Would-be Conservative MP steps down

No surprise here: The Markham-Unionville Conservative candidate, Gordon Landon, has resigned.

Landon was dumped Monday as the Conservative candidate for Markham-Unionville after publicly musing the GTA riding was being shut out of federal infrastructure funding because it is held by a Liberal.The York regional councillor says he complied with a request from the Conservative party to step aside, adding he is not used to people telling him what to say and think.

..."I didn't follow Conservative policy in terms of getting permission to go on that TV show and I made a comment on that show that was an embarrassment to some members of the Conservative party."

Of course, even Conservative MPs have to get such permission. They owe more fealty to their party than to their constituents.

He wants to speak his own mind? Wow. Did he ever pick the wrong party to run for.

Johnny Banananuck: Tom Flanagan is God

Well, I discovered that Conservative Johnny Banananuck is back, this time on YouTube. He has a channel, and a video, and there's more to come, I'm told.

For insight into the conservative mind, and critiques of Canadian politics in general, I guess he's worth watching.

I think it's clear he's a satirist, but at times he seems earnest in his support for Harper.

This video is about applying a principle recently raised by Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan. Johnny introduces the video with this:

"It doesn't have to be true. It just has to be plausible." I swear, this defines Conservatism. The facts don't have to be on our side, we just need one fact to support what we believe. And if we have that, well then, we have the truth and the islamofacists liberal socialists don't.

Petty Iggy elitism

I am all too well familiar with ruthless internal party politics. But past leaders, unless forever mired in scandal, are a treasure. Stéphane Dion deserves better than this:

[Stéphane Dion] deserves better than to have his back stabbed by the likes of Denis Coderre, a party apparatchik whose contributions to Canada are minimal compared with those of Dion. But Coderre apparently has the ear and the support of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, which greatly enhances his ability to make mischief in the ranks of the party's Quebec wing. And Coderre seems to think, according to our columnist L.Ian MacDonald, that Dion should have the decency to disappear before the next election and leave his riding open for a "star candidate."

This is the kind of nastiness that gives party politics a bad name - and rightly so. For all his errors as leader, Dion has long been a stalwart defender of national unity. He rallied to the Liberal cause in the dark days following the 1995 referendum precisely to fight the very real threat of national dissolution. His three open letters to separatists demolished the arguments of those who would tear the country apart and his Clarity Act stiffened the spines of discouraged federalists and infuriated their foes.

After Jean Chrétien's departure as party leader, Dion was relegated to the back benches in an act of particular vindictiveness by the ascendant Paul Martin. But Dion hung in, a faithful Liberal soldier, eventually re-emerging into prominence as an eloquent defender of the environment.

Given his bruising experience in the world of real politics, we wouldn't blame Dion if he did decide to return to the more theoretical world of the Université de Montréal's political-science department. But he has served his country well and we suspect he still has contributions to make. Leave him alone, Mr. Coderre

Just one more reason why I don't support the Liberals anymore.

It's what Mike Harris would say...

Just a thought: I wonder if Harper will come to deal with the massive disproportionate doling out of stimulus funds to Conservative ridings by accusing opposition MPs of simply being lazy? Its not favoritism, we just do our job better, he'd say.

Any bets?

WholeGovScam

Nevermind my calling Harper's abuse of public funds ADSCAM 2. Scott Murray named it WholeGovScam on my Facebook wall, and with it potentially encompassing some $12 billion, um, ya.


Andrew Steele says it all:

The worst example is in British Columbia, where ridings held by the government received 13 times more than those held by the opposition.

What makes this stunning is not the partisanship of public spending. Governments since the days of the Château Clique have used taxpayer dollars to reward friends and supporters.

But prior scandals of this sort were typically involving secondary initiatives with middling importance to both the economy and the political outcomes of the government.

What makes this story stand out is that a government that has bet its very survival in the economic success of the stimulus package would be this dumb.

Tying up the stimulus in red tape was the Conservatives fault. Had they flowed the money through municipalities directly, as the opposition pointed out, the dollars would already be creating jobs. But the government chose to retain control spending so they could direct projects where they liked.

The results speak for themselves: 12 per cent spent and over-weighted toward places represented by the front bench.

And please, with all this money flowing to the favoured few, please don't forget about the comparatively paltry $30-odd million of taxpayer's money the 'Harper Government' just spent on partisan ads.

