Archive for category Accountability
PBO report card shows municipalities will be left holding the bag on infrastructure projects
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Employment, Taxes, The Economy on August 9, 2010
OTTAWA, August 9, 2010 – A report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer today shows that delays by the Harper government in getting infrastructure stimulus funding out the door means municipalities – and, ultimately, the local taxpayer – could be left having to pay for millions of dollars worth of projects, Liberal Infrastructure Critic Gerard Kennedy said. Read on »
What Stockwell Day really meant to say
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Crime & Safety, The Deficit on August 3, 2010
Jane Taber, The Globe & Mail, August 3, 2010
NOTE: You’ve got to see the video to believe it.
The Prime Minister’s Office was busily emailing its message of the day to supporters and MPs as Treasury Board President Stockwell Day was unsuccessfully trying to share it with reporters in Ottawa Tuesday. Read on »
Numbers are in: Tories out of touch
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives on July 28, 2010
John Ivison, The National Post, July 28, 2010
It’s just as well for Tony Clement that he helped save a woman from drowning last weekend — it’s likely to be the last good news story he features in for quite some time. Read on »
The census kerfuffle isn’t about the census; it’s about Stephen Harper
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives on July 25, 2010
By Thomas Walkom, National Affairs Columnist, The Toronto Star, July 24, 2010
Two things stand out about the great Canadian census controversy.
The first is that there is a controversy. Who could have predicted that the federal government’s decision to eliminate something as profoundly prosaic as the mandatory long-form census questionnaire would generate such fierce opposition?
The second is the shameless hypocrisy shown by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Read on »
Busy Tony Clement is alienating voters
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Employment, Jobs, Science & Technology, The Economy on July 22, 2010
Carol Goar, The Toronto Star, July 21, 2010
Tony Clement is rapidly alienating large swaths of the population.
Folks in his goody-strewn riding of Parry Sound Muskoka think he’s a fine politician. But across the country, a large — and growing — segment of the electorate blames the industry minister for throttling Statistics Canada, allowing foreign acquisitors to pick off Canadian companies, chopping federal funding for dozens of tourist attractions and using last month’s world leaders’ meetings to funnel $50 million into his constituency. Read on »
The inconvenient truth in Mr. Sheikh’s resignation
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives on July 22, 2010
Norman Spector, The Globe and Mail, July 22, 2010
Ivan Fellegi told the Canadian Press that he would have quit if the government of the day had tried to axe the long census form when he was serving as chief statistician of Canada. In the case of my ex-colleague, that may be true. But Mr. Fellegi made that statement three weeks ago. And the fact of the matter is that his successor, Munir Sheikh, did not choose to resign when the Harper government took the dumb decision to axe the long census form against his recommendation. Nor did he resign when the decision — and the depth of its stupidity — became a matter of public discussion. He resigned yesterday. Read on »
StatsCan recommended move to voluntary census, Clement says
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives on July 17, 2010
Bruce Campion-Smith, Ottawa Bureau chief, The Toronto Star, July 16, 2010
OTTAWA—Industry Minister Tony Clement’s claim that Statistics Canada supports Ottawa’s plan to replace the long-form census with a voluntary survey doesn’t hold water, Canada’s former top statistician says. Read on »
They don’t need no census in Muskoka
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Democracy on July 14, 2010
Kelly McParland, The National Post, July 13, 2010
Tony Clement must have thought he was looking at an easy summer, what with the G8 being over with, and such a resounding success too. Read on »
Clement picked which festivals get federal funds
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives on June 14, 2010
Marie Vastel, The Canadian Press, as published in The Toronto Star, June 10, 2010
OTTAWA—Popular events in Toronto and Montreal that lost out on federal funding this year have Industry Minister Tony Clement to thank for the lack of cash in their coffers.
Clement himself chose which 47 events would receive financing under the Conservative’s marquee tourism events program, Richard Dicerni, deputy minister of Industry Canada, told the Commons heritage committee on Thursday. Read on »
Tories keep MPs in dark on data, says Commons budget watchdog
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Democracy on May 11, 2010
By Kathryn May, The Ottawa Citizen May 10, 2010
When it is finally released, budget watchdog Kevin Page’s costing of one of the Conservative crime bills will suffer the same problem as his probes into First Nations schools and the war in Afghanistan — no hard data from the government. Read on »
Can you spare $10 billion?
