Peace, order and good government, eh?

For a news channel that hasn't even made its first broadcast yet, the Sun TV News Channel is certainly generating a lot of buzz. If you can call it that. A number of other bloggers have already noted today's op-ed by Kory Teneycke. He seems to be quite agitated at the idea that some people aren't altogether thrilled with the prospect of what they've already dubbed "Fox News North" (and believe me, now that I know the phrase irritates Teneycke, I'm likely to use it every chance I get).

The piece was apparently prompted by Margaret Atwood's public endorsement of a petition which Teneycke — proponent of "Hard News and Straight Talk" — characterized as "opposing the television licence for Sun TV News." Actually the petition makes a specific objection to pressure alleged to be applied to CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein, apparently responding to reports that Prime Minister Harper might intervene to get the project a type of licence for which it wouldn't otherwise qualify. It doesn't say anything about denying Sun TV any kind of licence. Perhaps Teneycke feels that's implied but if that's the case, he might have said so.

In the inevitable exchanges on Twitter that followed there was also an intriguing question raised about this paragraph.

Atwood is not the only A-list "celebrity" that has signed. Dwight Shroot (from The Office), Boba Fett (of Star Wars), Snuffaluffagus (Sesame Street) and Homer Simpson are also signatories. Clearly the CRTC should take note of such distinguished individuals lending their name to this smear job.

I believe it was Kady O'Malley who first wondered aloud how it was that Teneycke knew which fictitious characters had signed the petition when the names hadn't been published. It was definitely O'Malley who followed up and then tweeted just a few minutes ago.

alright, just chatted with @KoryTeneycke , who was sent those names by an unnamed source who had added them him/herself.

So someone intentionally messed with the poll and then contacted Teneycke to report that someone was messing with the poll. Some anonymous person told Teneycke something that he can't otherwise verify and he reported it in a national newspaper without qualification.

Hard news and straight talk. I think it's going well so far, don't you?

Ibbitson has the Globe and Mail's version of today's big political news: the announced departure of the PM's Chief of Staff Guy Giorno by the end of this year. After dealing with that specific issue, the story provides a bit of a forecast on what we can expect in federal politics in the coming months, including this:

...the Conservative Leader is already test-driving what will doubtless become a relentless message: that Canada is really a two-party state, with the Conservatives on one side and a "coalition," as he calls it, of the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois on the other.

Never mind that the other parties don't think of themselves as a coalition. It is Mr. Harper's political good fortune that a coalition is governing Britain and will eventually be cobbled together in Australia. And a coalition is just what Mr. Ignatieff's predecessor, Stéphane Dion, attempted. So the idea is in the air.

If countries with which many Canadians are familiar and can more easily identify are now (or are soon to be) governed by coalitions and haven't descended into bloody chaos and anarchy, doesn't that make the idea of a coalition seem more familiar and benign as opposed to more exotic and dangerous? How is that good for Harper's intention to base his whole campaign on the idea of running against a coalition?

Or is this a case of: it's always good news for Conservatives?

Harper hints at extraordinary terror measures

Lapsed anti-terror provisions -- extraordinary measures the Conservative government has been trying to revive -- might have been useful in the current effort to round up suspects in an alleged bomb plot, the prime minister hinted Wednesday.

...

Asked whether the government planned to bring back exceptional powers to arrest terror suspects, Harper pointed to the bill, which is still at first-reading stage.

"There is some legislation in this regard that we would like to see passed, but obviously as we watch these particular incidents we'll carefully examine our laws to make sure they're adequate to deal with the circumstances that do arise from time to time," Harper said in Mirabel, Que.

Harper was referring to Bill C-17, aka The Combating Terrorism Act. It was introduced in April of this year and is intended to revive controversial measures — preventative arrests and investigative hearings — that were first implemented after 9/11 but with sunset clauses. Those measures were allowed to lapse when an extension of them failed to win majority support in the Commons in 2007.

Impolitical applauds a column by Lawrence Martin that encourages Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff to create a Bring Back Democracy platform. Martin suggests a number of specific points designed to reduce the concentration of power in the PMO and make government more open and accountable.

I think Martin overlooks an important one though. We have an electoral system that allows a party with the support of roughly 40% of the electorate to govern as if it has an absolute majority. Surely fixing that should be at the top of the list of Things To Do Today for anyone who wants to make this country more democratic.

And I'm going to disagree with Impolitical on one point.

Bring. It. On. At the appropriate time, of course.

This is the appropriate time. Stephen Harper has clearly indicated his intention to run his next election campaign based on misconceptions about our system of government. What better way to combat that than to encourage a conversation that, by its very nature, will help to educate people about how the system actually works? But can we do justice to the subject in the thirty-odd days of a federal election campaign?

It's conventional wisdom among pundits and politicians that Canadians have no appetite for discussions about governance and constitutional issues. I would have thought that all the attention paid to that last prorogation of parliament would have disabused a lot of them of that notion.

Don't hide information, governments advised

Canada's governments, in the interest of gaining public trust and building a "robust democracy," should open their files and provide much more information to Canadians.

This is the message that emerged Wednesday in a joint resolution released by information and privacy commissioners representing the federal, provincial and territorial governments.

That would represent a complete reversal in policy for our current federal government just as it would have for previous Liberal governments. The trend in Canada for years has been towards greater government secrecy and the politicization of the Access to Information system. I guess it can't hurt to keep encouraging governments to do better and I applaud these folks for trying. But there's a part of this issue they overlook.

