Stupid is like beauty!

Good Day Readers:

During yesterday's CBC Television's Power and Politics program, normally hosted by Evan Solomon, Shelly Glover out of the blue turned to replacement Host Parliamentary Bureau Reporter Rosemary Barton to blurt out, "He called me stupid!" hastening to add this had apparently occurred earlier in the day during a meeting of the Finance Committee.
The aforementioned took place at a live telecast discussion of the Canadian economy also involving Liberal Scott Brison and the NDP's Peggy Nash. Needless to say our Member of Parliament's comment piqued our ears.

Unfortunately, since her election in 2008 Ms Glover has left a litany of what could best be described as "rookie" faux pas mistakes. There are more effective ways and means of dealing with a situation such as this rather than announcing it on national television.

As for you Mr. Brison, if you're guilty, as we strongly suspect your are, you should immediately ask for time on The People's Television Network to apologize to Shelly Glover.

Like beauty stupid is as stupid does.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Postscript

In the past when we've e-mailed our Honourable Member we at least received a trite, meaningless, automatically generated, bilingual e-mail telling us how important our feedback is - problem is, there was seldom any follow up. Now we don't even get that. However, during the May election we were favoured with an unsolicited telephone message from Conservative Senate poster boy Mike Duffy urging us to vote for Ms Glover. It was all we could do not to become violently ill.

To Ms Glover's credit at least she doesn't use gold-embossed parliamentary business cards - at least not yet.

glover.s@parl.gc.ca
scott.brison@parl.gc.ca
peggy.nash@parl.gc.ca
kathleenharris@ipolitics.ca
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You’re stupid,’ Brison tells Glover as sparks fly over costing bills
Thursday, September 29, 2011
By Kathleen Harris

Conservatives used their majority muscle on the finance committee to impose a policy requiring cost accounting for private member’s bills — while quashing a bid to attach a similar price tag to government legislation.

The motion from Conservative MP Randy Hoback calls for the Parliamentary Budget Officer to cost out every private member’s bill. He said the objective would allow MPs to make a “educated decision” on a bill before it is passed into law.

“It’s one thing to have a piece of legislation from a private member come forward, and it sounds really good,” he said. “But when you see the financial consequences, you have to sit back and weigh it and ask if it’s really the best use of taxpayer dollars.”

Liberal MP Scott Brison said Canadians would find it “inexplicable” that there would be cost analysis on private member’s bills, but not on government bills. He said parliamentarians are “constitutionally obligated” to scrutinize costs and noted the Conservatives were found in contempt and defeated in March for failing to provide full accounting for tough-on-crime legislation and F-35 stealth fighter jets procurement.

But his proposed amendment — to cost out all government bills and to compel federal departments to provide necessary information to the PBO — was defeated. Hoback declared the move “pure politics” and insisted government bills already come with cost projections.

Brison was incredulous by what he suggested was an attempt by the Conservatives to use the all-party committee to evade scrutiny.

“This is another example of the Harper government, now emboldened with a majority, treating Parliament as a rubber stamp and running roughshod over the rights and responsibilities of parliamentarians to hold the government to account,” Brison told iPolitics after the meeting. “This is a slap in the face to democracy and a slap in the face to the Canadian taxpayer.”

Brison accused the Conservatives of using the committee to swamp the PBO with extra work so the office has no time to scrutinize the government.

Questioning the value of the PBO analysis since private member’s bills rarely pass into law, NDP MP Jamie Nicholls also worried the new workload could detract the PBO’s primary duties.

“Does the PBO really have the capacity to deal with an onslaught of private member bills?” he asked. “If members of all parties flood the PBO with private member’s bills and they have to do this costing information, maybe they won’t be able to do more important work.”

But Holback insisted the juggling of priorities will be well worth the effort.

“I think that is a good use of his time and a very good use of his resources,” he said. “It would be very beneficial for every member of Parliament to use his resources accordingly on something like this.”

When asked if he had consulted with Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page before tabling his motion, Holback said he wanted to bring it to the committee first. Conservatives also resisted a suggestion to postpone the vote until Page could appear before the committee.

The motion passed 6-5.

The private member’s bill costing issue provoked some heated exchange in the mostly empty committee room, with Brison hollering out, “You’re stupid,” to Conservative MP Shelley Glover.

After an indignant “Pardon me?” from Glover and an “out of order” call from committee chairman James Rajotte, Brison said he was sorry and that he should have instead said the member was “misinformed or intentionally dishonest.”

kathleenharris@ipolitics.ca