As the rhetoric on the OAS and pension
debates really ramps up, what with the (truncated) debate on the pooled
registered pension plans and the continued reaction to Harper’s speech in
Davos, it helps to get some perspective. You can get some political perspective
(and Bob Rae delivered one of his trademarked barnburner speeches in the Commons
on Monday, and make what you will of the content, it’s nice to see someone demonstrate
that there is some oratory skill left in Canadian politics), and you can get
some journalistic perspective. On that note, Paul Wells has put together a
really comprehensive piece about the OAS issue and some of the political calculation
that has been going on with it. Suffice to say, this is still early days for
this debate, and I’m sure it will reach the fevered pitch of hysteria quite
shortly.
RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson was before
the public safety committee yesterday, where he said he wasn’t muzzled by the
minister (he just didn’t want to meet with Senator Kenny), he will defend his
independence, and that the Force’s discipline process is cumbersome and
requires overhaul as they look into the harassment complaint investigations.
Vic Toews denies that he withheld tabling a
potentially embarrassing (or at the very least, politically inconvenient) report on the efficacy of the long-gun registry – you
know, like he did a year ago when he did the same thing.
On the topic of the registry, it seems the
government’s witnesses during the debate on the bill to scrap it were also
members of its firearms advisory committee and didn’t bother to tell anyone.
Because this is the most open and transparent government in the history of
ever!
The Canadian Forces spent $2.4 million on
training at a facility owned by Blackwater (now called Xe Services).
And Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin says
that the judicial system needs to learn to deal with the new reality of social
media, with Facebook and Twitter, when it comes to reports coming out of the
courtroom, and what it means for fairness and accuracy around what gets said about those proceedings.
