Assets & Liabilities – March 09

A monthly look at actions that add or subtract from our Parliamentary Democracy

Asset – Senator McCoy and her colleagues efforts to split the omnibus budget bill into sections so that each measure can be debated and voted upon on its own merits.

Liabilities – Minister Flaherty for appearing before the Senate to pressure them to pass said bill “immediately” without examining and considering each section, much of which is not budgetary issues.

Asset – The several citizen web sites springing up that attempt to enhance our access to information or allow better internal government communication.

Liabilities – The attempts to reduce or eliminate the Parliamentary Budget Officers ability to produce independent reports and make them public.

Asset - Commons Speaker Peter Milliken for standing firm in his efforts to stop the “debate” during question period from descending into a series of personal attacks upon various MP’s.

Liabilities - Officials of the Privy Council Office for their narrow view of the auditor general's mandate and expressing their view that aspects of the recent report “go beyond the auditor general's mandate”

Liabilities – The governments failure to support our national broadcaster (CBC) in these difficult times whilst considering help for private broadcasters.



Feel free to add your own thoughts to the list, I just wish it were as easy to find things for the asset side of the ledger as it is to find liabilities. Support Democracy - Recommend this Post at Progressive Bloggers