Why Svend Robinson speaks so well of Harper

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, March 7, 2011 at 3:30 PM - 2 Comments

Photographs by Mitchel Raphael

Does Bev Oda know?

These have been rough times for International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda. Just before the scandal surrounding the addition of the word “not” into her department’s funding recommendations blew up, she had eye surgery, resulting in her having to wear sunglasses most of the time in the House. It’s also meant the notes she refers to have to be supersized, a feature not lost on some Liberals who sit in the gallery above Oda and who told Capital Diary they can read what the notes say.

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

Svend Robinson rumours

With the announcement that NDP MP Bill Siksay would not be running in the next election, there were whispers on the Hill that Svend Robinson, the man who held the seat before him, might make a comeback. Siksay was Robinson’s aide for many years and ran after Robinson bowed out of politics. Robinson did try a comeback in the 2006 election, going up against Hedy Fry, but lost to the Teflon Liberal who has had big name after big name try to defeat her. Robinson was recently on the Hill meeting with MPs who are on the HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (HAT) parliamentary caucus founded by Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla. Robinson told Capital Diary there is no chance he will run. He likes his job with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which involves working with elected officials all over the world to secure funding. Robinson notes that the Harper government increased funding to the Global Fund last year by 20 per cent and he is happy to give credit where it is due: “The buck stops at [the PM's] desk. Good for Stephen.”

Continue…

The cycle

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 3:39 PM - 120 Comments

The Liberal side was, if memory serves, not terribly impressed when Conservative backbenchers were sent up, in the midst of Ruby Dhalla’s nanny problems, to ask terribly serious questions about the matter’s implications.

And so the Conservative side was terribly outraged—John Baird was particularly and audibly appalled—when, a short while ago, the Liberals sent up Anita Neville to ask if the government had any comment on the sentencing of those who are charged with driving while intoxicated and drug possession.

Here now, the transcript of today’s exchange. Continue…

Political Yearbook

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 6 Comments

And the Black Rod is made of chocolate!

By Colby Cosh - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 4:21 AM - 97 Comments

After some hours trying to decipher Angelo Persichilli’s column about the Château Laurier Conspiracy, I think I’ve found the key. One must disconnect Persichilli’s speculation about What It All Means from his actual reporting. It seems likely he overheard or was given access to audio of some genuine conversation, though the whole account is slathered in enough passive-voice sauce to turn anybody’s stomach. Ignore the carefully placed buttresses to the story’s authority and importance, like “This was not an isolated meeting between a few MPs”, and what you’re left with is… an isolated meeting between a few MPs, who bellyache tipsily while Bob Rae listens politely and encourages frank discussion but strongly insists he is not interested in a coup.

This is exactly what you would expect Bob Rae to do if he were a completely loyal lieutenant with no ambitions of his own whatsoever, intent solely on serving as his leader’s eyes and ears. It is also exactly what you would expect Bob Rae to do if he were planning a lightning coup for the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Most likely, Bob Rae is just what you think he is: an ambitious fellow forced to play a difficult hand, one who may be happy to profit from a regicide but is fully aware that he who draws the dagger rarely survives to wallow in the glory.

Beyond the facts, the column is full of fairly innocuous propositions disguised as dramatic disclosures. Succession to the leadership is a “dominant theme of discussion” in the Liberal Party? Well, sure, that’s what political parties are: machines for ensuring that aligned political interests stick together if something happens to the leader. I promise you that succession to the Conservative leadership is a pretty frequent subject of table-talk when Conservatives get together. (And, in fact, it’s a strength of the Liberal Party, not a weakness, that it has a lot of semi-credible successors around.)

And Persichilli “wouldn’t be surprised” if Ignatieff retreated to his “beloved academic world” at any moment? So who would be? The Liberals imported that danger/hope as part of the package deal when they dragged Ignatieff back from Harvard. Persichilli, I feel, is merely reminding us of the facts of life in a way that makes his eavesdropping seem fraught with urgency and electricity.

The more I concentrated on what is truly knowable and relevant in Persichilli’s story, the more I felt sorry for Bob Rae. Imagine having to stand there, nodding and smiling and nursing a schnapps, while you pretend to take the strategic judgment of Ruby Dhalla and Carolyn “Body Bags” Bennett oh so seriously. To what Christmas fantasy did his mind drift off while Dhalla, an ISO-certifiable ninny, was waxing obnoxious about the party “not doing enough to nurture the next generation of leaders”? Did he dream of being elected Santa Claus, passing in his crimson finery through the gingerbread doors of the Elf Parliament as the Candy-Cane Peace Tower glimmered in the night sky?

