If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, back in the days when the Navy was Royal, officers had, on their uniform jackets, a braided curl on their top stripe. That went away in 1968, when everyone adapted the green uniform; when the DEUs were reintroduced in the 1980s, the officers kept the stripes, but the braided curl never returned.

It’s called the “executive curl,” and it’s still part of a naval officer’s formal “mess dress.” And if you’re wondering what this has to do with politics, well, last week Parliament debated bringing the curl back onto the naval uniform.

I’m not joking. You can find the motion under Private Member’s Business, here. The motion was introduced by Tory MP Guy Lauzon.

I believe the timing of the motion is significant and important as well. With the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy, what better time to right this wrong and reincorporate the executive curl into the uniform of the navy? That is why I am here today to ask the House to support my efforts. This motion is aimed to give the navy back part of its identity lost in 1968 and to support the men and women of the Canadian Forces.

There were of course a number of Opposition members who wondered a bit about timing and relevancy, and how this thing came in out of the blue, and how there were better ways to show support for the Navy. But no one actually voted against the motion. Even the Bloc Québécois spoke in favour of it:

Mr. Mario Laframboise (Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, BQ): The Bloc Québécois has always defended the men and women, Quebeckers and Canadians, who wear a military uniform, whether they are in the army, the air force or the navy.

In the case before us, we have no objection to supporting a motion to reinstate the Navy executive curl, if that is the wish of the officers of the Canadian Navy. It is easy to understand that the reinstatement of the executive curl would be a source of pride and dignity for the officers of the Canadian Navy. Again, this is not a small measure to us.

And in the end, the motion carried unanimously. Note that this is a motion and not actual legislation, so tailors aren’t going to see a boom in business from navy officers just yet.

However, given what percentage of the population is actually affected by this, I think it’s time for a poll:

I found out about this particular prize in Hansard, as it turns out the finalists for this particular award were visiting the House yesterday. Here’s Conservative MP Andrew Saxton:

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the finalists of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. The five finalists are on Parliament Hill today. They are: John English, a former member of this place; Rudyard Griffiths; James Maskalyk; Daniel Poliquin; and Terry Gould, who is from my riding of North Vancouver.

Mr. Gould is an investigative journalist who is being honoured as a finalist for his work, Murder without Borders, which is a portrait of seven journalists who were murdered in the line of duty.

The Shaughnessy Cohen prize is a $25,000 award presented annually by the Writers’ Trust of Canada to the best non-fiction book on Canadian political and social issues. The winner will be announced on Wednesday.

I congratulate all finalists and thank them for their contribution to the understanding of political issues among Canadians.

As you all know, I happen to think that one of the purposes of political blogging is to develop the ability to express oneself, which means a collection of blogposts could make a perfectly readable book. As it happens, I think there are plenty of Blogging Tories who could, if sufficiently motivated, turn their blog into a book. (And 25 grand ain’t bad for a motivator either.) And as it turns out, the Guidelines for this particular prize don’t appear to be all that strenuous; although they ban self-published books, stuff that previously appeared on blogs seems to be alright.

Hence, this poll. We should push for a Blogging Tory to get a book published, and so identify one whose book we think everyone should buy.

Note that there are a couple of names left out. Ezra Levant doesn’t appear, because he already has a good book out (Shakedown) and that’s an unfair advantage. And since I’m the one conducting the poll, in all fairness my name’s not on the list either.

And, for the first time, I’ve enabled a multiple-choice option. You can pick up to three people whom you think should go for it.

Did you know that there’s a Government of Canada site for Governor-in-Council appointments?

Oh yes. You can find it right here. I mention it because when I heard the Treasury Board president announce his cuts, the thought occurred to me to see if those cuts were in any way — well, meaningful. As in “is somebody going to scream bloody murder if that position isn’t available?”

So here’s what I’m doing. I’m checking the TB backgrounder and how it describes its GiC cuts, and comparing it against what’s listed on the GiC site. The point of this is to see how much the perception left by the TB corresponds with the impression of the GiC site. (I am, of course, assuming that the GiC site is up to date; Government of Canada sites can be a bit lax in that regard.)

