Marc Mayrand on Election Reform and Referendum

Elections Canada CEO Marc Mayrand at PROC (Procedures Committee), excerpted :

"With a majority government in place, as well as a fixed election date of October 21, 2019, there is an opportunity now to bring the electoral process, currently anchored in the 19th century, in line with contemporary Canadian expectations."

On holding a referendum on choosing a new voting system as advocated by the Cons :

"The Referendum Act is outdated. It has not been changed since 1992, which was the last time we had a national referendum. In that regard, it is very much out of sync with the Elections Act, particularly around political financing. For example, unions and corporations could contribute to referendum committees. I think that may come as a shock. There is no limit on contributions by any entities. Again, that may come as a shock, but the legislation still stands."

"Six months minimum to set up a national referendum." 

On amending the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act for STV or MMP or ...

"The bare minimum for a standard redistribution is 10 months.There are another seven months after that for implementing. You need to redesign all the maps across each riding and reorganize the poll divisions to reflect the new riding boundaries."

On time needed to revamp the whole system in time for the 2019 election :

"Legislation enacting the reform should be there at least 24 months before the election.Once you have the redistribution, you would need six to seven months to implement the new maps, the new districts, and then we would need to get ready for the election. We would need to prepare all the training. We would also need to build the systems that would support this new regime. We can assume that there would be a need for major public education." Also for parties, candidates, election officials.

On new Election Day technology :

"You have the electronic lists available at the polls. That means that someone who is showing up at the poll shows a voter ID card. The card is scanned, their name is struck out of the list immediately, and automatically it's valid across the country, so that person cannot show up somewhere else later during the day. As a result of that, they get their ballot. We could consider entering them into a tabulator, so, again, the results would be instant on election night."

On advance polls :

"This time around, 25% of all Canadian voters showed up at advance polls. Similarly, we had a 117% increase in voting by mail—in this day and age, yes.We estimate that serving an electorate at an advance poll takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes. If you have 10 people ahead of you, and you're the eleventh, imagine the time it takes. If you see three or four tables that are free, why can't you go to them? If I show up at any store I'll go to the checkout that is available. Why can I not do that?"

"The other thing that we need to look at is automating procedures. If you have voted at an advance poll, you know that electors, when they show up, have to prove their ID, etc. Then their name has to be searched in a big paper document, and they have to enter the name and address and they have to sign. There's no reason in this day and age that it still needs to happen this way. We would be looking at automation. There are good reasons that controls are in place: to ensure that the vote is reliable. However, I think there are big opportunities for automation and better service at the polls."

Mr Mayrand also referred to four other Elections Canada issues that in my opinion should be addressed before the next election.

On removal of voter identification card as a valid piece of identification in the 2015 Federal Election: 

"Voter ID was a barrier for 172,000 people who claimed that not being able to prove their ID or address was an issue for them, and therefore they did not vote according to the Statscan Labour Force Survey"."There is no national ID card of any sort that meets the requirements of the Elections Act."

On voter education outreach :

"Our mandate now is restricted to non-voters, those who are under the voting age." 

"Elections Canada is, in fact, the only body in the world that I know of that cannot promote democracy within the country."

On expenses reimbursement to political parties after an election :

Approximately $60M goes back to our respective political parties—no receipts required. 

On the power to compel witnesses :

"The commissioner cannot compel witnesses.""The commissioner's office was moved from Elections Canada to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is reporting through the DPP and through the Attorney General. It's not an office of Parliament, so it doesn't report directly to Parliament."

Note : I took Mayrand's remarks on electoral reform and a potential referendum out of the order in which they were made and bumped them up to the top of the post. These quotes are responses made to questions from the MPs at PROC.

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Butt Farce

Today, Steve's partisan puppet Speaker Andrew Scheer punted a decision about Brad Butt lying to the House twice about personally witnessing vouching election fraud back to the House for debate. Because you can lie in the House, apparently - you just can't use the words "lie" or "liar".

