We have a neighbour, George, who lives to the…let’s say…south of us. We disagree on some things. For instance, we shop at the Farmer’s Market, and he shops at Costco. But hey, whatever - for the most part, we get along rather well. We invite him to enjoy our garden, and he is great about lending us his gadgets.
George does have one peculiar habit though. He insists on buying a particular brand of gas stove. Every few months or so, the stove malfunctions and George’s house blows up. Luckily, the wily George manages to escape with his life, but his house always ends up in ruins. Despite calamity, George continues to install this same stove, over and over, even though he, and everybody else, knows that the stove is the reason his house keeps on exploding. We’ve learned to expect this behaviour from George, and we just shake our heads when we hear the now-familiar sound of his house erupting.
Recently our household has been faced with a situation that needs to be addressed. Our own stove is not working as well as it has in the past. One element is burned out, the oven takes longer to heat things, and it’s hopelessly dirty (it is, after all, my stove). And so, we find ourselves discussing options as to how to rectify the stove situation. It’s enough of a battle to get me to cook in the first place – we certainly don’t need the added deterrent of a faulty stove.
Upon reflection, I believe that we ought to invest in fixing our stove. It has, until recently, served us very well. It has been dependable and good. However, we have let it fall into disrepair. I cost this option against buying a new one, and determine that fixing our current stove is the way to go.
But other forces in the house rise against me. They say that the old stove ought to be replaced with a brand new one. They get very excited at the prospect and soon, they’ve taken to combing the flyers for deals on new stoves – with vigour. Their enthusiasm is unstoppable - as they discuss the fate of the stove, with excited voices jabbering and flyers flying. And then they see it - a great deal on George’s stove.
When they come to me with this idea, I’m not at all for it. I point out that there are lots of options for the stove, and I remind them of George’s exploding house. I assert that while I realize our stove has problems, it’s not going to cause the devastation experienced by George whenever his acts up.
Luckily we’re a rational bunch and other alternatives are explored. Good thing I don’t live with others who would dismiss my concerns as Reductio ad NeighbourGeorgeium. Thankfully, both me and my household opposition see that it’s not really about George at all. It’s about how much we all love our house and don’t wish to see it explode. And I’m certain, that on more than one occasion, George has contrasted what he perceives to be our market experiences with his own, as he extols the virtues of shopping at Costco.
Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic
Tony Blair has done a lot for George Bush. Without Blair's support, the Bush administration's case for pre-emptive war against Iraq would have been tougher to make to the American people, as it always was to much of the rest of the world, including a majority of the British people. Since the Sunday Times' publication in May 2005 of the Downing Street memo, we've known just how much Mr Blair was willing to do for his friend Mr Bush, just how far he was willing to go, eyes wide shut:
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
Like much of the rest of the world, Mr Blair's fellow citizens hardly needed the Downing Street memo to suspect that the excuses for the invasion peddled at the time, Saddam's possession of WMD and connections to al-Qaeda, were fantastical and/or cynical. Few of Mr Bush's fellow citizens ever heard about the Downing Street memo, however, and fewer would have cared. What they saw and heard was that nice man from London standing side by side with their president, backing him to the hilt, shoulder to shoulder, reminding everyone of what a good time we all had together in WWII, Mr Blair speaking so well, eloquently, even, as he does, and always, always wearing those wonderful ties.
Tony Blair has been on a bit of a farewell tour this week. Everyone knows he is limping towards the finish line back home, so of course he is thinking of his legacy. In a world going up in flames, that's what matters, after all, that a superannuated politician's ego should be stroked one last time. Sadly, however, in the one city where, until recently, he had done so much to earn his popularity, probably his electability, Mr Blair seems to have suddenly deflated, fizzled, even:
... on this, possibly his last trip to Washington as prime minister, the affection seemed to be accompanied with sympathy.US political commentators repeatedly voiced wonder at a world leader with worse ratings than George Bush. And after a weary, cagey performance at the White House on Thursday night the New York Times observed that Mr Blair looked "dismayed and tongue-tied". The report even suggested that for once George Bush had to come to the prime minister's verbal rescue in the face of the scepticism of the British press corps.
When they met in 2001 the new US leader was asked what they had in common and could only think of a shared preference for Colgate toothpaste. Two wars and a political meltdown later, Mr Bush still seemed at a loss to define what bound them together. Asked what he would miss about the prime minister, his first response was: "I'll miss those red ties, is what I'll miss." But Mr Bush quickly rallied with a heartfelt: "I want him to be here so long as I'm the president."
Now, that's sad, isn't it? On the spot for a moment of witty repartee, Tony Blair can't match George W. Bush? Well, it had been a long flight, after all, and it's true that the ties are good.
Sadder yet was that everyone knew ahead of time what Mr Blair's legacy speech at Georgetown University on Friday was going to say. That's why Mr Bush had to focus on the good ties. Those Savile Row ties were all he had left to compliment Mr Blair on. He had to duck Mr Blair's neediness over his legacy as an international statesman because he knew that Mr Blair would suddenly and belatedly be ducking him:
... earlier yesterday, Mr Blair appeared to try to escape the presidential embrace, and went out of his way to make a distinction between his agenda and Washington's. In a foreign policy address at Georgetown University, he issued a thinly veiled rebuke to the US for its lack of global team spirit. "Let me be blunt. Powerful nations want more effective multilateral institutions - when they think those institutions will do their will. What they fear is effective multilateral institutions that do their own will," Mr Blair said."But the danger of leaving things as they are is ad hoc coalitions for action that stir massive controversy about legitimacy; or paralysis in the face of crisis. No amount of institutional change will ever work unless the most powerful make it work."
He painted a portrait of the international community as he would wish it, working in concert, through the UN Security Council and other institutions, against the great threats facing the world: terrorism, poverty, climate change and Middle East conflict.
Earlier in Mr Blair's tenure, similar foreign policy addresses were lauded. Now, several American commentators described them as just sad. Steven Clemons, of the American Strategy Programme at the New American Foundation thinktank, said that even after three years in Iraq Mr Bush showed little inclination to spend any of his dwindling political capital to support his friend's global causes. "I think George Bush's instincts don't want him to do any favours for Tony Blair," Mr Clemons said. "It's not going to happen."
Mr Clemons, of course, is an American, so when he says that things are sad for Tony Blair, he is thinking strictly in terms of how little capital Mr Blair has left in Washington. Some of us see a bigger picture.
Mr Blair's speech yesterday may not be his last desperate attempt to convince the rest of the world that he has been indeed a man of independent mind and an internationally minded statesman. To anyone familiar with his actions over the last few years, however, it certainly reads like a plea to be saved from the worst judgement of the history books. The Globe and Mail has reprinted the speech today on its op-ed page, and I thought that was a touching thing for them to do. Maybe they like the ties too.
It is late, Mr Blair, very late.
I've seen quite a few bloggers state that Stephen Harper's newest salvo in his war with the national press gallery is another example of his petulance. I'm not so sure. I wonder if this isn't a calculated gamble on Harper's part.
He may be gambling that the idea of an overall liberal bias in the media is well enough established that he can look sympathetic in the eyes of the voters by making the press gallery look like villains. It could easily backfire on him but that doesn't mean it isn't a deliberate strategy.
Meanwhile Paul Wells has reprinted the text of a speech he gave some years ago on the failings of the Canadian media's political coverage and a lot of his points are well-taken. Maybe the best move the press could take is to avoid playing tit-for-tat and go back to the job they used to do. If Harper and crew don't want to talk about their policies and legislative initiatives, maybe some enterprising reporters could actually read the legislation itself and report on what it really means. Do a few thorough analyses of government policy without giving the Conservatives a chance to inject their own spin and the reporters in question might suddenly find that representatives of the governing party actually do want to talk to them.
For background to the renewed confrontation between local residents of the town of Caledonia, near Brantford in southwestern Ontario, and members of the nearby Six Nations reserve, see "Ipperwash revisited?" from 21 April below.
Yesterday, protestors from the reserve had begun to dismantle a blockade set up to halt construction on the disputed land, in a good-faith response to the province's announcement at last week's end that a moratorium would be called on all building there as long as intergovernmental talks continued.
A group of local residents ("hundreds," according to the CBC) appeared, waving Canadian flags and singing "Oh Canada," apparently meaning to block native access to the town:
The scene turned ugly when a van driven by a Six Nations protester tried to force its way through the locals, prompting a fist fight.Several native and non-native demonstrators were injured in scuffles after natives blocked the highway with the electrical transmission tower taken from a construction site and then used backhoes to tear a shallow trench across the road in front of their blockade.
The non-native blockade began Friday night, as part of a weekly demonstration by members of the community frustrated about the barricade that has been in place for almost five weeks.
One non-native protester denied that residents had made the situation worse by coming out to face the natives.
"We're not provoking the situation," Jeff MacNeil told CBC News early Tuesday.
"We're just treating them the same way they're treating us — refusing them access to various things, like, 'We're not allowed over there? OK, you can't come over here.' "
The Six Nations Solidarity site reports that
Many of the media reports are focusing on racist, inflammatory statements by Caledonia politicians and residents, whipping up fear and portraying a military "solution" as the only option. However, there are dissenting voices within Caledonia.
... and takes us to the Hamilton Spectator:
some residents are furious that their neighbours took measures into their own hands, just as the road was being opened up."There were about 50 of us who came out here this morning," resident Diane McCormac said behind lines of OPP officers yesterday. "We were so excited to walk the road."
She said this time it's Caledonians who are to blame for the escalating situation. "All the people should be standing down to show (the natives) that this can work," McCormac said.
...
Caledonian Jim Smith's voice shook with anger as he spoke about his frustration over the outbreak of violence in his hometown. "It doesn't have to be like this," he said. "We're making it like this. We're neighbours. It's better to get along than fight for years."
Smith said while Caledonians are right to be frustrated, they have to be able to work with natives to rectify the situation.
"They opened their end and we didn't open our end. Now we look bad," he said. "Being barbaric isn't going to solve anything. We have to make up our minds. If we want the road open, we have to bend our back here a little."
