Photo Gallery: The Speaker’s Robbie Burns Dinner

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 10:16 PM - 0 Comments

Speaker Andrew Scheer hosted his second a Robbie Burns dinner on Wednesday evening on Parliament Hill.

A bad precedent

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 3:48 PM - 0 Comments

Conservative MP Larry Miller suggests opposition complaints about the size of this year’s omnibus budget bills are not to be taken seriously because he “never heard a peep out of them” when the budget bill in 2010 was 900 pages.

It is possible that Mr. Miller didn’t hear anything, but it would not be accurate to thus presume that the omnibus nature of C-9 passed without a peep. Here, for instance, is a rudimentary search of Hansard that shows the omnibus nature of the bill was at least noted. There were two attempts to split that bill—one in the House, one in the Senate—but the Liberals were loath to initiate an election. Ultimately, the bill passed the Senate intact.

That said, Mr. Miller has something of a point: the consternation expressed about C-38 this spring (and again this fall with C-45) seemed orders of magnitude larger than the reaction that met previous bills. That probably has something to do with the fact that a majority government situation makes it easier to oppose. And had there been more attention paid to previous budget bills, the fight against omnibus legislation now might be easier. (If, for instance, you imagine that continued fights over omnibus legislation will ultimately force some kind of compromise, it’s possible that a greater fight two years ago might mean compromise that much sooner. That is, if you believe that this year’s fights over C-38 and C-45 have had, or will have, some impact.)

‘Sometimes common sense does not prevail’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 at 12:31 PM - 0 Comments

Conservative MP Larry Miller offers his thoughts on the Lord’s Prayer controversy in Grey County.

For months now we have had to suffer and listen to how reciting the Lord’s Prayer at Grey County council has somehow bruised the rights of one of its residents and of how the county is now being sued in order to get it to stop this terrible injustice. It’s high time that all of you who have contacted me concerned about this issue (myself included) got off our collective fannies and publicly display our feelings.

We live in a democracy, but when the rights of the majority are trampled to satisfy someone who doesn’t agree with something the majority has no issue with, it makes me wonder how solid our democracy really is. Human rights commissions are a good (or bad) example of how the rights of the majority are totally ignored to satisfy the whining minority. But that’s a whole other story for another day.

Tradition is something that we should all be proud of. Tradition can be of a cultural nature, a family tradition, religious or linguistic traditions or one of many other traditions too numerous to mention. If something ain’t broken, don’t fix it. Is the present practice really hurting anyone or anything? If the answer is no (and it is no) than things should stay as they are.

Worrying about windmills

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 16, 2012 at 2:57 PM - 0 Comments

Conservative MPs Bev Shipley, Larry Miller and Garry Schellenberger support a moratorium on wind turbine development until Health Canada’s study is completed.

Speaking from his cottage at Grand Bend, Schellenberger said he and other members of the Conservative rural caucus took their constituents’ concerns about wind farms to Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq. ”It’s a big issue all over Ontario, not just in Perth-Wellington,” he said “In Huron and Bruce they are very concerned and in eastern Ontario – it’s all over the place.”

He recalled attending a meeting in Sebringville about a year ago and hearing presentations about the health effects on people and “about how it has ruined their lives.” ”We took it to the minister over the course of the year and we did request something be done by Health Canada — that a proper study be done so that everyone can be heard and we can work on scientific evidence.”

“It’s not just a question-and-answer form. It (the study) will be quite involved and I look forward to that. My concern with this is that’s it’s done properly and that when the results come out that either side — there are two sides to this — that whatever the findings are the differences can be resolved.”

See previously: All politics is local wind turbines and Wind turbines and the need for consultation and evidence

All politics is local wind turbines

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 12:44 PM - 0 Comments

Health Canada has announced a study of the potential health impacts of wind turbines.

This study is in response to questions from residents living near wind farms about possible health effects of low frequency noise generated by wind turbines,” said the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health. “As always, our Government is putting the health and safety of Canadians first and this study will do just that by painting a more complete picture of the potential health impacts of wind turbine noise.”

Conservative MPs Larry Miller and Ben Lobb are pleased.

