Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Harper v Trudeau 28 Nov 2012 - Lawrence Martin
Harper’s attacks on Trudeau will be vicious
Special to The Globe and Mail
Last updated Wednesday, Nov. 28 2012, 5:14 AM EST
For Stephen Harper, losing to a Trudeau would be the ultimate humiliation. It was his visceral hostility to Pierre Trudeau’s attitude to the West, exemplified by the national energy program, that propelled him into the Reform Party in the first place.
So you can imagine how Mr. Harper felt when a poll came out last week showing that the Liberals under the leadership of Justin Trudeau would defeat him handily. And you can imagine his relief when, right on the heels of that poll, the storm emerged over an interview Mr. Trudeau gave some time ago in which he spoke of how the country would suffer with Albertans at the helm. This was almost in a league with Mr. Harper once saying that Albertans, owing to their treatment from Central Canada, should build a firewall around the province.
Politics Trudeau apologizes for saying Alberta is 'controlling our community'
B.C. MP Joyce Murray launches Liberal leadership bid
John Ibbitson: Harper and Flaherty will bask in Mark Carney’s glory
The two men are polar opposites. Their deep differences mark a time of unusually deep divisions in our politics – a time of contrasting ideologies, regions and visions, making the stakes extraordinarily high. Mr. Harper wants to further his dismantling of the house Trudeau built and cement a conservative ethic. Progressives are of the hope that if George W. Bush could make a Barack Obama possible in the United States, Stephen Harper is making a new force for liberalism possible here.
Mr. Trudeau’s reckless remarks will link him more closely with his father. Given the lingering animosity toward Pierre Trudeau on the Prairies, his son had been trying to distance himself by disowning the despised NEP.
The challenge for Justin, who lacks the diamond-hard intellect of the père, will be to show his mettle in other ways. He has the charisma and the potential for appeal to a new generation. But does he have the ice in the veins that his father showed in standing up to terrorists, separatists and haters of all stripes? In Mr. Harper, he is facing an opponent who has that ice-cold glare and the smarts behind it.
Mr. Harper is not spoken of in such terms too often, but for my money he ranks with Pierre Trudeau as having the sharpest mind among our prime ministers of the last century. It’s a brain that is penetrating, razor-sharp, cold, calculating. Mr. Trudeau’s was more rounded and better-schooled, subject to broader experiences before his political ascendancy. Mr. Harper is essentially a career politician, and his mind, not long on imagination, is more predisposed to political priorities than was the philosopher king’s. But there is no shortage of storage space in that cranium. It is like a warehouse, one in which every issue is fitted, slotted, understood in considerable detail and strategically weighed.
Combine that with his appetite for going for the jugular with every tactic imaginable – he is still running a campaign of lies against NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair on the carbon-tax issue – and you see what the young Trudeau is up against. Mr. Harper will come at him more viciously than other opponents because of the name.
The Liberals were serious in their bid to recruit Mark Carney to run for the leadership, and he actually gave them the go-ahead to put out some feelers. As we learned Monday, there is currently no hope of that: Mr. Carney will be off to the Bank of England for a five-year term as governor. After that, who knows?
Former astronaut Mark Garneau is to enter the Liberal race Wednesday. U.S. Democrats thought they had a promising astronaut candidate in Senator John Glenn in the 1980s, but he disappeared fast. He had a solid but stolid reputation. Too stolid, which is the knock on Mr. Garneau.
The challenge to Mr. Harper will likely be left to Mr. Trudeau. Now that his armour has been dinted, there will be thorough searches by the Conservative hit squad through every inch of his record. It’s likely more ammunition will be found. We’ll see whether he has the steel to withstand.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
McGregor & Maher 16 Nov 2012 - Robocall Plot Thickens
Home
Discussions
ChristmasRob FordRetailingToronto Blue JaysNew movie WednesdayRobocallsHuman SmugglingRCMPWomenHealthSee all
Classic Edition
News
Business
Sports
Entertainment
Lifestyle
Health
Travel
Technology
Shopping
Jobs
Cars
Homes
Remembering
Classifieds
Voices
Andrew Coyne
Bruce Arthur
Katherine Monk
Lori Isber
Matthew Fisher
Misty Harris
Michael Den Tandt
Reb Stevenson
William Marsden
Weather
Select a Region Alberta British Columbia Manitoba New Brunswick Newfoundland Nova Scotia Nunavut Northwest Territories Ontario Prince Edward Island Quebec Saskatchewan Yukon Select a City Locate me
0
Elections Canada email trail points to growing suspicions over voter suppression ‘mischief’ during 2011 election
Robbie the Friendly Robot.
Photo: David Kawai / Ottawa Citizencomment Email
Stephen Maher
Glen McGregor
Published: November 16, 2012, 7:16 pm
Updated: 5 days ago OTTAWA — Three days before the last federal election, Elections Canada confronted the Conservatives about suspicious calls directing voters to the wrong polling stations but were met with denials of any wrongdoing from the party’s lawyer, internal emails show.
In one email, an official with the agency reported a growing number of misleading calls as voting day approached and said some were worried that a “scam” to mislead voters was under way.
The emails, released under the Access to Information Act, show that voters in ridings across Canada believed they had been misled by Conservative callers.
They also cast doubt on the theory, advanced by some Conservatives, that reports of so-called “poll-moving calls” were invented by voters who flooded Elections Canada with nearly 1400 complaints after news of the robocalls scandal first broke in February.
The message from Elections Canada staff trace a timeline that began with the first reports of the calls on April 29, three days before the vote, when the agency began to field inquiries from concerned voters.
At 8:16 p.m., Sylvie Jacmain, the director of field programs and services, sent an email to agency lawyer Ageliki Apostolakos, reporting problems in the ridings of Saint Boniface, Manitoba, and Kitchener-Conestaga, Ontario.
“In the course of the last half-hour, it has come to my attention (in two ridings) that is seems representatives of Mr. Harper’s campaign communicated with voters to inform them that their polling station had changed, and the indications offered to one would lead her more than an hour and a half from her real voting place, which is found a few minutes from her home,” she wrote in French.
Half an hour later, procedures officer Sylvain Lortie wrote to Jacmain to say that the Conservative campaign in Saint Boniface “has communicated with (party) headquarters, who were doing the calls.”
Apostolakos quickly followed up with an email to the Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton.
“In the course of the last half-hour, Elections Canada has heard that two representatives of the Conservative campaign office are communicating with electors in two electoral districts to inform them that their polling station has changed to another location,” Apostolakos wrote.
Hamilton responded just after midnight the following night — 27 hours later, according to time stamps on the emails — writing that because some polling locations had been changed, some Conservative candidates were contacting voters to ensure they were going to the right places.
“The calls being made by our candidates request the voter to confirm her or his polling location,” Hamilton wrote, saying he had looked into Elections Canada’s concerns.
“There is no indication by the caller that the location may have changed or words to that effect. And no voter is being directed to a polling location one and a half hours away from the correct polling location.”
By Sunday afternoon, Elections Canada had received reports of the calls from 13 different ridings. Legal counsel Karen McNeil sent another email to Hamilton:
“These calls are continuing and the frequency of calls seems to be increasing,” she wrote, providing a list of the originating phone numbers that some voters had recorded. Voters who called the numbers back heard only recorded messages identifying them as Conservative Party lines, she said.
McNeil told Hamilton the poll-moving calls had been reported by voters in the ridings of Avalon (Newfoundland and Labrador); West Nova (Nova Scotia); Ajax-Pickering, Halton, Kingston and the Islands, Kitchener-Conestoga and Vaughan (Ontario); Kildonan-St. Paul, Saint Boniface and Winnipeg Centre (Manitoba); and Cardigan (Prince Edward Island).
There were also later reports of poll-moving calls in two Quebec ridings: Outremont and Lac-Saint-Louis and Prince George-Peace River in British Columbia.
Hamilton replied at 10:45 a.m. the following morning — election day — saying only that he would forward the same response he had sent Apostolakos.
As Hamilton sent the email, hundreds of voters in Guelph were heading to vote at the Quebec Street Mall, victims of an as-yet-unsolved mystery call from “Pierre Poutine.”
In spite of the two emails to Hamilton, the calls continued.
Email traffic shows the officials were becoming increasingly suspicious about the nature of the calls.
On Sunday afternoon, Elections Canada lawyer Michele Rene de Cotret wrote to Jane Dunlop, manager of external relations, giving her a heads up on “some mischief purportedly done by representatives of the Conservative party calling people to tell them that the location of their polling site has been moved.”
The same day, elections officer Anita Hawdur wrote to Apostolakos: “The polling station numbers given out by the Conservative Party…are all wrong. Most of them are quite far away from the elector’s home and from the initial polling place that showed on their VIC (voter information card.)”
Later that afternoon, Hawdur sent Apostolakos a message warning that, in one riding, officials received four calls from voters saying they had been misdirected. “This is getting pretty suspicious,” she wrote. “The workers in the returning office think these people are running a scam.”
Hawdur reported at 3:32 p.m. Sunday that “we are starting to get more calls now.”
At 5:10 p.m., Natalie Babin Dufresne emailed a number of officials lining up advertising to warn voters in Prince George-Peace River, where no polling stations had been changed, as a result of “alleged Conservative and Elections Canada calls.”
The next morning, election day, the number of calls seemed to intensify.
At 11:27 a.m., as the agency struggled with chaos at a polling station in Guelph, Hawdur sent an email to a number of colleagues: “It’s right across the country except Saskatchewan; a lot of the calls are from electoral districts in Ontario. it appears it’s getting worse. Some returning officers reported that the calls are allegedly identifying Elections Canada.”
Asked about the allegations in the emails, Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey denied the party tried to mislead anyone.
“To ensure our supporters knew where to vote, our script read that ‘Elections Canada has changed some voting locations at the last moment. To be sure could you tell me the address of where you’re voting?’” DeLorey said in an email.
“In the days leading up to and including Election Day we were only calling our identified supporters to get out our vote, and in every call we identified ourselves as calling on behalf of the Conservative Party, so any accusation that we were misleading voters doesn’t hold up to those simple facts.”
DeLorey said Elections Canada changed over 1,000 polls locations and the country.
When Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand appeared before a parliamentary committee in March, he said only 473 polls of more than 20,000 locations were changed, and only 61 moved in the last week, when it would have been too late to send out revised voter cards.
