The Commons: A return to the natural order of things
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - 23 Comments
The Scene. “Our responsibility is to provide an opposition and an alternative government for Parliament and for Canadians,” a wise leader of Her Majesty’s official opposition said some years ago. “What the government has to do, if it wants to govern for any length of time, is it must appeal primarily to the third parties in the House of Commons to get them to support it.”
And so it was that today, in its own particular and perhaps peculiar way, Parliament returned to its natural state.
“Mr. Speaker,” said Michael Ignatieff at the outset of Question Period, “in Canada we have a government that does not believe in government.”
So it was, of course, that the Liberal leader had, hours earlier, filed official notice of the official opposition’s lack of belief in the party that presently forms government. He did in nine words—”That this House has lost confidence in the government”—what no Liberal leader in more than two decades has dared do.
“Which does not protect the jobs of today,” Mr. Ignatieff continued, “which does not create the jobs of tomorrow, that does not protect the technology made in Canada, which does not protect the health of the most vulnerable and does not protect our health care system when it is attacked in the United States. When will this government admit that its ideology is to weaken the ability of the Government of Canada to protect Canadians?”
The Prime Minister stood then and reached for reasonableness. Continue…
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Olympic hats create storm – but it could have been worse
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 4:31 PM - 132 Comments
Much drama and political theatre in the House foyer as opposition MPs like Liberal Hedy Fry (below) were aghast over official caps for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games bearing a similar logo to the Conservative Party logo.
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Fancy footwear as The Hill Times turns 20
By Mitchel Raphael - Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 1:29 PM - 16 Comments
The Hill Times celebrated its 20th anniversary at the Library and Archives Canada on Wellington Street in Ottawa. NDP MP Niki Ashton addresses the crowd below.
Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau in Fluevogs.
Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells with a shoeless Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt.
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Hedy Fry upset over drag queen’s lip liner
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 3:06 PM - 7 Comments
While in Toronto, Liberal MP Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre) stopped by the city’s premier gay bar Woody’s to check out the drag shows. She is seen here with Daytona Bitch (the one with bigger hair).
Fry with Bobby Crowder, who moved to Toronto from Vancouver. When he saw Fry he told her he was one of the cowboys on her gay Pride float in Vancouver back when she had a Brokeback Mountain theme.
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Mitchel Raphael on who Don Newman will miss
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments
And Rona Ambrose’s man-hating dog
Somebody at Stornoway is out of sortsMichael Ignatieff held a media garden party at Stornoway, his first since becoming Liberal leader. The Etobicoke Youth Jazz Orchestra from his Toronto riding provided the music. The party was supposed to go from 6 to 8 p.m., but when it started getting chilly, Ignatieff’s wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, invited the remaining guests into the house, where media folks stayed chatting with Iggy in the living room until 10:30. Zsohar’s and Iggy’s feisty feline Mimi was jumping all over the place.
(She even jumps in Ignatieff’s cereal when he has breakfast.) The couple had got their second cat, Eric, the day before the bash so Mimi was in a bit of a huff. Stornoway’s chef, Josh Drache, calls Mimi “an evil cat.” Zsohar served biscotti in the living room, and, despite her jumping, even Mimi got a nibble.
Who knew our Senators were that fit?Vancouver Conservative MP John Weston had several politicians, sports coaches, and Laureen Harper gather in front of the Peace Tower as part of his initiative to get MPs to invest at least “20 minutes 10 seconds” twice weekly in fitness activities. The amount of time is connected to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. When Conservative Senator Nancy Greene Raine told the crowd that 80 per cent of senators already had some sort of fitness regime, a few gasps were heard. Labour Minister Rona Ambrose brought her dog Luna to the event. When Peter Stoffer tried to pet the pooch, Ambrose warned the NDP MP that Luna hates men. But Luna liked Stoffer for some reason.