Meanwhile, in a heavily footnoted letter, Pierre Poilievre has written to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty—pdf here—to request a delay for a proposed wind farm in his riding.

As your Ontario Government continues to promote the expansion of wind power generation across the province, I am concerned that some scientists and physicians are warning about the adverse health risks affecting those who live in close proximity to IWTs. Until the completion of this Health Canada study, I am calling on a moratorium on the Marlborough Wind Farm project proposed for the village of North Gower, located in the City of Ottawa. 

The issue of wind turbines has been hotly contested in some parts of Ontario, linked even to the defeat of several Liberal MPPs in the last election.

John Baird vs. The UN

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments

Late last week, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird seemed to announce that Canada was withdrawing from the UN World Tourism Organization because Robert Mugabe had been appointed to the position of international tourism ambassador by the organization. The UN responded that no such appointment had been made. And today Embassy reports that Canada signalled it would be leaving the organization a year ago and left it two weeks ago.

On May 12, 2011, Canada formally communicated to the UNWTO, in a letter not made public, that it wanted to withdraw its full membership in the agency, according to Sandra Carvao, the UNWTO’s communications chief. It didn’t say why. ”According to UNWTO Statutes, withdrawal is effective one year after the formal notice (12 May 2012),” wrote Ms. Carvao in an email to Embassy May 31.

Under that timeline, the agency would have dropped Canada from its membership 18 days before Mr. Baird highlighted Mr. Mugabe’s recognition and said Canada had signalled it wanted to leave the UNWTO, “a decision that will take place later this month.”

Meanwhile, in response to recent criticism of this country, Conservative MP Larry Miller is seeking a review of Canada’s membership in the United Nations.

The Commons: Give us your tired, your poor, your convicted

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 6:19 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Thomas Mulcair had news. Or, rather, he’d read the news. And so he had a question.

“Mr. Speaker, the member for Trinity-Spadina and I last year asked why Gary Freeman, who lived in this country peaceably for 40 years and had several children, was not being allowed back in the country. The answer was an event that happened in Chicago in the sixties and he had served a short jail time. They said that because he was not a Canadian he was not allowed back in,” the leader of the opposition recounted.

“We just learned that the British criminal Conrad Black will be allowed in despite serving a second term in a federal American penitentiary,” he reported. “Why the double standard?”

The New Democrats seated around him stood to applaud.

“What about the French citizen who leads the NDP?” chirped Conservative backbencher Jeff Watson.

One should have known then that this would not end well. Continue…

A Conservative St. Patrick’s Day bash

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 at 10:55 PM - 0 Comments

A St. Patrick’s Day celebration was held in the office of MP James Rajotte for Tory MPs.

Tony Clement.

Jason Kenney.

Kellie Leitch and MIke Wallace.

Continue…

About that Hitler analogy

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 13, 2012 at 1:13 PM - 0 Comments

Last Tuesday, Conservative MP Larry Miller compared the long-gun registry to Hitler. He quickly apologized, but a day later he stood by the merits of his comparison. Irwin Cotler subsequently demanded he be sanctioned and so Larry Miller rose in the House this morning to once again clarify his Hitler analogy.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I believe that some members in this House and the media misunderstood the point I was making last week during debate when I argued that the confiscation of firearms is often the first thing that authoritarian governments do. While calls and e-mails of support from my constituents and from Canadians across the country indicated that they understood the point I was trying to make, and I do stand by my beliefs, but because of my respect for the House, I want to reiterate my withdrawal of the remark and apology for referencing two individuals in the way I did.

‘Odious and obscene’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 10, 2012 at 8:25 AM - 0 Comments

Irwin Cotler stood after Question Period to ask the Speaker to deal with Larry Miller’s pseudo apology.

‘That didn’t happen in Canada, but it could have’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 5:57 PM - 0 Comments

Whatever his apology yesterday, Larry Miller stands by his Hitler comparison.

