God, This is Just Too Good to Pass Up

Truth be told, I try to avoid giving marginal specks like Sister Sage's Musings proprietor too much exposure here at the Nexus. Over the past two days, CK has already gotten far more than someone as cowardly as she deserves.

But recently something presented itself that was simply too good to pass up.

Those who witnessed CK's last temper tantrum in the comments section of this blog may remember the following comment:

"Paranoia, Greed, bigotry, useless wars to keep corrupt governments in power = bad.

Unfortunately, the latter is all we see of today's conservatism: no redeeming social qualities here. You included. Not my fault you can't successfully defend irredeemable character flaws."

Which would beg a question about how CK may feel about the corruption that seized up the very heart of the Liberal Party right before its big fall from grace in 2006.
A comment made on a post about the ongoing investigations into the Sponsorship Scandal at Sandy Crux's blog turns out to be fairly revelatory.

CK writes:

"Has it been that slow of a newsweek for you and Daniel Leblanc?

I know what your motivation is, but what is Leblanc’s? A con cheerleader like you, who would do anything to hammer the opposition away, now that 10percenters are not allowed? Or a Bloc supporter boosting Gilles Duceppe’s newly resurrected campaign for sovereignty?

Either way, it’s high time to move on. This is a 10year old crime. Gomery had his inquest. It’s over.

Besides, you kind of lost that right to complain about adscam, given that Harper campaigned on cleaning up Ottawa before he was first elected.

So far he runs away, prorogues and deflects and distracts when the going gets tough and he’s in the hot seat."

So, regardless of the fact that investigations into the Sponsorship Scandal have yet to deliver all of those responsible to justice, CK thinks that the matter should just quietly go away -- so long as it continues to pose a threat to the Liberal Party.

It seems that corruption is only bad so long as CK can pretend conservatives are corrupt -- even if there has been no corruption.

It seems that everything is different once CK's white hot simmering conservative hatred of conservatives is in play.

The Whininess of Whiners And Their Enablers

Liberal party unwillingness to accept responsibility for its own defeat reinforced by "experts"

One of the disappointing institutional character traits to emerge out of the Liberal party's christening of itself as "Canada's natural governing party" has been an unwillingness on the party's part to accept responsibility for its own defeats.

Over the past three years, the Liberal party and its supporters have rarely hesitated to blame its last two electoral defeats on something other than itself -- anything other than itself.

They blamed the NDP for competing against them and winning seats that would otherwise be won by Liberals. They blamed the RCMP for announcing an investigation into a leak involving a taxation decision on income trusts. They blamed CTV for airing an interview which revealed Stephane Dion's inability to use the English language functionally.

But an opinion article appearing in the Victoria Times Colonist written by Carleton University's Andrew Cohen reveals a disturbing tendency by partisan "experts" to peddle these excuses under the guise of their expertise.

Cohen's article is a feverish mish-mash of what-ifs, ands, or buts, suggesting that Dion may have won the election if not for that dastardly Mike Duffy, just as Paul Martin may have won the 2005/06 campaign if not for the dastardly RCMP:

"The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council conducted a review. The council is a self-regulatory body comprising more than 720 Canadian radio and television stations. It administers the industry's broadcast code of conduct.

Its two reports, which were released recently and largely ignored by the media, criticized CTV for breaching the code, a finding CTV strenuously rejected. That was revealing.

But what's more revealing is what this little saga tells us about how things are done in this country. It's about politics, ethics and maybe ambition, too.

On CTV Atlantic, the council concluded that Murphy asked a question that was 'confusing, and not only to a person whose first language is other than English.' It said that Murphy mixed tenses (past and present) and moods (subjunctive and indicative). In other words, Dion was justifiably puzzled.

In light of the badly worded question, which Murphy could have clarified, the panel called the restarts "a courtesy" to Dion. It also said repeating questions isn't unusual in broadcasting and particularly justified here, given Murphy's convoluted question.

Moreover, because Murphy never refused Dion's requests to restart the interview, Dion had reason to believe that the embarrassing footage would not be used.

On Duffy's broadcast, the council's judgment was harsher. It called his performance unfair and unbalanced. It said that Duffy misrepresented the views of one of his guests, Liberal MP Geoff Regan. In the end, Duffy breached the industry's code of ethics.