Shall we begin?

Canadian Grain Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 9 GiC positions, 6 cut
• On the GiC site: 9 GiC positions, 6 vacant (assistant commissioner level)
• Comment: No one let go, no one missed

National Farm Products Council

• What the Backgrounder lists: 9 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 9 GiC positions, 3 vacant
• Comment: Chairmanship is currently vacant; other vacancies are part-time

Canadian Council on the Status of the Artist

• What the Backgrounder lists: 12 GiC positions, 12 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: Based on this page from the Writers’ Union, the Council may be a defunct agency that shut down during the Chrétien era and was never re-activated.

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 19 GiC positions, 6 cut
• On the GiC site: 19 GiC positions, 6 vacant
• Comment: Vacancies are part-time positions

Canadian Race Relations Foundation and Investment Committee

• What the Backgrounder lists: 24 GiC positions, 11 cut
• On the GiC site: (Foundation) 21 positions, 11 vacancies; (Committee) 3 positions, 2 vacancies
• Comment: According to the by-laws, Committee members cannot be Foundation directors, and the current membership of the Foundation is all at the Director level. So it’s possible that the Committee vacancies are still available for appointment.

Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada

• What the Backgrounder lists: 15 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 15 positions, no vacancies
• Comment: The appointments for two board members expire in June 2010, and one expires in October 2010. It’s possible that the June appointments won’t be replaced.

National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy

• What the Backgrounder lists: 26 GiC positions, 8 cut
• On the GiC site: 26 positions, 8 vacancies
• Comment: No one let go, no one missed

Canada Development Investment Corporation

• What the Backgrounder lists: 20 GiC positions, 9 cut
• On the GiC site: 19 positions, 5 vacancies
• Comment: The presidency is vacant, so that’s not eliminated. One director appointment expired in 2007. Another director appointment expires in June 2010, so that may not be renewed. Two auditor positions expired in 2009. The other vacancies are for auditor positions.

Canadian International Trade Tribunal

• What the Backgrounder lists: 9 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 9 positions, 8 vacancies
• Comment: The 8 vacancies include 5 “temporary” positions which have not been filled. I’m not sure why these weren’t listed, unless Treasury Board considered them a redundancy.

Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation – Advisory Committee

• What the Backgrounder lists: 12 GiC positions, 12 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: The Committee may have already been phased out.

Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada

• What the Backgrounder lists: 7 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 7 positions, 2 vacancies
• Comment: No one let go, no one missed

International Boundary Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: It doesn’t sound like the current commissioner, Peter John Sullivan, got fired; he’s had the job for nearly 14 years. And as far as I know, the IBC is still around.

International Development Research Centre

• What the Backgrounder lists: 21 GiC positions, 3 cut
• On the GiC site: 21 positions, 1 vacancy
• Comment: One appointment expires in 2010. The next appointment to expire, in February 2011, is Jocelyn Coulon of Montreal. (I wonder if this is the same Jocelyn Coulon whom Stéphane Dion appointed to run in Outremont, and lost to Thomas Mulcair? And if that’s the case, what do you suppose the odds are that he’ll be renewed, hmm?)

Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 3 GiC positions, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 3 positions with 6 alternates
• Comment: The three appointments took place in 1992, 1995 and 2002. I’m guessing an early retirement on this one.

Assisted Human Reproduction Agency of Canada

• What the Backgrounder lists: 13 GiC positions, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 13 positions, 3 vacancies
• Comment: Obviously one vacancy was eliminated, but what do you suppose is the deal with the other two?

Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse

• What the Backgrounder lists: 7 GiC positions, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 7 positions, 1 vacancy
• Comment: The vacancy is in the Chairman’s position. Note that none of the director positions are paid, although they get expense money.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research

• What the Backgrounder lists: 19 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 19 positions, 4 vacancies
• Comment: Again the question: what’s the deal with the other two?