In his report on the election tabled in August 2011, Mayrand made brief mention of the “crank calls” that incorrectly advised voters of changed polling locations but there was no indication that these were a widespread or coordinated effort. Mayrand said only the Commissioner of Canada Elections was investigating.
Hamilton’s emailed response to Elections Canada is consistent with evidence in a robocalls-related court challenge given by Andrew Langhorne, an executive with the Conservative’s main phone bank company, Responsive Marketing Group.
Langhorne swore an affidavit earlier this year saying that RMG agents called identified Conservatives to ensure they had the right polling location printed on their voter identifications cards.
“If the address provided by the voter for their polling station did not match the address in front of the RMG agent, the RMG agent was directed to provide the voter with the polling station address displayed from the (get-out-the-vote) data,” Langhorne said.
But Langhorne allowed that voters and callers may have different addresses because of errors in the database the callers used, or errors in the voters list provided by Elections Canada.
In its postelection report, Elections Canada said that it had “indicated to political parties that the list (of polling stations) supplied should only be used for internal purposes and that parties should not direct electors to polling sites.”
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Ten Things Stephen Harper Hopes You Forget by 2015
Ten things Stephen Harper hopes you forget by 2015
By Michael Harris
Jun 13, 2012 5:05 am
Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.
Tyranny, the arbitrary exercise of power by a government, usually pads up behind you in stockinged feet. It has to. In a democracy, stealth is the only way it can succeed.
But in Canada these days, it pokes you in the chest with an index finger while shoving you backwards with the other hand. As it turns out, Blaise Pascal might have been right: mankind can get used to anything, including the breathless loss of democratic freedoms when the usurping party masquerades as strong, competent government. Six years in to Harper rule, blue eyes and mascara apparently have everyone taking a few steps backwards.
Bill C-38 is the first thing Stephen Harper hopes you forget in time for the next election. It is passing through parliament like an institutional kidney stone the size of the Ritz. Wags in Ottawa who briefly portrayed it for what it is, the demise of parliament, are already slipping into discount mode. There have been omnibus bills before, they say; all’s fair in love, war and politics, they say; why, it’s just Elizabeth May’s slumber party, that’s all.
Even principled journalistic stands are subject, it seems, to the summary execution of the fifteen minute news wheel. The second coming of Christ would be bumped by Lindsay Lohan running her Porsche into the back of an 18-wheeler. Pity. What we have here is a coup. Bill C-38 upends the primacy of parliament. The government has effectively dealt out every federal MP, including the ones on the government side, from having a say in the radical makeover of Canada. What else can you call it when 74 pieces of legislation are changed without debate or due process? These are the ideas of one man, the ideological love child of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
More disconcerting, what is to stop Dear Leader from returning next year with another “budget implementation bill” that builds on his deconstruction of Canada as we know it? Certainly not Speaker Andrew Scheer. Personally, I think it’s time Scheer took down that portrait of Sir Thomas More that graces the Speaker’s Office. It’s time to hang his real hero, Pierre Poilievre, patron saint of coming when you’re called.
The PM also hopes Canadians will forget 20,000 police on Canadian streets during the obscenely expensive G-8 and G-20 meetings of 2010. In Toronto, the guys in the riot gear would have done Hosni Mubarak proud. The security arrangements included kettling, beatings, unlawful arrests, and other examples of excessive force not normally associated with Canada.
According to the Office of the Independent Police Review (the sort of office Harper has done away with at CSIS) there was no legal justification for arbitrary searches by police and the debacle ended with the largest mass arrests in Canadian history. And now we find out that one of the threats to national security identified by Canadian Forces was “embarrassment to the Government.” Finally, the transformative touch of humor: if embarrassment is the measure of danger to the state, Canada faces no graver national security threat than the ones posed by Peter MacKay, Bev Oda, and Christian Paradis.
Mr. Harper hopes you forget the F-35, an unprecedented fiscal, military, and political fiasco brought to you by a corrupt military procurement system in the U.S. and a rogue DND in this country unchecked by the civilian side. Too many zeros on the cheque is the government’s best defense; that, and the availability of robots like Julian Fantino, who will apparently read anything that is put in his hands. The public money about to be wasted is unimaginably staggering and on that account meaningless – or so the government hopes.
But lying about the program’s costs to the tune of at least $10-billion, as the Harper government has done, is different. It offends the stuff they taught in Sunday School. People get that. Souring the mendacity even further is the brazen illogic of the cover story. How could it be a good idea to start production on a jet fighter before testing it, choose between options before running a competition amongst prototypes that actually fly, and decide to buy it without knowing the cost? Would any of us buy a lawnmower that way? A gas can? Dazzle me with numbers, but don’t ask me to die stupid.
The Harper government would like you to forget that the Liberals in Canada haven’t been the only fiscal drunken sailors of Confederation. Only once in the 20th century did a Conservative government balance the budget – Robert Borden in 1912, thanks to a surplus handed to him by Sir Wilfred Laurier. By the next year, Borden was back into deficit.
So far, the Conservatives have repeated the feat once again in the 21st century, in 2006. This time the surplus was inherited from Paul Martin. Within a year, the government was back at the job of building the largest deficit in our history. Of course, that didn’t stop them from pillorying the other guys as the signature wastrels of the public purse. As they say in Newfoundland, if you get the reputation for being an early riser, you can lie in bed until noon.
It would also be convenient for you to forget that Stephen Harper once promised that he would not change the Old Age Security system to fight the deficit. He did just that.
Former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney made a similar promise in his day. He declared entitlement payments to be a “sacred trust”. How sacred? He promptly announced that pension benefits for seniors would no longer be fully indexed to the cost of living. The chin that walked like a man was skewered by a pensioner whose words shot across the nation back in 1985: “You made promises that you wouldn’t touch anything…you lied to us. I was made to vote for you and then it was goodbye, Charlie Brown.”
Stephen Harper doesn’t want to meet his Solange Denis, but certainly not because he has any idea of backing down the way Mulroney did. He’d rather you just forgot about it.
As he would like you to forget about the Accountability Act, that dress rehearsal for better Tory governance that never went into production. Other politicians give you their word, Stephen Harper gives wording. His gift as a rhetorical trickster has rarely been more in evidence than in the voluminous charade known as the Accountability Act. Duff Conacher, the founder of Democracy Watch, has graded this piece of legislation appropriately – a belly-flop from the high-diving board of political BS. It features a commitment to language and an aversion to acting on the language that conjures up the PM’s greasy undermining of the Atlantic Accord. Best forgotten.
It would also be appreciated by the Harper government if you took a nice long drink from the Lethe on the subject of what used to be called federal/provincial relations. The prime minister has eschewed a meeting with the premiers like a man making a detour around a leper colony. In Mulroney’s day, the view was that consensus was the only way for the country to compete and prosper. That’s what his National Economic Conference and fourteen First Ministers’ gatherings were all about. Stephen Harper’s idea of a meeting of the minds is his mind and a lot of stenographers. Just ask Jim Flaherty’s provincial counterparts on the matter of health transfers.
It would also be nice if you could forget that the Harper government’s first instinct on regulating the Internet was giving police the right to snoop into the private lives of Canadians without warrants. This they called law and order. Government, the hapless Vic Toews assured us, has business in the computers of the nation. And if you didn’t see it that way, you stood with the child pornographers. Yes, exactly the way that you were a subversive radical if you had misgivings about the government’s lust to build pipelines, leaky or otherwise, while paying lip service to environmental issues.
The government would be especially grateful if you could just let slip into oblivion that whole unfortunate incident about the beautification of Tony Clement’s cottage-country riding, that exercise in rural renewal that came at the small price of misleading parliament and misappropriating money – from the Border Patrol Agency to the Conservative Party of Canada. And if you are good enough to forget that slushy little fact, the government would be doubly grateful: that way you might not wonder before marking your ballot the next time how this particular fox could have then been put in charge of all those chickens over at Treasury Board.
Finally, Stephen Harper would really like you to forget that he is a niche prime minister who has consistently served the wealthy and the corporate while “managing” the great unwashed as the problem children of society – the ones who go on strike, who dare to disagree, who expect too much, who cost rather than contribute to the treasury – even if they have spent a life-time doing just that. There is little patience, tolerance, proportional thinking or moral imagination in his government. What there is, spun out of a weird amalgam of Austrian economics and American neo-conservatism, out of personal rebukes and unlikely triumphs, is one man’s unalterable conviction that he, and he alone, knows best.
The metamorphosis of democracy into something else begins with forgetfulness and ends with an eerie silence where once there was a multitude of voices.
Readers can reach the author at michaelharris@ipolitics.ca. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.
By Michael Harris
Jun 13, 2012 5:05 am
Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.
Tyranny, the arbitrary exercise of power by a government, usually pads up behind you in stockinged feet. It has to. In a democracy, stealth is the only way it can succeed.
But in Canada these days, it pokes you in the chest with an index finger while shoving you backwards with the other hand. As it turns out, Blaise Pascal might have been right: mankind can get used to anything, including the breathless loss of democratic freedoms when the usurping party masquerades as strong, competent government. Six years in to Harper rule, blue eyes and mascara apparently have everyone taking a few steps backwards.
Bill C-38 is the first thing Stephen Harper hopes you forget in time for the next election. It is passing through parliament like an institutional kidney stone the size of the Ritz. Wags in Ottawa who briefly portrayed it for what it is, the demise of parliament, are already slipping into discount mode. There have been omnibus bills before, they say; all’s fair in love, war and politics, they say; why, it’s just Elizabeth May’s slumber party, that’s all.
Even principled journalistic stands are subject, it seems, to the summary execution of the fifteen minute news wheel. The second coming of Christ would be bumped by Lindsay Lohan running her Porsche into the back of an 18-wheeler. Pity. What we have here is a coup. Bill C-38 upends the primacy of parliament. The government has effectively dealt out every federal MP, including the ones on the government side, from having a say in the radical makeover of Canada. What else can you call it when 74 pieces of legislation are changed without debate or due process? These are the ideas of one man, the ideological love child of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
More disconcerting, what is to stop Dear Leader from returning next year with another “budget implementation bill” that builds on his deconstruction of Canada as we know it? Certainly not Speaker Andrew Scheer. Personally, I think it’s time Scheer took down that portrait of Sir Thomas More that graces the Speaker’s Office. It’s time to hang his real hero, Pierre Poilievre, patron saint of coming when you’re called.
