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Politics in 2013

E.R. Campbell said:
Members of Parliament need and, in my opinion, deserve some special perquisites ~ trips back to the riding, spousal travel, etc. But I agree that, for the most part, the government rates for  hotels, meals and incidentals are adequate for all, except for the approved rate for breakfasts - I don't think there's a hotel in the world that serves a breakfast at the Canadian government rate which is, I think, still under $10.00.
Happy to report a bit of progress on that front  ;D  The latest Treasury Board rates show $15.75 for brekkie for Canada/U.S. travel (going as high as $22 in Nunavut).
GAP said:
Receipts are not a big deal.....businesses do it on a daily basis, I do it on a daily basis, and I am the guy to tallies it all up at month end.
That may be true, but I think it would be less paperwork going without receipts.  Besides, the present fracas isn't about senators ripping off meal money  ;)
 
E.R. Campbell said:
One one key issue I agree wholly with Prime Minister Harper: senators and Members of Parliament, too who are found by our Auditor General to have defrauded you and me by misusing their allowances must go.

I wonder how effective we can be with about 125 MPs and 25 senators?
Let the countdown of members continue - the latest via The Canadian Press ....
Documents filed in court by RCMP investigators allege Sen. Pamela Wallin committed fraud and breach of trust "by filing inappropriate expense claims contrary to ... the Criminal Code."

The unproven allegations are related to an independent audit released in August that flagged more than $140,000 in questionable travel expenses Wallin claimed between Jan. 1, 2009, and Sept. 30, 2012 — expenses Wallin has since paid back ....
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I just saw that. It appears that my "considerable sympathy for Sen Wallin" was misplaced.  :not-again:

But at least now for the PM, this justifies her dismissal and should add some much needed credibility to the actions of late.  I still believe the motion to suspend was premature and should have gone ahead only once charges had been laid.  This should  reduce some of the pressure and allow some good return fire on his part. 

Interesting turn of events.
 
Being somewhat cynical, I'll still stand behind this prediction:

The Senate story will be dropped like a hot rock the moment another Liberal Senator gets tagged by an audit or the RCMP.

Notice there is one (former) Senator who was implicated before the Gang of Three, yet somehow never gets mentioned in these stories?
 
I'd say it might be that the PMO wasnt appearing to make it go away
 
milnews.ca said:
As in Canadian Sea Kings?  Who knew (obviously, me)?  I had heard of Brit Sea Kings being in theatre ....
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.... but not Canadian.

Sorry if I wasn't clear.  It was British SeaKings I was referring to as well.  I was wondering if our replacements  (had not Jean Chretien cancelled or 148's gone smoothly to date etc) might not have made an appearance.  I remember prior to my last tour that the subject of SeaKings to the sandbox came up and it was reported that they wouldn't be able to fly there because of the conditions (heat, altitude).  I saw the British there and said hmmm.  Mind you there's no way I'd want to trust our SeaKings over bandit territory.
 
jollyjacktar said:
....they wouldn't be able to fly there because of the conditions (heat, altitude).  I saw the British there and said hmmm.
The British Sea Kings may look similar to ours, but their Rolls-Royce engines are more powerful than our General Electrics, and they have completely updated avionics.

 
Journeyman said:
The British Sea Kings may look similar to ours, but their Rolls-Royce engines are more powerful than our General Electrics, and they have completely updated avionics.
Its nice to see someone knows about updating airframes. Apparently we don't. Maybe I'm being unfair.....
 
Thucydides said:
Being somewhat cynical, I'll still stand behind this prediction:

The Senate story will be dropped like a hot rock the moment another Liberal Senator gets tagged by an audit or the RCMP.

Notice there is one (former) Senator who was implicated before the Gang of Three, yet somehow never gets mentioned in these stories?

Of course not.  He had enough time in the Senate, unlike these three, to "retire" with full pension.  These three do not have the time in to receive a pension, so I guess someone in a high position is hoping to save monies on not giving out three more extravagant pensions to them.  Of course the Canadian public are not perceiving this as a concern.
 
Jim Seggie said:
Its nice to see someone knows about updating airframes. Apparently we don't. Maybe I'm being unfair.....

Deciding how much to spend on upgrades and major maintenance to current equipment while procuring replacements isn't easy. The longer the lead times on such activity the higher the stakes. The cost of an upgrade plus all the new spares needed will seem wasted money if the new equipment comes on time. Don't do the upgrades and you end up using outdated equipment with increasingly hard to acquire spares if replacements are late.  There is no way to get it right except in hindsight.

Politically it makes for a no-win situation as one of "wasted money" or "deficient equipment" will always apply.
 
Back to the Senate for a bit:

One point I don't remember being made is that Harper campaigned on Senate reform. Arguably he has tried to reform the Senate and has been denied the opportunity by the people criticizing him now.  He was forced to make appointments when others failed to offer him candidates. He has referred the issue to the Supremes to determine what his arcs are.

His base had and has low expectations of the Senate.  He isn't losing them over this issue.

I believe that the worst that will happen is that the profile of Senate Reform will have been raised from a "risible" issue in the minds of the cognoscenti to a "critical" issue.  Depending on the timing of the Supreme's opinion Harper may be able to get it on the 2015 agenda with both an approved COA and a popular head of steam.

Interestingly enough the very issue that has stymied constitutional matters in the past might play into his hands now.  Anybody willing to bet that you couldn't find 50% of the population in 2/3 of the provinces willing to reform the Senate today? (Abolition is just a species of reform).

