Senate finance committee

I have recently been watching the Senate finance committee examine Bill C-9, the budget implementation act. They are very slow at it because Liberal Senators do not like the bill. Liberal MPs didn’t like the bill either but they received instructions from their leader Michael Ignatieff not to stall the bill. Liberal Senators are known for not following their leader. For example, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny recently wrote an op-ed in which he defended CSIS chief Richard Fadden about his espionage allegations and actually appeared to contradict his party’s message on this issue when he said “Fadden did Canadians a service by pointing out that too many Canadian politicians are effectively on other countries' dole.” That is a clear contradiction of the Liberal position that Fadden’s allegations are unfounded.

So it is evident that Liberal Senators have a tendency not to follow the party line. As a result there are a number of Liberal Senators who actively wanted Bill C-9 to be split into multiple bills and studied individually. They were disregarding the fact that a parliamentary crisis would ensue if they succeeded in doing this. Progressive Conservative Senator Lowell Murray also wanted to break up the bill. Murray considers this bill an affront to parliament. I wouldn’t go that far but putting so much budget-unrelated content into a budget bill is very questionable.

During the committee meeting Ned Franks said in relation to the confidence issue of Bill C-9 that numerous financial bills have been defeated in the past in Canadian parliament and the government did not fall. Now Ned Franks is a parliamentary expert and knows in detail all the legislative history of Canada’s parliament all the way back to Confederation. But I found that comment odd. Most of those years he has studied had majority governments in which financial bills are never defeated. And my impression is that in the case of minority parliaments, if a financial bill is defeated then in most cases the government falls. My impression is that only if the bill does not meet the criteria as being “supply” would the government not fall if the bill were defeated. “Loss of supply” is an undisputed loss of confidence when it occurs. There was a case in 1967 when a financial bill the Liberal minority government introduced was defeated because it did not have support of any other party in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Lester Pearson was out of the country when the bill was defeated and there were serious questions at the time about whether the government had fallen or not when the bill was defeated. The government declared it was not a matter of confidence and continued governing and an election was not called until 1968. But this must surely be the exception and not the rule. The Liberals were defeated over a budget in 1974 when it is believed they purposefully introduced a budget that the NDP could not support in order for there to be a reason to call an election in which they believed they could get a majority government. When the Trudeau government was defeated over the 1974 budget, it was clearly a loss of supply and the government fell. The Liberals only stayed in power because they won a majority government in the ensuing election. So I do not see how there has been an opportunity in Canadian parliamentary history for there to have been numerous financial bills defeated in which the government did not fall and so I am unsure what Franks was referring to. It is possible that Franks is referring to times that budget bills have been defeated in the Senate. But again I think there is limited opportunity for this to have occurred because it has been quite rare in Canadian history that one party has a majority in the House of Commons and another party has a majority in the Senate. This anomaly would have been the case throughout much of the Mulroney years but I’m quite certain no such bill was defeated by the Senate then. Another possibility that occurred to me was did such a thing happen during the Diefenbaker years? Again that does not seem likely so I am unsure as to why Franks was referring to when he made that comment about budget bills being defeated.

The funniest thing Franks said was when he referred to a bill that legislated on navigable rivers. He said that he actually prefers non-navigable rivers because he likes going white water rafting!

Obama and Gary Coleman

I would like to discuss a famous actor who passed away recently. RIP to Gary Coleman. He was a great actor and I shall always remember him for the time he played himself in an episode of the Simpsons and for the voice he played in the game the Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3). In the Curse of Monkey Island Coleman played the voice of a bratty lemonade sales boy who scams his customers by using a literally bottomless mug that sits on a hole in the table. The lemonade he poured after the customer paid a nickel went to the ground and the customer is scammed when they find the mug empty. The game’s hero, Guybrush Threepwood, switched the bottomless mug for a real mug and when Kenny pours the lemonade into this mug Guybrush gets to drink it. Kenny storms off in a fit as a result of this. Later, however, Kenny sees the error of his ways and runs a legitimate cannon sales business that Guybrush buys several cannons from.

In politics, I am perturbed by Barack Obama’s poor approval numbers. I do not know if it is because of the Gulf oil spill, a still-recovering economy, or lingering unpopularity of his health care reform, but many Americans in my view are too quickly forgetting how much worse things were under George W. Bush. In regards to Obama’s lingering unpopularity over health care, this is unfortunately the case because the Democrats may have won the legislative battle but by then they had long since lost the media battle with the Republicans. The Republicans by the summer of 2009 had already gotten their negative story on the health care bill to be a largely accepted belief among many Americans. Democrats fighting back failed to reverse the minds of many who had been convinced by the massive Republican misinformation. This is harming Obama’s presidency far too much despite the fact that the health care bill he signed is needed, long overdue, and contains none of the Republican negative characteristics attributed to it. As I’ve said, Obama’s health care bill is only a first step in the effort the cover all Americans for health care. Republicans really ought to show more care for the poor who cannot get adequate coverage but then that would not be a typical Republican thing to do, the party that likes to ignore the poor. What concerns me as well is that no matter how much the economy continues to improve in the United States, voters do not give him credit for the recovery and in surveys continue to treat Obama as though the United States in is deep recession. Meanwhile in Canada it is equally disheartening how large a lead the federal Conservatives have taken in the polls over the Liberals. Now is a difficult time to be a Liberal much in the same way that in the US it is a difficult time to be a Democrat. One can hope for improvements in the future.