Canada Employment Insurance Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 4 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 4 positions
• Comment: One position expires Oct 2010; another expires one year later.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

• What the Backgrounder lists: 13 GiC positions, 3 cut
• On the GiC site: 13 positions, 4 vacancies
• Comment: Three of the vacancies are vice-presidencies.

Canada Pension Plan / Old Age Security: Review Tribunals

• What the Backgrounder lists: 400 GiC positions, 40 cut
• On the GiC site: 400 positions
• Comment: The reason why there are so many of these is that the positions are based in Canadian major urban centres. Memberships fall in three categories per center: legal, medical and community. Since several memberships expire this year, I’d expect to see a rationing of memberships for each centre.

Canada Pension Plan: Pensions Appeals Board

• What the Backgrounder lists: 12 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 12 positions, 5 vacancies
• Comment: This page also lists 67 “temporary” members, who are judges or former judges of the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeals or the superior courts of any province.

First Nations Financial Management Board

• What the Backgrounder lists: 12 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 12 positions, 5 vacancies
• Comment: The Board requires a minimum of 9 members.

First Nations Statistical Institute

• What the Backgrounder lists: 15 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 15 positions, 5 vacancies
• Comment: One vacancy is the Statistician. The Institute’s board requires a minimum of 8 directors.

National Aboriginal Economic Development Board

• What the Backgrounder lists: 20 GiC positions, 7 cut
• On the GiC site: 20 positions, 10 vacancies
• Comment: Two of the vacancies are vice-chairs.

Northern Flood Agreement

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC positions, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 1 position
• Comment: The listed arbitrator, George Campbell MacLean, died in 2008.

Business Development Bank of Canada

• What the Backgrounder lists: 15 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site:15 positions, 1 vacancy
• Comment: The President’s appointment expires in June 2010. We can assume one of the directors will be promoted in that event.

Canada Foundation for Innovation

• What the Backgrounder lists: 7 GiC positions, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 7 positions
• Comment: The Chairperson’s appointment expired in February 2010.

Canadian Space Agency

• What the Backgrounder lists: 2 GiC positions, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 2 positions, 1 vacancy
• Comment: No one let go, no one missed

Canadian Tourism Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 25 GiC positions, 14 cut
• On the GiC site: 25 positions, 2 vacancies
• Comment: 14 of the directorships appear to be “private sector” positions, which don’t receive pay.

National Research Council of Canada

• What the Backgrounder lists: 22 GiC positions, 3 cut
• On the GiC site: 22 positions, 5 vacancies
• Comment: One of the vacancies is the presidency.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council

• What the Backgrounder lists: 22 GiC positions, 3 cut
• On the GiC site: 22 positions, 5 vacancies

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

• What the Backgrounder lists: 22 GiC positions, 3 cut
• On the GiC site: 22 positions, 4 vacancies

Space Advisory Board

• What the Backgrounder lists: 19 GiC positions, 19 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: This Board was apparently established at the same time as the Canadian Space Agency, but may now be defunct.

Standards Council of Canada

• What the Backgrounder lists: 13 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 13 positions, 2 vacancies
• Comment: The vacancies are a vice-chair post and a member from the public sector.

Export Development Canada

• What the Backgrounder lists: 15 GiC positions, 2 cut
• On the GiC site: 15 positions, 3 vacancies

NAFTA Secretariat, Canadian Section

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: The secretary position is currently listed as vacant.

Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety

• What the Backgrounder lists: 41 GiC positions, 18 cut
• On the GiC site: 23 positions, 5 vacancies
• Comment: The 41 positions here are the President, the Chairman, 13 governors (1 from each province and territory), 11 governors representing employers, 11 governors representing workers, and 4 representing federal ministries or Crown corporations. Right now, there are 4 governor nominees each from the employers’ and the employees’ groups; cut the 14 vacancies in these two, add the 4 from the federal bodies, and that’s your 18 — I think.

