Spinning Their Wheels

Federal politicians from the two opposition parties have a busy schedule this week even though the House of Commons is closed for a break week. This is usually a time when our MPs return to their ridings to focus on constituency work. But this week several opposition MPs are hitting the road to highlight their party’s stance on the Conservative’s budget bill.

What they hope to accomplish is debatable. To begin with, how many Canadians outside of the Queensway even know they are on tour? Do our MPs honestly expect that the budget debate was on our minds while we enjoyed the weather this past weekend and fired up the BBQ to celebrate the arrival of summer?  How many of us while flipping burgers were bemoaning the details about the omnibus budget bill to our assembled guests and neighbours? Somehow I don’t think it was discussed all that much.

For the most part when you are on a tour of this nature you talk to the people and groups who already agree with your position. It’s a good opportunity to have a warm and fuzzy moment with folks who support your position, but you aren’t convincing many others to change their minds nor will you convince non-supporters to suddenly show an interest in the debate.

The debate on this budget bill is just about past it’s “due date”. Groups or individuals who have a stake in the changes that will be implemented are rightly concerned and they have been expressing those concerns since the bill was first introduced. There are only so many times the public will listen to you say the same thing over and over again.

The NDP obviously feel they need to garner more public support for their stand against the bill and they do have a chance to use their tour to win over some anti-Harperites or Liberal supporters. That will be one of the few positives for them as they wander the country this week.

Having worked for a party that endured third party status for many years, I am not too sure what the Liberals hope to accomplish. No matter what they do, they NDP will steal the spotlight from them on any given day of the week. One comment from Mulcair will be all it takes to bury the Liberals media hopes. It is times like this when you really begin to appreciate your weaknesses and realize how difficult the road back to power (if it ever comes) will be. For the Liberals it will be a good day if they simply get a mention in the press.

With just 10 sitting days left (plus another 10 optional days) before the long parliamentary summer break begins, it’s time for the opposition parties to realize they have lost this debate and Canadians have really started to tune out. It is time for the opposition to look ahead to the fall session when Canadians will really start to see the impact of some of the items this budget bill will have implemented.

There will be lots of time to criticize the government then and with Canadians returning from the summer holiday’s they will once again start to pay attention to what our politicians are saying. The opposition hasn’t lost the war, but throwing everything into battle when no one is listening is futile and a waste of resources.

Appointing friendlies- shocking!

Was it really shocking to learn that Heritage minister James Moore has revised the candidate requirements for future appointments under his department to include a stipulation that they develop and maintain and effective relationship with him and his staff?

Actually what was shocking was that someone put that requirement in writing, but at least they can say they were being open and transparent.

It is unlikely that any government regardless of political stripe will appoint people to key positions if they know that they are opposed to that government’s policies. That is a recipe for political disaster and constant infighting and a dysfunctional working relationship. That helps no one including the taxpayer who foots the bill for the salaries and any legal costs that might arise.

One would hope that any individual who is appointed to a board or commission or any other Order-in-Council appointment would be the best qualified person and not just a party hack. It is beneficial for a board to include a mixture of backgrounds and opinions and the government and the taxpayer are best served when boards are staffed by qualified individuals who provide honest advice to a minister. Today, some of those appointees may very well have ties to the Conservatives.

When I read that some Liberals were shocked at Moore’s requirements I couldn’t help but think back to the thousands of appointments they made from 1993-2006. It was roughly 2700 positions that came up for renewal each year and as an opposition researcher for the PC Party, I would go through them, especially if one of the appointees got into trouble and ended up in the media. To aid me I had a huge document that had been compiled by a previous researcher and it showed the many different connections that many of the appointees had to the Liberal Party. Today’s Liberal complaints seem to be more of the pot calling the kettle black.

Whenever questions about an appointee arose in the House, the standard Liberal answer (you can substitute Conservative here too) was that these were the best qualified people for the job.  In fact in many cases that might have been true, both then and now.

For all the whining from the NDP over the appointment process, does anyone think for a moment that they would do things differently? Thomas Mulcair has been a cabinet minister in Quebec; he understands the process and the type of working relationship a minister needs with key members of commissions and boards etc. If Mulcair was Prime Minister today do the NDP critics or NDP backbenchers honestly think that he would be appointing people to key government positions if he knew that they were opposed to the very NDP policies Mulcair was promoting?

Unfortunately in 2006, an opportunity was lost to clean up the appointment process when Prime Minister Harper suggested Gwyn Morgan take over as head of the process. Instead of using that opportunity to vet and question an appointee in a rational manner (as MPs have done with the appointment of judges) the meeting was a circus.

It was a partisan side show of the worse type and it pretty well sealed the fate of that process. How could any Prime Minister ask another appointee to endure the same fate? Who would accept to be an appointee knowing what they would be subjected too? An excellent opportunity was lost to clean up our appointment process.

Opposition parties love to criticize and seek out that 10 second TV clip or earn that one sentence in the written press. But they need to remember that when they obtain power some of their comments will come back to bite them.

Should the NDP ever come to power, it will be interesting to see how quickly they establish a Parliamentary Appointments Office and how clean and nonpartisan their suggested appointees will be. Somehow I don’t think they will be any different from the Liberals or the Conservatives.

 This post was published on the ipolitics.ca web site today

Is There a Giant Killer Amongst Them?

