ADQ Members Seek to Draft Maxime

Action Democratique du Quebec woo former Foreign Affairs Minister

In the wake of a crushing defeat in the 2008 Quebec Provincial Election, the Action Democratique du Quebec is searching for a replacement for the only leader it has ever known.

When Mario Dumont resigned as ADQ leader in order to seek a career in the private sector it seemed that very few ADQ members were interested in the job.

With the lack of interest in the ADQ leadership absolutely palpable, some members of the party -- something of a defacto Conservative party of Quebec -- are attempting to recruit former Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier for the job.

The problem is that Bernier himself isn't interested.

"I'm flattered that some people can see me as ADQ leader, but it doesn't interest me at all," Bernier announced. "I've made my decision and it's firm -- I will run as a candidate to be a federal MP in the next election."

Whether Bernier has what it takes to resurrect the ADQ after the near-career-killing Julie Couillard debacle is a matter for debate. But Mark Burzan, the president of the Hull, Quebec ADQ riding association, thinks he has it.

"He shares the same philosophies as the ADQ, he is from the same generation as Mario Dumont and he is very popular in his riding," Burzan explained. "There was a controversy, but I don't think we should exclude someone because they made one mistake, especially when it wasn't as bad as we initially thought."

If Bernier were to lead the ADQ back to its glory days of less than a year ago, he would have to undergo a significant rehabilitation process as a candidate.

The accomplishment of this rehabilitation is far from out of the question. Unfortuantely for Bernier, leadership of the ADQ is.

What Opposition MPs Gossip About Over Their Crib Games

Maxime Bernier's ex-girlfriend his own business

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier's ex-girlfriend may have been born to be wild, but the reaction of Opposition MPs to recent revelations about her suggest that they've spent the better part of their lives walking on the mild side.

It's recently hit the news media that Julie Couillard, a woman formerly so close to Bernier that he described her as his spouse, had previously been involved with some members of the Hells Angels biker club -- the very same organization likely responsible for recent threats against Diane Finley.

At one point, Couillard was even reputed to be a target of Maurice "Mom" Boucher. "At one point the suspicions were so high that there was a contract on her … She was going to get it. She came close to getting it," testified Stephane Sirois, who turned informant in 2003.

Couillard accompanied Bernier to Rideau Hall for his swearing-in as Foreign Affairs minister, and accompanied him on several trips abroad.

Unsurprisingly, Opposition MPs have demonstrated little shame in trying to transform the revelation into a soap-opera-plot-cum-political scandal.

"Mr. Bernier needs to explain because we want to know if there were any matter of national security involved," Liberal leader Stephane Dion announced.

"They are everyone's business and we will raise them in this House," Ignatieff added.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper disagrees. "I hear that one of my cabinet ministers has an ex-girlfriend," Harper quipped. "It's none of my business, none of Mr Duceppe's business, none of Mr Dion's business. Mr Duceppe and Mr Dion are quite a group of gossipy old busybodies."

And Harper's precisely right. Bernier's romantic liaisons are nobody's business but his own. And to suggest that a woman who was targeted for assassination by Maurice Boucher is a national security risk is more than a little ludicrous. If anything, the prospect that a villain like Boucher considered her threatening enough to want her dead suggests the exact opposite.

To put Bernier on trial for Crouillard's previous taste in men -- something he didn't even know about until the media brought it up -- is a ridiculous farce.

Unfortunately, the Opposition has shown a taste for ridiculous farce of late.

From the moment she arrived in Ottawa, Couillard has been fodder for ridiculous farce. Some may recall her name on the tongues of Parliament Hill gossips once before, when she showed up to Bernier's swearing-in ceremony wearing a scandalously revealing outfit.

If anything, Canadians should probably be wondering why Bernier and Couillard aren't still together -- biker girls tend to look pretty decent in black leather. Sexy. (You need a hanky to mop up some of that drool, perv? -ed.)

All joking aside, Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff need to remember that this is the Canadian House of Commons we're talking about here -- not The Young and the Restless.

Although one does wonder what Stephane Dion will do next week when his evil twin brother makes a reapperance on the scene. (You'll know him when you see him -- he's the one with the mustache.)

A Backward Way to Prosecute a War

Benchmarks needed before a withdrawal date set, not after

Canada's role in Afghanistan is important.

It's important to our country's national security -- preventing a regime known for harboring terrorists from returning to power. It's important to internationalism -- proving that organizations like NATO can still work. It's important to the Afghan people -- bring them an opportunity to truly embrace the freedoms offered by a democratic government.

