Hands Off Canadian Pensions

Government had no right to seize pension surplus, must return it

Unbeknownst to many Canadians, there's a pivotally-important question at the centre of the ongoing -- and escalating -- postal workers' strike.

That question is: to whom do the pensions of Canadians belong? To themselves? Or to someone else?

In 1999, the Liberal government of Jean Chretien had an answer that should outrage all Canadians. They essentially decided that the pensions of public service employees belonged to them, to do with as they please.

They took it upon themselves to seize a $6 billion surplus in pension funds belonging to public service employees, the RCMP and the military and use it to eliminate the federal deficit.

"It was a money grab," fumed Public Service Assiance of Canada Executive Vice President Patty Ducharme. "The federal government has a responsibility to its employees, to the plan members; but they just took that money out of the plan ... and stole it."

"Stole" is a strong word. But it's bloody well close.

As the faceoff between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers draws on, it pays to remember that one of the issues at play in the strike is the state of the CUPW pension fund. The union wants to use funds from a profit-sharing program to restore solvency to the fund.

But they shouldn't have to. The funds snatched from the pension fund should have been returned long ago. They should have been returned, at the latest, five years ago.

It's largely Jean Chretien and Paul Martin who are responsible for this scandalous outrage. (It's one of many underhanded means they used to balance the deficit, including cutting transfers to provinces, raiding EI premiums, and cutting funding to health care and education.) But they don't carry it alone.

It's an absolute outrage that the Conservative Party has bothered fighting this at all. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty should have smiled and obligingly introduced a program to restore the pilfered pension funds in 2006. They didn't, and the government is fighting it still.

The figure under discussion? $30 billion. That's $30 billion being withheld from hardworking public servants, including the woman who brings you your mail (and in this author's neighbourhood, doesn't at all mind when a well-behaved dog accompanies her on her rounds), the RCMP officer you call when you need help (even if he occasionally writes you a traffic ticket), the military personell who risk their lives for us, and countless others.

It's absolutely mind-boggling that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice could decree that public service unions are not entitled to those surplus funds, and sign of a deep rot in that institution.

It's a simple idea: in Canada, our pension funds belong to us. It should be not a whit different for public employees. If their pension managers do such a splendid job that they have a $30 billion surplus, that surplus belongs to the fund, not to the government.

This doesn't mean CUPW is right about everything in this strike. But they are right about this.

Fair is fair. And it's beyond the time for the government of Canada to do the right thing, and restore that $30 billion surplus to these pension funds.

A Little Something For the Douchebags to Remember

Liberals are the ones with the record of brutalizing protestors

Pictured left is a scene from 1996, when then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien assaulted anti-poverty activist Bill Clennett.

Chretien recently reprised his famed "Shawinigan handshake" with both Michael Ignatieff and Justin Trudeau.

Yet this couldn't have come at a less opportune time for the Liberal Party, as some of its douchier members and supporters still try in vain to paint now-Prime Minister Stephen Harper with responsibility for the treatment of protesters at the G20 summit -- and, more comically, for the Black Bloc riots themselves.

But in reprising his famed assault on Clennett, Chretien has sent a stark reminder to Canadians:

If any governing party in Canada has a history of brutalizing protestors, it's actually the Liberal Party, not the Conservatives. That Chretien regards his unprovoked assault on Clennett as funny simply underscores how very little they care.

For his own part, Clennett is not amused.

"He's a buffoon," Clennett remarked. "It was just outrageous and it was something that never happened before."

"He plays this persona," Clennett continued. "He's not an idiot, but he doesn't act always intelligently from my perspective. And he thinks this is something funny."

Judging from their reactions, Ignatieff and Trudeau thought the joke was rather amusing as well.

If only the Clennett affair was an isolated incident, that could be written off to jitters following Chretien's experience with a violent home invasion.

But during the following year, in 1997, Chretien would be complicit in the unjustified pepper-spraying of protesters at the APEC summit in Vancouver. Through the Prime Minister's Office, Chretien ordered the RCMP to get rid of protestors.

And for whom did he do this? None other than then-Indonesian President Muhammad Suharto -- under whom Indonesia was a mass-human rights violator.

While Canadians have not taken the aforementioned partisan Liberal douchebags seriously in their desperate efforts to blame Stephen Harper for the unacceptable behaviour of police officers at the G20 summit, the time is ripe to recognize the Liberal Party's history of brutalizing protestors while in government.

The aforementioned douchebags won't like it. But fuck 'em.


By the way, speaking of douchebags -- Nice one, John. But the last thing the internet needed was another reminder that John "Dr Dawg" Baglow has absolutely no credibility.

A Question of Clarity

In part three of The Champions, Pierre Trudeau's temporary retirement from, and sudden return to, politics quickly gives way to discussion regarding the question that would be asked during the 1980 referendum.

In the end, the question that emerged was not one explicitly about separation, but rather one that asked for a mandate to negotiate sovereignty accompanied by political and economic "association" with the rest of Canada. What emerged was not a notion of sovereignty, but rather the nebulous term of "sovereignty association".

Moreoever, the 1980 referendum promised a second one to ratify whatever agreement Rene Levesque's government could reach with the rest of Canada.

The necessity of such a referendum at all was questioned by many, and with good reason. Quebec's government already had the authority to negotiate nearly anything that it liked with the federal goernment, and with Canada's other provinces.

Pierre Trudeau, who had previously declared Quebec separatism to be dead, didn't intervene until late into the referendum campaign, when it became apparent that Quebec Liberal leader Claude Ryan proved incapable of leading the fight.

Ryan's rejection of political polling was particularly troubling, and led to future Prime Minister Jean Chretien -- who had experience in both federal and provincial politics -- was dispatched to attempt to save the day.

But the absense of Trudeau and his government from the matter of the referendum question was as much a tactical error as entrusting the campaign to Ryan, or Chretien's decision to stay out of the 1995 referendum campaign until late in the contest.

Allowing the referendum question to be decided largely without input from the federal government produced two very problematic questions, one that left many Quebeckers unsure of what they were voting on, and many more deceived.

Eventually, Stephane Dion, under Chretien's leadership, produced the Clarity Act in 1999 -- four years after an ambigious question nearly dismembered Canada during the 1995 referendum, and nearly twenty years after the government should have been involved in the first place.

Moreoever, even in passing the Clarity Act, the Liberals were too late even to that topic. The central ideas of the Clarity Act were effectively lifted out of a previous bill, defeated by the Liberals, introduced by then-Reform Party MP and now Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

While the Liberal Party has long awarded themselves credit for the defeat of the two referendums, they have long evaded the blame for how their complacency on the matter nearly destroyed Canada.

The clarity question could have decided the question of Quebec separatism long before it grew into a decisive theat to Canada.

An Instant Emergency

Heather Mallick decries proroguement of Parliament

For many Canadians, if any one particular word could be used to describe Heather Mallick, it's almost certainly "tiresome".

Mallick demolished her own credibility with a vindictive hit-piece on Sarah Palin during the 2008 Presidential election. Under most circumstances, appealing to such ignominity would have to be treated as an ad hominem attack.

Unless, of course, it serves to appropriately characterize an individual as an ideological attack dog.

Similarly, the phrase "instant emergency" should strike most people as a tautology, unless it serves to describe a situation in which a particular course of action is only deemed to be threatening or troubling now.

This is, frankly, the only realistic manner in which to treat the complaints of Mallick and her compatriots over Stephen Harper's recent proroguement of Parliament: only suddenly is an emergency, or even an outrage.

"If there was a gold medal for shafting democracy at the Winter Olympics, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper would win it," Mallick fumes in a recent op/ed column. "Just before the games open in Vancouver, he has halted Parliament in its tracks, suspending it for the second time in little more than a year."

"Canada will not have a House of Commons until March 3," Mallick continues. "Instantly, we are a part-time democracy, a shabby diminished place packed with angry voiceless citizens whose votes have been rendered meaningless."

Mallick doth protest far too much. After all, she's made it clear on many previous occasions that Mallick doesn't consider this "diminishment" of Canada to be sudden at all. In fact, Mallick seems to think that Canada was diminished the moment it elected a conservative government.

In fact, she insists that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been planning that "diminishment" for a good, long time.

"Harper, that strange vengeful man you will see in February clapping awkwardly as Olympians leap off mountains and shoot past in the luge, has been on a mission since his youth to turn Canada into a pale, watery version of the United States of America," she complains. "Even then, the US was well into its identity-switch into the undereducated, paranoid, self-destructively aggressive overspent mess we watch now with grim fascination."

