Liberal leaks dried up for a spell last week
Blackberry blacklisted… Talk about blowing your sources. During the loya jirga, I mean, caucus meeting of two weeks ago, one of the fun things for some reporters was getting messages on their Blackberries from MPs inside the old Reading Room giving real-time accounts of what was happening inside. No one was smart enough in the […]
House spent $94.5-million on MPs’ office and travel costs, up from $90.2-million in 2001
If politics is the science of how, who gets what, when and why, then Canada’s 301 federal MPs are spending more to do it. MPs across the country spent a total of $65.8-million to run their Hill and riding offices last year, according to the latest list of MPs’ yearly expenses. This is up from […]
PM hosts annual garden party at 24 Sussex on June 17: House heads into its last week, but it’s going to be one interesting non-stop summer on Hill
MONDAY, JUNE 17 House Sitting — The House is sitting this week. It is scheduled to break for the summer on Friday, June 21. It then returns on Monday, Sept. 16. For more information on the House’s timetable, please contact the Government House Leader’s Office at (613) 952-4930. PM Garden Party — Prime Minister Jean […]
Hey MPs, Parliament is highest court in land, remember: Grit MP Derek Lee, a studious Parliamentary rules junkie, says MPs should flex their legislative muscles
The decision by MPs on the House Public Accounts Committee to invoke their rarely-used power to subpoena a witness should be congratulated, says Liberal MP and procedure buff Derek Lee, but there are many more powers that his colleagues have forgotten about. Mr. Lee recently circulated a 25-page booklet to all 301 MPs that reminds […]
Here’s the deal: The Little Guy hates access to information: Prime Minister Chr tien’s quite willing to have PCO direct and control costly, secret government marketing
Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s moral outrage is reserved for blaming Access to Infor-mation users for much of his current troubles just because his government is taking some heat in the daily revelations on his dubious sponsorship program. But that’s so much rubbish and it’s hardly why his government is in crisis. Instead, he should look […]
Guit&ea;’s been through this before, Mulroney years too
Chuck Guite, one of two public servants fingered by the Auditor General as having “broken just about every rule in the book,” in awarding controversial government contracts and who is now refusing to testify before a Commons committee, was involved in similar controversies during former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s years in power too. Last week, […]
How Paul Martin spawned a ‘Martin Mania’ in Grit Party
Rarely in the history of Canadian politics has there been an individual who commands the loyalty of a devoted following in the same way as Paul Martin, Jr. It’s been a dozen years since Martin’s first and only leadership campaign, and yet the vast majority of Liberal Party members would identify themselves as his supporters. […]
Bunch of corporate whiners
A curious sound has been emerging from corporate boardrooms in the past few weeks. It’s the sound, loud, insistent and high-pitched, whining. “This cynicism about business has gone beyond reasonable questioning and threatens to be destructive,” Stanley O’Neil, co-head of the investment firm, Merrill Lynch, said the other day. “Never in my memory has business […]
PM Chr&ea;tien keeps eye on Grit enemies: ‘People underestimate the Prime Minister’
Prime Minister Jean Chretien has apparently been preparing to deal with former finance minister Paul Martin’s exit from Cabinet for months, say Liberal sources who also say the Prime Minister will wage a fierce public relations war against his former colleague-turned-foe over the next few months and is keeping his eye on MPs who support […]
PM’s a pretty successful cad
In a Saturday Globe and Mail story headlined “Analyse this: If Chretien were a CEO, he’d be fired,” writer Alanna Mitchell cites author/psychologist David Stein as saying that the Prime Minister has none of the qualities necessary for successful business leadership while Paul Martin appears to be “the quintessential modern leader.” Stein is described as […]