As such, Canada's role in the Afghanistan war is worth doing. But anything worth doing is worth doing right.

During his current visit to Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier stressed the importance of setting benchmarks for what we expect Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan to accomplish before the mission can be considered to be a success.

"We have to go back in Canada and will have a discussion about the future of our mission, so we will have to set benchmarks on the training of the ANA, the training of the ANP," Bernier said. "It was important to have a meeting with the general and other officials to understand pretty well what is the challenges that we face concerning the training of the national army and the national police."

And he's right. It is important to understand the challenges Canada faces in Afghanistan and also to understand how we will meet them.

But that was even more important before the establishment of a withdrawal date, not after.

What seems to be at play in this situation is a fundamental misunderstanding of how a country can be successful in a mission like Afghanistan.

Leaving Afghanistan before Canada's mission there is accomplished is a recipe for disaster. The Taliban returning to Afghanistan would certainly not be the passive-aggressive Taliban of pre-2001, content to merely harbor terrorists like Osama Bin Laden within its borders. Upon reclaiming power in Kabul, the Taliban could be expected to become even more aggressive, likely supporting terrorism much more directly than before.

But accomplishing the mission means meeting the goals. So one clearly can't set a withdrawl date before one fully understands what these goals are, and what needs to be done in order to accomplish them.

In, frankly, going too far to accommodate Liberal inconsistency Maxime Bernier and the Conservative party have succeeded in making Barack Obama's Iraq dilemma our own Afghanistan dilemma.

In order to meet the artificial goal of Canadian withdrawal by 2011, we run the very real risk of not meeting the goals that will make peaceful withdrawal possible in the first place.

In particular, Afghanistan remains 20,000 soldiers short of the target of 80,000 troops by 2011.

That's an awfully big gap to have to close.

The successes in Afghanistan -- whether opponents to the war want to acknowledge them or not -- to date remind us that the war in Afghanistan can be won. But setting timetables for withdrawal that will make it more difficult to achieve our goals isn't doing anyone -- the troops who actually have to worry about achieving those goals -- any favours.

If Maxime Bernier and the Conservatives really wanted to make it possible for Canada to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2011 they would have decided what the goals would be before setting that date.

To do otherwise -- as they have -- is a backward way to prosecute a war.

What Brenda Martin Didn't Want Canadians To Know

Martin not as abandoned as she would like Canadians to believe

Sometimes, being injudiciously detained in a foreign prison means you never have to admit you were wrong.

This would seem to be the case for Brenda Martin, who, it was recently revealed, recieved regular visits and calls from Canadian officials ever since the beginning of her injudicious detainment. On some occasions, she was called multiple times a day.

Martin, who claimed the Canadian government wasn't doing enough to help her, and dismissed the most recent attempts to help as "a dog and pony show", has come up with a rather novel defence.

"I find it horrendous that my privacy would be breached in an attempt to smear my name," Martin insists.

She blames the leak on Conservative MP Helena Guergis, who, it was recently revealed didn't visit Martin during a recent visit to Mexico.

Naturally, Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who, along with various internet douchebags has been at the forefront of milking this particular story for partisan gain, agrees.

"There has been a serious breach in the privacy act," McTeague announced. "This is not only a smokescreen, it's... breaking the law."

What McTeague and Martin are overlooking, however, is that Martin's case is -- and has been -- the subject of foreign relations between the government of Canada and the government of Mexico. The document released -- "leaked" as Martin insists -- is actually a summary of the activities of Canadian diplomats on the Brenda Martin file.

It is not subject to privacy law.

Given that this document is not subject to privacy law, one has to wonder where the smokescreen is really being used: by Canadian consular officials defending their reputation by revealing how much work they've done? Or by Brenda Martin, who wanted to conceal that? The answer is obvious.

Keep in mind that this doesn't change the fact that there simply hasn't been enough work put in on this file by Canada's elected officials -- although our public servants in Mexico have been doing their job admirably.

And the real important question regarding this most recent revelation regarding the Martin affair is: what does this change?

Actually, absolutely nothing. The Canadian government still needs to do more to help Brenda Martin -- Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier, in particular, needs to do much, much more.

But Brenda Martin herself needs to be honest as well. Blaming Canadian officials for revealing information she didn't want revealed is little more than a classic bully's defence: it's not her fault for being deceptive, it's the Canadian government's fault for revealing her deception.

If we don't accept that from five-year-olds, we absolutely should not accept it from grown adults.

Star Reader Misses Point of Letter

Star readers asleep in Michael Byers' dreamland

Michael Byers' recent opinion article in the Toronto Star has managed to send a few ripples across Canada's political discourse.

