A Few Quick Notes 593

-Despite the fact that we've had nice weather during the day recently, our nights and mornings have definitely been getting cooler.  I'm constantly surprised in the afternoon that I need to take the sweater off that I'd been wearing all morning.

-This weekend, thanks to a reminder from my mother, I purchased some millet.  Since we fed this stuff to our pet budgie in the early 1990s I've been curious about the stuff.  Maybe I'll manage to get around to cooking some of it tonight.  I'm imagining that it will be comparable to quinoa, but I guess I'll have to wait to find out.

-I realize that I'm likely of a dying breed, but I really love waking up to a freshly delivered newspaper.  While I also check online news sources, there's nothing quite like being able to flip through the newspaper every morning.

-Today, while running an unrelated errand I happened to walk by the parliament buildings and was able to see the remnants of some protest activities.  I guess these protests were timed to coincide with the first day of the House's fall sitting.  I also witnessed a corresponding increase in the number of police officers.

-While out on my aforementioned errand I had the pleasure of walking along Sparks Street.  Despite the fact that the pedestrian-only nature of Sparks Street is one of the things I like most about it, I keep getting the sense that it's perceived as some kind of failure.  Though I don't necessarily head there all that frequently, it always seems like a resounding success to me.

-I suspect that the cooler evening and nighttime temperatures are slowing down the growth rates of our plants.  Presumably in the relatively near future I'll have to start wrapping everything up for the season. It will be strange to see our bare balcony after so many months of relatively rampant plant growth.

-On a related note, I think I spotted someone in an adjoining backyard engaging in some anti-squirrel sling-shotting.  I would guess that this means that I'm not the only one frustrated by their presence.

The vote-a-thon really is just voting

So last night I broke down and went to the House of Commons vote-a-thon.

I arrived at about 11:00 PM, just in time to catch the reading of the last 200 motions.

Much to my surprise, at about midnight Harper and the rest of the front benches showed up.

Voice voting started shortly afterwards.

They then rang the bells for 30 minutes before starting the roll call votes.

From then on it was just roll call vote after roll call vote.

I called it a night just before two and about 7 votes.

It's still ongoing, if you're interested or if you don't believe me that they really are doing about 24 hours of straight roll call votes.  Oh, and it's about as boring/absolutely fascinating as you would expect it to be (kind of reminds me of watching the GG's door in December 2008, or OJ's white Bronco in the nineties).

The all-night vote-a-thon

So in just a little while the Canadian House of Commons is set to begin would could be close to 24 hours of straight voting (they'll be voting on hundreds of proposed amendments to the recently introduced budget).  Because the Conservatives have a majority government the outcome isn't really in question, though I guess when you're trying to coordinate such large number of people for such a long period of time unexpected things may crop up.

Anyway,  for a while I'd been thinking about heading over to check out a little of this vote-a-thon, despite the fact that it will probably be just about the most boring thing in the world.

Then I went out for a walk.

Originally I was thinking I might just pick out a coffee.  Turns out that I ended up going for a slightly longer walk and ended up walking past Parliament.

By the time I made it to Parliament I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I probably would just give the whole vote-a-thon thing a skip and maybe just watch the streaming version, if anything.

Of course now that I'm back home and I get the sense that the voting is just about to get underway I'm a little more interested in the idea of heading over to watch the late night parliamentary antics.

Of course another problem is that if I head out to the House of Commons I'll lose my online coverage of the 'filibuster' currently ongoing in the Newfoundland House of Assembly (which is currently in recess while they resolve a point of order relating to comments about whether or not someone called someone racist and whether or not the comments are unparliamentary).

Anyway,  what a night.  I have more strange opposition-induced middle of the night legislating than I ever thought I'd have a chance to witness.

Fun(ish) fact

A few days ago I was thinking that over the past 20 years in the Canadian House of Commons there have been quite a number of parties that have been the Official Opposition.  Turns out there have been six.  In chronological order, the parties were: the Bloc Quebecois, Reform, the Canadian Alliance, the Conservative Party of Canada, the Liberals, and the NDP.

If my calculations are correct, the only party to have had official party status at some point during this 20 year window but not to have been the Official Opposition was the PC party.

Wasn't I right about this being a fun fact?

Did anyone else know about this?

I am currently in the midst of reading a Canadian Parliamentary Review article by former Speaker Peter Milliken.  Though just a few paragraphs into the article I was a little taken aback to find out that while in office Milliken routinely organized dinners for MPs.  According to Milliken

As Speaker of the House of Commons, I made use of a variety of tools, not all of which are found in the Chamber, to allow me opportunities to reinforce the Members’ perception that I was in office as Speaker to serve all regardless of party affiliation. For example, I instituted an ongoing series of dinners to which, in due course, every Member of the House was invited. Members from each of the parties represented in the House were invited to each dinner, always in different groupings. The effect of this was to encourage informal social contact between Members from the different parties with a view to fostering an atmosphere of greater collegiality and, by extension, greater civility in the House.

