Tonight at 8 pm ET a special season finale of #FAQMP. We asked you to vote for the MP you wanted to see most on the show again, and you picked Green Party Leader Elizabeth May in our All-Star MP vote.

Margaret Wilson wrote into our website with a question that sums up something we have heard over and over again this year on #FAQMP . Many people are frustrated that they are not getting a response when they write to their MP’s. So Margaret asked, what is the most effective method a constituent has of getting a politicians attention?

Elizabeth May recalled that in the days when she worked as an environment advisor to the Mulroney government, letters to MP’s were used as a barometer to measure public reaction and wants on policy.  She explains that such letters greatly influenced Brian Mulroney’s environmental policies. But she believes that has changed.

“Well, they are ignoring the letters to their office, aren’t they?” says May.

Instead, May encourages people to go back to an old, tried but true method of getting a politician’s attention. Continue Reading

In honour of Aboriginal History Month, ichannel is rebroadcasting a special series of 1-hour shows, hosted by Karyn Pugliese, that examine social justice issues, unique challenges as well as success stories in Aboriginal communities across Canada. You can watch on our website, or tune in to ichannel Mondays at 9pm ET.

Mon. June 4. Sisters in Spirit. In Canada, more than 600 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered since the 1960s — and half of those cases remain unsolved.  Are Aboriginal women more vulnerable to violence? Human rights groups say yes, and add that government, law enforcement and the media are failing to protect and bring justice to these victims of violence and their families. Continue Reading

Tonight at 8 PM ET we have Conservative MP Scott Armstrong. Watch online.

One item on viewer’s minds this week is the issue of abortion. While pro-lifers have hoped Conservatives would reopen the debate, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has stated publicly that his party is not interested in doing so, to the relief of Pro-choice groups. Until recently, that is.

Conservative backbencher, Stephen Woodworth, put forward a motion as a private member, known as M-312. The motion asks Parliament to strike a special committee of the House to review the Subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada which states that a child becomes a human being only at the moment of complete birth.  #FAQMP viewer Gail Rhyno wanted to know how Scott Armstrong will vote on this motion.

Continue Reading

Photo by: Demetri1968 at en.wikipedia

My first job after graduating university was working as a technical writer for StatsCan.  Their offices, a series of squat gray and beige low rises, are located in an area of Ottawa called Tunney’s Pasture (named for one of Ottawa’s early farming families.) Each morning I arrived at work via Ottawa’s rapid transit system, walked upstairs, crossed a large parking lot and made my way into one of the non-descript buildings, where I spent my days translating computer-geek into English.

One day in May, about 14 years ago I stepped off the bus and heard… traditional drums.  It’s an unmistakable sound. Our people often describe the sound of the drums as heart beats, I think because you feel the beat of the drums inside you.

Making my way up to the parking lot I saw four teepees, a food truck, arts and crafts tables and a Pow Wow arena. It was a head-scratcher.

Why had a Pow Wow broken out overnight at StatsCan?

I was being introduced to a long-time, but not very widely known, tradition –Aboriginal Awareness Week. Each May since 1992, the public service had invited First Nations, Métis and Inuit dancers, artists, elders and storytellers to celebrate and educate the public service about their history and cultures. Of course there is food too. Continue Reading

Mauril Bélanger  is the Liberal Critic for Official Languages  and Vice Chair of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. and tonight’s guest on #FAQMP. Watch online at 8 PM ET.

After a humbling third-place finish last election the Liberal Party has been looking for new ways to reach out to Canadians as part of their rebuilding process. One of their never-been-done before ideas, adopted at the party convention held earlier this year, is to let the public choose the next Liberal Leader. In the past – and for all other federal parties in Canada – you must buy a party membership to cast a vote for the party leader.

However, next time around, the Liberals will open up the vote to anyone who says they support the principles of the Party, the one condition is they can’t be a member of another federal political party. This has some people like our viewer Bev concerned. She wrote into our website to ask if this would make the Liberal Party vulnerable to special interest groups? It’s a concern that long time Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger has heard before. Could there be cheating? Could supporters of other political parties take over and vote for the worst candidate? Could the vote be spoiled by special interest groups who are pursuing their own interests but don’t care a whit about the Liberals, their Party’s values?

“You’ve got to have some trust at some point. We’re going to check so that Fluffy the Cat doesn’t become a member… So we’re going to do some basic verification, ” jokes Bélanger. On a more serious note he adds, “There’s a matter also of common decency which we think will prevail and were not totally naïve so will be on the lookout.”

He says the idea of open party leadership selection has worked well in other countries, citing France as an example.

Continue Reading

Tonight at 8 pm ET watch on ichannel or join us online to listen to our interview with the Liberal MP for St. Barbe – Baie Verte, Newfoundland and Labrador, Gerry Byrne.

Melissa from North York starts the ball rolling this week, asking Former Liberal tourism critic, and the current Critic for Economic Development in Atlantic Canada, Gerry Byrne, how travel in Canada can be made more affordable. She notes she visited Paris last year, and the cost of the flight was cheaper than flying to Newfoundland.