Harper might actually be able to create it as a wedge to cleave some Liberal and Dipper support in 2015.
 
WRT the Helos

Not only did the Brits fly Sea Kings in Afghanistan (as well as Iraq and Oman) but they also flew Merlins (presumably the UTTH variant) in Afghanistan.

Had the Sea Kings been swapped for the Cormorant/Merlins they might easily have been used there.  Having said that, if that were the case the Chinooks might not have been bought and that would have been a shame.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I don't think there's a hotel in the world that serves a breakfast at the Canadian government rate which is, I think, still under $10.00.

With respect ERC,

I regularly spend time at Holiday Inn Express (and therefore actually qualify as an expert  ;D ) and get adequate quantities of the major food groups (grease, salt, sugar, coffee and orange juice) to start my day included in the price of the room.  And lest I be accused of promoting the Holiday Inn, I've noted a recent trend in the hotels out West to include both Bed and Breakfast in their standard price.

So if your per diem includes a $10.00 breakfast allowance you can pocket that.

Unfortunately no linen or hot and cold running waitresses are on offer.  Plastic and polystyrene are the order of the day.
 
Fair enough, Kirkhill. I was thinking about conferences I often attended where we had little or no choice of hotels and the options for breakfast ($20.00+ in the hotel a decade ago) were very limited i.e. no McDonalds down the street.

I was just remarking to a friend that I have some favourite hotels, especially in Asia, where the girls on staff are hot  :nod: by the way, and I stay in places that give me a "free"* full breakfast.

_____
* Of course: nothing is free but one balances cost and benefits to one's best advantage.
 
Kirkhill said:
With respect ERC,

I regularly spend time at Holiday Inn Express (and therefore actually qualify as an expert  ;D ) and get adequate quantities of the major food groups (grease, salt, sugar, coffee and orange juice) to start my day included in the price of the room.  And lest I be accused of promoting the Holiday Inn, I've noted a recent trend in the hotels out West to include both Bed and Breakfast in their standard price.

So if your per diem includes a $10.00 breakfast allowance you can pocket that.

No.  If breakfast is provided, you are not entitled to claim it and should remove it from your claim.

Claiming a meal that is already provided is fraud.
 
dapaterson said:
No.  If breakfast is provided, you are not entitled to claim it and should remove it from your claim.

Claiming a meal that is already provided is fraud.

Correct, but correct me if I'm wrong but if a continental is provided, I believe you can still claim a certain difference as some of those "breakfasts" are hardly a meal and are entitled to a certain differential.  Ie, juice and muffin is what you get you could still claim 6$ towards a bagel and coffee at timmies.  I think it's a set amount but not sure.
 
dapaterson said:
No.  If breakfast is provided, you are not entitled to claim it and should remove it from your claim.

Claiming a meal that is already provided is fraud.

Different institutions, different rules perhaps.

The places that I have worked where a per diem was the standard then the per diem was calculated as a sum of prescribed allocations (room, breakfast, lunch, supper, perhaps local transport) and you were granted a fixed sum from which to find those requirements.

If you chose to stay at pricier hotels and pick up the additional costs yourself that was your affair.  If you chose to skip breakfast and lunch and buy a four star meal that, equally, was your affair.  If you chose to stay in low rent hotels and pocket the change,  again your affair (within limits the companies had certain standards necessary for marketing image).

On the other hand, the alternative to the per diem system was, and is, submitting claims for each expenditure.  In which case, submitting an unreceipted claim for a full breakfast covered in the hotel cost is, indeed, fraud.
 
The media and the natinal commentariat has now chewed over Prime Minister Harper's address to the CPC Convention, some coverage was balanced, but some was despairing and some was even helpful to those trying to understand what went on for a full 45 minutes.

It was, as John Ibbitson suggests, a speech which was carefully aimed at one smallish audience: the CPC base. Prime Minister Harper tsakes no interest in what the national media, especially the parliamentary press gallery, thinks or even says about him and his ideas. Jeffrey Simpson doesn't even exist in Stephen Harper's mind and he, Harper, is indifferent to the few thousand Canadians who hang on Simpson's every word.

I have said before that the CPC base is not monolithic ~ it is, like the Liberal Party of Canada, a fairly big tent. The speech needed 45 minutes because Prime Minister Harper had to speak, however briefly, to each component of his base ~ there was even something for "small government" Conservatives like me, a segment that is usually overlooked.

I was dismayed, but not overly surprised, to hear the CBC's James Cudmore, usually a better reporter than many, misunderstand Prime Minister Harper's remarks about the courts trying to prevent Senate reform: he was talking about the recent Quebec Court decision, not the reference to the Supreme Court of Canada.

 
To be honest I think he did achieve his aim.  With some grumblings from the base about recent events he had no choice but to address the base.  TBH I thought he would steer clear of the whole senate thing but by briefly touching on it and not dwelling on it I think it was (his speech) pretty effective and I think we'll see a re-energised CPC.  Some will bemoan him for not taking a more mea culpa type of speech (which really is something the media and interested) in that regard but as Mr. Campbell has stated, he was appealing to his base and not the nation. 

It will always be difficult to find a balanced view without listening to many sides but I can still understand Cudmore's point (although likely misunderstood) given that the media is literally taking every thing word for word when it comes to the PM.  It seems like semantics at times but they will attach litteral meaning to his every word, and can see why he has to stay on message less it be distorted.   
 
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