Is all this a grammarian's revenge, Miss Thistlebottom in full flight? A silly parsing of sentences? A regulator's punctilious dressing down on decorum? Does it really matter how Dion was treated by CTV, particularly by Mike Duffy?

Actually, yes, particularly in a country where the RCMP might well have determined the outcome of the 2006 election, when it announced an investigation, in mid-campaign, into allegations of irregularities on the part of finance minister Ralph Goodale. It caused a sensation. The Liberals lost that election; no charges materialized.

Last October, polls suggested the Liberal party's ascent stalled after the interview. While we cannot say if Dion's momentum would have brought his party victory, it isn't impossible.

In other words, CTV may have thrown the election to the Conservatives. In running the embarrassing outtakes, it reinforced an image of Dion as incomprehensible and indecisive."

The fact that millions of other Canadians understood Steve Murphy's question to Dion perfectly well seems to be lost on Cohen. As does the fact that if one of the political leaders running to be Canada's Prime Minister is severely hampered in his ability to use of one Canada's official languages, the public has the right to know about this.

Cohen seems to overlook the fact that Paul Martin and Ralph Goodale had declined to launch an inquiry into the allegations. When one considers that criminal charges were laid in the affair, Goodale and Martin's decision was grossly irresponsible. It took the NDP's Finance Critic, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, writing a letter of complaint to the RCMP to get the investigation launched.

If Goodale and Martin had done the responsible thing and launched a probe before the election, the RCMP investigation would have likely already been underway by the time the election began.

In other words, even if the RCMP investigation was the Liberal party's undoing, it was their own doing in the first place.

This is before one even mentions the fact that the Liberal party was already extremely vulnerable to charges of corruption after the ground-shaking revelations of the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal. They knew it well enough to threaten then-Opposition Leader Stephen Harper with a lawsuit for so much as speaking about the implications of the scandal for the Liberal party.

Harper wisely told the Liberal party to stuff a sock in it.

Likewise, Cohen seems to overlook the fact that, as it pertains to Dion's language issues, Canadians -- citizens of an officially bilingual country, and Cohen may want to remember that -- had a right to know. When the matter was discussed a few days later on Mike Duffy Live, the story was Dion's language issues.

Cohen, himself a Journalism professor, would know full well that if the false starts were the story, the rest of the interview is not part of that story and would be discussed later, if at all.

Cohen goes on to lob accusations that Duffy received his Senate seat as a reward for the allegedly-scandalous Dion segment -- Green party Elizabeth May, herself no stranger to self-indulgent whining, has also suggested that Duffy received his seat as a reward for a media hit job on her. He tries to bolster his case by noting that Duffy has been particularly partisan since being appointed, attending various party fundraisers, and noting that Pamela Wallin hasn't done the same.

Yet Cohen would also be overlooking the fact that Duffy realistically showed no such fervour for partisanship during his career as a journalist, although he was often accused of partisanship by each side of Canada's partisan divide.

It isn't at all as if Mike Duffy ever wrote an op/ed column making excuses for the Conservative party's electoral defeats -- which is more than can be said for certain journalism professors.

And Therein Lies the Problem

Ultra-secretive environment of Canadian politics keeps too many mysteries

Bob Woodward's journalism has transformed him into an American icon.

Not in the mold of Walter Kronkite or Walter Lippmann, but rather in the mold of an enterprising muckraker.

Woodward was the man who broke the story about Richard Nixon's misdeeds in the infamous Watergate affair -- the scandal that has become the prototypical American political scandal.

Woodward can make it all sound terribly easy. At a recent speaking engagement in Calgary, University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan was amazed at precisely how.

"Your career in Canada would be inconceivable," Flanagan mused. "No Prime Minister in Canada would give you seven minutes, let alone seven hours. And the thought that you would get all these hundreds of interviews with underlings, and meetings, it just wouldn't happen. There's like light years of difference between Canada and the United States."

"From the evidence I have, I think that's true," Woodward agreed, suggesting that Canada may have a unique national character trait as a result of its decidedly non-revolutionary nature.

