WHAT??

Let's get this straight. If a ministerial aid screws up or interferes with the function of the ministry, they cannot be questioned by parliament committees who are looking into the screw-up. The Minister will take the blame for the screw-up because of the joke term ministerial responsibility. Not too friggin' likely.

Two major problems. A minister can claim to have no first hand knowledge of the infraction... therefore plausible deny-ability. Second... a minister cannot be compelled to testify. Maybe legally he/she has to appear but in reality there are ten thousand ways to get out of it.

And what about the current case wherein the minister is in fact the prime minister. Is he going to testify? Not too friggin' likely. He doesn't even need an excuse - he just says, no thanks.

So what's next for Harpo and his band of cretins? They can pass a regulation to eliminate ministerial responsibility. Think that they can't? Just wait.

Maybe they could cancel the G8 and G20 and use the $930 million earmarked for security to set up a new government department. It could consist of five hundred Con patronage appointees who are charged with taking the fall when ministerial aids screw up. They could be put on contracts so that when they are fired for things that they did not do -they get no severance pay.

Cons on trial

I have to admit that I am not much of a fan of Peter Milliken, the Speaker in the House but he was recently between a rock and a hard place and he did the best he could with a rotten situation.

The issue that he was deciding was whether Canadians and parliamentarians have a right to know if the governing party can treat them like sheep.

The issue was the detainee issue. I am not going to go into the issue because I figure if you are smart enough to read this blog, you will already know the issue.

Milliken's ruling was that the government was in contempt of parliament but he did not o as far as to say that. He told the government to get their act together and work out something with the opposition with in the next two weeks.

Of course, if the government had any integrity at all they would have worked this out long before Pete's ruling.

Have I suggested in the past that the Cons are corrupt, bereft of ideas and fundamental decency? If not, I will say it now.

Environmental screw-up?

If today's Grope and Flail has it right in a story, then the Cons are granting the right to pollute to anyone with a lobbyist.

The story today is that Jim Prentice is about to announce that his department will no longer require environmental assessments for big projects such as pipelines and oil sands and anything else that the lobbyists can dream up to make exempt.

I can only hope that they make me exempt from filing taxes, while they are at it.

"Steamroller" MacLeod strikes again

In case you missed it, there is going to be a by-election for the provincial seat vacated by Jim Watson.  The Liberal candidate is none other than Bob Chiarelli, the former mayor and former Ottawa West MPP.

The Cons have been in a tough fight to nominate someone to come in third place and after much in fighting, gnashing of political teeth and back room maneuvering, they decided, by a whopping 3 vote margin, to serve up Beth Graham.

Graham's crowd out-finessed the crowd that was pushing Mike Patton.  Patton was formerly a Larry O'Brien stalwart and presumably Larry and his minions were backing Mike.  So who was the juggernaut that backed Graham?

Enter the ego that knows no bounds, Lisa MacLeod, MPP for Nepean Carleton, which is right next door to Ottawa West-Nepean.  Lisa has been reading her own press and has determined that she is in line for a cabinet seat when (or if) the Cons ever regain power in Ontario.  With her overblown view of herself (and one should note that her hubby, Joe Varner-MacLeod, is a very tested Con back-stabber), Lisa is pushing her weight around like it's a sale day at Baskins. But why Graham?

Well for one she ran the constituency office for MacLeod.  Second, she is penis-deprived, which fits Lisa's goal of emasculating Queen's Park.  Thirdly, Lisa thinks that she will be easier to control that Patton would ever have been.

But Lisa may have backed the wrong horse.  Beth's resume is not as light as Lisa might think.  In addition to being an EA to Federal Minister Leona A-glue-gun, she was also the president of the Leslie Park Community Association and the Nepean Federation of Community Associations. She has also chaired Nepean's environmental advisory committee, and served on committees of the Ontario Trillium Association and the Ottawa Special Olympic.  While all of these are back room appointed positions, it means that Beth has more friends than Lisa.

