GT: Federal Election

[Smartcar]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inte...says-1.3316721

The Liberal government is inheriting a new study into the "root causes" of terrorism – a study the Harper government ordered last year, despite mocking Justin Trudeau's call for the same basic research.

The report into how the internet plays into violent extremism concludes the web does have a role, though its psychological and social effects are often overstated, and says more research is needed.

The $40,635 study, delivered to Public Safety in late June, is an ironic rebuttal to Harper and others who dismissed Trudeau for wanting to "commit sociology" rather than combat terrorism as a crime requiring policing and surveillance tools.

[Kavvy]

Originally Posted by starseed

As part of the mandate for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, admission to all of Canada's national parks will be free in 2017 for Canada's 150th birthday. New Canadians will get their first year as citizens to explore all of Canada's national parks without paying admission.



All the mandate letters have been made public here:

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/ministerial-mandate-letters

for the lazy and those who don't want to read, how does this help climate change?

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

for the lazy and those who don't want to read, how does this help climate change?

That's the Government Department that oversees Parks Canada.

[CliffFletcher]

Trudeau has 40 MPs from Quebec in his caucus. Popular sentiment in Quebec is isolationist and pacifist, with the Republic of Ireland often cited as a model for how a sovereign Quebec would act on the international stage. This will absolutely influence Canada's foreign policy.

[Blaster86]

CPC MPs cannot help themselves.

http://leaderpost.com/storyline/moos...date-ndp-whore

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

CPC MPs cannot help themselves.

http://leaderpost.com/storyline/moos...date-ndp-whore

"There’s A’s and there’s B’s. The A’s are guys like me, the B’s are homosexual ######s with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases,”

Wow. And people think the Alberta NDP have a vetting problem.

[driveway]

Harper made a slew of "future" appointments to government agencies, which could significantly impact the Liberal's ability to implement their policies.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/11/23/doome...-appointments/

Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet quietly stacked government agencies and Crown corporations with dozens of “future appointments,” and early appointment renewals in the dying days of its regime, many of which were only scheduled to go into effect long after the Conservatives were defeated, iPolitics has learned.

...

John Badowski’s appointment as chairman of the Transportation Appeal Tribunal was renewed July 28. The renewal takes effect Jan. 1, 2019, and runs until July 29, 2020. The position currently pays between $174,700 and $205,500.

...

A review by iPolitics of order in council appointments by the Harper government found 49 appointments were made in recent months but scheduled to only take effect after the Oct. 19 election.

...

The moves mean that barring the future appointments or early renewals being rescinded, the Trudeau government will not be able to replace any temporary members of the National Energy Board until at least May 2018 and any permanent members of the NEB until January 2020 – which is after the next election.

...

Liberal Senator Percy Downe, who handled appointments for three years for former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien before then becoming his chief of staff, says making appointments that run into the next government’s mandate is “unbelievable” and unprecedented.

“The longstanding tradition has been that a current government can’t bind a future government….You don’t make appointments that are two years ahead of time on the eve of an election.”

“I have never heard of the like of that ever – that’s amazing, that’s a big story. Particularly with the National Energy Board they were trying to tie the hands of the future government which is not fair game at all.”

[rubecube]

Harper gonna Harper.

[Fuzz]

Well that was awfully nice of him, knowing Justin was going to be busy and just wouldn't have time to do these himself! Thanks Harper!

[Jacks]

The government appoints craploads of people every year, 49 people seems like a pretty low number overall and is probably just business as usual. Some of these were made a year ago according to the article. Besides, if the Libs don't like the appointments they can simply appoint someone else. It's not like these are lifetime senate appointments or something.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by Jacks

The government appoints craploads of people every year, 49 people seems like a pretty low number overall and is probably just business as usual. Some of these were made a year ago according to the article. Besides, if the Libs don't like the appointments they can simply appoint someone else. It's not like these are lifetime senate appointments or something.

Its not just 49 appointments. It's 49 appointments who's terms were scheduled to begin after the election. In some cases, those terms are not scheduled to even begin for years.

John Badowski’s appointment as chairman of the Transportation Appeal Tribunal was renewed July 28. The renewal takes effect Jan. 1, 2019,

...

Of the 49 appointments, 15 went into effect between election day and November 22. Six take effect today (Nov. 23rd) ... Another 28 are slated to go into effect between November 26 and January 2019.

Also, it's not as simple as the Liberals being able to appoint someone else.

Many of the future appointments could be hard to undo without risking litigation. Of the 49 early renewals and future appointments, 24 are conditional on “good behaviour,” meaning appointees can only be stripped of their positions for bad conduct.

emphasis added.

Here's more of the quote from Percey Downe who was responsible for these types of appointments for Chretien:

“The longstanding tradition has been that a current government can’t bind a future government….You don’t make appointments that are two years ahead of time on the eve of an election.” ... “That’s way in advance. That’s unbelievable.” ... “I have never heard of the like of that ever – that’s amazing, that’s a big story."