“While I retracted my comments, the similarities between the two are very clear and you can’t convince me of otherwise. But it’s obvious the media didn’t have much to write about yesterday because that was the hot-button issue. So just in order to take the buzz off and what have you, I partially retracted the statement in the house,” he said … 

“While the similarities between the gun registry and what Adolph Hitler did to perpetrate his crimes are very clear and obvious, it was inappropriate for me to point those out in the House of Commons,” he said Wednesday. “And I went on to say that I apologized to anyone who was offended, but the truth is the truth and what he (Hitler) did at the time was his men went around and collected all the guns from the Jews. So I was just pointing out the similarities. That didn’t happen in Canada, but it could have and that’s one of the reasons there’s been such an uproar against the gun registry in this country. So that’s the end of it.”

Like Hitler

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 2:30 PM - 0 Comments

Larry Miller makes sure the last hours of debate on the long-gun registry don’t pass without a Hitler reference.

It appears the quote he cites is also in some dispute.

Update 4:23pm. After QP, Mr. Miller rose with the following point of order.

Mr. Speaker, earlier today in this House I was speaking on Bill C-19 and I referred to and used the name Adolf Hitler. While the references to the gun registry and what this evil guy did to perpetrate his crimes are very clear, it was inappropriate to use his name in the House and I apologize to anybody it may have offended.

MPs in kilts

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 7 Comments

Speaker Peter Milliken’s held  his 10th annual Robbie Burns dinner. Below, Defense Minister Peter Mackay (left) and NDP MP Pat Martin bring in the haggis.

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Ontario Conservative MP Ed Holder

. Continue…

The keeper of the flame

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 5:22 PM - 93 Comments

Given Larry Miller’s exalted status within the Conservative government, it is almost always worth noting his comments and concerns.

“The only good coyote is a dead coyote,” Bruce-Grey Owen Sound MP Larry Miller told about 150 people during sheep day at the 45th annual Grey Bruce Farmers Week … Miller used the debate to again state his opposition to the national gun registry. He said farmers, like himself, who once a carried a couple rifles in the truck are “afraid to bring out their guns and travel around like they used to.”

“What the MNR needs to do when it comes to unregistered guns and what have you, they’ve got to start turning their heads the same way as they do with commercial fishermen that break the law,” Miller told the meeting. “Let the farmers out there that have guns do a lot of this control.”

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 3:08 PM - 10 Comments

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 4:29 PM - 4 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The QP 20

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 31, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 13 Comments

Michael Chong’s motion on Question Period reform is seconded by no less than 20 MPs. Those seconders include 14 Conservatives (Mike Allen, Dona Cadman, Maxime Bernier, Larry Miller, Gord Brown, Nina Grewal, James Rajotte, John Cummins, Peter Braid, Rick Casson, Greg Thompson, Merv Tweed, Brian Storseth and Bruce Stanton), four Liberals (Frank Valeriote, Martha Hall Findlay, Glen Pearson and Siobhan Coady) and two New Democrats (Denise Savoie and Brian Masse).

Summer is no time to be consulting with Canadians

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 1:04 PM - 10 Comments

Presented with a petition demanding he return to Ottawa, Conservative MP Larry Miller offers to sit for an extra 12 days this July.

Reached by telephone, Miller said the past few weeks have been among his “busiest on record.” He said he has met with many constituents. He said the Conservative government plans to “make up” 10 of the 22 sitting days missed by prorogation. ”If the issue is the 22 (missed) Parliament sitting days, we already have plans to make up 10 of those days and, as far as I’m concerned, we can make up the other 12 in July,” Miller said. “We’ll take them out of the summer break. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Dean Del Mastro, even more committed to Parliamentary democracy, is willing to sit through all of July and August.

Is our children learning?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 12:56 PM - 70 Comments

Conservative MP Larry Miller finds a sympathetic high school civics teacher.

