Tag: 2009 Canadian Politics

Putting The Olympics Before The House Of Commons?

I presume I am not the only one who understands the Olympics to be on one point of a sliding scale that includes little league summer’s end tournaments and Junior B hockey. How, then, could a government become so confused that this editorial observation can be made in the Globe and Mail this morning without explanation:

Political calculation is clearly behind the decision to prorogue. The Conservatives are hoping to bask in the glow of Olympic glory while dodging the mess and scrutiny of lawmaking, Question Period and an outstanding, unprecedented order from Parliament to provide transparency and truth on the detainee file. Then, they hope to return in March, stronger in the Senate and ready to reclaim, they hope, the public agenda.

Isn’t that like suggesting the political calculation is that the Conservatives are hoping to bask in the glow of their paper hat arrangements made over the holidays? What is the connection? Are the leftists who make up the majority of Canadian athletes (you don’t hear of any sending back the guvmint cheques, do you) supposed to respond and throw the game or pull up limp to ensure they play an accurate role in the Olympic political morality play? If they win, will we all pin up pictures of the dear leader in our kitchen by way of thanks for (surely) personally organizing the event?

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Group Project: Does Ministerial Responsibility Exist?

Maybe it’s just like the memories of Christmastime from when I was a kid. The snows were deeper, the tree more packed with presents. But I also recall a time when Ministers of government actually stood down for events they were involved with – sometimes quite tangentially. Yet thoughts of ministerial responsibility past dance in one’s head at the news today that…

Peter MacKay, Stockwell Day and Gordon O’Connor, then senior cabinet ministers, met the head of the International Red Cross in the fall of 2006 as the humanitarian organization tried to focus Canada’s attention on alleged abuses in Afghan prisons, The Canadian Press has learned. Precisely what Jakob Kellenberger told the three, as well as Robert Greenhill, then president of the Canadian International Development Agency, in the Sept. 26, 2006 meeting is blanketed by diplomatic secrecy.

See, just one month ago the news was that “reports amounted to evaluations of the Afghan prison system based on second- and third-hand evidence” and that “when the government had “credible” evidence, it acted in 2007 to strike a new deal.” So, is the understanding of the head of the International Red Cross not credible? Is the problem that if one cannot trust the Governor General, the judiciary, the news media, the military, the premiers, scientists and even our diplomats one also cannot be expected to trust the Red Cross because it isn’t a part of the PMO?

The sad thing for the Tories appears to be that if they had taken a different approach in this matter, admitted that 2006 was a bad year for the Afghan detainee file, this would have gone away quickly. Just as this is most certainly not about the actions of the military, it really did not have to become about the actions of members of the Federal cabinet in 2006 or 2009. But now it has.

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Hi-Jinx And Fun Times In Canada’s Parliament

I had a sense that there was the word going out this week to raise little bubbles of discredit of the legislative process when young Tory Stephen Taylor¹ put out the message “did you know that 15 minutes in the House of Commons costs the taxpayer $75,000?” Makes sense. Dad’s out of town. Juniors have to be kept in line. With performances like these, well, he may be right:

“Yesterday the government could not tell us why it erected an expensive sign in Gatineau to advertise the installation of another sign,” Nova Scotia MP Mike Savage said. “In Yellowknife, another Conservative sign has been bought to advertise the installation of ‘interior-exterior signs.’ Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.” Mr. Savage wanted to know why the government is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on signs when more and more Canadians are using food banks. Transport Minister Baird characterized these signs as “signs of hope”, and signs of opportunity.

You get used to this stuff when it continues for long enough. But it grates and it wears. Look to the voice of reason when it can be heard, like that of Canada’s favorite alt-country politician, Chuck Angus, who spoke out against Twitter in committee on Tuesday:

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, but this is not a clown show. We are elected to represent our people. We go to committee to do serious business. I believe the issue of members sitting on committee with their inane Twitters about what happens at committee demeans the work of all parliamentarians. I am not going to speak on this party or that party. We have an obligation to represent the best of our country and I would like members of Parliament to put the inane little games away and get down to business of serving their constituents.

