Inside Politics

Wrzesnewskyj vs. Elections Canada over 'clerical errors'

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:33:59 -0500

In a supplementary factum filed in court late Friday, Borys Wrzesnewskyj's lawyers blast Elections Canada for taking what they call a partisan position, rather than the position of neutrality they say Elections Canada originally promised, in Wrzesnewsky's application to overturn the election results in his riding.

On April 16, Elections Canada filed a document that said the constitutional right to vote trumps any "clerical errors" that may be made when voters register to vote, and have their identities "vouched for" in the absence of proper identification.

Wrezesnewskyj's lawyers say this directly contradicts the stance Elections Canada took a few years ago when it defended new voter identification requirements against a Charter challenge that argued that voters' rights were being thwarted by the demand to produce certain kinds of identification documents at the polling booth.

More, after the jump:

Video captures hours following soldier's suicide

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:44:49 -0500

In the Military Police Complaints Commission's cramped hearing room Thursday morning a hushed audience of lawyers and reporters watched a half-hour video.

The video is part of a military investigation into the suicide by hanging of Cpl. Stuart Langridge who killed himself on March 15th, 2008.

The images show Cpl. Langridge's body suspended from a bar in his room at Edmonton Garrison barracks. The camera zooms in on his face and neck, and then circles around the room cataloguing Langridge's possessions, down to the T-shirts in his drawer.

A family's fight for a soldier's honour

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:54:42 -0500

Sheila and Shaun Fynes' anguish spill out over the thousands of pages of evidence filed at the Military Police Complaints Commission. In conversations that go on for hours, where they don't so much answer questions as finish each other's sentences, they keep repeating, "You don't understand how angry we are."

Paying for our own surveillance

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:18:29 -0500

"We're talking Skype, we're talking web forums, it's a huge catchall, Facebook, Google, all of them. Facebook provides all the services that a TSP would: there's chat, the wall post... If you provide a communications service to the public in some sense, then you will be captured by this bill."

So who will pay? The public will pay.

Rule creates fear of flying for transgendered

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:47:17 -0500

Boarding a plane is more inconvenient than it used to be, but most of us do it without thinking: show your government issued photo ID and find your seat.

For transgendered people, it's a different story. Relatively new regulations adopted by Transport Canada state that no-one can board an airplane if "the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents."

Christin Milloy flew into the U.S. days ago. She says she actually got on a plane even though her ID says she's male. Although she appears as a young attractive woman, she still somewhat resembles her old photo: "Whether the regulation's being adhered to, or not, the regulation is wrong, and to say that (because) no-one is actually following it makes it OK is a bit of twisted logic."

Flying is out of the question for Zelda Marshall, who describes herself as "bi-gendered". (Zelda Marshall is the female name she uses; she doesn't want to reveal her male name or photo).

When travelling to Toronto for a conference, Marshall would rather be in her female identity.

And, as Zelda there is no way she resembles her photo ID. Zelda is biologically male, is known as a male at work, and is married to a woman.

"I don't have hair as a male. Having hair makes me different already, and make-up, absolutely!"

Zelda concedes that she could fly using her male identity.

NDP MP Randall Garrison suspects the new regulation was born out of "fear of men in burkas."

However, if his private member's bill passes, it would enshrine gender identity and gender expression in the Canadian Human Rights Act, and would likely force Transport Canada to change its gender regulation.

Zelda Marshall says flying is impossible in his female persona. (Erik Fauré photo)

A virtually similar bill to Garrison's was passed by the House of Commons last session, with 5 Conservative MPs, including two cabinet ministers (James Moore and Lawrence Cannon), among those voting for it. But that bill died on the Order Paper when the election was called.

In the meantime, Transport Canada doesn't think there's much of a problem.

According to a spokesperson: "Any passenger whose physical appearance does not correspond to their identification can continue to board an airplane by supplying a letter from a heath care professional explaining the discrepancy. We have no records of any individual being denied boarding in Canada because they are transgender or transsexual."

But Zelda Marshall doesn't think a medical certificate would be issued in her case, since she has "no desire to go under the knife."

Christin Milloy flat out refuses to provide proof of surgical transition. "My genitalia is none of the government's business."

Other countries might show the way. Australians can mark their passports with an M, an F, or an X, for "intersexual" -- people who are not entirely male or female. And in the U.S., transgendered people can change the gender on their passports without having to prove that they've had a sex-change operation.

Randall Garrison, who used to teach before he entered politics, wonders why it matters here.

"Some of my students were quite androgynous. It took me a while as an instructor to realize that it doesn't matter, why do I have to know what gender they are?"

UPDATED: Please see correction notice after the jump.

The push for Open Government - up to a point

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:46:07 -0500

Ottawa's six-week consultation period (which included Christmas and New Year's) on "open government" ends on Monday. A good question is: what came out of this call for feedback about how to make government more "accessible to Canadians"?

Interested parties were invited to make submissions to the open government website. But the bonus, and by far the most attention-getting element, was a Twitter town hall in December hosted by the President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement. While some participants marvelled about how many were joining in, one tweet seemed to sum up the chat: "Great effort w/ #opengovchat but limit of 140 characters and ideological bullying limiting the debates potential."

