October 2009 Archives

While I have a great deal of respect for the talents and accomplishments of Gene Krupa, I have to ask if he's ever been bold enough to go head to head with an absolute animal.

As for your bonus guitar player, will this do?

I'm going to mix it up a bit this evening. Let's open with the big band. Green Onions was a hit for Booker T. & the M.G.'s but here it's performed by Harry James and company. If you look closely you'll see that's Buddy Rich on drums.

I'm certainly not assuming it was written just for me but I did get one response to yesterday's outgoing mail about Omar Khadr and it was actually substantial and addressed the issue. Since the NDP took the trouble to write, they get the publicity. Eat your heart out, Iggy.

Subject: New Democrats support Omar Khadr's return to Canada

From: laytoj@parl.gc.ca

Thank you for your email requesting that Canada repatriate Omar Khadr. New Democrats have consistently supported Khadr's return to Canada. At our NDP Convention in August, delegates passed a motion re-affirming our demand for his return.

On the seven-year anniversary of Omar Khadr`s detention by US authorities, we now know that the Canadian federal government spent more than $1.3 million to effectively keep him in Guantanamo Bay. The total cost of the government's appeals recently was released in response to a formal question asked by our Party in June, 2009.

NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar said, "Every thread of this case shows the government is in denial of its responsibility, but now we find out it`s also spending a significant amount of money just to fight repatriation, which means the end result is that they're spending money to keep him in Guantanamo".

We share the disappointment of Canadians over the foot dragging by the Harper government. Like you, we want them to abide by judicial orders and seek the return of Omar Khadr to Canada. This government also should follow the will of Parliament which passed New Democrat Human Rights Critic Wayne Marston's concurrence motion calling for the immediate repatriation of Omar Khadr. This March 24th motion endorsed a report compiled a year ago by the House Subcommittee on Human Rights which called for Khadr's repatriation.

This case is yet another example of the Conservatives indifference to the plight faced by a growing number of Canadians who are experiencing problems abroad. New Democrats believe that it is time to put an end to 'conditional citizenship'. Looking ahead, MP Dewar has launched a campaign to protect all Canadians travelling abroad. For more information, please visit: New Democrats launch campaign to protect Canadians abroad

In opposition, Mr. Harper spoke of the government's moral responsibility to respect the will of Parliament because it was ultimately the democratic will of Canadians. Regrettably, now in government, Mr. Harper has continued the Liberals' shameful record of non-interference in the case of Omar Khadr.

Again, thank you for taking the time to register your concern. Feel free to pass this email to anyone who may be interested. I also invite you to check our website at www.ndp.ca to learn the latest work being done by our team of New Democrats.

Sincerely,

Jack Layton, MP (Toronto-Danforth)
Leader, Canada's New Democrats

I added link text to a couple of raw links but otherwise that's as I received it.

I have been reliably informed that today is Email Harper Day.

Subject: Please repatriate Omar Khadr

To: HarpeS@parl.gc.ca

CC: CannoL@parl.gc.ca, NichoR@parl.gc.ca, IgnatM@parl.gc.ca, LaytoJ@parl.gc.ca

To The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada:

Canada is the only western country that has failed to repatriate those of its citizens who are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. The Courts have found that in the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian government has failed to abide by its obligations under both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights law including the Convention Against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I urge you to reconsider the government's position and respect these decisions without any further delay.

Yours truly,

The nice people on Facebook seemed to think it was important that I include my full mailing address so I did. Do you suppose this means Harper will drop by for a chat?

While much of what the Hapless Government™ does is an obvious insult to our democracy, some of the damage it's doing can take a while to actually manifest itself.

Leading think-tank to close its doors

One of Canada's leading social policy think-tanks is closing its doors because lack of funding. The Canadian Policy Research Networks announced on its website Monday that it plans to close at year-end, ending 15 years of independent public policy research and evidence gathering to support Canada's decision- and policy-making...Many say CPRN never recovered after the Harper government cut the agency's $3-million-a-year funding in 2006.

Andrew Jackson at The Progressive Economics Forum describes the contributions the CPRN has made.

The CPRN made significant contributions to policy research in favour of child care and early learning, investment in social housing, better income support policies for the working poor, a federal role in the cities, and progressive changes to minimum wage and employment standards. Under the former Liberal government, they played an important role in connecting progressive academics to the internal government policy process...

It sounds like another one of those left-wing fringe groups, doesn't it? A lot of the institutional knowledge it had amassed in fifteen years of operation will be lost. Imagine this kind of loss occurring day by day in different ways throughout the country. Heckuva job, Harpie.

Commons committee opens prisoner torture investigation

A special House of Commons committee will conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the handling of Afghan prisoners -- including whether senior officials knew about the risk of torture in Kandahar jails and whether there was an attempted coverup.

The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois teamed up Wednesday behind closed doors to launch the probe, which will see key witnesses called to testify.

Those witnesses are expected to include cabinet ministers, senior federal officials, military commanders, former defence chief general Rick Hillier and Richard Colvin, the Canadian diplomat who warned of possible torture.

A majority government would be able to block this but the Conservatives can't stop a united opposition if they're determined to pursue an investigation. Works for me.

The story specifically mentions that the committee isn't investigating uniformed soldiers which frees it from the concerns that have shut down the MPCC inquiry. That was put on hold indefinitely because the government is holding up documents that individual MPs (the military kind) need for their defence.

Here's hoping Kady O'Malley keeps her thumbs limber though some of the proceedings may be in camera.

On Monday evening it was at the National Gallery of Canada and the occasion was the retirement dinner for Tom d'Aquino, outgoing president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. L. Ian MacDonald fills us in here, including the extensive guest list. But suffice it to say that everyone who's anyone in the corridors of power was there or sent his regrets and that includes the current Prime Minister who, as MacDonald notes, "doesn't do dinner out" but made time to show up and deliver a ten minute address.

MacDonald called this "a unique gathering of the Canadian establishment" and it serves as a reminder that the members of the CCCE, who control half the economy, have unparalleled access to the people we elect to represent us.