Of course, as some other commentators have already noted, Mallick and her ilk were suspiciously quiet on some of the occasions in which the Liberal Party prorogued Parliament.

Mallick and her compatriots insist that Harper is proroguing Parliament to escape from the "scandal" surrounding the treatment of Afghan detainees. There is a fundamental facetiousness at the centre of these claims -- one that insists on treating this matter as if it were the province of the Tories and the Tories alone.

In reality, there's a great deal of blame to go around. Some of it does indeed lie with the Conservative Party. Some of it rests with failures in the chain of command within the Canadian Forces, and more still lies with the Liberal Party who negotiated the prisoner transfer agreement in the first place.

In truth, proroguement of Parliament is a routine event. While Harper's previous proroguement was decidedly not routine -- it was done to head off an undemocratic attempt by the Liberal Party, NDP and Bloc Quebecois to impose an irresponsible coalition government on the country.

Whereas the current proroguement is intended to give Harper time to prepare phase two of his economic plan, take advantage of the diplomatic opportunity that is the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and -- if you believe Don Newman -- position for a spring election.

Which still beats the hell out of what the Liberal Party used proroguement for, hands-down. For his own part, former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien prorogued Parliament on four separate occasions.

On September 16, 2002, Chretien prorogued Parliament so he could prepare a Throne Speech that would test the resolve of the pro-Paul Martin faction within his party, which were trying to force him out of office faster.

On November 13, 2003, Chretien progogued Parliament again. This time, Parliament was prorogued in order to prolong Martin's transition into the Prime Minister's Office.

Whatever individuals like Mallick may want to complain about, Harper has yet to prorogue Parliament just to give himself an advantage in internal party wrangling. Jean Chretien and the Liberal Party literally kept Parliament waiting for them to settle their internal squabbles.

So, one may ask: which was the greater outrage?

Heather Mallick, by omission, has come up with an ideologically partisan answer. It isn't any kind of a surprise. Rather, it's precisely what those unfortunate enough to encounter her ramblings have come to expect of her.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

A CAW Workers' Voice of Reason - "Heather Malick Reinforces The Fact She Is An Idiot"

Chretien Digs His Hooks In

More Chretien insiders join Ignatieff's staff

When Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff recently overruled a decision made by then-Quebec lieutenant Denis Coderre in favour of Martin Cauchon, it was speculated that Jean Chretien was pulling strings behind the scenes.

Those looking for signs that Chretien is becoming more involved with the Liberal party need look no further than news that Peter Donolo, Chretien's former director of communications, is about to take control of Ignatieff's staff.

Moreover, Donolo will be charged with setting the Opposition Leader's Office straight, and he's expected to be authorized to make any staffing changes necessary.

This is far from a complete takeover of the party infrastructure by Chretien. But if Michael Ignatieff can't turn Liberal fortunes around, and soon, it's not unreasonable to look at Peter Donolo as another domino Jean Chretien can use to help topple Ignatieff.

The Achilles Heel of the Liberal Paty?

Jean Chretien's backroom leadership games hobbling party

Followers of Canadian politics as seasoned as Charles Lynch and Allan Fotheringham have long offered an interesting thesis explaining the tenure of the Liberal party as "Canada's natural governing party".

This thesis basically holds that longstanding tensions over the leadership of the Conservative party cost the party its key organizational impetus, allowing a united Liberal party to fill the void.

The machinations of Dalton Camp against John Diefenbaker, Brian Mulroney against Joe Clark, and practically everyone in the party against Richard Bennet is thus argued to continually undermine the party on a national basis -- and especially in terms of its organizational capabilities in Quebec.

This disunity resulted in decades-long periods in opposition for the party, with the Liberal party alternating between majority and minority governments.

Canadian history has now dawned on a new century, and the tables have essentially turned.

Writing in the Toronto Star, Angelo Persichilli suggests that the recent leadership woes of Michael Ignatieff -- particularly having to soothe bruised egos over the Martin Cauchon/Denis Coderre affair -- is actually the work of Jean Chretien, who is perpetually flexing his muscles behind the scenes.

Persichilli draws attention to what is actually a rather important fact: whatever unity the Liberal party has ever enjoyed has been a fragile one. Historically, there have been countless tensions at work within the party: young Liberals pitted against old Liberals and left-wing Liberals pitted against right-wing Liberals.

Over time, these competing dynamics settled into two camps that have quietly been at war within the party.

Persichilli's column suggests that the Liberal party hasn't been fully united since the 1980s when John Turner defeated Chretien for the Liberal leadership. The conflicts that have emerged since -- Chretien vs Martin, Dion vs Ignatieff, Ignatieff vs Rae -- have been reflections of the Turner vs Chretien divide.

This particular divide can actually be found to have deep roots in the Mitchell Sharp vs Walter Gordon rivalry of the 1960s and 70s.

Chretien's success in the 1990s may have led Liberals into the kind of false sense of security that kind precipitate this kind of inernecine tensions. After all, 11 years of uninterrupted majority government can be an extremely heady experience.

Perhaps they believe they've been in a strong enough position that they can afford to infight over leadership.

But Chretien also enjoyed the luxury of facing off against right-of-centre opposition that was divided and left-of-centre opposition that was vulnerable. The Liberal party no longer enjoys this position of comparative strength. The Conservative party is very much a united force (despite what those who choose to pimp reported tensions between Murloney and Stephen Harper would desire) and the NDP enjoys greater confidence and self-assurance than it has since Tommy Douglas retired.

It's in the face of these political conditions that the Liberal party needs to put its leadership question to bed for good.

But therein lies the problem. Michael Ignatieff came to the party leadership not as the result of a genuinely competitive leadership contest, but rather after his principal opponents, Dominic LeBlanc and Bob Rae, were pressured to jump behind Ignatieff.

It should be no great surprise that some Liberals may be covertly organizing their next leadership campaign.

That Jean Chretien would quietly work to undermine the party leadership, however, is and should be viewed as entirely inexcusable.

Au Revoir, Denis. See You on the (Leadership) Campaign Trail

Coderre quits -- as Quebec lieutenant

The Liberal party's quest to reclaim Outremont has apparently cost it a Quebec lieutenant.

Denis Coderre has resigned from the post after Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff second guessed his advice regarding Martin Cauchon's bid to reclaim Pierre Trudeau's former riding from the NDP's Thomas Mulcair.

"It is a tough decision, a very emotional one that I have to make today," Coderre announced. "But I took four days on my own ...and I thought that I don't have any more the moral authority to remain as the Quebec lieutenant."

Coderre vaguely suggested that, in rejecting his advice regarding Cauchon, that Ignatieff was largely deferring to ignorance.

"Fundamental questions are raised by these events: Who should the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada listen to on decisions that strictly affect Quebec?" Coderre mused. "Should he follow his Quebec lieutenant while working closely with a credible team? Or to his Toronto advisers who know nothing about the social and political realities of Quebec?"

"The lesson drawn from these events is the following: If you want to carry the day on a Quebec issue, all you have to do is perform an end-run around the Quebec authorities of the party, and go to the inner circle from Toronto," Coderre continued. He even seemed to suggest that Ignatieff hadn't merely rebuffed him, but rebuffed the entirety of his Quebec team.

“Contrary to what some may have said, the reconstruction work of the Liberal party in Quebec was not the affair of a single man. The recommendations I made to the leader were always the fruit of concerted decisions approved by our Quebec team.”

For his own part, Michael Ignatieff considers Coderre's charges to be laughable.

“It makes me laugh,” Ignatieff scoffed. “I am leading a pan-Canadian party. I’m proud of my team in Quebec. They have the leadership and responsibility with me, and I repeat with me, to renew the party.”

Rebuilding the Liberal party certainly won't be accomplished by fighting out old grudges in the form of a candidacy campaign, as Coderre was accused of doing. But Coderre himself says this simply wasn't the case.

“This isn’t a settling of accounts against anybody,” he insisted. “I’m not here to settle scores.”

Of course, Coderre also objected to suggestions that he's planning a wildcat leadership campaign. But strategically quitting has long been a standard Liberals planning to take a run at the leadership. Jean Chretien briefly quit politics altogether in 1986 after losing the Liberal leadership to John Turner.