Military Police Complaints Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 7 GiC positions, 2 cuts
• On the GiC site: 7 positions, 4 vacancies
• Comment: One vacancy is the chair’s position. The filled positions are listed as part-time.

Alberta – British Columbia Boundary Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 1 position
• Comment: The person filling that position is the same person who is (was?) the commissioner for the International Boundary Commission. Note that the position is not a paid one.

Alberta – Northwest Territories Boundary Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: The Commission was created by an Order-in-Council (P.C. decisions 1950-692 and 1963-1118) and may now be defunct.

British Columbia – Yukon – Northwest Territories Boundary Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: The Commission was created by an Order-in-Council (P.C. decisions 1943-5355 and 1969-786) and may now be defunct.

Cape Breton Development Corporation

• What the Backgrounder lists: 7 GiC positions, 7 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: The Corporation ceased operations in 2001 and is now in the process of winding down operations.

Energy Supplies Allocation Board

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 7 positions, 1 vacancy
• Comment: The Commission was created in 1974. Given that the last director appointments were made in 1979 and that the current chair is a deputy minister, the Board may now be considered defunct.

Manitoba – Saskatchewan Boundary Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: The Commission may now be defunct.

Saskatchewan – Northwest Territories Boundary Commission

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: Not listed
• Comment: The Commission may now be defunct.

Intercolonial and P.E.I. Railways Employees Provident Fund

• What the Backgrounder lists: 1 GiC position, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 1 position, 1 vacancy
• Comment: The Fund was established in 1907; it may now be defunct.

Marine Atlantic Inc.

• What the Backgrounder lists: 15 GiC positions, 5 cut
• On the GiC site: 15 positions, 4 vacant
• Comment: A director appointment expired in January 2010.

Parc Downsview Park Inc.

• What the Backgrounder lists: 13 GiC positions, 4 cut
• On the GiC site: 13 positions, 1 vacant
• Comment: Three director appointments have already expired.

Via Rail Canada Inc.

• What the Backgrounder lists: 17 GiC positions, 4 cut
• On the GiC site: 17 positions, 1 vacant
• Comment: One director appointments has already expired; the chairman’s appointment expires in October 2010, and another will expire in 2011.

Canada School of Public Service

• What the Backgrounder lists: 15 GiC positions, 3 cut
• On the GiC site: 7 positions, 1 vacancy
• Comment: The Treasury Board lists the maximum number of governors, while the Appointments site only lists four (the rest are ex officio positions. I’m not sure why.

Public Sector Pension Investment Board

• What the Backgrounder lists: 12 GiC positions, 1 cut
• On the GiC site: 12 positions, 1 vacancy
• Comment: No one let go, no one missed

My conclusion? A lot of this wasn’t so much of a slashing exercise as it was a sweep-up; some bureaucratic house-cleaning to update the records at Treasury Board.

A couple of other things to bear in mind:

One: we’ve only looked at GiC appointments that were either (a) obsolete, (b) vacant for a while, or (c) about to be vacated and won’t be missed, if they’re not filled. In terms of actual termination of patronage (which is what’s really needed to get serious about reducing government), we haven’t even begun to lightly caress the surface, let along scratch it.

Two: any attempt to portray this as a way to deny the Liberals an opportunity to practice patronage should they return to power, is going to be laughed out D’Arcy McGee’s. The positions that were eliminated here, aren’t really worth having; and there’s tons of other GiC appointments, in more important government bodies, that would be of greater interest to those styled in the old-fashioned art of pork-barreling.

You know how, last year, the Opposition tried to raise heck over minor things like communion wafer consumption? Unfortunately, if the Hill Times’ Tim Naumetz is to be believed, we’ll have to see more of the same this year.

Why?

“You can imagine what type of psychological impact it has if you’re the opposition party, the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, knowing that there’s a government that’s going to survive for at least another six months because the political opportunity doesn’t really exist to trigger an election,” Mr. Nanos told The Hill Times.