You'll recall this bs about vouching encouraging voter fraud was the excuse the Cons gave to explain why they want their Fair Elections Act to prohibit vouching in future elections. And Butt sits on the committee studying it - PROC, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, consisting of 6 Cons, 3 NDPers, and a Lib. 

So a motion on whether to send the matter of Butt making shit up over to the committee Butt sits on for further study was debated until House Leader Peter Van Loan signalled he would call closure on it. So that's that - end of story. 

Part of the debate on Butt's calandra-ing consisted of nutter Con MP Steven Fletcher, himself a former Minister for Democratic Reform, trying to bring a motion he termed "contempt of Canada" against the NDP because they declined his invitation to stand up as one and proclaim Canada's political system is better than Russia's.

Unlike the Cons, at least people in the Ukraine already know that.
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Tuesday vote : 
That the question of privilege related to the statements made in the House of Commons by Butt be referred to PROC : Yes - 110 ;  No - 152

- with 1/5 of NDP and 1/3 of Libs not present for the vote, not that it would have made a difference to the outcome.

So there we have it - lying in the House now officially approved .

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The Butt of Fair Elections Act fraud

Con MP Brad Butt, who sits on the PROC Committee reviewing the Cons new Fair Elections Act, alleged in the HoC on Feb 6 that he had personally witnessed evidence of vouching voter fraud in his riding.

Today as the G&M informs us :  
Conservative MP backtracks on claims he personally witnessed voter fraud
Or as Butt put it himself on Twitter this morning: "I misspoke during debate and corrected the record."

But he made that allegation in the House not once that day, as the G&M reports, but twice.
He had an hour to think over his first misspeak before he stood up and repeated it again.

You can watch him here on Hansard by clicking on "View the video" at the timestamp next to his name under "Explore by Members". Hansard does not give an exact translation of his remarks, so with the aid of their handy video option, I've corrected it in blue. 

Feb 6 2014 @16:19 : Brad Butt, Mississauga-Streetsville :

"Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a bit about this vouching system again. I know the minister represents an urban city. I am from a semi-urban area of Mississauga, where there are many high-rise apartment buildings. So one of the things that I have seen - On mail delivery day when the voter cards are delivered to community mailboxes in apartment buildings, we often find that many of them are discarded in the garbage can or the blue box. I have actually witnessed other people coming in, picking up the voter cards, going back to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with a friends who then vouches for them with no ID.
Does the minister not believe this kind of thing will get cleaned up properly with this bill?"

Not content with making up this allegation once, he enlarges on it again an hour later @17:19

"I think my friend from York South-Weston will appreciate this because, just like the riding I represent, he has a lots of apartment buildings in his riding as well. I will relate to him something I have actually seen. Here's what I've seen. I've actually seen this on the ground. On the mail delivery day when voter cards are put in those mailboxes, residents come home, pick them out of their boxes, and throw them in the garbage can. And I have seen campaign workers follow up after that, pick up a dozen of them afterward, and walk out. Now why are they doing that, Mr Speaker? They are doing it so they can hand those cards to other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally. That is going to stop."

Other Con members of the Procedures and House Affairs Committee [6 Cons, 3 NDPers, and a Lib] reviewing the Fair Elections Act alongside Butt include Con Chair Joe Preston and Con MP Scott Reid, plus :

Con MP Ted Opitz, the most recent member of Perps for donating $9,000 to his nomination campaign and thereby being cited by Elections Canada for exceeding his allowed expenses by nearly $7,000. Opitz' campaign manager also allegedly shut down a poll and frightened away seniors trying to vote during the last federal election. - which he won by 26 votes. This same campaign manager was recruited by Nick Kouvalis of Campaign Research to work on Rob Ford's election campaign in 2010. 