Dissatisfaction with Turner crystalized around Chretien's absence.

Coderre hasn't quit politics altogether. But his resignation as Ignatieff's Quebec lieutenant has been every bit as dramatic as Chretien's brief departure. Chretien managed to transform discontent with the second-worst leader in Liberal party history into his own leadership victory -- and three successive majority governments.

Somewhere, in the back of Denis Coderre's mind, one has to imagine the possibility of this kind of success must be lingering -- particularly for a politician as ambitious as Coderre.

Michael Ignatieff will see much more of Denis Coderre very soon -- very possibly in the midst of a leadership review.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Rob Harvie - "So, Liberal Denis Coderre appears to have had enough Ignatieff...

Jeff Jedras - "Coderre quits. Don't let the door, etc"

My Can of Contemplation - "More Evidence of Coderre's Treachery"

Navigating Canada's Way Out of Recession Redux

Preston Manning calls for post-recession roadmap

In an op/ed column appearing in the Globe and Mail, Preston Manning writes about the current federal deficit, and compares it to the 14-year quest to put an end to Canada's last deficit.

He argues that a lack of planning undermined efforts to control that deficit, and argues that a plan is needed to tackle the current federal deficit.

The best reason for doing this, he insists, is not necessarily the deficit itself, but some of the unconsidered consequences of accumulating debt:

"To combat the current recession, governments around the world have instituted economic recovery measures breathtaking in their magnitude and scope. These include dramatically expanding the money supply (printing money), taking significant ownership positions in key sectors of the economy and heavily engaging in deficit spending.

Such measures have other significant and long-lasting effects besides stimulating economic growth.

Rapid expansion of the money supply can lead to a tsunami of inflation. Government ownership of businesses can lead to unhealthy dependencies, unfair competition, corporate inefficiencies and serious conflicts of interest when governments must also regulate businesses in which they have an ownership stake. And heavy engagement in deficit spending leads invariably to increased public debt, increased interest payments and the necessity of cutting services and/or raising taxes in the future to rebalance the books.

So what must be done to recover from the adverse effects of these measures?

Let me focus particularly on what might be done to recover from the orgy of deficit spending in which virtually all governments in Canada are now engaged."

Manning notes that the 14-year struggle to end balance the budget and begin paying down debt stemmed from not a lack of a coherent plan:

"At the federal level, Canada's last big deficit-spending binge began in the Pierre Trudeau years. Fourteen federal deficits in 17 years eventually led to a national debt of $572-billion and annual interest payments of almost $40-billion in today's dollars (or stated in 1984 dollars, $250.5-billion debt and $21-billion in interest costs).

In 1984, the Liberals were replaced by the Brian Mulroney Conservatives, who promised a more responsible approach to public finances. But federal spending continued to soar, the annual deficit and national debt continued to rise, and the government resorted largely to increased taxation rather than spending reductions to try to tame the deficit dragon."

By the time the Jean Chretien Liberal party was in power and ready (however reluctantly) to start tackling the national deficit, all then-Finance Minister and future Prime Minister Paul Martin could think to do was slash spending on health care, education and transfers to the provinces -- something the Liberals only recently admitted was a mistake.

The skyrocketing public debt and debt service payments that Manning alludes to were thus only one consequence of the Trudeau-Mulroney deficit spending era.

As the '90s wore on, so did public anxiety about Canada's debt. That anxiety was also felt in financial markets, where there was speculation that Canada could potentially default on its foreign debts. This anxiety, however, was not born in the 1990s. Public concern about Canada's debt had begun to solidly take root in the 1989s:

"According to the pollsters, as early as 1984 there was significant public support for deficit reduction as a policy objective, including major cuts in public spending, but politicians were slow to recognize or respond vigorously to this shift in public attitudes. So the leadership of the deficit-reduction movement began largely outside the formal political arena.

Market-oriented think tanks such as the Fraser Institute and the CD Howe Institute provided much of the intellectual capital for the movement, hammering away on the problem's dangers and offering alternatives for alleviating it.

Interest groups such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Chambers of Commerce, the Business Council on National Issues (as it was then called) and later the newly formed (1989) Canadian Taxpayers Federation added their voices, energy and resources to generate public and political support for budget balancing by governments at all levels.

Grassroots publications such as Ted Byfield's Western Report and the radio talk shows gave media voice to the movement, and later several national newspapers joined the fray."

As Manning notes, it was only a matter of time before deficit-fighting arrived as the raison d'etre for a federal political party:

"And on the fringes of the political arena, the embryonic Reform Party (with Stephen Harper as its policy chief and fiscal critic) made budget balancing a central plank of its election platform and set out to prove that it was possible to elect candidates to Parliament on the pledge of saving taxpayers' dollars rather than spending more of them."

The Reform party contested its first federal election in 1988, the year Canadians bequeathed a second straight majority on then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Although he had inherited a structural deficit from Pierre Trudeau, history remembers (and will continue to remember) Mulroney as one of Canada's biggest deficit spenders.

But appearances could be decieving. Free Trade was the central issue in the 1988 election campaign, with Mulroney supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement, and his opponents opposing it. Mulroney won a majority on the back of the free trade issue. But at their earliest opportunity (which came later in 1988), Albertans sent Deborah Grey, their first Reform MP, to Ottawa. Stephen Harper (who will also be remembered as one oc Canada's biggest deficit spenders) went with her as her Parliamentary Assistant.

At a certain point, legislators couldn't ignore the signs the Canadian people were sending them -- get the debt under control. Now. Or else:

"As the movement for deficit reduction grew in public support, municipal and provincial politicians finally began to take notice. (Federal parties, because of their distance from grassroots voters and taxpayers, are usually the last, not the first, to respond to major shifts in public sentiment.)

Though rarely recognized for it, the first provincial government to commit itself seriously to the goal of budget balancing was the Conservative government of Gary Filmon in Manitoba. At the time (1988), the province was running a $500-million deficit on total revenues of about $4-billion and it took seven years to reduce the deficit to zero. Manitoba was also among the first to pass budget-balancing laws making it illegal to run deficits except in specifically defined emergency situations.

Next it was Alberta, where Ralph Klein made a similar commitment in 1993, eliminating that province's $3.5-billion deficit in two short years while at the same time decreasing revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product.

And then in Ontario, where the annual deficit was in excess of $10-billion, the Mike Harris government, elected in 1995, reduced it to zero in four years."

But, as Manning suggests, the federal government can often be the slowest to respond. It took the Reform Party and scathing criticisms from Andrew Coyne to convince Paul Martin that he needed to get Canada's fiscal house in order.

As Manning notes, the Reform party is still remembered as the only party in the 1993 election to present a credible plan for reducing the federal deficit:

"Meanwhile, in the federal arena, where the deficit was approaching $40-billion a year, the 1993 election saw the demise of the Mulroney Conservatives and the election of the Jean Chrétien government. But that election also resulted in the election of 52 Reformers committed to reducing the federal deficit to zero in three years. Eventually, the Liberals, though philosophically inclined to ever-increasing public spending, felt the political pressure to move in the opposite direction, and by 1998 the budget was finally balanced."

This was not nearly so simple for Paul Martin as some would have suggested it was.

The Chretien government, at the time, was also conducting a social services review under Lloyd Axworthy. It took considerable time and effort for Martin to out-maneuver Axworthy in order to impress the importance of his agenda upon Chretien.

Various political tensions -- both inter- and intra-party -- led to the exacerbation of Canada's deficit and hampered the best-intentioned efforts to get it back under control.

Manning seems to suggest that these kinds of tensions are characteristic of a political environment in which there is no real consensus on the matter, and what is needed to ensure Canada can efficiently shed its deficit once the recession is over is a policy similar to Reform's "zero in three" policy:

"The most disturbing aspect of this story is that it took 14 years (1984 to 1998), and an enormous effort at great expense by tens of thousands of people outside the formal political arena, before the federal government could be persuaded to take the self-evidently necessary actions required to balance its books.

Given this history, what will it take to tame the current deficit, the one being incurred in the name of economic stimulation? Political leadership, more likely to come from conservatives than liberals or social democrats, would certainly help. But no doubt another major effort outside the formal political arena – by think tanks, interest groups and media committed to fiscal responsibility – will be needed to create the public pressure required before politicians will act.