Meanwhile, back in the opposition leader's office, there was some confusion surrounding a personnel change. It seems that when the decision was made to bring Peter Donolo in as full time chief of staff, Ian Davey, the man Donolo replaces, wasn't among the first to find out. John Manley was though and he was considerate enough to spread the word at exactly the same time that Ignatieff's communications director was denying what she thought was a misunderstanding.

Manley is Tom d'Aquino's replacement at the CCCE. It stands to reason he would need to know who's in and who's out even before some of the participants do. After all, when he and the rest of the council make up the latest set of marching orders, he needs to know he's forwarding them to the right person. And obviously Michael Ignatieff knows which channels of communication he really needs to keep open.

Good to know.

You may recall that last month there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding the question of who would be the Liberal standard bearer in the Quebec riding of Outremont. Denis Coderre, who was Ignatieff's Quebec lieutenant at the time, wanted to appoint a new "star" candidate. But Martin Cauchon, who had represented the riding before his retirement from politics, wanted to come out of retirement and contest the nomination in an open race. When Iggy initially sided with Coderre he took a lot of fire from people within his own party. In the end, he relented and allowed the open nomination contest that Cauchon had wanted. Coderre wasn't pleased. To say the least.

At the time, I wondered aloud why the Liberals didn't at least make lemonade out of lemons and make a big deal about the victory this represented for grass roots democracy instead of trying to change the subject. But I guess they know their own party better than I do. I guess they knew something like this might happen.

...apparently a fair and open nomination process is far beyond the Libs' capability, as Martin Cauchon's main rival for the nomination has been run out of the race.

Not only was Comlan Amouzou repeatedly pressured to withdraw - a message at least once traced back to Cauchon's camp - but he was apparently denied the ability to sell party memberships in order to try to mount a challenge.

Just go read matttbastard. And try not to hurt your chin too badly when it hits the desk.

This is Robert Silver in yesterday's Globe and Mail:

The Green Shift - the reason so many Liberals now accept as divine truth that we shalt not say anything of substance prior to an election - failed because we as a party, from the leader on down (and yes, it was a much bigger circle of people who deserve blame than just Dion) - failed miserably to communicate it.

Period.

It seems to me that some Liberal party supporters have elevated the idea that Canadians have said no to a carbon tax to the status of conventional wisdom because the Liberals did so poorly with the Green Shift as their central campaign plank. I knew the policy was in trouble the moment I heard that someone had asked Dion what effect it would have on GHG emissions and he had no answer and refused to even speculate. That signaled to me that it wasn't a well-thought out policy; it was a hastily conceived Hail Mary attempt to differentiate the Liberals from the NDP who had been promoting the same cap and trade approach that the Liberals themselves had supported until shortly before the Green Shift was announced. Voters didn't reject a carbon tax for all time. They rejected that specific iteration of the Liberals and that particular campaign pitch.

I'm not a big fan of the Silver-Powers thingie in the Globe and only saw this because Aaron Wherry sent me there but in this post Silver nails it. The Liberals are taking entirely the wrong approach by refusing to reveal policy in advance of a campaign.

...folks are latching onto the wrong dichotomy entirely. It is not a trade-off between putting forward bold solutions for the problems facing the country or putting forward flaccid mush. Not even close.

The real dichotomy is between communicating your ideas well - whether those ideas are bold or more of the same - versus communicating your ideas poorly.

Canadians not welcome in Libya

Canadian travellers have been told they're not welcome in Libya, in an apparent reprisal for Canada's near tongue-lashing of Moammar Gadhafi.

Gadhafi cancelled a planned stopover in Newfoundland last month after the Harper government made public its intention to scold the Libyan leader over the hero's welcome Libya gave a man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

That has left some Canadians who were part of recent tourist groups travelling in the Middle East and North Africa in the lurch.

...

Not allowing Canadians into Libya may be an inconvenience for tourists who hoped to see the many attractions the north African country has to offer. But the move could also put at risk development projects, including the geological work being done by at least one Canadian company on underwater aquifers in Libya.

There are accepted ways that grownups use when one country wishes to express its displeasure with another. It's called diplomacy. But we're not being governed by grownups.

The Conservatives have certainly demonstrated that they can two things well. The first is to turn anything and everything into a partisan issue. The second is to drag their feet and avoid actually governing. And while it's long been apparent that the American movement conservative philosophy has had a serious influence on them it took this post by Hunter at Daily Kos to make me realize that the shining star Harper and company look to for inspiration is none other than Republican Senator Olympia Snowe.

I just have to say: I continue to be impressed by the bold, decisive leadership being displayed by Senator Snowe and the other Senate supporters of a healthcare "trigger." Nothing says "serious" like proposing the Senate perhaps do something about the healthcare crisis... later. You know, maybe in a while. If it doesn't get better on its own.

Emphasis in the original. Now we know.

The people who are encouraging Barack Obama to adopt General McChrystal's counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan and deploy the extra troops that he has asked for like to point to the success that COIN had in Iraq as validation. Apparently this is what success looks like.

Two explosions ripped apart government buildings in Baghdad this morning for the second time in two months, killing at least 132, wounding 500 and demonstrating once again that insurgents maintain the capacity to mount large-scale attacks in the heart of the capital.

The goal of the surge in Iraq early in 2007 was to create the conditions necessary for a political reconciliation that would put an end to the violence. It's two and a half years later and that's what the architects of the policy are calling a success. To say the least, their track record isn't great. Why would anyone listen to them?

H/t to skdadl at Bread and Roses.

Later that same day:

Speaking of people we shouldn't be listening to any more...

A group of conservative foreign policy advocates--including a bevy of neoconservatives--this week sent President Barack Obama a letter urging him to stand firm in Afghanistan and vowing their support for him (on Afghanistan) if he did so. The letter was organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative, a think tank put together by leading neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and signers included the pair and such neocon stalwarts as David Frum, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, John Podhoretz, Clifford May, Danielle Pletka, Randy Scheunemann, Dan Senor, and Gary Schmitt. But two high-profile right-wingers also added their names: Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.