“The only thing that could really potentially trigger an election is some kind of scandal or major mistake,” he added. “The Liberals basically need the Conservatives to make some kind of massive mistake to create the atmosphere that maybe there would be, what I will say, a political smash and grab.”

The Conservatives are “in control of their destiny” over the next year, Mr. Nanos said, adding that Mr. Harper has likely learned a lesson from his unpopular decision to suspend Parliament for strategic reasons.

Which is why you’re going to see Liberal MPs pick up on small miscues and scream, “Ah HA! SCANDAL!” They’re looking for something — anything — to disrupt the Harper government’s control over the agenda.

Oddly enough, in a way I can sorta understand the need for this. One of the big problems with unchallenged incumbency is the tendency to become smug, and smugness leads to mistakes and losing touch with the people who put you in power in the first place. It’s one of the reasons why Paul Martin’s government ended, and after four years smugness is a very real danger for the Harper government. The best cure for that is a vigourous opposition — and unfortunately, “vigourous” is most decidedly not the right word you could apply to the Liberals these days.

“When you go around here, and there’s no buzz and nobody wants to pronounce the word election, it shows that there is a malaise, obviously,” said [Jean] Lapierre, a former Liberal campaign strategist in Quebec who maintains party connections he draws on for political commentary on TVA.

Part of this, of course, is Michael Ignatieff’s failure to catch on with the voting public. But I think there’s another term for what we’re seeing here: “withdrawal symptoms.” It’s finally sunk into the Liberal consciousness that Canadians have no interest in returning them to power, and the “malaise” is simply them learning to manage their ambitions and addictions to the spotlight. It’s just unfortunate that they couldn’t have learned to do this, say, back in 2006 or 2007.

In today’s Toronto Star column, Angelo Persichilli makes a rather perceptive observation:

Ignatieff has had to swallow his pride, telling voters that the budget is awful but the Liberals will not defeat it because “Canadians are not ready” for an election.

The fact of the matter is that he is not ready, and people are already asking themselves why this is the case after he has had more than a year as leader.

According to sources close to the Conservative leadership, the Tories believe that with Ignatieff as leader the Liberals will never be ready. And considering the results to date of his four years in politics, who can blame them for thinking that way?

Some Liberals seem to agree.

Persichilli does raise an interesting question. “The Liberals will never be ready”? Why not?

Let’s find out. I’ll toss out a bunch of scenarios, and see which one has the most resonance with you. As before, there’s no “all of the above” option; this one requires a bit of thinking.

Yesterday, the Parly Sec for Aboriginal Affairs, John Duncan, tabled to Parliament the annual report of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (available in PDF format). Disclosure: I spent a couple of years working with the National Aboriginal Health Organization, an NGO which had a good working relationship with AHF.

It occurred to me that I should check out how some of my old colleagues were doing, and so it was with a little nostalgic sadness that I learned that AHF was planning to close. (The press statement is also in PDF format.)

Aboriginal Healing Foundation President, Georges Erasmus, noted that “Budget 2010 commits $199 million to mental health and emotional support services for former students and their families – money which will go to Health Canada for Government-run programs. It is good that there is support in the budget for Survivors. This budget does cast a dark shadow however over the good and effective work being done in Aboriginal communities, by Aboriginal people, to address the destructive residential school legacy and to create healthier, stronger communities.”

Concerning the future, he added, “Without additional funds, community services will disappear at the end of this month, and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation will have no recourse but to wind down its operations. Our first priority now is to inform our funded projects of this news and to support them as they close.”

What tempers my sadness is that AHF was never intended to be a permanent organization. Both its annual report and its corporate plan make it perfectly clear that AHF was planning to wind down its operations within the next couple of years. So this isn’t particularly surprising to stakeholders in the field of Aboriginal health; in fact I’m sure some contingency plans have been made to keep some of the AHF-started projects going.