There is some support for the solidarity site's summary claim about the emphasis of much msm coverage in two silly online polls being run currently by CTV and the Globe and Mail. Even more disturbing than the extreme alternatives posed by the polls, though, are readers' answers. At CTV, when I last looked, 60 per cent were in favour of using force to end the stand-off; 31 per cent favoured continued negotiations; and 9 per cent favoured "giving in to native demands." At the Globe, in answer to the starker choice between using force or not, 59 per cent favoured force; 41 per cent were opposed.
I will admit that I am not a neutral observer of this or many other aboriginal land-claims disputes in Canada. To me, anyone who has followed the history of a confrontation like the one that led to Dudley George's death at Ipperwash should be wondering about the amazing intransigeance of our federal government, which has for decades off-loaded responsibility for land-claims disputes on to the provinces when it is not the provinces who can solve them and it is not the provinces that the First Nations have their main claims upon.
Some provincial officials seem to have learned from the failures of the past. Former premier David Peterson, brought in as a special mediator last month at Caledonia, seems at least to have brokered an interim agreement, ineffectual and condescending and self-pitying though he was sounding late last week about his engagement with the Six Nations especially:
Mr. Peterson said it reminds him of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians."It's people talking past each other," he said. "People teach their children a different view of history and a different view of their own rights and there's not a lot of accommodation."
The negotiations have been made more difficult by these cultural dissimilarities, Mr. Peterson said. Like the non-natives in Caledonia, he is used to meetings where representatives stick to written agendas in pursuit of a timetable and make offers to strike a deal.
They don't do it that way at Six Nations. Matters are decided by consensus, which means everything is taken back to everybody -- the clan mothers, the traditional leaders, even the people on the barricades.
Mr. Peterson said the issues change from day to day. One day, he thinks he's making progress but the next day finds that he's taken a step back. "It's an emotional roller coaster," he said.
The poor fellow.
All the same, I take it that Mr Peterson is exerting himself because he, like Premier McGuinty and Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Ramsay understand what "using force" to end this or any other land-claims stand-off would mean and how unthinkable that choice now is, should always have been. Memo to CTV and the Globe and Mail: human rights are not up for a referendum. And might you consider passing that news along to some of the people who vote in your silly polls?
As for Stephen Harper ... But gosh. This is where we left off last time.
Remember all that money we were going to save from Conservative tax cuts? Well, it's official: they were just kidding.
The federal government's recent budget chopped personal taxes by about half as much as was advertised and actually lowered take-home pay for many Canadians, a new report by a leading economist says.The report, to be released Tuesday, says the budget will mean personal tax cuts worth about $9.5-billion over the next two years, when compared with current rates.
By contrast, the government said in its first budget earlier this month that it had cut personal taxes by $19.1-billion over that time frame, or by more than $2 for every $1 in new spending.
Dale Orr, chief economist at Global Insight (Canada) and the report's author, said the government's claims aren't accurate if you compare the budget's cuts against tax rates now in effect. Instead, the government compared the new post-budget tax levels to those from the most recent legislation, which don't include the cuts made by the Liberals late last year.
“We conclude that in budget 2006, there was much less tax relief than advertised,” the Global Insight report said. “When tax relief is measured the usual way, as opposed to the Budget 2006 way, tax relief is only about 1.4 times as much as new spending.”
The Liberal cuts, which were announced in November and have since taken effect, included lucrative reductions to personal income taxes. They were implemented, but the 2006 federal election was called before the cuts had been accompanied by legislation. That allowed the Conservatives to compare their expected tax regime against the older, legislated rates, instead of the newer, unlegislated ones.
Despite massive spending increases over their final four years in power, the Liberals reduced the lowest tax rate to 15 per cent from 16 per cent, effective Jan. 1, 2006. The Conservative budget set the new rate at 15.5 per cent, which means federal income taxes will climb on July 1.
Those tax hikes will add about $4.3-billion to federal coffers over the next two years, although other measures will mean a net reduction of $9.5-billion in personal taxes during that period.
But Mr. Orr said the income tax hikes mean take-home pay — which excludes the new government's cut to the goods and services tax cut and a variety of new tax credits — will drop for many Canadians during the last six months of 2006.
So, the Conservatives lied to us (or, if you prefer, were too incompetent to figure out the net result of their tax plan). How will their tax hating supporters react to this, I wonder? Will it ever occur to them that their party is as "conservative" as the Liberals are "liberal"? For those who think I am being too hard on the Cons, here's what Stephen Harper had to say about his tax reduction plans last January, prior to his taking up residence at Sussex Drive.
"The problem with general tax reductions, as the Liberals have shown in the past, is they're always offset by other measures," Harper said. "That's why nobody's going to notice [the proposed Liberal] tax reduction."Harper said his party decided on a combination of cuts because the Conservatives want them to be "real, noticed and not reversed."
"This plan will save Canadians money. It will be far less tax than you're paying under the Liberals."
And in case you simply can't believe the CBC as a source, here's what Harper's people posted on the Conservative website the same day that story appeared:
“We will be doing our tax plan – not the Liberal tax plan – and I’ve been clear on that. We can’t do both. And our tax reduction will save a lot more money for Canadians than the Liberal plan.”
So we're left with a choice here when it comes to Harper and his gang: dishonest, incompetent, or, like their ideological brethren to the south, a ghastly combination thereof?
Shorter Toronto Sun: Even if the latest story about Iran is false, all the ugly conclusions we draw from it are still true.
There's one particular part of the editorial I'd like to highlight because it's come up repeatedly and will doubtless be thrown around again every time Iran is mentioned.
[Ahmadinejad] wants Israel "wiped off the map."
Here's Juan Cole, who speaks the language.
The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.
Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.
Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.
Updated. Please see below.
Last night the National Post ran a story informing us that Iran was on the verge of forcing its Jewish and Christian citizens to wear coloured badges in public so they would be identified as non-Muslims. Quite a few media outlets picked up the story, all sourced to the Post. And a lot of bloggers picked up the story, mostly to take it at face value and scream and gnash their teeth about that horrible Iranian regime (not that they're particularly nice guys).
Very few picked up this from this morning:
But independent reporter Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli Middle East expert who was born and raised in Tehran, says the report is false.
"It's absolutely factually incorrect," he told The New 940 Montreal.
"Nowhere in the law is there any talk of Jews and Christians having to wear different colours. I've checked it with sources both inside Iran and outside."
IRAN'S only Jewish MP strongly denied reports in a Canadian newspaper overnight that Iran may force non-Muslims to wear coloured badges in public so they can be identified."This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," Maurice Motammed said in Tehran. "It is a lie, and the people who invented it wanted to make political gain" by doing so.
...
Mr Motammed said he had been present in parliament when a bill to promote "an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women" was voted. "In the law, there is no mention of religious minorities," he added.
There are obviously a fair number of people who are in a hurry to create a crisis where Iran is concerned. And there are obviously a lot of people who have already forgotten the con job that was pulled in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and the role that expatriates played in the propaganda. Either that or they'd like us to forget.
I wonder if we have our newest zombie lie -- a story that won't die no matter how often it's debunked.
Hat-tip to EnMasse for the links.
Edited for spelling. (And edited some more for spelling and such. I have a guardian editor.)
Update:
Thanks to Ti-Guy in comments for a link to the text of the original story at the CJC's website.
And a non-retraction retraction from the Post. Notice how they cast doubt on their original story but then close with Stephen Harper's reaction. Not his reaction to the latest news, mind you, but to the original story.:
“Unfortunately we’ve seen enough already from the Iranian regime to suggest that it is very capable of this kind of action,” Mr. Harper said. “It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the earth would want to do anything that would remind people of Nazi Germany.”
Here is a photograph of Ben Nevis, the highest peak in Britain.
Ben Nevis is a nice mountain a little more than halfway down the Great Glen, that ancient diagonal slash that runs southwest from Inverness to the sea, along which are strung Loch Ness, Loch Lochy, and Loch Linnhe. The mountain overlooks the handsome Highlands gateway town of Fort William.
Everybody likes Ben Nevis. It is an avuncular sort of mountain, even if it is tall (to the British). It is climbable. There are lots of things you can do on Ben Nevis. Bet you wouldn't have thought of this one, though:
Litter pickers working on the summit of Britain's highest mountain, Ben Nevis, have made a startling discovery: a grand piano buried in scree below the peak. The volunteers were winkling cans and plastic bags from rock crevices when they spotted a large, finely varnished length of wood. Shifting granite boulders, they discovered first the top of the piano, then the entire frame complete with stringboard and pedals....
There already exists a bizarre series of climbs on the peak, including a couple of extremely risky drives to the top made in Model-T Fords ... In 1980 Kenneth Campbell, from Ardgay, in Ross-shire, carried up a piano single-handedly to raise funds for cancer research. But he brought it down again.
Mr Hawkins mentioned one possible clue to the grand's ascent: there was a biscuit wrapper tucked inside the grand with a best-before date of December 1986.
Sandy Maxwell, head of the trust's volunteer section, said: "This is the largest, heaviest and most unusual thing we've ever had left on the mountain. We've always fought a constant battle against litter on Ben Nevis, but this takes it into a different category."
...
The search may well turn up other musical debris, from the era between 1884 and 1904 when a weather station on top of the mountain was manned around the clock by meteorologists.
To relieve the tedium of their lonely life the scientists, as well as amusing themselves with outdoor ping-pong on a table constructed of compacted snow, played the bagpipes, the violin, flute, mandolin and accordion. They also devised a game which consisted of hurling boulders into the glen below - occasionally chucking down one of the instruments too.
That cookie wrapper really thickens the plot, doesn't it? You would have thought that stashing a grand piano on top of Ben Nevis would be, y'know, original, but apparently not. Some other guy (a Campbell, too) had done the same thing six years before, and he brought his back down.
They do things differently in Scotland. If you're expecting to boldly go where no man has gone before, don't try that in Scotland. Whatever you dream up, they've already done it, several times, and your cleverest idea is just going to leave them worrying about more litter.
Ah, Fort William. The place is heaven, and the people are canny.
The word would be Pakistan.
