Rounding off my series of catching up with our gay and lesbian MPs, I spoke to Liberal MP Mario Silva this morning about what he's been busy doing.

Q: What did you get up to over the winter break?
A: There were a few things. One was the big event that happened at the 519 here in Toronto in relation to Uganda. I attended that event with Glen Murray, who’s running as a candidate in the area provincially now. It was very well attended, and it’s a very important issue for a lot of gay people, and I mentioned the fact that if in fact the law was adopted, then they should be suspended from their membership in the Commonwealth. That was one thing that I did. There was a lot, especially around Christmas and New Year's, there’s lots of major activities here in the riding, in terms of all the different cultural clubs. There are a lot of different cultural communities here, so there were a lot of events to go to, so I did as much of it as I could go to. And my partner and I went away for about a week, so it was good. We spent some time together, and now we’re back again – I was in Ottawa for most of the week, I came back [to the riding] last night and then I’m back [to Ottawa] again next week.

Q: What are some of the sessions that you’re participating in during this three-week roundtable series that the caucus is putting on?
A: I’ve been attending as many of them as I can, and I’ll be attending the one on poverty on Monday, but I’ve also been busy as well. [Last] Monday I was pretty much busy all day with the hearings as well as the inquiry of the Anti-Semitism [Coalition] because that’s still going on. I’ve also been spending a lot of time with the secretariat, because we have one more hearing on the 8th, which is the one we have to wrap up, but the other factor so that we’re planning a conference for some time in November. So there’s a lot of work to be done on planning for that, so we’ve been having a lot of meetings for that – myself, Scott Reid and also Irwin Cotler. That issue has been taking a lot of my time because just about every day, I have emails and calls from the secretariat on things that need to be done, and action plans, because I’m co-chairing this with Scott Reid, and everything falls on our shoulders – everything from fundraising, to speakers, to conference halls. It’s a major event so there’s a lot of work to be done.

Q: How have the hearings been going?
A: They’ve been going very well. We’ve gotten some really high-calibre people, so I’m very pleased about that. We’ve got a lot of experts in the field – we had the universities, and on the 8th, we’re bringing in the RCMP and people from different policing divisions to hear also from law enforcement. Minister Vic Toews has been invited – he hasn’t said if he can make it, but he’s been invited. So it should be a very important conference that will be taking place.

Q: The last time I posted about the hearings, I got some comments back from people who were concerned about campus anti-Semitism, and concerns that any discussion is being quashed by people saying that it’s anti-Semitic, and they’re trying to contest that. So I’m wondering how that issue is coming out in these hearings?
A: This is something that we obviously have to address in our report. It’s been raised several times, and that’s going to be something that we have to address. Those who raised the issue that there is genuine fear and concern about what’s taking place on campus and don’t feel uncomfortable at all, and feel intimidated when there are these “Israeli Apartheid weeks,” and those who feel that it’s a question of free speech and that it’s not anti-Semitic. These issues have to somehow be addressed in our report, and I think we’ve got some good information and hopefully the report will shed some light into this issue as well.

Q: Any other plans for the prorogation period?
A: We have work to do, and I have things to do in the riding, and I have to come up to Ottawa, and so we’ll just keep on working as best we can.

With their poll numbers tanking as a result of prorogation, the Conservatives decided that it was once again time to play to the base – more “tough on crime” talk, this time focusing on young offenders. But this whole exercise is nothing more than a repository for hyperbolic statements that don’t actual bear out in reality.

After all, there’s the whole commitment to these “tough on crime” laws. The justice minister, Rob Nicholson, went on Power & Politics and railed with bluster and thunder about how they couldn’t pass anything because of that darn Liberal Senate blocking everything, and it was so great that they’d have these new Senators to help them pass these bills.

But it was all bullshit. Every last bit of it. We’ve seen conclusive proof that the Senate hasn’t held up a single crime bill, nor have they gutted anything – they amended very bad legislation, as is their constitutional duty, and they did it fairly expeditiously in Parliamentary terms. In fact, they did it in less time than those same bills were in the Commons.

When I interviewed Senator Joan Fraser, chair of the legal and constitutional affairs committee, for the article I did on the unspoken costs of this “tough on crime” agenda, she said this:

We in fact have not amended or obstructed in any way the vast majority of crime bills. We haven’t obstructed any of them. We hadn’t amended very many of them at all, and we hadn’t gutted any of them. Those that we have amended, and I can say that with real confidence because I’ve been on the legal committee all the way through, we have been very careful to ensure that all of the amendments that were made in the committee were within the scope of the bill and were not contrary to the stated purpose of the bill – that’s Parliamentarily sound procedure. It’s just an urban myth that we’ve gutted anything or obstructed anything.