Makes for fun television, don't it?

Off to the slammer with you!

The Cons have an interesting take on crime.  Stats show that crime is down all across Canada which continues a trend that has occurred over the past 10 or 12 years.  That also means that fewer people are being incarcerated.

That should be great news for Canadians - and it is- unless you are a Con.

The stats can only mean one thing... we are soft on crime.

We need to make more things illegal and make sure that more Canadians go to jail.  That way we can get our stats back up to where they used to be and make Harper's Cons happy.

Sure is strange!

Gerald Kenny... MP of all he sees

Gerry had better learn how to play the piano and sing... cause he is potentially in hot water over a picture of himself on the Internet.  No, no, he's not doing anything illegal -- just stupid.

Seems that the Con government's Infrastructure money is actually Kenny's to dole out with his name on it.  In the past government cash given out came with a big-sized cheque made up to look like a government check -- from the government... you know, you and me... of Canada.

Kenny's government handouts come complete with a medium-sized check made up in blue with the Cons party logo on it.  A check from Gerry and Steve.

Now that sounds a lot like a bribe.

And just so you don't think that the picture to the right is a one time occasion.  There is another photo of his honour given out a similar check to a Chester, NS, church.

I wonder what the Auditor General will make of this?

The devil is in the details

In 2007 the Cons passed a law to fix election dates. At the time, Rob Nicholson, then-Minister of Democratic Reform and now the Minister of Justice, declared that the measures restricted the prime minister from calling an election unless a vote of no-confidence occurred before October 19, 2009.

Then in 2008, Harper called an election based on the excuse that parliament wasn't working. There was no confidence vote involved, just Harper's imagination at work.

So in 2009, Democracy Watch takes the government to court over the issue and a judge rules that:

"The matter of convention in this set of circumstances is political in nature and is outside the jurisdiction of the court, bearing in mind the separation of powers under constitutional supremacy."

That, but the way is legal speak for the government can do whatever to hell it wants and we have nothing to say about it.

Another nail in the coffin of true democracy brought to you by the Ministry of Democratic Reform?

War is Peace and Freedom is Slavery

One or two of their own?

I wonder if the Ontario Cons are feeling a little sheepish these days. When former MPP and cabinet minister Michael Bryant got involved in an incident in which a cyclist died in Toronto, the Cons went overboard to heap blame on McGuinty and his government.

Now that Jaffer has been charges with DUI and cocaine possession, the Cons are mute. Three questions arise:

1) Why did it take 5 days before the news of the arrest got out?
2) Will Jaffer go to jail for this alleged crime or will be be bailed out by the Tough-on-people-not-like-them Cons?
3) What did Helena know about the drugs and when did she find out?

Inquiring minds just want to know.

Thinking people recognize the deceipt

So here's the thing -- Harper and Iggy agree, before the summer recess, to strike a committee to see if there was some kind of compromise over Employment Insurance.

The committee meets a few times with the Liberal members submitting ideas and suggestions.  What did the Cons do?  They submitted not even one shred of paper.  They drank the coffee and ate the donuts but did not do the work. 

Why?  Did they not have any ideas?  Were they just wasting time?  Did the donuts put them to sleep?

The answer is that they were being deceitful.  Two weeks after the Liberals gave up trying to engage the Cons, the Cons release a position on EI that has bought off the "Socialists and the Separatists" (Harper's term).  Did they not have any idea about their proposal during the summer?  Was it dreamed up after the committee last met?

Or were they just thumbing their nose at Canadians?

Oh, and by the way, Nepean-Carleton's, "Results for Himself", MP was on that committee.

For those who keep score

There is a Canadian being held in jail in Egypt. The claim was that he confessed that he was a spy for Israel. The counter-claim was that he was tortured into make that confession. The Canadian government offered no consular assistance to Mohammed El-Attar during the time that he was allegedly tortured and the government has washed its hands of the affair since. El-Attar is gay.

