Politics in 2014

[Edward Campbell]

Cue the patronage appointment for a quiet Friday in a few months.

Agreed; Mr Del Masto has done his party a great service. The Liberals and NDP could have, would have made much of a (former, but no one would mention that) CPC MP being thrown out of the House, but as Mercedes Stephenson is explaining right about now, on Twitter (she's @CTVMercedes) "the harassment stuff is definitely of broader interest, or should be," and I suspect the media, even those elements of the media that would love to discomfit Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives, will give great emphasis to the troubles of the errant Liberal MPs, especially given that the Speaker has referred the matter to the secretive Board of Internal Economy.

(I'm not sure where else the Speaker might have sent the matter, there is neither a parliamentary police force to investigate nor a "court" to try any alleged offences on Parliament Hill. Maybe there should be. But "The Board of Internal Economy is the governing body of the House of Commons ... [and it] ... makes decisions and provides direction on financial and administrative matters of the House of Commons, specifically concerning its premises, its services, its staff and Members of the House of Commons." If there is some need for investigation and action it appears to me that the Board must initiate and oversee it. If there is an need for something more then it also seems to me that only the Board can tell the Speaker to take some action.)

But, for the time being, and absent any more allegations, I think that l'affair Ghomeshi and this little imbroglio will shove Mr Del Mastro and his 'crime' - covering up the fact that he donated too much of his own money (not taxpayers' money) to his own election campaign - well back the front pages. Dean Del Mastro will be handsomely rewarded after the next election.

 

[Kirkhill]

Say what???????  ISIL makes the case for buying a 5th generation fighter?

Maybe not on buying the F35 .... but buying something.  They are eating up the hours on the existing fleet of Aerial Effects Providers.

One thing about delaying the purchase:  the longer the delay the fewer the production lines open.  F35 by default?

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

Say what???????  ISIL makes the case for buying a 5th generation fighter?

ISIL almost makes the case against a 5th generation fighter. After all when our victorious CF-18s return, non stealth capable and all, from a successful bombing campaign it'll be hard to sell the need for a stealth fighter.

 

[dapaterson]

You're missing the point. What if the enemy has fifth generation backhoes and dumptrucks?

 

[jpjohnsn]

Agreed; Mr Del Masto has done his party a great service. The Liberals and NDP could have, would have made much of a (former, but no one would mention that) CPC MP being thrown out of the House, but as Mercedes Stephenson is explaining right about now, on Twitter (she's @CTVMercedes) "the harassment stuff is definitely of broader interest, or should be," and I suspect the media, even those elements of the media that would love to discomfit Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives, will give great emphasis to the troubles of the errant Liberal MPs, especially given that the Speaker has referred the matter to the secretive Board of Internal Economy.

I think the bigger point of interest will be how the public reacts to the leader of the 3rd party's handling of this.  From a purely HR standpoint, he appears to be playing this by the numbers and being proactive rather than reactive.  His suspension of the MPs and reaching out to both the speaker and the NDP has gotten him ahead of the media curve and could blunt most of the public's criticism of the party as a whole and his leadership, specifically. 

It's entirely possible he could lose two MPs and yet still gain popularity (especially with female voters) if he sticks to the script. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think the bigger point of interest will be how the public reacts to the leader of the 3rd party's handling of this.  From a purely HR standpoint, he appears to be playing this by the numbers and being proactive rather than reactive.  His suspension of the MPs and reaching out to both the speaker and the NDP has gotten him ahead of the media curve and could blunt most of the public's criticism of the party as a whole and his leadership, specifically. 

It's entirely possible he could lose two MPs and yet still gain popularity (especially with female voters) if he sticks to the script.

I agree with you, too. I think M. Trudeau has handled this very well.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Muck-raking has been around a long time, but the Internet has not.  I think it makes a difference when a pot-stirrer has to publish and distribute broadsheets, versus dumping content onto a web page.

 

[a_majoor]

WRT the CF-35, I suspect this is one of those issues where an election is a bad time to talk about it.

The aircraft is suffering due to the rather inept management of the overall program by the prime contractor, and the unfortunate fact that there are no real alternatives (either by accident or design) given the projected service life out to the 2040's. I am also concerned with the effects of "Moore's Law" (the number of transistors on a chip double every 18 months), which makes the CF-35 pretty much obsolete even now. Given the long lead times for producing new kit, there is a strong incentive to start work on the successor now and being ready to get it into service a lot sooner than 2040.

The other issue has been mentioned upthread: what sort of armed force do we really need? Fighting insurgents like ISIS, the Taliban and assorted other trouble makers around the globe requires one sort of force, while watching the Russians run rings around NATO with their Hybrid Conflict doctrine, or mulling over the possible range of responses China can generate using "Unrestricted Warfare" doctrine (or other variations which generally fall under the "4GW" rubric) requires ranges of capabilities that are well outside of what most people would consider conventional militaries at all (can you imagine a militarized trading floor where soldier-traders monitor the stock market for suspicious trade patterns and have the tools to intervene if needed?)

Of course most politicians, reporters and bureaucrats have a great deal of difficulty talking about military matters due to their lack of experience and understanding, and general lack of interest as well (until someone points out the price tags), so expect a very disjointed and uninformed "debate" on military and security matters falling out from the recent terrorist attacks, mission in the Middle East and other assorted military events.

 

[dapaterson]

WRT the CF-35, I suspect this is one of those issues where an election is a bad time to talk about it.

The aircraft is suffering due to the rather inept management of the overall program by the prime contractor, and the unfortunate fact that there are no real alternatives (either by accident or design) given the projected service life out to the 2040's. I am also concerned with the effects of "Moore's Law" (the number of transistors on a chip double every 18 months), which makes the CF-35 pretty much obsolete even now. Given the long lead times for producing new kit, there is a strong incentive to start work on the successor now and being ready to get it into service a lot sooner than 2040.