Mr Gee would be Marcus Gee, editorial-page editor of the Globe and Mail and regular op-ed columnist as well, a curious double gig given that Mr Gee as author is a one-man sittin' 'n' typin' cure for insomnia, but there I go again, derailing myself. To the issue.
All of a sudden, the oft-not-debated commitment of Canadian troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan is going to be debated -- voted upon, even -- in the Commons this afternoon and evening. NATO apparently wants more Canada in Afghanistan. Well, of course they do, since the Americans and the British need their troops elsewhere just now, Iraq falling apart as it is, Iran on the horizon, and Mr Blair's and Mr Bush's political futures looking not all that bright. NATO would like our current commitment extended beyond next year, and may furthermore be asking us to take command of the entire Afghanistan operation in 2008. Whether or not NATO needed our parliamentarians to be debating these major commitments so far in advance on twenty-four hours' notice is another question, a serious political question raised ever so carefully by the Globe and Mail's leading news report this morning.
Update already: The Globe is reporting that another Canadian soldier has been killed, near Kandahar. And the political discussions are becoming less careful by the hour. The Bloc and the NDP have said that their members will not support the Conservative motion to extend our current mission beyond next year, and Bill Graham seems to be saying that Liberal MPs will be free to vote independently.
Now, you'd think that the editorial-page editor of the Globe and Mail would have anticipated some of the subtleties of national and international politics swirling about the Tories' surprise Afghanistan debate today, wouldn't you? In fact, you don't believe that he didn't, do you. Neither do I.
But Marcus Gee is just so onside with George Bush's war on terror. Like, totally. He can fill up an entire column of the country's most expensive media real estate without even mentioning political jockeying in Ottawa or the international chess games that matter so much to the real future of the people of Afghanistan.
And he did that this morning, in a column strangely titled "Are we mice or men?" (As we all know, women don't read the Globe and Mail, aren't MPs, don't vote, and are not members of our armed forces.)
The question that MPs face in today's House of Commons debate on the Afghan mission is really quite simple: Will Canada stand up for the values it espouses or not? Are we willing to play a useful role in the world, or are we happy to be a global scold, wagging our fingers at others behind the safe fence of our own borders?
Well, it takes a scold and a finger-wagger to know one, doesn't it, Mr Gee? Really, what else is going on in the rest of that column? The entire article is a scold aimed at that half (at least) of Canadian citizens who are not so sure that we should be in Afghanistan, and is Mr Gee offering them any help at all in understanding why rational people might agree to this mission? Through a long stream of tired clichés ("put our money where our mouth is," "shirk our duty," "get in the game," "you can't lead from the bleachers," and I could go on -- Mr Gee does), Marcus Gee contributes nothing to the debate over our military presence in Afghanistan except a bit of tendentious pop psychology that also amounts to a tired straw man: Canadians are skeert, skeert of blood, dead bodies, commitment. To Marcus Gee, it is not possible that anyone should need a better reason to go into battle than, well, just that really terrific need that all true men must feel to go into battle:
If we want to play a constructive role in the world, we have to stop "carping from the sidelines" and get in the game, with all the dangers that entails. As Mr. Harper put it, "you can't lead from the bleachers."Yet, that is where Canada often sits, lecturing with great eloquence about the need for goodwill among men but seldom risking Canadian lives to advance it. We played a backup role in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and a support role in the 2001 campaign to unseat the Taliban and al-Qaeda. We stayed out of the Iraq war altogether. Now, for a change, Canadians are on the front lines. It's about time.
Does anyone else see any intelligent content in that call to arms? I see no content at all. That looks a lot to me like the argument that we must do something, anything, and this is something, so we'll do it.
Purely by coincidence, I'm sure, the Globe ran this morning an equally tendentious, scolding, and soporific editorial mirroring Gee's column, already out of date since it did manage to choke out a few words about Harper's game-playing in setting up tonight's vote but short-circuited that news with the limp hope that the opposition would endorse the Harper-Gee hype unquestioningly. The bulk of the editorial, though, like Gee's column, is aimed at shaming Canadians for being cowards. In the opinion of the Globe and Mail editorial board, at least, it is not possible that Canadians could be wondering about Afghanistan for any good reason at all. If you're wondering, that's because you're afeard, and you're letting down the side. World War II and all that, y'know? Haven't you missed that spirit? Marcus Gee has. Put your brains in storage. "It's about time."
M'self, I think there are a few other things that Marcus Gee and the editorial board of the Globe and Mail, not to mention all of our political parties, have missed. I persist in thinking that it is not possible to think about Afghanistan intelligently without facing up to the problem of Pakistan to the east, and maybe even the other Stans to the north, which raises the further and even more troubling issues of Russia and China.
Frankly, I feel ashamed to read one of my fellow Canadians describing Afghanistan as "a backward, wretched state," and deeply trepidatious about following into battle any government or any military establishment that understands the current balance of power in that region at this moment in that naïve a way. Frankly, I think that the prime minister and Marcus Gee and anyone echoing them sound profoundly stupid about international politics.
Now, I concede that it may be possible that Mr Harper and Mr Gee and others of their ilk realize as well as you or I do that much depends on the tangled relations of the Bush administration with the strange and difficult military government of Mr Bush's more-or-less good friend, Pakistan. So why do they speak to Canadians only in sentimental clichés, and only to scold us about our imaginary failings as epic heroes, when they could actually be seeking out some solid information to keep citizens well informed of what is really happening in Afghanistan, which depends entirely on what is happening in Pakistan?
The POGGE budget, unfortunately, will not stretch far enough to send any of your faithful correspondents to Pakistan. But trust us: there is a story there. Marcus Gee must know that, but seems not to care. Stephen Harper: hard to tell. General Hillier must know about Pakistan, but again seems willing to send his troops into a situation that cannot be controlled by focusing on Afghanistan as a discrete entity, as though it were unconnected to its neighbours and to international great-power politics.
What do they all hope to accomplish by lying? Honestly: what?
UPDATED BELOW
I hadn't intended to write another piece about how we're draining our main (oil) vein to our insatiable oil-addicted southern neighbour so soon, 'till this article got my attention:
Unbeknown to most Canadians, Canada is now the Number 1 foreign supplier of oil to the United States. Given the uncertainties of Mideast and Venezuelan supplies, the US has rapidly increased oil imports from Canada, facilitated by the proportional sharing clause on energy in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
That's bad enough, but it gets worse:
Canada has become the leading energy satellite of the US at a time when America has reasserted itself globally with imperial ambitions, as witnessed by the ongoing war in Iraq.Furthermore, the fact that securing energy supplies has risen to the top of the US national security agenda during George W Bush's presidency, has put Canada in a strategic but also delicate and vulnerable position.
This may make Albertans as rich as Kuwaiti sheikhs, but its likely to leave the rest of us freezing in the dark:
Canada's own energy security is at risk.Expanding exports to the US has rapidly depleted our conventional reserves of oil and natural gas. It is now estimated that Canada has less than a 10-year proven supply of both conventional oil and natural gas.
Despite having the second largest proven petroleum reserves in the world, Canada is already compelled to import nearly 50 percent of the oil needed to fuel our homes, cars and industries. Quebec and the Maritimes import 90 percent of their oil needs. [For lack of a trans-Canada energy pipeline that's been talked about since the fifties - the pipeline stops in Montreal - after passing through the States to get there! - Ed.]
The more we supply the US, the more we endanger our own energy security.
Fortunately, as pointed out in my earlier posts, we're sitting on a motherlode. But it is a Faustian bargain:
Enter the Athabasca tar sands of northern Alberta, covering almost one quarter of the province.The largest known hydrocarbon deposit of unconventional oil supplies discovered, it is estimated to contain between 175 and 200 billion barrels of recoverable oil using existing technologies.
The tar sands, however, could contain as much as 2.5 trillion barrels of oil, but new and questionable technologies would be required to access these reserves at enormous financial and environmental costs.
As a result, the Athabasca tar sands has become the centrepiece of a continental energy plan to send massive new oil and gas supplies to the US. Three major crude-oil producing projects are in operation with another six planned over the next 20 years. As the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases, the tar sands also put Canada in a bind over our Kyoto commitments.
Three of the top five Canadian polluters are tar sands operators. If present trends continue, Canada will be 44 percent above its permitted Kyoto levels by 2010.
Either the Harper government will let the tar sands run amok (supported by generous federal subsidies to Big Oil) and thereby cast Kyoto to the wind, or it will get serious and rein it in.
And you wondered why the cowboy harpy's recent backpedaling on Kyoto?
Truly, its a deal with the Devil:
Moreover, tar sands developments will require huge amounts of natural gas to extract the deeper reserves of oil from the bitumen and process it as crude oil.For this purpose, a pipeline corridor through the Mackenzie Valley is currently being proposed to transport natural gas from the Arctic. In other words, one of Canada's last remaining frontier sources of natural gas, a relatively clean fuel, will be tapped to help extract dirty crude oil. It's like turning gold into lead. And for what purpose? So Canada can feed the US's insatiable demand.
Of course as a commentator on my first post pointed out, we can avoid this undesirable outcome:
The Alberta government is now talking about putting a *nuclear power plant* in Northern Alberta, to produce the steam for tar refining.I didn't make that up. I couldn't have.
Posted by 'lance at April 25, 2006 02:46 PM
If such madness in the management of our energy security does leave us freezing in the dark, perhaps we can take cold comfort in the fact that the new oil pipeline south referred to in part II of this series terminates in Beaumont, Texas - just a coupla hundred miles as the eagle flies from the Western White House - at least the prez will have enough Canadian crude to keep him warm in winter.
p.s. While at this site don't forget to sign the condolence book : "In Loving Memory of Spotty Bush.... Born March 17, 1989 .... Gone to Heaven February 21, 2004." (Where presumably he anxiously waits for his Master to join him - 'cept Spot may be disappointed - if there is a god I think his Master's goin' to the Other Place!)