While American history was forged out of the challenging of authority figures, Canadian history has emerged out of respect for, and deference to, authority as the independent Canadian state emerged slowly and steadily out of British colonialism.

Flanagan notes that an affair like the lingering Brian Mulroney/Karlheinz Schreiber affair could never have occurred in the United States.

"We have a judicial commission appointed to investigate things that Brian Mulroney did in the final years of his administration 15 years ago and we still don't know the truth, and we probably won't know the truth even after this commission is finished," Flanagan said. "I imagine in the United States, the truth would have been published at the time on the front page of the Washington Post."

In Canada, the first inklings of the Sponsorship Scandal were detected as early as 2000. Yet it took until 2005 for a judicial inquiry to begin to establish responsibility for the scandal.

In the United States, it took only two years for the Watergate Hotel break-in to lead to Richard Nixon's resignation.

This difference in response time to scandals allows for time to obscure the facts and dodge responsibility. Then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien continues to evade the scope of his responsibility for the Sponsorship Scandal despite the fact that the Spnsorship Program was run out of the Prime Minister's office, and run by his staff.

The Sponsorship Scandal isn't the only Canadian scandal to be obscured by time. The tainted blood scandal concluded with a stonewalling compensation package rammed through the House of Commons that left thousands of blood-injured Canadians uncompensated.

The federal government had collaborated with several provincial governments to force a compensation package through Parliament that had set a largely-arbitrary cut-off date for victims' eligibility for compensation.

These are only three of numerous scandals that have never been exposed to the full light of day. The low standard of transparency in Canadian politics should be alarming to many Canadians.

Woodward's words should give nearly any Canadian pause.

"Democracies die in darkness."

Harper Out to Crush Liberal Party

Tom Flanagan reveals a key piece in Harper's election puzzle

Stephen Harper insists that his intent to call an election is not for partisan gain.

How could it be? The Conservatives and Liberals remain statistically tied in the polls, and another minority government -- be it Liberal or Conservative -- remains a near certainty.

Harper has also indulged himself in some intellectually dishonest excuse making for his relentless push to call an election before 2008 finally writes itself into the history books, but his true intent remains something of an enigma.

The alleged need for a renewed mandate does indeed make a lot of sense. Then again, so do the clues offered today by University of Calgary political scientist (and former Harper adviser) Tom Flanagan.

Namely, that Harper is out to score another TKO over his Liberal rivals.

“I don't think Harper has to be thinking about a majority at all,” Flanagan told the Globe and Mail. "Strategically, this is sort of a prolonged war of attrition.”

Flanagan historically divides Harper's ongoing battle with the Liberals into three acts: act one took place in 2004, when Harper rendered Paul Martin's inherited majority government into a minority. In 2006, Harper won a minority government in act two. Now, in 2008, Harper thinks he's ready for act three.

Of course, the third act is the one that really matters. Few people remember acts one and two. But everyone remembers act three.

As such, Harper has only one option: victory.

“You can fight a war with some objective less than total victory,” Flanagan said.

Of course, a victory in an upcoming federal election will almost certainly represent significantly less than total victory. It certainly won't destroy the Liberal party, but it will give the numerous Liberals who want to dump Stephane Dion an excellent opportunity to do so.

Such a victory "would be enough to throw the Liberals into turmoil and give Harper ... a virtually free hand in Parliament for quite a while and really handicap his main opponent.”

Much of this holds true. After all, the Conservative government was at its most effective when the Liberal party was leaderless in the commons. Even though replacing Dion will almost certainly pave the way for a stronger leader -- likely Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae -- the Conservatives would have a much easier time in the Commons.

Not that this is a reasonable excuse to trample his own fixed election date legislation.

But a desire to utterly crush the Liberal party seems to underly many of Harper's move. Consider the promised lawsuit against the Liberal party for the excesses of the Sponsorship Scandal. If the Liberal party were held responsible for all the funds stolen under Adscam, it would certainly be a significant setback for the cash-strapped party.

It would possibly even cripple the party in the long-term.

In fact, Harper has an often-disturbing proclivity for wanting his political opponents utterly destroyed.