Most of the Conservative crime bills were sitting in the Commons on the Order Paper, not being moved ahead by the government House Leader. It’s a falsehood for Nicholson to say the Senate obstructed anything (not that this is the first time that Fraser has had to smack Nicholson down). It’s also a falsehood to say that these five new senators – who are likely to be named today – will significantly shift the balance of power on these crime bills because those pesky independent senators still hold the power, and many of them, like Senator Elaine McCoy (who I will remind you, is made of awesome), doesn’t support this government’s backwards crime agenda either.

Of course, there is always the basic illogic of the Conservative positions that 14 year-olds are mature enough to be face trial as adults and face adult sentences, and yet they’re not mature enough to have consensual sex… I’ve never been able to figure out that particular disconnect.

And as for that appearance on Power & Politics, why wasn’t Evan Soloman calling him on any of this bullshit? A little more rigour in holding the feet of the government to the fire would be appreciated.

Also rich – Harper, over in Davos, talking about “enlightened sovereignty” and also, doesn’t he have a great approach to climate change? No, seriously.

“Mr. Harper has not earned a reputation for ‘enlightenment’ on the international stage,” Scott Brison, also in Davos, responded.

Harper also said that in his experience, if you make bad policy for the sake of good communications that it’ll catch up with you eventually. Really? Because he’s been making all kinds of bad policy for the sake of optics (hello his whole crime agenda for a random example), and it hasn’t entirely “caught up” with him yet, even if his poll numbers are finally starting to head south. My guess is that this is just his “statesman” personality that he puts on for foreign visits only, and that we’ll see the usual Harper soon enough back on home soil.

The Liberals held their roundtable on veterans’ issues, and say that the veterans’ charter needs to be overhauled.

Up today – the Supreme Court is due to rule on the Omar Khadr case. This could be very interesting…

The Liberals are hosting roundtables on the impact of dementia and Alzheimer’s, as well as a “virtual” roundtable on health.

As part of my catching up with gay and lesbian MPs, I caught up with Bill Siksay today, who has just returned to his riding of Burnaby-Douglas after his caucus meetings in Ottawa.

Q: What did you get up to over the winter break?
A: That seems so long ago. It was good to be back in the riding and be able to do some things locally. I usually every holiday/New Year’s season, I have a New Year’s levee, so I my annual New Year’s levee at the Scandinavian Community Centre here, which is always a nice event. It’s not a big political event – it’s more of a meet-and-greet. There’s a big fireplace there, and you sit around and eat and have conversations – it’s one I look forward to. So it was nice to be back in Burnaby to have that kind of exchange with folks for a change.

That break period over the holidays is usually a time for me to spend with my family, which I don’t get very often, and to sleep in my own bed for a while, which is nice. We always have a staff retreat in that time too, the Ottawa and Burnaby staff, where we try to make some plans for the coming year and get a sense of where we’re going and what we’re working on and our priorities, and so we did that as well.

Q: I guess the plan for your caucus is to go around the country and do consultations rather than do them here [in Ottawa]. What are your plans for that?
A: In terms of my work for the next little while, one of the things that I’m going to be doing is trying to get thing set up for the Private Members’ Bill on adding gender identity and expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act. It’s still likely to come up this spring, even though it might be a little later because of prorogation and because of re-jigging the Private Members’ List – it doesn’t drop off, it doesn’t change, and everything’s still intact, but it’ll take a little longer for the bill to come up than we expected, so that gives us some time to prepare a programme for contacting MPs, letting them know it’s coming up, and trying to build some support in the community for folks to go out and talk to their local MP and try to get them onboard with this bill for when it does finally get debated in the House. So that’s one of the projects I’ll be working on in this period.

Another one that I want to do some work on is the whole issue on the criminal code changes in Uganda. It seems like there’s been some movement there. The [President] of Uganda recently acknowledged that he’s been getting pressure from heads of [government] in the Commonwealth - he mentioned that he had a conversation with Prime Minister Harper about it. There’s been comment from other cabinet ministers in Uganda about that piece of legislation, so it sounds like things are percolating, and some of the efforts of members of the community from around the world are starting to pay off, and hopefully we can continue to work here, and I wanted to go to work with folks in the community here to figure out how we can keep that pressure coming from Canada.