Oh, well, if they've got Sarah Palin on board that makes all the difference. You betcha!

Wouldn't attacks like this on a foreign embassy be considered acts of war? If you read that post and follow the links you'll find that the Brazilian embassy in Honduras is under seige, the inhabitants are living on biscuits, their communications are being jammed and they appear to be under assault from both chemical and sonic weapons. If this was happening to a Canadian embassy we'd be screaming at the government to do something.

Let's open with some unplugged Clapton. This is Drifting Blues.

I figure that each of us gets to do this only once, so today it's my turn.

pogge sets a high standard for videos on this site, but Sir Paul and the lads seem not to have left us a filmed performance, so I went for the animation. I don't often like cartoons, but this one is very much of the period (ok: it's dated), brings back memories -- I mean, look at the Marimekko! -- and the countdown through sixty seconds and then to the full sixty-four is kinda trippy, as we used to say. The video's great pogge-sin is that it cuts out the very last few notes, but y'all know those, don't you, and can hum them to yourselves?

And on the turn, as a bonus, not only a live performance but a historic one.

Government in squabble over torture secrets

A dispute rages over secret portions of an inquiry report on the overseas torture of three Canadians one year after release of the document, which criticizes the actions of security agencies.

...

In his report released one year ago Wednesday, former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci found Canadian officials contributed to the torture of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin by sharing information -- including unfounded accounts -- with foreign agencies.

...

But a small portion of the public report -- Iacobucci says it amounts to a page or two -- was held back because the government argued it could compromise security.

At first I thought this was to make it easier for the government to defend against the lawsuits that have been brought by the three men whose torture is the central focus of the inquiry. But the government has already revealed that on that score, it has little concern for what's been made public and will simply pretend that the whole sorry business never happened. The crucial piece to this puzzle is here:

The public version makes it clear the material under wraps would shed new light on actions by Canadian officials that likely contributed to the torture of El Maati in Egypt.

Given what we've already learned, I have to assume the information being held back is pretty serious. Somebody's butt is being covered.

Jim Flaherty interviewed by Steve Maich for Canadian Business on the meaning of "fiscal conservative":

I think the key is to have a commitment to a balanced budget and to always be moving in that direction, to have a plan to be there, and to have the discipline to do it. ... I've certainly exercised that kind of discipline before at the provincial level in order to balance budgets...

Have I mentioned that I lived in Ontario during the Mike Harris years? They called it the Common Sense Revolution. They lied about that too.

H/t to Aaron Wherry.

Liberals snub NDP climate-change bill

Federal Liberals say they won't support the NDP in its effort to push a private member's climate-change bill through the House of Commons on Wednesday.

The proposed legislation, called Bill C-311, the climate change accountability act, sets strict targets for greenhouse gas emissions and is currently being considered by a House environment committee.

The bill is identical to one that passed final reading last year but died in the Senate when the last election was called. This version has already passed second reading. Layton wants to push it through before the climate change talks in Copenhagen to send a message that Harper and company, who have been quite happy to sabotage international efforts whenever they can, don't represent the majority of Canadians on this issue. So why are the Liberals suddenly withdrawing support from legislation they've supported on five previous votes?

Liberal environment critic David McGuinty, however, said the committee needs more time to study the implications of the bill.

"We need to hear more about the American position, the European position, the Chinese position" before considering the bill, McGuinty told CBC News.

This is the party that signed us on to the Kyoto Protocol in the first place and then spent a decade or more studying implications without actually doing anything. So does this mean they didn't study the implications of this bill the last five times they voted for it? Awesome. Just awesome.

Judge questions CSIS's disclosure in security certificate case

A Federal Court judge says Canada's spy agency has undermined the integrity of the justice system by "filtering" evidence unhelpful to its terror case against Ottawa's Mohamed Harkat.

As a result, Judge Simon Noel said Tuesday, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service will have to open another top secret file to scrutiny by Harkat's special advocates.

...

"It is necessary to repair the damage done to the administration of justice," Noel wrote, "and re-establish the necessary climate of trust and confidence, which must be present in such an exceptional legal procedure."

In May of this year Justice Noel learned that despite his direct questions concerning the credibility of the key witness against Harkat, three different CSIS witnesses had failed to disclose that the key witness in question had failed a polygraph test in 2002. At the time Noel expressed his displeasure by calling it a "troubling situation" and wondering aloud if CSIS was dealing "in good faith." He has since reviewed the evidence and re-examined the three witnesses and the ruling reported here is the result.

As Michael Geist notes, the lobbyists still have 24 hours to try and keep the pressure on. But it appears that "thousands of emails and letters" to MPs on the subject of Bill C-27 have had an effect. Geist's sources are telling him that the Liberals are withdrawing the motions concerning DRM and spyware that were inspired by the copyright lobby and the Conservatives are still indicating that they're reversing themselves on the exceptions that would have weakened the anti-spam provisions.

Yay us.

Price tag to repair Chalk River $70M: AECL

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. has put a $70-million price tag on repairing its downed Chalk River reactor.

That was the estimate given Monday by AECL's chief nuclear officer to a House of Commons committee looking into the isotope shortage.

Bill Pilkington, who is also the Crown company's senior vice-president, said that figure includes lost revenue from selling medical isotopes as well as physical repairs to the facility at Chalk River, Ont.

Emphasis added. That's interesting when you consider that the headline and the lede make it sound like the entire $70 million is for "physical repairs." Are they trying to make this sound worse than it is? Because the lost revenue is lost whether they repair the facility or not.

Update a few minutes later:

Okay, I think I get it. AECL wants the government to fork over $70 million to cover both the cost of bringing the Chalk River reactor back on line and the revenue they haven't received since it went down and won't receive until it's back up. If I'm right, then $70 million is most assuredly not the price tag for repairing the reactor and somebody has a lot of nerve.

THE DETAINEE FILES: Top brass knew about torture allegations: gov't and military sources

According to insiders, it turns out Ottawa was indeed aware of reports from a senior Canadian diplomat, which repeatedly warned that Afghan detainees turned over to local authorities risked being tortured.

