Inside Politics

Orders of the Day - Wednesday, December 2, 2009

by Kady O'Malley Posted: December 2, 2009 7:51 AM Last Updated: December 2, 2009 10:13 AM
Surprise! It's report card day for Canada's Economic Action! Plan -- and it's all happening in Beijing! Or, more accurately, on the Airbus that ferried the prime minister to China, and on which the accompanying media suddenly found themselves presented with embargoed copies of the fourth and final budget update while soaring over Siberia, as the Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson describes the backdrop to this "most unconventional rollout."  

Not only did the move come as a shock to reporters on the plane, few of whom were likely expecting to sending back copy on stimulus spending while covering the PM's first visit to China, he even managed to "scoop his own finance minister," as Colleague Milewski reports. After all, Flaherty was, at last check, still slated to release the update later this morning in Winnipeg. (Yes, Winnipeg. What -- you thought he might actually do it in the House of Commons? That's so 2006.) 

Unlike the prime minister, he won't have the advantage of doing so in front of a truly captive audience of assembled media -- and unlike those reporters on the plane, the rest of us won't be locked up before he hits the stage, and will actually be able to run the numbers past someone other than the journalist in the next seat. 

The Action! Plan update may overshadow this afternoon's meeting of the Afghanistan committee, during which members are not only scheduled to hear from three officials who were on the ground in Kandahar at the time, but are also expecting the document dump to end all document dumps, as the government finally hands over the material that they've been demanding since Richard Colvin's appearance last month. 

The big question now, of course, is whether it will be as heavily redacted as the files submitted to the Military Police Complaints Commission and/or those obtained by the Globe and Mail. If that's the case, expect an outburst from opposition members, who will be only too happy to remind the government that the Canada Evidence Act that the defence minister and others are so fond of citing does not, in fact, apply to parliamentary proceedings -- not according to the House Law Clerk, that is. 

The Globe report on the memos may also motivate the committee to recall David Mulroney to explain just exactly why Canada's then-ambassador, Arif Lalani, allegedly ordered Colvin to delete certain sections of his reports, namely those that expressed the concern that "Ottawa's delays in notifying the Red Cross of prisoner transfers to Afghan authorities left these detainees vulnerable to abuse." 

Also on the committee front, the annual pre-Christmas ministerial supplementary estimate tour is in full swing, with appearances by Transport Minister John Baird, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, and even Diane Ablonczy, Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism Except For The Marquee Event Program Fund.
 


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