That effort would be greatly aided if someone – perhaps one of the think tanks or a respected academic institution – were to provide a definitive history of the last deficit-reduction movement. Most of us involved in that exercise have only partial knowledge of who did what, of what worked and what didn't, and of how the whole process might have been expedited. A road map to deficit elimination, based on a comprehensive analysis of past experience, will be extremely helpful to the deficit-fighters of the future. Hopefully, this time it will not take 14 years to get the job done."

If Canada's political leaders establish a deficit-busting concession now, as opposed to waiting until Canada faces the threat of a complete fiscal collapse, Canada will be able to navigate itself out of the recession fairly quickly -- and perhaps even without an additional five years of deficit spending.


From the archives:

August 5, 2009 - "Navigating Canada's Way Out of Recession (And Beyond)"

World Shouldn't Hold Its Breath Over Tiananmen Square

Lawrence Cannon calls for "public accounting"

In a statement on the eve of today's 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon joined the chorus of voices calling for a public accounting of the massacre.

"The 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square tragedy provides an opportunity for China to remember those who lost their lives at that time while calling for political and economic reforms in China," Cannon said. "Twenty years later, we hope that they will be able to examine these events in an open and transparent fashion -- including the public accounting of those killed, detained or missing."

Cannon shouldn't hold his breath -- nor should anyone else in the world.

The Communist Party regime in China will certainly not hold any kind of public accounting into Tiananmen Square unless they need to do so in order to hold on to power. As sad as it may be to realize this, they simply don't.

In Mediapolitik, Lee Edwards outlined how the Chinese government micro-managed coverage of the massacre. In 1989 China was a very different country than it is today. While today the amount of coverage that the massacre received in the international media -- partially through the efforts of Canada's own Jan Wong, who witnessed the massacre from the relative safety of her nearby hotel room -- would almost assure that Tiananmen Square would be common knowledge throughout China, the average Chinese citizen didn't have satellite television or the internet in 1989.

Instead, the Chinese government repressed coverage of Tiananmen Square within China's borders. Even today when many Chinese citizens learn about the massacre it's in the history books published in other countries.

Even when the Chinese government acknowledged -- on a very limited basis -- the occurrence of the massacre, they played it off as necessary to contain "violent militant anti-revolutionaries".

Yet Wong's own reflection of the event, as told in Red China Blues, tells a different story. Rather, much of the Chinese student movement's fervour was staged for international cameras. Wong recounts witnessing one student in particular furiously waving a pro-democracy banner when television cameras were on him, then slumping over and smoking a cigarette when they had moved on.

Whatever the Chinese student movement had planned to accomplish at Tiananmen Square, taking up arms against the communist government wasn't one of their goals.

To make matters worse, comparatively few foreign leaders are willing to hold the Chinese government responsible for what occurred at Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. When former Prime Minister Jean Chretien toured China in the 1990s he refused to so much as utter the words "human rights" and instead referred to "good governance and the rule of law".

When the rule of law allows the government to run over its citizens with tanks, there's little question that whatever governance exists in that country is not "good".

Yet even Cannon is willing to to echo similar statements when he refers to China's economic development -- achieved at the direct expense of more than 100 million Chinese citizens who were dislocated from their homes in order to serve as a mobile labour force -- as an advance for human rights.

Anyone expecting the Chinese government to suddenly be forthcoming about the events of June 5, 1989 shouldn't hold their breath.

Will Mario Dumont Be Back?

Dumont's ride into the sunset may not be permanent

As the Action Democratique du Quebec looks anxiously toward its future -- a future without the only leader it has ever known -- some continue to speculate on former leader Mario Dumont's future.

Last year Lawrence Martin suspected Dumont would be named to the Senate as one of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's 17 new Senators. That didn't pan out.

Westmount Examiner columnist is being a little more cautious in his predictions. He expects that Dumont will be back, he just won't say how or when.

"Mario Dumont is a hero in his home town — the local lad who defied all odds to become the leader of a third political force in Quebec," Laresen writes. "He not only put Rivière-du-Loup on the map, he also served as an inspiration to many young rural Quebecers, showing them that Algeresque success is possible, given the right circumstances."

Larsen holds up two previous small-town Quebeckers -- Jean Chretien and Brian Mulroney, both former Prime Ministers -- as proof that there may be something to the mystique of small-town Quebecois leaders.

"Jean Chretien has always liked to refer to himself as the scrappy kid from Shawinigan, while Brian Mulroney proudly professes to be Baie-Comeau’s political wunderkind," Larsen notes. "Both claims are perfectly true, suggesting that any backwoods Quebec town can spawn a savvy, charismatic leader who has what it takes to rise to high political office."

It's worth noting, however, that both Chretien and Mulroney suffered ignominious fates in Canadian politics. Brian Mulroney backed out the back door before the Canadian people delivered his successor, Kim Campbell, a humiliating and crushing defeat.

Chretien left the Liberal party after his welcome had effectively been worn out, and with a major party-breaking scandal on the horizon. Like Mulroney, Chretien left his predecessor to face defeat, even if a decade of political fear mongering allowed the party to reduce both the scope and the immediacy of their defeat.

Yet the stories of Dumont, Chretien and Mulroney couldn't be more dissimilar in an important regard. As Larsen notes, Dumont built the ADQ from scratch, went on to win his seat in the National Assembly, and eventually transformed his party -- ever so briefly -- into a force to be reckoned with in Quebec politics.

By contrast, Chretien and Mulroney assumed the leadership of established political parties that were already on their way to governing -- a luxury that Dumont has never had.

Then again, few political leaders have ever come back from as complete a defeat as Dumont absorbed in Quebec's 2008 provincial election.

Larsen may be being overly optimistic about Dumont's chances.

"Dumont’s early retirement from political life certainly does not mean we’ll never see his name on a ballot again," Larsen surmises. "He most likely will return one day, probably when 'favourable conditions' prevail. This means he may still be the premier of Quebec one day, or even end up in Ottawa."

At Dumont's age one would be foolish to rule out a return to politics for the man formerly known as Super Mario.

But it won't happen any time soon. Furthermore, the how, when and why of his return can only be in the hands of Dumont himself.

Old Separatists Never Die, They Just Get Pissed Off At France

Jacques Parizeau hurt by Nicolas Sarkozy's pro-unity comments

If anything over the past few years has lulled the Quebec separatist movement into a false sense of security, it certainly hasn't been French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Some comments Sarkozy made while in Canada on Friday have enraged Quebec separatists once again, when he questioned the role of Quebec separatism given the current state of the world.

“It's something constant in my political life. If someone tries to tell me that the world today needs an additional division, then they don't have the same read of the world as me,” Sarkozy said. “I don't know why a fraternal love of Quebec would have to be nourished through defiance toward Canada.”

Jacques Parizeau, for his own part, was outraged at the comments.

“What this implies is that it is a judgment that is very anti-Quebec sovereignty that says: ‘We do not agree with Quebec sovereignty, we do not want additional divisions," Parizeau sniffed. "We accept divisions everywhere in the world but not that one.'”

Parizeau also noted that he doesn't feel Sarkozy's comments should damage a sovereign Quebec's relations with France. “It isn't because a head of state says an outrageous remark that it should change our relations with the French people,” he added.

Perhaps it's natural that Parizeau would be upset. For years, Quebec's sovereingtist movement depended upon France's support following a vote to separate from Canada. French President Jacques Chirac had pledged his willingness to help a newly sovereign Quebec chart its way through the international community.

But one of Jean Chretien's many valuable accomplishments as Prime Minister of Canada was turning Chirac from a pro-Pequiste adversary into a pro-Canadian unity ally.

Ever since, Quebec separatists have had less and less reason to feel confident about French support for their cause.

Former Quebec Premier Bernard Landry also took it upon him to add his two cents.

“I hope the President of the republic poorly expressed himself and that it is not the way he actually thinks,” Landry mused. “If the President of the French republic came and interfered in our affairs and took a position against the independence of Quebec, well then it is extremely serious.”

Of course, many Canadians -- French Canadians and otherwise, within Quebec and otherwise -- would likewise view pro-sovereignty comments by Sarkozy as interference in the matter of Canadian unity. Many certainly did when former French President Charles DeGaulle did so.

"What I think is Mr. Sarkozy has maybe misunderstood our project," said current Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois. "Maybe he doesn't understand the sovereignty project of the Quebec people which, on the contrary, is a very inclusive project, open on the world, and modern. People for decades around the world have given themselves countries, and I think Mr. Sarkozy rejoiced."