UPDATE
This just in:
Here's the new development on the oil and gas front. Doug Bracewell is a retired University of Alberta medical researcher who pursues a new career of "blogging activism" from his home in Edmonton. In late March, he wrote a letter to Harper requesting information on federal contingency plans should Canada face an energy and environmental crisis. The letter was forwarded to Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, who in turn sent it to Howard Brown, Canada's assistant deputy minister of energy policy.Last week, Brown replied to Bracewell. Much of the letter was devoted to repeating already published statistics on Canada's non-renewable energy reserves and exports. But it made three disquieting, even amazing, statements on natural gas, the tar sands and free trade's proportional sharing.
Brown wrote that Canada has 9.5 years of proved natural gas reserves under current technology and prices. But "if the resource base is expanded to include discovered and undiscovered resources, Canada is thought to have over 100 years of natural gas production at current rates." He did not explain how it is possible to calculate "undiscovered resources."
Brown used the Alberta Energy Utilities Board's estimate that the tar sands has 174.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil. He did not mention the fact that the energy inputs (natural gas) required to extract the bitumen (not oil) from the sand cuts Canada's estimated reserves by 40 per cent. Nor did he mention the impact on greenhouse gas emissions or on Alberta's rapidly depleting supplies of gas and water -- a major reason for Bracewell's letter.Brown casually made this shocking admission: "Canadian proportional trading obligations under the North American Free Trade Agreement apply to all trade commodities, not just energy." Still, he said, Canada could avoid having to cut its energy consumption by the same amount should it have to reduce exports to the U.S. But only if "Canadian customers choose to bid more for supplies in the market place."
Any American administration that signed the U.S. on to these strictures, plus left $1 billion of illegal duties in a foreign government's hands, while submitting the U.S. to a foreign-controlled managed trade regime, would face impeachment.
Canada pays a very high price whenever it sends a Conservative government into a room, alone, with the Americans.
O CANADA - SOLD/VENDU
Harper scraps commission idea after setback
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scrapping the idea of a new public appointments commission after opposition MPs rejected his nominee to chair it."So what that tells us is that we won't be able to clean up the process in this minority Parliament. We'll obviously need a majority government to do that in the future," Harper said Tuesday.
If Harper believes in his accountability package and his nominee, he's quite free to ignore this vote and put his nominee in place anyway. He might take some political flak for it, but if he's really chosen the right man for the job then it should prove out, shouldn't it? Or he could, you know, put forward another nominee.
It couldn't be that Harper chose someone controversial for the job precisely so he could manufacture a reason why he needs a majority, could it? Nah, he wouldn't do a thing like that.
I don't own a gun. Never have. I'm not into hunting, but I don't begrudge those folks who enjoy a moose steak or a caribou roast their right to go bag a few (though trophy hunting leaves me more than a bit cold). As I have never owned a gun of any sort, I have never really had a heartfelt position on the federal gun registry.
Sure, it was a collossal screw-up in terms of getting the thing up and running. Yeah, it pissed off a lot of people who have no difficulty whatsoever registering their vehicles, but respond with white-hot rage to the thought of registering guns. And, it provided a handy cudgel for the Conservatives (and their predecessors in the Reform Party) to thump the Liberals and energize their gun-lovin' base.
But all that was remote stuff, really. I wasn't affected by it, so I thought it best to let those folks who were affected thrash this issue out.
Now these guys are affected by the gun registry. Every single day, they use it to good effect, and they like it.
The Conservative government plans to grant amnesty to all long-gun owners who haven't been licensed under the controversial program. The move marks the decline of a crime-fighting tool that was never given a chance, said Chief Jack Ewatski, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and Chief Armand La Barge, president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police."The merits of the registry, the positive aspects of the program, have never really been properly told to the citizens of this country, and as a result I think there are more critics than supporters," said Chief La Barge, who also heads York Regional Police.
What has been lost on the public, Chief La Barge said, is that police officers across the country search the registry about 5,000 times per day.
A 2004 report from the Commissioner of Firearms that was released without much publicity detailed the increased number of hits the registry was getting from police departments. Patrol officers routinely run names and addresses through the registry to see if they might encounter a gun when responding to a domestic disturbance or break-in, Chief La Barge said.
The Canadian Firearms Centre has also used it to get recreational weapons, such as hunting rifles, out of the hands of the mentally ill, he said. In 2004, according to the commissioner's report, 2,500 gun licences were revoked and 550 licences were refused.
"These are individuals who have shown a tendency to violence," Chief La Barge said. "The program has worked very well from that perspective."
Investigators have also taken advantage of the registry when applying for search warrants and wiretaps, said Mr. Ewatski, who is chief of the Winnipeg police force. In 2004, the firearms centre also prepared 2,265 affidavits that police officers used to persuade judges to allow surveillance and raids on suspected criminals.
"We've always said that information is the lifeblood of policing. The more information we can give our front-line officers, the better position they're in to perform their duties. If the registry is shut down or even if the long-gun registry is shut down, they're going to lose an important database of information and that would be very unfortunate."
So, I'll leave it to the professionals to sort out the usefulness of the program. Because most gun owners in Canada are responsible citizens, they see the registry as an impingement on their right to privacy, or a major inconvenince to them. They do not see it from the side of the police, who find it useful in keeping guns out of the hands of the tiny percentage of people who are not responsible gun owners. You know, the percentage whose gun use affects the rest of us, usually with tragic consequences.
Complaints about the cost of the program are red herrings, now. The damage is done, but a useful program is now up and running and is relatively cost effective. Is it too much to ask that gun owners endure a bit of inconvenience to leave in the hands of the police a tool they use up to 5,000 times a day?
[The scene: Cabinet Committee Room, Parliament Hill.]
Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Good morning everyone, welcome to day 123 of the glorious Conservative Revolution…
Stockwell Day (Public Security): Amen, brother…sorry, Prime Minister Brother.
Harper: Stock, I’ve been thinking about your suggestion to start the meetings with a prayer, and I like the signal it sends to our Christian supporters, so let’s do it.
Day: Wonderful, news, sir. If I may…
Our Father, who art unregulated,
Hollowed be thy federal government,
Thy tax breaks come,
Thy will be done in Canada,
As it is in Bush America,
Give us this day our military fetishism,
And deliver us from liberalism…
Entire cabinet: Amen…
Harper: All right, let’s get started on today’s order paper: let’s hear a report on Afghanistan…
Gordon O’Connor (Defence): Well, sir, we’ve had a few more soldiers wounded since last we met, but thankfully, no more deaths, so we are…
Harper: Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, but what I meant was how is our sucking up to the military affecting our poll standings. For goodness sakes, man, we’re risking political life and limb in that forsaken hellhole. Tell me we’re getting something out of it.
O’Connor: People are kind of nervous about it all, sir. This country wasted its time peacekeeping for many years. War fighting is a bit new for everyone, so they don’t quite have the appetite for killing that we find south of the border.
Harper: Well, at least we’re hiding the bodies of those soldiers who seek to damage us politically by dying.
O’Connor: I know, sir. You think that would be effective, but some people are keen to show their respect for our dead, no matter what it does to our poll numbers.
Harper: Would it help if I went over there and showed off my bulge?
O’Connor: Actually, sir, I thought your vest covered that nicely…
Harper: Not my pot belly! I mean, you know…my man-bulge. Like George Bush did on that aircraft carrier.
O’Connor: Um…
Rona Ambrose (Environment): Er…you need to have one, first, sir…
Harper: Hey! I have one! Even weirdo lefties think so. Why, just the other day, one of those pinkos who write for that commie website Pogge called me a “major dick.”
Ambrose: Um…they meant that figuratively, I think, sir…
Harper: Oh, you mean like our commitment to the environment.
Ambrose: Exactly, sir.
Harper: Speaking of which, how is that going, Rona?
Ambrose: Not bad, sir. We’ve got the dead-enders convinced that more coal-fired power plants will result in “cleaner air”, but a surprising number of people are having trouble swallowing our “Made in Canada” solution.
Harper (shaking head sadly): Who would have thought it would be so hard to get people to embrace their freedom to wallow in their own polluted shit?
Ambrose: I know, sir. They’re sheeple raised on David Suzuki propaganda. But we’ve got the Sun newspapers and the National Post shilling for us hard.
Harper: Any credible media outlets?
Ambrose: No, but we’re hopeful…
Harper: All right, let’s turn to provincial relations. How’s the Quebec strategy working out, JP?
Jean-Pierre Blackburn (Labour and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec): Tres bien, sir. As long as no one notices that our definition of “standing up for Canada” means giving the entire farm away to the provinces, we’re in good shape. Once we’ve given Quebec everything, our electoral success in la belle Province is assured.
Peter MacKay (Foreign Affairs): Aren’t we sort of giving the separatists everything they have ever wanted? A voice in international affairs, greater powers within confederation. I mean, appeasing them has never worked before. Won’t this just embolden them, and make the separatists’ job easier? Aren’t we, in effect, proving their point by allowing provinces to run their affairs in isolation from national standards and the greater good?
*Crickets chirping. Tumbleweed rolls through the cabinet room.*
Harper: Apologies, folks. Peter still thinks he has influence here. Sit, Peter! Stay! Good boy! [Scratches MacKay behind the ear. MacKay’s leg begins twitching uncontrollably; he pees on the carpet.]
Vic Toews (Justice): I thought he was housebroken, darnit! Hey, one of you girly ministers needs to clean that up.
Female cabinet members (outraged): What!?
Toews: Well, you’re not at home cleaning your own houses, so I assumed you were here to do that for us.
Marjory LeBreton (Leader of the Government in the Senate): I spent three years cleaning up after Diefenbaker. That man’s bladder control went down as his paranoia went up. We finally had to put a tarp under his desk in the PMO and hose him down after Question Period. [Shudders] One of you girls can take this one.
Harper: Well, someone has to clean up this mess.
Tony Clement (Health): Couldn’t we just blame it on the Liberals? You know, like we do with the state of health care?
Harper: Good one, Tony. Let’s get a hold of some of the Blogging Tories and spread a few unfounded rumours about the vandalism of public property by the Liberal Party. Gotta love that Republican playbook. Since you’ve chimed in, Tony, let’s hear what’s up with health care. How is our great project coming along?