The PM also hopes Canadians will forget 20,000 police on Canadian streets during the obscenely expensive G-8 and G-20 meetings of 2010. In Toronto, the guys in the riot gear would have done Hosni Mubarak proud. The security arrangements included kettling, beatings, unlawful arrests, and other examples of excessive force not normally associated with Canada.
According to the Office of the Independent Police Review (the sort of office Harper has done away with at CSIS) there was no legal justification for arbitrary searches by police and the debacle ended with the largest mass arrests in Canadian history. And now we find out that one of the threats to national security identified by Canadian Forces was “embarrassment to the Government.” Finally, the transformative touch of humor: if embarrassment is the measure of danger to the state, Canada faces no graver national security threat than the ones posed by Peter MacKay, Bev Oda, and Christian Paradis.
Mr. Harper hopes you forget the F-35, an unprecedented fiscal, military, and political fiasco brought to you by a corrupt military procurement system in the U.S. and a rogue DND in this country unchecked by the civilian side. Too many zeros on the cheque is the government’s best defense; that, and the availability of robots like Julian Fantino, who will apparently read anything that is put in his hands. The public money about to be wasted is unimaginably staggering and on that account meaningless – or so the government hopes.
But lying about the program’s costs to the tune of at least $10-billion, as the Harper government has done, is different. It offends the stuff they taught in Sunday School. People get that. Souring the mendacity even further is the brazen illogic of the cover story. How could it be a good idea to start production on a jet fighter before testing it, choose between options before running a competition amongst prototypes that actually fly, and decide to buy it without knowing the cost? Would any of us buy a lawnmower that way? A gas can? Dazzle me with numbers, but don’t ask me to die stupid.
The Harper government would like you to forget that the Liberals in Canada haven’t been the only fiscal drunken sailors of Confederation. Only once in the 20th century did a Conservative government balance the budget – Robert Borden in 1912, thanks to a surplus handed to him by Sir Wilfred Laurier. By the next year, Borden was back into deficit.
So far, the Conservatives have repeated the feat once again in the 21st century, in 2006. This time the surplus was inherited from Paul Martin. Within a year, the government was back at the job of building the largest deficit in our history. Of course, that didn’t stop them from pillorying the other guys as the signature wastrels of the public purse. As they say in Newfoundland, if you get the reputation for being an early riser, you can lie in bed until noon.
It would also be convenient for you to forget that Stephen Harper once promised that he would not change the Old Age Security system to fight the deficit. He did just that.
Former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney made a similar promise in his day. He declared entitlement payments to be a “sacred trust”. How sacred? He promptly announced that pension benefits for seniors would no longer be fully indexed to the cost of living. The chin that walked like a man was skewered by a pensioner whose words shot across the nation back in 1985: “You made promises that you wouldn’t touch anything…you lied to us. I was made to vote for you and then it was goodbye, Charlie Brown.”
Stephen Harper doesn’t want to meet his Solange Denis, but certainly not because he has any idea of backing down the way Mulroney did. He’d rather you just forgot about it.
As he would like you to forget about the Accountability Act, that dress rehearsal for better Tory governance that never went into production. Other politicians give you their word, Stephen Harper gives wording. His gift as a rhetorical trickster has rarely been more in evidence than in the voluminous charade known as the Accountability Act. Duff Conacher, the founder of Democracy Watch, has graded this piece of legislation appropriately – a belly-flop from the high-diving board of political BS. It features a commitment to language and an aversion to acting on the language that conjures up the PM’s greasy undermining of the Atlantic Accord. Best forgotten.
It would also be appreciated by the Harper government if you took a nice long drink from the Lethe on the subject of what used to be called federal/provincial relations. The prime minister has eschewed a meeting with the premiers like a man making a detour around a leper colony. In Mulroney’s day, the view was that consensus was the only way for the country to compete and prosper. That’s what his National Economic Conference and fourteen First Ministers’ gatherings were all about. Stephen Harper’s idea of a meeting of the minds is his mind and a lot of stenographers. Just ask Jim Flaherty’s provincial counterparts on the matter of health transfers.
It would also be nice if you could forget that the Harper government’s first instinct on regulating the Internet was giving police the right to snoop into the private lives of Canadians without warrants. This they called law and order. Government, the hapless Vic Toews assured us, has business in the computers of the nation. And if you didn’t see it that way, you stood with the child pornographers. Yes, exactly the way that you were a subversive radical if you had misgivings about the government’s lust to build pipelines, leaky or otherwise, while paying lip service to environmental issues.
The government would be especially grateful if you could just let slip into oblivion that whole unfortunate incident about the beautification of Tony Clement’s cottage-country riding, that exercise in rural renewal that came at the small price of misleading parliament and misappropriating money – from the Border Patrol Agency to the Conservative Party of Canada. And if you are good enough to forget that slushy little fact, the government would be doubly grateful: that way you might not wonder before marking your ballot the next time how this particular fox could have then been put in charge of all those chickens over at Treasury Board.
Finally, Stephen Harper would really like you to forget that he is a niche prime minister who has consistently served the wealthy and the corporate while “managing” the great unwashed as the problem children of society – the ones who go on strike, who dare to disagree, who expect too much, who cost rather than contribute to the treasury – even if they have spent a life-time doing just that. There is little patience, tolerance, proportional thinking or moral imagination in his government. What there is, spun out of a weird amalgam of Austrian economics and American neo-conservatism, out of personal rebukes and unlikely triumphs, is one man’s unalterable conviction that he, and he alone, knows best.
The metamorphosis of democracy into something else begins with forgetfulness and ends with an eerie silence where once there was a multitude of voices.
Readers can reach the author at michaelharris@ipolitics.ca. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
How Long will Harper Stay? Lawrence Martin 8 May 2012
.Canada is right to be troubled by Ukraine’s treat...
Back to Watchlist The perfect tool to help you manage and track your investments.
LAWRENCE MARTIN
How long will Stephen Harper stay?
Lawrence Martin | Columnist profile | E-mail
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, May. 08, 2012 2:00AM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, May. 08, 2012 8:37AM EDT
509 comments Email 14Print Decrease text size
Increase text size By the time of the next election, should this government’s term run four years, Stephen Harper will have been prime minister for almost a decade.
He’s still relatively young, he relishes the exercise of power and there is much he still wishes to do in transforming Canada into a conservative society. The likelihood is that he will run again and try to extend his stewardship of the country to 14 years.
More related to this story
•Tread carefully, Tories: Governments can live to regret omnibus bills
•Tories debate how best to keep middle-class voters
•Harper unbound: An analysis of his first year as majority PM
Slideshow
How Stephen Harper is remaking the Canadian myth
Infographic
Where federal parties stand a year after the 2011 election
Photos
Europe's engine That’s what the smart money tells us. It almost makes me wonder why I’m writing this – but a number of other possibilities do need to be considered.
One possibility is that in a couple of years’ time, our suzerain will decide he’s had enough, call a leadership convention and leave with his reputation intact, a major political success story in the conservative pantheon.
Another is that he will prefer to stay, but circumstances will force his hand; the public grows weary of him before the next campaign date, perhaps, and he senses it.
There’s also the scandal scenario, in which Mr. Harper’s standing falls so low, because of accumulated evidence and belief that he is a serial power abuser, that he has little choice but to step down. Chief among the Prime Minister’s worries here is that the Elections Canada robocalls probe turns up wrongdoing. Mr. Harper’s image is already taking a beating over the F-35 jet fighter file.
To date, Mr. Harper has gotten away with his style of governance. When his government was found in contempt of Parliament last year, it barely registered with the public – or, it seems, with him. In the past week, he has been pilloried (with conservative commentators leading the way) for embedding important legislation on the environment and employment insurance in the bowels of the mammoth 420-page budget bill. The Prime Minister turned up his nose at the critics, imposing a seven-day time limit for debate on the hugely complex legislation before it’s sent to committee.
In opposition, Mr. Harper railed against the Liberals for bill-bundling practices nowhere near this magnitude, but this duplicity probably won’t register with the public, either. Still, there’s the old saying: What goes around comes around. One day, it may be that the billy club turns on him.
Another possibility, if ominous clouds gather in the next year or two, is that rather than step down, Mr. Harper calls a snap election to seek a new mandate, arguing that he is being falsely accused. Everyone thinks the next election will be in 2015, but the Prime Minister has already ignored his own fixed-date election law once, in calling the 2008 campaign, and he could well do it again.
Any number of surprises are possible, but the character of the PM suggests that he will hunker down for the long haul. If the robocalls probe goes against him, for example, he is likely to use every tactic at his disposal.
That’s been the modus operandi so far: Mr. Harper has routinely rejected the word of the courts, of independent agencies, of watchdogs such as the Parliamentary Budget Officer. In the campaign to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board, the Conservatives ignored a democratic plebiscite among farmers that went against them and a Federal Court ruling censuring the move. The toolkit continues to feature smear and intimidation tactics, as seen in Environment Minister Peter Kent’s latest charges against groups opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Mr. Harper appears oblivious to the toll all of this is taking on his reputation. He is essentially saying that he doesn’t care, that he will not be constrained by the limits of traditional democracy.
In speculating about how long he will be in power, don’t underestimate the degree of this defiance. His instincts are such that he will attempt to trample anything or anyone seeking to remove him.
509 comments
Monday, April 30, 2012
Harper Unbound - John Ibbitson
28 April 2012
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/harper-unbound-an-analysis-of-his-first-year-as-majority-pm/article2416555/
Friday, March 2, 2012
Trouble in Toryland: their Dirty Tricks catalogue 27 Feb 2012
Trouble in Toryland: their Dirty Tricks catalogue
Posted on Mon, Feb 27, 2012, 5:04 am by Lawrence Martin Email
Lawrence Martin is the author of 10 books, including six national bestsellers. His most recent, Harperland, was nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen award. His other works include two volumes on Jean Chrétien, two on Canada-U.S. relations and three books on hockey.
The Conservatives have been caught up in many shady activities since coming to power. The revelation that they may have been behind a robocall operation to suppress voting for opposition parties would rank, if proven, among the more serious offences.
Stephen Harper has denied involvement in the scam in which operatives acted under the guise of Elections Canada officials. Coincidentally, another controversy, the in-and-out affair, involved Elections Canada. Some of Harper’s most senior officials took part in that operation.