This is so huge, I'm not sure people are going to grasp the scale of it. I guess Harper figures that fortune favours the bold.

Kind of makes all that fuss years back over that hotel in Chretien's riding look ridiculously minor, don't it?

Cannon is being sued

Abousfian Abdelrazik is not just suing the government, he's suing Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon personally, claiming that Cannon personally blocked his constitutional right to enter Canada.

Of course, we'll pick up the tab anyway.

In other news, Adil Charkaoui is well on his way to freedom. Not much of a sleeper agent, if you ask me.

Harper chooses donuts over the planet

Harper is AWOL from the huge UN climate change gathering, featuring world leaders calling for renewed effort to deal with global warming.

As the video shows, Harper was instead meeting the mayor of New York and then talking up donuts back on home turf.



Harper will always these days favour sending a message that he is a ‘great economic manager’ (actually,  much stimulus cash is left unspent and disproportionately distributed to Conservative ridings) over sending a positive message over some issue like climate change, which is sadly still a latent issue in many people’s minds.

Conservative spinners know that talking tough on the economy will get them more votes than talking tough on climate change. Face it, even if he did attend, progressives still wouldn’t vote for the dirty oil patch’s favourite man.

Yes, Harper will attend minor functions there. But he clearly is avoiding the climate change issue because he is so weak on it.

Become a fan on Facebook of Harper chooses donuts over planet and get the word out!

This is further to my post from last night. Visit it to find links to the sad trail of news which has led us to this.

h/t today to Scott Tribe for the video.

Harper chooses donuts over climate change

I won't go on at length. Today is the day Stephen Harper avoided an important UN world conference on, among other things, climate change to attend a Tim Hortons PR event.

Impolitical has the coverage.

Harper believes that global warming is a latent issue with voters, and not a active issue like the economy, so this is why he made this potentially vote-getting choice. I hope we can make him wear it.

I simply can't deal with this tonight.


P.S.: By relocating from the US to Canada, I wonder how much money the Tim Hortons head office figured it would save on not having to pay for escalating health care costs?

Why isn't this Adscam? Part 2

Our politicians should start demanding the Conservative Party to pay back the $36 million in taxpayers' money it has abused on partisan ads and web presence. This is fraud or whatever you call it when the PMO or its agents force civil servants to spend our money on the Conservative Party.


I had written last week on the massive amounts of our money ($36 million) spent on obviously partisan ads by the 'Harper Government' promoting stimulus spending, openly wondering why this isn't a major scandal along the scale of Adscam.

Well, I do have an answer. Apparently, if some party members embezzle money from contracts awarded by government and spend it on your party, that's wrong, and is worth changing governments, whereas if you order civil servants to spend public money promoting  your party it's just business as usual, not worth comment.

As if.

Just for comparison, the spending limit for a federal political party on an election is around $20 million. That's right. This dwarfs the amount spent on an election.

The ads clearly promote the Conservative Harper government message that an election should be avoided or else it would interfere with the economic stimulus spending. Such a clear lie as well as elections do not grind government programs to a standstill.

We need to know what meetings were held, what politicians and government employees were involved. To ignore this, is to belittle what we learned from Adscam.

The ads direct viewers to a website wallpapered with pictures of Harper, describing government as 'the Harper Government.' As of yesterday, there were less photos, a development made late one evening, obviously related to the ample public criticism and press coverage, the most effective being a comparison between this enormous partisan spending spree and the lack of advertisement over H1N1 precautions.

Given the obviously partisan nature of these ads, spent with -- I must say it again -- OUR MONEY, should not the Conservative Party start paying us back? That's $36 million, Harper. Pay up!

The Liberal Party paid back public funds due to Adscam. I say 'continue the tradition!'

Impolitical  has covered this well, and if you are not up to speed, please go read, in order:

Conservative advertising hijinks: using taxpayer funds to support their message
Is there anything else we taxpayers can get for you trough swilling Conservatives?
A retreat from Harper megalomania
The case of the missing mug shots

One telling radio interview, reposted here from Impolitical, is of Gerry Philips. Philips is a staunch Conservative (libertarian) and former colleague of Harper's when Harper headed the National Citizen's Coalition, a right wing org pressing for small government. Philips has emerged as a significant right wing critic of Harper. Philips is particularly lucid here. It is worth a listen.

Jack sings ' Party For Sale or Rent' -- for real

This is quite good. Beats Bob Rae's piano.