Of course, very few of these ethnic groups felt the need to deceive their own people in order to accomplish this task, but one digresses.

"Some people have a - how would you say - blunter interpretation [of the remarks]," Marois said of Parizeau's comments. "It's clear, if Mr. Sarkozy's references about a divisive project refer to the sovereignty project, it is simply not the case."

So apparently, to Pauline Marois, Quebec sovereigntism isn't divisive despite the fact that so many Quebeckers don't want it, and in 1995 the PQ and Bloc Quebecois had to pose a perplexing question to Quebeckers in order to artificially inflate support for "sovereignty association".

For her own part, former PQ Minister of International Relations Louise Beaudoin doesn't regard this as a threat to a sovereign Quebec's potential recognition. "The day Quebecers decide to be sovereign, notwithstanding the Clarity Act, by 50 per cent plus one, I'm telling you, France will recognize Quebec. It seems so obvious to me. They recognized Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova and I don't know who else," she insisted. "Sarkozy is a very pragmatic man. He changes his mind."

If Sarkozy were ever put in a position where he had to change his mind regarding Quebec separatism, it's entirely possible that he might. But with even Quebec separatists continually putting off another referendum until the conditions are right -- a time that hasn't arrived in 13 years, and isn't likely to arrive soon -- Sarkozy is unlikely to ever have to face such a prospect.

In the meantime, Jacques Parizeau can get as angry about Nicolas Sarkozy as he wants. It isn't getting him any closer to a sovereign Quebec.

The Toronto Star Plays the Blame Game

Liberals have no one to blame but themselves, says Star

Ever since their defeat in the 2005/06 federal election, the Liberals have spent a good deal of their time blaming the NDP for their defeat at the hands of now-Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"The Stephen Harper government is the House that Jack built," Bob Rae recently remarked, following the recent Liberal tradition of blaming Jack Layton for the Liberals' defeat.

It was Layton, they reason, that helped the Conservatives defeat Paul Martin's Liberal government.

But as the Star asserts, it really is the Liberals themselves who are to blame for their current predicament. Adscam and the ill-fated and ill-conceived Green Shift policy may be the least of their blunders:

"Paul Martin must assume a good deal of responsibility.

When he was finance minister in the 1990s, he ruined a good part of the Liberal's left-wing legacy by slashing federal social programs, right down to reversing promises made by Jean Chrétien in his 1993 campaign Red Book.

Martin, the leader of the socially conservative wing of the party, pushed the party away from its liberal social agenda roots by cutting spending on initiatives such as affordable housing and health care. These moves made many progressive Liberals wonder why they continued to back the party."

Indeed, Martin's budget cuts have made for good ammunition for both the NDP and the Conservative party.

But few people realize the extent to which those cuts strained the unity of the Liberal party membership. In the time in which the cuts were made the party was split between three major priorities: Social Service Minister Lloyd Axworthy's social services review and the reform package he wanted to implement, Martin's deficit-fighting agenda, and Jean Chretien's focus on the upcoming 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum.

With little perceived importance of the budget issues to the referendum, and seeking to alleviate pressure being exerted by Preston Manning and the Reform Party, Chretien wound up effectively taking Martin's side in the dispute.

Martin, for his own part, had once believed he could effectively juggle his deficit-fighting agenda with Axworthy's social program reforms until writers such as Andrew Coyne lambasted him in the press.

In the end, Martin's desperation to be a popular leader became his -- and perhaps even his party's -- undoing.

"The Chrétien-Martin wars took their toll. For years, Martin and his cronies actively worked to discredit Chrétien, even though Chrétien won three majority governments for the party. The feud still bitterly splits the party, including its rank and file."

That Chretien-Martin war has also cost the Liberal party the services of some of its best election personnel.

The obvious missing piece of the once-dominant Big Red Machine of the 1990s? Warren Kinsella, who has made his dismay with the current state of the Liberal party known on many different occasions.

He's also holding a grudge for the party's attempts -- under Martin -- to lay the bulk of the blame for the Sponsorship Scandal on Jean Chretien.

To be fair, however, Chretien and Martin shouldn't be made to wear the entire blame for the feud that has diminished the Liberal party and its effectiveness. The Martin/Chretien feud finds its roots in various previous internal conflicts within the party: conflicts between Trudeau and Pearson supporters (although Pearson was welcoming to Trudeau, many of his supporters felt he never should have been allowed into the party, even at the cost of losing the opportunity to recruit Jean Marchand), liberal and conservative wings of the party, Walter Gordon-styled nationalists and Mitchell Sharp-styled neo-liberals.

The very real tensions within the party -- and the failures to resolve them -- derive from many different interrelated conflicts. Many of these conflicts will only continue to intensify as the party attracts dissident conservatives such as David Orchard and as individuals such as Bob Rae continue to rise in prominence within the party.

"The party failed to undergo a desperately needed renewal after being defeated in 2006 by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.

Martin quit as party leader right after the election, launching a 10-month search for a successor.

Before the race officially started though, the party selected Tom Axworthy, a long-time Liberal policy adviser, to co-chair a Liberal Party Renewal Commission, with two dozen task forces to bring fresh perspectives to "policies and structure," from youth involvement to Canada's role in the world.

But once the leadership race began in earnest, Axworthy's commission was virtually shunted aside and ignored. It published several reports, but few Liberals read them and none of them have had any real impact on the party."

Not only did Axworthy's commission become an afterthought, but it was ill-conceived in the first place.

Tom Axworthy has long been considered the godfather of the left wing of the Liberal party. Any renewal commission acting under Axworthy's direction would inevitably find itself pushed toward left-wing policies (such as, per se, the Green Shift) that would alienate conservative Liberals.

Not only was the necessary renewal of the party never really taken seriously, but it was doomed from the get-go.http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9149446

"The 5,000 delegates at the Liberal leadership convention in December 2006 made a fatal mistake when they elected Dion as party leader over Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, both of whom have proven more effective campaigners on the election trail. Their strong performances in this election have only further highlighted Dion's weaknesses.

In addition to his obvious shortcomings as a campaigner, Dion has also failed in his 22 months as leader to rebuild grassroots membership, undertake a major policy review open to all Liberals, get the depleted finances back in shape and prepare for the election."

Dion clearly failed to grasp the importance of the grassroots to the Liberal party. Instead, he spent a good deal of the time spent reorganizing the party at a fundamental level meeting and greeting Al Gore and striking electoral deals with marginal political figures (read: Elizabeth May).

Dion believed he was going to be key to Liberal political fortunes from the moment he entered the leadership campaign. As it turns out he has been, but not in the way he imagined.

"The ongoing feud between Ignatieff and Rae, while often overly hyped by political pundits, still divides the party internally."

Which is perhaps nothing less than what Canadians should have expected. This is also something that is going to get much worse before it gets better. After all, with Dion set to be put out to pasture following a potentially humiliating electoral defeat, the leadership question is only going to intensify over the coming months.

It's said that its darkest before the dawn.

With the Liberals continuing to sink in the polls, it's becoming obvious that the dawn still has yet to break.

Things will get darker still for the Liberals.

Thanks for Calling, Jean...

But we'll wait for someone with credibility to speak up

When considering relations between Canada and China, one has to wonder just how far Canadians would really agree with a man who couldn't even bring himself to say the words "human rights" to the Premier of China.

After all, Canada is a country that respects human rights. China? Not so much.

So when such a man -- a former Prime Minister of this country -- cannot bring himself to talk to Chinese leaders about their myriad human rights abuses, one has to wonder precisely how in touch with Canadian values he really is.

When that man is Jean Chretien, the very man who insisted on using the rather ambiguous phrase "good governance and the rule of law" in lieu of "human rights", it just so happens to say a lot about how deeply he shares the values of most Canadians, particularly when it comes to relations with China.

Recently, as the Beijing 2008 Olympic games are underway, Jean Chretien had a good deal to say about current Prime Minister Stephen Harper's absence at the games. None of it was good.

"Starting with Diefenbaker, Trudeau and all of us, we established very good relations, relatively speaking, with China," Chretien boasted. "And suddenly, you break the bridge. It would have been easy just to be there."

"Look at the speech by Sarkozy on China," Chretien said. "He had to swallow himself whole and he went there. The Chinese are like that. `OK, fine, you don't like us, we're not buying French food'."

Of course, Chretien has his own justification for his comments -- most of them economic.

