Ottawa

Politics on TV: Procurement, Brazeau and CIDA

The three things you need to see

Here are the three things you should not have missed:

  1. The Jenkins Report on military procurement
  2. Senator Brazeau’s suspension
  3. CIDA funding to Christian Crossroads

Military procurement:

With the release of the Jenkins Report on military procurement, Power & Politics had an MP panel of Chris Alexander, Matthew Kellway and John McKay to discuss it. Alexander said that the government has an interest in leveraging spending to help Canadian industry flourish and to meet the needs of the Canadian Forces. He also said that the government is not discontinuing assist audits for defence industries in Canada. Kellway said that it was more evidence that the government doesn’t know how to do military procurement or economic development. McKay said that the report was six years too late, and that it was unrealistic to assume that the full $490 billion spending program could go ahead.

Senator Brazeau:

On Power Play, Robert Fife gave a rundown of what happened at the Senate today, where Senator Brazeau showed up for the vote to force him onto a paid leave of absence, before University of Ottawa’s Penny Collenette – a former Director of Appointments under Jean Chrétien – looked at the process of Senate appointments. Collenette said that a list of names are usually brought to the Prime Minister, and those names are subjected to a security and background check – so there was no way that the government didn’t know about the different allegations of misconduct in Brazeau’s past. Collenette said that it was surprising how many times people would turn down appointments.

CIDA Funding:

Evan Solomon hosted an MP panel of Deepak Obhrai, Paul Dewar and Dominic LeBlanc to discuss the funding that Christian Crossroads received from CIDA for their projects in Uganda, when their website contained homophobic statements. Obhrai said that the group has been given funding based on their programs for reducing poverty, and that they condemn any promotion of hatred. Dewar said that it didn’t make sense that groups like this were getting funding when other groups like Kairos, with decades of good work, were getting their funding cut. LeBlanc said that the government uses aid money to silence groups that have different beliefs than they do, such as women’s groups, and that they can’t continue to fund groups with such “repugnant” views.

Worth Noting:

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