Tourism is one area Byrne agrees Canada needs to develop economically.  His home province of Newfoundland and Labrador has worked hard to promote tourism, and attracts 500,000 tourists each year.

“If Canada were able to do the exact same thing we would have 33 million passengers, 33 million tourists, to take in everything that is great about our country,” says Byrne. And — it goes without saying — to drop tourism dollars into the Canadian economy.

Byrne agrees with Melissa that the high cost of air travel is a problem that discourages both domestic and foreign tourism.  Canada, he says, is consistently listed by potential tourists as the number one place they’d like to visit, but less tourists are coming each year. In fact, Byrne says Canada has slipped from number 7 to number 15 as a travel destination. Air travel costs are part of the problem, and to get those costs down Byrnes says Canada needs to create economies of scale, which ironically means prices won’t drop until we attract more tourists. So how do you break what sounds like a vicious cycle, especially considering the economic woes plaguing European and US economies?

Continue Reading

Garry Breitkreuz will be on #FAQMP Monday April 23 at 8 pm ET.  Tune into ichannel, or watch online  at 8 pm ET.

Garry Breitkreuz , the Conservative Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville since 1993, has become well known both nationally and internationally for his work and expertise on the federal long gun registry file.

It all started 18 years ago, one year after his election. The rookie MP was asked to attend a town Hall meeting opposing the federal long gun registry. He admits he didn’t know much about the topic at the time. He was surprised to find the room heavily crowded, signaling this was a hot-button issue for his constituents.

“I was just shocked how many people were there. The reason I was shocked it was -39° — and with the wind chill it was even colder than that,” he recalls.  “They welcomed me to the platform and asked that I make a few remarks. I didn’t really know anything about the firearms issue, so I said some off-handed remarks like: “Well I don’t know how you can be opposed to gun control. Would not be a good thing, you know, improving public safety ?” he recalls. “They were very polite and they challenged me to take a closer look, scratch below the surface, and see what this is all about… I had to do a 180, after few months.”

Breitkreuz became convinced the registry was not doing its job, and should be eliminated. Since then his party has maintained that the long gun registry – introduced by the Liberals, and supported by some NDP – did not save lives, but instead made criminals out of any legal long gun owners who did not keep their paperwork up to date. This year the Conservatives pushed through controversial legislation to scrap the registry.

But now – many of our viewers wanted to know – will the Conservatives take up the hand gun controversy?

Continue Reading

It’s the last vote of the season at #FAQMP and we wanted to make it a special one.

We decided to make an “All-Stars Block”, inviting back some of the MPs who had the highest votes and/or received the most questions throughout the season.

In the running are: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC), Liberal Deputy leader Ralph Goodale (Wascana, SK), Conservative Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough, ON), Liberal Aboriginal Affairs Critic Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s, ON), and Conservative MP Joy Smith (Kildonan—St. Paul, MB).

The online voting for the #FAQMP “All-Stars” runs from March 27 to April 10. You can vote one time per day by clicking on the picture of the MP you’d like to see on the show, and don’t forget to send in the questions you want us to ask.

Thanks everyone for paticipating!

Photo courtesy of Media Ball

Watch on ichannel or online Monday March 26 at 8 pm ET

It’s funny when one of the first questions you ask a politician is to justify their existence.

But that’s the question @I_LuvTO wanted us to ask.  “Don’t you think the Senate is undemocratic and should be abolished?” she tweeted.  The NDP opposition would agree. Scrapping the Senate was part of their election platform, but not Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau.

“I don’t believe scrapping the Senate is the answer,”  says Brazeau. “But having said that, obviously like any political institution or other institution there’s always the opportunity for improvement, and that’s why the Conservatives have tried to reform the Senate, to make it more accountable and democratic. “ Continue Reading

Join us Monday March 5 at 8 PM ET  for our interview with the Liberal MP for Guelph Frank Valeriote online or on ichannel.

Yes, Liberal MP Frank Valeriote comes from THAT riding: Guelph. The riding at the centre of an election fraud allegation that has sparked cries of “foul” across Canada.  Since the story broke, other Opposition MPs, and at least one Conservative MP,  have said their ridings may have been affected. The number is growing as journalists and MPs  shoutout across the twitterverse for any constituents who remember misleading calls to come forward.  The topic has trended, and the twitterverse is divided on what it all means.  A lone gunman? A Conservative conspiracy? Is the spread to 40+ ridings mass hysteria? Is it a smear campaign? Tweeps and bloggers are on all sides of these yet to be answered questions but seem to agree about one thing: this whodunnit, however it finishes, has ended an age of  innocence of Canadian politics.

In this interview taped just days before the story went viral, @cdnpolitico asked Valeriote to take us back to where it all began.  And he does. Guelph. April 2011. Spring. A rough and tumble campaign. Alleged dirty tricks. Possible election fraud.

Continue Reading