"It is the second biggest economy in the world, and in 50 years it will be the biggest," Chretien insisted.

Chretien's attitude is that Canadians should simply swallow their pride in order to sell our products to China.

"Look at the speech by Sarkozy on China," Chretien said. "He had to swallow himself whole and he went there. The Chinese are like that. `OK, fine, you don't like us, we're not buying French food'."

Of course, wherever Chretien imagines China will get enough food to feed nearly 1.5 billion people if it stops trading with any country that criticizes it is probably best left unimagined -- in a perverse sense, it really isn't all that different from David Tsubouchi's insistence that Ontario's poor could feed themselves by buying dented cans of Tuna.

The fact is that an economy like China's -- currently growing faster than any other economy in the world -- is in desperate need of resources. It's not likely to hamper its ability to acquire those resources over some wounded pride. In modern China -- under a communist regime willing to skimp on the actual communism in order to assure its own survival -- pragmatism will prevail.

Chretien also insists that China has made progress on human rights.

Perhaps he should try telling that to John Ray, a British reporter who was arrested for merely covering a Free Tibet rally. Or Naomi Klein, who notes the shocking breadth of the police state China has built around the Beijing games.

Stephen Harper, for his part, insists that his absence at the games was merely due to a scheduling difficulty. Which, in and of itself, is rather unfortunate. One should hope that Canada's Prime Minister would stand up to China on human rights.

But Stephen Harper should take few lessons from Jean Chretien on how to deal with China. Chretien peddled his credibility away for a few measly trade agreements.

Gomery to Tories: Money. Mouth.

J-Gom's recommendations still not in place

When John Gomery drafted and released his report on the federal sponsorship scandal, he was perfectly entitled to expect that it would be given some consideration when it came time to finally tackle the corruption that had crept into the Canadian government under Jean Chretien's Liberal government.

Sadly, that isn't what has happened.

"I was expecting the report would be given more consideration and would be to some degree at least followed, and it really hasn't," Gomery said during a recent interview. "It's been put on the shelf."

Gomery notes that while the Conservatives tabled and passed their Accountability Act -- despite predictable opposition from the Liberal party -- it was largely drafted before he tabled his report, and contains very few of his recommendations.

Furthermore, Gomery is concerned about the continuing centralization of power in the Prime Minister's office.

"I don't think Canadians elect only a prime minister," he said. "They elect a House of Parliament which is there to deal with government policy. I don't think government policy should arrive only out of the prime minister's office -- that's sort of an anti-democratic kind of government."

Meanwhile, Tom Flanagan, one of Canada's leading conservative thinkers, recently noted that Harper is "turning the screws on the government" by implementing fiscal policy that will reduce the government's ability to develop new programming.

"They've gradually re-engineered the system. I'm quite impressed with it," Flanagan announced.

"They're boxing in the ability of the federal government to come up with new program ideas. ... The federal government is now more constrained, the provinces have more revenue, and conservatives should be happy."

And while putting more money -- and power -- into the hands of the Provinces certainly only helps decentralize the government, there is still a long way to go. And Gomery is entirely right to be concerned about the lack of action on his recommendations -- let alone dragging its feet on its own Accountability Act.

Stephen Harper and the Conservative party won power by promising to clean up the government and decentralize power.

It's time for Stephen Harper to put his money where his mouth is.

Ouch. That Had to Hurt.

Don Martin takes a savage kick to the 'nads

The conspiracy theories alleging Stephen Harper made a letter written to him by Karlheinz Schreiber disappear took a rather merciless kick to the balls today, as Marilyn MacPherson, the Assistant Deputy Minister for Corporate Services at the Privy Council Office, decided to clear the air regarding a recent column written by Don Martin.

In the column, Martin wrote:

"For reasons that defy logic and established process, the Prime Minister's Office insists the incarcerated lobbyist's rant against former prime minister Brian Mulroney never reached Mr. Harper's intensely inquisitive staff.

This just doesn't pass the smell test given the procedural checks in a system that handles roughly a million pieces of mail per year, which must surely represent the only million letter writers left in a nation of e-mailers."

Martin goes on to vaccilate over whether or not Harper ever saw the letter itself. However, he notes, a conversation with Jean Chretien's old "mailbag man" predictably proved to be "constructive":

"There are only two explanations: Either somebody dropped the ball in the bureaucracy or Mr. Harper's office is fibbing when they say Mr. Schreiber's package failed to reach even one of the 82 people listed in the PMO directory.

The standard correspondence form generates a six-digit reference number for every letter that arrives, and scans them into a database for instant retrieval. Bureaucrats can check off one of two options, to forward either the original or copies to one of seven sections in the PMO.

This once-senior official insists all correspondence addressed to the prime minister is routinely forwarded to his office unless the sender falls into the "frequent wingnut" category.

While some may argue that shoe fits Mr. Schreiber, keep in mind most correspondence staff have been there since Jean Chretien was prime minister, and that unique name would still set off a rocket's red glare for special attention.

"There's institutional memory in the unit for this particular file," the Liberal said. "A clerk would not be qualified to take responsibility for that sort of correspondence by themselves. They would need guidance from the PMO."

It probably doesn't matter that Mr. Harper didn't see the letter personally. But there's either a troubling failure to communicate between the two senior levels of government or a deliberate miscommunication with the public."

"Of course there is," Newman would probably want one to agree.

Until, that is, one reads the recent letter by MacPherson to the National Post, wherein she writes:

"I am writing to clarify several issues relating to Don Martin's Thursday column. Firstly, the headline of the column is misleading -- no letter went missing. All correspondence processed by the Privy Council Office is kept on file for the prescribed period of time. The statements attributed to a former supervisor in the correspondence unit of another government, to the effect that "all correspondence addressed to the Prime Minister is routinely forwarded to his office" is not accurate either. Due to the volume and nature of correspondence, in fact the vast majority of it is not forwarded to the correspondence unit in the Prime Minister's Office, but is processed by the Privy Council Office correspondence unit.

As we have stated with other media representatives, the Privy Council Office processes all incoming correspondence to the prime minister. In the case of correspondence from Karlheinz Schreiber, it was decided that replying would be inappropriate as a result of the author being the subject of an extradition hearing, as well as his involvement in other litigation.

Finally, I want to reconfirm here for your readers the accuracy of statements made by the Prime Minister's Office, that the Privy Council Office did not forward the March 29, 2007 letter to the Prime Minister's correspondence unit."

One needs to remember that this is coming from an Assistant Deputy Minister, whom tend not to be elected officials, but bureaucrats selected for the job. When one also considers the remarkable number of deputy ministers not fired by the Harper government, one has to wonder what to make of the following passage from Martin's column:

"Most of my media colleagues would side with the dishonest declaration view. PMO flaks have a well-deserved reputation for non-communication when they're not spinning exaggeration or fabrication.

The level of media distrust in getting the true goods on any issue from Mr. Harper's team is lower than any communications shop I've encountered in almost 30 years of covering politics."

It seems that Martin is forgetting that last particular fact. Whether or not one considers the current batch of deputy ministers to be "Harper's team" is immaterial. The fact is that they were also "Paul Martin's team" in this regard, and as such, one has to wonder what to make of such assertions when the Pricy Council office backs the Prime Minister's Office up, as McPherson has.

At the very least, one pretty much instantly knows what to do with the varying conspiracy theories regarding the Karlheinz Schreiber affair. It just so happens to be the same thing one knows to do with Martin's 15 November column.

Liberals Striking Out on Corruption Allegations

Liberal desperation at bat starting to show

If one were to ask the Liberal party, they would certainly be assured that Canada's governing Conservative party is secretive, corrupt and untrustworthy.

Most Canadians would probably be forgiven if they thought that sounded more like the Liberal party, but I digress.

First off, the Liberals insisted that the Conservative party failed to report more than a million dollars in donations related to the party's 2005 convention. While it turns out that there were indeed undisclosed donations, they turned out to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, as opposed to millions. The scandal subsequently failed to gain any traction with the Canadian public.

Foul ball. Strike one.

Then, the Liberals insisted that the Conservatives had broken election law with their so-called "in and out" scandal, despite the fact that the expenditures themselves were well within the letter of the law.

Strike two.

Now, the Liberal party is seizing upon allegations that Brian Mulroney took several years to pay tax on $300,000 he recieved from Karlheinz Schreiber shortly after he left public office.

