Bless this mess

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 18, 2009 at 2:51 PM - 16 Comments

In a two-part post—here and here—Kady O’Malley reviews all that has befallen Parliament’s committee system.

The first one to collapse  was Procedure and House Affairs. where a motion to investigate the Conservative Party’s in-and-out electoral financing scheme led to meeting after meeting after meeting of government members running down the clock to prevent the vote from being called. Eventually, the opposition parties got fed up and ousted the chair — at the time, one Gary Goodyear, since ascended to the ranks of junior cabinet minister — which really did not go over well at all, particularly for Joe Preston, who was elected to take Goodyear’s place, despite his vehement protestations. After accusing the opposition of forcing him into indentured servitude, which made for a truly touching acceptance speech, Preston reluctantly took the chair, and adjourned the meeting, which turned out to be the last one the committee would hold until well into the next year.

Goodbye to all that

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 29, 2009 at 12:24 PM - 14 Comments

Chris Selley memorializes the veiled-voter debate.

The first law that was supposed to do that is now in effect. But all it does is instruct poll clerks, having determined that a voter’s name and address are on the register, to ask for either one piece of photo ID that lists the voter’s home address or “two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer each of which establish the elector’s name and at least one of which establishes the elector’s address.” So not only does it not ban veiled voting, in other words, but it doesn’t even require photo ID.

Nevertheless, when Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand said as much, he was pilloried. “We just adopted this spring… a law designed to have the visual identification of voters,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper fumed. “That’s the purpose of the law,” he added, astonishingly. Not satisfied with his boss’s gaffe, Tory MP Joe Preston—a real live member of the committee that OKed the legislation, apparently without having read it—then upped the ante. “I’d love for [Mayrand] to come here and try to explain to us what he doesn’t understand,” he said, causing numerous heads to explode in the few Canadian newsrooms that actually noticed what was going on.

One of the first public events I attended after arriving in Ottawa was Marc Mayrand’s press conference to respond to all this. For a half hour he sat and calmly refuted his interrogators as reporter after reporter told him how sorely mistaken he was. Then everyone went back to their offices, read the law and realized he was right. Probably one of the five best performances I’ve witnessed in these two years.

Joe Preston will not take your bait

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 7:00 PM - 15 Comments

Various questions and answers from Conservative Joe Preston’s scrum after QP today. The topic is expenses incurred by CBC executives.

Reporter: You believe, right, on your side, your belief — you guys think generally they’re a bunch of lefty fat cats that need to be cut, right?

Preston: Even if that was the truth, I think they should control their spending either way.

Reporter: So what’s the solution? If the perception is that they’re, you know, spending out of control and sort of a la-di-da gang, what can you do?

Preston: Well, I say the suggestion is the same as other corporations: control your spending, take a look at it. Talk to your people and say these are the levels of spending we think are appropriate in the organization.

Reporter: Privatize, sell it off, shut ‘em down?

Preston: Well, let’s start off with controlling some spending. You know we can get to the others if that’s the end result but, no, let’s start off with controlling some spending. Thank you. Thanks.