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Thursday, November 5, 2009 12:24 PM

The little PMB that could

Jane Taber

Hot: Candice Hoeppner. The Manitoba Conservative MP - with a little help from her friends on the Liberal and NDP benches - scores big as her private member’s bill (PMB) to abolish the gun registry passes second-reading. Ms. Hoeppner, 45, a former political consultant is a rookie MP from the class of ’08 and a popular member of caucus. (In fact, she was Stephen Harper’s Manitoba campaign manager for his 2004 leadership bid.)

Ms. Hoeppner had a little help from other friends, too. Her colleague Gary Breitkreuz is really the driving force behind this, helping her craft her bill and pushing it along. Some opposition ridings were targeted with ads and other publicity. Still, it is astonishing that a PMB of this consequence has made it so far. Usually, PMBs die on the order paper.

House of Commons statistics show that since 1994, 43 PMBs have received royal assent, including several substantive ones, such as former prime minister Paul Martin's successful attempt in 2006 - he was a backbencher then - to resurrect the Kelowna Accord. Former NDP MP Svend Robinson also was successful with his PMB on hate propaganda.

Generally, however, the ones that are successful are non-controversial - declaring lacrosse our national summer sport and hockey our national winter sport or the declaration that the the beaver is the “symbol of sovereignty of the Dominion of Canada.” There is also a legendary PMB put forward by a young, rookie backbencher in 1964. Its aim was to change the name of Trans-Canada Airlines to Air Canada. The MP was Jean Chrétien.

Not: Seniors and Michael Ignatieff. Frank Graves’s new EKOS national opinion poll shows that Canadian seniors - 65 and older - love Stephen Harper and his Tories. Mr. Graves was surprised to see that more than half - 51.2 per cent - of seniors support the Conservatives compared to 26.5 per cent for Mr. Ignatieff's Liberals.

In an interview this morning, Mr. Graves said that this “age affect” is an important change for the Tories, especially because seniors will come out to vote. He said this “very strong performance” is “not typical” and figures it is because this group is comfortable with the Harper government’s performance on the economy.

You can read the full EKOS data here.

EKOS national opinion poll - November 5, 2009

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Ottawa Notebook Contributors

Jane Taber, senior political writer

Jane Taber

Jane Taber has been on Parliament Hill since the Mulroney days, first writing for the Ottawa Citizen in 1986. Since then, she's reported for a small television network, WTN, and for the National Post before joining The Globe’s parliamentary bureau in 2002. She is the senior political writer and also co-host of Question Period, which airs Sundays on CTV.

 
John Ibbitson

John Ibbitson

John Ibbitson started at The Globe in 1999 and has been Queen's Park columnist and Ottawa political affairs correspondent. Most recently, he was a correspondent and columnist in Washington, where he wrote Open and Shut: Why America has Barack Obama and Canada has Stephen Harper. He returned to Ottawa as bureau chief in 2009. Before joining The Globe, he worked as a reporter, columnist and Queen’s Park correspondent for Southam papers.

 

Steven Chase

Steven Chase has covered federal politics in Ottawa for The Globe since mid-2001. He's previously worked in the paper's Vancouver and Calgary bureaus. Prior to that, he reported on Alberta politics for the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun, and on national issues for Alberta Report. He's had ink-stained hands for far longer though, having worked as a paperboy for the (now defunct) Montreal Star, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Vancouver Sun and the North Shore News.

 
Deputy Ottawa bureau chief Campbell Clark

Campbell Clark

Campbell Clark has been a political writer in The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau since 2000. Before that he worked for The Montreal Gazette and the National Post. He writes about Canadian politics and foreign policy. He stopped being fascinated by ShamWow commercials after that guy’s nasty incident in Florida, but still wonders if one can really pull a truck with that Mighty Putty stuff.

 

Bill Curry

A member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1999, Bill Curry worked for The Hill Times and the National Post prior to joining The Globe in Feb. 2005. Originally from North Bay, Ont., Bill reports on a wide range of topics on Parliament Hill. He is very protective of the office copy of Marleau & Montpetit.

 

Gloria Galloway

Gloria Galloway has been a journalist for almost 30 years. She worked at the Windsor Star, the Hamilton Spectator, the National Post, the Canadian Press and a number of small newspapers before being hired by The Globe and Mail as deputy national editor in 2001. Gloria returned to reporting two years later and joined the Ottawa bureau in 2004. She has covered every federal election since 1997 and has done several tours in Afghanistan.

 

Daniel Leblanc

Daniel Leblanc studied political science at the University of Ottawa and journalism at Carleton University. He became a full-time reporter in 1998, first at the Ottawa Citizen and then in the Ottawa bureau of The Globe and Mail. While he likes the occasional brown envelope, he is also open to anonymous emails.

 

Stephen Wicary

Stephen Wicary has been with The Globe since 2001, working on the news desk as a copy editor, page designer, production editor and front page editor. During the U.S invasion of Iraq, he pulled a three-month stint as overnight editor of the website. He moved to the parliamentary bureau at the end of 2008 to bolster online political coverage.