In giving or not giving the benefit of the doubt on matters like these, the question of the track record figures prominently. To the misfortune of Team Harper, its record on duplicitous activities is hardly one to inspire confidence that its hand are clean.
There follows a list – is Harperland becoming Nixonland? — of dirty tricks, black ops and hardball tactics from the Conservatives’ years in power.
1. Cooking the Books
The duplicity began in the election that brought the Conservatives to power – the 2006 campaign in which they were promising a new era of transparency and accountability. Via some peculiar accounting practices, the Tories exceeded spending limits in the campaign, providing themselves with an advertising advantage in key ridings. They were later caught, had their offices raided by police and ultimately pled guilty last year to reduced charges of violating financing provisions of the Elections Act.
2. The Hidden Slush Fund
More than $40-million slated for border-infrastructure improvements instead went into enhancement projects in Tony Clement’s riding in preparation for the G-8 summit. To conceal the intent of the spending from legislators, John Baird used the border fund as a “delivery mechanism” for the money.
3. Falsifying Documents
The document-altering scam involving Bev Oda’s office and the aid group Kairos is only one of several instances in which the Tories have been caught document-tampering. They went so far as to alter a report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser to make it look like she was crediting them with prudent financial management when, in fact, it was the Liberals to whom she was referring.
4. Shutting Down Detainees’ Probes
The Conservatives employed a number of authoritarian tactics to avoid culpability on the Afghan detainees’ file. They included an attack on the reputation of diplomat Richard Colvin, the shutting down of Parliament and the disabling of Peter Tinsley’s Military Police Complaints Commission. The Tories denied Tinsley’s commission documents for reasons of national security – even though commission members had national security clearance.
5. The Cotler Misinformation Campaign
In an act described by the Speaker of the Commons, himself a Tory, as reprehensible, Conservatives systematically spread rumours in Irwin Cotler’s Montreal riding that he was stepping down.
6. The Suppression of Damaging Reports
A report of the Commissioner of Firearms that showed the gun registry in a good light was kept hidden by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan beyond its statutory release deadline. As a consequence, the report escaped the eyes of opposition members before a vote on the registry was taken. It is one of many instances in which the government has suppressed research that runs counter to its ideology.
7. Attempt to Frame the Opposition Leader.
Late in the 2011 election camapign, a senior Conservative operative leaked bogus photos to Sun Media in an attempt to frame Michael Ignatieff as an Iraqi war planner.
8. Communications Lockdown.
The government went to unprecedented lengths to vet, censor and withhold information. After denying legislators information on costs of programs, Harper became the first prime minister in history to be found in contempt of Parliament. The public service has muzzled like never before. Last week, several groups wrote Harper urging him to stop gagging the science community on the question of climate change and other issues. The Tories denied an opposition member accreditation to attend the Durban summit on climate change then lambasted the member for not being there. Journalists have faced myriad restrictions. At one point in the in-and-out affair, PMO officials fled down a hotel fire-escape stairwell, Keystone-Kops style, to avoid the media. On another, the governing party had the police clear a Charlottetown hotel lobby of scribes wishing to cover a Tory caucus meeting.
9. Intimidation and Bullying of Adversaries
The list of smear campaigns against opponents is long. Some that come to mind are Harper’s trying to link Liberal Navdeep Bains to terrorism; Vic Toews’ labelling of distinguished jurist Louise Arbour a “disgrace to Canada” for her views on the Middle East; seeking reprisals against University of Ottawa academic Michael Behiels for being critical of the government; and the dismissal of Nuclear Safety Commission boss Linda Keen who the PM decried as having a Liberal background.
10. The “Citizenship” Dog and Pony Show
As well as being muzzled, civil servants have been put to use for the government’s political benefit. In one such case, the immigration department ordered bureaucrats to act as stand-ins at a fake citizenship reaffirmation ceremony broadcast by Sun TV.
11. Writing the Book on Disrupting Committees
The Tories quietly issued their committee chairpersons a 200-page handbook on how to obstruct the opposition. The handbook recommended barring witnesses who might have embarrassing information. It went so far as to instruct chairpersons to shut down the committees if the going got really tough. The Tories have also issued an order that frees cabinet staffers from ever having to testify before committees. They are resorting more frequently to in-camera committee sessions, away from the public and media eye.
12. Leaking Veterans’ Medical Files
Colonel Pat Stogran, who was dropped as Veterans’ ombudsman after making waves, says he became the target of anonymous defamatory emails and other dirty tricks after criticizing the government. Other veterans, Sean Bruyea and Dennis Manuge, say their medical files have been leaked, going all the way back to 2002, in an attempt to embarrass them.
13. Unfixing The Fixed-Date Election Law
The prime minister brought in a fixed date election law which, he said, would remove the governing party’s timing advantage in dropping the writ. He promptly turned around and, earning Jack Layton’s lasting disdain, ignored his own law and issued a surprise election call in 2008.
14. Declaring Brian Mulroney Persona Non Grata
In the wake of the Karlheinz Schreiber cash hand-out controversy, Harper’s team, in its zest to disassociate itself, went so far as to put out the false rumour that Mulroney, who won two majorities for the party, was no longer a card-carrying member.
15. Unreleasing Released Documents
The Conservatives have resorted to the use of shady tactics to de-access the Access to Information system. In one notable instance cabinet staffer Sebastien Togneri ordered officials to unrelease documents that were on their way to the media. Freedom of information specialist Stanley Tromp has catalogued some 46 examples of the government’s shielding and stonewalling.
16. Ejecting Citizens From Rallies
Operatives hauled voters out of Harper rallies in last year’s campaign for the simple reason that they had marginal ties to other parties. The PM was compelled to apologize.
17. Hit Squad On Journalists
Operating under phony email IDs, Conservative staffers have attacked journalists in thousands of online posts in an attempt to discredit them and their work.
18. Dirty Work on Dion
The Conservatives have set records for the use of personal attack ads. In the 2008 campaign they ran an on-line ad which depicted a bird defecating on Stephane Dion’s head. Protests compelled them to withdraw it.
19. Tory Logos on Taxpayer Cheques
The economic recovery program was paid for by taxpayer dollars but the Tories tried to make political gains by putting their party logo – until they were called on it – on billboard-sized cheques. Surveys by journalists showed the money was distributed disproportionately to Conservative ridings and partisans.
20. The Rob Anders Nomination Crackdown
The prime minister has been accused of turning his own party into an echo chamber. When someone tried to exercise her democratic right to challenge Harper loyalist Rob Anders for the nomination in his Calgary riding, Harper’s men descended like a black ops commando unit, seized control of the office, seized control of the riding executive and crushed the bid.
21. The Rights and Democracy Takeover
Groups like Rights and Democracy supposedly operate at arm’s length from the government. But the Harperites, in what journalists described as boardroom terror, removed or suspended board members and stacked the board with pro-Israeli hardliners. As part of the ethical anarchy, a break-in occurred at headquarters.
22. Vote Suppression Tactics
Along with the accusation of pre-recorded robocalls sending voters astray in last election, reports of several other Tory vote suppression tactics have surfaced. They include a systematic live-caller operation in which Liberal supporters were peppered with bogus information.
The list does not include such controversies asthe Cadman affair in which the Conservatives allegedly tried to bribe independent MP Chuck Cadman for his vote; the whitewashing by Integrity Commissioner Christiane Ouimet of 227 whistleblower complaints against the government; the allegation by eyewitness Elizabeth May that Harper cheated in the 2008 election’s televised debates by bringing in notes; and many others.
Posted on Mon, Feb 27, 2012, 5:04 am by Lawrence Martin Email
Lawrence Martin is the author of 10 books, including six national bestsellers. His most recent, Harperland, was nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen award. His other works include two volumes on Jean Chrétien, two on Canada-U.S. relations and three books on hockey.
The Conservatives have been caught up in many shady activities since coming to power. The revelation that they may have been behind a robocall operation to suppress voting for opposition parties would rank, if proven, among the more serious offences.
Stephen Harper has denied involvement in the scam in which operatives acted under the guise of Elections Canada officials. Coincidentally, another controversy, the in-and-out affair, involved Elections Canada. Some of Harper’s most senior officials took part in that operation.
In giving or not giving the benefit of the doubt on matters like these, the question of the track record figures prominently. To the misfortune of Team Harper, its record on duplicitous activities is hardly one to inspire confidence that its hand are clean.
There follows a list – is Harperland becoming Nixonland? — of dirty tricks, black ops and hardball tactics from the Conservatives’ years in power.
1. Cooking the Books
The duplicity began in the election that brought the Conservatives to power – the 2006 campaign in which they were promising a new era of transparency and accountability. Via some peculiar accounting practices, the Tories exceeded spending limits in the campaign, providing themselves with an advertising advantage in key ridings. They were later caught, had their offices raided by police and ultimately pled guilty last year to reduced charges of violating financing provisions of the Elections Act.
2. The Hidden Slush Fund
More than $40-million slated for border-infrastructure improvements instead went into enhancement projects in Tony Clement’s riding in preparation for the G-8 summit. To conceal the intent of the spending from legislators, John Baird used the border fund as a “delivery mechanism” for the money.
3. Falsifying Documents
The document-altering scam involving Bev Oda’s office and the aid group Kairos is only one of several instances in which the Tories have been caught document-tampering. They went so far as to alter a report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser to make it look like she was crediting them with prudent financial management when, in fact, it was the Liberals to whom she was referring.
4. Shutting Down Detainees’ Probes
The Conservatives employed a number of authoritarian tactics to avoid culpability on the Afghan detainees’ file. They included an attack on the reputation of diplomat Richard Colvin, the shutting down of Parliament and the disabling of Peter Tinsley’s Military Police Complaints Commission. The Tories denied Tinsley’s commission documents for reasons of national security – even though commission members had national security clearance.
5. The Cotler Misinformation Campaign
In an act described by the Speaker of the Commons, himself a Tory, as reprehensible, Conservatives systematically spread rumours in Irwin Cotler’s Montreal riding that he was stepping down.
6. The Suppression of Damaging Reports
A report of the Commissioner of Firearms that showed the gun registry in a good light was kept hidden by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan beyond its statutory release deadline. As a consequence, the report escaped the eyes of opposition members before a vote on the registry was taken. It is one of many instances in which the government has suppressed research that runs counter to its ideology.