Flanagan's musings about Harper's motivation should give many Canadians cause to think twice about Stephen Harper's leadership of the Conservative party -- and whether or not they're still comfortable with him leading the country.

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.

Oh. Dear. Lord.

This should make for amusing political theatre

In an apparent attempted response to suggestions that the Official Opposition Liberals have abandoned the realm of opposition to the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals are digging up some old bones to pick.

According to the Toronto Star, the Liberals will introduce a motion condemning the NDP and Bloc for helping the Conservatives defeat their minority government in 2005.

It's nothing new. Immediately following the election of the sitting Conservative government in 2006, various Liberal partisans blamed the NDP. After all, not only did they not fold up during the 2005/06 election, but also defeated the sitting Liberals in the first place.

So of course the Liberal defeat in 2006 wasn't their fault. It was all the NDP and now, the Bloc.

Right.

The motion, resolving that Parliament "condemn the irresponsible and self-serving actions on Nov. 25, 2005, by the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois which led to the installation of a government that is hostile to the rights and needs of vulnerable Canadians," is a farce.

To suggest that the Liberals lost the 2006 election only because of their fellow opposition parties (let's not forget about a little thing called "Adscam") is as equally ridiculous as to suggest that they're the reason why the Liberals are such a shitty opposition in the first place.

Opposition politics, after all, isn't exactly rocket surgery. You vote against the government. John Turner got it, and he still identifies himself as "former Prime Minster of Canada" despite never having been actually elected to that position.

It's hard to say what the Liberals should think is more embarrassing: introducing this motion in the first place, or being defeated on this resolution in the house.

Apparently, crybaby politics are here to stay.

Everything Old is New Again

Liberals believe they may find old news is good news

If there was anything that became immediately clear following the 2006 federal election, it was that the Liberals were very embittered by their defeat.

Often engaging in freakishly protracted conspiracy theories sometimes alleging that, despite the testimony of dozens of implicated figures and the absence of millions of unaccounted taxpayer dollars from government coffers, the Sponsorship Scandal was purely a work of fiction, many Liberals took it upon themselves to pretend that, somehow, the Conservative party's victory was the result of some great "neo-conservative" conspiracy.

It was, if you believe their rantings, all terribly unjust. Even if the sponsorship scandal did happen, it was surely no big deal.

"Right? Right?"

If one believed them then, one may wonder what to believe now, as they renew a 14-year-old witchhunt for a good old fashioned political scandal. Now, as the stench of political incompetence threatens to overwhelm the stink of corruption, they certainly must hope that the smell is at least as strong as that emanating from the stains left on their once-proud standard by the Sponsorship Scandal.

What has emerged has very closely resembled the conspiracy theory Mulroney referred to in a recent speech,complete with Ralph Goodale winking and nudging toward his theory of a nefarious Conservative plot to cover up the truth.

The most recent allegations raised against Mulroney have a good number of people very excited. Unsurprisingly, most of these people are partisan Liberals.

Yet, when one looks closer at the allegations themselves, all one finds is a suggestion that Mulroney discussed business dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber before he left office.

So apparently, the most recent charges against Brian Mulroney are that he discussed business that he planned to engage in after leaving office while he was still Prime Minister.

Considering that the RCMP could uncover no evidence of criminal wrongdoing into the matter of the cash payments themselves, a good many people may find themselves feeling (and looking) very serious when this is treated largely as an open-and-shut case.

As it turns out, however, Schreiber expects people to believe that he, a known fraudster, is actually a victim in this entire affair. "At the special request of Mr. Mulroney, I wrote a letter to [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] on July 20, 2006 suggesting to Mr. Mulroney that the public rhetoric regarding the sale of Airbus planes by Airbus Industries G.I.E. (the `Airbus Affair') and the conspiracy against me personally amounted to the largest political scandal in the history of Canada," Schreiber wrote.

The suggestion that Schreiber would be extradited to Germany to face fraud charges there amounts to a greater scandal than the abuses perpetrated under the Sponsorship Program, the blatant interference in Canadian politics by John F Kennedy, or the Igor Gouzenko affair?

To put it bluntly, surely this man fucking jests.

