The morning after

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 20, 2012 at 10:41 AM - 0 Comments

Pat Martin talks to the Winnipeg Free Press about all this.

Martin told the Free Press this morning he was angry because he found out last night he had not been invited to an announcement on refugee housing in his own riding on Tuesday. ”I got upset again,” he said. “I just get so fed up with these guys.” Martin said the former Liberal government always invited opposition MPs to government announcements as a courtesy. The Conservatives he said never do.

Martin has been in trouble on Twitter before for telling someone to “F*** off.” He is also facing a lawsuit from an Alberta robocall company who allege Martin slandered the company last winter. Martin told the Free Press he was not officially commenting on the Youth For Christ situation because he had to do more research to find out if what he was being told is really true. ”It was private tweeting to my followers,” he said.

Pat Martin vs. Vic Toews: That escalated quickly

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 20, 2012 at 5:50 AM - 0 Comments

NDP MP Pat Martin took to Twitter last night to express his displeasure with a local infrastructure project and the Minister of Public Safety.

First Nations were concerned ‘Youth for Christ’ would try to steal their children’s souls. Now building is empty…Vic Toews big project.

All the $oney for inner city youth went to USA Youth for Christ. Big building, no benefit. Vic Toews Mr family values. What gives?

All the money for inner city youth went to ‘Youth For Christ’, who are Vic Toews’ donors and buddies, now the bldg is all but empty.

Listen, I would never judge someone who screwed their babysitter for years or knocked up their secretary, so don’t ask me to. Respect…

Not sure the public really knows their Minister of Public Safety who forgot to invite me to announcement in my risding AGAIN!!! RFW

Next time I’m bringing my own folding chair if the Minister ‘forgets’ to invite me to his spending announcements in my riding. Arrogance

When Vic gave the USA Youth for Christ ALL the money for inner city youth, FN’s said they don’t want people to ‘steal their chldn’s souls’

These are truly bad people.They won their razor thin majority by cheating; Robocalls and who knows what else. American style dirty tricks.

@CTVMercedes I’m not ‘worked up’ so much as ‘fed up’ with the rat faced whores in the CPC who neglect to invite me to ancemnts in my riding

Look…Given the parliamentary session we’ve just endured, the term ‘rat faced whores’ is using a great deal of restraint…

All of which drew tweets from Conservative MPs Candice Bergen, Brian Jean and Mike Lake.

The issue of the Youth for Christ’s centre in Winnipeg goes back to February 2010, when Mr. Martin complained about the federally funded project. Mr. Toews responded to Mr. Martin. After city council approved the project, Mr. Martin pledged to support it. (More on the larger controversy here, here, here, here and here.)

The details of Mr. Toews’ personal life harken back to the Vikileaks controversy earlier this year.

Update 1:44pm. Pat Martin talked to the Winnipeg Free Press about his tweets. LaVar Payne passed judgment. And then Mr. Martin quit Twitter.

Update 2:00pm. Vic Toews responds.

A surprisingly detailed throne speech prompts questions

By John Geddes - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 3:58 PM - 31 Comments

UPDATED BELOW

The Speech from the Throne uses Canada’s recent success at the Vancouver Olympics and generosity toward Haiti to set a ringingly patriotic tone. Beneath its expected rhetoric about jobs, family and security, a surprising number of specific new initiatives are sketched. But sketched is the word—the speech doesn’t fill in much detail. From my first read-through, at least five striking examples cry out for more precision, sometime very soon.

1. There’s a promise to “aggressively review all departmental spending.” The Conservatives announced on Sept. 25, 2006, that they had “eliminated wasteful and ineffective programs” after a review launched in their very first budget in 2006. How much new waste has crept into the system since then? In other words, how much spending do they expect to cut? (Maybe tomorrow’s budget will tell us.)

2. There’s a promise to “open Canada’s doors further to venture capital and to foreign investment in key sectors, including the satellite and telecommunications industries…” Does this suggest that last year’s controversial Globalive decision was, despite government claims that it did not open the door to more foreign ownership, a harbinger things to come?

3. There’s a promise to support businesses by removing “unnecessary and job-killing regulation and barriers to growth.” The small-business lobby puts cutting red tape right behind reducing taxes as a priority. On the other hand, after the financial meltdown of 2008 was blamed largely on lax regulation, the word no longer carries negative connotations in talk about the economy. So exactly which federal regulations are pointless rather than prudent?

4. There’s a promise to “look to innovative charities and forward-thinking private-sector companies to partner on new approaches to many social challenges.” Does this mean more initiatives like Winnipeg’s recent and controversial government-funded Youth for Christ community centre project? Exactly which social challenges are best handled by private charities or even companies? And what sorts of charities and companies?

5. There are promises to “give police investigative powers for the twenty-first century” and “modernize the judicial tools employed to fight terrorism and organized crime.” Police chiefs often complain that they lack manpower; criminal courts face backlogs. But what are the investigative and judicial powers, rather than resources, that police and judges currently lack when it comes to properly enforcing the law?

UPDATED:

We ask, they answer. Here’s Industry Minister Tony Clement a little while back responding on the Hill to reporters’ questions on what the government intends for the telecommunications sector:

“Well, these will be coming out in due course.  Clearly what we’ve heard from the sector as well as the satellite sector is that in order for them to continue to grow, to continue to innovate, to continue to create new jobs and new opportunity for Canadians there has to be a review of this policy.  This was obviously recommended by the original report on competitiveness, the Red Wilson Report and clearly we’ll be following up on that.”