Con MP Tom Lukiwski, whose riding was the occasion of deceptive push-poll robocalls he blamed on Steve's director of political operations, Jenni Byrne

Con MP Blake Richards - fined $14,400 by the CRTC for two anonymous robocall campaigns in 2012

Gosh, I wonder if any of these committee members are carrying a grudge about elections law.

Making up the minority voices on the PROC committee are Lib MP Liberal Kevin Lamoureux, and NDPers Craig Scott, Dave Christopherson, and Alexandra Latendresse.
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Update : Arggghhh. 
Election act changes could muzzle report on probe into robocalls, lawyer warns

According to James Sprague, senior general counsel at Elections Canada until 2006 : 

"the bill tabled by the government earlier this month actually may prevent Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer, from reporting to Parliament on the results of an investigation into allegations of dirty calls across the country.

The new act would forbid the Commissioner of Canada Elections, Yves Cote — who is in charge of investigating election crime — from disclosing “any information relating to an investigation that comes to their knowledge in the exercise of their powers.”

Sprague says that means Canadians may never learn what investigators uncover about fraudulent and deceptive telephone calls in the past election.

...the act will prevent the commissioner from discussing investigations with Elections Canada, so Mayrand will not be able to report on the investigators’ work. Instead, the director of public prosecutions will include information about the commissioner’s work in an annual report to the justice minister, but, Sprague says “that report cannot set out the details of any investigation.”

Just read the whole thing, keeping in mind the makeup of the committee studying it.
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Woodie's wombattlefield

Steve, one year ago : "I'm not opening this debate (on abortion). I don't want it opened. I have not wanted it opened. I haven't opened it as Prime Minister. I'm not going to open it. The public doesn't want to open it. This is not the priority of the Canadian public or this government and it will not be."


Yet here's Con MP Stephen Woodworth, happily debating abortion with Choice Joyce at HuffPo yesterday. 
Why?
Because the House Procedures committee, which coincidentally boasts four openly anti-choice MP guys - Scott Reid, Harold Albrecht, Laurie Hawn, and Tom Lukiwski (and do see yesterday's post for their particular shenanigans over robocon) - the PROC Committee has granted Woodie the right to debate his don't-mention-abortion-I-did-once-but-I-think-I-got-away-with-it abortion Motion 312 in the House on April 26. 


Woodie believes a human life begins at conception and he's not about to allow us sluts to fuck that up for the state any longer. All he asks is for a committee of 12 MPs - 7 Cons, 4 Dippers, and 1 Lib with a Con chair all appointed by that selfsame PROC committee - to figure it out for us and let us know the answer to the question : Why doesn't the state have legal custody over the breeding vessels any more? AKA Whatever happened to a trip to England for the rich; coathangers for the poor? 


Woodie wants it all done "scientifically" : "If we accept one law that says some human beings are not human, who's next?" 
From there he makes the jump from what is human - which is not in dispute as fetuses are obviously human tissue - to what is a person, which is a legal argument. He's pretty sure some kind of equitable agreement can be worked out that will allow two or more legal persons to inhabit one body which will be fair to both and so help me he likens it to freeing the slaves : "the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1859 that blacks were not persons under U.S. law. Wouldn't you and I have objected if we had been there?"

I'm really tired of the whole gamut of this cloying fetish for fetuses - those ethereal imaginary pets of terminally controlling god freaks - from their bunfests on the Hill to pix of their pets plastered in all their gory glory like substitute suffering jesuses on the sides of trucks parked outside schools for the shock value.

It's disgusting. Get help. Stop bothering us.

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RoboCon : The Very Significant Alligator Under the Bed

Kady did such a brilliant live-blog of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand's appearance before the Procedures Committee last Thursday that I didn't get around to watching it all myself till today.  But now that I have, I think the extraordinary lengths to which the Cons on committee were willing to go to try to shift the blame onto Elections Canada requires a fuller transcript.