What I do find surprising is the lack of outrage from people interested in keeping this foundation going. Usually with these types of NGOs you’d get a flurry of letter-writing or social networking tweets petitioning Ottawa (in the form of Health Canada) to keep the funds coming in. But then again, these are smart people: they know that this particular brand of Tory government never really bought in to the idea of taxpayer-supported NGOs, and that it would be very hard to argue for continuing in the face of such an attitude. And if you know your arguments are going to fall on unhearing ears, why waste the energy to make them?

I was sorta wondering, which MP would be monumentally ignorant enough, intellectually blind enough and catastrophically stupid enough to try to argue for continued support for First Nations University, despite the fact that everyone was fed up with its governance problems and that the government was quite right to pull its funding.

Well, now we know. Hello, Mr. Goodale:

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Wascana, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, yesterday’s budget mentions post-secondary education for aboriginal people, but there is no mention of funding and no mention of First Nations University in Regina. That institution is working hard with partners to correct its governance problems. The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, the University of Regina and the government of Saskatchewan are all pulling together to help.

Will the federal government fully support these combined efforts to first fix and then preserve First Nations University?

Mr. John Duncan (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we continue to work on options to ensure the affected students complete their academic year. That is our primary concern. As previously stated, we will not be renewing the funding agreement with First Nations University. In terms of discussions with the province the department continues to look at a wide range of options for the funding.

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Wascana, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this is about hundreds of aboriginal and non-aboriginal students now at First Nations University and generations yet to come. It is about treaty rights and it is about the federal minister’s fiduciary responsibilities. It is about the proper administration of a genuine university and $8 million in federal funding without which a noble vision will get thrown out with the bath water.

Specifically, is that money in fact in the federal budget for 2010-11? Exactly where is it in the budget and will it be directed to the students at First Nations University?

Mr. John Duncan (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the department has been working since 2005 with the university to address longstanding and systematic problems. There have been allegations of mismanagement of funds, audit information handed to the RCMP commercial crimes unit, and politicization of the board on all issues. Meanwhile attendance has been falling. That is why the university was censured by the major teacher’s union and it is why the province withdrew its funds as well. We need to be accountable to Canadians as well as first nations.

Or, put it another way:

Mr. Goodale, whatever “noble vision” there was with FNU got thrown out or corrupted into a financial cesspool a long time ago. And it wasn’t the Tories who did it; FSIN did it to themselves, and the fact that it took so many years for the people involved to even try to address those problems pretty much screwed their credibility in the eyes of the people looking after taxpayers’ dollars.

This isn’t so much throwing out a “noble vision” as it is junking a clunker that’s finally had its last breakdown. Far better to find a new model for First Nations post-secondary education, than to keep tossing money into something that’s beyond repair.

Well, I said it was a “bread and circus” issue, but it does seem to have captured the MSM’s imagination, so . . . let’s talk about rewording “O Canada.”

Personally I have no objection to “all thy sons’ command.” I can see how some people with only daughters might object, and perhaps these days the Elizabethan “thy” can throw young people, so maybe a rework wouldn’t hurt.

The last time the anthem got changed, the lines “From far and wide” and “God keep our land” were added. The debate wasn’t all that heated for the first, since it was replacing another “We stand on guard”, and there were some grumbles from the PC crowd about the second, but no real movement started up.

If I had to replace “all thy sons,” I’d opt for “all our hearts.” That scans properly, and it’s a bit more in sync with the first-person plural that currently peppers the anthem. And perhaps that’s my point: so long as the replacement isn’t catastrophically bad (which can sometimes happen when well-meaning committees try to change things), people won’t put up that much of a fight. But perhaps you might have a different opinion.