Global National has learned from senior sources within the federal government and the Canadian military, that diplomat Richard Colvin's warnings reached Retired Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff at the time.

Then I'm sure Gen. Hillier can shed some light on whether this news was passed on to his political masters.

Hillier did not respond to Global National's requests for an interview Monday.

Oh. Since his book was just released I would imagine he'll be doing the tour. Might get awkward.

H/t to Aaron Wherry

Courtesy of Aaron Wherry, this is Defence Minister Peter MacKay in the House of Commons when pressed about the memos concerning the mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan that he claims he didn't see. Here he is addressing BQ MP Claude Bachand:

...I will note that when it comes to Bloc members, I wish they would spend just as much time standing up and protecting the interests of Canadian soldiers as they do for the vigour they seem to have for Taliban prisoners.

And this is later on in a comment to NDP MP Jack Harris:

I only wish he would bring that type of enthusiasm to support the men and women of the Canadian Forces.

It's nice to see someone raise the tone of the discourse in Question Period, isn't it?

If you're following the progress of Bill C-27, Michael Geist has an update. Short version: the Conservatives seem to have withdrawn support for the worst of the amendments and the final review of the legislation has been put off until Wednesday.

There were news reports a while back that Environment Minister Jim Prentice was floating the idea of having weaker GHG emissions standards for the tar sands developments than for other industries. It would mean that if Canada is to reach any kind of hard targets for emissions, the rest of the country would have to clamp down disproportionately in order to allow the oil patch to continue to expand. And the idea is certainly popular with the oil companies.

Alberta's oil sands producers should be allowed to significantly increase their greenhouse gas emissions, even if that means forcing other sectors to take on additional expensive obligations to meet Canada's climate change targets, an industry executive says.

Marcel Coutu, chief executive officer of Canadian Oil Sands Trust, (COS.UN-T32.90-1.25-3.66%) travelled to Toronto Thursday to spread the industry's message about climate change. The oil industry stance highlights the dilemma facing the federal government as it prepares regulations to meet its commitment to reduce emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 from 2006 levels.

If the oil sands were allowed to expand production with only marginal improvements in their per-barrel emissions, the rest of the country faces a much harder and more expensive challenge in meeting Canadian targets.

I suppose it's not surprising to see that argument coming from an oil company executive though he's getting pretty close to the definition of chutzpah there. But I'm more than a bit surprised to see our new ambassador to the U.S., a man who has a good reputation on the climate change file, trying on an argument that can be used to justify just that kind of double standard.

And I'll post Joe Walsh if I want to.

Subject: Please don't water down Bill C-27

To: Clement.T@parl.gc.ca, ChongM@parl.gc.ca, RotaA@parl.gc.ca, BouchR@parl.gc.ca, BrownG@parl.gc.ca, Coady.S@parl.gc.ca, Garneau.M@parl.gc.ca, LakeM@parl.gc.ca, MasseB@parl.gc.ca, VankeD@parl.gc.ca, VinceR@parl.gc.ca, WallaM@parl.gc.ca, WarkeC@parl.gc.ca

Dear Honourable Members:

Bill C-27 was originally drafted to include much needed protections for consumers. These included provisions that would prevent companies from surreptitiously installing software on our computers and from retrieving personal information from those devices without our knowledge and consent. The legislation was also written to implement an express opt-in regime for commercial email which would help us to control who has access to our InBoxes and reduce the deluge of unsolicited email.

Recent media reports suggest that amendments to the legislation being proposed in committee at the behest of corporate lobby groups would weaken or even eliminate those protections. I'm writing to urge you to oppose those amendments. It's to be expected these days that corporations will treat individual Canadians as nothing more than profit centres to be managed in such a way as to maximize revenue. We rely on our elected representatives to remember that we're more than that and to protect our rights as citizens and not just as consumers.

Please stand in favour of our rights to privacy, to control what is and isn't installed on our computer systems and to secure the personal information we store on them.

Yours truly,

The two previous posts I've put up on this issue are here and here. The distribution list is Industry Minister Tony Clement and the membership of the Industry committee which is scheduled to meet tomorrow afternoon to finalize Bill C-27.

Today is the sixth anniversary of the first post on Peace, order and good government, eh? and it seems fitting that I'm posting to encourage everyone to go yell at the government. But do it politely in the email. Save your snark for the blogs where we can all see it.

The title is a quote from Michael Geist, describing proposals being made in committee to amend Bill C-27, also known as the Electronic Commerce Protection Act. Geist's description isn't hyperbole.

Earlier today I posted about a Montreal Gazette story that described how Liberals in particular were joining with Conservatives on the committee to water down anti-spam provisions but there's actually worse than that going on here. Representatives of "the copyright lobby" have been hard at work trying to get changes to the bill before it comes back out of committee and Geist describes why the lobbyists are so interested:

The two core concerns arise from fears that the bill could prevent surreptitious use of DRM and block enforcement initiatives that might involve accessing users' personal computers without their permission.

So the legislation as originally drafted would prevent private companies from installing Digital Rights Management software on your computer without your knowledge and from subsequently accessing your computer to retrieve information from you without your permission. The software and entertainment industries want to block the implemention of those protections and our elected representatives are going to accommodate them by proposing amendments that would render those protections useless.

Sources say that the Liberals have introduced a motion that would take these practices outside of the bill. In its place, they would define computer program as, among other things, "a program that has as its primary function...inducing a user to install software by intentionally misrepresenting that installing that software is necessary to safeguard security or privacy or to open or play content of a computer program." This sets such a high bar - primary function, intentional mispresentation - that music and software industry can plausibly argue that surreptitious DRM installations fall outside of C-27.

So as long as they don't actively lie about what the DRM does, its installation would be permissible without informing you as to what it actually is.

Liberals back Tory plan to dilute anti-spam bill

The Liberals are getting behind a Conservative plan to water down the government's proposed anti-spam law so some marketers can continue to send unsolicited emails.

Liberal backing means the amended bill will have enough support to pass the House of Commons.

