Today could be it – the last day of the spring session in the House. Maybe. It all hinges on that back-to-work legislation and how long the opposition is able to delay it. The government intends to pass it before the end of the day, but, if necessary, is willing to keep sitting into the weekend. The complicating factor? Tomorrow is St-Jean-Baptiste Day, which is considered the “national holiday” of Quebec and treated in the same way as Canada Day. With an NDP caucus full of Quebec MPs and a leader who is eager to get some photo ops in Quebec on such a day, those MPs will be under some pressure to get out of the House and attend events in their ridings. The other complicating factor? Talks between Canada Post and the union broke down again. So, will there be a genuine filibuster or just a token resistance before a final climb-down by the NDP (after which, they’ll declare moral victory), done in time for its MPs to get back to their ridings? Stay tuned….
At long last, those reams of Afghan detainee documents were released yesterday. Stéphane Dion, the Liberal MP on the panel, says that because we lost track of several detainees and were slow to inform the Red Cross about some prisoner transfers, it’s likely some of the detainees whom we handed over were tortured or abused. The Conservatives, however, are spinning this as confirmation that they were right all along by saying that there’s no story here and thanking the opposition parties for wasting $12 million on the process. That’s right – the old “trust us” line. Because that always works so well.
The CBC provides those tabled documents here and puts out a request for crowd sourcing. If anyone wants to go through documents to find questionable things, now’s your chance.
John Geddes characterizes the government’s saying that anyone asking questions about the handling of prisoners is not being supportive of the troops as a “low slur.”
The Canadian general in charge of the NATO mission in Libya says he’s not going to stop the bombing missions lest Gadhafi’s forces use the time to re-arm. He also says that humanitarian aid is already getting through, so there’s no point in stopping.
Paul Wells gets a late sort-of answer on the job cuts at Public Works in his quest to find out just what cuts the government booked in the budget.
Not a big surprise here: Elizabeth May wants the cuts to climate science reversed.
Why you can trust Xtra