In particular, the commissioners are calling on politicians and bureaucrats to embrace the principle of "open government" -- a shift they say is occurring in other nations such as the United States, where President Barack Obama has made it easier for Americans to get access to information, usually online. Meanwhile, government leaders in Britain and Australia have also recently endorsed the idea.

In some respects, it's true that Obama has improved access to information. He has also done far more than his predecessor ever did to cast a chill on whistleblowers by attempting to prosecute those — including journalists — who have tried to shine some light on government abuses. If this discussion is about being able to hold governments accountable then protection for whistleblowers has to be a part of it. If the U.S., Britain and Australia are so good at it, why is WikiLeaks striking up relationships with Iceland and Sweden?

This is a conversation we should be having. But there are so many of those these days.

Budget cuts hurting embassies: DFAIT reports

Recent budget cuts at Canadian embassies and high commissions are having dramatic ramifications on the country's representation abroad, according to Foreign Affairs reports.

In particular, the documents reveal that last summer's decision to slash travel and hospitality budgets has made it difficult to make key contacts and build trade relations, and has kept missions from covering more than one country effectively.

This is a story that has been unfolding for at least three and a half years — a Conservative government that has publicly boasted about restoring Canada's place in the world has quietly closed consulates, sold off property, slashed budgets and hollowed out the Department of Foreign Affairs. Harper's foreign policy appears to be fairly simple — do what the Americans and Israelis tell us to do and pretend it was our idea. I guess that doesn't require a very big budget. Except for the weapons systems, of course.

Court clears way for Abdelrazik torture lawsuit

The [Federal Court of Canada] has dismissed the federal government's attempt to strike out much of the lawsuit filed by Abousfian Abdelrazik.

...

Abelrazik (sic) alleges negligence on the part of Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials that resulted in his detention and caused him severe physical and mental injuries.

I would add negligence on the part of the federal government, and specifically Lawrence Cannon, who refused to lift a finger to aid Abdelrazik until the courts forced the issue. Needless to say I'll be watching this one.

Liberals rally gun registry support at expense of divided New Democrats

BADDECK, N.S. - Forget all that talk about federal Liberals merging or forming a coalition with the NDP.

The Liberals now aim to co-opt NDP support and they're using debate over the controversial long-gun registry to do it.

They announced Tuesday they'll open a national campaign to save the registry. In the process, they hope to mould a defining issue that will establish the Liberals as the only real alternative to Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government.

Emphasis added. There was an interesting piece in The Hill Times yesterday about the increasing tendency toward "hung parliaments" in countries with a parliamentary system like ours. The story pointed out that the politicians in those other countries have been quicker to adapt to the electorate's unwillingness to grant any single party a mandate to govern. They've recognized that the nature of the game may have changed and so they're exploring both coalition governments and the possibilities of electoral reform.

But the people at the helm of the Liberal Party of Canada won't let a little thing like a changing political reality get in their way. They saw a minor bump in the polls for a few days and they're ready to go all in on trying to make Iggy the next Emperor of Canada. There may be some minor revisions to the playbook but they think they can continue essentially the same game they've been playing for most of the last four and a half years and get a different outcome. I don't think it's going to play out that way.

H/t to Antonia on Twitter.

Government set to appeal Abdullah Khadr extradition

A Canadian citizen's four-year fight to stave off extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on terrorism-related charges, is poised to become even longer.

The federal government has decided to appeal a court ruling that stayed extradition proceedings against Abdullah Khadr on the grounds U.S. authorities had been complicit in his jailing and abuse in Pakistan.

...

In granting the rare stay on Aug. 4, Ontario Superior Court Justice Christopher Speyer found the U.S. had violated basic principles of justice.

Didn't Stephen Harper once promise to stand up for Canada? Because here he's standing up for another country's right to illegally detain and abuse a Canadian citizen and still have its way with him. Let me repeat that: our courts have ruled that the United States was complicit in the illegal detention and abuse of a Canadian citizen and that citizen's own government is appealing on behalf of the abuser and not in protection of its own citizen.

But this government has long made it clear that it reserves the right to decide which of us are worthy of the protection a government should provide to all of its citizens and which of us are not. See Abdelrazik, Abousfian. And if it can happen to Abdelrazik or Khadr, it can happen to you the moment someone in power decides that he doesn't like ... the cut of your jib.

MacKay denies Afghan committee request

Letters obtained by CBC news show that Defence Minister Peter MacKay was unwilling to waive the government's right to solicitor-client privilege when it comes to the testimony of the military's one-time senior legal adviser, despite a request for it to do so from the House of Commons special committee on Afghanistan.

The tense in the headline makes it sound as though McKay's denial is a recent development but what's recent is the CBC's discovery of it. It was last November when a former judge advocate general of the Canadian Forces, Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Ken Watkin, testified before the Commons committee. At the time he refused to answer certain questions claiming that they involved privileged communications with his client, the government of Canada. The CBC is now confirming that MacKay, on behalf of the government, refused a request from the committee to waive privilege. It's always good to know that our government is doing its best to thwart our government's ability to hold our government accountable. Or something.

It doesn't surprise me and it probably doesn't surprise you either. I just note it for the record as further evidence that the Harper government will block disclosure on this file at every turn, using every means at its disposal. It almost makes you wonder what they're hiding, doesn't it? Have I said that before?

H/t to JB on Twitter.