Of course, it has been said that a bad penny always turns up again. But for the Liberal party, this is more like 30,000,000 bad pennies turning up, and all on their own accord.

See, the Liberal party has already had a bad experience with Brian Mulroney and this allegedly-scandalous payment. In fact, when Liberal leader Stephane Dion was in Jean Chretien's cabinet, the federal government was ordered to fork $2.1 million over to Brian Mulroney as a result of an RCMP letter written to the government of Switzerland that falsely accused Mulroney of a crime.

Now, one might expect that this latest allegation would represent a pitch that Dion simply may not want to swing at.

Guess again.

In fact, when Dion rose during yesterday's Question Period, he swung for the fences. "Will the prime minister take every step necessary regarding this disturbing information about Brian Mulroney to get to the bottom of this matter?" Dion asked. "The current prime minister owes the institution he represents a duty to shed full light on this issue. Will he do that? Will he set up a commission of public inquiry?"

When government house leader Peter Van Loan rose to answer, the sound of the ball hitting the catcher's mitt was clearly audible.

"That Liberal leader was part of a cabinet that had to pay 2 million dollars of taxpayers' money for falsely pursued allegations in exactly this case," Van Loan pointed out.

Kitchener Center Liberal MP and party whip Karen Redman would later try to step in as a pinch-hitter. "Taxpayers' dollars are lining the pockets of Brian Mulroney. Canadians deserve answers. Will this Conservative government launch an inquiry?" she asked.

And she's right. Taxpayers' dollars are lining the pockets of Brian Mulroney. This happened because the RCMP, under the Liberals' watch, not only falsely accused Mulroney of a crime, but actually made those false accusations to the government of another country.

Strike three.

Perhaps it's ironic that the Liberals would like Canadians to now think of them as dedicated corruption-fighters while in opposition. Ironic because they had plenty of chances to do so while they were in government, and failed utterly to do so.

Shawinigate. Strike one.

Jane Stewart's HRDC billion-dollar boondoggle. Strike two.

The Sponsorship Scandal. Strike three.

The Liberals, in terms of battling corruption, have now struck out not only in government, but in opposition as well.

The Liberal party would certainly be well-advised to play to its strengths. Although insipid, the party is more likely to score some runs with their "mean Stephen Harper" invective.

As far as corruption goes, however, the party will likely continue to find that it's likely to continue striking out, particularly when they failed to swing at those pitches when it would have mattered most.

Calling a Spade a Spade: Nothing Too Sacred to be Politicized

Apparently, the government has something to hide... but what?

For supporters of the Afghanistan mission, one of the more disturbing realities of the conflict is its use--by both government and opposition--as a partisan tool.

This disturbing tendency aside, the fact is that, as it was initiated by the Liberals under Jean Chretien, escalated by the Liberals under Paul Martin, and maintained by the Conservatives under Stephen Harper, Afghanistan really is a non-partisan war.

Apparently not, if one takes recent comments by Liberal party defence critic Denis Coderre to heart.

"This is damage control pure and simple," said Coderre regarding the late release of a report on an investigation into the friendly-fire death of Private Robert Costall. "Let's call a spade a spade."

Indeed, let's.

The report, completed on 8 March, was recently released, and concluded that the commander of American forces failed to adequately determine the location of Canadian forces defending Forward Base Robinson, resulting in the friendly-fire incident. An accompanying report regarding an investigation by Military Police was not completed until 8 June.

However, since the incident also involved forces from another country, it was actually incomplete without considering the conclusions drawn by an American inquiry, which, as it turns out, delayed the release of the report significantly.

Don't tell that to Denis Coderre, who doesn't believe that it would take five additional months for general Rick Hillier to sign it and consult with the American authorities. Instead, he insists that the Conservative government must have interferred with the process, and was covering up the report.

This, despite the fact that investigations carried out by the Canadian Armed Forces don't work this way.

"We don't ever intervene in investigations," said Department of Defence spokesperson Isabelle Bouchard. "We get the findings when they come through the chain of command. And even then the minister only gets an FYI."

Commander Mike Considine, speaking on behalf of the board of inquiry, adds more. "We were waiting on information coming from the U.S. investigation. The report had to be reviewed for national security issues, there was a legal review, the families -- both here and in the States -- had to be notified."

Coderre's counterpart with the NDP, Dawn Black suggests a conspiracy theory in which the government tried to delay the release to a week following a statuatory holiday. "When information is held back -- rightly or wrongly -- it leads to a perception of coverup," Black said.

Apparently, nothing -- not even the investigation into the death of Canadian soldier -- is too sacred for the opposition to politicize. The fact that the review process is a well-established procedure when dealing with inquiries into the deaths of Canadian soldiers abroad has failed to stop the opposition parties from trying to use it to paint the government as secretive and obfuscatory.

So, yes. One should call a spade a spade. Politicizing the war in Afghanistan is an entirely unacceptable political tactic, no matter who it is using it. Politicizing the deaths of Canadian soldiers is even more unacceptable.

Denis Coderre and Dawn Black should both be ashamed.

Prime Minister's Office Oversteps its Boundaries

PMO allegedly misuses the RCMP to muzzle press

A Charlottetown hotel lobby became the scene of an absurd spectacle today, as RCMP officers, allegedly operating under orders from the Prime Minister's office, removed journalists waiting to speak to Conservative party MPs convening for their summer caucus meeting.

"Obviously, much of what we're doing is confidential," said Rahim Jaffer, the party's caucus chairperson explained.

So confidential that the Prime Minister's office has RCMP officers performing duties that should rightly be performed by hotel security? Not bloody likely.

If the Prime Minister's office did indeed issue the orders to have the media hustled out of the hotel lobby, this could--and probably should--be construed as an abuse of power. If the party had hired off-duty RCMP officers to work as security (with the hotel's permission, naturally), and paid them from party funds, this would be an entirely different issue. At persent, however, the picture being presented to the Canadian public is very different.

Managing the party's media coverage by defining boundaries around which it can be covered is one thing. Using the RCMP to enforce those boundaries is another entirely.

Frankly, it's wrong.

To be entirely fair, at least this abuse of the PMO's power didn't involve the use of pepper spray, as did Jean Chretien's 1998 abuse. However, a "kinder, gentler" abuse of Prime Ministerial power is still an abuse of Prime Ministerial power.

Unfortunately, Jean Chretien escaped responsibility for his abuse of power, even despite the fact that the APEC pepper spray incident involved several incidents that easily qualify as criminal assault.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper rightfully shouldn't have the same luck. Fortunately, the offense and necessary penalty are much less severe.

Kyoto Protocol : Hypocrisy Thy Name is Liberal

Liberals all talk on climate change

The truth, as the old adage says, hurts. This being said, the current Kyoto debate in Canada should send the Liberal party scurrying for a helmet.

The Liberals have certainly found Kyoto to be a politically productive issue. Despite their recent branding of a Conservative party election war room as a “fear factory”, the Liberals recently released a new ad clearly aimed at provoking terror amongst Canadians, on the issue of climate change (the terrified-looking baby is a nice – but hypocritical – touch).

Yet, when one looks closer at the Liberal party stance on Kyoto, one finds layers upon layers of hypocrisy, threatening to undermine what was a very tender policy point to begin with.

The Liberals point with pride toward the December 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference, wherein Stephan Dion brought 182 countries to agreement on further commitments to fight climate change.

For Dion, that’s pretty much where the story ends. Previously, on November 29, 2005, Paul Martin’s Liberal government – in which Stephan Dion served as minister of the environment – lost a confidence vote in the house of commons. Dion’s success at the Montreal conference was little more than an empty triumph of a dying government.

Equally unfortunately for Dion – and the Liberals – that isn’t where the story begins, either.

Under the Liberal government of Jean Chretien, Canada ratified the Kyoto protocol in 2002. Canada committed to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012 (interestingly, Chretien chose the 6% figure merely to one-up the American commitment of 5%). Yet, by 2004, greenhouse gas emissions had continued to rise until they were 27% above 1990 levels.

Under Stephan Dion, greenhouse gas emissions only continued to rise. This undoubtedly paints a less-than-flattering image of Stephan Dion: the man who could bring 182 countries together to agree to fight climate change, but who himself did nothing to actually do so.

Another revealing point is that posed by Liberal Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty (brother of Liberal party environmental critic David McGuinty).

