WTF TORY

From The Globe and Mail:

Stephen Harper wasted no time in bringing back three defeated candidates, appointing former Quebec cabinet minister Josée Verner to the Senate and reappointing Larry Smith and Fabian Manning.

Minutes after he finished answering questions from reporters about his cabinet shuffle, the Prime Minister’s Office sent out a release announcing the three appointments. So Mr. Harper did not have to address the issue in public.

From The Globe and Mail:

A bill to fix a heavily flawed five-year-old plan to sell cheap Canadian medicines to impoverished countries is set to die because the New Democrat who sponsored it has resigned and the Conservatives are unlikely to allow another MP to take it over – a courtesy that was once extended to Stephen Harper.

The House of Commons must give unanimous consent for a bill that has been abandoned by one member to be sponsored by another. In this case, when Judy Wasylycia-Leis quit her job as a federal MP to run for municipal politics in Winnipeg, her New Democrat colleague Brian Masse was willing to take over Bill C-393, which aimed to reform the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime.

There is precedent for such a handover. In 1997, when Mr. Harper quit his seat in the back benches of the Reform Party caucus, the House unanimously agreed to let Preston Manning take over his bill to establish the terms and conditions that must apply to a referendum relating to the separation of Quebec from Canada.

But Richard Elliott, the executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said Tuesday he has been told there will be no such goodwill extended with regard to Ms. Wasylycia-Leis’s bill.

From the Toronto Star:

Rahim Jaffer finally showed up to testify a second time before the parliamentary committee probing allegations he was illegally lobbying government officials and peddling his political influence.

But despite his expressed desire to set the record straight he mixed up his facts under intense grilling from MPs about apparent inconsistencies in his earlier testimony.

Also: Jaffer blasts PM, Tories - CBC

From the Globe & Mail:

The Harper government openly defied the House of Commons on Tuesday as Transport Minister John Baird crashed a parliamentary committee and took over for the previously scheduled witness.

Mr. Baird said he was appearing at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and went on to act as an uninvited stand-in for Mr. Harper’s main spokesman, Dimitri Soudas. The meeting dissolved into partisan wrangling between Conservative and opposition MPs. Mr. Baird left after saying little, except to defend the government’s new ban on appearances by ministerial aides before parliamentary committees.

“The days where you can call in 25-year-olds before this committee, to beat up staff who can’t defend themselves, are over,” Mr. Baird told the ethics committee.

Hey John Baird, fuck you. Maybe if you didn’t give every fucking committee in parliament a reason to investigate you guys every few months or I dunno, adhered to protocol that you’re so fond of flaunting every time it’s convenient and sidestepping so readily when it’s not we wouldn’t have to, in Mr. Baird’s words, “call in 25-year-olds before this committee, to beat up staff who can’t defend themselves.” Mr. Soudas is 30. He is a 30 year old man being asked to comment on what he saw at work. At a job paid for by the public. I can understand perhaps he will come under much undeserved scrutiny. But perhaps this can be remedied with a media blackout. Or here’s a novel concept, why don’t you guys just stop doing sketchy shit?

While Mr. Baird said ministers will show up when their aides are invited, he did not guarantee that ministers will always respond positively to committee invitations.

“Depending on the issue, I suppose,” he told reporters.

Also see: Impolitical: The throttling continues

The cuts have come to light in the wake of Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth’s blunt advice to foreign-aid groups earlier this week.

She warned groups they’ll face a backlash if they don’t “shut the …. [fuck] up” on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to include abortion in his G8 maternal health initiative.

The federal government spent $37-million on advertising and other communications related to the H1N1 flu pandemic, more than it devoted to antiviral drugs or managing the outbreak combined, according to newly divulged cost figures.

A prominent critic of government response to H1N1 said much of that ad blitz came after the epidemic had peaked, urging Canadians to get flu shots at a time when they were virtually pointless.

National Post