As PLG points out at Pogge :

"we know the Pierre Poutine phone alone resulted in 6,700 calls to voters, but these calls only resulted in 70 complaints. So, 800 complaints clearly doesn't indicate only 800 calls.If the ratio held it'd be around 80,000. But I'd figure the ratio in other ridings would actually be higher--since publicity about the whole deal would have been especially intense in Guelph, leading more people to actually come forward. So who knows how many fraudulent calls were actually made--I'd say likely well over 100,000."

So here, given that the PROC committee does not have a transcript up yet, is a partial one for posterity and committee geeks :

Con MP Tom Lukiwski opened with a tirade against a Lib staffer who alerted voters to the fact that Con Marty Burke is reportedly anti-choice without identifying herself in the tagline as a Lib staffer.
Tom's talking point already handily debunked two weeks ago here. 
Next up :

Con MP John Williamson : "800 strikes me as potentially just a few errors per riding in the grand scheme of potential voters. What's your sense of the numbers?" 

Mayrand : "We know in the case of Pierre Poutine that there were at least 6,700 calls placed... What is troubling here is that there were definitely calls that were placed on behalf of people, falsely placed on behalf of people including Elections Canada. When you talk about 800 complaints you're talking about specific allegations with respect to calls received by electors."

Con MP Harold Albrecht of Kitchener-Conestoga amusingly tries to make the case that his party might contact a voter early on in the campaign and receive a response of overwhelming support but that by week five of the campaign that voter might changed his mind and it's possible that voter might perceive a follow up call on election day as harassment. 
Which of course has fuck all to do with pretending to be from EC and directing people to non-existent polling booths or calling people up and being rude or offensive while pretending to be from another party. 
Albrecht : 

"800 complaints in 70,000 polling stations - that's roughly one complaint per 100 polling stations"

Lukiwski :

"If we're looking at only 800 complaints, reasonably founded complaints, over roughly 200 ridings, that's maybe as little as one complaint lodged in a riding or as many as seven complaints in another riding. But based on the election return ... since there's a court challenge in seven ridings, and we're only talking about perhaps an average of four complaints, in other words perhaps as little as four examples, even if they were verified, of a voter receiving a vote suppression or misleading phone call trying to get them to another voting station, or to try and prevent them from voting in itself, what is the level that is required to overturn a result? It wouldn't seem to me that if we're talking about only four complaints, even if they were legitimate, per riding, that that would be enough to overturn an election result. What would it take to actually have you look at even considering the possibility of overturning an election result?"

Mayrand : "The responsibility to overturn an election lays with the court. The court will decide." 

Lukiwski : "But in your opinion ..." 

Mayrand : "My understanding of the legislation is that there has to be a demonstration that the result of the specific election, riding election, were affected by the irregularities claimed by the plaintiffs."

Con MP Bob Zimmer, Prince George Peace River : 

"We're hearing about deliberate acts that are attempting to dissude voters from voting or sending voters to wrong polling stations - I would suggest to moving to more of the non-deliberate acts and we mentioned earlier that there was 84% in terms of accurate calling lists or voters lists, [Note to Bob : EC does not have or give out phone numbers] but that still remains 16% in error and I guess most of us and me I was alarmed to see that number. And you had said that 700,000 were updated but that still leaves 3.1 million in error, and I guess just for Canadians' confidence, and I know that's why you're here, can you relay your confidence in the system with that high amount of error? Can you give Canadians a sense of confidence that we still have a good system? And I'll go back to your numbers of four per riding in terms of complaints, of actual calls, so we see quite a discrepancy in numbers there of significant amouts of errors - 3.1 million as opposed to four per riding in terms of net complaints. So there's quite a gap there like you had stated. How can Canadians still be confidant in the Elections Canada system?"

After pointing out that Canada's electoral system is a model around the world,  

Mayrand :"I would point out that a single elector being misdirected from his poll is a serious offence. At the end of the day, that's what investigations are about... "

Zimmer : "Deliberately or even really if its done non-deliberately - if it's an accident ..." 