Likewise, surely Ralph Goodale, "Flying" David McGuinty and Stephane Dion jest if they feel they can somehow tag Mulroney's alleged and unproven misdeeds upon the current government. In fact, 66% of Canadians feel they can't. The 19% that figure the current government is somehow involved? It just might be safe to suggest that the vast majority of them are probably partisan Liberals.

Of course, there is another side of the coin. If Mulroney truly feels victimized by the proceedings as they have unfolded, he certainly hasn't done himself any favours. Acceping cash payments in a hotel room certainly provokes suspicion, even if Karlheinz Schreiber himself has suggested that the cash payments may have been paid for services rendered ranging from legal services, to consultation in a pasta machine business, to help selling Bearhead armoured vehicles to China (selling weapons to China itself being a fairly unsavoury practice).

As for the Liberals themselves, however, they already took it upon themselves to come after Mulroney once, and cost Canadian taxpayers $2.1 million. Whether or not Canadian taxpayers can buy Mulroney off on their account so cheaply again has yet to be seen.

In the meantime, perhaps the best the Liberals should hope for is a short-term boost at the polls, and the hope that perhaps Canadians will remain annoyed enough with Mulroney to not fall asleep amidst the wild gestriculations of their verious spokespersons.

At the end of the day, the Mulroney-Schreiber affair remains as it was: old news.

"Conservative Adscam" A Dead-End Issue

More philosophy at heart of "in and out" scandal than actual malfeasance

In today's National Post, Don Ivison comments on the political dead end that is the Liberal party's recent reliance on the so-called "in and out" scandal in which the Conservative party is accused of violating spending limits by dressing down national advertising spending as regional advertising.

"Just Stephane Dion's luck. The Liberal leader picked the Conservatives' alleged "in and out" election spending scandal as his signature issue to attack the government. The public gave a collective yawn, apparently unconvinced Stephen Harper had "bilked taxpayers for millions of dollars," as the Liberals claim."

This particular scandal -- referred to by many Liberal partisans as "Conservative adscam" -- has, despite the Liberal party's best efforts, failed to take on the spectre of the sponsorship scandal in the public eye.

There is a reason for this, as Ivison alludes to:

"Since Parliament returned this month, the Liberals have been using Question Period to attack Conservative accounting practises during the 2006 election. It's an eye-glazingly complicated tale that has failed to gain any traction in the national media, but which boils down to the allegation that the Tories exceeded election spending limits by more than a million dollars.

A Liberal party brought low by Adscam would dearly love to uncover a Conservative corruption scandal, but this ain't it. The allegations centre on the Tories passing off national advertising costs as regional ads for local candidates. It is being looked at by the Elections Commissioner but even a cursory reading of the Elections Act suggests the line between "national" and "local" is cloaked in hodden grey."

Ivison goes on to address the recent allegations made against West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast MP Blair Wilson. We'll part at this particular fork in the road, and look at the "in and out" scandal itself.

In the end, much of the complaint regarding this particular issue seems to boil down to a differing in political philosophy, one that raises the question of whether or not the local candidates, in particular, benefited from this particular advertising.

While the Liberals would certainly insist that it didn't, the truth is that they know better.

Canadians are currently living in an era of a Consumerist democracy, wherein image often trumps substance, and branding serves as a key political tactic in virtually every campaign. To put it simply, each political party has developed a brand, much like the consumer products found on the typical store shelf. Each one espouses a core package of values, ideology, and promises that they invite consumers -- in this case, voters -- to purchase (in this case with their vote).

Each local candidate for each party benefits from the promotion of his or her party's brand, much like each individual McDonald's franchisee benefits from the larger corporation's advertising. Thus how the Conservative party, seizing on a legal loophole that defines local advertising, in rather nebulous phrasing, is that which benefits the local candidate, can insist that they're well within the straight and narrow. In the age of consumer democracy, national advertising does benefit the local candidate, particularly in a political age where -- for good or ill -- many Canadians tend to vote for parties above candidates.

Of course, the Conservative party knows it's exploiting a loophole. This portion of Elections law was clearly written with yesterday's political climate in mind, one where (in theory, at least), voters voted for individual candidates over parties.

At the same time, the Liberal party has to know full well how branding can affect the fortunes of their candidates. In Canada, they pioneered it, when they embraced John F Kennedy's image-based campaign model and applied it to Lester Pearson, and (more successfully) Pierre Trudeau.