7. Attempt to Frame the Opposition Leader.
Late in the 2011 election camapign, a senior Conservative operative leaked bogus photos to Sun Media in an attempt to frame Michael Ignatieff as an Iraqi war planner.
8. Communications Lockdown.
The government went to unprecedented lengths to vet, censor and withhold information. After denying legislators information on costs of programs, Harper became the first prime minister in history to be found in contempt of Parliament. The public service has muzzled like never before. Last week, several groups wrote Harper urging him to stop gagging the science community on the question of climate change and other issues. The Tories denied an opposition member accreditation to attend the Durban summit on climate change then lambasted the member for not being there. Journalists have faced myriad restrictions. At one point in the in-and-out affair, PMO officials fled down a hotel fire-escape stairwell, Keystone-Kops style, to avoid the media. On another, the governing party had the police clear a Charlottetown hotel lobby of scribes wishing to cover a Tory caucus meeting.
9. Intimidation and Bullying of Adversaries
The list of smear campaigns against opponents is long. Some that come to mind are Harper’s trying to link Liberal Navdeep Bains to terrorism; Vic Toews’ labelling of distinguished jurist Louise Arbour a “disgrace to Canada” for her views on the Middle East; seeking reprisals against University of Ottawa academic Michael Behiels for being critical of the government; and the dismissal of Nuclear Safety Commission boss Linda Keen who the PM decried as having a Liberal background.
10. The “Citizenship” Dog and Pony Show
As well as being muzzled, civil servants have been put to use for the government’s political benefit. In one such case, the immigration department ordered bureaucrats to act as stand-ins at a fake citizenship reaffirmation ceremony broadcast by Sun TV.
11. Writing the Book on Disrupting Committees
The Tories quietly issued their committee chairpersons a 200-page handbook on how to obstruct the opposition. The handbook recommended barring witnesses who might have embarrassing information. It went so far as to instruct chairpersons to shut down the committees if the going got really tough. The Tories have also issued an order that frees cabinet staffers from ever having to testify before committees. They are resorting more frequently to in-camera committee sessions, away from the public and media eye.
12. Leaking Veterans’ Medical Files
Colonel Pat Stogran, who was dropped as Veterans’ ombudsman after making waves, says he became the target of anonymous defamatory emails and other dirty tricks after criticizing the government. Other veterans, Sean Bruyea and Dennis Manuge, say their medical files have been leaked, going all the way back to 2002, in an attempt to embarrass them.
13. Unfixing The Fixed-Date Election Law
The prime minister brought in a fixed date election law which, he said, would remove the governing party’s timing advantage in dropping the writ. He promptly turned around and, earning Jack Layton’s lasting disdain, ignored his own law and issued a surprise election call in 2008.
14. Declaring Brian Mulroney Persona Non Grata
In the wake of the Karlheinz Schreiber cash hand-out controversy, Harper’s team, in its zest to disassociate itself, went so far as to put out the false rumour that Mulroney, who won two majorities for the party, was no longer a card-carrying member.
15. Unreleasing Released Documents
The Conservatives have resorted to the use of shady tactics to de-access the Access to Information system. In one notable instance cabinet staffer Sebastien Togneri ordered officials to unrelease documents that were on their way to the media. Freedom of information specialist Stanley Tromp has catalogued some 46 examples of the government’s shielding and stonewalling.
16. Ejecting Citizens From Rallies
Operatives hauled voters out of Harper rallies in last year’s campaign for the simple reason that they had marginal ties to other parties. The PM was compelled to apologize.
17. Hit Squad On Journalists
Operating under phony email IDs, Conservative staffers have attacked journalists in thousands of online posts in an attempt to discredit them and their work.
18. Dirty Work on Dion
The Conservatives have set records for the use of personal attack ads. In the 2008 campaign they ran an on-line ad which depicted a bird defecating on Stephane Dion’s head. Protests compelled them to withdraw it.
19. Tory Logos on Taxpayer Cheques
The economic recovery program was paid for by taxpayer dollars but the Tories tried to make political gains by putting their party logo – until they were called on it – on billboard-sized cheques. Surveys by journalists showed the money was distributed disproportionately to Conservative ridings and partisans.
20. The Rob Anders Nomination Crackdown
The prime minister has been accused of turning his own party into an echo chamber. When someone tried to exercise her democratic right to challenge Harper loyalist Rob Anders for the nomination in his Calgary riding, Harper’s men descended like a black ops commando unit, seized control of the office, seized control of the riding executive and crushed the bid.
21. The Rights and Democracy Takeover
Groups like Rights and Democracy supposedly operate at arm’s length from the government. But the Harperites, in what journalists described as boardroom terror, removed or suspended board members and stacked the board with pro-Israeli hardliners. As part of the ethical anarchy, a break-in occurred at headquarters.
22. Vote Suppression Tactics
Along with the accusation of pre-recorded robocalls sending voters astray in last election, reports of several other Tory vote suppression tactics have surfaced. They include a systematic live-caller operation in which Liberal supporters were peppered with bogus information.
The list does not include such controversies asthe Cadman affair in which the Conservatives allegedly tried to bribe independent MP Chuck Cadman for his vote; the whitewashing by Integrity Commissioner Christiane Ouimet of 227 whistleblower complaints against the government; the allegation by eyewitness Elizabeth May that Harper cheated in the 2008 election’s televised debates by bringing in notes; and many others.
The curious case of Saanich-Gulf Islands 1 March 2012
LAWRENCE MARTIN
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Mar. 01, 2012 2:00AM EST
The robo-call jury is still out. The story might be overblown. It’s not Robogate unless more evidence is forthcoming.
What fuels suspicion, however, is the trend line of controversial actions and allegations of dirty tricks by this government. That’s why it’s not so easy to believe Conservative protests of innocence in the robo-calling scandal. In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Stephen Harper, a hands-on prime minister with a history of warring with Elections Canada, dismissed the affair as “a smear campaign” by sore losers.
More related to this story
•Harper dismisses robo-call scandal as ‘smear campaign’ by sore losers
•Tories using Vikileaks to deflect heat from robo-calls, Rae warns
•The ‘freedom’ show on the Rideau
Photos
Adrift To cast a bit of light, let’s go back to the 2008 election in the closely contested B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. The incumbent was the apple-cheeked Conservative Gary Lunn. Midway through that campaign, Julian West, the NDP candidate, dropped out owing to revelations of a public nudity scandal from years earlier. But his withdrawal didn’t come in time to get his name off the ballot.
The federal election was on Oct. 14. At dinnertime on Oct. 13, an automated phone message went out urging constituents, strangely enough, to vote for Mr. West. And it appeared to have some effect: He received 3,667 votes, almost 6 per cent of the total. A poll a few days earlier had showed him at 1 per cent. This was good news for Mr. Lunn. The bulk of those votes might otherwise have gone to the Liberal candidate, who lost to Mr. Lunn by 2,625 votes.
When news of the election-eve robo-calling surfaced, Liberals were naturally suspicious of the Conservatives. Who else could have been the source of the automated calls? The Liberals or Greens wouldn’t have wanted anyone to vote for the NDP, because it would have split the vote. As for the NDP, why would it make a last-minute push for a candidate who had resigned?
In an interview this week, Byng Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, denied any involvement with an automated-call operation. Maybe the NDP had been behind it, he speculated, because of the per vote subsidy that each party received under the rules back then. But even if spoiled ballots were counted for the subsidy, the expense of a robo-call operation would likely have been higher.
After the election, Elections Canada took what Liberals viewed as a cursory look at the matter and was unable to determine the source of the calls. Will Horter, who was from the group Conservation Voters of B.C., which was very active in the campaign, heard that Elections Canada and Telus couldn’t identify the source because the robo-calls were made from the United States. He put out a blog titled Karl Rove Comes to Canada? Today, we see media reports suggesting that some of the robo-call tracks lead to U.S sourcing.
Mr. Horter, having organized some robo-calling himself on environmental issues, is well familiar with them. They’re expensive and they require a target list, a voter I.D. list, a call centre and a lot of expertise. The Conservatives, he said, had the most sophisticated voter identification operation in the country.
Mr. Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, was categorical: “Nobody has ever asked me to do dirty tricks.” But it’s conceivable they were done without his knowledge. The party had a separate team, he said, that worked on swing ridings. It’s also possible the Conservatives weren’t the source at all.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May now represents Saanich-Gulf Islands. She and Mr. Horter and others are given to wonder whether the riding was a robo-call pilot project. Mr. Harper said on Wednesday there was no project, never mind pilot.
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Mar. 01, 2012 2:00AM EST
The robo-call jury is still out. The story might be overblown. It’s not Robogate unless more evidence is forthcoming.
What fuels suspicion, however, is the trend line of controversial actions and allegations of dirty tricks by this government. That’s why it’s not so easy to believe Conservative protests of innocence in the robo-calling scandal. In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Stephen Harper, a hands-on prime minister with a history of warring with Elections Canada, dismissed the affair as “a smear campaign” by sore losers.
More related to this story
•Harper dismisses robo-call scandal as ‘smear campaign’ by sore losers
•Tories using Vikileaks to deflect heat from robo-calls, Rae warns
•The ‘freedom’ show on the Rideau
Photos
Adrift To cast a bit of light, let’s go back to the 2008 election in the closely contested B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. The incumbent was the apple-cheeked Conservative Gary Lunn. Midway through that campaign, Julian West, the NDP candidate, dropped out owing to revelations of a public nudity scandal from years earlier. But his withdrawal didn’t come in time to get his name off the ballot.
The federal election was on Oct. 14. At dinnertime on Oct. 13, an automated phone message went out urging constituents, strangely enough, to vote for Mr. West. And it appeared to have some effect: He received 3,667 votes, almost 6 per cent of the total. A poll a few days earlier had showed him at 1 per cent. This was good news for Mr. Lunn. The bulk of those votes might otherwise have gone to the Liberal candidate, who lost to Mr. Lunn by 2,625 votes.
When news of the election-eve robo-calling surfaced, Liberals were naturally suspicious of the Conservatives. Who else could have been the source of the automated calls? The Liberals or Greens wouldn’t have wanted anyone to vote for the NDP, because it would have split the vote. As for the NDP, why would it make a last-minute push for a candidate who had resigned?