Clement: Pretty wobbly, sir. Canadians’ are strangely attached to universal health care. Though the universal aspect of it has been successfully eroded by stealth for many years, the myth is hard to kill. In fact, even Albertans, the most sensible of Canadians, seem to like public health care. Even Ralph Klein has had to back off on his health reforms.
Harper: These damn socialists are hard to wean off the government tit.
Bev Oda (Heritage): I find that sexist.
Harper: What, tit?
Oda: Yes.
Harper: Oh, sorry, I meant “bazoombahs”.
Oda: That’s no better!
O’Connor: “Torpedos?”
Chuck Strahl (Agriculture): "Udders?"
Day: “Pillows of sin?”
Oda (angry): Just forget it!
Harper: All right, we’re getting a bit testy, here, people. Remember, we’ve got a larger project going on here. We have to convince the people of this country we are good old centrists until we have a majority. Then the real game plan kicks in. I want this country to enjoy the same thriving success that the Republicans have brought to the United States.
[MacKay wets himself again.]
Harper: Majory, do you still have Dief’s tarp around?
[End scene]
See previous Fly on the Wall.
There's an interesting editorial in today's Edmonton Sun. That's if you find it interesting to see the the lengths to which a partisan editorial board will go in an effort to boost Stephen Harper.
The authors try to argue that the recent rise in the Canadian dollar can be directly attributed to the election of a Conservative government and that, by extension, decades worth of fluctuations in the value of the loonie can be traced to the party that's in government.
But whether it's a coincidence or not, we have long thought it strange at the very least that the loonie has, for over 30 years now, seen its fortunes rise and fall in an inverse relationship to the relative fortunes of the Liberal party.In other words, the loonie hit its lowest depths when the Liberals were firmly entrenched in power. And the loonie always seemed to find its wings when the Conservatives were riding high.
Given the length of time it can take economic trends to develop, I could as easily argue that it's Liberal management of the economy that results in the eventual strengthening of the dollar and Conservative mismanagement that results in its decline once we smarten up and kick them out of office and then ask the Liberals to repair the damage done. But I'm not going to put that simplistic a spin on it because, unlike the editorial board at the Edmonton Sun, I'm prepared to acknowledge that economics is a bit more complicated than that.
The editorial also ignores the fact that, at least to a great degree, the recent rise of the Canadian dollar is in fact a decline in the American dollar (hat-tip to Hale Stewart at BOP News). Or do the bright lights at the Edmonton Sun think that Stephen Harper should be given credit for that too? They might want to think twice about that one because if the weak fundamentals in the American economy lead to a deep recession -- or even a depression -- our economy will go south right along with theirs.
And why do I suspect that if that happens, they'll find anyone else to blame but the Conservatives?
Now that Nightingale has returned from her vacation in the sun with tales to tell, I've added her to the contributors list at the right.
And now we are... oh, never mind.
Breakfast. Breakfast is key. Flowers are nice, but if you are lucky enough to have a lovely mum around, then you make her a nice breakfast tomorrow morning, y'hear?
Mother's Day resonates for my brothers and sisters and me a little more than usual this year, since it falls on the second anniversary of the morning when our lovely mum woke up to streaming Alberta sunshine, said it was beautiful, and then said good-bye to us and ninety years of good works in this life.
When I think of my mother, the first word that comes to me is "strong." She was a beautiful woman, taller than I've ever been, with dramatic bones and enormous, competent, caring hands. Those huge hands used to fascinate me when I was little, and reassure me, too. People who knew our mum only socially would have called her good, or kind, or generous, and she certainly was all those things. But staying good and kind and generous through ninety years, years that included voyages through U-boat-infested waters and assisting doctors who were inventing plastic-surgery techniques for badly burned RAF fliers simply because they were there and what else was there to do, years that also included raising five bumptious brats ... that takes some steel and stubbornness, and our mum was nothing if not steely and stubborn.
We had one tough mama, in other words, and it makes me smile to remember just how ornery and determined she could be.
So what would the lovely mother in your life like for breakfast tomorrow morning? Me, I am not a mother, unless you count the cats, and the cats, alas, cannot cook. They can't even pop the frozen waffles into the toaster, fry up a little back bacon, and find the genuine maple syrup in the cupboard (genuine maple syrup: accept no less!). That would be an ok Mother's Day breakfast, depending on the mum you're thinking of.
An ideal Mother's Day breakfast? Well, Portobello Scramble with Tomato Marmalade is a thought.
Portobello Scramble with Tomato Marmalade
Tomato Marmalade:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes, drained (28 oz/796 mL)
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp chili paste
Mushroom Scramble:
8 5-inch portobello mushrooms
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
8 thin slices pancetta, chopped
12 eggs
1/4 cup water
1/4 lb goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
Marmalade: Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes, until softened. Stir in tomatoes, honey, vinegar, and chili paste; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Reduce heat and stir more frequently towards end of cooking to prevent scorching. (Add more chili paste if you want a spicier marmalade - and of course you do.) Let cool, then refrigerate for up to 1 week.
Mushroom Scramble: Preheat oven to 400 F (200 C). Wipe mushrooms with damp cloth; peel if necessary. Cut off stems and with a melon baller gently scrape out black gills from the underside of the caps.
Stir together 3 tbsp of the olive oil, rosemary, and half of the pepper and salt in a small bowl. Brush mushrooms on both sides with olive oil mixture; then arrange stem-sides up in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until tender. Set mushrooms aside on baking sheet. Reduce oven heat to 350 F (180 C).
Heat remaining oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add pancetta to skillet and cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes, until crisp. Drain off all but 1 tbsp fat from skillet.
Meanwhile, beat the eggs, water, and remaining pepper and salt in a medium bowl. Add eggs to pancetta in skillet and cook over medium-low heat for 3 minutes, stirring gently, until just beginning to set. Stir in goat cheese and half of the parsley. Cook for about 2 minutes, until scrambled but still moist.
Spoon a heaping 1/3 cup of the scrambled eggs on to each mushroom cap; bake them for 5 minutes, until heated through.
Sprinkle with remaining parsley. Serve with tomato marmalade.
You're already feeling tired, you say? Mothers everywhere are grinning at you.
A year or so ago, one of our fellow bloggers invented a new expression, modelled on "jumping the shark," when he was shocked and appalled to discover that pogge had "posted the cat." Who was that, pogge? And what do you think he is going to do when he sees that pogge has just "posted the recipe"?
Now I at least understand why the major American telcos are so interested in increasing the profits they make from the internet. It appears they might soon need the money.
Ok. It's Friday and I've had a bad month this week. And I no longer have a dog to kick so I think I'll take it out on L'il Stevie instead.
The world according to Stephen Harper:
And I think the real problem that we're facing already is that the government doesn't accept that it got a minority. - Stephen Harper
Really? Most of us had that figured out ohhh about January 24th.
But I'm very libertarian in the sense that I believe in small government and, as a general rule, I don't believe in imposing values upon people. - Stephen Harper
And just when were you planning on putting that second belief into practice?
I do not intend to dispute in any way the need for defence cuts and the need for government spending cuts in general. ... I do not share a not in my backyard approach to government spending reductions. - Stephen Harper
Note to General Rick Hillier: I wouldn't be making too many plans for all that money you think you are getting. At least not until it actually shows up. That's what you get for making a public statement without approval of the PMO.
If you want to be a government in a minority Parliament, you have to work with other people. - Stephen Harper
Guess that includes getting the Blocheads to help dismantle the country?
The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with its allies, or its inability to contribute. In the end it will join out of the necessity created by a pattern of uncertainty and indecision. It will not join as a leader but unnoticed at the back of the parade. - Stephen Harper
[Referring originally to the invasion of Iraq but insert Bush policy of your choice.] Gee, what a bold vision for the country - advance to the rear and go unnoticed at the back of George Bush's parade. Someone should tell Stevie that being American asswipe is not a bold vision for Canada's future.
Toryism has the historical context of hierarchy and elitism and is a different kind of political philosophy. It's not my favourite term, but we're probably stuck with it. - Stephen Harper
Take that you elitist eastern liberals and don't even think about commenting on hierarchy and elitism without approval from my office.
Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy. - Stephen Harper
And give me a few more months as prime minister and I'll make sure it's dead.
Whether Canada ends up as one national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion. - Stephen Harper
More bold vision for the country from Stephen Duceppe or is that Gilles Harper? It's getting so hard to tell them apart.
And a bonus from Stockwell Doris Day.
Judges must be free from political intervention or intimidation. - Stockwell Day
Our Parliamentary system has simply failed to meet the challenge of judicial activism. - Stockwell Day
Ok Doris. Which is it?
It has been a busy week for Maurice Vellacott, Conservative MP for Saskatoon-Wanuskewin.
First he put a lot of strange words into the mouth of Canada's chief justice, Beverly McLachlin. His misreading of a nuanced speech she had given was so egregious that the Globe and Mail felt compelled to correct him in an editorial:
He claimed Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin had said that when judges take an activist role, "all of a sudden there's some mystical kind of power that comes over them . . . and they take on almost these godlike powers. She said that herself. I didn't say that." In fact, she said nothing of the sort. Mr. Vellacott was just airing his own dismissive attitude toward the courts -- a strange view for the chair of the Commons aboriginal affairs committee to hold, given the role of the courts in determining and upholding aboriginal rights.
In fact, Justice McLachlin's speech had affirmed the opposite of godlike powers -- the power of human reason to work from basic democratic principle to interpret individual cases. The chief justice broke her traditional silence in the face of public criticism to deny that she had ever claimed to be godlike; even the PMO decided it would be politic to announce that Mr Vellacott's views on the workings of the Supreme Court are not those of the government.
Undeterred, on Wednesday, when Mr Vellacott, an ordained minister, resigned as chair of the Commons aboriginal affairs committee under threat of a non-confidence vote, he kept the godlike motif going through scattershot comments wherein the godlike seemed at once very Bad (the Liberals) and very Good (his own revealed views on aboriginal affairs):
Facing defeat as chairman, he attacked the Liberals for, yes, believing they had godlike powers. "They seem to think that they have some divine right to govern, and it is deeply upsetting to them when the public judges otherwise." And, announcing his resignation as chair, he sought divine support for his own future. "I submit to a sovereign God to provide me that opportunity [to serve aboriginal Canadians] at some point in the future."
