A Perfectly Cromulent Politics Blog
When procrastinating from law school, I write about politics, tech, or whatever else I'm interested in. Feel free to tweet me up (@devinjohnston).
When procrastinating from law school, I write about politics, tech, or whatever else I'm interested in. Feel free to tweet me up (@devinjohnston).
Posted by Devin Johnston on January 5th, 2010
I will have a lot to say about the suspension of representative democracy shortly. Today, I want to talk about what happens when Parliament resumes. As I see it, the opposition parties have three options:
Posted by Devin Johnston on December 12th, 2009
On today's installment of "Then and Now", we look at the evolution of Stephen Harper's thinking in relation to government transparency and public accountability. I remember working on the 2005-2006 federal election campaign. When it ended, I was disappointed that the Conservatives won, but happy that the Liberals lost. At the time, the Liberals were embroiled in a massive corruption scandal that shook the public's confidence in government. The Harper Conservatives swept to power on a compelling platform of government transparency and accountability. At least, I thought, we will finally have a government that is honest and open with the public.
Posted by Devin Johnston on October 24th, 2009
The Liberal Party has put together a new site attacking the Conservative Party over allegations that the government is paying for partisan political advertising as part of the distribution of "Economic Action Plan" stimulus money. In particular, the Conservative MPs have come under fire for distributing over-sized novelty cheques with Conservative Party logos and colours to organizations receiving stimulus money. The attack site includes a "make your own cheque" web application, allowing visitors to create fake Conservative Party cheques. The cheque I made, pictured above, is a $1,000,000 cheque to Chuck Cadman, the late independent MP whom the Conservative Party allegedly offered a bribe to defeat the Martin government in 2005. These allegations have received very little attention of late; the Liberals mysteriously stopped talking about them after settling a lawsuit with the Conservative Party earlier this year.
Disclaimer: the attempted bribery allegations against Mr. Harper and the Conservatives were made by journalist Tom Zytaruk and others and have not been proved in a court of law. The RCMP announced there was not enough evidence to support criminal charges in much the same way that they declined to investigate allegations by the NDP that the Conservatives engaged in illegal interception of private communications in 2008.
Posted by Devin Johnston on May 27th, 2009
During Question Period yesterday in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister responded to a question by Liberal Finance Critic Hon. John McCallum in a way that has activated the Liberals' collective Pavlov response. Grit bloggers and strategists are having a field day based on the Prime Minister daring to utter the words "[...] until we need to raise taxes." The irony, of course, is that the Liberals are helping the Conservatives to spread an indictment of the Liberals. To understand this point, it's important to look at the full context of the quote.
Posted by Devin Johnston on May 26th, 2009
Yesterday, a leading Canadian politician reacted to North Korea's recent nuclear weapons tests by saying that "It is deeply troubling that a regime routinely unable to provide for its own people should invest so much of its effort and wealth into its weapons programs." This strikingly leftist idea - that the material welfare of people is more important to their security than militarization - did not come from NDP leader Jack Layton nor from Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. It came from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Under Harper, Canada's national defense budget has increased from $13,425,031,000 to $20,993,001,000, an increase of 56.4% (source). Eight percent of Canadians are unemployed (source) while 12.2% of working age people live in poverty (source).
