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.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
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
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Dec 2011 - Harper is Inventing a New Canada - Gerald Caplan
Be very afraid: Stephen Harper is inventing a new Canada
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 6:09PM EST
Last updated Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 6:22PM EST
2128 comments Email Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Stephen Harper first became Prime Minister in 2006 and has already dramatically transformed the old Canada. But with no election due for four more years, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
It’s in the nature of true believers and ideologues to believe that any means to their sacred ends are justified. This makes them extremely dangerous people. It’s also typical of such people that they’re often motivated by unfathomable resentment and anger, a compulsion not just to better but to destroy their adversaries. These are good descriptions of Stephen Harper and those closest to him.
More related to this story
•Minister Kenney, can I become a citizen in these shoes?
•Canada’s message: The world and its climate be damned
•Do Conservatives now think they have carte blanche on dirty tricks?
Video
Burka ban for citizenship oath
Video
Canada pulls out of Kyoto
Video
Justin Trudeau admits losing his cool There was never a Trudeauland or Mulroneyland or Chrétienland, but as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has made us understand, there is already a Harperland whose nature is quite apparent. Like the American conservatives whom the Harperites so envy, our government has concocted a new reality of its own that it is systematically imposing on the Canadian people. The values and moral code of Mr. Harper’s new Canada are clear.
A central tenet of the new reality is the repudiation of the need for anything as irrelevant as evidence, facts or rationality whenever they are inconvenient. As in cancelling the long-form census, without a shred of reason. As when Injustice Minister Nicholson defends his back-to-the-jungle crime bills by reminding us of a Harperland article of faith: “We don’t govern on the basis of statistics.” Or, as we now know, on the basis of the findings of serious experts both in and out of the government.
Jason Kenney can stand as a past master at inventing evidence to serve his unfailingly partisan needs. This is a man, after all, who has shamelessly claimed a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism in Canada contrary to all the facts. Just days ago, Mr. Kenney employed gratuitously inflammatory language when he created a crisis over a handful of women who wear a veil, and who are of course Muslim.
But lying is the very mother’s milk of Harperland morality. When you invent your own reality, you can also invent your defence. Just follow the distinguished careers of ministers Peter MacKay, Peter Kent and Tony Clement. Old joke: How do you know when certain politicians are lying? Their lips are moving.
In Harperland, hitting below the belt is standard equipment, as the dirty tricks used against Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler nicely demonstrate. Straightforward dishonesty as in the Cotler caper is just the Conservative version of free expression, as Government House Leader Van Loan earnestly explained. When the Speaker of the House brands the tactic as “reprehensible,” you know we’re no longer in Kansas, kids.
On the complex aboriginal file, Harperland blames the victims for their own wretched circumstances and blames local NDP MP Charlie Angus for not cluing in the clueless Aboriginal Affairs Minister. The minister’s assertion that the chief of Attawapiskat had accepted the government’s imposition of a ludicrously expensive third-party manager was, of course, immediately contradicted.
Harperland values demand fundamental changes in our governance processes – the outright attacks on trade unions, the unprecedented measures taken to silence critical NGOs, the muzzling of ostensibly independent federal watchdogs.
But the new values also reverse decades of cherished Canadian policies. Look at the contempt the Prime Minister shows for the United Nations, as described in a new paper for the McLeod Group by former Canadian diplomat and senior UN official Carolyn McAskie, “Canada and Multilateralism: Missing In Action”:
The Prime Minister says he has little use for the UN. ... After losing a bid for membership of the Security Council, many government members made disparaging comments about that “corrupt organization” and right wing press commentators referred to it as an organization run by “dictators.” Is this the Canada that played such a front-line role in previous decades? How can we behave in this childish manner, spurning a whole system of organizations critical to world peace, security and development?
2128 comments Email Print Decrease text size
Increase text size To damage Canada’s reputation even further, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has gravely disappointed those who had high expectations of him as the country’s senior diplomat. Sadly, Mr. Baird has proved incapable of eschewing the cheap politics by which he demeaned the House for so many years, complete with endlessly-repeated spin lines that substitute on the world stage partisan slogans for real thought.