In remembrance

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 34 Comments

On the 11th day of the 11th month, statements of remembrance from Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, Glen Pearson, Ujjal Dosanjh, James Bezan, Ruby Dhalla, Hedy Fry, Martha Hall Findlay, Peter Stoffer and Mark Holland.

Ignatieff on Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 14 Comments

An account of the Liberal leader’s remarks to caucus, added as a footnote to a story detailing Ruby Dhalla’s assurances to her Liberal colleagues that unsubstantiated speculation of her exit from the party is both unsubstantiated and speculative.

“I’ve made some mistakes. I will make some more,” he told his caucus according to an insider. “But I’ve stood strong on the beliefs.”

“We stand for those people for whom the promise of Canada has not been met. We are here for you. We are here for Canadians,” he said. “We’re in the business of helping people who are not in this room.”

Do the shuffle

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 10:18 AM - 19 Comments

Four Liberals (Dhalla, Wrzesnewskyj, Silva and Wilfert) get advisory roles for various regions of the world, four new critic portfolios are created and various spots in the shadow cabinet are distributed as follows:

Navdeep Bains – Small Business and Tourism
Siobhan Coady – Treasury Board
Bonnie Crombie – Crown Corporations
Ujjal Dosanjh – National Defense
Kirsty Duncan – Public Health
Marlene Jennings – Government Ethics and Democratic Reform
Derek Lee – National Revenue
Joyce Murray – Amateur Sport and Vancouver Olympics
Robert Oliphant – Veterans Affairs
Justin Trudeau – Youth and Multiculturalism

On why the NDP hates all the applause

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 11 Comments

Coming soon? This is your pilot, Ruby Dhalla, speaking.

Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla was in riding lockdown this summer. She left only twice: for the Liberal caucus meeting in Sudbury, and for French lessons in France. This summer, to mark her fifth year as an elected official, she was raising money for the Ethno-Cultural Canadian Women’s Organization or ECCO (the final O is the symbol for woman). The group’s goal is combatting domestic violence in ethnic communities. Dhalla is also studying to be a pilot; so far, she has only been in simulators, though. Toronto’s Pearson International Airport is on the border of her riding. She often gives herself extra time when flying out of there because security people, many of whom are constituents, stop her to ask about things like immigration problems when she leaves for Ottawa on Mondays. But for the first Monday that the House returned, Dhalla had a downtown Toronto meeting and flew Porter Airlines from the Toronto island airport. Her reading for the first week back was Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. Over the summer she read Barack Obama’s books and The Tao of Detox: The Natural Way to Purify Your Body for Health and Longevity.

It’s the much-coveted spot

Conservative backbench MP Brad Trost seems to be out of the doghouse. Several Tory MPs were miffed at Trost after he told a website, “The tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy, was not supported by—I think it’s safe to say—by a large majority of the MPs. This was a very isolated decision.” He also alluded to a demotion for Diane Ablonczy, the minister responsible for allocating the funding. But on the first day Parliament resumed, Trost gave the last member’s statement before question period. This is a much-coveted spot since by that time most of the media and other MPs have reached their seats and may actually pay attention to it. NDP House leader Libby Davies says the Conservatives tend to use the last member’s statement simply to rattle Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. The personal attacks, she says, result in the Liberal caucus rising and extending their applause for their leader. Davies feels that the applause is going on so long it is cutting into question period and lowering the NDP’s chances of getting in an extra question at the end. She has complained to Speaker Peter Milliken. Continue…

How I spent my summer vacation

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 9 Comments

Click on the images to find out, in their own words, how each of these famous Canadians spent their summer.

Can I call you Belinda?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 10, 2009 at 3:57 PM - 19 Comments

Sylvia Bashevkin talks about her new book, women in politics and this government’s attitude toward women.

“So we see this pattern of speech where we often speak about women in those leadership positions using their first names. … We find this pattern of dissecting their appearance, their clothing, their hair, their style of speech, their personal lives. This is probably not just trivializing the women who may seek to run for top office but it also serves to discourage individuals from trying out those careers. It tends to dampen the supply of women as well as men who are willing to submit to that kind of public microscopic examination so part of it is the stakes that are involved.