Now that’s public speaking. He was building upon his rebuke of the Liberals on Monday:

Mr. Speaker, I always listen with great interest to my hon. colleague, but I think we need to back up a little to see where the Liberal Party has been. When it came to siding with the Conservatives on stripping pay equity for women, the Liberal Party stood and supported that. When it came to stripping basic environmental protection on Canada’s river ways, the Liberal Party stood with the Conservative Party and supported that. When it came to stripping the fundamental obligations on Kyoto, the Liberal party went along with that. The Liberal Party always looks through the prism, not of a national vision but of how to get back to power. Now we have a situation where the Liberal leader, perhaps he was seeking employment benefits himself, suddenly announced that the Liberals would oppose everything from here on in. The Liberals are opposing changes to EI, which would help unemployed workers. Many in my riding have asked me about supporting it, but the Liberal Party does not support that. The bigger issue is getting the visitor from Harvard elected. Now the Liberals are refusing to support the home renovation tax credit, even though it is out there, because the visitor from Harvard sees this as a path to getting to power. The Liberals have supported the government on everything that is wrong. When it finally has done one or two things right, the Liberals oppose it. I cannot understand their hypocrisy on this.

Now, that’s the voice of someone who is taking the business of the business of the nation seriously. Far clearer and finer a voice than, sadly, we had to put up with from Defense Minister Elmersson MacKay whose idea of oratory is “Mr. Speaker, I think we all know here in the House who is doing the huffing and puffing and hyperventilating and pontificating. It is the member opposite.” Sounds like one of those out guys on the Muppets complaining form the balcony, Statler and Waldorf. Another gem from the man who cursed the language with his personal invention, unCanadian.

¹You know, the…err… blogger who gets to speak “with a senior staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office and another staffer at Public Works” to put together a blog post. As fine a gentleman as ever you will meet. Just hi-jinxy methinks from time to time.

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Friday Bullets For The Fall Membership Drive

Membership drive? Not for around here. That didn’t work out well. No, it’s the week that the incessant drone in my head called NCPR asks for your support… and you should answer the call. I feel badly for not going over to answer phones this week and not just because sometimes there is beer.

Friday is upon us. The best day of the work week. I have meetings but they are good meeting, thanks for asking.

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Friday Bullets For The Feast Of The Big Bird

Not Big Bird just a big bird.

I am having a little difficulty coming to terms with the fact that Jay… Jay who has commented on this blog for yoinks, actual yoinks… did not know I have a logo. Made it myself when I was 41. So this is it. Jay: ‘Hello, Mr. Logo.” Mr. Logo (with a deeper voice): “Hello, Jay”. There. That’s done.

  • The “They Were After My Town” Update: “And the third bomb would go off at a military base somewhere along Highway 401, between Toronto and Ottawa.” Where else is a military base along the 401? Well, Trenton I suppose.
  • “What Country!” Update: unemployment dropping. Said it before – amazing economy we have… mainly by the luck of geography and importing the most ‘fraidy cat of business cultures through 300 plus years of immigration.
  • It started when I was in high school and was called “the yuppie flu” as it sapped the will of baby boomers. Now they figured it out.
  • I had no idea that I could pick up high school radio at work until the other day. Plenty of hits of the 80s. Teacher’s oversight committees are gold.
  • Just in time for Gourmet magazine’s demise, I learn that not reusing the paper coffee filter is a crime against nature. Who knew these things were more J-cloth than Kleenex?
  • Did you know algae only took a few years to rebound after the comet slammed into the Earth? It’s all about stunning and amazing facts this week.
  • Less charming is the fact that we are governed by consultants whose salaries flow from who knows where: “Asked Monday if he ever worked at the hospital network, which includes Toronto General, MacLeod replied, “No.”” Excellent. Note the extra “a” in MacLeod.
  • I don’t know what to make of this. I am not of the “Obama = Satan” school that is out there but I still don’t know where he is heading. Peace prize? For just not being in a telephone pals relationship with Dick Cheney? Maybe.