The new Canada is a place where militarism is given pride of place over peacemaking. Watching Defence Minister Peter MacKay taking bows at the Grey Cup game for Canada's part in the Libyan campaign, Globe columnist Lawrence Martin observed:
The blending of sport and the military, with the government as the marching band, is part of the new nationalism the Conservatives are trying to instill. It is another example of how the state, under Stephen Harper’s governance, is becoming all-intrusive. … State controls are now at a highpoint in our modern history. There is every indication they will extend further.
The University of Ottawa's Ralph Heintzman, who created and headed the federal Public Service Office of Values and Ethics, provides an important insight into what’s happening here: 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.”
Politics as war is exactly what former Harper strategist Tom Flanagan has long advocated. A Globe piece by Mr. Flanagan before the 2011 election was actually titled “An election is war by other means.” Mr. Flanagan also chose to compare 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”.
As Alan Whitehorn of the Royal Military College of Canada wrote: “This suggests a paradigm not of civil rivalry between fellow citizens of the same state, but all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the opponent. This kind of malevolent vision and hostile tone seems antithetical to the democratic spirit, not to mention peace and stability.”
In fact like Mr. Harper, Prof. Flanagan seems to get a kick out of “destroying and obliterating” those he’s not fond of. When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was making news, Prof. Flanagan commented: “Well, I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something. … I would not feel unhappy if Assange ‘disappeared’.”
To a woman who e-mailed him objecting to his (presumed) flippancy, Prof. Flanagan responded: “Better be careful, we know where you live.” What would Freud have made of such kibitzing, I wonder? After all, the good professor has cited Machiavelli's odious comment that “fortune is a woman and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force.”
Ironically, if you want to hear from the other Canada, the former Canada, the one so much admired by the world, you should (and still can) listen to last Sunday’s interview on CBC radio’s Sunday Edition between host Michael Enright and Iceland’s President, Olafur Grimmson. There, in Mr. Grimmson, was the voice of humanity, thoughtfulness, pragmatism and commonsense. He is the perfect Canadian and would make the perfect Canadian prime minister. No wonder the masterminds of Harperland want to disappear the CBC.
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 6:09PM EST
Last updated Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 6:22PM EST
2128 comments Email Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Stephen Harper first became Prime Minister in 2006 and has already dramatically transformed the old Canada. But with no election due for four more years, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
It’s in the nature of true believers and ideologues to believe that any means to their sacred ends are justified. This makes them extremely dangerous people. It’s also typical of such people that they’re often motivated by unfathomable resentment and anger, a compulsion not just to better but to destroy their adversaries. These are good descriptions of Stephen Harper and those closest to him.
More related to this story
•Minister Kenney, can I become a citizen in these shoes?
•Canada’s message: The world and its climate be damned
•Do Conservatives now think they have carte blanche on dirty tricks?
Video
Burka ban for citizenship oath
Video
Canada pulls out of Kyoto
Video
Justin Trudeau admits losing his cool There was never a Trudeauland or Mulroneyland or Chrétienland, but as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has made us understand, there is already a Harperland whose nature is quite apparent. Like the American conservatives whom the Harperites so envy, our government has concocted a new reality of its own that it is systematically imposing on the Canadian people. The values and moral code of Mr. Harper’s new Canada are clear.
A central tenet of the new reality is the repudiation of the need for anything as irrelevant as evidence, facts or rationality whenever they are inconvenient. As in cancelling the long-form census, without a shred of reason. As when Injustice Minister Nicholson defends his back-to-the-jungle crime bills by reminding us of a Harperland article of faith: “We don’t govern on the basis of statistics.” Or, as we now know, on the basis of the findings of serious experts both in and out of the government.
Jason Kenney can stand as a past master at inventing evidence to serve his unfailingly partisan needs. This is a man, after all, who has shamelessly claimed a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism in Canada contrary to all the facts. Just days ago, Mr. Kenney employed gratuitously inflammatory language when he created a crisis over a handful of women who wear a veil, and who are of course Muslim.
But lying is the very mother’s milk of Harperland morality. When you invent your own reality, you can also invent your defence. Just follow the distinguished careers of ministers Peter MacKay, Peter Kent and Tony Clement. Old joke: How do you know when certain politicians are lying? Their lips are moving.
In Harperland, hitting below the belt is standard equipment, as the dirty tricks used against Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler nicely demonstrate. Straightforward dishonesty as in the Cotler caper is just the Conservative version of free expression, as Government House Leader Van Loan earnestly explained. When the Speaker of the House brands the tactic as “reprehensible,” you know we’re no longer in Kansas, kids.
