Pamela Wallin – mackaycartoons

Friday July 15, 2016

July 14, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 15, 2016

Someone must be held accountable for spending accusations: Brazeau

Spending in the upper chamber still needs to be cleaned up, Sen. Patrick Brazeau said Thursday as he promised to push for more changes when he makes his triumphant return to the Senate in the fall.

Brazeau said someone has to be held accountable for the fact that he has spent the last three years of his life under what he describes as false allegations of misspending and wrongdoing.

Brazeau summoned the media to his Ottawa office Thursday and spoke out publicly at a news conference for the first time since his long, difficult legal saga began more than three years ago.

Brazeau has long insisted he did nothing wrong when he filed housing claims for a secondary home near Parliament Hill, noting he met the test the Senate now uses for verifying a primary residence.

Independent auditors from Deloitte couldn’t conclude he broke any rules because the rules themselves were so vague, he added. But the Senate rejected that finding and ordered Brazeau to repay about $49,000 in housing claims.

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Months later, in November 2013, Brazeau was suspended without pay in an emotional vote in the upper chamber. Some Conservative senators abstained, believing it unfair to treat Brazeau the same as fellow members Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy.

Brazeau said he wants the whole thing to be “water under the bridge,” but knows that may be impossible.

“What happened in the Senate with me in particular … was unjust and somebody needs to be held accountable,” he said.

“And I’m going to work darn hard to make sure that place gets cleaned up, because each time you hear senators saying, ‘Oh, well, we changed these rules and we changed those rules’ — well, they haven’t done enough and I’m going to start working on that right away.”

The rule changes, a key pressure point in the Senate, are at the heart of a dispute between one senator and the Senate committee that oversees spending. The committee has threatened to cut off Sen. John Wallace’s expense privileges if he doesn’t sign a declaration saying he is in compliance with Senate rules.(Source: Metro)

Thursday, November 7, 2013

November 7, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, November 7, 2013

A Great Game: Stephen Harper’s hockey history captures the pulse of a young Canada

Can a book this long awaited also be unexpected? Stephen Harper’s first book is. A Great Game: The Forgotten Leafs & The Rise of Professional Hockey is billed as a look at the early history of the sport. It’s being marketed as a tale for hockey obsessives. But what it is, really, is something better and more interesting and, from the perspective of book sellers, probably less saleable: a history of Canada in the early years of the last century, before the old world was washed away by The Great War.

The entry into that world comes through the tale of Toronto’s earliest professional hockey teams. Between 1908 and 1914, they challenged for the Stanley Cup. They did so while fighting a far more vicious battle off the ice: against Toronto’s conservative hockey establishment, which sought to destroy any club or player committing the original sin – playing the game for money.

Mr. Harper’s book reads a bit like a PhD thesis, which is to say that it is well researched, and sometimes heavy going. He seems to be aiming to write the definitive take on these events, so minor details aren’t left out. The pacing of the narrative sometimes suffers. But the Prime Minister does a good job of taking you back to the country, and the time, that gave birth to the national game.

The Canada of 100 years ago is in some ways easily recognizable to us: immigrants arrived in record numbers, the cities boomed and hockey was already incredibly popular, with the Stanley Cup already the ultimate prize. Players wanting to make their fortune headed south: After he and his teammates in Berlin (now Kitchener, Ont.) were suspended for accepting a gift of $10 gold coins from the city’s mayor, John “Doc” Gibson moved to northern Michigan and created what appears to have been North America’s first openly professional hockey team, in 1903.

There were debates over hockey violence, and counterclaims that new rules were robbing the game of its manly nature. In 1904, the Belleville Intelligencer accused the authorities of turning hockey into a wimpy “cross between croquet and ping-pong.” It sounds like a quote from Coach’s Corner.

But in other ways the Canada that is the setting for A Great Game is now a foreign country. Toronto before the First World War was run by people who saw themselves as defenders of the British heart of a British Canada. Mr. Harper describes them as so conservative that they remained stuck in the Victorian era long after it had ended, and he contrasts them with the “palpably more flexible” elites of Montreal. (Continued: Globe & Mail)

FEEDBACK

Letter to the Editor, Hamilton Spectator, November 8, 2013

Kudos to Graeme MacKay for the Great Game cartoon, showing the three Senators being tossed out. Due process was surely a fourth victim.