McGuinty had previously promised to deactivate all of Ontario’s coal-fired power plants by 2007. McGuinty has extended this deadline to 2014 – two years after the deadlines laid out in the Kyoto protocol. Had McGuinty lived up to his original promise, Ontario would be 50-80 closer to its Kyoto targets.

This from the premier who accused the federal government of letting the Alberta oil industry “off easy”.

McGuinty – who, just to reiterate, supports Kyoto – has also demanded that Ontario’s car manufacturers be given favorable treatment. “we will not abide is any effort on the part of the national government to unduly impose greenhouse-gas emission reductions on the province of Ontario at the expense of our auto sector," McGuinty said.

McGuinty was, at the time, responding to Conservative musings about imposing emissions standards on Canadian car manufacturers similar to those in effect in California. According to a graph released by Environment Canada in 2004, transportation-related emissions accounted for 19% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. The oil, gas and coal industries accounted for 20%.

In other words, McGuinty – a Kyoto supporter – was in favor of regulating an industry that produces 20% of Canada’s greenhouse gases, but not in favor of regulating cars – producers of 19% of Canada’s greenhouse gases.

Unfortunately for McGuinty, it’s all too similar to Quebec supporting Kyoto while it stands to profit from its hydroelectric resources (GHG free), while less fortunate provinces struggle to meet their share of Canada’s Kyoto targets.

If Canada is to meet its Kyoto targets, Ontarians – who support Kyoto – will have to make sacrifices as surely as Albertans will.

At the end of the day, however, it seems some Liberals have forgotten the purpose of the Kyoto protocol. On CTV’s Canada AM, David McGuinty (just to reiterate, Dalton’s brother), complained, “We as a country signed onto Kyoto and one of the mechanisms in the Kyoto Treaty is to allow our emitters to trade credits internationally between countries to help reduce the cost, per tonne, of greenhouse gases. This government has ruled that out."

Apparently, according to McGuinty, the Kyoto protocol was never about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To McGuinty, Kyoto was about forcing industry to send their money to other countries in order to meet the government’s diplomatic obligations.

The Liberal party stance on Kyoto is nothing short of hypocrticial. While the Conservative government may need to work well outside the Kyoto deadlines in order to meet Canada’s obligations, it is Liberal inaction that has forced them to do so.

Which ultimately leaves Stephan Dion and the flying McGuinty brothers facing an unpleasant revelation: the truth hurts.

Liberal Party Prepares To Eat its Own Young

Ignatieff has fellow leadership candidates running scared

There is a man who has the Liberals running scared.

No, it's not Stephen Harper, who led the Conservative party in a defeat of the Liberals in the 2006 election. Nor is it the Honorable John Gomery, who handed them their ass at the Adscam inquiry, precipitating that defeat. Nor is it I (although, maybe it should be).

No, the man that the Liberals fear most is one within their party -- one they went to great lengths to recruit to run as a star candidate during the 2006 federal election.

This man is Michael Ignatieff.

At first glance Ignatieff, the current Member of Parliament for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, seems like the man that Liberal party members should absolutely adore. He's taught at Harvard. He's worked for the BBC, the Globe and Mail and New York Times Magazine. He's published volumes of books.

Like all Liberal leaders, Ignatieff was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, which was earned for him by his hard-working father, who emmigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union and eventually served as a distinguished diplomat. George Ignatieff also served as president of the United Nations Security Council. On his mother's side, Ignatieff can trace his lineage to George Monro Grant. Michael continued to benefit from his family's status when he attended the University of Toronto... where is father was conveniently the serving Chancellor.

Ignatieff was parachuted in to run for his riding, which he handily won. When Paul Martin resigned following his defeat, Ignatieff was immediately mentioned as a contender -- possibly the favourite -- to win the Liberal leadership. Indeed, in the minds of many, he has already won.

He's already shown leadership within Liberal party ranks. He recently turned a vote on extending Canada's mission in Afghanistan almost single-handedly, as he and his supporters stood against the Liberal caucus, and delivered the motion to a narrow victory.

Since that moment, Ignatieff has been in the crosshairs of his opponents.
At the June 10 Liberal party leadership forum, Joe Volpe fired his first shots at Ignatieff, when he seemed to point out Ignatieff's short membership in the party. Bob Rae (obviously continuing to attempt to tap into the anti-American crowd) accused Ignatieff of holding opinions that are too similar to those of the American Republicans.

What is perhaps most shocking about Rae's accusations is that they are awfully true.
Ignatieff's critics accuse him of supporting the controversial Missile Defense Shield. In "A Generous Helping of Liberal Brains" he writes:

"The government has recently announced its decision about ballistic-missile defence. The decision will be popular in the party. But we need clarity in our national defence policy. We need to balance a principled opposition to the future weaponization of space with an equally principled commitment to participate in North American defence right now. We don't want our decisions to fracture the command system of North American defence, and we don't want a principled decision to result in us having less control over our national sovereignty. We must be there, at the table, defending what only we can defend.""

In short, past agreements not to weaponize space are all well and good. But we need to protect ourselves now. Pragmatic, perhaps. But it is exactly what his critics accuse him of.

Ignatieff's critics accuse him of supporting the American war in Iraq. In "The Burden", he writes:

"Those who want America to remain a republic rather than become an empire imagine rightly, but they have not factored in what tyranny or chaos can do to vital American interests. The case for empire is that it has become, in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike."

In short, the only hope for the survival of American democracy is to go to war abroad, in places like Iraq.

Ignatieff's critics aim to rally the anti-American crowd, and accuse him of spending more time in the United States than in Canada. Again, they are right. Harvard may be one heckuva school, but McGill it ain't. He also writes much of his work under the guise of being an American.

However, there is one area where his critics have clearly missed their mark. Ignatieff has, in the course of his writings, questioned the moral nature of torture. While some people may consider this to be inherently dangerous, all Ignatieff has tried to do in this particular situation is explore the definition of torture. In "Evil under Interrogation", he writes:

"A liberal society that would not defend itself by force of arms might perish, while a liberal society that refused to torture is less likely to jeopardise its collective survival. Besides, there is a moral difference between killing a fellow combatant, in conformity to the laws of war, and torturing a person. The first takes a life; the second abuses one. It seems more legitimate to ask a citizen to defend a state by force of arms and, if necessary, to kill in self-defence or to secure a military objective, than it does to ask him to inflict degrading pain face to face. On this reading of a democratic moral identity, it may be legitimate to kill in self-defence, but not to engage in cruelty."

The point quickly becomes abundantly clear: torture occurs when someone is treated in a manner that cannot be justified based on their actions. Finally, torture is wrong.

There is no question that those who control the Liberal party leadership -- pulling the strings of the "election" process, favor individuals such as Ignatieff. The reasons for this are already well established. For this reason alone, Ignatieff clearly stands head-and-shoulders above his meagre competition -- he holds favour with those whose favour he needs.

These are the king makers of the Liberal party. They were the masterminds behind the ascension of Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien, and they imagine the leadership campaign less like an actual campaign, and more like a coronation -- where the "crown" of the "natural governing party of Canada" (they have, in fact, controlled the government for all but a handful of the last 100 years) is neatly passed from meticulously pre-selected leader to the next. It is for this reason that Canadians can probably fully expect the crown to be passed along to one of the surviving Trudeau children at some point in the next 20 years. It is indeed a chilling view of Canadian democracy, but one that the Liberal party has been advancing for longer than any living party member can likely attest.

Because of this in turning on Ignatieff, the Liberal party is in fact cannibalizing itself. The fact is actually quite simple: in looking at the list of candidates for the Liberal leadership, Ignatieff is in fact the most qualified, and easily the most charismatic. This is what makes him most dangerous to his competitors: he is a legitimate triple threat.

Certainly, the Liberals are not the only ones who are afraid of Michael Ignatieff. The Conservative party is likely rubbing its hands together in anticipation of lining up against any of the other piss-poor candidates that have been advanced to lead the Liberal party.

But not Ignatieff. Ignatieff is a true threat. He is determined to defeat the Conservatives: "We have an enormous responsibility to defeat the Harper government. We have to understand -- we have to make Canadians realize the choice they face. This is a government that has abandoned our environmental commitments. This is a government that has lost and betrayed faith with aboriginal Canadians.”
Beyond this, he is the only candidate capable of the task.

In turning on Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal party is in fact turning against its own future. Its future with Ignatieff may not be guaranteed, but it would be a whole lot brighter than with any of the other candidates.

Perhaps that is what these other candidates fear the most.