In an interview this week, Byng Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, denied any involvement with an automated-call operation. Maybe the NDP had been behind it, he speculated, because of the per vote subsidy that each party received under the rules back then. But even if spoiled ballots were counted for the subsidy, the expense of a robo-call operation would likely have been higher.
After the election, Elections Canada took what Liberals viewed as a cursory look at the matter and was unable to determine the source of the calls. Will Horter, who was from the group Conservation Voters of B.C., which was very active in the campaign, heard that Elections Canada and Telus couldn’t identify the source because the robo-calls were made from the United States. He put out a blog titled Karl Rove Comes to Canada? Today, we see media reports suggesting that some of the robo-call tracks lead to U.S sourcing.
Mr. Horter, having organized some robo-calling himself on environmental issues, is well familiar with them. They’re expensive and they require a target list, a voter I.D. list, a call centre and a lot of expertise. The Conservatives, he said, had the most sophisticated voter identification operation in the country.
Mr. Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, was categorical: “Nobody has ever asked me to do dirty tricks.” But it’s conceivable they were done without his knowledge. The party had a separate team, he said, that worked on swing ridings. It’s also possible the Conservatives weren’t the source at all.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May now represents Saanich-Gulf Islands. She and Mr. Horter and others are given to wonder whether the riding was a robo-call pilot project. Mr. Harper said on Wednesday there was no project, never mind pilot.
Exactly how dangerous is Stephen Harper? 2 March 2012
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Robo-gate, considered by many to be a concerted (if so far unproven) assault on democracy, has opened wide the simmering debate about Stephen Harper and his cronies. Are they reformers or revolutionaries? Are they simply a somewhat more ambitious form of the conservatism Canadians have known since John A., just a further notch or three along the traditional Canadian ideological continuum?
More related to this story
•Tories lose control of agenda as they try to ride out robo-call storm
•Liberals build their case in robo-call scandal as Tory attack backfires
•Elections Canada faces 31,000 complaints in robo-call probe
Video
Democracy the loser in robo-call affair
Interactive
Map: Which ridings were hit with robo-call allegations?
Video
More than 31,000 robo-call complaints made Or do they represent a radical transformation, an extreme new form of conservatism that had, until now, been relegated to the lunatic fringe of Canadian political culture? It’s hardly an academic question. You could even say that he future of Canada depends on the answer.
I don’t mean to be disingenuous here. Of course many partisans have already answered this question to their own satisfaction; that includes me, as faithful readers well know. Ever since it was formed from the American-style populist Reform Party and the dead ashes of the Progressive Conservative Party, and with a pugnaciously hard-right Stephen Harper as its leader, the usual suspects have demonized the new Conservative Party as beyond the pale.
Liberals and New Democrats insisted Mr. Harper's baby was a new and unwelcome species, one that was determined to shatter the vague but real consensus that had ruled Canada for so long. For the truth has long been that even while New Democrats had great fun and won some points portraying the PCs and Grits as the entirely interchangeable “old parties,” Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Visa and MasterCard, the NDP too played within certain very broad Canadian parameters.
Of course there were always real differences on a wide array of key policy matters. But on fundamental ethical and process questions, there was crucial agreement, with all parties accepting that real democracy meant accepting certain constraints on their political practices. It’s not always an easy distinction to make, but it can be seen as the difference between hardball and barely legal dirty tricks, between toughness and take-no-prisoners. It’s the dangerous mindset of the type who say – and believe – those not with us are communists/terrorists/child molesters/pornographers. As political scientist Alan Whitehorn has couched it, it’s the difference between “civil rivalry between fellow citizens of the same state [and] all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the enemy”.
Again, I don’t want to give the false impression that there weren’t real divergences, real animosities, real bitterness. On occasion, the consensus was entirely breached, as when Pierre Trudeau recklessly invoked the War Measures Act – a moment that will forever scar his reputation.
But on the whole there was an underlying civility, a belief that one’s opponents (not enemies) were not going to change the rules of the game – though they might stretch them a fair bit. Signs might be torn down, street people might suddenly turn up at conventions as rabid partisans (though that was largely an inter-mural sport), a deceased chap might occasionally present himself at the ballot box. Nasty insults were exchanged, Question Period was often a zoo. An aberrant American-style Progressive Conservative or Liberal brawler would occasionally threaten the consensus. Nevertheless, there was an overall sense of playing the same democratic game, of getting a kick out of the game, of matching wits with opponents, of some of them even being worthy.
Mr. Harper’s Conservatives, many of us fear, have changed the entire game. In fact for them it’s not a game at all. Like their cherished American Republican role models, when they speak about their war room, they mean it. And in war, it hardly needs saying, there’s little tolerance for democratic niceties.
Enlarge this imageComment
Exactly how dangerous is Stephen Harper?
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Do I exaggerate? Listen once again to Tom Flanagan, former Harper strategist and a powerful voice still among conservatives and Conservatives. A Globe piece by Mr. Flanagan before the 2011 election was actually titled “An election is war by other means,” while earlier he had compared the 2008 campaign to ancient wars in which Rome (the Conservatives) defeated Carthage (the Liberals) and “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.” This is crazy talk.
The University of Ottawa’s Ralph Heintzman sums up this Harper credo: There is a “lack of sense of inner self-restraint on the part of the Prime Minister, a sense that it is some kind of war and therefore anything is legitimate, that it's quite acceptable for a prime minister to lie, for example, about how our parliamentary democracy works.”
It’s within this context that Robo-gate should be viewed.
Would a party that believed in politics as war hesitate to use the latest technology to keep opponents – the enemy! – from voting? Would a party that has already systematically undermined many traditional parliamentary and democratic niceties, as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has repeatedly documented, hesitate to violate accepted democratic limits? Does a party that has already been found guilty of violating the election laws and that deliberately attempted to destabilize a sitting Liberal MP deserve the benefit of the doubt?
Here’s the problem. Both sides know with certainty the answer to these questions. Those of us who wouldn’t trust Stephen Harper if he told us today was Friday have no doubt who organized Robo-gate. In fact, I’m informed by a former Conservative operative familiar with both the party and technology that there’s far more to be revealed in this saga. This is said specifically to involve close ties between the Harperites and American Republicans who have been constructing a terrifying, full-blown voter suppression machine, as The Nation magazine, among others, has well documented and CBC Radio’s The Current has noted. I have no idea if this will be found to be true, but based on the record, it is surely not implausible.
Yet Mr. Harper's faithful base, that slightly-more-than-one-third of the electorate on whose behalf the entire government of Canada operates, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is some kind of vicious Liberal frame-up and that their man is as innocent and pure as the driven white snow we occasionally still get.
Both sides can’t be right here. Let’s all pray mine is wrong.
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Robo-gate, considered by many to be a concerted (if so far unproven) assault on democracy, has opened wide the simmering debate about Stephen Harper and his cronies. Are they reformers or revolutionaries? Are they simply a somewhat more ambitious form of the conservatism Canadians have known since John A., just a further notch or three along the traditional Canadian ideological continuum?
More related to this story
•Tories lose control of agenda as they try to ride out robo-call storm
•Liberals build their case in robo-call scandal as Tory attack backfires
•Elections Canada faces 31,000 complaints in robo-call probe
Video
Democracy the loser in robo-call affair
Interactive
Map: Which ridings were hit with robo-call allegations?
Video
More than 31,000 robo-call complaints made Or do they represent a radical transformation, an extreme new form of conservatism that had, until now, been relegated to the lunatic fringe of Canadian political culture? It’s hardly an academic question. You could even say that he future of Canada depends on the answer.
I don’t mean to be disingenuous here. Of course many partisans have already answered this question to their own satisfaction; that includes me, as faithful readers well know. Ever since it was formed from the American-style populist Reform Party and the dead ashes of the Progressive Conservative Party, and with a pugnaciously hard-right Stephen Harper as its leader, the usual suspects have demonized the new Conservative Party as beyond the pale.
Liberals and New Democrats insisted Mr. Harper's baby was a new and unwelcome species, one that was determined to shatter the vague but real consensus that had ruled Canada for so long. For the truth has long been that even while New Democrats had great fun and won some points portraying the PCs and Grits as the entirely interchangeable “old parties,” Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Visa and MasterCard, the NDP too played within certain very broad Canadian parameters.
Of course there were always real differences on a wide array of key policy matters. But on fundamental ethical and process questions, there was crucial agreement, with all parties accepting that real democracy meant accepting certain constraints on their political practices. It’s not always an easy distinction to make, but it can be seen as the difference between hardball and barely legal dirty tricks, between toughness and take-no-prisoners. It’s the dangerous mindset of the type who say – and believe – those not with us are communists/terrorists/child molesters/pornographers. As political scientist Alan Whitehorn has couched it, it’s the difference between “civil rivalry between fellow citizens of the same state [and] all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the enemy”.
Again, I don’t want to give the false impression that there weren’t real divergences, real animosities, real bitterness. On occasion, the consensus was entirely breached, as when Pierre Trudeau recklessly invoked the War Measures Act – a moment that will forever scar his reputation.
But on the whole there was an underlying civility, a belief that one’s opponents (not enemies) were not going to change the rules of the game – though they might stretch them a fair bit. Signs might be torn down, street people might suddenly turn up at conventions as rabid partisans (though that was largely an inter-mural sport), a deceased chap might occasionally present himself at the ballot box. Nasty insults were exchanged, Question Period was often a zoo. An aberrant American-style Progressive Conservative or Liberal brawler would occasionally threaten the consensus. Nevertheless, there was an overall sense of playing the same democratic game, of getting a kick out of the game, of matching wits with opponents, of some of them even being worthy.
Mr. Harper’s Conservatives, many of us fear, have changed the entire game. In fact for them it’s not a game at all. Like their cherished American Republican role models, when they speak about their war room, they mean it. And in war, it hardly needs saying, there’s little tolerance for democratic niceties.
Enlarge this imageComment
Exactly how dangerous is Stephen Harper?
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Do I exaggerate? Listen once again to Tom Flanagan, former Harper strategist and a powerful voice still among conservatives and Conservatives. A Globe piece by Mr. Flanagan before the 2011 election was actually titled “An election is war by other means,” while earlier he had compared the 2008 campaign to ancient wars in which Rome (the Conservatives) defeated Carthage (the Liberals) and “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.” This is crazy talk.