“There is high stakes in all fields but very few of them are as exposed, stark, public inspection as public political leadership. … So therefore, we tend to see women who become party leaders, leading parties that are really very weak and then blaming them when the party in fact turn in weak results in an election, which is entirely consistent with the fact that the party was in a weak position.”

The first name basis on which we seem to be with most female politicians is an interesting point. Part of it probably has to do with little more than the fact that the lack of women in positions of political power makes female names all the more singular—you know who is being discussed when someone mentions Belinda or Ruby, there’d be more possibility of confusion if we talked about Michael or Stephen.

None of which gets around the fact that the use of first names in this context is almost always implicitly diminishing.

Mitchel Raphael on a handshaking situation

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

The Defence Minister, the military and the very prominent bandage

It was a tough job, but MPs rose valiantly to the challenge of consuming as much lobster as possible. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Gail Shea hosted a packed reception at the Westin Ottawa for P.E.I. Seafood Processors, who, along with the Atlantic provinces, Quebec and the federal government, were trying to raise awareness of the low-price challenges currently facing the lobster industry. When Shea’s three daughters and two sons lived at home, she told Capital Diary, she needed 15 to 20 lb. of lobster to feed her family in one sitting. Liberal MP Siobhan Coady says when it comes to lobster, you must, as they say in her home province of Newfoundland, “eat as much as you can suffer.” Coady’s husband is the perfect partner for eating lobster, she notes, because “I eat the arms and the tails and my husband eats the bodies.”

Defence Minister Peter MacKay arrived with his right arm still in a sling from his rugby-match injury but said that if he had to he could still crack open a lobster with one hand. Two days later, MacKay was at a luncheon held by the Canadian Club of Toronto to honour the men and women of the Canadian Forces. VIPs included Laureen Harper and Don Cherry. This time on MacKay’s injured arm there was a prominent bandage that he did not have on before. The bandage was to make sure the military folks saw his arm was broken. His aide, Jay Paxton, noted military personnel like giving very firm handshakes and that one of those could have seriously damaged the defence minister’s arm. MacKay used his left hand to greet people.

If he can make it to October . . .

At Speaker Peter Milliken’s garden party, CTV’s Craig Oliver jokingly announced that the media were going to form a “blue ribbon panel” to ensure that there will be no election until after October 2009. If Milliken remains House Speaker until Oct. 12 (which happens to be Thanksgiving), he will be the longest-serving Speaker in Canadian history. Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on Layton's tight pants

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 5:21 PM - 0 Comments

Finger puppet goes after Stockwell Day’s tan

When Toronto textile artist Gabe Thirlwall and her partner moved to Ottawa three years ago, she discovered “you’re hard up for excitement in this town.” Then inspiration hit as she began spotting the city’s political “celebrities.” She decided to combine her textile skills with political theatre. The result is a growing collection of handmade MP finger puppets. While she likes to poke fun at all the politicians she has made so far, some get worse treatment than others. “I purposely made Stephen Harper look on the fatter side. I feel you can attack a man on his policies, but he probably stands by his policies. But we know he is sensitive about his weight.” Harper and a few of the other puppets have an apple-motif fabric backing “because I thought they were keeners.” NDP Leader Jack Layton has tight orange pants “because he is very fit. Riding his bike to Parliament Hill and all.” There is also an Olivia Chow puppet; most people buy her with Layton so as not to separate the MP couple, says Thirlwall. Trade Minister Stockwell Day “is on a brown fabric because he always has questionable tans—I don’t know if he goes to the tanning salon or uses creams. But every time I see that guy, he’s a different colour.” Green Leader Elizabeth May is made out of a hand-dyed organic cotton. “I gave one to her in exchange for her new book [Losing Confidence].” Each puppet comes with a card saying the head is filled with polyester stuffing and that the puppet “is not intended for small children.” Thirlwall always asks people which puppets they’d like to see and says “there is a big demand for Stéphane Dion.” Puppets made so far include Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff, Justin Trudeau, John Baird (her most popular seller) and Peter MacKay. The puppets are available at fishonfridays.ca and Ottawa’s Workshop Studio & Boutique, where staff say there is a rush on Ruby Dhalla.

Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on the picture that took 20 years to get

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

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.

Continue…

You sicken me, you inferior kettle

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 4:20 AM - 4 Comments

The problem with the Conservative attack ads against Michael Ignatieff isn’t that they’re rude or desperate—it’s that they’re lame. The party that nailed Stéphane Dion as Prof. Whiny McShrugsalot has hit a sophomore slump in trying to pigeonhole the new guy.