On the complex aboriginal file, Harperland blames the victims for their own wretched circumstances and blames local NDP MP Charlie Angus for not cluing in the clueless Aboriginal Affairs Minister. The minister’s assertion that the chief of Attawapiskat had accepted the government’s imposition of a ludicrously expensive third-party manager was, of course, immediately contradicted.
Harperland values demand fundamental changes in our governance processes – the outright attacks on trade unions, the unprecedented measures taken to silence critical NGOs, the muzzling of ostensibly independent federal watchdogs.
But the new values also reverse decades of cherished Canadian policies. Look at the contempt the Prime Minister shows for the United Nations, as described in a new paper for the McLeod Group by former Canadian diplomat and senior UN official Carolyn McAskie, “Canada and Multilateralism: Missing In Action”:
The Prime Minister says he has little use for the UN. ... After losing a bid for membership of the Security Council, many government members made disparaging comments about that “corrupt organization” and right wing press commentators referred to it as an organization run by “dictators.” Is this the Canada that played such a front-line role in previous decades? How can we behave in this childish manner, spurning a whole system of organizations critical to world peace, security and development?
2128 comments Email Print Decrease text size
Increase text size To damage Canada’s reputation even further, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has gravely disappointed those who had high expectations of him as the country’s senior diplomat. Sadly, Mr. Baird has proved incapable of eschewing the cheap politics by which he demeaned the House for so many years, complete with endlessly-repeated spin lines that substitute on the world stage partisan slogans for real thought.
The new Canada is a place where militarism is given pride of place over peacemaking. Watching Defence Minister Peter MacKay taking bows at the Grey Cup game for Canada's part in the Libyan campaign, Globe columnist Lawrence Martin observed:
The blending of sport and the military, with the government as the marching band, is part of the new nationalism the Conservatives are trying to instill. It is another example of how the state, under Stephen Harper’s governance, is becoming all-intrusive. … State controls are now at a highpoint in our modern history. There is every indication they will extend further.
The University of Ottawa's Ralph Heintzman, who created and headed the federal Public Service Office of Values and Ethics, provides an important insight into what’s happening here: 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.”
Politics as war is exactly what former Harper strategist Tom Flanagan has long advocated. A Globe piece by Mr. Flanagan before the 2011 election was actually titled “An election is war by other means.” Mr. Flanagan also chose to compare 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”.
As Alan Whitehorn of the Royal Military College of Canada wrote: “This suggests a paradigm not of civil rivalry between fellow citizens of the same state, but all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the opponent. This kind of malevolent vision and hostile tone seems antithetical to the democratic spirit, not to mention peace and stability.”
In fact like Mr. Harper, Prof. Flanagan seems to get a kick out of “destroying and obliterating” those he’s not fond of. When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was making news, Prof. Flanagan commented: “Well, I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something. … I would not feel unhappy if Assange ‘disappeared’.”
To a woman who e-mailed him objecting to his (presumed) flippancy, Prof. Flanagan responded: “Better be careful, we know where you live.” What would Freud have made of such kibitzing, I wonder? After all, the good professor has cited Machiavelli's odious comment that “fortune is a woman and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force.”
Ironically, if you want to hear from the other Canada, the former Canada, the one so much admired by the world, you should (and still can) listen to last Sunday’s interview on CBC radio’s Sunday Edition between host Michael Enright and Iceland’s President, Olafur Grimmson. There, in Mr. Grimmson, was the voice of humanity, thoughtfulness, pragmatism and commonsense. He is the perfect Canadian and would make the perfect Canadian prime minister. No wonder the masterminds of Harperland want to disappear the CBC.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
29 November 2011 - Lawrence Martin
Under this PM, the state is everywhere
Lawrence Martin | Columnist profile | E-mail
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011 2:00AM EST
What does the Grey Cup football game have to do with the Canadian military? Not much, you say. True enough. But chalk up another public-relations triumph for the governing Conservatives. They turned the opening ceremonies of our annual sports classic into a military glorification exercise.
For our part in the NATO Libya campaign, the Defence Minister took bows on the field. A Canadian flag was spread over 40 yards. Cannons boomed.