Following the letter, Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier naturally found it necessary to respond. In a 3 January letter to the editor, he wrote:

"This article by Michael Byers is so one-sided and lacking in objectivity that I feel compelled to respond. Let me first dismiss his claims about the recent Bali conference on climate change. Canada played a constructive role in Bali that resulted in an agreement that recognizes that all major emitters, like China, India and the U.S., all need to be on-board to reduce emissions.

It's also interesting that Byers quotes Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In Bali, Canada and Australia held the same position and agreed on the final language that was adopted.

I also found Byers' claim that our government has "picked unnecessary quarrels" with China, Russia and Iran to be particularly risible. Our government is guided by Canada's key foreign-policy values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. I don't understand why our insistence on standing up for these values seems to make Byers so upset.

Finally, that he would see something sinister in the U.S. ambassador to Canada accompanying Defence Minister Peter MacKay to view American contributions to the UN-authorized, NATO-led mission in Afghanistan verges on the paranoid. Under the previous Liberal government, Canada's global influence declined while it diverted energy away from the important work of diplomacy and toward soft-power fantasies."

Bernier's letter is quick, concise, and covers the key points.

Yet it seems that, unsurprisingly, a few Star readers are willing -- seemingly even eager -- to swallow Byers' tripe. Such was the point of Tom McElroy's 5 January letter to the editor:

"I was amused by Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier's response to the opinion piece by Michael Byers. It is rather representative of the current government's use of rhetoric in place of logic in responding to the needs of the country. First, Bernier opens by accusing the writer of being "one-sided and lacking objectivity." This accomplishes two things in the propaganda battle. It suggests that the writer (Bernier) has the moral high ground in objectivity. It also suggests that Byers is in some way a flawed person. In fact, an opinion piece is not expected to be objective; it is supposed to express a viewpoint and promote the discussion of other options.

With respect to the Bali meeting, the comment about having an agreement with all nations on-board is one of the government's slickest pieces of rhetorical fallacy. Yes, we need everyone on-board in an agreement. But emerging nations cannot be compelled to agree to something they don't like. There must be an international agreement that everyone is prepared to live with (read compromise) and that provides a level playing field for international trade and development.

Bernier (re-)states the apparently reasonable view that "all need to be on-board" and leads the public to think that they are trying hard when, by demanding across-the-board, immediate cuts from nations with emerging economies, they are, in fact, undermining the concrete steps needed to be taken. This is a position that is immoral, unreasonable and impossible – in short, they are still rejecting the reality of climate change in favour of the economic development of the oil patch in Canada.

Canada seems to have become very flexible on where it is upholding moral principles these days. The minister is being deliberately obtuse in responding to Byers' claim that the government provoked negative reactions from China and others. Some details here are necessary to define exactly what the minister means before any credence can be granted to his statement. Finally, Bernier would do well to remember that Canadian soft power earned Lester Pearson a Nobel Prize."

First off, it's interesting that someone would accuse the government of "using rhetoric in place of logic" in defense of an article that is so wrought with factual errors, half-truths and rhetorical dead ends. And while McElroy may actually be entirely right in asserting that objectivity isn't expected of opinion articles -- the exact opposite, in fact -- McElroy declines to address why Byers' piece can't even maintain rhetorical coherence.

He then indulges himself in accusing the government of using Byers' piece as an opportunity to engage in a "propaganda war" despite the fact that Byers' article fits so neatly into Noam Chomsky's propaganda model, vis a vis historical engineering.

McElroy then actually resorts to making the government's argument for it -- that we need climate change agreements on which all countries can agree before dismissing the need for developing countries to also commit to fighting climate change as "immoral". Perhaps mr McElroy is entirely comfortable with manufacturing jobs migrating from developed countries to developing countries pumping the atmosphere full of the very same greenhouse gases the Kyoto protocol addresses, only in different countries, and to no net effect overall.

Then again, we aren't supposed to ask serious questions about Kyoto.

To top it off, McElroy insists that Bernier should conjure some details before dismissing Byers' complaints over the "negative reactions" "provoked" "from China and others". Yet Byers' article skimps on details in the first place, and with reasons that eventually became obvious -- his arguments collapsed under their own rhetorical weight once details -- or any facts whatsoever -- were added to the equation.

If Bernier's objections should be granted little credence, than it should be doubly so for Byers.

Last but not least, one would remind McElroy that the purpose of Canadian foreign policy is to represent and support Canadian interests abroad; it's not to win Nobel prizes for Prime Ministers, or make Canada seem "cool".