Watching twitter go off during the post caucus meeting press conferences has been absolutely hilarious. The talking points are already out in full force;
Mulcair wants to abolish the senate entirely, Huzzah how fantastic!.
This would be a great idea if it were at all possible for Parliament to do it themselves. In order for the Senate to be abolished a consensus would have to be made with the provinces. This is because the Senate, or the house of sober second thought, is constitutionally engrained. Thankfully it isn't that easy to change the constitution in this country. Currently there is a case in front of the Supreme Court that is looking into the constitutionality of abolishment, a decision has not been given yet, but one can assume that the Supreme Court will decide that Parliament does not have the power to abolish the senate, and the appropriate means will have to be taken in order to accomplish this.
This is a long drawn out process, and since the Supreme Court hasn't ruled yet, and Canadians are easily convinced of things a quick google search would disprove, Mulcair takes a completely safe position here, arguing for something he knows he can't deliver on (and will conveniently be able to blame his change of position on the Supreme Court decision). Throughout this campaigning on abolishment of the Senate, and passing out the talking point that Justin Trudeau simply wants to pad the senate with more Liberal senators, Mulcair, the official leader of the opposition, will be missing the opportunity to focus on the real issues here; the conflict of interest and ethics violations that caused the scandal to begin with. This gives PM Harper, Senator Mike Duffy and the rest of the chronies a free pass.
The Conservatives have been patting themselves on the back for being so swell, and have decided to focus solely on the expenses within the Senate. They want to reform the process for these expenses, make the rules clearer and waste a whole lot of time since these rules already exist, they just don't have to be followed when the PM appointed senators white wash a report and give the offenders the benefit of the doubt.
Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau is arguing not for padding the senate, or leaving it as it is, but for thoughtful debate and consideration on the matter. Firstly, wait for the Supreme Court decision to come down before you start rabble rousing about something you can't do, and secondly, acknowledge the role the Provinces and Canadian citizens have in this decision.
Trudeau also would like to move the focus from the senate onto the PMO, Nigel Wright, Duffy and Harper himself. There are a ton of questions that haven't been answered (you know since Harper refused to answer questions for Canadian journalists, yet willingly answered questions from Peruvian journalists), and this part of the scandal is what is demonstrative of all of the issues with this government. They aren't accountable, they aren't even remotely transparent, and patronage appointments are a way of life. I am shocked they haven't used the Rob Ford claim that they just have a different understanding of what conflict of interest means. I mean it worked for him, why wouldn't it work for the PMO? Although sputterings of this have been tried, the idea that Nigel Wright a man with law degrees from both University of Toronto and Harvard, had no clue that writing a 90 thousand dollar cheque with no expectations of it being paid back, would be viewed as a gift; you know a thing you give without an expectation of financial renumeration, and would be directly against the rule stating :
Section 17 (1) of the Senate Conflict of Interest code states: “Neither a Senator, nor a family member, shall accept … any gift or other benefit, except compensation authorized by law, that could reasonably be considered to relate to the Senator’s position.”
is absolute bullshit. It's quite possibly the biggest load of shit this government has tried to feed us.
I am not a lawyer, I'm just a measly 4th year Honours poli-sci student, so I think it should be reasonable to state that if I can read that and know that giving any sort of financial gift like the $90 000 written by Wright would be against the rules, someone with an education like Nigel Wright would have understood that as well.
Conflict of interest violations and ethics violations are par for the course with this government which is exactly why that's what we need to be focusing on. On the same day that the shit hit the proverbial fan when Harper gave a unconvincing pep talk to his caucus, it came out that Harper had appointed Conservative donors to the EI board, another incredibly obvious conflict of interest and patronage violation.
The thing is Harper thinks Canadians are stupid, and that while he and his friends might be able to read those laws and fully understand what they mean and their ramifications, that regular Canadians like me could not possibly have a clue. But we do. We understand why what they did was wrong. We understand that the closest appointed person to the Prime Minister writing a cheque to a Senator appointed by the same man that would stop an audit dead in it's tracks and have other Conservative Senators declaring that repayment was good enough with them is a shady fucking thing. We also know that there's not a rainbows chance in Hell that Harper had no clue this was happening.
People have been using their words very carefully in prepration for the oncoming investigations (there will be many, they will take years and they will cost millions) but people are catching on. The government hacks, the guys that actually are stealing Canadian taxdollars, think that we have no clue what they're doing. They think that they can just keep on bringing up "Adscam," not just bring it up but lie about the actually fallout of the situation ($2 million misused, half paid back by the Liberals, and top brass were found to be ignorant). At one point I read that the Liberals had stolen over 300 million dollars throughout the process. That's a huge number and it's bound to make people incapable of googling incredibly angry, but it's not the truth and moreover an event that happened over a decade ago can not be used to justify every single scandal, every single misstep of the Conservative Harper government.
Harper appoints 58 senators after campaigning on appointing none? "Adscam and the Liberals appointed senators too"
3.1 billion dollars unaccounted for? "Adscam"
Unethical patronage appointments to the EI board? "Adscam"
Peter MacKay takes a government helicopter to a family event? "Adscam"
Bev Oda charges tax payers for $16 orange juice? "Adscam"
Dean Del Mastro's cousin may have funneled party donations through his employees? "Adscam"
G20 spending? "Adscam"
And now Senate Scandal "Adscam, Adscam, Adscam"
We get the picture, you guys are still pissed about the sponsorship scandal, but complaining about something that happened over a decade ago while ignoring the rampant issues created by the current government makes your anger meaningless and hypocritical. Hold all parties, all politicians, all governments to the same standards. It's the only way that any of your criticisms will mean something.
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