As the group did a walking lap around the Hill, they passed AIDS activists dressed in black-and-white-striped prison uniforms protesting the criminalization of HIV transmission, saying it is the only potentially fatal pathogen being treated this way. The AIDS activists were supported by NDP MPs Libby Davies and Bill Siksay as well as Liberal MP Hedy Fry. Before the AIDS protest had wrapped up, another group of demonstrators arrived with effigies of Stephen Harper and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as the two leaders were meeting on the Hill for trade talks. The Uribe protesters’ music was so loud it drowned out the AIDS activists.
Luckily Don Newman ignored his CBC bossesCBC Newsworld Politics host Don Newman will soon retire. He arrived on the Hill as a Globe and Mail reporter during Pierre Trudeau’s first government. He was the first print reporter to have a tape recorder. “I was laughed at and ridiculed both by broadcasters and by colleagues in the print press.” He has no plans to be a politician, although he notes his former fellow broadcaster Mike Duffy, who is now a senator, always had an interest in the upper chamber. Notes Newman, “I am very happy for him that he finally got where he wanted to go.” Newman hasn’t voted in a federal or provincial election since 1972 because he covers them. “I do vote municipally. I kinda know who is running for council. I vote for the school board although I have no idea who they are.” When CBC got the Newsworld channel, Newman was told by his bosses not to waste his time on it. They later admitted they were wrong. “I knew Newsworld was going to be a big success because Brian Mulroney would phone me personally on the commercial breaks.” Will he miss wearing makeup every day? “No,” says Newman. “But I’ve had a wonderful person [Joan Hodgins] who has done my makeup since 1993. I will miss her company every day.”
What’s Martha Hall Findlay wearing?Toronto Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay was spotted wearing a sealskin ribbon she got from the government of Nunavut. Her Liberal colleague Anthony Rota, who has the fur industry promotion organization Fur Harvesters Auction in his northern Ontario riding, says he plans to get similar ribbons for all the Liberal MPs.
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Politicians and prison outfits
By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 9:25 PM - 53 Comments
AIDS activists dressed in black-and-white striped prison uniforms took to the Hill to protest the criminalization of HIV transmission, noting it is the only potentially fatal pathogen being treated this way.
The AIDS activists were supported by NDP MPs Libby Davies and Bill Siksay.
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Mitchel Raphael on the picture that took 20 years to get
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments
Why the Ruby Dhalla story is not big in the Philippines, and how Bob Rae beat Ignatieff in the Parliamentarians of the Year awards
Gilles Duceppe’s short-lived acting career
At the third annual Maclean’s Parliamentarians of the Year awards gala, Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe was runner-up for most knowledgeable MP and best orator. He found the latter recognition “funny, because in Quebec they are saying I am not that good an orator. But here, I am very good.” Duceppe comes from a family passionate about theatre and film. When asked if this had influenced his oratorical skills, he noted: “I was not a good actor at all. I can’t play a role. I did only once for a Christmas play [in Grade 6 at his Catholic school]. The nuns had me play Saint Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, which is the most awful role for a man to play—the husband of a virgin!” The awards gala was hosted by Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells and Le Devoir columnist and L’actualité magazine contributor Manon Cornellier.
Speaker Peter Milliken did the toast. Bob Rae won for best orator but could not attend—in his place he sent Toronto Grit MP Kirsty Duncan to fetch his award. (In 2007, when Michael Ignatieff won for best orator, he sent Ruby Dhalla on his behalf.) Toronto Liberal MP Rob Oliphant, who voted for Rae as best orator, said the reason Rae beat Ignatieff this year was that as leader “Michael doesn’t have as much time in the House. Bob gets more floor time.” Ontario NDP MP Joe Comartin won, for the second year in a row, the award for most knowledgeable MP. He said he can now place the extremely heavy awards in his Windsor, Ont., office because he just replaced his flimsy desk with a more solid one. For the third year in a row Nova 
Scotia NDP Peter Stoffer won most collegial. In second place was Liberal whip Rodger Cuzner, who noted: “I guess I’ve got to drink a little more [to beat Stoffer].” Cuzner said he wasn’t surprised that fellow Grit Paul Szabo once again won for hardest-working MP. Szabo sends new MPs a three-page letter filled with things they need to watch out for. “He wants to see everyone succeed,” says Cuzner. Halifax NDP MP Megan 
One of the highlights for her was seeing Garneau at the Canada Aviation Museum. “I really wanted to get my picture taken with him but I was too shy,” recalls Leslie. “So I took a picture of him by himself and it’s in my photo album still.” Twenty years later at the awards gala, Capital Diary snapped the first picture of Leslie and Garneau together. The NDP continued to dominate the awards for the third year, which had leader Jack Layton beaming all night. He noted the most knowledgeable MP, Joe Comartin, is his party’s justice critic and that the best rookie MP is their deputy justice critic. Layton also had kind words for the winner of best overall MP, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney: “He’s always a guy you can approach. I’ve always had a good relationship with Jason. He’s straight up. What you see is what you get.”
