Patrick Brazeau – 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)

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

February 5, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Patrick Brazeau, Mac Harb charged by RCMP

Suspended Senator Patrick Brazeau and retired senator Mac Harb have been formally charged by the RCMP with one count each of fraud and breach of trust related to inappropriate Senate expense claims.

RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud announced the charges at a news conference at about 11:10 am ET Tuesday.

“The RCMP has proceeded to charge Mr. Brazeau and Mr. Harb with one count each of breach of trust and fraud under sections 122 and 380 of the Criminal Code, ” Michaud said. “Both Mr. Brazeau and Mr. Harb will be appearing in court at a later date.”

The Mounties allege Brazeau and Harb defrauded taxpayers by claiming travel and living expenses to which they were not entitled.

Brazeau was suspended from the Senate in October along with onetime fellow Conservative Senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin. The three former Conservatives were suspended without pay following an outside audit of their expenses.

Harb, who was a Liberal senator until his spending came under scrutiny through an external audit, retired in August after paying back $231,000.

Both Brazeau and Harb, along with Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, were subject to a lengthy Senate investigation of their expenses claims and living allowances.

A Senate committee determined each of the four had claimed tens of thousands of dollars in expenses that they were not entitled to.
The Senate then passed its files to the RCMP.

The charges expected Tuesday against Brazeau and Harb are the first to flow from the RCMP’s own lengthy investigation of the spending scandal, underway since May 2013. (Source: CBC News)

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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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