More related to this story
•A three-peat for prorogation? Bring on reform
•A tale of two democracies: Harper steamrolls, Obama grinds gears
•Tories take over as party of Big Government
Photos
Leak in the bucket The blending of sport and the military, with the government as the marching band, is part of the new nationalism the Conservatives are trying to instill. It is another example of how the state, under Stephen Harper’s governance, is becoming all-intrusive.
Conservatism, as defined by Ronald Reagan, was about getting government off the backs of the people. Conservatism, as practised by team Harper, is more akin to an Orwellian opposite. State controls are now at a highpoint in our modern history. There is every indication they will extend further.
The propaganda machine has become mammoth and unrelenting. The parliamentary newspaper The Hill Times recently found there are now no fewer than 1,500 communications staffers on the governing payroll. In the days of the King and St. Laurent governments, there were hardly any. In recent decades, the numbers shot up, but Mr. Harper is outdoing all others, a primary example being his institution and maintenance of a master control system wherein virtually every government communication is filtered through central command.
In his minority governments, the rationale was that tight controls were necessary for survival. With a majority, it was thought that the controls that brought on parliamentary shutdowns and contempt of Parliament rulings would ease up. Those who thought that way didn’t know Stephen Harper.
In recent weeks, the government has invoked closure or time limits on debate at a record-breaking clip. The limits have come on key legislation, driving the combustible New Democrat Pat Martin to proclaim, “There’s not a democracy in the world that would tolerate this jackboot [expletive].”
On the propaganda ledger, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney put on a show in committee last week. In what may have been a first, his spinners set up a billboard behind him replete with bright Conservative blue colours and flags. Everything except a marching band.
In the message-massaging department, news has arrived that the government is imposing new communications controls on the RCMP. The same is being done with the Defence Department. Secrecy surrounds the government’s plans to spend a whopping $477-million on a U.S. military satellite.
State surveillance, the rationale being security, is being taken to new levels. The Conservatives are bringing in legislation that will compel Internet service-providers to disclose customer information. A Canada-U.S. agreement is on the way that will contain an entry-exit system that will track everyone.
In Parliament, more and more ministers are showing up for Question Period with prewritten answers. If the scripted stuff is far afield of the questions posed, it doesn’t matter. In our shining democracy, they use it anyway.
Research that contradicts the government line is discarded. Civil liberties fade, new jails proliferate. Those who speak out better watch out. When the NDP’s Megan Leslie stated an opposing view on the Keystone XL Pipeline, she was accused by the government of treachery.
In that conservatives cherish freedom, it’s rather strange. For a book on the government, Harperland, I chose the subtitle The Politics of Control. I now plead guilty to understatement. With their populist nationalism and drive for domination, these guys are everywhere, even on our football fields.
82 comments
Lawrence Martin | Columnist profile | E-mail
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011 2:00AM EST
What does the Grey Cup football game have to do with the Canadian military? Not much, you say. True enough. But chalk up another public-relations triumph for the governing Conservatives. They turned the opening ceremonies of our annual sports classic into a military glorification exercise.
For our part in the NATO Libya campaign, the Defence Minister took bows on the field. A Canadian flag was spread over 40 yards. Cannons boomed.
More related to this story
•A three-peat for prorogation? Bring on reform
•A tale of two democracies: Harper steamrolls, Obama grinds gears
•Tories take over as party of Big Government
Photos
Leak in the bucket The blending of sport and the military, with the government as the marching band, is part of the new nationalism the Conservatives are trying to instill. It is another example of how the state, under Stephen Harper’s governance, is becoming all-intrusive.
Conservatism, as defined by Ronald Reagan, was about getting government off the backs of the people. Conservatism, as practised by team Harper, is more akin to an Orwellian opposite. State controls are now at a highpoint in our modern history. There is every indication they will extend further.
The propaganda machine has become mammoth and unrelenting. The parliamentary newspaper The Hill Times recently found there are now no fewer than 1,500 communications staffers on the governing payroll. In the days of the King and St. Laurent governments, there were hardly any. In recent decades, the numbers shot up, but Mr. Harper is outdoing all others, a primary example being his institution and maintenance of a master control system wherein virtually every government communication is filtered through central command.
In his minority governments, the rationale was that tight controls were necessary for survival. With a majority, it was thought that the controls that brought on parliamentary shutdowns and contempt of Parliament rulings would ease up. Those who thought that way didn’t know Stephen Harper.
