Don’t Let Biden and Blinken Get Away With Aiding a Second Nakba

On Wednesday, the Israeli army raided Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, terrorizing patients, medical staff and families sheltering in the hospital compound. Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon, told Al Jazeera from inside the hospital that “food and drinking water haven’t come to the hospital for the sixth day now, with no way of getting anything in the hospital.” He expressed shock that “the whole world has been witnessing this crime and seeing everything that is happening and no one has stopped it.”

“No one has said loudly this is not allowed,” he added. “Where is the international community?”

Israeli and US Leaders Must Be Held Accountable for the Genocide of Palestinians

In retaliation against the Palestinians in Gaza for Hamas’s October 7 killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians, Israel has intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza to a “complete siege.” Israel is slaughtering civilians, cutting off their food, water, electricity and fuel, ordering more than 1 million of them to leave their homes and then bombing their evacuation routes, and trapping them with nowhere to escape.

Israeli forces are amassing tanks on the border in preparation for an imminent invasion. The United States is sending massive firepower to help Israel.

Rex Murphy, the oilsands and the cone of silence

CBC News is a secret service.

I used to be the Globe and Mail’s national security reporter and I wrote a book about Canada’s spy agency, CSIS. So I know something about secret services and how they treat pesky reporters who ask prickly questions about how they operate.

I had more success prying out information about CSIS’s dubious conduct than I have had recently delving into the questionable practices of CBC News and one of its high-profile and (usually) loquacious personalities, who has, in the face of some uncomfortable queries, suddenly and uncharacteristically taken refuge in the cone of silence.

To recap, the prime minister is not responsible for almost anything

To recap, the prime minister is not responsible. He is not responsible for appointing Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau to the Senate. He is not responsible for appointing senators from provinces in which they were not resident, and he is not responsible for their subsequent activities shilling for the Tories across the country at public expense.

And he is most certainly not responsible for the clandestine campaign, involving officials in his office, the chairman of the Conservative Fund Canada, and several leading Conservative senators, to repay Senator Duffy’s falsely claimed expenses on his behalf and conceal his misdeeds from the public. He is not responsible for his spokesman’s statements, even after the plot had been exposed, praising Mr. Duffy for “doing the right thing” and vouching confidence in his chief of staff, Nigel Wright.

Eyes on the Spies: Canadians Deserve Accountability

For anyone involved in the privacy debate, it's been a busy couple of years. Barely a week goes by without new revelations about the activities of the Canadian spy agency known as Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and its Five Eyes partners in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

In just the past few weeks, for example, we learned that the CSE actively exploited security holes in a popular mobile web browser. We also learned that the U.K. government passed quiet legislation granting Government Communications Headquarters (Britain's version of CSE) immunity for hacking into our computers and mobile phones. And we've seen the U.S. National Security Agency implicated in extensive spying on European citizens and private companies, in ways that go far beyond national security.

Bill C-51: 4 Former PMs Call For Better Intelligence Accountability

OTTAWA - Four former prime ministers and several retired Supreme Court members are among almost two dozen prominent Canadians calling for stronger security oversight.

The statement published Thursday in the Globe and Mail and La Presse newspapers comes as the Conservative government proposes a new, expanded mandate for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

"Protecting human rights and protecting public safety are complementary objectives, but experience has shown that serious human rights abuses can occur in the name of maintaining national security," the statement says.

Conservatives downplay allegations of misusing mail privileges

Conservative MPs defended themselves Tuesday after House of Commons administration suggested in a secret report that about 10 MPs, including a handful of cabinet ministers, had misused their parliamentary mailing privileges.

The possibility that the Tories circumvented the rules of the Commons when it comes to sending out political flyers free of charge, and that this could cost the party tens of thousands of dollars – or possibly more – left MPs scrambling to distance themselves from the NDP, which is on the hook for $1.17 million for partisan mailings.

Want details about a program promoting accessible and accountable government? Sorry, no can do

It’s an admirable motto: “Visible government = accessible government = accountable government,” one adopted by the program overseeing federal branding. Try finding out much about it, though, and you’ll soon hit a brick wall.

The Federal Identity Program (colloquially called “FIP” among bureaucrats familiar with the program) was established in 1970 to develop and maintain the integrity of Canadian emblems like the coat of arms, the flag symbol and the Canada wordmark — all familiar sights that help Canadians know when they’re looking at something belonging to the feds whether it’s a GST cheque, passport, income tax form, or the now-retired Canadarm.

About those 620,000 missing patient files: The timing's interesting but the accountability's a bigger deal

Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne claims to be outraged he's only just learned the personal health records of 620,000 Albertans were on a laptop computer that disappeared, presumably stolen, in Edmonton last September. And well he should be.

But no one in a position of responsibility seems all that concerned that the records -- which included names, birthdays, health card numbers, billing codes and diagnostic codes of enough patients to fill the Edmonton Oilers' planned new hockey arena 31 times -- were on a private IT consultant's unencrypted computer lying around the offices of a private company that operates a string of 16 medical clinics.

That's just one of those things, here in free-enterprise Alberta.

Why there’s no shame in Ottawa

If we can accept, as Scott Reid wrote for the Citizen on the weekend, that Canadian politics lacks shame — or, at the very least, the ability to administer it properly at the right times — then the next logical question is: Why is there no shame? A combination of factors, no doubt. But primarily, it might have something to do with too much discussion and not enough dialogue.