The University of Ottawa’s Ralph Heintzman sums up this Harper credo: There is a “lack of sense of inner self-restraint on the part of the Prime Minister, a sense that it is some kind of war and therefore anything is legitimate, that it's quite acceptable for a prime minister to lie, for example, about how our parliamentary democracy works.”
It’s within this context that Robo-gate should be viewed.
Would a party that believed in politics as war hesitate to use the latest technology to keep opponents – the enemy! – from voting? Would a party that has already systematically undermined many traditional parliamentary and democratic niceties, as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has repeatedly documented, hesitate to violate accepted democratic limits? Does a party that has already been found guilty of violating the election laws and that deliberately attempted to destabilize a sitting Liberal MP deserve the benefit of the doubt?
Here’s the problem. Both sides know with certainty the answer to these questions. Those of us who wouldn’t trust Stephen Harper if he told us today was Friday have no doubt who organized Robo-gate. In fact, I’m informed by a former Conservative operative familiar with both the party and technology that there’s far more to be revealed in this saga. This is said specifically to involve close ties between the Harperites and American Republicans who have been constructing a terrifying, full-blown voter suppression machine, as The Nation magazine, among others, has well documented and CBC Radio’s The Current has noted. I have no idea if this will be found to be true, but based on the record, it is surely not implausible.
Yet Mr. Harper's faithful base, that slightly-more-than-one-third of the electorate on whose behalf the entire government of Canada operates, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is some kind of vicious Liberal frame-up and that their man is as innocent and pure as the driven white snow we occasionally still get.
Both sides can’t be right here. Let’s all pray mine is wrong.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
G&M Lawrence Martin 24 Feb 2012
LAWRENCE MARTIN
The ‘freedom’ show on the Rideau
Lawrence Martin | Columnist profile | E-mail
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Feb. 24, 2012 2:00AM EST
296 comments Email 18Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Conservatism has contradictory impulses. The pursuit of freedom and the pursuit of order run at cross-purposes.
Moderates push neither button too strongly. But in both Canada and the United States, the conservative parties are now controlled by virulent wings that are prepared go to aggressive lengths to achieve their ambitions. The danger is that in the name of freedom, they bring forth the contrary.
More related to this story
•Mulcair leads, but alliances are the wild card
•The myth of Tory economic performance
•Eisenhower, the great forgotten Republican
Photos
Fun in Tehran In this country, the Conservative government has a nationalist bent, evident in its elevation of military values, populist anti-intellectualism, moral certitude on foreign policy, law-and-order fixation and message-control mania. This kind of nationalism requires state-driven conformity, not liberty.
And so, while Conservatives are supposed to cherish government that is off the backs of the people, what we have is something closer to the opposite. The government is also oversized in spending, another conservative no-no.
The Conservatives’ in-your-face proclivities from the minority years have been well documented. But a majority has brought no let-up. On the freedom front, the government likes to boast of encouraging provincial autonomy and of shutting down the gun registry, the long-form census, the Wheat Board. But, by way of contrast, it’s instructive to look at what has transpired in our land of liberty recently. It might make you wonder about the kind of Canada that’s emerging.
Last week, the Conservatives were planning to go ahead with a system of national online surveillance. But a national outcry against the plan (originally advocated by the Liberals) will likely force amendments. The government also reaffirmed its plan for mandatory minimum sentencing, although an Ontario Superior Court judge lambasted the policy and critics say it will reduce the right to a fair trial.
Earlier in the month, from a government that took no umbrage at Guantanamo-style justice, came the decision to accept information derived from torture from foreign governments, in some cases. The Conservatives, we recall, have also vowed to bring back long-expired post-9/11 antiterrorism powers that allow Canadians to be locked up without charges.
On the matter of political freedom, another debate – the one on the controversial copyright bill – has been moved behind closed doors. The Tories are increasingly resorting to this secretive in-camera approach. Despite having a majority, they have been cutting off democratic debate with near record-breaking usage of time limits and closure in Parliament.
Freedom of expression has also been in the news. Last week, disgusted representatives from the Canadian science community sent an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for him to stop muzzling federal researchers. Under the government’s extensive vetting system, civil servants and diplomats are less free to voice their views than they have ever been. Also recently, opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline were pilloried as foreign-financed radicals and, according to one sworn affidavit, as enemies of the state. And during last fall’s Durban summit on climate change, the Conservatives denied opposition members their usual right to accreditation.
The Harperian high command takes a draconian stance against even soft drug use. It has taken a hard line against organized labour and a more exclusionary course on immigration. It will no longer allow Canadians imprisoned abroad to serve out their sentences at home.
The many victims of Tory smear campaigns have been well documented, a most recent target being Montreal MP Irwin Cotler.
On Thursday, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Elections Canada and the RCMP are investigating a fraudulent robo-call phone operation apparently designed to suppress the Liberal vote in Guelph, Ont., during last year’s election. Calls misdirecting voters in many other ridings have been reported. The NDP linked the operation to the Conservatives, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper denied any wrongdoing by his party.
The accumulation of dirty tricks is beginning to sound like something out of Nixonland. The last election, we recall, was the one where citizens were hauled out of Conservative campaign rallies for the sin of having marginal ties to other parties.
This is just a small sampling from the march of audacities in respect to our freedoms and liberties. It’s the new Canada. Enjoy.
The ‘freedom’ show on the Rideau
Lawrence Martin | Columnist profile | E-mail
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Feb. 24, 2012 2:00AM EST
296 comments Email 18Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Conservatism has contradictory impulses. The pursuit of freedom and the pursuit of order run at cross-purposes.
Moderates push neither button too strongly. But in both Canada and the United States, the conservative parties are now controlled by virulent wings that are prepared go to aggressive lengths to achieve their ambitions. The danger is that in the name of freedom, they bring forth the contrary.
More related to this story
•Mulcair leads, but alliances are the wild card
•The myth of Tory economic performance
•Eisenhower, the great forgotten Republican
Photos
Fun in Tehran In this country, the Conservative government has a nationalist bent, evident in its elevation of military values, populist anti-intellectualism, moral certitude on foreign policy, law-and-order fixation and message-control mania. This kind of nationalism requires state-driven conformity, not liberty.
And so, while Conservatives are supposed to cherish government that is off the backs of the people, what we have is something closer to the opposite. The government is also oversized in spending, another conservative no-no.
The Conservatives’ in-your-face proclivities from the minority years have been well documented. But a majority has brought no let-up. On the freedom front, the government likes to boast of encouraging provincial autonomy and of shutting down the gun registry, the long-form census, the Wheat Board. But, by way of contrast, it’s instructive to look at what has transpired in our land of liberty recently. It might make you wonder about the kind of Canada that’s emerging.
Last week, the Conservatives were planning to go ahead with a system of national online surveillance. But a national outcry against the plan (originally advocated by the Liberals) will likely force amendments. The government also reaffirmed its plan for mandatory minimum sentencing, although an Ontario Superior Court judge lambasted the policy and critics say it will reduce the right to a fair trial.
Earlier in the month, from a government that took no umbrage at Guantanamo-style justice, came the decision to accept information derived from torture from foreign governments, in some cases. The Conservatives, we recall, have also vowed to bring back long-expired post-9/11 antiterrorism powers that allow Canadians to be locked up without charges.
On the matter of political freedom, another debate – the one on the controversial copyright bill – has been moved behind closed doors. The Tories are increasingly resorting to this secretive in-camera approach. Despite having a majority, they have been cutting off democratic debate with near record-breaking usage of time limits and closure in Parliament.
Freedom of expression has also been in the news. Last week, disgusted representatives from the Canadian science community sent an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for him to stop muzzling federal researchers. Under the government’s extensive vetting system, civil servants and diplomats are less free to voice their views than they have ever been. Also recently, opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline were pilloried as foreign-financed radicals and, according to one sworn affidavit, as enemies of the state. And during last fall’s Durban summit on climate change, the Conservatives denied opposition members their usual right to accreditation.
The Harperian high command takes a draconian stance against even soft drug use. It has taken a hard line against organized labour and a more exclusionary course on immigration. It will no longer allow Canadians imprisoned abroad to serve out their sentences at home.
The many victims of Tory smear campaigns have been well documented, a most recent target being Montreal MP Irwin Cotler.
On Thursday, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Elections Canada and the RCMP are investigating a fraudulent robo-call phone operation apparently designed to suppress the Liberal vote in Guelph, Ont., during last year’s election. Calls misdirecting voters in many other ridings have been reported. The NDP linked the operation to the Conservatives, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper denied any wrongdoing by his party.
The accumulation of dirty tricks is beginning to sound like something out of Nixonland. The last election, we recall, was the one where citizens were hauled out of Conservative campaign rallies for the sin of having marginal ties to other parties.
This is just a small sampling from the march of audacities in respect to our freedoms and liberties. It’s the new Canada. Enjoy.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Harper's List of Sins February 2012
This was a comment posted after another great Larry Martin column.
ibn batuta
6:24 AM on February 24, 2012
Baggage check for Mr. Harper. Hasn't time to savour the triumphs!
In And Out, Bernier Lost NATO Documents, Income Trusts, Security Leaks, Funding Cuts For Women's Rights, Cadman Affair, Strangling Of Budget Officer Kevin Page, Personal Attack Ads With No-Context Facts, Taxes Used To Promote Conservative Party, Homophobia, Unregistered Firearms, Kyoto Accord, Kelowna Accord, Lisa Raitt Dissing Health Minister, Listeria Outbreak, Astronomical Deficit, Enlarging Fort PMO, Pit Bull John Baird,Transparency Lies, Accountability Lies, Afghanistan Secrecy, CBC Funding Cuts, “Parliament Makes Markets Unstable”, Cultural Funding Cuts,, Mutant Fish, Taser Deaths, Religious Fundamentalists, Cuts To Arts, Governor General Told To Forego Paralympics, Internet Copyright Legislation, CRTC Meddling, Mulroney Affair, Canadian Nobel Winners Ignored, Atlantic Accord, Rona Ambrose Ineptness, Killing Off International Welfare, Militarization Of Arctic, Outsourcing Policy Research, Anti-Intellectualism, Fixed Election Date Broken, Ambassador's Reports On Human Rights Overseas Made Secret, Attempt To Stop Same Sex Marriage, Advertising Budget Doubled, Taxpayer’s Money Used To Diss Opposition And Promote Conservatives, Almost All Legislation Posed As Confidence Motion, Support For Biofuel, Insufficient Support Of Alternative Energy, Failure To Protect Canadians Abroad, Support For keeping Guantanamo, Child Soldier & Canadian Omar Khadr Still Not Repatriated to Canada, Wheat Board Muzzled, Caucus Muzzled, Ontario Ignored, Cancelled National Childcare, Fired Nuclear Watchdog Linda Keane, Fired Head of Military Police Inquiry, Fired Veteran’s Omsbudsman, Had Firearm Long Gun Mountie removed, Eviscerated Long Form Census To Keep Facts From The People, Climate Change Embarassment On World Stage, Trashed Diplomat Richard Colvin For Doing His Job. Prorogued Parliament Twice In A Year. Prorogued Parliament to Stop Inquiry Into Torture, Took Liberal Surplus And Ran it into 53 Billion Dollar Deficit, Screwed Up G8 and G20 Meetings.
ibn batuta
6:24 AM on February 24, 2012
Baggage check for Mr. Harper. Hasn't time to savour the triumphs!