In recent weeks, the government has invoked closure or time limits on debate at a record-breaking clip. The limits have come on key legislation, driving the combustible New Democrat Pat Martin to proclaim, “There’s not a democracy in the world that would tolerate this jackboot [expletive].”
On the propaganda ledger, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney put on a show in committee last week. In what may have been a first, his spinners set up a billboard behind him replete with bright Conservative blue colours and flags. Everything except a marching band.
In the message-massaging department, news has arrived that the government is imposing new communications controls on the RCMP. The same is being done with the Defence Department. Secrecy surrounds the government’s plans to spend a whopping $477-million on a U.S. military satellite.
State surveillance, the rationale being security, is being taken to new levels. The Conservatives are bringing in legislation that will compel Internet service-providers to disclose customer information. A Canada-U.S. agreement is on the way that will contain an entry-exit system that will track everyone.
In Parliament, more and more ministers are showing up for Question Period with prewritten answers. If the scripted stuff is far afield of the questions posed, it doesn’t matter. In our shining democracy, they use it anyway.
Research that contradicts the government line is discarded. Civil liberties fade, new jails proliferate. Those who speak out better watch out. When the NDP’s Megan Leslie stated an opposing view on the Keystone XL Pipeline, she was accused by the government of treachery.
In that conservatives cherish freedom, it’s rather strange. For a book on the government, Harperland, I chose the subtitle The Politics of Control. I now plead guilty to understatement. With their populist nationalism and drive for domination, these guys are everywhere, even on our football fields.
82 comments
29 November 2011 End of Wheat Board
steven chase
OTTAWA— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 6:44PM EST
The Harper government has flexed its majority muscle to push through the Commons a controversial bill that will forever change the lives of 70,000 Canadian grain farmers.
With this, the Conservatives fulfilled a long-promised goal of stripping the Canadian Wheat Board of control over western grain sales – a move that the agency’s dissenting chair has warned will ultimately doom the Prairie institution.
More related to this story
•Senate plans extra sittings to pass budget, Wheat Board bills before Christmas
•Wheat Board bill gets pre-screening – and debate limit – in Senate
•Sound and fury as Tories limit debate on packed agenda
Video
Wheat Board files suit against Ottawa Conservative MPs easily outvoted their NDP and Liberal rivals Monday evening to pass the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act in the Commons. The vote passed 153 to 120.
As of Aug. 1, 2012, western Canadian farmers will be free of the wheat board’s monopoly and no longer forced to sell their wheat and barley through the agency.
Instead, for the first time in nearly seven decades, they will be able to negotiate their own deals.
“This is a tremendous day; this is a movement forward; this is what we have been waiting for, [for] decades,” Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Monday.
“For far too long, western farmers have been shackled by an outdated monopoly and today they got one step closer to having the marketing freedom they want and deserve.”
The Conservatives and their predecessor parties, including Reform, had long campaigned against the board as a symbol of big government gone awry – a nanny state intrusion into the lives of farmers that, like the gun registry, the Tories were determined to end.
Before it can become law and take effect, the legislation must still be approved by the Senate, where the Tories also outnumber their rivals and can ensure its passage.
Western Canadian farmers are sharply divided on the legislation, plebiscites conducted by the board show.
The Conservatives have been adamant about passing the bill before year end so that millers, maltsters and farmers can begin negotiating contracts for summer 2012 delivery.
The wheat board debate is fundamentally a battle between individualism and collectivism – over whether, in 2011, these farmers should be obliged to pool their grain to seek a better price or whether they should be free to pursue their fortunes alone.
Interim NDP Leader Nycole Turmel predicted farmers would suffer when producers are free to exit the board. Those who wish may stick with the board but it will no longer have the selling volume to command as much influence in the market.
“For generations, farmers relied on the wheat board to get the best possible price for their grain and to support their families,” Ms. Turmel said. “But this government ignored them and now that stability is gone.”