Dion himself has attempted to benefit from image-based branding, donning Green scarves throughout his leadership campaign to underscore his overrated reputation as an environmentalist.

In this particular case, it's obvious that the letter of the law doesn't reflect the intent of the law. That's an issue that will clearly have to be resolved in Parliament.

In the meantime, Ivison offers astute insight as to why this particular tactic is proving disastrous for the Liberals:

"Mr. Dion must take the heat for this fixation of the "in and out" scam. It was raised in the House again yesterday, to the great glee of Government House Leader Peter Van Loan, who rose to answer in the Prime Minister's absence.

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings said Mr. Wilson had done the right thing by stepping aside and called for a number of ministers "implicated" in the election saga to do likewise. Hardly able to contain himself, Mr. Van Loan pointed out that the "Blairwitch" project had been well-known to the Liberal party, who only forced Mr. Wilson to resign when it became front-page news.

He then proceeded to read all the allegations into the public record, pointing out that their stark nature was a far cry from the confusing muddle of accusations levelled against various Conservatives. By this point, it was all over for Liberals, who were forced to defend the position of their leader and their member.

The whole thing makes a mockery of the parliamentary process. I know it's Question Period, not Answer Period, but surely it's not too much to expect that it is the Opposition that thrusts and the government that parries.

At the moment, the Liberals are behaving like the crack suicide squad from Monty Python's Life of Brian, who attack by impaling themselves on their own swords."

Unfortunately for Stephane Dion, not only is the "in and out" scandal not the scandal he and his party want to make it out to be, but much more serious violations have not only sunk the Liberal party's fortunes recently. Worse yet, more of the same may (or, in all fairness, may not) be yet to come.

The Liberals need to make a tactical shift. With Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton currently duelling over who can usurp him as at least the spiritual leader of the opposition, Dion is running out of thime.

But they won't find any extra time by running head-long into a dead-end... or by impaling themselves on their own swords.

Adscam Lawsuit is Treading on Precarious Territory

Liberals' Day of Judgement May be Nigh

Since losing the federal election to the upstart Conservative party in January, things have been looking rather bleak for the Liberals. The Conservatives have been surging in the polls to the point that surveys have indicated -- on a regular basis -- that if a federal election were held now, the Conservatives would be likely to win a majority government.

What ultimately led to the defeat of the Liberals is not great secret -- the multi-million (possibly multi-billion, according to forensic accountants) adscam that funnelled taxpayer dollars into Liberal party coffers in order to "save the country". Since their January 23 defeat, the Liberal party has been waiting for the other foot to drop.

Now, the proverbial shit has hit the fan.

During the election, Stephen Harper suggested that under his reign, the government of Canada may sue the Liberal party in order to recover up to $40 million in stolen taxpayer dollars that remain unnaccounted for. To date, the Liberal party has paid back a scant $1.4 million.

Naturally, a move like this has all sorts of implications. First off, it would demonstrate to the Canadian public that the Liberal party and the Government of Canada are indeed separate political entities. The lawsuit would seek to recover "all the dirty money", returning it back to government coffers -- where it should have remained to begin with. Finally, it would also set a legal precedent with severe implications for any governments in future that engaged in such activity -- or, at least those that got caught.

However, $40 million is a steep price for any organization -- especially a political party -- to pay. In a December 24, 2005 Sun Media column, former Liberal debuty leader Sheila Copps reported that the party was "$34,818,257.32 in debt by way of 13 bank loans". If not for Elections Canada rules (insituted in 2004) requiring all political parties to report their financial status, few in the public probably would have ever known this.

Imagine that this particular case goes to court tomorrow, and the Liberals lose -- this would put the Liberal party $74,818,257.32 in debt -- firmly at risk of complete bankruptcy.