Now, Mr Vellacott's revealed views on aboriginal affairs have seemed -- oh, how shall we put this? -- other than neutral in the past:
he defended two Saskatoon police officers who were convicted of unlawful confinement. The two officers admitted to driving an aboriginal man outside of town and leaving him to walk home on a -25 winter evening.
But let's not digress. At least Mr Vellacott's replacement as chair of the committee, MP Colin Mayes, is not known for complicated prior views on aborginal affairs. He is known, unfortunately, for complicated prior views on journalists ...
Mr. Mayes made headlines last month when he wrote an opinion column in a local newspaper suggesting reporters should be jailed for writing misleading stories."Maybe it is time we hauled off in handcuffs reporters that fabricate stories, or twist information and even falsely accuse citizens," Mr. Mayes wrote.
The B.C. MP later issued an apology after he was contacted by the Prime Minister's Office.
But seriously: let's not digress. Conservative MPs: so many sub-plots. Back to the main plot, the careering career of Mr Vellacott.
Nothing daunted, Mr Vellacott, no doubt still driven by divine revelation, has bounced back from his forced resignation on Wednesday to champion yet another cause -- the liberation of women.
In league with Liberal MP Paul Steckle (Huron-Bruce), Mr Vellacott yesterday organized a press conference to warn women that abortions are bad for their health. The two MPs brought along with them a breast-cancer surgeon and anti-abortion activist from New Jersey, Angela Lanfranchi,
who said there has been a 40-per-cent increase in the incidence of breast cancer in the last 30 years."It's the women of the Roe v. Wade generation that account for most of this increase. Dramatic lifestyle changes brought about by the sexual revolution and the women's liberation movement are largely responsible for the rampant breast cancer we see today."
Dr. Lanfranchi, who is also opposed to oral contraceptives and advises women instead to avoid sex on days that they are fertile, described what she calls a biological link between breast cancer and the early termination of a pregnancy.
Now, she doesn't quite seem to be saying that most women who develop breast cancer have had abortions, does she. Maybe because that isn't true? As she must know? There has been a rise in the incidence of breast cancer as of some other cancers, and "lifestyle" -- if that term is interpreted to mean everything from diet to environmental causes -- may indeed be a factor. But how seriously is one to take that vague wave in the direction of an entire generation? Political attitudes cause cancer? A doctor said that?
Well, yes, she did. And she said it knowing, as everyone should, that every learned society of ob-gyns and every cancer society in North America has discounted the only fake "scientific" study that ever attempted to claim a link between abortion and breast cancer.
But then that is what propagandists do. They just bull ahead, in defiance of evidence, facts, or human vulnerability. And why?
Well, in Mr Vellacott's case, it's because he is worried about women:
Mr. Vellacott said he and other like-minded MPs believe women are being kept in the dark about abortions and are being forced into them by the men in their lives."We are opposed to unwanted abortions that do happen in this country where women are coerced, pressured, harassed, badgered if you will, by a boyfriend, by a husband, by a doctor, an employer, friends, family circumstance," he said. When asked whether he would put forward a private member's bill banning abortion, Mr. Vellacott replied: "There are always options for members of Parliament to put forward good initiatives on a range of subjects."
Me, I also am opposed to the coercion, pressuring, harassment, or badgering of women (if you will) by just about anyone who seeks to limit their autonomy. That would include MPs and doctors who persist in disseminating information shown to be mistaken or distorted for propaganda purposes -- ie, lies.
Curiously enough, immediately after the press conference Mr Vellacott and Mr Steckle organized for Dr Lanfranchi in Ottawa on Thursday, an anti-abortion rally materialized on Parliament Hill. "Who, us?" said the honourable MPs.
You have to admire Mr Vellacott's resilience, though, don't you? I know that I do. To spring back from so many humiliations as quickly as he did this week and to reinsert his foot in his mouth so purposefully -- that shows promise, I think. I am so looking forward to whatever cause he decides to champion next.
Next week, in fact. Creation science? Surely that's not too much to ask. Send him ideas. The man is on a roll.
The Toronto Star is reporting that after a two week study of the recent deal that was supposed to end the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the United States once and for all, Canadian lumber companies are extremely unhappy with it and are determined to change it.
"Nobody's happy with this. Our objective is to get back to free, unencumbered access to the U.S. market, but this is clearly not the way — this is a managed trade agreement," said Carl Grenier, executive vice-president of the Free Trade Lumber Council.
On April 27, when it was announced that Canada and the U.S. had arrived at a long-sought deal on softwood lumber exports, Harper was praised for standing up to the White House to obtain concessions for Canadian forestry companies.Harper's image as a tough negotiator had already been etched by Bush who, after meeting the PM in March in Cancun, Mexico, talked about his "steely resolve" on the softwood issue.
But a U.S. source close to the negotiations insists it was just the opposite. Harper was quietly convinced by Bush that the new government in Ottawa could achieve a major breakthrough in U.S.-Canada relations by working with Washington to resolve the nagging softwood dispute.
...
But, the source said, "on the Canadian side, the instruction was, `Just get it done.'
"And on the U.S. side, it was, `Give up nothing,' and they didn't give up anything."
Canadian producers' willingness to accept terms of the deal has also been undercut by the tactics used to win agreement from the industry, sources say.
There were complaints that Harper and other senior Conservatives told forestry company executives that if they didn't support the April 27 agreement, Ottawa would drop its efforts to put an end to U.S. softwood duties and cut off federal government support for the industry.
Describing the approach taken by federal officials, one industry stalwart said, "The expression I use is: Would you like seven bullets to the head or an AIDS injection? And most people are taking the AIDS injection because, who knows, you might be immune..." said the source, a top figure at a Canadian company that employs 10,000 forestry workers.
There's nothing inherently wrong with managed trade deals but this certainly makes a fiction out of the NAFTA dispute resolution process and the idea that free trade goes both ways. And there's definitely something wrong with a prime minister who claims to be standing up for us while he's actually undercutting his own side's position for political gain.
My husband, Dave, and I have just returned from a most blissful sojourn. For the last week, we found ourselves in a place where it was sunny, and windy, and sandy, and turquoise. We spied on some fish, clumsily beat a hasty retreat from a couple of very surprised moray eels, kissed some stingrays, and met some wonderful people. While the rest was fun, and I’d love to discuss it, in this context, it is the people who bear mention.
I find myself in rather strident opposition to the Iraq war. I worry a lot about pollution and environmental degradation. I stiffen at the idea of people with a narrow social agenda limiting things like reproductive rights, education free of religious dogma, and what I’m allowed to watch on TV.
In my mind, I have a picture of the people I perceive to be acting in perpetuance of these misdirections. When I imagine them, these people are likely middle-class, unconcerned with human impact on the Earth, religious, and faithful viewers of Fox News. To be truly quintessential, they are from a southern state. They probably drive an SUV, in town, for a commute that’s less than a mile in distance. They consume appalling amounts of Wal-Mart merchandise, and have never heard of Fair Trade. And they are for the war in Iraq.
If I picture a confrontation with this bunch, it’s a bitter one. If they’re going to insist on running around with a conception of rightness in stark opposition to my own, and hold to those views as tightly as I hold to mine, how else can things possibly go down? A proper ruckus is all I can envision.
Well, that’s not exactly how things went when we met them, staying two doors down, on the same floor, at our hotel.
We met “Jack” and “Sally” when we were late for a snorkelling trip. A little gaffer had decided that the best thing for a hermit crab was to be transplanted from the shore to the concrete sidewalk surrounding the heavily chlorinated pool. Dave was returning said crab to a more amenable locale when the van arrived. We were sheepishly boarding, looking for seats, when we heard: “Hey! Y’all can come sit back here”! So back we went, and throughout the day of snorkelling, swimming, and feasting on fish, a fast friendship ensued.
We’d been hanging out for about two days, us treating them to nachos in celebration of their honeymoon (if one needs an explanation, note the “hicks” in the title of this post), and them treating us to their wedding video over Dr. Peppers. Dave and I quickly recognized the kindness and sweet character of this pair, and they seemed to see something of the same in us. We laughed a lot and had very long conversations, each of us noting our differences in perspective from the off-hand comments we’d make. It went like that, as I say, for about two days, when the following exchange took place:
Jack and Sally are heading out to the reef. We are loaning them our flippers. They are leaving us their Solarcaine. The trade is taking place between Jack and Dave when Jack says something funny about a group of sore losers he played ball against. Dave responds:
Dave: It’s like, screw you guys – I’m goin home! (a la Eric Cartman)
Jack: Oh, that’s from that South Park show.
Dave: (chortles) Yeah.
Jack: That show’s awful. They shouldn’t be allowed to show it on TV. Same with that
Family Guy one.
Dave: (still laughing) Yeah right.
Jack: Seriously – they shouldn’t be allowed to make fun of people’s religions on TV.
Dave: You’re not one of those freaky churchy guys are ya?
Jack: Yeah I guess. You really have no problem with the stuff they say on those shows?
For a split second I’m mortified. I want to kill my husband right there on the beach. Sally and I look at each other with a look that says “Oh gawd (God for her). Please ignore this – I really like you guys”. As it happens, gesture trumps words. Dave and Jack complete the handoff – Solarcaine for flippers - and we all laugh.
Jack: (sheepish) Yeah – we’re what ya’d call church-goin rednecks.
Dave: Oh us too – only where we’re from, we’re called hicks.
Jack: Hicks?
Dave: Hicks from the sticks. Ya might wanna adjust those fins, I think your feet are
smaller than mine…
After that we’re not afraid to ask each other about things we know we disagree on. Our (identical) sense of humour carries us through each confirmation that the other does indeed, personify *that* stereotype. Dave and I are the tree-hugging liberals. Jack and Sally are the straight-laced conservatives. But the people behind the stereotypes are the same (frighteningly so at times). Eventually, Sally and I broach the subject of *the war*:
Sally: Most of ya probably disagree with it up there.