Q: This is one of those things I’ve been wondering – is there any means by which we should examine the aid that we give to Uganda and start asking questions about that?
A: I’m not sure exactly what the level of aid is. I know the Conservative government recently changed their aid policies in Africa, and some countries were in and some countries were out. I think it’s probably too early to talk about changing any aid that we send to Uganda – I think we need to see what the outcome of their debate and deliberations are before we look at a step like that, but certainly I think on a fundamental level, if a country presents great to concerns to Canadians and to values that Canadians espouse, then we need to consider that kind of thing. But I think it’s probably early to do that when we haven’t seen exactly what the outcome of the debate in Uganda will be.

I also was doing some work on nuclear disarmament, and want to do some follow-up on that. We had a meeting in Ottawa on Monday of the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, with the global coordinator of the organisation, Allan Ware. Allan was in Ottawa for a conference, and even though it was a Monday and in this funny nether-space between Parliaments, we had 12 MPs and a Senator out to hear Allan talk about how it was important that Canada play a more prominent role in the whole move for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Canada used to be a strong player and now is not to be found in that discussion, so we want to work on ways of bringing Canada back into that important discussion. Also on Tuesday, I attended a conference in Ottawa on practical steps that Canadians can take towards that goal. I think there’s important work to be done there. I think that’s an issue that is crucial – there’s a moment with the change in administration in the United States where we can make progress on that issue, and I think that on a very basic level, everyone’s security is bound up on our ability to make some progress on that front.

Q: Over in the Ethics, Information and Privacy committee – was there anything that died in prorogation?
A: Well one of the things that’s come up since the committee’s last meeting was this commitment to install these electronic full-body scanners in airports, and one of the concerns that I have is the particular concern that folks in the trans community have around those scanners. I’ve been making inquiries with both the government and the Privacy Commissioner as to what provision has been made around training folks who operate this equipment and also just general policy around how transsexual and transgendered folks are to be accommodated in those security searches. I think that’s a really important one, and it has a particular implication for certain members of our community, so I want to pursue that, and if we need to bring that to the standing committee when it gets back, then we’ll certainly try to do that. I think the whole follow-up to the Olympics and closed-circuit surveillance of city streets, certainly here in the Greater Vancouver Area, that’s an issue with the number of cameras that have been installed for the Olympics and we want to do some follow-up to make sure that those come down as has been promised after the campaign, and that we don’t go into this whole new era of video surveillance of community streets as an Olympic legacy, so I think that’s an important one. But just the pressure on the government around coming up with important reform to privacy legislation and Access to Information will certainly be on the committee’s agenda when it comes back.

With Harper in Davos, preaching “moderation” in the global bank crackdown, is not only talking about his new commitment to women and children in developing countries, but he’s also met with the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. Harper was silent, apparently, on increasing our aid for that country, which I’m not about to complain about given their human rights record – particularly when it comes to the GLBT community.

Also on the Davos file, the Globe and Mail’s Jane Taber files a rather condescending blog post about Scott Brison’s participation there, painting him as some kind of bumpkin who never thought he’d be there with so many world leaders when gee, he’s only been part of the World Economic Forum’s young global leader’s programme for years now and attends the Davos and “summer Davos” in Dalian, China, regularly. And it’s not like he hasn’t been meeting with global leaders over trade issues for years either, so this is, like, totally new for him, obviously.

Ignatieff, incidentally, is sceptical of the new Conservative commitment to women and children. And hey, when it comes to women in top jobs in our own country, it looks like we’ve…stalled. Hmm. Perhaps Harper may need to realise that to lead by example, he still needs to fund things like Status of Women.

Transport Minister John Baird held a press conference yesterday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their Economic Action Plan. And sure, he pointed to all kinds of projects on the go, but had no numbers on job creation. His Liberal critic, Gerard Kennedy, hijacked the end of the press conference to point this out, had some concrete examples of what his party would have done differently. Not long later, the party unveiled some new proposals for job creation.

The NDP’s Paul Dewar held a press conference yesterday to keep the Afghan detainee issue in the media, and he raised the possibility that the government wouldn’t reconstitute the special committee on Afghanistan, which we all know they prorogued Parliament to stonewall. The PMO immediately turned around to assure Canadians that they do care about Afghanistan and that the committee will indeed be reconstituted. But no mention as to whether or not they’re still going to boycott it or play procedural games to stonewall its inquiry into the detainee issue.

Jim Flaherty is calling for the world to cancel Haiti’s debts, just like Canada did last fall. And you can be sure the NDP is going to take credit for this one. Oh, and it seems the government’s response to the Haiti crisis hasn’t helped them in the polls. More proof that Canadians do care about the prorogation issue, and they’re not so quick to forgive – or forget.

