Bill C-38 vs. Bill C-36: a study in contrasts*, as explained by Elizabeth May

by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May believes the Conservatives' motive for lumping together all sorts of legislative changes into the omnibus Bill C-38 is "to avoid scrutiny" and she made the case by comparing it to Bill C-36, also known as the Protecting Canada's Seniors Act.

The former, as you have undoubtedly heard before, is 425 pages.

The latter is four paragraphs.

Here is how May described the difference at a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday morning, where she outlined why she had introduced more than 300 amendments to the federal budget implementation bill.

"Bill C-36, by the way, will get full scrutiny in Parliament. It goes to first reading, second reading, committee. We’ll have a lot of time on Bill C-36. It’s four paragraphs long. It amends one sub-clause of the Criminal Code. It’s not as though, for efficiency’s sake, Stephen Harper wants all laws compressed into one omnibus bill all the time. The ones he doesn’t want you to notice are compressed in an omnibus bill. The ones they want to put out in the front window, like C-36, has the grandiose title that it’s [the Protecting Canada's Seniors Act]. All it does, actually, is allow for at time of sentencing, a judge to consider the situation of the victim at the time of the assault. There is a lot I’d like to do to help seniors in this country against abuse, I don’t have any problem with C-36, but just in a contrast, C-36 is getting the full treatment of its own review in a committee, its own opportunity to have witnesses, and 70 bills are changed through C-38 with time allocation and running roughshod over hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition and democracy. This is the most egregious piece of legislation ever tabled, certainly in Canada, and they can’t expect us to roll over and play dead when this kind of outrage is put in front of us.”

 

*Yes, I am aware this is the most clichéd headline phrase of all time.

Day 5: Layton, jobs and the Greater Toronto Area

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

The events

UPDATE: Just as (un)expected, the hints about health care being the focus of the announcement on Wednesday morning were wrong. The announcement in Oshawa is about jobs. Details follow.

Since the New Democrats just released a television spot attacking Stephen Harper for his record on health care, there have been suggestions the policy announcement Jack Layton is scheduled to make at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday in Oshawa, Ont. will be on the same topic. If that ends up being the case, expect a proposal to train and hire 1,200 doctors and 6,000 nurses, which was one of the things Layton demanded from Harper in the failed federal budget. It was also a 2008 NDP campaign proposal. So was a plan to reduce the student debt of health professionals who practiced family medicine for at least a decade and so it is a good bet that if the announcement is about health care, that will be in there too. As an NDP staffer said yesterday when being ribbed about the recycled nature of Layton’s credit card rate announcement: “Everything is a new idea until implemented”. 

Layton will also tour a space technology plant in Brampton, Ont., where they have a piece of the space shuttle, and then finish the day with a rally at Artscape Wychwood Barns in the St. Clair W. and Bathurst St. area of Toronto. 

The ridings 

Oshawa: Conservative incumbent Colin Carrie won this riding over the NDP by about 3,200 votes, with the Liberals getting fewer than half the votes the NDP did. So, this is one of the ridings the NDP is targeting with the “New Democrats defeat Conservatives” message it has been hammering home in Blue vs. Orange ridings this week. The NDP is running Chris Buckley, president of CAW local 222, as its candidate this time. 

Bramalea—Gore—Malton: This riding is a different story, as the Liberal incumbent Gurbax Singh Malhi beat the Conservative candidate by about 3,900 votes in 2008. The NDP candidate came far behind in third. 

Canadian Labour Congress upset with Flaherty over budget claims

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

The labour movement and the federal New Democrats share a long history together, so it was surprising to hear the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) – the central body linking unions across the country – was endorsing the Conservative budget.

“This is a win for every senior living in poverty in Canada,” Government House Leader John Baird said during Question Period on Wednesday, quoting from a CLC news release issued after the budget was tabled.

It turns out the CLC was also surprised at how its favourable response to what it called a “modest improvement” to the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) for vulnerable seniors was being portrayed as an endorsement.

It was so surprised by similar statements Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had made to the media that CLC President Ken Georgetti sent him an open letter on Wednesday asking him to stop.

“I am deeply troubled to hear you are misleading the public that the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) gives unqualified endorsement of your government’s budget,” Georgetti wrote.

“Minister, one can support parts of your budget without giving it full endorsement. While we have supported certain measures in the budget, we in no way have given unqualified support for the budget as a whole,” Georgetti added later in the letter.

A spokesman for Flaherty emailed a transcript of a CTV News report that included a clip from Georgetti.

"Well I'd say to Jack there's enough in this budget that we want to look at it seriously in the labour movement. We would think that that would be, if we were at a negotiating table we'd take that offer," Georgetti said in the clip broadcast Tuesday night.

