Ottawa

Politics on TV: RBC’s outsourcing and Thatcher’s passing

The three things you need to see

Here are the three things you should not have missed:

  1. RBC and temporary foreign workers
  2. Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s passing
  3. Veteran harassment

RBC:

With RBC being accused of replacing Canadian employees with temporary foreign workers, and chairman of RBC saying that there may be one single temporary foreign worker as part of the transition process, Power Play spoke to immigration lawyer Chantal Desloges. Desloges said that it’s not illegal for RBC to hire a company to provide workers on an outsource basis, but the questions revolve around whether Service Canada dropped the ball in their labour market analysis, or if the outsource company, iGate, was not being transparent. Desloges stressed that it’s not an immigration issue, but an outsourcing issue. On Power & Politics, an MP panel of Kellie Leitch, Jinny Sims and Kevin Lamoureux to discuss it, and all three agreed that it was unacceptable if RBC was in fact replacing Canadians with temporary foreign workers. While Leitch pointed to the investigation that the government would carry out on the matter, Sims said that the temporary foreign worker rules had been so elasticized that they no longer worked, and Lamoureux noted that the government’s own study on the system was being kept under wraps.

Margaret Thatcher:

Don Martin spoke with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney about his recollections of Margaret Thatcher. Mulroney said that her legacy was in two big areas, with the transformation of the UK from being the “sick man of Europe” into a leading world economic power, and her political leadership to some of the greatest global challenges of the day, including ending the Cold War. He also spoke about their differences on the issue of sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Evan Solomon had an MP panel of Michelle Rempel, Nycole Turmel and Carolyn Bennett to talk about Thatcher’s political legacy. While Rempel spoke about the path that Thatcher blazed for women in politics, and how she changed the culturally accepted role of government around the world, Turmel was disappointed that while Thatcher opened doors for women, she didn’t do what she expected a woman would do. Bennett also noted that Thatcher behaved in a way that was not a feminist approach of consensus building or inclusivity.

Harassment:

Solomon spoke with former Veterans Review Board member Harold Leduc, who won his arbitration before the Human Rights Tribunal but says that he is still being subject to harassment by board members who remain in place, while they pass off his private information in order to discredit him. Leduc also says that the minister’s chief of staff has at various times told people that he was no longer on the board because they were trying to clean up problems, and that board members have shelf lives – though there are other board members who have been there for far longer than him. Leduc says that the harassment has triggered his PTSD.

Worth Noting:

  • Brian Mulroney (08:45 on the clip) said that anyone who treats Justin Trudeau with scorn and derision does so at their own peril.
  • Liberal leadership contender Martin Cauchon says that he is not giving up, that people can still be convinced during the week-long voting process, and that he will be a leader working with the Liberal family.
  • Author Charles MacNab talked about the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the only federal political assassination in Canada, which took place 145 years ago yesterday.

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