A new report dismisses cabinet claims the RCAF can get by with the single-engine F-35 jetfighter. The analysis cautioned that twin-engine planes, the kind currently flown by the air force, appear more reliable than single-engine replacements: “The math is very simple”.
In testimony MPs described as shocking, current and former Transport Canada staff accuse the department of misleading Parliament on the scope and effectiveness of commercial airlines’ safety inspections. Authorities were accused of falsifying data to conceal a decline in random inspections: ‘It’s a simple sleight of hand’.
The Department of Fisheries has committed “gross negligence” in failing to protect wild stocks from aquaculture, a Senate panel has been told. The Newfoundland & Labrador Outfitters Association blamed federally-regulated fish farms for threatening ocean life: “The Department of Fisheries is in a severe conflict of interest”.
Fifty MPs have petitioned Parliament to suspend Canada Post cuts and rate hikes in the largest petition drive of the Commons’ spring sitting: ‘It should be debated if the public wants it to be’.
Tax Court has upheld Canada Revenue’s right to reach back nearly 30 years to collect unpaid debts despite a statue of limitations. The judgment came in the case of a widow denied pension benefits till she pays old taxes dating from 1986: “Tax debts are payable”.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver is being pressed for adoption of a single bank ombudsman he’d advocated as a Bay Street executive. Oliver’s past remarks were uncovered by a New Democrat MP. The finance minister would not comment: “Will he actually follow what he said?”
“We can learn a lot about a place from the kind of scandal it generates,” writes J. Patrick Boyer. On that count the Senate fares not too badly. Its disgraced members are cited for cheating on expenses and lying to their colleagues. There have been no kickback schemes; no influence-peddling; no secret contracts, poisonings or manslaughter. The Senate merely embarrassed itself in the comic manner of a self-satisfied and slightly pompous aristocrat made to look ridiculous.
Our Scandalous Senate is a lively recounting of the famous troubles by a former two-term MP. Boyer is a delightful writer who dissects the problem plainly: the Senate suffers from a near-absence of leadership. Speaker Noël Kinsella warrants only cursory mention in Boyer’s account, and only then to be mocked for his ineffectual news conferences.
“The absence of administration was camouflaged by hallowed pretense of the Senate’s ‘honour system’”, Boyer writes. “The mythical ‘system’ – it was actually an absence of a system – continued to be the Senate’s operating cultural norm, even after the 1960s when the rules were changed so that senators could no longer hang around past age seventy-five, simply because it was embedded in the very fabric of the place”.
To win appointment to the Senate, he writes, is to join a kind of priesthood and face “the intimidating power and dumb inertia that had lumbered along for centuries.”
Our Scandalous Senate correctly notes the misconduct of senators has moved talk of abolition from the lunatic fringe to mainstream discourse of Canadian politics. Boyer also neatly dispenses with the mythology of Senate reform – the long, tiresome campaign by reformers who convinced themselves the Upper House was somehow malformed by patronage, and that highly technical changes in the rules would return the Senate to its pure Confederation roots.
In truth the Senate is exactly what it was supposed to be: the invention of political fixers who were trying to build a country. “By creating two houses for Parliament, it was possible to persuade Quebecers to agree to ‘representation by population’ in the Commons, where they knew they would be outnumbered, since they would be guaranteed the condition of equality in the Senate. Quebec and Ontario got twenty-four senators each,” Boyer notes. “‘On no other condition,’ said George Brown, one of the Fathers of Confederation, ‘could we have advanced a step.’”
These are the worst days for the Senate: Three members are suspended; one resigned under investigation; five others quit in apparent dismay.
These are also the best days for the Senate. Members killed a union-busting Bill C-377 that was almost certainly unconstitutional. They exposed a mean-spirited clause in an omnibus budget bill to give police warrant-free access to tax returns. Senators have convened landmark hearings on bitcoin; public broadcasting; credit fees; cross-border pricing; Official Languages communities; aquaculture and the collapse of the Atlantic lobster fishery.
“Senators are good people,” Boyer notes; “Many have rich contributions to make to public affairs, and try gamely through the muted channels of the Senate to do so.”
The contributors will be the salvation of the Senate in the end.
By Holly Doan
Our Scandalous Senate by J. Patrick Boyer; Dundurn Press; 392 pages; ISBN 9781-4597-23665; $24.99 
Changes to patent rules for plant breeders came amid pressure from Europe, suggests a confidential memo. Agriculture officials refused comment on the document released through Access to Information. The memo indicates Canada was pressed to tighten patent rules while negotiating free trade with the E.U.: “Who’s making policy?”
MPs are expressing concern over budget cuts for federal auditors, describing their work as “indispensable”. Funding for the Office of the Auditor General is to be cut by more than $10 million this year compared to 2012: “It’s not a good thing”.
A federal privacy bill has so many loopholes it will “diminish privacy rights”, says an industry group. The latest warnings came at Senate hearings as legislators expressed growing unease with the bill: “I didn’t think it was a big deal but now that I’m found out — “
Cabinet is proceeding with privatized inspections of weights and measures for the first time since 1877. Industry and merchants will be subject to private checks with “graduated enforcement” and maximum $1,000 fines: “We need independent scrutiny”.
More federal agencies are improperly withholding documents in breach of federal law, says the Information Commissioner. Culprits include VIA Rail, for concealing data it used to publish on its website, and the Privy Council Office for trying to bill one applicant $4,000 in employee benefits to retrieve files: “Fewer and fewer people trust”.
Canada Revenue Agency faces resistance from tax-filers who refuse to enroll in automatic bank deposit and withdrawal programs. Agency research confirmed a significant number of Canadians will not give the government access to their bank account. Ottawa proposes to phase out paper cheques in 2016: “I’m surprised by the intensity of the sentiment”.
A new private bill proposes to appoint a federal health commissioner empowered to examine complaints of federal programs managed by Health Canada. A similar ombudsman operates in the U.K. public health system: “Much work remains”.
MPs are reviewing another private bill, the second in a month, to supervise the conduct of Canadian mining companies abroad. The legislation would appoint an ombudsman to probe mining, oil and gas companies: “Even the government recognizes this is a problem”.