The bill could be further diluted Monday when the Liberals propose their own changes.

This is about Bill C-27, aka the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, and there appears to be a lot of problems developing with this one. You can follow up with Lindsay Stewart at Canadian Cynic and with Michael Geist if you like. Or you can stay tuned because this one is now on my list of things to do.

Even though it sounds like none of the parties are particularly distinguishing themselves when it comes to representing our interests here, it's interesting to see how quickly the narrative in the media can shift back to one of the Liberals supporting the Conservative agenda. When the phrase "Liberal, Tory, same old story" gets tossed around it's often in reference to the way both parties look out for corporate interests at the individual's expense. If the Liberals really want to get out from under that, I would suggest that being seen to side with the spammers is the wrong way to go about it.

Have I mentioned that I hate spam with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns?

When he wants to Leo Kottke can overwhelm you with more notes per second than any human guitar player should be able to produce. But in the opener for tonight's mixed bag of performances he's downright restrained as he backs up his own vocal on a song written by Paul Siebel.

The National Post is reporting that neither Peter MacKay, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, nor Gordon O'Connor, then Minister of Defence, were informed about the reports that Richard Colvin was filing from Afghanistan regarding his concerns that prisoners originally captured by Canadian military personnel were being tortured.

The controversy surrounding the treatment of prisoners in the Iraqi prison at Abu Ghraib began in 2004 with the first batch of the infamous photos being published in April of that year. In 2005 it was reported that two prisoners had been beaten to death by American soldiers in the prison in Bagram and the deaths had been ruled to be homicides. It defies belief that in May of 2006, when Colvin sent his first report, anyone in a senior position in Canada's military or foreign service would be unaware of the potential ramifications — both legal and political — if it came to light that Colvin's concerns were well-founded.

But here we have a senior official in the Department of Foreign Affairs who is newly arrived in his posting in Afghanistan and who almost immediately begins sending alarming reports to multiple officials in both the military and the diplomatic corps and who is careful to send them through "action address" channels. He sends well over a dozen of these reports during his time in Afghanistan. And even though he was doing everything possible to raise concern about a highly charged and controversial subject that had already been making headlines for two years and that had the potential to cause harm or death to the detainees themselves and cost the careers of both military officials and politicians, we're to believe that no one ever thought to raise these concerns to the level of the minister of either department?

If that's true then I expect we'll be hearing shortly about people in both the DND and the DFAIT who have been fired for displaying the worst. judgement. ever. Any day now. Right?

Harper government refuses to expand information, privacy laws

The Harper government has quietly nixed recommendations to expand and modernize Canada's access-to-information and privacy laws.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's rejection of reforms to the 26-year-old laws sparked accusations Thursday that the Tories have reneged on campaign promises to bring openness and transparency to the federal government.

The current (and interim) information commissioner, Suzanne Legault, has a somewhat better opinion of the way the access to information system is working than her predecessor but...

... she acknowledged there's an "urgent need" to modernize legislation to remedy some "very long delays" in responding to access requests.

But Nicholson wasn't impressed with the idea of giving more power to the commissioner.

He said giving the information commissioner more powers would shift the nature of the job "from an ombudsman model towards a quasi-judicial model," which would be inconsistent with other independent parliamentary watchdogs.

It would also make his boss angry since the prime minister has been busy attempting to make all the current quasi-judicial bodies as toothless as possible. So I guess we muddle along with the system we have.

In other news, I'm running out of exclamation points.

H/t to SisyphusThis in comments to a post at Beyond the Commons.

Updated. Please see below.

CSIS orders caution in describing suspects

Canada's spy agency has explicitly told its officers to describe people in "a fair and precise manner" when passing information to other countries, especially those with poor human rights records.

The formal directive came last November from the deputy director of operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, The Canadian Press has learned.

Right. Don't tell the intelligence service in the country that's notorious for torturing people that the nice Canadian is a terrorist unless you're pretty darn sure it's true.

The story reports that this edict went out a month after Justice Iacobucci found that CSIS had contributed to the abuse of three Canadians at the hands of Syrians. But Justice O'Connor identified a problem with including unfounded accusations about "persons of interest" in information supplied to foreign intelligence services when he examined the case of Maher Arar. That inquiry ended in September of 2006. So it took two inquiries and two years for CSIS to determine that agents need to be "fair and precise" in their communications. And it took another year just to inform the public that a formal directive to that effect had been issued.

Impressive.

Update (2009.10.16, 09:05):

CTV has a much more complete version of that same Canadian Press story and it includes more background on Iacobucci's rebuke of CSIS. There's also this:

But officials from CSIS, the RCMP and other security agencies will not comprehensively spell out steps taken to fix shortcomings identified by Iacobucci's 544-page report -- and they certainly won't link any changes, including the CSIS directive on labelling, to his findings.

...

Almalki, El Maati and Nureddin are suing federal agencies in Ontario Superior Court over alleged complicity in their detention and mistreatment abroad. The government denies any responsibility for their imprisonment and torture.

And while the case is open, officials have been told to clam up.

Officials have been told to clam up. There's a lot of that going around these days.

When it was reported over a week ago that PMO spokesperson Dimitri Soudas had literally called bullshit on claims fed to the press by Alykhan Velshi, it didn't sound as though Soudas was merely accusing Velshi of being misinformed. In fact the Toronto Star article in which this was reported informed us that:

[Soudas] ... could not explain why the communications director to the immigration minister would tell the Star about the potential floor-crossers if they didn't exist.

That sounds very much like as close to an admission from Soudas as we're likely to get that Velshi pulled the information about potential floor-crossers out of his butt. Someone employed as a director of communications for a cabinet minister lied to the press for explicitly partisan purposes and was called on it by the very government he works for.

The reason I'm bringing this up again is that it's over a week later and I'm seeing Velshi's name in the media in a context which suggests he's still on the payroll as our immigration minister's director of communications. Journalists are continuing to quote him as if he still has credibility. An admittedly quick search of google news provides no indication that any other government official, including Velshi's direct superior Jason Kenney, has even bothered to comment on Velshi's attempt to misinform the Canadian public. Why is that, I wonder.