Moore's Law speaks to processing power; the ability to effectively exploit that processing power is entirely different.  Indeed, the F-35's software is a major part of the ongoing development work, or, to be more direct, the F-35 does not yet do many of the things that make it special, because the software has not been written yet.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Note to The Canadian Press & Scott Brison on this one ....

Federal public servants were asked by the Finance department to promote Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recently announced tax measures on Twitter using the slogan “Strong Families.”

A senior bureaucrat with the Finance department sent out a mass email across government asking organizations to retweet messages about the announcement using the hashtag #StrongFamilies.

“We ask that your organization re-tweet the Department of Finance tweets from @financecanada on the announcement over the following 72 hours,” wrote Jean-Michel Catta, an assistant deputy minister.

“Most of our tweets will contain the hashtags #StrongFamilies ou #Famillesfortes.”

The proposal, which includes income splitting for families with children under 18 and extending the monthly Universal Child Care Benefit to more taxpayers, has not yet received parliamentary approval.

Both the NDP and the Liberals have been sharply critical of the income-splitting plan, which they say will benefit only 15 per cent of Canadian families.

Liberal finance critic Scott Brison argues the tweets are partisan and shouldn’t be promoted by public servants. The government is again spending money to advertise the proposal on TV and radio, even before it is voted on, he noted.

“It shows again that the Conservatives don’t understand the principle of a professional public service separated from partisan politics,” Brison said ....

Government Info-machine bureaucrats (departmental comms folk, not Ministerial political staff) sending out a news release, then asking other departments to share such news releases, isn't "partisan", it's "sharing the message"** -- same same with Twitter posts and hashtags.

** - If said statements clearly attacked political parties, that would be partisan.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In fairness ~ maybe that's not the right word ~ to Brison et al, I'm not sure that "messaging," especially not "messaging" in the social media era is well understood by bureaucrats and many politicians; I'm absolutely certain that I don't understand it.

I find the whole business of communications a bit murky ... I know it's a legitimate skill that organizations, including governments, need to use to explain what they are doing, and why they are doing it, to their clients/customers/voters/etc. I'm just not sure where the line is between "informing" and proselytizing.

 

[ballz]

I consider it partisan. I'd like public servants to be neutral and execute what they're told to execute, not launch Twitter campaigns to support or not support what Parliament has decided or is planning to decide on.

The CAF forbids it's members to act in this manner when it relates to the CAF or DND... this is no different, except that we expect a higher level of professionalism from our members than we do from your every day government employee. Maybe they should take a leaf from our book, just because it's not forbidden doesn't mean they should be unprofessional...

 

[dapaterson]

https://twitter.com/canadianforces

Glass houses and all that...

 

[ballz]

https://twitter.com/canadianforces

Glass houses and all that...

I can understand the need for the CAF to have a Twitter account for PR purposes. However, are they posting things along the lines of
"The CAF supports the decision to send fighter jets to fight ISIS #fightterrorism"
"The CAF supports the DND decision to purchase F-35 stealth fighter jets #strongandfree"
etc???

Probably not... so simply having a Twitter account is not necessarily launching / participating in a Twitter campaign. I find your post to be more along the lines of trolling as I suspect you recognize the difference.

 

[ModlrMike]

I consider it partisan. I'd like public servants to be neutral and execute what they're told to execute, not launch Twitter campaigns to support or not support what Parliament has decided or is planning to decide on.

I would agree with the above if the direction was aimed at individual employees, but it clearly says organizations. I see nothing wrong with government departments participating in information campaigns provided the individual employees are not compelled to use their own resources.

 

[Remius]

Agreed.  No one was asked to retweet anything personally.  This is a departmental comms thing. 

 

[ballz]

Ack. Understand what happened here better now. For some reason I read it as the department asking employees to re-tweet it on their personal accounts or something along those lines.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Moore's Law speaks to processing power; the ability to effectively exploit that processing power is entirely different.  Indeed, the F-35's software is a major part of the ongoing development work, or, to be more direct, the F-35 does not yet do many of the things that make it special, because the software has not been written yet.

Actually lot of the software is in now in object code and moving along quite in the RF/LF hardware and ESM simulators that I have seen. Certainly the underlying source code is trusted and reliable.  What makes this platform give the flyboys that are geeks a blood rush to the penis is the scalability, reliability, resilience  and adaptability of the source software. A new, incompatible sub system need not be hacked and patched for future uses.  This the first fighter aircraft that uses secure apps that access firmware api's, literally downloaded just like you would a utility app from iTunes or Google play. 

 

[larry Strong]

A fly in the ointment?


From CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/b-c-sikhs-quit-liberals-to-protest-justin-trudeau-s-star-candidate-1.2866343

B.C. Sikhs quit Liberals to protest Justin Trudeau's 'star' candidate

Larry

 

[The Bread Guy]

Why can't the government share more data in electronic format?  Because someone could use it to make something up.

The Conservative cabinet minister responsible for freedom of information says some federal data cannot be released to the public in electronic format because people might alter it and spread falsehoods.

There's a fear people could "create havoc" by changing the statistical information, says Treasury Board President Tony Clement.

Federal agencies hold a vast array of data on everything from immigrants held in detention to use of force by RCMP officers.

Some researchers have requested data kept in electronic format, only to receive it as a paper printout.

That makes it virtually impossible for the recipient to sort and filter the data to identify patterns and trends.

The Access to Information Act says federal agencies must provide timely access to records in the format requested ....

Like someone couldn't make up a different version of hard copies, right?  Or misrepresent what's on paper?  :facepalm: