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It seems that a new Facebook group created by Harpercon blogger, Derek Fildebrandt no less, is once again getting Canadians together from all political stripes, it would seem, for now, anyway. We all want to see the MPs expenses made public and as well they should be made public. After hearing about how Porky Puffy Duffy spent more of taxpayers’ dollars in less than 3 months than most earn inside a year, working at real jobs, I for one want to know how they’re spending the public purse. It’s a given that there would be many, oh so many frivolities, I think many Canadians are prepared for this. Paul Szabo, the Liberal Fetus fetishist comes out with the feeble excuse that there are too many law suits against MPs , thus the public should not be allowed to see them.
“If they were opened to the auditor general and open to the public, all of a sudden people would jump to conclusions without having all the facts,” Szabo said.
“If you identify the member, or the law firm or all this other stuff, all of a sudden people could say … what’s wrong with this member, this member is getting sued all the time,” he said.
Oh boy! Between his fetus festivities and now protecting MPs from Inquiring minds wanting to know about law suits, I think it’s high time for the Liberals to cut him loose. Too bad they can not afford to lose seats at this time. Got a newsflash for ya Paul, we kinda figured there were lawsuits and to us, many MPs reputations are already tarnished, including your’s for showing up at that bloody fetus festival last Thursday.
So, once again, Facebook is bringing Canadians from the left, center, right and far right all together in a common goal; to somehow get MPs to make their expenses public. Facebook users, click here to join. Great, I hope to see at least as many, if not, more than Christopher White’s old Canadians Against Parliament group. Needless to say, some action must be planned and agreed upon. Perhaps like CAPP, a cross country effort. If I can offer one piece of advice from an error to be learned from the CAPP rallies last January, let’s not brand this effort as non-partisan; the media and pundits see right through that. Let’s call it a by partisan or multi-partisan effort.
Someone by the name of Ed Gallois made this interesting comment on the group’s wall. I hope that’s not the only way to get MPs to loosen up on this.
In Britain, all of last year’s news was dominated by UK politicians claiming for ridiculous expenses – moats, porn, second homes within 10 miles of their constituency home, you name it, they did it – all at the British taxpayers’ expense. Our politicians at every step blocked the details coming out. It was only because… the Daily Telegraph surreptiously bought the database of MPs’ expenses that any of it ever came to light. I would suggest someone – or some body – in Canada tries to do the same because the MPs will never release the info. They are not going to commit political suicide willingly, after all. Cheers.
The problem with that is what is the likelihood someone or some company with enough civic mindedness and cash would make such a purchase?
How long will we remain all together on this. Given that Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc are not part of this secretive bunch, he will surely add this to the Quebec Sovereignty arsenal, saying that a Sovereign Quebec’s government will be open and transparent or something along those lines.
I also worry about further voter apathy on this one as it could further Steve’s agenda for his totalitarian regime as we would let him get away with it from inaction or any other government with goals just as insidious.
I’m curious as to how the corporate media which is mostly right slanted handles this issue as time goes along. I’m curious as to how this will affect polls for all three parties since they’re equally guilty of this very same crime.
SS, for some reason I thought those lawsuits were all about labour issues; I don’t know where I got that idea. What are your thoughts on what the lawsuits r about? Indeed Szabo should cross the floor or be cut loose, he makes a mockery of women’s rights.
ck Reply:
May 16th, 2010 at 12:31 PM
Well, since the books aren’t open, we don’t really have an idea as to how many lawsuits, who sued whom and about what? That article in Sun Media has that Paul Szabo implying that quite a few of them are labor related, but every company and/or organization that hires multiple employees be it the public sector/private sector: unionized/non-union; I think it’s a safe assumption that all have at the very least at one time or another have had complaints lodged against them by disgruntled employees who felt they didn’t get a fair shake. In other words, what Paul Szabo suggests is a non-starter.
I think we want to know about things like marble super robotic toilets in their office restrooms (don’t laugh, Pauline Marois when she was finance minister did just that) or moats and castles and even porn as the Daily Telegraph may suggest in Britain.
WE hear things of cuts to health care; the Americanization of our health care; the scrapping of all those programs who did good work in favour of bible translators and youth conversions to Christian Evangelism, we hear of the usual 1000$ a plate rubber chicken and frozen pea dinners for some insipid candidate and/or obscure charity that only the rich or the political elite would know about anyway.
And yes, perhaps some lawsuits if they’re of the sexual harrassment type to satisfy our appetite for smut.
Three Harpercons get together and start a facebook group aimed at making MP’s expenses public. Real conservative of them. It’s no CAPP or anything, but worth a look.
I will not be joining for the simple fact that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is a pillar of the group. CTF opposes everything based on their reductionist economic model. The gun registry: bad on economic grounds. Health care: even worse. Their policy prescriptions have less to do with cost effectiveness than it does with providing efficient alternatives.
When a group so badly confuses “the economy” with “commerce” on environmental and social issues, I cannot get behind their rallies – even when they genuinely serve the public’s interest.
Lord only knows that the same people calling for an independent audit will go to bat for their republican overlords claiming that “the Liberals did it first/worse” when the smoke clears.
ck Reply:
May 17th, 2010 at 2:43 PM
Thanks Dylan. If truth be told, I never thought of it that way, and perhaps more should be thinking about the founders of this group and their motivations.
I am clearly a minority about this, because I do not like the idea of the AG performing a value for money spent audit on MPs. I said so a couple of days ago at Scott Tribe’s place and it is because I do not like the idea of an Officer of Parliament deciding what is and what is not good value where an MP’s decisions to spend money doing their job is concerned. I am fine with auditing to make sure that money is not misspent inappropriately, that MPs are not diverting money for official use to personal spending for example, and I was under the impression that was the type of auditing the outside auditor the Board uses did. Deciding what is good value though is not the same thing though and that is where my unease sits.
For me the problem is that under our system of government MPs are the only ones able to decide how best to perform their official functions within very broad guidelines, that is a part of the same principles of Parliamentary supremacy we saw upheld by the Speaker on the documents issue a few weeks back. I get nervous when making changes to fundamental aspects of how our governing system works in a piecemeal manner, and things meant with the best of intentions can still have profound negative ripple effects and consequences down the road.
Consider for a moment having an AG who uses their power of value for money audit to advance a partisan agenda by declaring certain MP activities to be a bad value, how easily could an MP defend against that? We have to remember that we in our system send MPs to be our representatives to and for governing ourselves and that to mess around with the fundamental underpinnings of this could end up with some serious consequences not immediately obvious (in part because so many people think it is so good an idea they are not considering that it might have negative aspects to it, which I must say makes me nervous, there is a reason we have a cliche about the road to hell being paved with good intentions after all) to the health of our system.
I am not saying (yet) that I am utterly opposed to the notion, I am saying there is a valid argument against this move, and that it needs more serious consideration before too many people blindly jump on the short term thinking train about this. One of my personal philosophies is that when something seems to be utterly obvious that everyone agrees with it then it is even more important than usual to take a second look at it because those are the decisions that can really come back to haunt you down the road, especially where fundamental powers of government are concerned.
I know politically this is not a sexy argument, I know it is a bit of a contrarian perspective as well, but one of my core principles regarding politics is good government and process being as important as policy. Indeed most of my greatest concerns about Harper always rested in the process side more than the ideological policy side (not that I was too happy about that either, just that as bad as that was the process side was even worse IMHO). This is one of those times where I think the stampede to what on the surface seems like an obvious good thing politically may be on sober second thought and consideration more problematic and fraught with serious complication and consequences than is being considered. Hence why I am speaking up about it.