Me: Yeah, most of us do.
Sally: I can kinda see that, but I didn’t want Saddam to have nuclear bombs.
Me: Me either. I’m just not sure there was immediate danger of that.
Sally: Well he won’t get them now.
Me: No, I don’t think he will.
Sally: But now that he’s gone, we should leave. I mean, even though we know our way
is right, they might just not want to do it, and we should respect that now.
Me: I think we always should – respect that.
Sally: Yeah...
They went home to Bill O’Reilly. I’m sure, at this moment, he’s telling them to hate us – especially since it’s occurred to Fox that Neil Young is Canadian. Oh well, the hicks and rednecks will work it out. Maybe, eventually, the pundits and the politicians will catch up.
Kick the Liberals as they're down
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government should do its best over the coming year to dig up embarrassing information on the former Liberal administration and portray it as corrupt, a prominent Republican pollster counselled an influential group of Conservatives yesterday.Speaking a day after meeting with Mr. Harper, Frank Luntz described the Conservatives as allies of the Republicans and urged them to discredit the Liberals so thoroughly that it will be years before they make it back into power.
"I want you to do something for me because I know you might be able to make this happen," Mr. Luntz told more than 200 members of the Civitas Society gathered in a Kanata hotel yesterday. "Your Liberal government was corrupt. It was disgusting. The way they wasted your hard-earned tax dollars was a disgrace.
"I want you to leave here committed to insisting that the Conservative government hold that previous Liberal government accountable, that you do oversight, that you do investigation, that you continue doing it for the next year so that every Canadian knows and will never forget and will never allow another government to steal more from them," he said to applause.
But the irony is pretty thick here on at least two counts. First of all, the Conservatives are being advised to focus on their opponents' corruption by an ally -- his word -- affiliated with a Republican party that looks more and more like a crime family every day. While I continue to regard Harper as an ideologue and his party as the worst possible choice to govern this country, I've never supposed them to be the outright criminal conspiracy that the GOP has become. Harper and the Conservatives might want to think about avoiding this particular association.
And secondly, do the Conservatives really want to take strategic advice from a Republican at a time when George Bush's approval rating has just reached the lowest point of his presidency?
On second thought, Mr. Harper, forget I said anything.
They have a special way of doing it in George Bush's Washington. Everyone is very positive about it -- not quite nice (that would be too Canadian, although Canadians also have a way with quiet disappearances and the occasional spectacular public back-stabbing) -- but definitely upbeat and positive. Searching for words yesterday to pay tribute to Porter Goss, the departing director of the CIA, Mr Bush managed to choke out these words of praise:
"Porter's tenure at the CIA was one of transition. He's helped this agency become integrated into the intelligence community. That was a tough job. He's led ably."
Ok, faint praise, very faint, barely perceptible, in fact, but you have to give it to them: they all stood there manfully, the president and the departing Mr Goss and the not-departing national intelligence director John Negroponte, and they did the ritual praise number for the most recent of Mr Bush's appointees deemed to have become a liability to the current administration. How many does that make now?
Cheers were apparently audible all the way from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where Mr Goss has presided over the exodus of numbers of senior staff who seem to have resented the implication that their work was politically motivated, or at least not politically motivated in the direction that the White House would consider not politically motivated.
In little words, Mr Goss failed. Mr Negroponte has apparently not failed yet, although Melanie at Bump notes that he has lately shown distressing signs of developing a conscience. (That would be a very late-developing conscience in Mr Negroponte's career, but these days, we take what we can get, yes?) Melanie detects no such signs in Donald Rumsfeld, Mr Negroponte's major rival for the moment. Such larks.
Meanwhile, across the pond, they do things differently. British prime ministers are seldom nice. They would scorn to be nice, especially when they are cornered. They may pretend to be upbeat, but they dispense pretty quickly with all that nonsense of propping up the dead bodies politely for a final feel-good photo-op.
Tony Blair has tried harder than most PMs to seem nice, to mimic the sentimentalities of his good friend and ally George W. as they warmonger together. But almost no one in Britain ever cared how nice Tony was trying to be, and you can imagine how that makes Tony feel. Not nice, eh? Ruthless, in fact.
So yesterday, a day after Labour losses in country-wide municipal elections signalled complicated blowback from Blair's own failed attempt to play the North American neo-con tough-on-crime card, Mr Blair did what all honest and forthright desperate British prime ministers always do. He dispensed, at once and absolutely; and the dispensed-with were not invited to the photo-op.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke was the fall-guy for the opportunistic crime policy that bit back. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in spite of his earnest attempts to become chums with Condi Rice, has apparently been sounding altogether too nice on the subject of Iran, dubious about the wisdom of ever more shock and awe in the Middle East, so he's gone too. There was even a moderate nod to a tabloid sex scandal: the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has not lost his job -- just the keys to his office and all further duties. Such a British touch: who could imagine a publicly acknowledged sex scandal in Washington?
All the replacements are Blair loyalists, which suggests that Tony intends to run his own foregin policy and, well, just about everything else himself from now on -- for however many weeks that may mean. "Circling the wagons" is not a British expression, but it is a well-known gambit of beleaguered prime ministers, and many observers are reading Blair's defensive cabinet shuffle as a sign of the Last Days.
With enough opposition from within his own party (however belated), the ending may come very swiftly for a British prime minister -- conceivably, even a Canadian one (and isn't that a happy thought?). Meanwhile, at Rome on the Potomac, the perp walks -- excuse me: praise rituals and photo ops -- just go on and on and on ...
The Kim-killin', Svend-slayin' dragon lady of VanCentre, not content with being one of the few politicians in Canadian history ever to unseat a serving Prime Minister, now wants the job for herself. Displaying the charming modesty which has endeared her to Canadians coast-to-coast-to-coast she declares:
I never undertake a challenge unless I expect to win
This after a mediocre decade or more in Parliament as one of the few MPs representing the downtown heart of our country's third largest city never to hold a significant cabinet post. Kim Campbell was (briefly) Prime Minister and long-serving Liberal Ron Basford was rarely out of Trudeau's cabinets.
This despite a near-fatal attack of rampant foot-in-mouth disease for a would-be anti-racist:
We can just go to British Columbia, in Prince George, where crosses are being burned on lawns as we speak.
The good citizens of PG did not take kindly to this slander - and she's still (sort of) apologizing:
she said she named the wrong town...
Most recently she took out star NDP candidate Svend Robinson in a nasty 'don't let the ring thing die' campaign.
It's clearly gone to her head.
My fellow canucks, I abjectly apologize for our MP's overweening ambition and over the top hubris. Please, pay no attention as she embarrasses us yet again and proves herself a living embodiment of the Peter Principle. If successful (goddess forbid!) may she reign no longer than the last Prime Minister from Vancouver Centre.
Where's that bluenose holdout Morris Finster when we need him?
Note: In the interest of full disclosure - I am not now and have never been a member of the CPC or the CPC.
Updated below.
I'll give Stephen Harper this much credit: the man knows how to pursue an agenda. Having gained a foothold for the neoconservatives in Canada, he is intent on extending that power not only for his own party at the federal level, but for his ideological allies at the provincial level.
Exhibit A in this little indictment of mine is his slap down of Dalton McGuinty, who had reason to believe Harper was serious aobut helping him address the so-called fiscal imbalance he likes to talk about. Harper was very sympathetic to this cause during the election campaign, but his recent actions make it clear that Ontario will get little help from the Conservatives until they elect a government more to his liking.
Why is he so intent of screwing over the Ontario Liberal Party in order to get John Tory of the Progressive Conservatives elected? Short answer: he's an ideologically-driven prick our to cripple liberalism in Canada. Long answer:he's an ideologically-driven prick out to cripple liberalism in Canada, and he doesn't care what damage he does to the nation in the advancing his goals.
First of all, let me just do a pre-emptive strike for the trolls: "OOOOH! Harper's sooooo scary! Not that tired anti-American rant about Harper being a neo-con! You're suffering from HDS! Blah, blah fucking blah if Harper shit on my head I would call it a hand-knitted toque." Your sad and predictable protests have now been entered into the record, and those of us dealing with reality will now continue our conversation.
Harper has gone to great lengths to screw over Ontation Premier Dalton McGuinty over the past 24 hours, first by giving McGuinty the high hat over their meeting regarding the Preimier's perceived "fiscal imbalance".
After meeting Premier Dalton McGuinty for barely 45 minutes last evening, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped from his hotel room in downtown Toronto to the adjacent convention centre to attend a provincial Conservative fundraising dinner.At the $750-a-plate dinner, he introduced the main speaker, Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory, the man who will try to unseat McGuinty in next year's provincial election.
Harper called Tory "the next premier of Ontario" and declared: "Ontario needs John Tory because a strong Canada needs a strong Ontario and because John Tory is a nation builder."
Queen's Park veterans cannot recall a previous prime minister attending such a partisan provincial event, least not having a speaking role in it.
To the best of their recollection, Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin did not attend provincial Liberal fundraisers in this province, nor did Joe Clark or Brian Mulroney go to provincial Conservative fundraisers.
"What it tells you is that this is the most partisan prime minister we have seen in many years," said one seasoned Queen's Park MPP.
Many prime ministers have done what they could in subtle ways to support federalist parties in Quebec, but by and large provincial elections have been outside the realm of federal politicians. Harper is different, and for a very simple reason: he is not here to ensure good government for the country, he is here to implement an agenda, which includes slashing government spending, undoing the social safety net, gutting regulations and reducing taxes to the point where the federal governments ability to respond to the needs of the public is undermined. What he needs in his effort is an ally in the most powerful province in confederation, and John Tory - the new Mike Harris - is his man.
