Grits obscured gun registry overspending
Botched computer contracts, AG’s report will find
OTTAWA—The huge costs incurred by the federal gun registry were obscured by the former Liberal government deep within mandatory reports on government spending, preventing Canadians from learning just how much money was being spent on the poorly managed program, the auditor general is expected to reveal next week.
…Conservative sources said the report will show the Liberals failed to clearly identify those costs in mandatory reports on government spending, instead slotting the increased price under nondescript headings such as “administration” that would not be easily detected.
…Already, Conservative MPs are suggesting parallels between the way the Liberal government tried to hide the huge costs of the gun registry and the way that the government covered up spending related to the $250-million sponsorship program.
Kyoto goals can’t be met
minister: Would have to park every car, plane, train
OTTAWA – Canada would have to ground every train, plane and car in the country if it seriously sought to meet its target under the Kyoto climate change accord, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose said yesterday.
…Ms. Ambrose repeated the Conservative government’s charge that Canada has no chance of meeting a commitment to cut emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2008-12, a target agreed upon by the previous Liberal government.
…The Bloc Quebecois and other opposition parties attempted to embarrass the government yesterday by introducing a motion calling on the Conservatives to commit to its Kyoto targets and unveil a greenhouse-gas reduction plan by Oct. 15, 2006, complete with bilateral agreements with provinces to help them implement their own plans.
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Related:
Environmentalists want Amrose to quit Kyoto post
Power to lower flag rests with PM: Speaker (Note the snideness in the story)
…The Conservative government is getting its way on the contentious flag issue after the Speaker of the House ruled that the power to lower the Peace Tower banner to half-mast rests with the prime minister—not parliamentarians.
…CTV’s Rosemary Thompson in Ottawa said what the ruling means at the end of the day is that “the prime minister wins.”
…”(Milliken is) saying that the idea that the House of Commons would reign supreme or perhaps the Speaker would reign supreme on the raising and lowering of the flag is not correct. He’s saying it’s up to the executive branch of the government to make the decision, so he’s saying Stephen Harper wins, and their decision to lower the flag on Nov. 11 to recognize the collective sacrifices that military personnel have made in many different conflicts and wars will remain.”
…“The previous Liberal government broke with this long-standing tradition that confidently brought Canada through its wartime history,” wrote Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor in The Globe and Mail last month, “and instead decided on an ad-hoc basis to lowering the flag of the Peace Tower.”
…“As Minister of National Defence, I can tell you that this adhockery unfairly distinguished some of those who died in Afghanistan from those who have died in current and previous operations.
Tories to sue Liberals over adscam: report
…MONTREAL —The Conservative government is preparing to take the Liberal Party of Canada to court to recoup funds diverted to the party in the sponsorship scandal, Montreal La Presse reported Thursday.
…The coming legal offensive is to recuperate “all the dirty money,’’ a source told the newspaper in a report out of Ottawa.
The right to judge judges
…For the love of God, can we please end this hysterical over-reaction to innocuous remarks by a Conservative MP about judges seeing themselves as gods?
…Given the rhetoric by the opposition, the Canadian Bar Association and the Globe and Mail, you’d think Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott had called for a holy war on the Supreme Court.
…He (Vellacott) should never have had to quit. His only mistake in expressing a view held by many Canadians was in wrongly claiming Chief Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin had acknowledged that judges considered themselves to be possessed of “godlike” powers in a recent speech.