Certainly bankruptcy wouldn't be the end of an organization like the Liberal party. However, it would put the party at a severe disadvantage for a considerable period of time. Under a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the Liberal party would see their payments on their outstanding bank loans, as well as their newfound debt to the government of Canada restructured over a three to five year period -- more than enough time to place them at a considerable disadvantage during a federal election. Under a chapter 7 bankruptcy, some of these debts could be wiped clean, but the Liberal party would have to divulge itself of many of its assets in order to do this. Also, the $40 million figure won by the government under a lawsuit would not be discharged. Furthermore, a chapter 7 bankruptcy would be disastrous to the party's already-tattered credit rating.

This only adds to the political benefit the Conservative party could derive from such a lawsuit. Not only would it keep adscam fresh in voters' minds through the next federal election, it could also devestate the Liberal party and impede its operations (both day-to-day and election-time) well into the foreseeable future.
A question could be asked about how this bodes for the country. And while the relinquishing of the Liberal party's strangle-hold on federal politics has and will continue to be a positive thing, replacing that with a Conservative party garrote is not exactly what one should consider a positive alternative.

Healthy democracies require differing (and most importantly, fully-functioning) political parties in order to maintain a rich marketplace of ideas. Crippling the Liberal party may well mean allowing not only the Conservative party, but also the NDP and Bloc Quebecois to sieze a greater "market share", as it were. With the exception of an ulikely emergence of the Green Party, the marketplace of ideas would become a significantly smaller one, offering less variety.

Suing the Liberal party to recover stolen public funds may be the right thing to do, but it may have unforeseen consequences for the country as a whole. Prime Minister Harper had best tread carefully to ensure that no damage is done that can never be undone.

Attack of the Vandals

Canadian voters must face the unblinking truth

There’s no question that elections can often bring out the best – and the worst – in people.

As Canada’s current election draws toward its conclusion on January 23rd, vandalism of election signs has become an issue – one that many point to as one of the uglier sides of the current election.

All across Canada, Liberal party campaign signs have been defaced, often with the words “Thieves” and “Adscam”. Conservative party signs have not been immune to this vandalism either.

Liberal candidate Dr. Ruby Dhalla (running in the riding representing Brampton, Ontario) has a theory of her own: she believes her political opponents are responsible for the vandalism of her signs, noting that in many cases the signs had been replaced with signs for her Conservative opponent (this may be fair game, given that particular occurance).

However, it is important to realize that those vandalizing Liberal signs and those vandalizing Conservative signs are motivated by two very different ideas, and are doing so for very different reasons.

Those vandalizing Conservative signs are probably mostly doing so for the same, tired old rhetoric: the Conservatives are evil fat cats that will erode civil rights, destroy the social safety net, and transform Canada into a clone of the United States. These are the sort of people who spread fear either mindlessly, having bought into the fear-mongering tactics of the Liberal party, or those who are doing so in a very calculated fashion: because they know having a party like the Liberals in power benefits hem, and they will do anything to make sure they continue to enjoy those benefits.

Given the facts behind the current election, however, there is something I find inherently patriotic about vandalizing Liberal election signs – particularly that of the “thieves” or “adscam” variety. These brave people are putting themselves at risk to ensure that those planning to vote Liberal in the coming election will not be able to do so while pretending Adscam – or any of the other mounting scandals – never happened. Sometimes the truth has to be rubbed in people’s faces before they’ll wake up, and these people are doing just that.

Not that I am encouraging this sort of behavior, per se – merely condoning it and applauding it. There is, however, one caveat that must be added: there is a line that must be drawn.

All over the country, there are those who are afraid that their homes will be vandalized next – this is something that can not and must not be tolerated. All differences aside, people should be encouraged to vote from their consciences. If one’s conscience demands they vote Liberal, then so be it. That is fair, and they should. If their conscience, however, is choosing to ignore important issues – such as government corruption – then those with the will to do so should force them to acknowledge them.

God willing, that is exactly what those people will do.

Deconstructing the Hidden Agenda

Welcome to Ottawa, where telling the truth, it seems, has become strictly verboten.

Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper was sent a letter of warning last week by the legal representatives of the Liberal Party. The subject of the warning? Harper’s assertation that Adscam demonstrates connections between the Liberal party and organized crime. The letter insisted that should Harper, or any member of the Conservative party repeat the comments outside of the House of Commons, the Liberal party would sue.

Which would probably be all fine and dandy… if it wasn’t true. The Sponsorship Scandal reflects practices common in much of white collar crime… which is, by its very nature, premeditated and organized. In other words, organized crime.