At a time when the incidence of HIV/AIDS is growing in Canada by 8-10% per year, the government of Canada has cut research and treatment funding. The largest group of sufferers are gay.

In 2009, Diane Ablonzy, a junior Harper minister, was stripped of her responsibility to dole out tourism funding after she gave $400,000 to the Gay Rights Parade in Toronto. Then the government overturned their own officials to deny funding to a gay event in Montreal, Cite-divers.

In 2008, our local golden-boy MP, Pierre Whatever, criticized the Ontario government for funding sex change operations through OHIP.  The recipients of the operations, all 10 of them in any given year, are gay.

See any trend here?

When is a tax increase not a tax increase?

So let's get this straight. All though out 2007 and 2008, the federal and provincial Cons chided the government of Ontario to reduce corporate taxes because without the reduction, business would move out of, or not locate in Ontario. "Lower corporate taxes are essential," spewed Flaherty. He being a former Ontario Minister of Finance made his word ring with truth (chuckle).

So lowering taxes on profit is a good thing. As a small business guy I like paying lower taxes... if now I could only make a profit!

So here we are in 2009, the Cons finally figured out that the economy is in the toilet and after 3 years of seven percent program spending growth, maybe, just maybe, they have to do something about the deficit which will be $50b-75b in 2009 depending on who does the math.

One of the problems for the government is that they are collecting a lower tax rate on less profit. The perfect storm! So what to do?

Raise the EI premiums paid by business! According to Cons it is not a tax increase. Tell that to the people who have to pay it!

The reality is that they gave tax breaks to big corporations making huge profits (read: banks and investment firms) and now they want to ding the smaller guys with a higher bill for EI. These are the same small firms that are not making a profit to take advantage of the tax-rate reduction. Will they have to lay of people to pay the EI... um... tax increase? Or will they just have to do without new employees?

Either way it is dumb.

Fall election, says Harper

The best way to predict an election is to watch what PM Harper and his band of Cons do when they thinks that no one is watching.

Example 1:  Harper agreed with Iggy to strike a committee to look at ways to improve EI for Canadians.  Then he turned around and assigned his pit-bull moppet, Poilievre, to the committee.  Harper knows that PP does not have a single cooperative bone in his body so he is using PP to scuttle the work and send us to a fall election.

Example 2:  I am sure that it is no coincidence that AECL waited until Parliament was not sitting to announce that their one month-turned three month shutdown of the NRU reactor in Chalk River is now one year, and maybe it will never come up again.  Liberals have been saying this for months but Harper stalled the announcement hoping that no one will notice?

Example 3:  Cons are churning out the ten percenters in record numbers.  I am waiting for the one that accuses Iggy of starting WWII.  Regardless of what they say, ten percenters are propaganda aimed at the pre-election writ.

Lest we forget

In the fog of the 2008 war over the fiscal update delivered by everyone's least favourite government, most of us remember the brouhaha over the funding of federal political parties. The Cons still try to make hay with their continuing use of the coalition terms. Scary thought, wasn't it? Parliamentarians working together on the Hill. What could be scarier than cooperative politicians, ask the Cons?

Well in that fog there were two very important initiatives that the voters in Nepean Carleton should remember -- and ask PP about during the next election.

This is a direct quote from their economic update: "As indicated in the Speech from the Throne, the Government is introducing legislation to ensure predictability of federal public sector compensation during this difficult economic period."

What, you ask, does that mean? Here is another quote, "For groups with collective agreements already covering 2008–09, the 1.5 per cent would apply for the remainder of the three-year period starting at the anniversary date of the collective agreement." What that means is that collective bargaining for civil servants was being suspended and a 1.5% increase was being imposed. Sounds a bit like wage control, doesn't it?

But the piece de resistance was this gem. "In addition, the legislation would suspend the right to strike on wages through 2010–11."

And you still want to vote for the Cons?