More related to this story
•Ottawa accused of hoarding wheat board fund
•‘It’s beyond Big Brother,’ Ritz says of wheat board
•Wheat-board chief fears final harvest if Harper has his way
•Canadian Wheat Board sues Tories over plan to dismantle monopoly
•Wheat Board takes fight to the people
•Wheat board directors broke ranks with lawyers to sue Ottawa
•Farmers slap Canadian Wheat Board with countersuit
•All farmers are equal – but some are more equal than others
•Canada’s Wheat Board wars: The future of farming cut two ways
•End of wheat-board monopoly bolsters Tory stand against regulation
More
OTTAWA— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 6:44PM EST
The Harper government has flexed its majority muscle to push through the Commons a controversial bill that will forever change the lives of 70,000 Canadian grain farmers.
With this, the Conservatives fulfilled a long-promised goal of stripping the Canadian Wheat Board of control over western grain sales – a move that the agency’s dissenting chair has warned will ultimately doom the Prairie institution.
More related to this story
•Senate plans extra sittings to pass budget, Wheat Board bills before Christmas
•Wheat Board bill gets pre-screening – and debate limit – in Senate
•Sound and fury as Tories limit debate on packed agenda
Video
Wheat Board files suit against Ottawa Conservative MPs easily outvoted their NDP and Liberal rivals Monday evening to pass the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act in the Commons. The vote passed 153 to 120.
As of Aug. 1, 2012, western Canadian farmers will be free of the wheat board’s monopoly and no longer forced to sell their wheat and barley through the agency.
Instead, for the first time in nearly seven decades, they will be able to negotiate their own deals.
“This is a tremendous day; this is a movement forward; this is what we have been waiting for, [for] decades,” Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Monday.
“For far too long, western farmers have been shackled by an outdated monopoly and today they got one step closer to having the marketing freedom they want and deserve.”
The Conservatives and their predecessor parties, including Reform, had long campaigned against the board as a symbol of big government gone awry – a nanny state intrusion into the lives of farmers that, like the gun registry, the Tories were determined to end.
Before it can become law and take effect, the legislation must still be approved by the Senate, where the Tories also outnumber their rivals and can ensure its passage.
Western Canadian farmers are sharply divided on the legislation, plebiscites conducted by the board show.
The Conservatives have been adamant about passing the bill before year end so that millers, maltsters and farmers can begin negotiating contracts for summer 2012 delivery.
The wheat board debate is fundamentally a battle between individualism and collectivism – over whether, in 2011, these farmers should be obliged to pool their grain to seek a better price or whether they should be free to pursue their fortunes alone.
Interim NDP Leader Nycole Turmel predicted farmers would suffer when producers are free to exit the board. Those who wish may stick with the board but it will no longer have the selling volume to command as much influence in the market.
“For generations, farmers relied on the wheat board to get the best possible price for their grain and to support their families,” Ms. Turmel said. “But this government ignored them and now that stability is gone.”
More related to this story
•Ottawa accused of hoarding wheat board fund
•‘It’s beyond Big Brother,’ Ritz says of wheat board
•Wheat-board chief fears final harvest if Harper has his way
•Canadian Wheat Board sues Tories over plan to dismantle monopoly
•Wheat Board takes fight to the people
•Wheat board directors broke ranks with lawyers to sue Ottawa
•Farmers slap Canadian Wheat Board with countersuit
•All farmers are equal – but some are more equal than others
•Canada’s Wheat Board wars: The future of farming cut two ways
•End of wheat-board monopoly bolsters Tory stand against regulation
More
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Tony Clement's G8 Spending Spree
2 November 2011 Greg Weston
The federal minister responsible for cutting government waste is being called before a parliamentary committee Wednesday to explain how his own Ontario riding became paved in $45 million of political pork.
Treasury Board head Tony Clement certainly has a lot to answer for.
The $45.7-million spending spree was supposed to provide essential facilities to host last year's G8 summit of world leaders in Clement's riding in Muskoka cottage country north of Toronto.
Instead, almost all of the money was scattered across Clement's electoral domain for local pet projects that had little or nothing at all to do with the summit — everything from a $17-million community centre expansion to a $100,000 gazebo in the middle of an empty lot an hour's drive from the meeting site.
So far, Stephen Harper's government has successfully stonewalled all attempts by the opposition parties to get to the bottom of the great Muskoka pork barrel.
That may help to explain why the Conservative government's master of political bafflegab, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, will be seated next to Clement at the committee hearing.
At the time of the G8 spending, Baird was the minister responsible for managing billions of dollars of infrastructure money, allegedly including giving final sign-off on what is unaffectionately known in political circles as Tony's Porkfest.