Another chip off the old Bloc The Bloc’s Paul Crête also did well in Maclean’s Parliamentarians of the Year poll. He placed third for most collegial MP and fourth for hardest-working. Crête has been an MP for nearly 16 years and was part of the wave of separatists elected when the party ran in its first federal election in 1993. It was a well-timed tribute to the MP, who will be leaving federal politics to run for the Parti Québécois, in a yet-to-be-announced Quebec by-election in the riding now vacant thanks to the resignation of ADQ leader Mario Dumont.
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Speaker hosts Paul Gross and GG winners
By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 12:45 PM - 0 Comments
Speaker Peter Milliken held a reception in his dining room for the recipients of the 2009 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards.
Heritage Minister James Moore with actor and GG winner Paul Gross.
Vancouver Liberal MP Hedy Fry with actor and GG winner Paul Gross.
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The Commons: If unanswered, just keep asking
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 11, 2009 at 6:11 PM - 27 Comments
The Scene. It was Marlene Jennings’ turn to ask why. Or, more specifically, it was her turn to ask when. As in: “When is the government going to establish a national standard of eligibility that is fair to everyone?”The subject this day was employment insurance. It has been the same subject for some time now. For weeks, it seems, the Liberals have been asking the government to amend the system through which benefits are doled out to the those Canadians who’ve most recently been unceremoniously separated from their jobs. And for months, it seems, the government has been arguing that changes have already been made, what problems still exist are the responsibility of previous Liberal governments and, anyway, any future Liberal government will just raise punitive and punishing taxes on the poor and jobless.
No doubt the unemployed have watched enraptured each afternoon by the nuanced exchange of ideas, proposals and slander.
In response to Ms. Jennings this day, the minister responsible, Diane Finley, reviewed the charges noted above and proceeded to her standard finish.
“They want to increase taxes and rhetoric,” she said of the Liberals, “we are increasing profits.” Continue…
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Stockwell Day challenges Death
By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 10:01 AM - 23 Comments
The National Arts Centre launched their B.C. Scene festival, which highlights the province’s arts.
Several giant cardboard boxes were set up where people went inside for a performance. Here Stockwell Day, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, challenges Death to a game of chess.
This actor’s performance piece included invited people to join her in bed and pretend to be her husband—and then she proceeded to get mad at them.
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Student government leaders talk to big government
By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 10:54 AM - 8 Comments
Members of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) were on the Hill lobbying MPs on issues pertaining to Canadian post-secondary institutions. Here is Zach Churchill (right), National Director of the CASA, with Liberal Cape Breton MP Mark Eyking.
Labour Minister Rona Ambrose with Stephen Lecce, President of the University Student Council at the University of Western Ontario.
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Politics and the Pen plus the Cabinet Ministers hairdresser
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 9:31 PM - 50 Comments
The Writers’ Trust of Canada handed out their annual $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize honouring political writing excellence to James Orbinski for An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century at the annual Politics and the Pen gala dinner in the Fairmont Château Laurier ballroom. Politics and the Pen is one of Ottawa’s A-list events and brings out top politicians, including Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt and Transport Minister John Baird.
A full press! Adam Chambers, aide to Jim Flaherty, with Lynn Meahan (left), press secretary to Labour Minister Rona Ambrose, and Jasmine MacDonnell, press secretary to Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt.