Friday beckons. A three day weekend beckons. Plans for the weekend? Dump run. Wooooooot!

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The Last Friday Bullets Of This Summer

I wore a sweater to work yesterday. I should have stung like it was rinsed in acid but I settled into place. I used to not like summer so much. But that was when it meant summer job labour camps and the days before controlling my own air conditioning unit. Say what you like about the miseries of owning a house, not owning one was not as good. But now it’s the cold that gets to you. I used to aspire to being outdoorsy but I realize now that I am destined to be indoorsy. Climate controlled.

  • So when do we actually get tax and duty free border crossing?
  • “Diplomatic celebrity“? How can that be anything but an oxymoron. Telling that both parties wanted him. It’s a lot like living in a disfunctional one party state.
  • Do they have body bags in storage for you, too?
  • Like others, I have watched Leno. I have enjoyed watching Leno. The comedy is 75% on which is better than usual and the musical guests are OK, though last night’s Clapton and Hornsby combo was a bit weird, many due to the free form jazz selection.
  • Morton still awful.
  • Three-billion-to-one? Add in the fact that a 34 year old can golf three times in a week on weekdays when not on an annual holiday and make it more like an ad for Canada’s regional development subsidization policies.
  • So Brian has been the only Tory majority leader in 50 years. And he left the party with 2 seats and two decades in the wilderness.
  • Think I will write a book on the 4375 beers to drink before you die. Inflation is affecting beer books. Time was 50 was enough. Or maybe 300 was the required number.

The gaping maw of the weekend stands before us. Have I mowed may last mow already? Will I find a way to get off the sofa?

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Group Project: So If Doom ’09 Is Really Over…

… Did the stimulus work? Here’s what you need to think… because that’s my job. Telling you what to think:

  • Why not say so? Why can’t we take a little pride in the fact that a little government intervention did the trick? Tax dollars in action.
  • What was the alternative? Did you really fall in with those dopes on the far right who wanted stimlus to fail? What would that do? Hurt your neighbour, your town, yourself? How far does the smug satisfaction of ideological purity get us all?
  • I want to look forward to the next new bubble economy. I want green cars and windmills not so much for what they do as what they provide – an active economy. If it were up to me, gas lawn mowers would be outlawed and everyone (else) would go buy a push mower. Open the push mower factory doors wide!
  • Do you really want a Federal election based on doubt and fear? Frankly, I am happy as all get out without a bunch of newbies getting into office for the next year or so. Sure lets have a fall 2010 election but that’s only two years for the Tories in office in Ottawa. They’ve even finally got the hang of playing a bit nice with Ontario. Look – they may be goofy and tick off Jay but they also seem harmless, right??
  • Best of all, we get to call out the naysayers and tell them that the economy works, that we are not facing the collapse of market based mixed socialist capitalism and that they are ‘fraidy cats. Nothing worse that economic friady cats.

We need post-recession street parties. Jingles about whipping the nation back into shape. Just like we live in a post-post 9/11 world, we also may be living in a post recession one, too, now. Bring back the happy songs. Bring back cake on Tuesdays at lunch.

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Friday For The First Stinking Hot Weekend

It’s the meteorological chitchat that keeps you coming back. I know it. We spend so much time looking forward to a bright hot day that you would think we would record them in binders like family albums, categorized by how nice the breezes were or how long the evening seemed to last. Tomorrow bodes very well. Perhaps 80F in April on a sunny Saturday. 70F this Friday evening. This very day. It’s the anti-blizzard weekend. The one you wanted on a Tuesday in late January.