The second issue forgotten in the coalition talk was this little tidbit from the economic update: "the Government will introduce legislation to modernize the pay equity regime for federal public sector employees,...". This was a sneaky attempt by the Cons to rid themselves of the pay equity issue by putting onus on the collective bargaining system to solve their problem. Let me explain it this way. If you are a char-lady making $8.00 per hour and you do work deemed the same value as the street sweeper who makes $9.00 per hour, you could appeal to the government for equal pay for work of equal value. The problem is who could figure out what work is as valuable as another job? Well the government wants to make that a union issue. Fine and dandy, as long as the government negotiators accept the union's determinations.

For example, what if the union says that the street sweepers are equivalent to, say, electric engineers who are cleaning up the tritium spill from the reactor floors at Chalk River? Does that mean the the government accepts the argument that the street sweepers should get a raise to $70 per hour? And with them go the char-ladies? Betcha the answer is no.

Before the nest election, public servants, and all Canadians, will want to look closely at what the Cons have been doing to Canada and Canadians. They protected the pensions of the CAW by bailing out GM and Chrysler, but the said "Piss off" to Nortel pensioners.  They protected the assets of the US-owned car companies but turned their back on technological innovations at Nortel that have been paid for by Canadians.

This is a shameful government -- and you should see it as just that.

A tax on us all to pander to the uninformed?

To say that these so-called attack ads the the Cons are aiming at Iggy are lame, would be charitable.  They are slightly right of stupid.  But, you know, the ads are not aimed at me or possibly at you.  Attack ads are aimed at those folks that do not follow, or care to follow, political debate or happenings and get their news from TV.

Fair enough, I suppose.  Lead them by the nose until you win their minds?  Pretty callus way to treat the serious business of governance, but then all parties have done it once or twice.  The Cons are just the masters of the black-art.

Let's look at the realistic side of attack ads.  The Cons say that they are paying for the ads and maybe they are.  But who funds the Cons and how is that funding received?  The reality is that you and I are funding the Cons attack ads.  The ads, by some estimates, have cost around $3 million so far.  Since contributions to political parties receive tax receipts equal to seventy five percent of the contribution, that means that there will be approximately $2.2 million in subsidy through the tax department to fund the stupidity.

Did anyone ask you if you wanted to contribute to the attack ads?  They certainly did not ask me.

Cons slowly imploding

For a government that recently dragged a Liberal MP over the coals for her alleged treatment of a couple of nannies, the federal Cons sure are sensitive over the Raitt misunderstanding.

The Cons invited two well rehearsed nannies to give a tearful account of their ordeal at the hands of Ruby Dhalla.  Never mind that the nannies could not keep their story straight or that the Cons refused to hear evidence that countered the claims of the nannies.  They wanted Dhalla's reputation to be destroyed and, as far as they are concerned, all is fair in politics -- as long as the shoe is not on the other foot.

Now comes Raitt-gate.  Just in case you have been on Mars or something, let me fill you in on this issue.  With the economy in a shambles, an AECL nuclear reactor shut down for a long time and maybe forever, with Canadians beginning to miss treatments and diagnostics because of the lack of isotopes from that reactor and with MDS Nordion (the packager of the isotopes and formerly a part of AECL) suing AECL for over $1 billion, Raitt is caught on tape by her own communications denizen saying that the file is sexy and is her ticket to the big desk in the Cabinet Room.  Not only that but she calls her colleague, the Health Minister, everything but a gutless wonder.  Now the rumour is that she also was taped slamming another colleague by the name of Prentice because he is pandering to the major polluters in the oil sands -- which is her job and not that of the Albertan named Prentice.

All this came on the heels of that same Raitt communications person leaving a file of secret documents with respect to AECL in a TV studio for almost a week.

So what do the Dhalla-attacking Cons say about all this when asked a question by Iggy?  Harper accused Iggy and the Liberals of playing cheap politics on the issue.

BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Harper should have been a comedian rather than an economist -- although his handling of the economy is no joke.

All this is a clear signal that the Cons are bereft of ideas and well past their best-before date.

