to move up and down
Analysis: Who shone and who stank in Parliament this year
Call them sizzlers or fizzlers, stars or squibs: they’re the members of Parliament who either rose through the political firmament in 2011, or suffered serious parliamentary pummelling.
Here are some of the politicians who made one of the lists, as compiled by the parliamentary bureau of Postmedia News. But bear in mind — politics being what it is — that any of them could make it onto the opposite list by this time next year.
John Ivison: The rising toll of a ‘failed experiment’ with isolated reserves
Canadians are accustomed to the Red Cross sending emergency aid to Haiti and the Horn of Africa. They are less used to the organization sending blankets and winter clothing to impoverished native Canadians living in tents.
In the stricken northern Ontario aboriginal community of Attawapiskat, it is being portrayed as an alternative to government. The Red Cross stepped in after Alberta wildfires and Quebec floods, but Attawapiskat is a slower-moving disaster. The fly-in reserve near James Bay is facing an acute housing shortage. A state of emergency was declared at the end of September and, as winter begins to bite, dozens of people are living in wood-frame tents and uninsulated sheds, using slop buckets as toilets.
Pictures and video posted online by northern Ontario NDP MP Charlie Angus have shocked Canadians, and the story is likely to get more coverage Tuesday when interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel visits. Small wonder the Opposition is going big. Shots of mouldy, overcrowded houses and Third World poverty beamed into suburban living rooms move people to ask questions of their political leaders. (Photo: Allison Dempster/CBC News)