Laureen Harper with former Conservative MP Monte Solberg and designer Justina McCaffrey.
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Megapundit: Inside the Jock Zone
By selley - Friday, August 8, 2008 at 2:04 PM - 0 Comments
Must-reads: John Robson on the Greyhound murder; …Christie Blatchford on Adam van Koeverden; Rosie
Must-reads: John Robson on the Greyhound murder; Christie Blatchford on Adam van Koeverden; Rosie DiManno on the athletes’ village; Dan Gardner on our horrible future; Vaughn Palmer on the World Trade University; Lorne Gunter on the Wheat Board.
The federal miscellany
The Liberals are still broke, the Wheat Board is still a communist abomination and Stephen Harper is still tearing the country apart. On the bright side, TGIF!Lorne Gunter says the Liberals “simply cannot afford to fight a general election”—a shocking revelation the Edmonton Journal quite understandably put in its headline—and as such will be forced to play “crutch to the Tories’ Tiny Tim” for the foreseeable future. The truth is revealed in paragraph 14, however, where Gunter pegs the likelihood of the Grits being able to afford an election campaign “without resorting to more bank loans” (our emphasis) as “highly unlikely.” So, there you have it: they’ll resort to more bank loans. Problem solved. Thanks for stopping by.
The Vancouver Sun‘s Barbara Yaffe (who filed her wildly oversold assessment of Grit finance yesterday), handicaps the battle for Vancouver-Centre between lefty poli-sci professor Michael Byers and incumbent Hedy Fry, arguing it will be “one of the most compelling” races in the coming election (which will occur once the Liberals take out some more bank loans). Byers’ chosen issues: homelessness in his tiding, the “militarization” of the Arctic, shutting down private medical centres, “taking a break” from combat in Kandahar, big government solutions to climate change, and cruise ships “spew[ing] diesel fumes into Vancouver’s harbour.” Fry’s chosen issues, so far as we can tell: incumbency, not upsetting the applecart, and the benefits of the status quo.
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Megapundit: It was war for oil after all!
By selley - Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 12:58 PM - 0 Comments
Must-reads: Henry Aubin and …Margaret Wente on Henry Morgentaler; Gary Mason on Michael Byers.
Must-reads: Henry Aubin and Margaret Wente on Henry Morgentaler; Gary Mason on Michael Byers.
Shouting into the wind
The politicians have fled Ottawa, but the opinions remain.As soon as the next American president is inaugurated, the Toronto Star‘s James Travers says the Canadian government should be full steam ahead encouraging Washington “to adjust its current muscular enforcement model and return to the risk management approach”—that’s Traversian for loosening up on border security—and to “expand the NAFTA platform to open other markets.” Unfortunately, he notes, while John McCain is the presidential candidate more likely to be open to such discussions, cozying up to a Republican is a politically risky move. (And it’s official, we’re officially sick to death of this argument. Canadians are not going to reject border security negotiations because the man in the White House has elephant cufflinks.)
The Vancouver Sun‘s Barbara Yaffe doesn’t have an awful lot that’s new to say about Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift, but fundamentally she believes the backlash is worth the risk for a party that was desperate “to grab the spotlight on a prominent policy issue.” (Previous attempts, she notes—notably Stéphane Dion’s ironclad insistence on a February 2009 pullout from Afghanistan—didn’t end so well.) But she notes that one of the most trenchant criticisms of the Liberal plan, especially given the idea that it’s such sound policy, is the fact that it includes “poverty reduction measures.” One might reasonably ask: Is this meant to fight climate change after all? Or is it “a vehicle to steal votes from other left-wing parties”?
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Wait, there are rumours circulating that have nothing to do with Guy Giorno and the coming purge at PMO?
By kadyomalley - Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 1:59 PM - 0 Comments
Huh.
And yes, it’s true: Michael Byers is planning to run for the federal…And yes, it’s true: Michael Byers is planning to run for the federal NDP nomination in Vancouver Centre, currently held by Hedy Fry. From an email he sent out earlier today:
Continue…