Mayrand : "One thing I can assure Canadians and the committee is that calls made on behalf of Elections Canada are not errors. I'm sorry, this is not an error. That's a deliberate attempt to thwart the right of an elector."

Zimmer : " But if ridings are given incorrect data and are responding to that data and Canadians are responding to that data and going to the wrong polling stations as a result of incorrect data, that, simply put, that's ..."

And his time is up. 

Laurie Hawn : 

"This circus, and it is a circus, is undermining, notwithstanding the legitimacy of the processes that need to be followed in order to get to the bottom of it - nobody argues with that -  the circus aspect of this process has served to do nothing but unfortunately degrade the trust of Canadians in their system."

Hawn : Afghanistan, Haiti, blah, blah, blah, after which Lukiwski returns for yet another bout of whine about the Lib staffer busting out Con Marty Burke's alleged anti-choice creds.
Finally, the alligator under the bed makes its appearance :

Con MP Scott Reid : 

".. Is what we've heard an indication of some kind of alligator under the bed? Is something bigger going on or not? The assertion has been at least implied that there's widespread fraudulent either voter suppression or impersonation of Elections Canada or something of that sort. But what strikes me is if there's really an alligator under the bed, that I wonder if the alligator under the bed simply isn't a widespread problem with trying to figure out where people actually live in order to contact them in a way that uh - you can see there is a distinct problem here.  The normal voters list, the normal number of voters who are put in the wrong location, is 16%. You indicated that after you go through and issue the final voters list, it comes down to 12% error rate? Is that correct? That's still millions of Canadians and I know from experience I've picked up that final voters list myself in the last election from my riding. .. It was about 48 or 72 hours before Voting Day so you can understand it's hard to get that data, input it, and that sort of thing, any kind of actual ...In our case we do more print communication - you can't get that out with the list. As a final note - this is not something that Elections Canada has done but I'll make the point - from the last provincial election, Elections Ontario put myself and my wife - we live in the same house - in two different ridings. So things like this occur all the time. It is as a practical matter very difficult to overcome that problem. I think there is a widespread problem here that leads to many of the kinds of complaints you've heard ."

Mayrand : "The list is not perfect and I don't think it will ever be ... people move all the time, things happen. That being said, I still can't reconcile the idea that people pretending to be Elections Canada tried to misdirect people."

Scott Reid : "... but I think I'm right in saying that the number of instances you're going to find of that as a proportion of the total number of complaints people are raising will be very very small."

Just dying to get to the bottom of this, aren't they?
Final obfuscations with bonus veiled threat from Mr. Creosote ...

Dean Del Mastro : "Just to kinda tie things up here - Mr. Mayrand, thank you for your appearance. You've indicated that in the 308 election results you stand behind your determination of each and every riding - that's part of your report that you've already made to this committee and I thank you for that. You've indicated in your report that you find it troubling to hear sometimes sweeping and vague allegations of irregularities being made public many months after the election and not supported by specific facts. We find that troubling as well - we've referred to that as the unsubstantiated smear campaign. 

Uh and I'd also like to point out that we've got a couple of former very significant - well, police chief and a commissioner of the OPP - that have been involved in some very significant investigations and one of the things that they're concerned with are some of the leaks. And I really wanna say that I appreciate your commitment and your comments specifically with respect to keeping these things in the strictest confidence. I can tell you that there's been harm, there's been harm to individuals, there's been harm to companies, even though for example the member from Winnipeg Centre has apologized for a number of the outlandish things that he has said in the NDP, there has been real harm done. Can you just confirm to the committee that you're going to work to make sure that no leaks are occurring from Elections Canada because there's a number of folks in the media that have in fact came forward and indicated to me that they feel Elections Canada has been the source of some of these things, or folks within Elections Canada. Can you just confirm that you're going to echo your comments to this committee that things will be kept in the strictest confidence...."