Of course, this nicely outlines my entire argument for why the NDP shouldn't exist federally: They are just spoilers. The macro economic world is barely under any control, and that policy is frankly done largely at arm's length.

Pour your resources into the provinces. You'll get more done there.

May wins nomination

Not surprising: Elizabeth May is now the Green Party candidate for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

The long-time incumbent there is, of course, Gary Lunn. He is the Minister of State for Sport. BC has the Olympics coming up. The Greens, Liberals and NDP are going to vote split.

As much as I want her in, I'm betting she's third, with the Liberal candidate second, and Lunn in first. If I'm wrong, May will take second. But Lunn, baring an Act of God, will still win.

City of Toronto understated extent of sick days bank liability

With the blast marks from this summer's civic strike still clearly visible on the tattered remains of Miller's mayoralty, the relevation today that the future sick leave payouts actually totaled $450 million, not $250 million, is going to all but destroy what is left of Miller

The news is that the City knew this before the strike but issued no public correction.

This is bizarre. The entire strike was based around abolishing the sick days bank as it was a large unfunded liability the City could not afford. Why not issue the larger number leading into the strike, in order to solidify public opinion?

Mayoral candidate to be George Smitherman is going to have a field day with this. Smitherman is the man to beat, I think.

I have been saying for years that the left wing on council is going to get trounced one day by a right-wing backlash similar to the rise of Mike Harris provincially, and Toronto is going to suffer in other ways because of it. I jokingly say 'Rob Ford: Mayor' to get across how bad that'll be. Ford refuses to keep a constituency office, citing the need to be frugal. Scared yet?

Miller's people best get their act together.

The 'Prince' must stay out of the fray

More on this later, but Ignatieff has to avoid this sort of thing:

Mr. Ignatieff at first told reporters Friday that he did not want to play “games” by criticizing the NDP's position, but did later poke fun at his rivals on the opposition benches.

“Jack and Gilles have gone up the hill, and we know how that little fairy tale ends,” he said.

 That's a good quote, but one of his lieutenants should have pitched it.

The 'socialists' and 'separatists' save Harper

Harper has survived his first confidence vote of the session due to support from the 'socialist' and 'separatists' he recently spent millions in ads attacking.Oh, the irony. That's a lot of wasted ad money. I do enjoy those tables turning.

The NDP, desperate to avoid an election as they are in bad financial shape, are propping up Harper supporting a bill they know to be badly flawed, in the stated hope that after months of creeping negotiations, they won't get screwed over by Harper, who would rather see the money not spent at all. Given how hard Harper worked this past summer to not allow the EI Working Group to accomplish anything, should act as a a warning to the NDP.

While the NDP continue to bluster that the lipstick on this pig is worth propping Harper up, the Liberals continue to seek to expedite the bill, in order to remove the NDP's stated reason for supporting the government.

Any gains the NDP may get, won't last under a Harper majority. Indeed, Harper, who is up in the polls, may pull the plug on Parliament before the NDP get anything they are looking for.

Well, the longer this takes, the more money the NDP can get in to cover its fundraising deficit.

I hear the NDP own a building in Ottawa, and recently lost their tenant? That they are still heavily leveraged from the last election?

And while these games carry on, poverty in this nation grows worse. This EI bill will do nothing for people hardest hit this recession. And they don't have months to wait.

Jack the obstructionist

Well, the games continue in Ottawa. The Liberals want to expedite the paltry EI legislation through Parliament, so that they can get to their non-confidence vote early next month with those issues settled.

The NDP has stated that they wanted to support the government for as long as it took for the bill to wind its way through the usual process. That's several months.

The theme the Liberals want to have played in the media tonight: The NDP is foot-dragging on a bill they deemed so important to be worth propping Harper up over. Why isn't Jack immediately supporting those unemployed workers he is supposed to be champion of!?

The theme everyone else wants: The Liberals are flip-flippers. They were against the government before they were for it.

I'm not taking sides here -- I don't vote Liberal -- I'm just not seeing the shine for the NDP here, and I don't think the public will either. First, Jack won't support the government out of principle, now he will, and now he's the one holding the works up.

The Liberals can be dissected just fine. I'm not denying that. The public mostly only listens to sound bites though. Yesterday Jack was 'saving the Harper government' and did not get the best coverage out of that. Now he's going to be holding up the very bill he claims to be worth saving the government over.