In And Out, Bernier Lost NATO Documents, Income Trusts, Security Leaks, Funding Cuts For Women's Rights, Cadman Affair, Strangling Of Budget Officer Kevin Page, Personal Attack Ads With No-Context Facts, Taxes Used To Promote Conservative Party, Homophobia, Unregistered Firearms, Kyoto Accord, Kelowna Accord, Lisa Raitt Dissing Health Minister, Listeria Outbreak, Astronomical Deficit, Enlarging Fort PMO, Pit Bull John Baird,Transparency Lies, Accountability Lies, Afghanistan Secrecy, CBC Funding Cuts, “Parliament Makes Markets Unstable”, Cultural Funding Cuts,, Mutant Fish, Taser Deaths, Religious Fundamentalists, Cuts To Arts, Governor General Told To Forego Paralympics, Internet Copyright Legislation, CRTC Meddling, Mulroney Affair, Canadian Nobel Winners Ignored, Atlantic Accord, Rona Ambrose Ineptness, Killing Off International Welfare, Militarization Of Arctic, Outsourcing Policy Research, Anti-Intellectualism, Fixed Election Date Broken, Ambassador's Reports On Human Rights Overseas Made Secret, Attempt To Stop Same Sex Marriage, Advertising Budget Doubled, Taxpayer’s Money Used To Diss Opposition And Promote Conservatives, Almost All Legislation Posed As Confidence Motion, Support For Biofuel, Insufficient Support Of Alternative Energy, Failure To Protect Canadians Abroad, Support For keeping Guantanamo, Child Soldier & Canadian Omar Khadr Still Not Repatriated to Canada, Wheat Board Muzzled, Caucus Muzzled, Ontario Ignored, Cancelled National Childcare, Fired Nuclear Watchdog Linda Keane, Fired Head of Military Police Inquiry, Fired Veteran’s Omsbudsman, Had Firearm Long Gun Mountie removed, Eviscerated Long Form Census To Keep Facts From The People, Climate Change Embarassment On World Stage, Trashed Diplomat Richard Colvin For Doing His Job. Prorogued Parliament Twice In A Year. Prorogued Parliament to Stop Inquiry Into Torture, Took Liberal Surplus And Ran it into 53 Billion Dollar Deficit, Screwed Up G8 and G20 Meetings.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
The Myth of the Tory economic performance - Lawrence Martin 7 Feb 2012
LAWRENCE MARTIN
The myth of Tory economic performance
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Feb. 07, 2012 2:00AM EST
The extent to which the Conservatives’ propaganda machine will go was illustrated last week by the news, courtesy of The Canadian Press, of the staging of a Potemkin-village-style citizenship reaffirmation ceremony.
Only three bona fide new Canadians could be found for last October’s event, so at least six federal bureaucrats suited up as imposters for the PR show broadcast by Sun TV. In a control-freak kingdom, this one – “a full North Korean,” as one wag put it – is hard to top.
More related to this story
•Let’s debate OAS based on fact, not perception
•Truculent moralizing for a domestic audience
•Prime Minister Harper unveils grand plan to reshape Canada
Earlier discussion
Q&A: Why the Quebec Question still matters
Photos
Kenney's Oscar News of the charade came on the heels of Stephen Harper’s proclamations in Davos on the wonders of the Canadian economy as piloted by a Finance Minister who, he said, is the greatest on Earth. The Prime Minister’s musings on the need for pension reform were reasonable enough. But his ever-soaring estimations of his economic record are starting to be challenged by many observers, as well they might be.
From 2007 to 2011, Canada’s economic performance put us in the middle of the pack in GDP growth among 34 industrialized countries. Our unemployment rate is currently rising and nearing the U.S. level. It’s true that, comparatively speaking, we’re doing well on a number of other economic indices. But given the advantages the Conservatives enjoyed when they took office – the big surplus, the well-regulated financial sector, the natural-resource-laden riches – how much of an accomplishment is it? When you start a race a lap ahead of the field, how hard is it to be among the leaders?
To talk of the Tory economic record, we might first address the reddened state of our treasury that’s occasioning the cuts in the coming budget. A pertinent question is whether our deficit is the result of natural economic factors or whether it owes itself to vote-getting political expediency.
In this context, let’s recall a few things. Let’s recall the two-point GST cut that tore a giant hole in the revenue base, accounting for a good deal of the deficit. Let’s recall the prerecession spending – having inherited a $13-billion surplus, the Harper/Flaherty team spent so excessively that we were close to a deficit by the time the recession began. Let’s recall the slashing of corporate tax rates and the government’s easing of mortgage rules and backing of risky loans that further bled the treasury.
Put it all together and what it shows is that, with more prudent fiscal management from the same guy who lectured other countries on debt in Davos, we could have coped with the recession without driving our treasury into a large deficit hole.
Some other things should be recalled. In the fall of 2008, when the economic crisis hit, was the dynamic Harper/Flaherty duo on top of things? Or were they still saying that the budget would remain in balance and that there was no need for stimulus spending, and bringing in a foolhardy budget update that almost brought their government down?
With the opposition parties putting a gun to their head, they introduced a stimulus package that virtually every other country was doing. With the exception of Tory logos on cheques and Tony Clement’s G8 spending boondoggle, it was not badly administered.
Jim Flaherty has performed more ably in the past couple of years. But what’s in his record that makes him the greatest finance minister in the world?
Given the coming squeeze the Tories talk about on health care and Old Age Security, is it smart economic management to commit a staggering $30-billion to increasingly discredited F-35 warplanes? It’s nice that, on trade diversification, the government is waking up to China. But how many years did Ottawa ignore it?
I was talking to a plugged-in guy at the Finance Department the other day and asked him what the Tories have done that’s so wonderful. “The PR,” he responded.
Hard not to agree. It’s been a great shell game. Their propaganda has masked a middling economic performance.
977 comments
The myth of Tory economic performance
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Feb. 07, 2012 2:00AM EST
The extent to which the Conservatives’ propaganda machine will go was illustrated last week by the news, courtesy of The Canadian Press, of the staging of a Potemkin-village-style citizenship reaffirmation ceremony.
Only three bona fide new Canadians could be found for last October’s event, so at least six federal bureaucrats suited up as imposters for the PR show broadcast by Sun TV. In a control-freak kingdom, this one – “a full North Korean,” as one wag put it – is hard to top.
More related to this story
•Let’s debate OAS based on fact, not perception
•Truculent moralizing for a domestic audience
•Prime Minister Harper unveils grand plan to reshape Canada
Earlier discussion
Q&A: Why the Quebec Question still matters
Photos
Kenney's Oscar News of the charade came on the heels of Stephen Harper’s proclamations in Davos on the wonders of the Canadian economy as piloted by a Finance Minister who, he said, is the greatest on Earth. The Prime Minister’s musings on the need for pension reform were reasonable enough. But his ever-soaring estimations of his economic record are starting to be challenged by many observers, as well they might be.
From 2007 to 2011, Canada’s economic performance put us in the middle of the pack in GDP growth among 34 industrialized countries. Our unemployment rate is currently rising and nearing the U.S. level. It’s true that, comparatively speaking, we’re doing well on a number of other economic indices. But given the advantages the Conservatives enjoyed when they took office – the big surplus, the well-regulated financial sector, the natural-resource-laden riches – how much of an accomplishment is it? When you start a race a lap ahead of the field, how hard is it to be among the leaders?
To talk of the Tory economic record, we might first address the reddened state of our treasury that’s occasioning the cuts in the coming budget. A pertinent question is whether our deficit is the result of natural economic factors or whether it owes itself to vote-getting political expediency.
In this context, let’s recall a few things. Let’s recall the two-point GST cut that tore a giant hole in the revenue base, accounting for a good deal of the deficit. Let’s recall the prerecession spending – having inherited a $13-billion surplus, the Harper/Flaherty team spent so excessively that we were close to a deficit by the time the recession began. Let’s recall the slashing of corporate tax rates and the government’s easing of mortgage rules and backing of risky loans that further bled the treasury.
Put it all together and what it shows is that, with more prudent fiscal management from the same guy who lectured other countries on debt in Davos, we could have coped with the recession without driving our treasury into a large deficit hole.
Some other things should be recalled. In the fall of 2008, when the economic crisis hit, was the dynamic Harper/Flaherty duo on top of things? Or were they still saying that the budget would remain in balance and that there was no need for stimulus spending, and bringing in a foolhardy budget update that almost brought their government down?
With the opposition parties putting a gun to their head, they introduced a stimulus package that virtually every other country was doing. With the exception of Tory logos on cheques and Tony Clement’s G8 spending boondoggle, it was not badly administered.
Jim Flaherty has performed more ably in the past couple of years. But what’s in his record that makes him the greatest finance minister in the world?
Given the coming squeeze the Tories talk about on health care and Old Age Security, is it smart economic management to commit a staggering $30-billion to increasingly discredited F-35 warplanes? It’s nice that, on trade diversification, the government is waking up to China. But how many years did Ottawa ignore it?
I was talking to a plugged-in guy at the Finance Department the other day and asked him what the Tories have done that’s so wonderful. “The PR,” he responded.
Hard not to agree. It’s been a great shell game. Their propaganda has masked a middling economic performance.
977 comments
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