One of the enduring myths about this country is that we have this unlimited supply of fresh water and this isn't something we have to worry about. Wishful thinking.

Climate change, hydro power destroying Canada's rivers

Canada's rivers are at risk and some are even close to drying up because of climate change and growing demand for water, warns a new report.

In its report "Canada's Rivers at Risk: Environmental Flows and Canada's Freshwater Future," the WWF-Canada looks at the health of 10 major rivers, not by analyzing the water quality but by assessing their water flow.

...

According to the report, the water flow in some of Canada's biggest and most important rivers, such as the South Saskatchewan and the St. Lawrence, have been modified to the extent that ecosystems are in serious trouble.

Other rivers, including some of the planet's increasingly scarce large, free-flowing rivers like the Skeena, the Athabasca, and the Mackenzie - could soon be in trouble, it warns.

The report makes recommendations including long term planning.

""This includes strong federal leadership to address climate change..."

We are so screwed.

Goldman Sachs 2009 bonuses to double 2008's

On Thursday, Goldman Sachs will announce the firm's bonus payments for 2009. Analysts expect the bonus pool to mushroom to $23 billion -- double the bonus pool paid to employees in 2008.

Oh look. There's more.

Congressional lawmakers today expressed concern that another AIG bonus fiasco could soon unfold, on the heels of a new watchdog report criticizing the Treasury Department for failing to oversee pay plans at AIG before the bailed-out company dished out $168 million in retention payments in March.

...

It could happen again, in March, when AIG is due to pay out another $198 million in retention payments.

"We have history repeating itself," the panel's chairman, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said.

The underlying reasons for our financial woes haven't changed. The Bush and Obama administrations threw a lot of money at the problem and left the graduates of the Goldman Sachs School of Cowboy Capitalism in charge. It's still the banksters' world; we just live in it.

H/t to lambert at Corrente and to digby at Hullabaloo.

Updated. Please see below.

If you've been following the story of the Military Police Complaints Commission's attempts to hold public hearings into the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan then you'll recognize the name Richard Colvin. He's the Canadian diplomat who had previously expressed his willingness to testify and who had already defied the federal government's attempts to gag him by submitting a sealed affidavit. That affidavit was unsealed today and it's now easy to see why the government may have been a bit uncomfortable at the prospect of Colvin revealing what he knows.

As the Canadian government was defending its treatment of Afghan prisoners, one of this country's diplomats was internally raising "serious, imminent and alarming" concerns that it might be putting detainees at risk of torture by handing them over to the South Asian country's notorious jails.

...

Mr. Colvin, who's defying Ottawa's efforts to stop him from testifying, said his first of more than 15 reports was written and e-mailed around the Canadian government within a month of his joining a reconstruction team in Kandahar. "I became aware of procedural concerns regarding the transfer of Afghans detained by Canadian Military Police ... to Afghan authorities, and also substantive concerns about the treatment of the detainees following their transfer," Mr. Colvin said in the affidavit.

Colvin investigated his concerns and sent the first of those reports on May 26, 2006. As the Globe reminds us, then Minister of Defence Gordon O'Connor continued dismissing concerns about this issue until early 2007. An announcement concerning a new agreement with Afghan authorities on the transfer of detainees and subsequent access to them wasn't made until late in April of that year, almost a year after Colvin's first report.

It's no wonder that O'Connor was shuffled out of the Defence portfolio at Harper's first opportunity.

Update:

The Canadian Press version of the story adds a few interesting points.

The report was submitted to the Foreign Affairs Department, but cc'd to senior military officers - both in Kandahar and Ottawa.

Colvin said he sent it through specific "action address" channels, "which ensured it would not only be received and read, but should be acted on."

That will make it difficult for anyone to claim that Colvin's reports simply went unnoticed.

It remains unclear in the affidavit whether the stark warnings were passed along to either Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who was in the foreign affairs portfolio at the time, or former defence minister Gordon O'Connor.

I'm quoting that as a reminder that Peter MacKay was involved in this before he became Minister of Defence. I wonder if the heavy-handed tactics the government has used to try to shut this inquiry down are mainly in an effort to keep this from getting all over him since he's in a perfect position at the moment to run interference. It seems to have very little to do with protecting Canadian soldiers, one of whom is actually having more difficulty preparing his defence because of government tactics.

Also, the lawyer representing the former head of military police, a subject of the complaint, said the government has prevented him from seeing documents important for his client's defence.

H/t to Aaron Wherry.

Yesterday was what some refer to as Black Tuesday. The second Tuesday of the month is when Microsoft releases the operating system and application patches that weren't actually urgent enough to require immediate deployment. So when I booted up this morning I wasn't surprised to see the familiar message that there were updates awaiting download. But I was a bit surprised at how many there were.

Microsoft releases biggest patch on record

Microsoft Corp. issued its biggest software patch on record on Tuesday to fix a range of security issues in its programs, including the yet to be released Windows 7 operating system.

In a monthly update sent to users of its software, Microsoft released 13 security bulletins, or patches, to address 34 vulnerabilities it identified across its Windows, Internet Explorer, Silverlight, Office and other products.

It said six of the patches were high priority and should be deployed immediately.

Of particular interest is the fact that MS is already officially releasing security patches for an operating system that hasn't itself been officially released yet. They're really fast. I'll feel so much better about upgrading when if the time comes. (Note: I'm still running XP. I wouldn't let Vista in the house.)

Ever since Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy accused the Conservative government of using the stimulus funds to reward some ridings in the country for electing Conservatives, I've been watching to see if the news media would follow up. It seems a much better use of the airwaves or newspaper column inches than endless speculation based on the whisperings of anonymous party strategists. And it takes the accusation of partisan spin out of the story when it can be reported as independent analysis rather than the usual he said/she said. So credit where credit's due to The Chronicle Herald:

Spreading the wealth unevenly

Nova Scotians in Conservative ridings should be feeling a little action in their economic plan by now, because an analysis of federal stimulus spending in the province shows blue ridings are awash in pork.