As we approach the month of June, the Liberal Party will soon be making a decision on when to hold their next leadership convention. Attached to that decision will be another key one as they must also decide if interim leader Bob Rae can run for the leadership position.

With roughly a month to go, there doesn’t seem to be much interest from the public in what they do or for that matter, what they decide. This isn’t unusual, as public attention is focused on Tom Mulcair and the NDP. Clearly at this point in time the NDP offers voters the biggest contrast with the governing Conservatives, the Liberals still don’t seem to fit in anywhere.

It is always tough for a third party to define itself and being in the mushy middle isn’t necessarily a good thing at this point in time. This is partially due to the fact that the voters haven’t turned on the Conservatives yet and the NDP is finally starting to get its act together. My guess is those opposing the Harper government will park their interest and their vote with the NDP for now.  Better to give a strong opposition leader a shot at dealing with Harper than switch back to the mushy Liberals with unknown leadership prospects waiting in the wings.

To date, even the potential candidates don’t have the profile to generate a lot of interest amongst the general public, even though inside the Queensway it will be a hot topic of conversation and speculation. But with BBQ season finally arriving, will ordinary Canadians being paying attention?

Martha Hall Findlay, Gerard Kennedy, Scot Brison, Marc Garneau, David McGuinty, Dominic LeBlanc, Denis Coderre and Justin Trudeau and of course Bob Rae are mentioned as potential leadership candidates, but how do Canadians see them? Do they see them as reasonably competent MPs or as a giant slayer who can defeat both Harper and Mulcair? Based on their track record I don’t see any of them in that position just yet.

Hanging over all of the potential candidates will be the question of how they will deal with a merger or coalition with the NDP. We can expect most if not all to deny any hint of a merger and they will probably dodge the question of a coalition arrangement with the NDP after the next election. But with their thirst for power, do we honestly think the Liberals, no matter who they are led by would walk away from a coalition deal that gave them a few seats around the cabinet table?

Gerard Kennedy was honest enough to say recently that “I don’t think the coalition itself was particularly well handled in the end, but I think that was a matter of politics as opposed to whether or not it was the right thing to do. We'll see how things are.”

You can bet the Conservatives won’t let him forget that one and it is a key question to put to every leadership candidate. Today, Canadian voters have been exposed to coalition governments more frequently than in the past, the UK being an example. Conservative scare tactics may not be as successful this time around and the bogeyman of a coalition government may have played itself out especially as the Bloc will have no role to play. It is therefore a legitimate question for potential Liberal leaders. Would they join an NDP led coalition or come to a working arrangement if it meant the defeat of the Conservatives?

At this point in time even that question is a long way away. For now the media and pundits will be looking at who might throw their hat into the ring? Can they raise the necessary funds? Which potential candidates will be seating MPs or defeated candidates?

Canadians will be asking themselves do I care and if I do is there a giant slayer amongst them?

Ministerial Drivers and Overtime

It was interesting to see that departments IE the taxpayer paid out some $600,000 in overtime payments to ministerial drivers. This covered the one year period from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011.

I am not about to defend these expenses, all government expenses deserve scrutiny and some of these do seem excessive, but the story does raise a few additional questions.

Peter MacKay, Julian Fantino and former minister Jean Pierre Blackburn have their drivers listed as exempt staff and therefore no overtime is paid out. Sounds like a smart move. As exempt or political staff their hours are allocated by the Chief of Staff and it is the Chief of Staff who reviews their expenses and signs off on them. In other words, as both the drivers salary and expenses are coming out of the minister’s office budget there is direct oversight.

Some of the questions I have centre around what happens when the driver is a departmental employee and not a member of the minister’s exempt staff?

1. Who does the driver submit their hours and expenses to? Is it the minister’s office or the department?
2. Does the Chief of Staff still sign off on the worksheets submitted by the driver?
3. Does the driver submit the worksheet directly to a departmental supervisor?
4. Why must it be overtime pay as opposed to time off?
5. If the department didn’t red flag driver overtime to the minister’s office, who is responsible, the department or the minister?
6. Another related issue of course is the number of drivers and cars? Do junior ministers of state need one? If the junior minister falls under a senior minister couldn’t they use the same driver?
7. What about cars and drivers allocated to senior departmental officials such as deputy ministers and PCO officials. Let us see their numbers too so that we can compare.

One way or another, someone needs to review the expenses and the system needs an overhaul

Tuesday musings

1. It was nice to see Bev Oda cough up $1353.81 to help cover the difference in cost between the hotels she stayed at in London. One can only imagine the phone call that went from PMO to her office when that story broke.

Now what about the close to a $1000 a day limo fee? The hotels were about 2 k a part, in other words roughly a 20-25 minute walk. Assuming a vehicle was needed to get back and forth between the two hotels, had no one thought about simply calling a taxi? Did they need a driver on call for 15 hours?

Taxpayers might appreciate if she paid back her limo fees as well. Wasn't it the Conservatives who used to attack the Liberals for being entitled to their entitlements?

This is one of those occasions when it would be nice if the government side let the minister stand up and answer questions about her trip in Question Period.

2. It was quite the Alberta election. Congratulations to the Progressives Conservatives and Alison Redford on their win. Now we will see how or if she can revitalize the party and their policies. The results proved once again that the only guarantee in an election is that it isn't over until the last voter has caste their ballot.