"Sounds pretty supportive," Flaherty spokesman Chisholm Pothier wrote in the email above the transcript on Wednesday.

Flaherty also read that same quote from Georgetti into the record in response to a Point of Order question from Liberal MP Scott Brison on Wednesday about the letter from the CLC. The full transcript is not yet available.

What the CLC said in its news release was that it urged all parties to consider the budget because it liked the GIS increase, but stressed such a measure was not a long-term solution for lifting seniors out of poverty.

The better way, the CLC said, was through eventually doubling the Canada Pension Plan benefits, something which the NDP had also asked for but did not receive. It is also against proposed corporate tax cuts and concerned about where the federal government will find a planned $4 billion in annual savings.

Georgetti said in an interview that he was upset about the mischaracterization because what he really wants is for Flaherty to work with the other parties to reach a deal.

“The job he is supposed to do is table a budget and then work with the parties to fine-tune his budget,” Georgetti said Wednesday. “He probably could have got a deal, but it doesn’t seem to me he’s looking for a deal.”

Georgetti said he was disappointed to lose the GIS increase but does not think Flaherty gave the NDP much of a choice.

“As I watched it unfold I don’t think Mr. Flaherty gave them much option to move. He was very skinny and quite – I don’t what the polite word to say for cheap is, but he could have done a lot better on the GIS, frankly, and he could have been more specific on Canadian Pension,” Georgetti said.

That is why Georgetti finds the whispered suggestions about a disagreement between the CLC and the NDP having a negative impact on how the labour group helps out its favourite political party in the campaign ridiculous.

“No, not a bit. Not a bit. Never will. It’s our party,” Georgetti said when asked if the CLC would lessen its support for the NDP. “If (the Conservatives) were practically looking for solutions for seniors living in poverty, they did a very poor job of it yesterday.”

The national campaign manager for the NDP also stressed the CLC remains on board.

“I know that the labour movement in this country – working men and women – will be working very closely with New Democrats across the country to defeat Conservative MPs so that we can bring in a budget that will actually help working and middle-class families,” Brad Lavigne said on Wednesday. “So I think that it was a swing and a miss for Mr. Flaherty.”

Read the letter from CLC President Ken Georgetti to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty here: http://www.canadianlabour.ca/national/news/canadian-labour-congress-president-ken-georgetti-has-sent-following-letter-finance-min

Harper's earthquake threat a tried and true pre-election ploy

Posted by Allan Woods, Ottawa Bureau

For some, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's attempt Tuesday to use the catastrophic earthquake and nuclear crisis in Japan -- particularly the resulting threats to the global economy -- as a reason for the opposition to stop their election threats struck the wrong chord.

"What it shows is a person who is prepared to clutch and grab at anything, even a tragedy of this magnitude, and use it for his own crass political purposes," Liberal House Leader David McGuinty told Postmedia news in reaction.

But it's neither the first time nor will it likely be the last time that a government forecasts the armageddon that will follow from its defeat in the House of Commons.

Ahead of the fall 2008 campaign, Harper took the initiative and called his own election, arguing that the bitter divide between the government and opposition parties had left Parliament at an impasse.

The 2006 campaign that brought Harper's Conservatives to power was the last time a government was outright defeated by the opposition.

Then as now, Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin said the defeat of his minority government would jeopardize the so-called Kelowna Accord, an agreement between the federal, provincial and territorial governments, as well as aboriginal leaders, to improve the lot of Canada's native population.

Also in jeopardy, a pleading Martin said, were federal commitments to create a national childcare program, legislation to cut down on gun crime in Toronto and an international summit in Montreal on the environment dealing with the next phase of the Kyoto Accord to cut greenhose gas emissions (a campaigning Liberal leader eventually staged his own election stunt when he publicly rebuked the United States for doing too little to protect the environment).

Of course, many of those intiatives were actually shelved when Harper's Tories won the eight-week election in January 2006. Rightly or wrongly, every party has its own priorities.

But for those who may have taken the Prime Minister's comments at face value would be wise to heed the past warning of former Harper cabinet minister back in November 2005, just a few weeks before the campaign that brought the Conservatives to power.

"This is just more of their fear-mongering, that old, faithful, reliable tactic that they use every election campaign," said Monte Solberg, then the opposition finance critic.

He went on to warn that the Liberals were likely to delay until such time as they could present a fiscal update to the House of Commons and pack it with election-type promises.

"I wouldn't be one bit surprised if they try to campaign hard with the public treasury."

In many ways it is a similar situation to today's pre-election period. On Tuesday the Tories invoked arcane parliamentary tactics that will give them enough time to present their budget next Tuesday. In the meantime, the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers and rarely-heard-from backbench Tory MPs flood the country with spending commitments.