In fact, more money -- $162 million -- is being spent in those three Tory ridings than in Nova Scotia's other eight ridings put together.

...

The analysis by The Chronicle Herald supports the conclusions reached by a federal Liberal party report, which found that Conservative ridings across the country have been getting more federal economic stimulus funding than opposition-held ridings have.

More like this please.

Canadian position prompted walk-out at climate talks

The government's push to abandon much of the Kyoto protocol prompted dozens of developing countries to walk out on Canada's address during recent climate talks in Thailand, The Canadian Press has learned.

The mass walkout came after the Canadian delegation suggested replacing the Kyoto Protocol with an entirely new global-warming pact, according to one of the negotiators and notes taken by others at the meeting.

I'm so proud! We can now clear a room faster than any other country in the world!

Incidentally, note this:

U.S. President Barack Obama was once thought to be leading the charge towards a new climate pact but environmentalists believe he is facing increasing pressure to blunt any agreement on greenhouse gases that costs corporate America too much money.

The Nobel peace prize committee appeared to be offering encouragement to Obama last week by specifically mentioning in their citation that the U.S. president is "now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting."

I'm not feeling all that encouraged.

This is another edition of What Lindsay Stewart Said.

From an article reporting that Taser International is now recommending that users of its products avoid aiming for the chest:

"When possible, avoiding chest shots with electronic control devices avoids the controversy about whether ECDs [electronic control devices] do or do not affect the human heart," said the bulletin said.

...

Taser International says the risk of a cardiac arrest in connection with Taser use is low, but if this were to happen after the weapon hits the chest area, it would place police and the company in the "difficult situation of trying to ascertain what role, if any, the Taser ECD could have played in a unique situation that cannot be replicated in human clinical safety evaluations."

The article makes no mention of the difficult situation faced by those who might suffer that cardiac arrest. Or their surviving family members and friends.

The whole video was called Learning To Smile. This song, the closing tune, is called Gum Tree Canoe.

The latest dead tree issue of Maclean's is sitting beside my keyboard and the cover touts an exclusive story about our prime minister. No, it's not a hard hitting exposé about the politicization of the bureaucracy. And it's not a follow up investigation of the accusations that the stimulus funds are going predominately to Conservative ridings. It's "exclusive photos and interview" of Stephen Harper on his pop music debut. One of the photos shows the PM and his family crossing the street in imitation of the famous Beatles Abbey Road photo.

Apparently those "exclusive" photos were taken by the PMO photographer. Isn't it a bit odd for a newsmagazine to be accepting "exclusive" content from the PMO that's obviously designed to burnish a politician's image? Or is that just me?

H/t to KNB in comments to a post by BigCityLib.

CBC, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009:

U.S. President Barack Obama is humbled by his Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him by the Norwegian Nobel committee "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between people."

Glenn Greenwald, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009:

...yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman successfully inserted into the Homeland Security appropriations bill an amendment -- supported by the Obama White House -- to provide an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act's mandates by authorizing the Defense Secretary to suppress long-concealed photographs of detainee abuse. Two courts had ruled -- unanimously -- that the American people have the right to see these photographs under FOIA, a 40-year-old law championed by the Democrats in the LBJ era and long considered a crowning jewel in their legislative achievements. But this Lieberman amendment, which is now likely to pass, undermines all of that and -- as EBay founder Pierre Omidyar put it today -- its central purpose is to "legalize suppression" of evidence of American war crimes.

Now that we've been softened up with different media stories for a week or so:

Troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2011: MacKay

Canada's troops will stay in Afghanistan even after the combat mission ends in 2011, Defence Minister Peter MacKay told the House of Commons defence committee Thursday in Ottawa.

...

The role of the troops will change from fighting a war to development and training, MacKay said. He side-stepped the question of how Canada will carry out such a mission with the resurgency of the Taliban in many parts of southern Afghanistan.

The Conservative government will respect a motion passed in March 2008 to withdraw troops until a new motion is tabled in the Commons, he added.

Emphasis added. That's new. They wouldn't try and maintain the status quo while using different language to describe it, would they?

H/t to Toedancer at Bread and Roses

Bump and update. The original post was published yesterday and the update is below.

Liberal trio looking to defect, Tories say

OTTAWA-A Conservative government official said Monday there have been discussions with three Liberal MPs interested in crossing the floor to the Tory side over the past month.

After a number of paragraphs of speculation concerning Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, we get this:

Conservatives wouldn't disclose the names of the three Liberal MPs they say are considering defection, but said Dhalla was not likely to be among them. They suggested Dhalla was circulating the defection rumours to send a message to her own party about its rejection of her private member's bill.

So now we have a rumour about who started another rumour.

Can anyone explain why these sources have been granted anonymity so they can use the Toronto Star to circulate rumours that serve an obviously partisan agenda?

Update:

One day later, the story falls apart:

Dimitri Soudas, a PMO spokesperson, said there was no truth to claims made to the Star by Kenney's communications director, Alykhan Velshi, about three Liberal MPs interested in crossing the floor to the Conservatives.

Outside the main entrance to the Parliament buildings, Soudas called out to a Star reporter that Velshi's information was "bulls---."

The story fails to acknowledge that the only reason this is news is because a rumour credited to an anonymous source had been treated as news the previous day.

The last paragraph of the story begins with this (emphasis added):

The Prime Minister's Office, though, perhaps interested in cultivating peace with the Liberals, was quick to reassure reporters Tuesday that Conservatives were not in talks with any Liberal MPs about floor-crossing.

Can you imagine the reporter expecting anyone who's been paying attention to take that seriously? Neither can I.

I just spotted this in a post Aaron Wherry wrote last night:

For the record, that was Carolyn Bennett, objecting to the Health Minister's that there was no pandemic preparedness plan until the Harper government took power.

I think there's a word missing there and it sounds very much as though Leona Aglukkaq is attempting to claim that there was no pandemic preparedness plan in Canada when the Conservatives took office.

