Paging Joe Comartin…

In justice news

Ex-Liberal official guilty of fraud not going to jail

MONTREAL — Benoit Corbeil, a former top federal Liberal party official, won’t be going to jail after all.

Corbeil who pleaded guilty to influence peddling and fraud charges had his 15 month jail sentence reduced to 12 months served in the community by the Quebec Court of Appeal in a ruling issued on Wednesday.

In upholding his appeal on the fraud charge, but upholding his conviction on the corruption charge, the court also absolved him of the order to repay $117,000 to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Did you really expect anything different?

Now, will we see opposition MPs call the Minister of Justice to the mat to explain how this judicial outcome could have occurred?

Explain Rahim Jaffer sentence, ministers told

Joe Comartin doesn’t believe Rahim Jaffer received favourable treatment for his driving conviction but he wants the federal and Ontario governments to tell Canadians that.

Mr. Comartin, the NDP justice critic and former long-time trial lawyer, believes there is a risk that the Jaffer case will shake the integrity of the judicial system.

It seems that we need tougher sentencing guidelines for committing fraud while Liberal. The Crown could not proceed on the heftier charges in the Jaffer case because he was not searched in compliance with his Charter rights. However, Corbeil was convicted.

Speaker election – interviews

In general, I’m asking the same four questions

1) 30 second to 1 minute pitch on why you should be Speaker
2) Why replace the incumbent?
3) It’s a minority Parliament and the election was framed to reinvigorate a “dysfunctional” Parliament (Prime Minister’s framing of the situation). How would you work to improve the behaviour in Parliament?
4) The Speaker delegates authority of press-related matter to the Parliamentary Press Gallery which is slow to change to recognize the evolution of new media be it blogs, youtube, facebook, twitter. Will you direct Parliament to recognize new actors in the press space?

Merv Tweed:

Barry Devolin:

Andrew Scheer:

Joe Comartin:

Royal Galipeau:
[attending other business in the riding today]

Peter Milliken:
[not doing press]

Mauril Belanger:
[his helpful staff are trying to set up a phone call for later today. UPDATE: It appears that this won’t be possible.]