Mayrand :  "Another case of vague allegation here.[Room erupts with laughter] I can assure you - no, seriously, seriously  - again, there's no source leaking from Elections Canada if that's the allegation. I can attest to that. I think some should be checking their sources."

Committee ends with an all-party agreement to call Al Mathews, the guy heading up the actual investigations, some time before June. 
Maybe he can locate the very very significant alligator under the bed.

Fun fact : Committee members Tom Lukiwski, Harold Albrecht, Scott Reid, and Bob Zimmer are all from ridings where alligators of electoral irregularities have been alleged.

The most significant alligator of all : The Accountability Act of 2006 rescinded the authority of Elections Canada to prosecute offences under the Elections Act and gave that authority instead  to the Director of Public Prosecutions under the  Attorney General of Canada :

"The Director is given responsibility, in place of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, for prosecutions of offences under the Canada Elections Act."

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Adventures in Con Leakage to lobbyists - Part 3.

On Tuesday the Procedures and House Affairs Committee heard from Russell Ullyatt, the former Con MP Kelly Block staffer who leaked a draft copy of the Finance Committee report to Con-connected lobbyists before MPs had seen it.

Today we got Con MP Kelly Block herself before the PROC committee, already ably live-blogged by Kady so I'm not going to blow-by-blow it, except to note that the meeting immediately descends into the committee Cons - Scott Reid, Tom Lukiwski, Ted Menzies, and the Chair Joe Preston - circling the wagons around Block to prevent her from answering any of the questions raised by Ullyatt's previous testimony. How they think this helps her personal credibility as an MP at all I have no idea.

This committee, like most of them, is composed of 50% Con MPs including a Con chair.
If the chair doesn't like a particular line of questioning, he disallows the witness from answering and that's the end of it.

Today Chair Joe Preston refused to hear any questions following on from Ullyatt's testimony on Tuesday, while the Con MPs used up their allotted time praising the apparently sainted Block for appearing before committee at all and hey isn't her son coming back from Australia today? and what are her plans for Christmas? OK, I made that last one up - only the last one.

Blocked line of questioning from opp members :
What about the printer with its pallets of boxes of mailouts stacked outside Block's office that were presumably part of Ullyatt's private direct mail business? Was it run out of her office? What was in them? More leaks? Didn't she ask him about them some time over the past two years he was in her employ?

NDP Mulcair elicits from Block that Ullyatt was recommended to her employ by Con MP Rob Clark. Ah. As already noted, when Ullyatt was Clark's campaign manager before coming to Block, RCMP in uniform were discovered using RCMP vehicles to deliver Clark campaign signs, causing a wee stir in the media about blurring use of gov resources for Party partisan reasons. You can guess where Mulcair is going with this and so does the chair who immediately shuts him down.

Much of the two hour meeting with Block posted on the committee agenda was taken up with opp members registering their outrage that Block mentioned she was only staying for one hour. Whose idea was that? Because it's going to take more than a couple of five minute attempts each by opp members to get any relevant questions past the chair.

My guess : As no one knew the two hour session was being cut to one hour before Block mentioned it after being escorted into the meeting by House Leader and veteran defender-of-witnesses-from-committees John Baird, I'm guessing we can draw our own conclusions where that particular one hour directive shutting down hour two with the committee came from.

Anyway Block declines to stay, down comes the gavel and she's whisked away by a posse - the meeting and the committee adjourned till next year - leaving us none the wiser about anything from her testimony.
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Inside the Procedure and House Affairs Committee : Ullyatt

Further adventures in Con Leakage to lobbyists.

Russell Ullyatt, Con MP Kelly Block's staffer who leaked a pre-budget finance committee draft report to five Con-connected tax industry lobbyists before MPs had seen it, was grilled at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee today.