There’s been an update on the Richard Colvin story – turns out he is finally getting his money back for hiring independent counsel. Not that the government had to be embarrassed into doing it or anything.

Up today – Liberal MP Rob Oliphant hosts his roundtable session on veterans, which includes a keynote address by Senator Roméo Dallaire.

As we continue to catch up with our gay and lesbian MPs this week, I spoke to NDP House Leader Libby Davies who has very definite plans for the Olympic period - but she won't be watching the games.

Q: What did you get up to over the winter break?
A: Over the actual holiday part, I was very quiet. I stayed home and had my family over. Sometimes in other Christmases I’ve gone away, but this time I stayed home and I had my family over, I made a turkey dinner and all of that, so that was good. I’ve been in the riding, and I did my hunger strike relay – like a fast for homelessness. I don’t know if you’re aware of that.

Q: No, I wasn’t.
A: It’s been an ongoing thing in Vancouver. I did a whole bunch of blogs on it. Instead of the Olympic torch, they’ve had this hunger strike relay, and you pass the wooden spoon. I received the wooden spoon – I did week 55, so it’s been going on for more than a year – and I did it for a week, and basically you go on a fast, it’s liquid only. Every day I went down to the Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings, which is in my riding, it’s sort of the core of the Downtown East Side, and I stood in front of the Carnegie Centre, and I had a flip-chart with me, and I have the most amazing things that people wrote on that flip-chart. Really powerful messages, some of them really angry, some of them very philosophical, quite a few of them from aboriginal people – just the way people feel about their existence and being on the street, and what it’s like, and the need for housing. That was a very powerful experience. We got a fair amount of media for it, and in fact, one funny thing was I was holding this big wooden spoon, and it was weirdly empowering, and when I accepted the spoon, I started tapping it against my hand and said something to the effect that I’m really tempted to go up to Mr. Harper and Mr. Campbell with this spoon and give them a good spanking. And of course, everyone started laughing and that’s what made it in the media. But it was weirdly empowering holding this spoon everyday and being out on the street and listening to people, so I did that for seven days, and it was very intense. It’s helped get the word out about my housing bill of course.

I’ve been working in the riding, and then we came back to Ottawa for our caucus meetings, and then I went back to the riding, and then I’ve been back here again, and I’m here until tomorrow, actually. This weekend I’m going to London, Ontario. I was in Toronto, did a big public meeting on my trip to Gaza and the Middle East, and that’s why I’m going to London, Ontario, to the London Islamic Centre, I think it’s called, on Saturday. And then I’ll be heading back to my riding and basically while everyone is getting wound up about the Olympics, I’m going to be there in Vancouver. I’m not going to the Olympics, but I feel like my role is monitoring what’s going on because there’s a lot of unease and concern about what’s going to happen to people who are on the street, and people’s civil liberties and around security issues. There’s going to be sixteen thousand security forces in Vancouver, nine hundred security cameras, there’s various actions being planned. I’m going to be working with people, watching what’s going on, and being ready to speak out if people start getting harassed or things like that.

Q: The plan for your caucus is to go around the country and consult with Canadians. What are you planning to do for that?
A: At this point, I don’t have anything planned myself personally because I’ll be in the riding, particularly over the Olympic period. I may need to come back and forth to Ottawa – I have been working as the House Leader on some of the issues around prorogation. We had a discussion with the Liberals yesterday, and they put out some proposals, and we’ve had some ideas as well, and certainly as the House Leader, with a couple of other of our MPs, we’re working on that, so I may need to keep some tabs on that. At this point, I’m going to some NDP riding events on Vancouver Island, but my main focus – I feel like I need to be close to what’s going on in Vancouver around the Olympics, leading up to it and when the Olympics are on, and that’s what I’m trying to do.

Q: Has there been any word from the Conservative House Leader in terms of negotiating what bills they want to get back?
A: No. They may not do that until we actually get back. We may not hear anything formally until we are back on March the 3rd, or a couple of days after that.

Q: Any bills in particular you don’t want back, or is everything up for negotiation?
A: This is a general thing – we’re taking a look at all the bill that are there and where they’re at, but I do think that there’s an issue here, and that is Mr. Harper, he made a decision to prorogue, and that was his decision, and I do think there are consequences that he is aware of – he knows that making means that his bills go back to the beginning, and I don’t want to speculate on what’s going to happen. We’ll see at that time, but surely he must be aware that’s one of the consequences that he to live with. He’s eliminated his own bills – we didn’t do that. He did that.