Dear Canada: An open letter from abroad

By JanaLee Cherneski

Concerning:: I'm a Rhodes Scholar completing my doctorate in Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford.

Dear Canada,

I write with sadness to confess I have been unfaithful to you, my home and native land. It seems I lack national sentiment, or so I have been told by our governing party’s most recent advertising campaigns.

Why am I anti-nationalist and unfaithful? Sporting not one, but three Canadian flags lovingly stitched by my mother onto my backpack, I have abandoned you to travel and study outside your borders. I am unfaithful because, like Michael Ignatieff, I have left you to study in England. Because on Canada Day, I, alongside other Canadians working and studying overseas, unfurled my Canadian flag with pride in London’s Trafalgar Square instead of back home in Saskatchewan.

We Canadians abroad who wave our flags from afar on July 1st, who carry our Tim Horton’s mugs, who search out specialty stores that sell maple syrup and Molson beer, clearly must be less patriotic than our peers who stay at home.

For we, like Michael Ignatieff, are now of the world: we have become ‘cosmopolitan.’
Dear Canada: you are one country, but are you not cosmopolitan too? As John Ralston Saul tells us in his most recent book, you are a Metis civilization, historically formed out of aboriginals and the arrivals of newcomers over the centuries. You are composed of not one (or even three) languages or cultures, but rather many.

You house people of many views and experiences and professions; and you are connected to even more outside your borders. You consume coffee from Colombia, bananas from Ecuador, chocolate from Switzerland and movies from Hollywood; use computer chips from Japan, phones fabricated in China, wear clothes made in India and shoes made in Spain.

Like it or not, Canada, you are a member of a global community: you yourself are a cosmopolitan global citizen.

You need the world beyond your borders and you need the people beyond your borders and that world also needs you. Which means you need your people to have experiences outside your borders. And you need them to cooperate with people on the outside, as well as people on the inside, because both are equally important. You need to appreciate the talents of all your people all the time, regardless of where they are in the world or where they have come from.

We, the immigrants from other countries who chose to come to you, we are yours. And we, who are born in your borders but leave you for a time, we remain yours. None of us are citizens of the world who come from nowhere: we are all Canadians living in one global village.

Our cosmopolitan identity doesn’t stop with our people: our national livelihood is global too. International exports account for more than 40 per cent of our GDP. International trade, especially of our commodities, is the fastest-growing area of the Canadian economy and our country relies on B.C. lumber, Alberta oil, Arctic oil, prairie crops, hydro from Quebec and Manitoba, mining from all over, steel and the auto industry in Ontario, and oil and gas and fisheries from the East Coast. A recent study says one in three Canadians is in some way dependent on exported goods or services for their income.

What this means for Canada is not just that we are dependent on our resources and international trading partners but that we are dependent on our own people who work in these industries: our commodities workers are vital to our prosperity. In turn, their livelihoods — like the livelihoods of all Canadian citizens — depends on our ability to understand the international community and befriend it. Thus, as we harvest the profits of our industrial workers, we must also harvest the international experience of some of our other citizens.

We are interdependent — we need each other. In this international world we need our workers and our politicians and our ‘elite’ intellectuals. Most importantly, we need them to communicate and to cooperate. Especially as we face this current financial crisis.

Why, then, are our current leaders talking about spending money on advertising campaigns to attack each other? Why would we even think about spending money to attack one of our citizens instead of to provide tools for the people of our country to learn and to communicate with each other?

We need people who can cooperate across difference. We must empower leaders who foster community rather than conflict: leaders who succeed for society through a politics of unity rather than succeed for themselves through politics of division.

I am worried, Canada. I am partly worried for myself: when I come back to serve you with the knowledge and experience I have gained from afar, will you call me opportunistic and turn on me too? But I worry more for you: once you start rejecting the skills and knowledge of your own citizens where will that leave you, dear Canada?

_____________________

I couldn't have put it better myself.