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Crime & Safety, Taxes, The Deficit on May 11, 2010
VANCOUVER SUN MAY 5, 2010
Conservatism, in both theory and practice, advocates that governments must introduce changes only when there is substantial evidence of their potential efficacy, and only when their costs are known and manageable.
Just how unconservative the federal government is acting is evident from its criminal justice reforms. Read on »
Liberals circulate ‘interesting’ government funding list
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Human Rights, Liberals, Women's Rights on May 6, 2010
By Karina Roman, CBC News, May 5, 2010
So there’s been lots of talk in the past few days about women’s groups that have been de-funded by the Conservative government and debate about why they are losing their funding. Last night on CBC’s Power and Politics, Conservative MP Candace Hoeppner said the government was simply being more “focused” in their approach to funding groups.
The Liberals, not surprisingly, don’t see it that way and have been working on a list of groups they say are losing their money because they don’t share the government’s ideology (not all the groups themselves agree with this characterization). But along with handing out that list, they have also added a list of groups and programs that are getting government grants. Let’s be clear, this list is not complete in any way. In fact, it could be said to be quite selective. But the Liberals point out it still offers an “interesting” contrast. Read on »
Canada stymied detainee monitoring, Richard Colvin says
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability on April 13, 2010
Steven Chase, Ottawa — The Globe and Mail, Published on Tuesday, Apr. 13, 2010
When diplomat Richard Colvin urged a March, 2007, meeting of Canadian officials to stop handing prisoners to Afghanistan’s notorious intelligence service, a federal government note-taker put her pen down and stopped recording the meeting, an inquiry into detainees heard today. Read on »
Harper’s openness in dispute
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Democracy on April 13, 2010
Susan Delacourt, Ottawa Bureau of The Toronto Star, April 13, 2010
OTTAWA – The Prime Minister’s Office has declared this week that freedom of information is “the oxygen of democracy.”
Canada’s information commissioner, however, finds that the capital is somewhat oxygen-deprived under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government. Read on »
Harper plays to people’s worst instincts
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Crime & Safety, Justice on April 7, 2010
BY DAN GARDNER, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN, APRIL 7, 2010
Having spent the last four years being amazed and appalled by Stephen Harper’s style of governance — cynical, ruthless, controlling, unprincipled, and proudly ignorant of basic facts — I thought I had seen the worst. But then the news of Graham James’s pardon broke. Read on »
Find Some Principles
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Democracy on March 3, 2010
Justin Trudeau, Member of Parliament, Papineau, QC. First published in The Mark, Mar 02, 2010
Even though it makes my job as a member of the Official Opposition a little easier, I am genuinely disappointed that this Conservative government didn’t hold true to the principles that brought it to power. Read on »
Harper: “Obscene” and “Monstrous” pension
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Human Rights, The Deficit on February 28, 2010
by Richard Cléroux, The West Island Chronicle, February 28, 2010
The budget is coming up this week. It’s a budget so important that Stephen Harper decided that Parliament had to be closed down for two months to prepare it. Read on »
Travers: Conservative motivations laid bare
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Democracy on February 23, 2010
By James Travers, National Affairs Columnist, The Toronto Star, February 23, 2010
Conservatives are out of their particular closet. Not since ripping into social and legal activists during a first year in power has the party so aggressively, or openly, imposed its ideology. Read on »
MPs pile on `train wreck’ agency
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Human Rights on February 18, 2010
By Bruce Campion-Smith, Ottawa Bureau chief, The Toronto Star, February 18, 2010
OTTAWA–Opposition MPs are calling on Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon to rein in the Rights and Democracy agency that they say has gone “rogue” and is “out of control.”
They’re vowing to hold a parliamentary probe of the government-funded agency’s woes when the House of Commons resumes sitting in less than two weeks. Read on »
Briefing notes show Tories put branding above economic benefits: Liberal critic
Posted by sitemaster in Accountability, Conservatives, The Economy on February 18, 2010
By Mike De Souza, Canwest News ServiceFebruary 18, 2010. From the Montreal Gazette
OTTAWA — The Harper government’s infrastructure plan is more about marketing and branding than it is about creating jobs and improving the economy, Liberal infrastructure critic Gerard Kennedy said Thursday in response to newly released federal documents. Read on »
You need to log in to vote
The blog owner requires users to be logged in to be able to vote for this post.
Alternatively, if you do not have an account yet you can create one here.
Powered by Vote It Up