Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be spending his Victoria Day long weekend meeting with fellow world leaders.
He’ll start by heading to Camp David, Maryland on Friday to meet with G8 leaders for two days. From there, Harper will head to Chicago to meet up with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Defence Minister Peter MacKay. The threesome will be representing Canada at the two-day NATO summit.
The top agenda item for Harper at the G8 will be the economy, although he and other leaders will also be hearing from African countries about food security on the continent. It’s interesting timing considering the UN special rapporteur on the right to food just wrapped up an investigation in Canada where he found unacceptable levels of hunger and inequality.
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Also travelling is Human Resources Minister Diane Finley. The minister is talking labour and employment at a G20 summit, all while a firestorm brews at home over the vague changes she’s promised to make to employment insurance.
Other parliamentarians will be wrapping up work in Ottawa on Friday before heading back home for a constituency week. The NDP has promised to spend most of the week doing cross-country hearings on the Conservatives massive budget bill. Liberal leader Bob Rae will spend a good part of the week in British Columbia.
In the chamber:
Members will be debating and voting on an opposition motion tabled by NDP MP Jasbir Sandhu, who hails from Surrey, B.C. Sandhu wants to see Harper officially apologize in the House of Commons to Canada’s South Asian community for how the government treated a group of immigrants who arrived in Vancouver in 1914 via a ship named the Komogata Maru. Discriminatory policies prevented the passengers from leaving the ship. Instead they remained afloat in Burrard Inlet for two months without basic necessities like food and water. Harper already made an apology at an outdoor festival in 2008, but Sandhu said many consider the “informal” apology insincere and rude.
After question period, MPs will be resuming debate on a private members bill from Liberal MP Scott Sims that would allow Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security payments to be made biweekly at the request of recipients. Currently payments are made just once a month. It’s the third time such a bill has been brought before the House of Commons
In committee:
As usual, there are no committee meetings scheduled for Fridays.
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