 Assuming these dinners had the effect Milliken suggests they did and given the relatively raucous nature of recent parliamentary sessions, I wonder how the last parliament would have behaved had these dinners not been held?

More poking about on the internet

Not surprisingly, my poking about on the internet didn't end with my examination of The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws's membership list.

I soon found myself looking at Standing Orders/House rules for various legislatures in Canada. While looking at the standing orders for Newfoundland and Labrador and the House Rules for Nova Scotia I was surprised by the fact that neither had been amended in the past few years. The last time the Newfoundland Standing Orders were amended was 2005. The last time that Nova Scotia's House Rules were amended was 1998. Between these two amendment dates and now both of these legislatures have had significant spending scandals that seem to have had no impact on procedure.

This means that in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia the newly constituted Management Commissions that came about because of these scandals are not mentioned. Though these Management Commissions aren't technically matters of procedure, that they aren't mentioned at all seems a little strange to me.

It should also be noted that neither of these two sets of rules seem to deal with matters relating to matters of ethics or conflict of interest.

I think these last two points become a little more significant when these provincial rules are contrasted with the House of Commons' Standing Orders. Both the Board of Internal Economy (the federal analog to provincial Management Commissions) and the Conflict of Interest Code are included in the Standing Orders. Though I guess I will leave it to you to make of this what you will.

Even more conflicting information about Ms. Brosseau

A few days ago I posted about the apparent disconnect between the newly elected Ms. Brosseau's reported language abilities and parliamentary language preference.

One might think that Ms. Brosseau has already dealt with enough media coverage, but it seems that she might be in for a fair bit more because reports are now coming out that the post-secondary experience reported on Ms. Brosseau's NDP profile page did not actually occur as claimed. It seems that the school in question has indicated that Ms. Brosseau did not complete the program that it has been claimed she completed. Drama.

Now it seems that the NDP profile been modified to reflect the claim of the school.

Anyway, while I can't say that I am glad to hear about this development I am quite pleased that CBC's reporting on the topic has at least resulted in a second picture of Ms. Brosseau. The overwhelming presence of the first photo was starting to become a little disconcerting. Was there only one picture of this woman? That being said, the new photo being used by the CBC has the same strange background. What's up with that?

Anyway, I am curious to see how much longer this story will manage to attract coverage. Mustn't there be more important stories for the parliamentary press corps to be following?

Conflicting information about Ms. Brosseau

Starting a few days before the final votes were cast in the recent Canadian election and now continuing past the election has been a media fascination for the then NDP candidate for Berthier--Maskinongé, Ruth Ellen Brosseau. At first it was noted that Ms. Brosseau had spent some portion of the campaign period on vacation in Las Vegas. More recently it has been reported that Ms. Brosseau did not even go to the riding to campaign during the election period.

Maybe the most contentious revelation, at least as far many Francophone residents Ms. Brosseau's district are concerned, is that Ms. Brosseau's French is so rusty and that she is currently being given a crash course in French through the aegis of the NDP and Thomas Mulcair (a prominent Quebec NDP MP).

Given the prominence of this revelation about Ms. Brosseau's level of competence in French I was a little surprised to see that on her parliamentary profile page her "language preference" is French - a language which even her party and father suggest she can't speak particularly well.

Since the disconnect between her parliamentary profile and publicly available information is quite prominent I included a screen shot in case the profile is updated to reflect her language abilities (we wouldn't want to lose this piece of information in the shuffle).

Oh, and I also love that there seems to be only one publicly available picture of this woman, and that it is being used by just about everybody. I wonder if she knew that her candidate profile photo would gain such attention and be so frequently used if she would have used the photo that she used?

Fun fact

Who is the only 'country gentleman' currently sitting in the Canadian House of Commons?

According to the Canadian Parliament's website, it would be Peter Stoffer, the NDP member for Sackville–Eastern Shore.

On related note, while checking out Stoffer's parliamentary profile I noticed that one can now view a record of the way in which MPs voted in those votes on which division was called. While I was hoping I could get an RSS subscription to these votes I haven't figured out how to do this quite yet.

MPs?

Just a few moments ago I happened to see the descriptors following the names of various national politicians.

After the names of those individuals who were members of the House of Commons the letters 'MP' appeared. After the Senator's name it said 'Senator.'

In many ways this seems somewhat strange because both Senators and members of the House of Commons are members of Parliament. How is it that common usage has developed in such a way that only members of the House of Commons are referred to in this way?

Presumably this has something to do with the corresponding usage practices that have developed in the UK, though it might be interesting to know if this has always been the case. I wonder if there has been a time when Lords were known as MPs?

Surely all of you are equally as concerned with this question and will likely lose some amount of sleep in the coming days, at least on until some sort of resolution has been reached.