When I first got involved as the webmaster at Flu Wiki and we were discussing how to organize information, pandemic preparedness plans was one of the first subjects to be raised. We have an entire section devoted to the subject which includes a page for links to Canadian resources. My own role there involves making sure the lights stay on and the doors stay open rather than actually supplying content but I can assure you that much of that material, including a link to a national plan created by the federal government, went up within a few months of going live. That was in June, 2005 before the Conservatives ever formed a government.

In fact, in conversations with the people who were involved in the original gathering of those resources, people who included MDs, epidemiologists and public health professionals, I was quite pleased when I was told repeatedly that Canada was ahead of the U.S. and many other countries in terms of the breadth and detail of our planning. (It was apparently at least partly because of SARS that our own public health officials got busy and updated the planning in this area.)

To be blunt: our Health Minister is full of crap.

Guilty until proven innocent isn't acceptable. It just isn't. Of all the political parties I would have expected the NDP to be the first to stand up for that. Any time the justice system operates on the basis that people have to prove their innocence, abuse follows. We should know that by now.

H/t Jeff Jedras

There have been a number of developments with regard to the Military Police Complaints Commission's attempts to hold public hearings since I last posted on it. The short version is: government obstruction continues.

The subject of that last report was the government's effort to put a metaphorical gag on all the witnesses. In comments to that, arborman suggested that the intent was probably to silence one or two without making the attempt obvious and while his analysis may well have been correct, the attempt to avoid having attention paid to any particular witness seems to have failed. Later the same day the Toronto Star carried a Canadian Press story that named a specific witness who might have pertinent testimony to offer:

A former Canadian diplomat with intimate knowledge of what the army may have known about alleged torture of Taliban prisoners in Kandahar has been barred from testifying at a public inquiry, The Canadian Press has learned.

Federal lawyers have invoked a national security clause in the Canada Evidence Act that effectively prevents Richard Colvin from giving evidence before a military watchdog agency.

They have also filed a motion with Federal Court to remove Colvin and 22 other senior government officials and military officers from a list of witnesses subpoenaed to appear before the inquiry by Military Police Complaints Commission, which is to begin Monday.

At the time that was written the hearings were still scheduled to begin today. As you'll soon discover, that changed.

Today's installment of "Why Canada should think again about Afghanistan" comes from the Globe and Mail. The context is an Afghan general stating that the Afghan National Army (ANA) will be able to take over the fight against the Taliban on its own by 2013 which prompts this from a Canadian general:

"You could make the case" that Canada is ending its combat role in Afghanistan two years too early, said Gen. Tremblay. "It's really up to Canada to decide it. And so far we're out of here."

This story repeats what I've read elsewhere: that the ANA already consists of 96,000 troops which sounds at least like a foundation to build on. In a story by Ann Jones, who was in Afghanistan this past July investigating this very issue, she wrote:

Although in Washington they may talk about the 90,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army, no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan. When 4,000 U.S. Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds, accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces, some of whom were police. Why, you might ask, didn't the ANA, 90,000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring, handle Helmand on its own? No explanation has been offered. American and NATO officers often complain that Afghan army units are simply not ready to "operate independently," but no one ever speaks to the simple question: Where are they?

My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist. It may well be true that Afghan men have gone through some version of "Basic Warrior Training" 90,000 times or more. When I was teaching in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, I knew men who repeatedly went through ANA training to get the promised Kalashnikov and the pay. Then they went home for a while and often returned some weeks later to enlist again under a different name.

There's more at the link if you're so inclined. And there are more angles to examine but this will do for now. I'm sure we'll get back to this because I'm sure stories like the Globe and Mail piece will continue to surface for a while. At least this one is more specific about the "clear decision" that someone wants to see: two more years (for now). Let's see if that becomes a consensus.

H/t to David Olive's morning news summary for the Globe link.

From Greg's Sunday morning meditation:

... the Liberals are going to have a tough time growing their party beyond the limited range in which they find themselves. If you look at the polls, this is not because of the NDP. The NDP is stuck in its own historical range and has been for years. What has changed is the rise of specific issue parties, the Bloc and the Greens. To me, it is no coincidence that the rise of the Greens especially, has happened at the same time Liberal support has fallen. If you add the two parties' support together you get the traditional Liberal numbers. The NDP, for all the bluster on the Liberal side, has not eaten into their voter base. Liberals need to get this through their heads. The NDP threat is more illusion than real. The Liberal Party is losing support elsewhere.

For Ottawa, tough choices loom over Afghanistan

As the U.S. rethinks its strategy on Afghanistan, pressure is mounting on Canada to make a clear decision regarding the future of its hard-fought mission there.

If you read the story carefully, you might be left wondering just who is applying this pressure. You can see at least an acknowledgement that Obama is reviewing strategy though no consideration of the possibility that he might make a decision that could have a profound affect on what anyone else does or could do in Afghanistan.

But putting that aside for the moment, there has been a clear decision made and communicated regarding Canada's combat mission in Kandahar: it ends in 2011. There is also an unequivocal statement from Harper quoted in the article:

"Canada is not leaving Afghanistan," Harper said flatly. Instead the mission will move from a predominantly military one to "a civilian humanitarian development mission," he said.

There may be details to work out there but the overall idea seems pretty clear. So if there is mounting pressure to make a "clear decision" I suspect it isn't the absence of one that's really at issue. Someone doesn't like the decision that's already been made and wants it to change. I wonder why it isn't being reported that way.

Tonight's opening tune is an old traditional song called Tell Old Bill.

You'd almost think there was some central headquarters shaping the message and sending out the talking points. No, I'm not talking about Liberal bloggers all posting up exactly the same Jack Layton quote at the same time. I'm talking about Afghanistan.

On Wednesday it was Jack Granatstein in the Globe and Mail* suggesting that we need another Manley commission to chart the future of Canada's involvement there. On Thursday it was the editorial board of the Toronto Star telling us that we really need to hurry up and have that debate. And today, it's the Canadian Press (as picked up by the Chronicle Herald) reporting that our allies are all waiting on Canadians to make up our minds about what we want to do in Afghanistan. Which is nonsense, of course.