  • I sure love it when people who accuse others of having no moral compass then have to admit that the guy was pretty much right. Oh, what a giggle we will have in the next era when we look back on these times.
  • I would have thought the whole “eating a replica of our bodies” might have been a bigger issue than the name.
  • SPACE BLOB!!!
  • I thought this was pretty funny. When to worry about the IT geeks planning to control your lives? When they say “…people are passionate about your product…” or “IZ: You mean enhance civilization, make it even better?” you know someone is quite enraptured by an impending cash-in.
  • In the same vein, when someone says “Can we just retire this stupid line of questioning once and for all?” after referring to “the straw man” you may need to realize they are facing an argument they don’t want to admit is lost due to the weight it places on the possibility of being enraptured by an impending cash-in.
  • Sometimes the things that got cashed-in die and, quite surprisingly, take 675 employees. Can you believe GeoCIties was bought for 2.9 billion ten years ago?
  • Not necessarily my deepest love with a french fry van – I reserve that for Colburne’s of Pembroke, Ontario – but certainly my first. Sitting on the wall at the Halifax central library having a Bud the Spud was a big part of my youth.
  • Why are we not hearing news item after news item about how Ford saw this coming, may well never ask for a penny of public money, is about to crush its competition through sheer prudence and actually makes cars people buy?

And you may ask yourself how do I work this BBQ? You may ask yourself where is my suntan lotion? And you may ask yourself where does that garden path go? Is this my beautiful yard?

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Again With The Whither The CBC On This Tough Day

So who do you blame? Who do you blame for the evaporation of much of the CBC today? Do you blame me who stopped watching and listening years ago and regularly disses it? For that you can pretty much blame Brent Bambury leaving the local CBC Ottawa drive home show as that was the last thing I would tune in for. Do you blame Stephen Harper? You could I suppose – but when people are losing their jobs all over the place, when private news and entertainment sources in Canada are closing – is every job at the CBC sacred and worthy of tax dollars? Harper himself would blame consumers – you – ultimately but that is part of his whole passive / aggressive love / hate thing that has worked out so well.

You know who I blame? Paul Martin and Stephane Dion – Tweedle dumb and Tweedle dumber. “WHAT???” you say with a high screechy voice? Yes, Martin and Dion. They had the nation handed to them as only a Liberal party leader can, they had the ability to continue in the steady (if sometimes slightly sticky) hand of Jean Chretien. But no. Martin has to wrestle the leadership away from Jean only to find he has no skill at being leader. And Dion has to run against Iggy only to discover that, zoot!, he is actually a goofball egghead. Had these two men not botched the natural governing party, we would not have the social and economic experimentations of our rural overlords. We would not be driven into deficit by the single decision to reduce the GST from 7% to 5%. Remember that? Would it have made a tick of difference to anything other than the emptying of Federal bank accounts had the GST stayed at 7%.

This is what happens in a leadership void whether a void created intentionally by the CPC which wants to prove that the Federal level is irrelevant or by the Grits who, until recently, apparently wanted to prove that they were. Don’t get me wrong. I think the CBC in large part created the wall that it is now slamming headlong into. It has a singular lack of vision and stilted stance on its own importance that stands out among public broadcasters and public institutions. I should be a fan of the mothership, a booster. But it failed me long ago. I feel very badly for those who will be out of work, perhaps including creative clever friends from that undergrad with the journalism school I attended all those years ago. Still, the CBC deserved and deserves better. Blame those who should have defended her and who should have been there in these dark days. Blame Martin and Dion and the Grits who supported them.

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Great Moments In Support Staff Career Building

Monday morning. No one like Monday morning but you can bet you like this Monday morning more than a certain somebody in Ottawa:

An aide in Mr. Petit’s Ottawa office said the MP was very busy, and would not likely have time for an interview to explain his comments.

Should we not feel for the backbencher’s aide? Are these not the jobs held by friends that people initially admire until that Saturday night dinner party where too much is poured? “Too busy,” he said, “Tell them I am very busy!!!” “More wine?” “Yes. Yes, please.”

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