The long awaited book on hockey by our prime minister reportedly shows great admiration for goalies. They consistently keep over 90 per cent of all shots from scoring. It is an average that Stephen Harper can only dream about, judging from recent Question Periods in Parliament.

Richard Ring, Grimsby

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

October 29, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Senate to explore lighter punishments for Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau

The Conservative government leader in the Senate says he will discuss options for easing the proposed sanctions against three senators as he faces resistance within his caucus to the idea of lengthy suspensions without pay or benefits.

Claude Carignan said he will consult with Conservative senators in a closed-door meeting on Monday to determine if his motions to suspend the senators should be amended.

At least two Tory senators – Don Plett and Hugh Segal – and one MP spoke out publicly against the motions last week, saying the senators are being punished without being found guilty.

Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau all face the threat of suspension without pay or benefits over what Mr. Carignan has characterized as “gross negligence” in their managing of parliamentary resources.

The allegations relate to tens of thousands of dollars in disputed expense claims.

Between four and seven Conservative senators in total have expressed reservations about the suspension motions, according to sources familiar with the matter. Some of the concerns include questions about whether the senators have been granted due process and a fear that the sanctions could interfere with a police investigation. Several also expressed concern that the suspensions would remove medical benefits for the senators, a source said. Now, lesser punishments are being considered – particularly for Ms. Wallin, a source familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Carignan said he does not envisage accepting suspensions with pay – calling it more of a reward than a sanction. He suggested the Senate will evaluate the situation of the three senators individually, meaning that the sanctions could vary based on last week’s statements, and any further comments on their part before the matter is put to a vote. (Source: Globe & Mail)

SOCIAL MEDIA

This cartoon was featured at Yahoo! Canada News and on its Facebook page.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

October 17, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, October 17, 2013

Government wants to force providers to unbundle TV packages

The government’s plan to force content providers and distributors to unbundle cable and satellite TV packages and offer viewers a more à la carte way of choosing the channels they subscribe to might seem like a consumer-friendly move, but some experts say it could end up hurting consumers and the TV industry.

“It’s a horrible idea,” said Laura Martin, a senior analyst in the entertainment, cable and media division of the U.S.-based investment and asset management firm Needham and Company
Martin and her colleague Dan Medina wrote about the potential impact of the unbundling of television services in the U.S. in a July 2013 report titled The Future of TV. They suggest in the report that unbundling would cost content owners and distributors about half their revenue and shrink the channel offerings available to U.S. consumers to “fewer than 20 channels.”

“Most entertainment cable channels generate about 50 per cent of their revenue from advertising and 50 per cent from subscription payments,” they write. “The reason there are subscriber payments at all is that there is zero ad revenue until a channel reaches at least 25 million homes. Any channel with less than a 25 per cent penetration of U.S. households (and recall that HBO — the best of the best — only has 30 per cent penetration) would probably not survive in an à la carte world.” (Source: CBC News)

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

October 16, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Throne speech expected to make scant mention of scandal-plagued upper chamber

The disgraced Senate will serve as a backdrop for next week’s throne speech and is bound to dominate debate during the fall sitting of Parliament.

Yet there’ll be scant mention of the scandal-plagued Senate in the speech, which is to be read Wednesday by Governor General David Johnston from a regal throne in the ornate upper chamber.

Insiders say Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has concluded it can do little to clean up the unelected Senate until the Supreme Court rules on the constitutional requirements for reforming or abolishing the chamber, which could take a year or more.

Hence, any kind of reform to the upper house has been put on hold — including purely administrative measures, which would be entirely within the government’s purview to implement, such as requiring senators to publicly disclose details of their expenses.

The throne speech’s expected silence on the subject comes amid an ongoing Senate expenses scandal that has mushroomed over the past year and shows no sign of going away any time soon.

The RCMP is investigating allegedly fraudulent living and travel expenses claimed by four senators — former Conservative caucus members Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin and former Liberal Mac Harb.

Duffy is also under the Mounties’ microscope for accepting $90,000 from Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, in order to reimburse the Senate for his dubious expense claims. (Source: National Post)

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