Vincent Gogolek of FIPA, the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, uses the phrase "shiny gee-gaws" to describe an event like this. "Everyone thinks it's so cool that the minister tweets, and talks about 'crowdsourcing' and other techie buzz, but, it's like the government's saying: Look at the shiny new gee-gaw that we have here, and ignore the smell coming from the access to information system."

As far as access to information goes, it's mostly a non-starter on the open government website, other than the fact that summaries of completed ATI requests are now posted there.

And the government hasn't implemented most of the reforms it promised for Canada's 30-year-old outdated access to information law, which included giving the Information Commissioner more powers and enshrining an override that public interest be put before before government secrecy.

During the Twitter town hall, Vincent Gogolek tweeted a suggestion to the effect that minister's offices and staff should be under the ATI act. "Oddly enough they were quiet on that. Now Tony Clement, he's a busy guy, he can't respond to everyone."

Nothing is more crucial to open government than a country's commitment to access to information. Internationally, access to information is beginning to be recognized as a human right, as a part of freedom of expression.

But in Canada, says John Hinds of the Canadian Newspaper Association, the culture seems to be: "We have to jump through hoops to get information, rather than endorse the idea that information should be available and the law should be a last resort."

There's a plethora of other voices that have found fault with Canada's access to information legislation.

In September the Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault appeared before the parliamentary committee dealing with access to say that over the past 10 years there's been a steady decline in the timeliness and disclosure of information by federal institutions. She was asked by an opposition member whether the minister's office and staff exemption (for ATI requests) creates a "black hole" for documents. "Yes, I think that is a major risk," Legault said.

In its annual audit of Canada's freedom of information system, the Canadian Newspaper Association gave the federal government a grade of D for timeliness of disclosure, and a C for completeness of disclosure. Compared to some provinces, this was "one of the worst performances" according to the report.

What does this say about the push for open government announced by Stockwell Day a year ago? Gogolek says, "It's going to be in terms of platforms, in data sets, things it can do very easily."

Already, more than a quarter-million data sets have been posted online, the stuff of trivia games and information lovers everywhere. There is, for instance, a registry of all Canadian civil aircraft, as well as a history of federal ridings since Confederation. This kind of document dump, according to Gogolek, is useful for data-miners or app developers.

And no-one's saying this release, if not deluge, of information is a bad thing.

Tony Mendel of the Centre for Law and Democracy says the push for open government is, "what I would call the soft side. So they're pushing government to put more stuff online proactively, to make it available in user friendly formats.

"That's all great and it has a lot of economic and social value. The hard side of it is the request side of access to information. There, we have not seen any interest from the government in amending the access to information line."

A report on the findings of the public consultation will be published on the open government website in March.

Canada gets moving on Open Government

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:10:15 -0500

It was no surprise that when the United States invited Canada to join an Obama-launched initiative called the Open Government Project, Canada promptly accepted.

That was about two years ago. Now, with members meeting in Brazil this week, Canada has announced new steps to meet its commitments under the OGP.

UPDATED: Two Canadian officials attended the first OGP meeting in Brazil, which concluded Thursday.

More after the jump...

Moore shifts money from bureaucracy to the arts

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:22:26 -0500

James Moore, the Minister of Heritage, told the Canadian Heritage committee Thursday that the arts are good for the economy and pointed out that Canada is the only G8 country that actually increased funding for arts and culture during the recession.

Is Movember a partisan issue?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:00:58 -0500

Members of Parliament who participate in Movember have split up into partisan teams, and at the top of the fundraising tally is the NDP. The NDP team (New-De-MO-crats) has raised, so far, more than $26,000, shooting it heads and shoulders above the Liberals at $13,000 and the Conservatives at $8,000.

More after the jump...

Debates about to change NDP leadership race

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:16:25 -0500

The NDP Leadership is still in the "smaller event" stage.

As one campaign volunteer put it, "It's not a campaign that's being fought in the media right now -- it's playing out in the church basements and in the pubs."

That's about to change.

Read more after the jump....

The NDP can live with new leadership funding rules

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:02:02 -0500

Wednesday the government introduced new and fairly predictable rules for leadership candidates seeking loans, changes that that Marc Mayrand of Elections Canada had recommended.

Individual loans will be capped at $1,100, only financial institutions can make larger loans and unions and corporations will be banned from making loans at all.

If anyone thinks the government introduced the new restrictions to mess up the NDP right in the middle of their leadership campaign, as some say the government "stuck it to the Liberals" during their 2006 leadership campaign, they can calm down. The new rules won't come into effect until six months after royal assent, well after the NDP leadership race is over.

Read more, after the jump...

The Year of the Woman (in provincial politics, anyway)

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:56:43 -0500

Kathy Dunderdale is the first elected female provincial premier in Canada since 1993 -- something to celebrate for sure, but you can't help wondering: How did 18 years go by, and the millenium turn over, and feminism enter its 6th decade and, somehow, women were shut out of premiers' jobs all that time?

