As reported by The Hill Times, the parliamentary budget officer has created a new database to help MPs track government spending so that they have more up-to-date information when it comes time to review expenditures for the supplementary estimates. Which is great. But then the article degenerates to talking about Paul Dewar introducing a private member’s bill on making the PBO more independent, even though Dewar has already committed to reintroducing the CAMR bill under his name. And once again, we see the dynamic of MPs shrugging off their actual duties of holding the government to account because math is hard (by making the PBO an independent officer of Parliament, it will give MPs an excuse to further fob off their responsibilities on him), while MPs crow about private member’s bills that will never see the light of day (as Dewar just did). And on it goes.
Despite all of this government’s insistence that immigration numbers are up under its leadership, it looks like the numbers are actually down quite significantly for the first part of this year – some 25 percent. Add that to the caps on applications its accepting, and questions start begin to be raised. I’m curious about how many more temporary foreign workers its accepting instead of permanent residents, since that seems to be the way this government rolls, which is to the long-term detriment to our county’s economic growth. Kenney later took to the Twitter Machine to dispute the numbers. In response to my own question, he said that the government is on track for accepting 245,000 permanent residents this year, while temporary foreign workers, visitor and student visas will be around a million.
John Baird is in China talking trade and human rights and using the same rhetoric the Conservatives used to blast the Liberals. Funny how much things change.
Prison costs have risen 86 percent in the last five years. But hey, double bunking is apparently a-okay and a mandatory minimum sentence is great politics, even if it’s terrible policy. Also, the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation is another mouthpiece for this government, but we already knew that.
Bob Rae was in Vancouver on Sunday having a “political therapy” session with supporters there.
The Canadian Tourism Commission apparently thinks that Maxime Bernier is a tourism draw, or that it’s appropriate to use cabinet ministers in their advertising.
What’s that? Alberta’s Drilling Royalty Credit program has been a colossal failure? You don’t say!
And shifting to Ontario politics, Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak is shying away from his previous stance on abortion – maybe.
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