A student asked about prorogation and Miller defended and explained that decision. The civics teacher then remarked, “I didn’t know the word prorogue,” then added he doubted many had…

Scott noted former prime ministers Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau shut down government four and 11 times respectively with no fuss. ”How come all of a sudden when he does it, Mr. Harper does it, everybody knows about it and there’s protests?”…

Miller blamed the media for prorogation criticism. He said the media have “worked it up” to “sell papers or sell TV shows.” ”The national media needs a story in Ottawa and they didn’t have one,” Miller said, to which Scott expressed agreement…

Scott next asked Miller why opposition parties “give the impression they’re a little softer on crime.” They’re “not pro-criminal but they seem to look after the criminal as much if not more than the victim. What is that?”…

At one point, a student passed a note back to Scott, which he said informed him he was asking too many questions. Scott paused and invited students to ask any. Who’s your favourite hockey team? one asked. “Boston Bruins,” Miller replied.

Liberal media conspiracy infiltrates Harper cabinet

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 4:30 PM - 137 Comments

Congratulations are due to Peter MacKay.

In a startling reversal of roles, it was Defence Minister Peter MacKay asking the news media a big question when he proposed to a CTV news executive Saturday.

MacKay asked Jana Juginovic, director of programming at CTV News Channel, for her hand while they were in Boston, where she is on a one-year fellowship. She said yes immediately, according to sources.

No word yet on how Larry Miller is taking the news.

The vast left-wing conspiracy

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:39 AM - 79 Comments

Conservative MP Larry Miller tells us what’s really going on here with all these stories about giant novelty cheques.

“This is about the national media trying to help the Liberals deflect the attention off their problems right now,” said Miller. “Anybody that has seen Mr. Ignatieff and his crew in the House of Commons in the previous two or three weeks, it has looked as bad as when (Stephane) Dion was there and the media knows it, the Liberals know it and they are just trying to make an issue out of something.”

Heavens, how did that get there? (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 12:55 PM - 24 Comments

Upon further review, Gerald Keddy notices the Conservative logo on that giant novelty cheque and apologizes.

On the other hand, as Rosemary Barton notes, Conservative MP Larry Miller seems to have his own brand of giant novelty cheques.

Jim Flaherty's permanent tax on everything

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 4:45 PM - 26 Comments

Federal budget 2008. Replacing remaining provincial retail sales taxes (RSTs) with value-added  taxes harmonized with the GST is another area where provinces can contribute  to strengthening Canada’s Tax Advantage … The Government recognizes the significant economic benefits to Canada from sales tax harmonization and is willing to work with the five provinces that still have RSTs to help facilitate the transition to provincial value-added sales taxes harmonized with the GST.

Federal budget 2009. Modernizing these harmful taxes by implementing a value-added tax structure harmonized with the GST is the single most important step that provinces with RSTs could take to stimulate new business investment, create jobs and improve Canada’s overall tax competitiveness.

Jim Flaherty, March 30. Last week, Ontario’s Liberal government, after objecting to the combined tax for years, decided to switch. Ottawa agreed to help Canada’s most populous province with that move by giving Ontario one-time compensation of $4.3 billion. ”I think this is very good economic policy,” Flaherty told reporters in Ottawa Monday. “This is a massive tax cut, a $5 billion tax cut for businesses in the province of Ontario and that means job creation and investment in the province of Ontario. So, this is very good economic policy over time.”

Jim Flaherty, August 4. Ottawa is prepared to cut a cheque to three holdout provinces if they agree to merge their sales taxes with the federal GST, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Tuesday. ”We’ll see what their governments decide to do,” he said. ”But the same proposal – in terms of transition funding – that we made with the province of Ontario followed by the province of British Columbia is available to those provinces as well. The same formula.”

Dick Harris, August 10. Bringing a harmonized sales tax to B.C. isn’t the federal Conservatives idea, Cariboo-Prince George MP Dick Harris is emphasizing … Reached Monday for comment on the issue, Harris said the Conservatives are merely adhering to federal legislation passed by the old Chretien Liberal government that includes a formula to determine how much funding a provincial government should get for making the move … ”The legislation is still there, of course, and even if we wanted to change it, the Liberals and the NDP and the Bloc would not vote to change it and we’re a minority government,” Harris contended. Asked what the Conservatives’ position is on harmonizing the provincial sales taxes with the federal goods and services tax, Harris said the party hasn’t really taken one saying it’s strictly a provincial government decision.

Larry Miller, August 11. “First, I want to make it clear that this was a change initiated by the province of Ontario and was not a decision made by the federal government in any way.”