Again, emphasis added.

Here is the full list of these appointments:

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/11/23/doome...intments/#list

As it relates to current news, 5 of these appointments are to the Immigration and Refugee Board, 4 of those 5 last until 2019, and they are conditional on "Good Behaviour" making it hard for the Liberals to undo the appointments without risking litigation.

4 are to the National Energy Board, 2 of them expiring in 2018 and 2 expiring in 2022, again conditional on "Good Behaviour."

Harper is like the human equivalent of the Edmonton Oilers, except in addition to being fundamentally No Good, he's frighteningly competent.

[EldrickOnIce]

Well, the LPC should know — If there is one thing they know about, it's patronage. 'Unprecedented' applies to Turner's patronage, only to be surpassed by Chretien in his last days. This isn't even anything, a drop in the ocean, in relation. How about instead of pretending to be scandalized by this, they commit to ending it. That would be a news story worth reading.

[CliffFletcher]

Yeah, I'd take complaints against patronage more seriously if they were complaints against the long-standing practice of patronage, rather than partisan ranting.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

Well, the LPC should know — If there is one thing they know about, it's patronage. 'Unprecedented' applies to Turner's patronage, only to be surpassed by Chretien in his last days. This isn't even anything, a drop in the ocean, in relation. How about instead of pretending to be scandalized by this, they commit to ending it. That would be a news story worth reading.

The Globe and Mail, Aug 15, 2003:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1165382/

...the Liberals will be taking pains to avoid the all-out spree that marked the handover of power from Pierre Trudeau to Mr. Turner

"I don't have any reason to believe there's going to be a repeat of what happened in 1984," said Senator David Smith, a longtime Chrétien confidant.

...
Mr. Chrétien said as much himself when the subject came up during an interview in May with the Global television network.

"There will be some appointments as we have every year," he observed. "There will be nothing that will be packaged at the last minute as it was, say, in 1984."
...
that year, the outgoing Mr. Trudeau and the incoming Mr. Turner combined to appoint no fewer than 23 Liberal MPs - one sixth of their parliamentary caucus - to the Senate, judgeships, ambassadorial posts and a host of Crown corporations, boards and agencies.

Nov 7, 2003
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1168790/

There may be a few more political appointments next week, say Liberal insiders, but critics expecting an orgy of patronage in Jean Chretien's last days in office will have to find another stick with which to beat the departing prime minister.
...
Mr. Chretien has spent the last year repeatedly stating he won't leave office amid the kind of legendary patronage quagmire that swamped John Turner when he succeeded Pierre Trudeau two decades ago.

"There will be some appointments as we have every year," Mr. Chretien said in a May interview. "There will be nothing that will be packaged at the last minute as it was, say, in 1984."

So, the 'unprecedented' Turner patronage is less than half of the Harper appointments which are scheduled to take place after the election. Those 49 appointments being exactly half of the number of appointments made on June 18-19, forty-six days before the election was called.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/nation...e-appointments

The Conservative government made 98 patronage appointments over two days last month, filling up federal boards, tribunals and panels in advance of the October election.
...
The blizzard of appointments will, no doubt, have some recalling the preamble to the 1984 election campaign, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau approved a similar orgy of patronage of mostly Liberal supporters.

Not to mention your claim that Chretien vastly surpassed this being it seems, pretty much an outright fabrication as I can find no news reports, nor even conservative commentary, backing up this assertion.

[EldrickOnIce]

Does $100M public funds illegally distributed to friends of the LPC under Chretien ring any bell?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

Does $100M public funds illegally distributed to friends of the LPC under Chretien ring any bell?

So is your argument here that Harper government was at least as corrupt as the Chretien government?

Is that the hill we're dying on today?

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

So is your argument here that Harper government was at least as corrupt as the Chretien government?

Is that the hill we're dying on today?

No. To recap my post, I said instead of displaying faux outrage at partisan handouts, committing to ending the orgy of same would be something worthwhile reading.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

No. To recap my post, I said instead of displaying faux outrage at partisan handouts, committing to ending the orgy of same would be something worthwhile reading.

I could have sworn you were using a different example of corruption from 15 years ago in an attempt to minimize the partisan corruption from 15 weeks ago.

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by driveway

Harper made a slew of "future" appointments to government agencies, which could significantly impact the Liberal's ability to implement their policies.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/11/23/doome...-appointments/

Paul Martin did pretty much the same thing in 2006, but with more people. Made the appointments effective quicker, but it was still done right around the election.

When it comes to appointments, neither party has clean hands.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

I could have sworn you were using a different example of corruption from 15 years ago in an attempt to minimize the partisan corruption from 15 weeks ago.

The Chretien response was to thss:

Not to mention your claim that Chretien vastly surpassed this being it seems, pretty much an outright fabrication as I can find no news reports, nor even conservative commentary, backing up this assertion.

If that's not what you are talking about, I invite you to scroll up a bit and re-read my post.