The Tory argument against the Liberal leader boils down to three assertions:

Continue…

What Terry Olayta might have said, had she made it to committee today

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 10:55 AM - 6 Comments

… based on what she told the Philippine Reporter last week, that is:

Terry C. Olayta:
(Coordinator, Caregiver Resource Centre)
Ruby Dhalla destroyed herself through her own actions and behaviour towards this complaint against her. She threw herself down the drain. All the evidences she produced are evidences against her and her family and served her own destruction.

Example: The letter showing that her mother paid cash, the letter admitted the worker received the documents from her brother Neil. Is that not stupid? Whether it’s Ruby, her mother or brother who returned those documents it’s still within the turf of Ruby Dhalla, the government official who should not be ignorant of the law.

We already had waited enough, brainstormed enough. We the caregivers here at the Cross Cultural have always been prepared to show up at Queen’s Park or to Labour and the Federal, to fax barrage, call the offices, continue the awareness education information.

ITQ is trying to find out just why she and the other witness scheduled for the second hour didn’t make it to this morning’s meeting. We’ll keep you posted!  Our bet: Overzealous Hill security; that, or nobody bothered to give them the details of when/where to show up. Yes, it would be much juicier if it involved one of those shadowy pro- or anti-Ruby conspiracies that, we’re assured, are orchestrating the show from behind the scenes, but we’re betting on Occam’s razor carrying the day.

Mad About Ruby Redux: Liveblogging the Citizenship and Immigration committee

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 10 Comments

ITQ can’t quite figure out how, exactly, they fit into the ostensible mandate for this committee, which covers “ghost consultants and migrant workers”, but never mind the details — bring on the disgruntled caregivers! Check back at 9am for full liveblogging coverage.

On the witness list today:
Canadian Live-In Caregivers Association:
Tristan Downe-Dewdney

Caregiver Resources Centre
Terry Olayta

Filipina Women’s Association of Quebec
Evelyn Calugay
Delia DeVeyra
(For Colleague Wherry’s take on the last meeting, which featured appearances by Ruby Dhalla and the angry ex-nannies, click here.)

8:43:51 AM
Good morning, Oliphantia — wait, that’s not right at all, is it? Good morning, faithful and steadfast ITQ committee junkies! I’ve missed you — and my beloved committees, of course — so much. Well, maybe a titch more the former than the latter, but never mind that.

Anyway, after missing out on the main event earlier this month due to a previously scheduled appointment to liveblog a former prime minister on the witness stand at Old City Hall, ITQ is about to have her first experience with the recently reenergized Citizenship and Immigration committee, the members of which likely couldn’t believe their luck when one of the juiciest scandals to hit the Hill in ages fell right into their collective lap earlier this month. Ruby Tuesday may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean this committee is going to give up its moment in the spotlight.

9:03:04 AM
And – bang goes the gavel, courtesy of David Tilson – who, I’ve been assured, is considerably less cranky in his new role as chair than he was during his tenure as official Ethics committee curmudgeon.

Continue…

The Canada-Philippines Parliamentary Friendship Group

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, May 22, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 3 Comments

The Canada-Philippines Parliamentary Friendship Group was recently created on the Hill at a meeting in a West Block conference room just a few doors down from Ruby Dhalla’s office.

(Left to right) Winnipeg Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, Philippines Ambassador Jose Brillantes and NDP Winnipeg MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis. Bruinooge and Wasylycia-Leis are the co-chairs of the new group.

MPs (standing) and three congresswomen from the Philippines (sitting).

Continue…

Too soon?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 4:19 PM - 7 Comments

Concerns are raised that Jason Kenney has not acted duly impartial in regards to the allegations made against Ruby Dhalla. Meanwhile, at our little party, the minister makes sure to avoid any perception of impropriety.

It all started when the new immigration minister found a hot-off-the-presses copy of Maclean’s. He was under the impression winning the title put him on the cover of the contest-sponsoring magazine, but that was definitely not his face, often described as Fred Flintstonesque, on the front. In his place was an eye-popping, cleavage-busting shot of Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, which would not look out of place fronting an edition of the men’s magazine Maxim, which rated her third sexiest politician on the planet last year.