James Lunney, August 20. As this was a decision of the BC provincial government, I encourage you to contact your MLA Ron Cantelon (ron.cantelon.mla@leg.bc.ca) to relay any concerns you may have.

Newsmakers of the week

By Lianne George - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 3 Comments

Roberta’s flack

Senator John McCain’s mother, the feisty Roberta McCain, 97, won’t tolerate bullies on her team. Appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last Wednesday, she dismissed Republican pundit Rush Limbaugh as a glorified “entertainer.” “What he represents of the Republican party has nothing to do with my side of it,” she said. “I don’t know what the man means, I don’t know what he’s talking about.” Limbaugh was one of her son’s harshest critics during the 2008 presidential election. More recently, Limbaugh suggested that her granddaughter, Meghan McCain, who sees herself as the fresh new face of the GOP, should take a hike.

B.C. may get its Citizen of the Year back

Twenty years ago, Frank Hertel, 72, a charismatic Victoria businessman who pledged to turn Vancouver Island into a high-tech mecca, fled Canada to avoid tax evasion charges. On May 9, Interpol arrested him at Heathrow Airport in London, where he is now in jail, awaiting an extradition hearing. In 1984, Hertel founded a company called International Electronics Corp., which specialized in oil and thermal power, with the help of a federal program allowing for scientific tax credits. The Victoria Chamber of Commerce named him “Citizen of the Year,” but in 1985, Revenue Canada reported that he owed $30 million in back taxes and began seizing assets. In 1986, after being slapped with tax evasion charges, he fled Victoria for Venezuela, where he is said to have lived for a time in a large house in Caracas. “He knew everybody in Venezuela,” his former lawyer George Jones told the Victoria Times Colonist. “It was remarkable.” His bail was set at $900,000.

Guests: call first

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, leader of the Burmese pro-democracy party NLD, is on trial for breaching the conditions of her house arrest after she allowed a strange American man to stay in her home for two days. John Yettaw, a 53-year-old Vietnam war veteran, allegedly swam up to her home—uninvited and for unknown reasons—using homemade flippers. Suu Kyi alleges she told Yettaw to leave, but that he refused, saying that he was exhausted. Suu Kyi has been detained for most of the last two decades, and was due to be released after serving a six-year sentence on May 27. Critics say Burma’s military government is using these charges as an opportunity to silence Suu Kyi for another three to five years. Members of her legal defence team met with her this week at the Rangoon prison where she is being held. She told them: “Don’t worry about me. I will face whatever happens.” Her chief lawyer, Kyi Win, however, blames Yettaw for the whole mess, calling him “a fool.”

Bruni’s secular life

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is now on record as the only first lady of France—a predominantly Catholic nation—to have ever criticized the Pope. Speaking with the French women’s magazine Femme Actuelle, Bruni-Sarkozy called Pope Benedict XVI’s refusal to support the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa “damaging.” “I was born Catholic, I was baptized, but in my life I feel profoundly secular,” she says. Last week, as though offering up an Exhibit A, a Paris auction house announced its intention to auction off a nude drawing of Bruni-Sarkozy as part of a collection called “Pin-up.” Also featured in the collection are photos of the burlesque star Dita von Teese, dressed as a nurse and as a dominatrix.

Old man Caulfield

J.D. Salinger, the notoriously reclusive American fiction writer, swore off publishing new works decades ago. For a Swedish-American writer named John David California, however, Salinger’s silence is an open invitation. California’s debut novel, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, is an unauthorized sequel to Salinger’s classic coming-of-age story Catcher in the Rye. In 60 Years Later, Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, now 76 and known as “Mr. C,” flees a nursing home (it was a prep school in the original) to search, once again, for answers to life’s great questions in the streets of New York. “He’s still Holden Caulfield and has a particular view on things,” California, 33, told the Guardian. “He can be tired, and he’s disappointed in the goddamn world. He’s older and wiser in a sense, but in another sense he doesn’t have all the answers.” California dedicated his book to Salinger. “Maybe he will get upset,” he admits. Critics argue that the prospect of this book is so horrific, it can only be a hoax.