To the Globe and Mail, this affair apparently qualified as front page news, as they reported “Liberals Threaten to Sue Over Harper’s Rhetoric.” Which is what Harper’s assertations may well have been… if they weren’t, you know… true. This also came on a day when the rest of the national media was focusing on the Liberal party’s steadily dropping polls, and the backlash against the party’s proposed bribery of Canadian voters. So, if one suggests that the Globe and Mail is manipulating the news to the benefit of the Liberal party, they probably are not all that far from the truth.

In fact, they’re probably spot-on. It’s no secret that the Liberal party practically owns many of Canada’s high-profile media personalities (Rick Mercer, anyone?). The only question that remains is thus: did Jean Chretien pay cash or credit when he bought these people? And has Paul Martin been keeping up with the bills? Evidently so.

With today’s calling of a January 23rd election, one can expect some of Canada’s more unscrupulous “journalists” to begin lining up to take shots at any opponents of the corrupt Liberal regime. We can expect to hear the same old rhetoric (actual rhetoric, not demonstrated truth dismissed as rhetoric) over and over again.
Including that same propaganda lie fed to the Canadian public over and over again: the Hidden Agenda.

The idea of the Hidden Agenda has been a reliable lie for supporters of the Liberal party, used to counter virtually everything the Conservative party has ever proposed. “End corporate welfare”… HIDDEN AGENDA!!! “Tax relief”… HIDDEN AGENDA!!! “Gomery Inquiry”… HIDDEN AGENDA!!!

Unfortunately for these liars (or, perhaps, unfortunately for the Conservative Party), the Conservative Party has no hidden agenda. The Liberal party, however, does have such a hidden agenda, and they have shown us this time and time again.
Through various state endowments, the Liberal party has repeatedly laid the frame work for an ideological brainwashing of Canadians. The country’s most prominent think tanks are all Liberal party-friendly, and have all consistently worked toward entrenching the values allegedly espoused by the Liberal party as “Canadian values”. Meanwhile, a monopoly on political power has made the Liberal party increasingly corrupt. Even as the air is cleared from the last major scandal (Shawinigate?), the next scandal emerges, painting a picture of a political party that has brainwashed the country so thoroughly that it doesn’t matter what the truth is: the federal Liberals have, in effect, issued themselves a license to be as corrupt as they wish: and they’ve invented the perfect lie to make it possible.

Perhaps the most telling fact regarding the hidden agenda is the fact that those screaming it at the top of their lungs can’t seem to agree on what it is. Depending on which pro-Liberal drone you ask, it amounts to almost anything, from turning Canada into a puppet state under U.S. control to legalizing discrimination against gays and other minorities, to even “a Canada ruled by rednecks”.

Which is all fairly interesting, especially when considering that the Conservative party has, election in and election out, sent forth the most ethnically and racially diverse range of candidates out of any of Canada’s political parties. Oops.

Those responsible for spreading the “hidden agenda” lie have often grasped at any straw they can find. For example, the nomination of three candidates with links to Christian activist groups led to the pronouncement that “religious zealots are hijacking the Conservative party”. Those spreading this particular bit of propaganda all took care to bury the pertinent facts – the mere three out of more than 200 candidates nominated by the Conservatives – as deeply in their respective “journalistic articles” as they could.

In another case, an article exploring the “anti-abortion” hidden agenda of the Conservative party alleged that 20 anti-abortion MPs attended a “March for Life” rally in Ottawa. The article noted that “most of them” were Conservative MPs – then failed to mention how many of them were, or how many of them were from other parties – or who, or which.

If ever forced to produce concrete proof – not rhetoric – those supporting the hidden agenda lie would be unable to produce it. But this is not something they are meant to support – it’s a propaganda tool, designed for one purpose: spreading hysteria for the purpose of demonizing political alternatives, essentially turning Canada into a one-party state.

Take one look at Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or Communist China. It isn’t hard to figure out what the ultimate consequences for establishing a one-party state are.
Unfortunately, there are those in Canada who are simultaneously so ambitious and so unscrupulous that they are willing to stop at nothing in order to do this.