You can find an official text of the Throne Speech here at its official website. A few random thoughts about it:

• “Spending designed for a rainy day should not become an all-weather practice.” Nice line, that.
• Freezing spending on Ministers and members? Well, that’s fine — so long as we’re talking about absolute dollar amounts, as opposed to holding increases to the inflation rate. I’d be very curious to see which members will try to argue against this idea, come the budget. And you can bet, there’ll be a few.
• Eliminating unnecessary appointments to federal agencies, boards, commissions and Crown corporations — let’s be clear here, this is not signalling an end to patronage appointments. The key word here is “unnecessary”; some of these entities might argue that an expansion of their board and staff is indeed necessary in order to improve governance and oversight. And you’ve also got retirements to deal with: when a board member leaves, will the bureaucrats in charge argue that he shouldn’t be replaced in the name of fiscal restraint? I’d be very careful about this one.
• Strengthening laws governing intellectual property and copyright — well, in terms of legislation, that ought to make for a good debate, particularly with Canada’s arts community vs. artist advocates vs. schools vs. the “free downloads” crowd. It certainly would be a lot more substantive than Wafergate.
• Extending support for space-based technologies, especially in support of Arctic sovereignty — translation: launching more satellites, which should make the Canadian Space Agency happy.
• Closing unfair tax loopholes — you know what I’ll bet? I’ll bet there’s going to be some Libranos who are going to look at this, and claim that the government is raising taxes. Any guesses which MP will do that?
• Ensuring that unnecessary regulation does not inhibit the growth of Canada’s uranium mining industry by unduly restricting foreign investment — translation: they want to relax the rules on foreign investment. A political gift to the NDP; they can argue this one for decades, playing it to their voter base.
• If I were working for Atomic Energy of Canada, I’d be worried. The speech talks about “restructuring,” which in most pundits’ eyes can be equalled with “job loss.”
• Strengthening the Universal Child Care Benefit — potentially this means it could go up, or expanded eligibility. This one’s a wait-and-see-the-budget.
• A Prime Ministerial Award for volunteerism — oh dear. Depending on how this is organized, you can bet someone will scream bloody murder about hyperpartisanship whenever an award recipient is announced.
• A biometric passport? I think I’ve just been screwed. Last week I mailed in an application for renewing my passport, along with the passport itself. I have a feeling they’re going to delay the process so I’d get the new one — but knowing how slow bureaucracy works, it won’t arrive until after May, when I really need it.
• Reviewing the English version of O Canada — I think I’d have to call “bread and circus” on this one. Looks a lot like a non-issue designed to make the Opposition huff-and-puff about their patriotism. Which suggests they probably won’t get round to it until August, when “silly season” really starts.
• A national monument to the victims of communism — this strikes me as yet another Opposition target, with accusations of ideology as the ammunition. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea; I’m just not sure that it’s a necessary one.

My overall opinion: not exactly a vision-inspiring agenda, but at least the level of back-patting smugness is tolerable. And there’s enough ideas here to get the Opposition thinking about legitimate issues of dispute, rather than having to drift about making mischief.

This is one of those casual slips of the tongue that really casts doubt on the Waffle’s reputation as an intellectual.

“Is Parliament the sovereign or isn’t it? That’s a question that every Canadian can understand. The Prime Minister is not sovereign. That’s what the issue is.”

The thing is, “The Sovereign” (with the definite article) has a very specific meaning in the Canadian political context. It’s another word for the Head of State, i.e. Queen Elizabeth II, with the Governor-General standing in. In which case, Parliament is most definitely not the Sovereign.

Now, leave out the definite article, and “sovereign” becomes synonymous with power and responsibility. And Norman Spector explains that, no, Parliament isn’t sovereign in that sense either, because the Constitution is what holds sway over any decision reached by the House of Commons.

The Iceman believes that the Waffle was just trying to explain in how he, as Leader of the Opposition, should have the power to bend the government to his will (since the Opposition is bigger than the government). And, theoretically, that sense is probably the one that makes the most sense, for Iffy’s point of view. The problem is, even that doesn’t really work, because it assumes that the other two Opposition party leaders will work in automatic lock-step with the Opposition Leader’s directives. And neither Layton nor Duceppe are that sycophantic.

You would have thought that, as an established writer and television presenter, the Waffle would have been more clear about his words. But once again, the Waffle’s desire to appear as all things to all people, without offending anyone, has hamstrung his ability to speak on the fly.