There’s a bad recycled joke in Ottawa about how the government’s reluctance to provide complete or informative responses in the House of Commons each afternoon should come as no surprise. It’s called question period, not answer period, the gag goes. But, in some fairness, answering questions put to it is only one of the options officially available to the government during question period. Ministers can also: defer the question; take the question as notice; explain why they can’t give an answer at that moment; or say nothing at all.

UBS Off The Hook For $2.3 Billion In Losses From Rogue Trader

NEW YORK, Dec 13 (Reuters) - U.S. securities laws have their limits and do not justify making UBS AG liable to shareholders for touting its ability to control risk even as it harbored a rogue trader who caused $2.3 billion of losses, a federal judge ruled on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan threw out a lawsuit seeking to hold the Swiss bank responsible for shareholder losses stemming from revelations about unauthorized and fictitious trades made by former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli.

Nigel Wright-Mike Duffy affair tests Harper's 'new era of accountability'

For his single-minded devotion to business as usual, you have to hand it to Stephen Harper. Really.

There he was Thursday in Lac Megantic, far away from Parliament Hill, committing $95 million to the critical work of decontaminating the site of one of the worst rail disasters in Canadian history.

Harper is frequently the face of his government when it comes to big spending announcements. Good news like that is good for the PM's image.

Harper fails to explain his unconstitutional appointments to the Senate

Earlier this week this writer suggested that the Prime Minister has not yet answered what is at once the simplest and the toughest question about the Senate scandal.

The question concerns the fact that Stephen Harper named folks to the Senate who did not live in the provinces they were supposed to represent.

The Canadian Constitution, the British North America Act, states, in a "very clear" manner, that a Senator must be "resident in" the province he or she represents.

Conspiracy against Rob Ford and Stephen Harper exposed

Yes, Rob Ford did smoke crack cocaine. So what? He says he’ll stay on as Toronto’s mayor. It’s Bill Blair, the police chief investigating Ford who should resign.

Ditto in Ottawa. It’s not Stephen Harper’s fault that he appointed to the Senate three people he now calls grifters. It’s not his fault that his most trusted aide wrote one of those senators, Mike Duffy, a cheque for $90,000 in exchange for unspecified services.

Nor is it the prime minister’s fault that the party he heads paid $13,000 to cover the legal fees Duffy incurred in hammering out the $90,000 deal.

Harper Doesn't Apologize For Senate Scandal In Party Convention Speech

CALGARY — Stephen Harper’s troops are lining up firmly behind him.

The Prime Minister may not have provided any answers or shown any remorse about a Senate scandal that has his party sinking in the polls, but his caucus and delegates at the biennial Conservative convention say he didn't need to.

Harper delivered a rallying speech Friday at the BMO Convention Centre in Calgary. In it, he mocked his opposition, praised the government’s economic record and said senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau had to go.

Harper's Credibility In Expense Scandal On Par With Senators'

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader who promised to usher in a new era of accountability when his government came to power in 2006, is seeing his credibility erode following months of controversy surrounding a Senate expense scandal, a new poll suggests.

Harper promised during a speech to his party in Calgary on Friday that the Conservatives will "do the right thing" and suspend senators Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin without pay, but new poll numbers suggest his credibility is on par with that of the senators who are under investigation by the RCMP.

Oil firms asked to account for climate change risk

A group of global institutional investors have asked the world’s oil companies to determine how much risk they face from potential policies to reduce carbon emissions.

Two U.S.-based ethical investment companies — Ceres and Carbon Tracker Initiative — have written to 45 of the world’s oil companies on behalf of big pension and institutional investors to ask about how they intend to manage demands to deal with climate change.

Eye-popping Tory riding war chests raise eyebrows

OTTAWA - The refusal of Conservative riding associations to explain how they spend millions in taxpayer-subsidized cash raises suspicions they're putting the money to questionable uses, Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale says.

Goodale said he can't fathom how Tory riding associations have racked up eye-popping expenses, such as the nearly $70,000 in "travel and hospitality" reported by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's Whitby-Oshawa association last year.

"That's astounding, that's breathtaking," the veteran Liberal MP said in an interview.

Little accountability for millions spent by federal party riding associations

OTTAWA - Riding associations for federal political parties are sitting on nearly $30-million of taxpayer-subsidized cash, with little obligation to account publicly for how the money is spent.

Annual financial reports filed recently with Elections Canada indicate that Conservative electoral district associations are by far the wealthiest, with combined surpluses of $18.3 million in 2012.

As of last week, the richest of all was the Conservative association in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Calgary Southwest riding, which had amassed a war chest of more than $330,000 — the largest of any riding association, Conservative or otherwise, in the country's 308 constituencies.

Corporal Horton Versus the Harper Government

On June 24, RCMP Corporal Greg Horton filed an affidavit in Ottawa. It is 28 pages of single-space text, his detailed reasons for requesting a "Production Order" that will give him the full story of Senator Mike Duffy's public life since late 2008.

It is also the greatest threat that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government have faced, a threat they may not survive.

In saying that, I base my argument on what Corporal Horton's meticulous account says about him, the RCMP, and the Government of Canada -- and what it doesn't. As he himself says, "This is an ongoing investigation involving high-level political officials."