Read what some leading political women have to say, including the first women elected premier in Canada.

NDP hopefuls must mind leadership money pit

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:32:44 -0500

Here's one thing for the growing list of NDP leadership candidates (as well as BQ and putative Liberal candidates) to keep in mind: Know the rules and don't borrow too much.

For the Liberals especially, the ghosts of leadership past are around to remind everyone about the perils of ending up losing, loaded down with a ton of debt. Gerard Kennedy, a former Liberal leadership candidate, says he's tired of the notion of "woeful little Liberals."

He's talking about the deadbeats, as some would call them, from the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign. Five years later, many still have not paid off their loans, and face the public embarrassment of asking for yet another extension on Dec. 31, the deadline for cancelling the debt. (Kennedy says his debt will be paid off by then).

Almost all are in the bizarre situation of having to raise money to pay themselves back, with interest. Kennedy's point is it's not particularly fair when the rules change, and then change again. . . .

The NDP without Jack

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:02:49 -0500

As the NDP moves on -- with their caucus meeting in Quebec City and the beginning of a leadership race -- it's still not clear to them or anyone else what, exactly, Jack Layton represented to Canadians, and why his death resulted in an outpouring in Canada so emotional that it may have exceeded the reaction to Pierre Trudeau's passing.

Brian Topp, the first leadership entrant, reminded everyone, "No-one can claim Jack's mantle." To say the least.

First, there was Layton's extraordinary election achievement, how he vanquished the separatist party, putting paid to the experts who said that since the Bloc could always be counted on to win 50 or so seats in Quebec, the odds were slim that any party could ever get a majority. That was the political landscape, then. Layton changed it, surprising perhaps even himself.

Some thoughts on how he did it, and what it means for the NDP now that he's gone, after the jump.

Pension deficits -- real, or not?

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:05:08 -0500

It's been said that in the recent labour disputes at Air Canada and Canada Post, one of the big issues was pensions.

In Air Canada's case, yes, somewhat. In Canada Post's, not so much.

Let's concede that for those of the fiscally conservative persuasion, defined benefit pensions are luxuries from a bygone age, like jobs for life, a decent house on a working-class income, and a new car every two years.

(Defined benefit plans, as the name suggests, give workers a defined income in retirement, based on a formula that takes salary levels and employment duration into account. Defined contribution plans, on the other hand, only set rules for the payments into the plan, so there's greater risk to the retired worker if the pension fund does not perform well.)

Air Canada and Canada Post have said they just can't afford to shore up the deficits their pension plans have sprung. So they've pushed for an inferior plan for new employees, much to their unions' dismay. (Canada Post gave in on that one: all new hires will continue to have defined benefit plans).

But, if you think Air Canada and Canada Post have pension problems particular only to them, think again. The fact is, most defined benefit plans are in a solvency crisis. The Financial Services Commission of Ontario reports that 84% of the defined benefit pension plans it regulates are "less than fully funded on solvency basis." In other word, almost all of them. (Disclosure: The CBC's pension plan is also in solvency deficit).

But understand that these are "solvency" deficits, meaning the plans would come up short if, and only if, the companies were suddenly to go bankrupt, be abolished, or be swallowed up in an earthquake or a tornado, so that every single eligible employee's benefits had to be paid out at once.

Pension plans often go into solvency deficit during a long period of low interest rates. Besides saying new employees should take a haircut, companies have been begging regulators for leniency in paying off these deficits, wanting to wait for the good times (and higher interest rates) to roll again.

Not such a good idea, says Ottawa pension consultant Bob Baldwin, adding that retirees at GM and Nortel would agree. If Nortel had not had a solvency deficit, he points out, its pensioners wouldn't be in trouble today.

So here's an idea about how unions can help with those solvency deficits: how about making a concession on minimum retirement age?

Work how short, retirement how long

Defined benefit plans that pay out until death are in trouble because life expectancy keeps relentlessly rising. The UK government, for instance, has calculated 11 million Brits, or 1 in 4 people who are now 16, will live to be 100.

Keith Ambachsheer of the Rotman School of Business relates that when the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, introduced the world's first state pension system in the 1880s, no one could collect until age 70. The life expectancy at the time was 55.

Bob Baldwin says that a lot of people who retire at 55 are often going back to work, turning their pension into a transition plan. And many are going back to their own employer. One civil servant says that at her retirement party, her boss's first question was, "When are you coming back?"

Baldwin says, "Recently our tax rules wouldn't allow you to be a contributing member and a beneficiary of a pension at the same time." But the government has amended those rules so that employees 55 and over who have reached full pensionable status can simultaneously work on salary and collect a part of their pension.

The government's thinking: "As the Canadian workforce ages, it will become more important for older, more experienced workers to keep a foot in the labour market."

There's lots of good reasons -- the big one: cat food in old age -- for unions to continue to fight to keep defined benefit pensions. But going to the barricades for the right of new 20-something employees to retire at 55, instead of 60? Some of these 20 year-olds might live to ring in the next century, meaning for them, age 60 will practically be the bloom of youth.