To further his undermining of the Ontario Liberals, Harper had Finance Minister Jim Flaherty eliminate the $538 million promised to the province to replace their coal-fired generators, making it extremely difficult - if not impossible - for Ontario to meet its targets in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
TORONTO and QUEBEC — The federal government has pulled the plug on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding that was supposed to help Ontario phase out its high-polluting, coal-fired power plants while it concentrates on its "made-in-Canada" approach to fighting emissions that cause climate change.Ontario officials say that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty wrote on Wednesday to Dwight Duncan, his provincial counterpart, informing him that at least $538-million the previous Liberal government pledged to help defray the costs of the province's actions to fight global warming were off the table.
In its place, Mr. Flaherty said the Conservatives would develop their own program to control emissions, and once this plan is completed, would negotiate a new funding arrangement. No indication was given of how much the province could expect, but it is unlikely to be as generous because Ottawa is cutting spending on climate-change programs by about 80 per cent.
"The new made-in-Canada approach to climate change will address future commitments," the letter said.
Ontario officials say the action breaks a funding commitment for an important national environmental goal. The coal phase-out is the largest effort in Canada to reduce greenhouse gases, and when it is complete in 2009, would reduce emissions by up to 30 million tonnes, or the same amount as taking seven million cars off the road, according to Ontario estimates.
"I'm very disappointed. Climate change and clean air are among our government's top priorities," Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Broten said in an interview.
She said the province isn't wavering in its determination to shut its coal-fired generating stations. "Our commitment to clean air in the province, I have to tell you, is steadfast, but it is a challenge," she said.
And now, exhibit B: compare Harper's attitude toward Ontario with his new love-in with Quebec. While slashing the Ontario funds, the Conservatives have let Quebec know that they can count on federal funding to assist with their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. From the Globe story:
Quebec Environment Minister Claude Béchard said yesterday that he is negotiating an agreement with Ottawa for financial compensation for the province's efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions."In recent discussions with my federal counterpart, Rona Ambrose, Ottawa has agreed to recognize what we have done in the past and what will be done in the future," Mr. Béchard said.
Quebec unveiled a new energy strategy yesterday to develop 4,500 megawatts of hydroelectric power and another 4,000 megawatts of wind power over the next 10 years. Premier Jean Charest said the plan will reduce greenhouse gases, but gave no indication that the federal government will contribute to it.
Last November, the Quebec government refused to sign a $328-million agreement on climate change with the former Liberal government after talks broke down over who would determine how the money was spent.
However, Quebec has built a harmonious relationship with the new Conservative government that could translate into financial help for projects aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
So there is money for helping provinces reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but not for Ontario, where a Liberal government is currently in charge. (The Quebec Liberal Party is not affiliated with the national party, and is currently led by a conservative, Jean Charest.) What we are seeing here is the use of power to play one part of the country off of the other. Smack Ontario with one hand, give to Quebec with the other. Harper knows that if he can shackle the McGuinty government he can help create the conditions for a Conservative win in Ontario. Together, he and Tory can then build an election machine that he hopes will lead to Conservative gains in the next federal election. His actions in Quebec are aimed at the same goal.
In fact, if you look at the payola doled out in the Conservatives' first budget, you can see that everything Harper does is done with an eye to extending his power. Good governance simply does not enter the picture, and why should it? Harper is on record many, many times over the years expressing his contempt for government. Why should we be surprised then when he governs so badly?
Canadians thought they got a Conservative minority government last January, but Harper knows he has a de facto majority, due to the debt-ridden leaderless Liberals and the sinking Bloc Quebecois, neither of whom are capable of fighting another election anytime soon. Under these circumstances, Harper is governing as though he has a majortiy, and is using this period of grace to cement his power. It's smart politics, but it is poor leadership.
But then, what do ideologues know about real leadership?
Update: Greg from Sinister Thoughts has been chiming in in the comments, but he also has a couple of interesting posts on this topic at his place as well.
There’s a tonne of good commentary out there about the budget, so I thought I would present some of the more interesting stuff I found while touring the Canadian blogging community. [You mean instead of doing the actual work yourself? – Ed.] [Yes. – Tim]
Balbulican at Stageleft finds some disturbing overtones of assimilation in the budget, noting the short shrift given to the Kelowna Accord and many other misguided ideas.
Well, the good news is…the mask is off; and the face under the mask is the ugliest side of the old Reform Party. To those of you who suggested my earlier reservations about Conservative policy were premature…I suggest you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Greg Staples at Political Staples gets a bit metaphorical in his budget analysis, suggesting that the Harper budget may help Canadians grow up a bit.
If it is true that the Nanny-State turns citizens into children (I will leave that to you in the comments) then you could argue that this budget allows the children to age, if ever so slightly. You could say the training wheels have come off but there is still a parent behind the bike with their hand on the seat - if only to make sure. Will we be able to one day ride free? Not if the Conservatives keep growing expenditures faster than growth+inflation. But you can't expect the world in a minority budget.
Declan at Crawl Across the Ocean does his usual bang-up job in analyzing the budget, and finds both positives and negatives. What bothers him most is the dishonesty inherent in some of the projected benefits from the tax cuts.
Two points - the first one is that they pointedly don't highlight how much a family making over $150,000 will save - probably because it is a figure which would dwarf the savings for lower income earners (although to be fair there is a more complete chart on page 67), reflecting the fact that this is a budget which will worsen inequality.But more importantly, note the wording, "will be better off by almost $300."
In order to believe that someone will be better off by the entire amount that their tax bill has been reduced, one has to assume that taxes, once collected, simply disappear into thin air without providing any benefit to anyone. Maybe just a poor choice of words, but I think it goes deeper than that.This Conservative budget, which lacks much imagination beyond simply taking the projected surplus and handing it back to Canadians via a huge uncoordinated stack of tax cuts, tax credits, tax exemptions and flat out handouts, perfectly reflects this Conservative belief that government can not be a force for good in this country.
Greg Bester at Sinister Thoughts notes something that I felt too. Sure, tax cuts are popular. Who doesn’t want a few extra bucks in their pockets? But there is always another price to pay, as Ontarians found out after the Mike Harris years.
Finally, the tax cuts will be popular, at least until the next election (which is all that matters to Harper). But later, when the program cuts kick in and people start to realize there is no such thing as a free ride, the grumbling will begin in earnest. I have seen this movie before, in Ontario, from 1995 to 2003.
Andrew at Bound by Gravity finds much to like in the budget, while noting it does not go as far as he would like in other areas.
In the face of huge surpluses, the Conservative government has decided to relieve the tax burden on Canadians. Budget 2006 contains twenty-eight different tax breaks/tax credits that distribute much of the massive surplus back to the people who the money came from in the first place: Canadians. While it is true that I would prefer more tax breaks and less tax credits, I can live with the mix that the budget delivers. (Aside: A tax break is a decrease in tax paid, while a tax credit is wealth redistribution - likewise, a tax break is a loss in government revenue, whereas a tax credit is an increase in government spending.)*snip*
All in all I am mildly pleased with the first Conservative budget in more than a decade. It is more in tune with ideas and concepts that I support, and contains less social engineering initiatives than we have seen in the past. Thus, while I would have preferred to have seen some money for environmental initiatives (emissions reductions, etc), more tangible military commitments, and an abandonment of the expensive "child care" wealth redistribution scheme, I am certainly more comfortable with this budget than I have been with past Liberal endeavors.
Canadian Cynic, in his own inimitable style, has a message for Jack Layton regarding the budget.
Dear Jack: Stephen is not going to "accept a few changes" based on your recommendations. Stephen doesn't give a fuck what you think since he already knows that, with the Bloc's support, his budget is going to pass so, really, Stephen couldn't possibly be less interested in your opinion about anything.Deal with it.
Ross at The Gazetteer is admirably succinct in his budget analysis.
To me the entire budget looks like bribery of every possible special interest group you can imagine.
Dave and Cheryl at The Galloping Beaver actually run some of the numbers from the budget, and find the picture for lower income Canadians is not so rosy as the Conservatives paint it.
Now the Conservatives will tell you that the same wage earner will realize just a ton of savings from a 1% reduction in the GST. Except that's simply not true.In order to make up for the increase in income taxes, at a 1% reduction in GST, the earner would have to spend $12,130.00 on taxable goods and services, and the money isn't there. Keeping with the same earner's annual expenditures...
- Income: $30,000
- CPP: $1,311
- EI: $585
- Fed Taxes: $3,039
- Prov Taxes: $1,000 (approximate)
- Housing: $12,000 (i.e. Mortgage, rent property taxes)
- Food: $2,600 ($7/day)If an earner spent all of it on taxable goods and services, they would save $94.65 when the GST is reduced to 6% from 7%. But they have paid an income tax increase of $121.35. The earner has lost $26.70 to a tax increase.
The only way it translates to a tax decrease is if you make enough money to absorb the income tax increase and then spend enough on consumer goods to save more on the resultant GST decrease. That makes it a tax cut for wealthier Canadians and an increased tax burden for the lower wage earner.
Any budget is a Rorschach test upon which you project your own beliefs. If you support Harper’s policies, there was much to like, and if (like me) you don’t support them, there was plenty to dislike. Looking at this budget, I can’t help but think back to how giddy Ontarians were when the rebate cheques and the tax cuts were flowing from the Mike Harris government. It seemed like happy days, until everyone woke up and realized their schools were screwed up, their municipal infrastructure was crumbling and there were deficits as far as the eye could see.
I get the feeling the same slash-and-burn hangover, and the inevitable buyer’s remorse, is waiting in the wings for the entire country.
Addendum: I should note that these are, of course, merely exceprts, which should be taken as encouragement to read the entire linked post.
Stephen Harper, one year ago, on the "NDP budget" being brought down by the Liberal Party.
"An NDP budget gives us no reason to support Liberal corruption," Harper told reporters earlier in Ridgetown, during a stop while he campaigned in southwestern Ontario. "This government is behaving in a completely irresponsible manner with the taxpayers' money. We're talking about a secret deal worth almost $5 billion to stay in power."
Stephen Harper today:
OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally appealed to the New Democrats to support his minority government for two years, the Star has learned.In return, the Prime Minister offered to make good on all the spending contained in the NDP's budget deal with the Liberals a year ago — almost $4 billion worth of new cash that was at risk of expiring.
Let the lectures about honest Conservative government begin.