With Clement and Baird in the hot seat at committee, opposition MPs will be after answers to five key questions:
Auditor General Sheila Fraser, in her final report released just after she retired in June, revealed that the $50 million used for the so-called G8 legacy projects in Clement's riding had been wrongly, if not illegally, taken from funds Parliament had approved for Canadian border crossings.
Question: Exactly who in government approved the pilfering of the border improvement fund, and given the severity of the auditor general's findings, what disciplinary action has been taken against those responsible?
The auditor general also reported that public servants were not involved in selecting the 32 projects in Clement's riding that received the $50 million.
Question: Who selected the projects, by what criteria, and who authorized those responsible to circumvent all of the normal government funding procedures in place to ensure the prudent use of taxpayers' money?
The auditors who dug into the G8 spending were unable to find any of the usual government documentation showing how the projects were selected for funding.
Question: What happened to all the paperwork, and if it was destroyed, has the government called in the RCMP?
Documents obtained by Postmedia journalists and NDP researchers suggest Clement was personally involved in getting at least one friend hired to work on a G8 contract, and the minister may have also tried to pressure federal officials not to conduct a routine review of G8 spending.
Question: How do Canadian taxpayers benefit if a minister becomes involved in nepotism and meddling with officials trying to protect the public purse?
As head of the Treasury Board, Clement is now responsible for ensuring the Conservative government adheres to stringent rules intended to get the best value for Canadian taxpayers in all federal spending.
Question: Given all that has happened on the G8 spending file, if Clement cannot clearly and convincingly answer all of the above questions, why should Canadians trust him in such a pivotal cabinet role?
The federal minister responsible for cutting government waste is being called before a parliamentary committee Wednesday to explain how his own Ontario riding became paved in $45 million of political pork.
Treasury Board head Tony Clement certainly has a lot to answer for.
The $45.7-million spending spree was supposed to provide essential facilities to host last year's G8 summit of world leaders in Clement's riding in Muskoka cottage country north of Toronto.
Instead, almost all of the money was scattered across Clement's electoral domain for local pet projects that had little or nothing at all to do with the summit — everything from a $17-million community centre expansion to a $100,000 gazebo in the middle of an empty lot an hour's drive from the meeting site.
So far, Stephen Harper's government has successfully stonewalled all attempts by the opposition parties to get to the bottom of the great Muskoka pork barrel.
That may help to explain why the Conservative government's master of political bafflegab, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, will be seated next to Clement at the committee hearing.
At the time of the G8 spending, Baird was the minister responsible for managing billions of dollars of infrastructure money, allegedly including giving final sign-off on what is unaffectionately known in political circles as Tony's Porkfest.
With Clement and Baird in the hot seat at committee, opposition MPs will be after answers to five key questions:
Auditor General Sheila Fraser, in her final report released just after she retired in June, revealed that the $50 million used for the so-called G8 legacy projects in Clement's riding had been wrongly, if not illegally, taken from funds Parliament had approved for Canadian border crossings.
Question: Exactly who in government approved the pilfering of the border improvement fund, and given the severity of the auditor general's findings, what disciplinary action has been taken against those responsible?
The auditor general also reported that public servants were not involved in selecting the 32 projects in Clement's riding that received the $50 million.
Question: Who selected the projects, by what criteria, and who authorized those responsible to circumvent all of the normal government funding procedures in place to ensure the prudent use of taxpayers' money?
The auditors who dug into the G8 spending were unable to find any of the usual government documentation showing how the projects were selected for funding.
Question: What happened to all the paperwork, and if it was destroyed, has the government called in the RCMP?
Documents obtained by Postmedia journalists and NDP researchers suggest Clement was personally involved in getting at least one friend hired to work on a G8 contract, and the minister may have also tried to pressure federal officials not to conduct a routine review of G8 spending.
Question: How do Canadian taxpayers benefit if a minister becomes involved in nepotism and meddling with officials trying to protect the public purse?
As head of the Treasury Board, Clement is now responsible for ensuring the Conservative government adheres to stringent rules intended to get the best value for Canadian taxpayers in all federal spending.
Question: Given all that has happened on the G8 spending file, if Clement cannot clearly and convincingly answer all of the above questions, why should Canadians trust him in such a pivotal cabinet role?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