Mr. Ullyatt could not be more contrite. Mr. Ullyatt cannot say enough wonderful things about his totally blameless former employer Kelly Block, who he worked for for two years before leaking docs out of her office to exactly the same five lobbyists to whom he was applying for jobs. Mr. Ullyatt has a longer list of people he is apologizing to than Academy Awards winners have people to thank. Mr. Ullyatt is breaking my heart here.

First question is from Lib MP Ratansi - not usually my favorite committee interrogator but she has it totally pegged : "Who coached you for your appearance here today?"

Ullyatt responds well you know his family, his friends, but not the Cons - oh no, not the Cons.

Ratansi circles around, comes back at him. Um ok yes actually he did retain Con Party lawyer Paul Lepsoe of Con in-and-out court case fame to coach him today. Busted.

Ratansi also points out that eight hours elapsed between first and last leak, which pretty well blows the momentary lapse of judgement part of his heartbreaking apology all to shit.

And holy crap I'll bet Lepsoe wishes he had been allowed to sit next to Ullyatt in committee and stop him from scoring on his own goal by offering up the entirely unsolicited info that he asked one of the lobbyists he leaked the docs to - Egan, CEO of the Canadian Gas Association -if Egan had any specific questions he would like Block to put to Egan during Egan's appearance before the Finance committee. Oh dear.

NDP MP Mulcair wants to know about the "slats and pallets, with boxes piled high and a very elaborate printing machine" he has seen sitting outside Block's office when he walks by. Would that would be Ullyatt's on-the-side business R. U. Thinking, "Canada’s only completely political mail provider," that has sent out "over 5 million mailouts in the last two years"? Yes, it would. How long did he work for Block again? Two years. Does Block know about his on-the-side biz? Um.................yes. But Ullyatt assures the committee he didn't operate his private business out of her office which would, incidentally, be totally illegal. [slats of mailouts out side her office? what slats?] No, he operated it out of his garage. Oh dear again.

Rather handy, isn't it, that the upshot of yet another low level staffer being busted is that the final committee report will now be shelved, leaving opposition parties and the over 400 witnesses who have appeared before finance committee without any input at all into next federal budget, so now the whole show belongs entirely to Flaherty. The problem is that it was the draft committee report that was leaked and drafts reveal all the horse-trading the opposition parties do in camera - and none of them wants that aired in public. This is just total bullshit on your part, opposition parties.


Next up - Ullyatt's five "friends" as he refers to them at least 50 times - the lobbyists who received Ullyatt's clearly marked Confidential report.

Lynne Hamilton, former Mike Harris alumnus and media co-ordinator for Walkerton water tragedy, now a VP at GCI Group and author of the "I heart you" response to Ullyatt upon receiving the leaked doc, says she never read it. Moreover she points out that as a former Senior Special Assistant to Secretary of State Helena Guergis, Ullyart can not be hired as a lobbyist by her company anyway.

Andy Gibbons, former legislative assistant to Con MP Leon Benoit and now at Hill and Knowlton, said Ullyatt knew he was following the finance committee but he did not solicit the report. Gibbons sent a paragraph of the leaked report on to his client Merck Frosst and someone else at Hill and Knowlton.

Clarke Cross, former Legislative Assistant to Con/Alliance MPs James Lunney and Leon Benoit, and now senior consultant with Tactix Government Relations and Public Affairs Group, forwarded "a summation of two points" from the report on to "one person at the University of Calgary". Huh.

Howard Mains, formerly with the Mulroney government and now Co-President of Tactix, never read Ullyatt's email and is hearing the contents of the email for the first time just now apparently.

Tim Egan, CEO of the Canadian Gas Association and founding director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, the Tim Ball and Tom Harris climate change skeptics group, also never read Ullyatt's email because it caught in his spam filter.

Testimony from these lobbyists, btw, marks the single greatest number of times I have ever heard the term 'pro-active' used to describe the failure to anticipate an oncoming shitstorm.

Pro-active. For those days when "going forward" just isn't strong enough.

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