Ujjal Dosanjh

I was just watching on the internet the interview that Vancouver South Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh did with Stephen Colbert. Everyone should see the really funny part where Colbert and Dosanjh sing the Canadian National Anthem to the tune of the American National Anthem. I also love how Dosanjh responded to Colbert’s scenario: a gun is to your head and therefore you must choose to scrap either Canadian medicare or Canadian same-sex marriage, which do you choose to eliminate? Dosanjh’s answer: neither. Dosanjh also appeared on CNN to defend Canada’s public health care system from Republican attacks during the United States’ health care debate. The CNN host did not realize that it was taxes that paid for Canadian medicare and surprisingly thought that Canadian employers were somehow involved in providing Canadian medicare before Dosanjh set him straight. The host also got a viewer caller question about whether medicare is provided in Canada to illegal immigrants. Dosanjh did not directly address the question about whether care is provided to people who are in Canada illegally but stated more generally that anyone visiting Canada from abroad who has a medical emergency will be treated immediately without upfront payment even though as non-Canadian residents they obviously would not have a health card. Dosanjh said that in such cases the government sometimes tries to collect bills for this care later. Dosanjh is great handling these interviews and I’m very glad we got him from the NDP. I think he was also a good Minister of Health during his year in Paul Martin’s cabinet.

Bob Rae's fond memories

What is going on here? A cow, a female cow, attacking a woman unprovoked? Cows are supposed to be docile. What happened? It is a good thing her grandson could drive a tractor and he got her the quick medical attention she needed. I always figured a cow might kick you if you try and ride her, but to engage in a prolonged attack for no reason? What is wrong with this cow?

Source for this crazy cow story:

http://www.theprovince.com/Alberta+woman+lucky+alive+after+attack/3075170/story.html


On to politics. Bob Rae is reminiscing about the events that happened 25 years ago this month when he negotiated the pact with the Ontario Liberals that toppled Frank Miller’s government. The Lieutenant Governor, John Aird, allowed the Liberal party to form a minority government because the NDP had reached an accord with the Liberals that in other countries such as New Zealand would now be called a “confidence and supply accord”. In other words, the NDP agreed to support the Liberals on matters of confidence and supply in exchange for the Liberals implementing several key NDP policies. As any studier of Ontario politics knows, it was the Liberals who were given credit for these left-leaning policies and the Liberals were given a huge majority government in the 1987 election that was called after the two year accord had expired. It is Bob Rae’s dream to bring such a similar accord to the federal government. Rae was one of the strongest backers of Stephane Dion’s aborted coalition accord with the NDP and Bloc Quebecois. The problem is English Canadians reacted so negatively to the Bloc’s involvement in the coalition and it is almost completely mathematically impossible for the Liberals and NDP alone to obtain a majority of seats. So as much as many people want such a coalition government it is very difficult. They couldn’t even convince Michaëlle Jean to allow the coalition. How would Rae and other coalition supporters get the next Governor General who may have strong Conservative ties, to allow such a similar proposed coalition in future?

Confrontational Tories

I am unhappy that the Tories are now prohibiting their staffers from testifying in committees. Doing so in essence goes against House of Commons rules and it creates needless additional conflict. It also prevents committees from getting to the bottom of important questions and is just the same old Tory excessive secrecy that Canadians have noticed but many of whom are not paying enough attention to.

UK election outcome

The United Kingdom recently saw a change in government. It has seen an unprecedented formal coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. It is quite amazing they have been able to form this coalition considering that the two parties disagree ideologically on many different issues. One of the early government policies has been a civil liberties policy, including the scrapping of Labour's plans for a national ID card. I agree with the general thrust of this new government’s civil libertarian policies. One Conservative policy I do not agree with that the Liberal Democrats were reluctantly forced to agree to as part of the coalition agreement is the redrawing of every House of Commons seat in the whole country. The Tories want the Commons shrunk to under 600 members. I do not agree with this shrinkage when in fact the Commons has had over 600 members since at least 1950. This policy may be a ploy by the Tories to redraw constituencies to favour the Tories more than the current boundaries, which are said to favour Labour. Hence how Labour got 35% of the votes in 2005 and 55% of the seats and how in 2005 Labour had fewer votes in England than the Tories but way more seats in England than the Tories. A purported reason to reduce the number of constituencies is to save money. But given that the Tories and Liberal Democrats have agreed to a fix term five year parliament, any such saving of money would not kick in until 2015. Nevertheless, hopefully with the Liberal Democrats as part of the government they will keep a check on the Tories so that they do not gerrymander the constituencies in the Tories favour too much. Furthermore, hopefully the Liberal Democrats will keep a check on the Tories more ideological agenda, if and where such ideological agenda exists.

McGuinty and the HST

One might wonder why Dalton McGuinty, who seems adept at trying political self-preservation, would implement the unpopular HST. I think it must be because he believes it will create jobs by the time of the next election and he can point to the HST being tax neutral. On the related question of why the HST is so much more unpopular in BC than Ontario I would guess it is because in BC the HST is not at all tax neutral because all of the federal exemptions are being applied to fuel so that the HST will not be charged on top of BC’s carbon tax.