Anti-piracy legislation rated flawed and expensive is to pass the Senate this week with an appeal to cabinet to investigate whether it does any good. The Senate trade committee reported Bill C-8 for a final vote with reservations: “I’m not sure it’s good enough”.
Regulators foresee no repeat of last winter’s price spike in propane that had costs rise so sharply it triggered an anti-trust investigation. The National Energy Board said current production is so high, and prices so low, there is little chance of another price run-up that prompted allegations of industry gouging: ‘In the dead of winter there are public policy concerns’.
Parliament’s Budget Office says it faces inadequate funding and persistent concealment of federal financial records by “legally questionable” means. The Office in a blunt Annual Report said Canadians are denied full disclosure of government spending: ‘Others take this seriously’.
Cabinet proposes new regulations on aquatic pests, but with numerous exemptions. The Department of Fisheries said new rules will mainly federalize regulations already in place in Ontario since 2007, and Manitoba since 1987: “The U.S. does a lot more”.
The Supreme Court will decide if penalties under the Income Tax Act are so severe they constitute criminal sanctions. The case follows an appeal by an attorney hit with six-figure penalties over a charity scheme: ‘There was wanton disregard of the law’.
Mark Bourrie, an award-winning writer, sees Ottawa as a kind of ancient parable where three harried travellers stumble into each other at a crossroads: one is a Prime Minister, cynical and conniving; the other is a press gallery, weak and self-pitying; the third is an indifferent electorate. Each turns to the other and cries, “Aha! It’s you again.”
Kill The Messengers is funny and unnerving. Bourrie takes aim at all three with a sniper’s precision. The result is the gutsiest account of contemporary Canadian politics to come out of the parliamentary press gallery in a generation. “A new kind of controlling, arrogant and often vindictive government has emerged since the 1980s and is getting more emboldened and entrenched,” he writes; “What’s the point?”
An illustration: In the 2011 campaign a teenager from London, Ont., Awish Aslam, attended a Conservative rally to hear the Prime Minister speak. Aslam was studying political science and attended other leaders’ rallies, too. It was a bad mistake.
A Tory rat patrol ran background checks and discovered Aslam posted a souvenir photo of her and Michael Ignatieff on her Facebook page. The 19-year old was spotted by two RCMP officers, had her name tag torn up and was escorted from the hall, distraught and near tears. “Typical,” reported CBC-TV’s Terry Milewski; “Everyone had to preregister and show ID before being allowed in to hear Stephen Harper.”
The hall was filled with reporters, but no TV camera captured the scene; networks had paid for a single pool camera that remained focused tightly on Harper at the podium. Televising images of teenagers being hauled out of a rally by RCMP bouncers was verboten.
“When Harper was elected in 2006 the media was already very, very sick,” Bourrie notes. “Isolating and delegitimizing the media and its role in Canadian democracy would be easier than it could have been at any other time in recent Canadian history. The stars had aligned, the media was hobbled, and now, if possible, Harper and his people would push it to the fringe of Canadian politics. At least it wouldn’t be alone: scientists, parliamentary watchdogs, and pretty well anyone else who could get in the way would be out there, too.”
Bourrie is almost unique among Parliament Hill journalists. He is a gifted writer; he seeks no favour from officialdom; and he lets the chips fall where they may. “Instead of being watchdogs, most of the reporters on Parliament Hill are ciphers, unable to do much more than get reaction to issues that are, for the most part, manufactured by political parties for their own benefit,” he writes. Kill The Messenger names names. I won’t recount them here. Buy the book.
In this true-to-life parable Ottawa cultivates a mystique of competence – as if voters cared – though cabinet can’t appoint a Supreme Court judge without getting sued, and the finance department once doubled the tax rate on credit unions by mistake. Ministers needlessly antagonize judges, climatologists, Elections Canada, premiers, trade unions and members of their own caucus, and reporters entertain each other with amusing Tweets. “Most ‘news’ is not news at all,” Bourrie concludes.
To read Kill The Messenger is to experience a strange euphoria. As weak and distracted and cynical as we are, it’s invigorating to know somebody still publishes books like this, and somebody still writes them.
By Holly Doan
Kill The Messengers: Stephen Harper’s Assault On Your Right To Know, by Mark Bourrie; Harper Collins Canada; 340 pages; ISBN 9781-4434-31040; $32.99
The Bank of Canada in confidential documents estimates a return to 2007 interest rates would see one-tenth of households sink under debt. The release of the analysis comes amid estimates Canadians’ personal debt now totals a record $1.5 trillion: “This has the potential to put the Bank of Canada in a box”.
Fine print in an anti-counterfeiting bill will see manufacturers pay high costs to combat piracy and won’t halt black market goods that pass through Canada to U.S. buyers, the Senate trade committee has been told. Attorneys and executives cautioned the bill may achieve little: “What is this going to cost me in legal fees?”
A Conservative bill would see copper thieves punished under threat of $3,000 fines and up to 10 years’ imprisonment. The bill follows appeals from utility companies for tougher sanctions on theft of copper wiring: ‘These are more than petty crimes’.
Proposed fisheries regulations on aquaculture firms are too onerous and will likely kill start-ups in the industry, says a Conservative senator. Cabinet proposes to exempt companies from a Fisheries Act provision that bans the use of pesticides in fish habitat: “Who in their right mind would get into this industry?”
Environment Canada is being petitioned by more than fifty medical and ecology groups to restrict the use of triclosan, an anti-bacterial additive in soap, toothpaste and other consumer products. Petitioners said the chemical should be listed as toxic: ‘We are lagging behind’.
A bill to reduce federal red tape but exempt all tax measures appears pointless, says one of the country’s largest unions. The 170,000-member Public Service Alliance of Canada told a Commons committee the bill grants cabinet no new powers it doesn’t already have: ‘It makes us wonder’.
Cabinet is harmonizing import rules with the U.S. on low-cost wholesale shipments across the border. The Canada Border Services Agency raised limits on small shipments that qualify for speedier processing: “We’ve been pushing this issue for a long, long time”.
Cabinet has done little to hit promised targets on greenhouse gas emissions and is unlikely to meet commitments it made four years ago, says Canada’s environment commissioner. Julie Gelfand told a Senate panel that oil and gas regulations have been delayed so long the targets appear unachievable: “I can only give you the facts”.
The Supreme Court is hearing a key case of an attorney who claimed solicitor-client privilege in withholding financial records from the Canada Revenue Agency. Lawyer Duncan Thompson of Cardston, Alta. invoked privilege in refusing to surrender details of his accounts receivable to tax authorities: “This is an important case”.