Kenney thumbed the pages filled with 20 flattering photos framing a lengthy article on Dhalla’s life story and the latest brouhaha over the treatment of nannies in her family home and suddenly burst into laughter: “I put her there!” he howled, jabbing the magazine cover.

Mad about Ruby Dhalla

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 56 Comments

For a woman who has never met a microphone she didn’t like, it can’t have been easy. Days of enforced silence as her personal reputation, and perhaps political future, were savaged by allegations she and her family illegally employed, then bullied and mistreated, caregivers for her aging mother. Watching the critics pile on, and her federal Liberal colleagues run for cover. And when Ruby Dhalla finally did face the public last week, it wasn’t so much to mount a defence—a task delegated to a pit bull Bay Street lawyer—as plead for more time. “I would once again ask the Canadian public to please hold judgment,” the MP said in her brief remarks before the dozens of cameras and reporters jammed into her Brampton, Ont., constituency office. “Because when the facts and the truth come forward, then I think true victory will be achieved.”

Less than a week before, Dhalla had been basking in her status as one of the Liberal party’s up-and-comers, arriving in a white stretch limo for the Vancouver convention and standing alongside new leader Michael Ignatieff, hoisting his arm in the air as the confetti flew. Now confronted by three former family employees, she finds herself at the centre of a controversy that has mushroomed to enmesh members of the Ontario government, and spark an ethics investigation as well as public hearings before the House of Commons immigration committee. Among the allegations—first aired at a round-table discussion on nannies’ rights attended by two provincial cabinet ministers and later reported in the Toronto Star—are charges that Dhalla seized the passports of the immigrant women hired to help her mother Tavinder, and used her position to try to sidestep the required paperwork. Furthermore, the caregivers allege they were overworked and underpaid, forced to take on tasks like washing cars, shovelling snow and cleaning the chiropractic clinics owned by Dhalla’s brother Neil. The MP has called the allegations against her “false and unsubstantiated,” and maintains that all who know her family recognize “how loving, and caring and compassionate we are.” Her lawyer, Howard Levitt, has gone even further, suggesting there is a political or media conspiracy at play, “a purposeful attempt to destroy [Ms.] Dhalla’s career and credibility,” as he told reporters. “The only question is: who’s really behind them? And who orchestrated, enabled or assisted these former employees of her brother to suddenly come forward?”

Continue…

'Because you people are writing about it'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 2:13 AM - 2 Comments

David Tilson explains why the immigration committee is investigating Ruby Dhalla.

Iggy speaks (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 11:31 AM - 5 Comments

Adam Radwanski refutes Ignatieff’s contention that the system worked.

Sorry, but there is absolutely no evidence whether or not the system has worked. The system will work when the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and/or the criminal justice system makes a (hopefully correct) decision whether or not to take action. That a show trial was conducted into a matter with absolutely no relevance to Parliament was, if anything, a distraction from the system working.

Iggy speaks

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 38 Comments

So everyone can sleep soundly tonight, here is the transcript of Michael Ignatieff’s apparently first scrum on the Dhalla matter. Continue…

What everybody else saw

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 3:49 PM - 6 Comments

Reports on this morning’s proceedings from the Globe, Star, Post, Canadian Press, Susan Delacourt and Adam Radwanski.

The Commons: The show trial of Ruby Dhalla

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 1:55 PM - 51 Comments

The Scene. At six minutes past nine, after pantomiming a bang of the gavel for benefit of the TV cameras, David Tilson, chair of the standing committee on citizenship and immigration, asked that photographers clear the room and called the meeting to order. To his left sat members of parliament from the three opposition parties. To his right, half a dozen MPs from the government.

Along the walls of the committee room, sat staffers for each party. In the audience sat half a dozen reporters, a smattering of spectators and one aide to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

Three flat-screen TVs were set up around the room, one behind the government side for the opposition to look at, one behind the opposition for the government to look at, another at far end of the room for the benefit of spectators. On the screen, around a table in a poorly lit beige boardroom at some other location, sat two nannies, one advocate for their plight and a lawyer acting on their behalf.

The advocate, Ms. Pura Velasco, told the committee that she had submitted a brief to the committee. Tilson informed her that no such brief had been received. (Later, he would confirm that a brief had arrived, but it was still being translated into both official languages.) Whatever the case, Mr. Tilson then asked Ms. Velasco, Ms. Magdalene Gordo and Ms. Richelyn Tongson if they wished to make opening statements. They indicated they did.

With that, the show trial began. Continue…