It boggles the mind when your government tells you that international exposure and knowledge is equivalent to treason... or, at minimum, a cardinal sin.

Let Iggy be Iggy

Mike Storeshaw is not a stupid person, he is just visually impaired when it comes to things not Conservative.

Case in point. Ignatieff supported the Liberal/NDP coalition created by Dion and Layton. He said at the time, "I support the (coalition) accord because it's fiscally responsible, it provides responsible economic leadership in tough times and it also conserves the basic principles of national unity, equality that our party has always believed in."

According to Storeshaw, written in the current Hill Times, the statement "is not open for parsing or interpretation".

Hey Mike, the statement does not need to be interpreted, it just needs to be viewed in the context and time frame in which it was delivered.

The time frame was shortly after Harper decided to deliver a fiscal update by ignoring Canadians and the looming economic problems and focusing instead on trying to destroy his competition. Was that fiscally responsible? Was that responsible economic leadership? Was calling the coalition an unholy alliance with separatists a good thing for national unity?

The coalition, something that I did not feel entirely comfortable with, offered a program of economic stimulus, was priced out, regionally balanced and preserved our fragile unity. Now read the Iggy quote in that context.

This is the same "pundit" that recently defended selective briefings to selected press outlet with respect to the Cons dispute with Election Canada over the In and Out Scandal (Remember that one? It is still not resolved!)

Storeshaw stated in the Hill Times that,  "The field on which we all play is one where the media seek out conflict and controversy, and the quicker and simpler it is the better. Any political organization would understand that trying to communicate the meaning of hundreds of pages of documents in this environment is not something that lends itself to six-second sound bites, squeezed in between reporters shouting questions.

“So I suppose that by inviting some reporters to a more private setting to explain some of our disagreements with Elections Canada, our party was trying to inject some facts into the discussion."

That statement is not open to parsing or interpretation either, Mike.   You are simply saying that Cons will only talk with parliamentary reporters who are too dumb to read long documents. The smart ones will be ignored as irrelevant.

Storeshaw should apologize for being a bit cloudy in the eyes.

Attack ads... a smack of desperation

Ask yourself a question. Would it be better to have a Prime Minister who is worldly, knowledgeable of international events and dedicated to real Canadian values or is it better to have a PM who sat on his MP hands, still collecting time for his gold plated pension, during a referendum on Quebec separation.

Is it better to have a PM who supported partitioning of Quebec than one who wants to work with Quebec?

Is it better to have a PM who has opposed official bilingualism than to have one that speaks a Parisian form of French?

The Cons attempt to smear Ignatieff will rebound on them when the facts come out.

ad hominem

Cons have been raising personal attacks on their competition to stratospheric level in recent years.  From Kitten-eaters to anti-Semites to Canadians-of-convenience, there is no attack below the morality of the Rabid Right. 

When your position is indefensible and the competition has you dead-to-rights, the best defense is a personal attack... ad hominem.

Ad hominem attacks ignore the issues and attempt to characterize the opponent as something less than honest or worthwhile to debate.

And yes, Rabid Right is ad hominem.  Is that what Canadians want to hear from their politicians?

And so it begins...

The Cons have dropped into their full attack stance.  They see nothing but targets for their venom.  It is times like this that Cons show their true side... caring more about power than people.

Is Ruby Dalla a slave driver?  I don't know and I do not particularly care.  What I care about is the immigrants and refugees that are entering Canada illegally and committing crimes while they are here.  I am concerned with so-called honour killings, which by any measure of Canadian laws and norms... is premeditated, first degree, bloody murder.  But what do the Cons want to spend their time on?  Ruby.  Ruby's case should be investigated as a civil case and not a political one.

And the knives are out for Iggy.  "He is too smart," cry the Cons.  "He is too worldly," they lament.  He is too popular so cut hm down to size," Cons declare.

Why don't Cons spend a bit more time governing instead of carping.  Maybe they too would become popular.

Nah.  Can't happen for the Gang-That-Can't-Think-Straight!