The ethics commissioner has ruled that Helena Guergis did indeed contravene ethics guidelines when she promoted a company that her husband was connected to in a letter to her local council. Might I just add that the NDP has no room to complain about the (slow and obfuscation-heavy) job that the ethics commissioner is doing in cases such as this or others that she dismisses after interpreting the rules very narrowly. In an attempt to stick the knife into the Liberals, the NDP gleefully went along with the changes governing her office during the rush to pass the Federal Accountability Act five years ago. It is now reaping what it sowed.
Wonder why the US has a debt ceiling and Canada doesn’t? It turns out that we did until 2007. At that time, the Conservatives took out the provision from the Financial Administration Act. Seeing as MPs haven’t exactly been keen on their duty of financial oversight (as we’ve previously discussed, math is hard, and MPs would rather be holding press conferences on private member’s bills that will never see the light of day), it went unnoticed until it hit the Senate at which point, it was too late. Once again, should I make the point about MPs actually doing their jobs?
The government is looking at creating a series of military bases or “transport hubs” in the Arctic to try to cut response times and increase surveillance capacity in the North.
Bob Rae says that the crumbling Champlain Bridge (*drink!*) is fast becoming an international issue because it’s a major transport artery to the United States.
Aaron Wherry takes us back to the first-televised question period from 1977. Desk thumping rather than clapping and standing ovations were the order of the day and the camera operators actually gave reaction shots – something that our coverage today could use more of.
Roland Paris wonders just what Stephen Harper is so afraid of given that he insists on fear mongering about what a dangerous place the world is and how Canada is continually under threat.
And here’s an interesting piece about the former head of CSIS, Jim Judd, testifying about how CSIS was trying to insulate itself should the intelligence it received from foreign sources be obtained through torture (making it inadmissible) and how that impacted not only our relations with foreign agencies, but also several security certificate cases in Canada.
Why you can trust Xtra