Layton may be forced to speed the bill through as well, else suffer more of an image problem.

And then we are back to where the Liberals want us: On the cusp of an election.

What is Layton going to use to prop up Harper next?

Understand, the NDP don't want an election. They lack the money. That places the Liberals in a stronger position because they do.

Harper is pleased to try to give treats to the NDP so as to try to bleed votes from the Liberals and to prop himself up, but if the Liberals can play the game well enough (this is Harper's manipulations in the end -- he's playing the NDP and Liberals off of each other), they will look strong, and the NDP weak. Lefty swing voters are in play here.

The Liberals can deal with their 'flip flop' by saying "it's going through anyway, we'll improve it when we get in, and why delay it like the NDP want to do?" The shoe goes on the other foot. The NDP's insistence that this bill is so important to be worth propping up Harper is contradicted by their comparative foot dragging.

You know, if the NDP had negotiated a better bill (they didn't apparently negotiate at all), then we'd have news featuring down to the wire negotiations staring Jack Layton as the savior of the unemployed. But that's not what we have. Actually, with the Bloc supporting the bill, the only leverage left is that Harper wants to avoid the optics of being propped up by the Bloc alone.

Unless the NDP gets its thinking cap on straight, and their finances quickly in order, they are going to come out of this session in bad shape. Sadly, the only leverage they have is that Harper would prefer to have the NDP's support more than the Bloc's. Working against his strategy are the millions of dollars in ads Harper recently spent (are those out of date ads still running?) demonizing anyone who works with the NDP and the Bloc, those 'socialists' and 'separatists.'

But, hey, voters are fickle. You never know what they will think of all this. Just be clear that they often fail to keep track of events, and don't pay attention for long.

I'll throw this into the works: Harper is quite inconsistent himself on huge issues (for coalitions, then against them for example), but he gets away with it. Why is all due to image control and the psychology of voters. People can argue about what is best, what is moral and what really happened, but what goes down in the electorate's mind is often barely connected to those things.

If the Liberals can be seen to be driving Parliament, getting things done, and presenting a vision, then voters may very well take to them, regardless of the machinations. The Liberals are trying to drive the polls here, not follow them.

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are more often influenced by things that seem than by things that are.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli

===
Update:

It seems likely now that Jack is going to fast track the EI bill as well. What choice does he have?

h/t Scott Tribe.

===
Update:

Nah. The bill sucks. It'll be off to committee, by the looks of things. With the NDP not really wanting to support it in this form, suddenly the Liberals can go back to opposing it if they wish, citing everyones negative comments about it. If the Liberals do support it in first reading, I'm not so sure that's the best thing.

NDP push 'Buy Canadian' law

It's a private members bill from the NDP:

NDP MP Peter Julian today introduced a private member's bill, the Made in Canada Procurement Act, which would give Canadian companies and industries priority on all government procurements and services.

This is in response to the rising tide of protectionism in the US. Harper will not, of course, back it. It is an attempt to damage Harper as not 'standing up for Canada.' It also gives the NDP something to argue over with Harper instead of appearing to be his cabin boy.

There's also a pill in it (I won't call it poison because I like it):

...the bill calls on Ottawa to purchase goods and services from countries and companies that adhere to the International Labour Organization's core labour standards relating to the rights of workers.

Is this a dig at the coming Colombian trade deal? I think it is, given the terrible violence the government perpetuates against unionists in that country. This clause would prevent Colombian products from being purchased by the Canadian government. Harper can't have this while trying to have free trade with that country.

This also places the Liberals in an awkward position. For populist reasons, they could support the bill, but as they support the coming free trade deal with Colombia... awkward! Still, they aren't the government, so they could support it. With the Bloc stepping in to support it -- they will -- the bill would actually pass.

Tactics: The Liberals should vote to pass it through first reading, but facilitate the Conservatives in delaying it in committee until an election call wipes it away.

I don't agree, but I'm just saying it's the way around the conundrum.

Mike Harris accused of political interference in OLG files

Oops, my bad. I meant to say Premier Dalton McGuinty's office.

Seems the Premier's office may have delayed the release of documents pertaining to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. scandal. This is an allegation from by fired OLG chief executive Kelly McDougald's statement of claim.

Just a note of warning: Statements of Claim are often massive works of fiction, and are not required to be true.They can -- and have -- been used to cause damage to reputations without being liable for libel. The plaintiff is simply making a filing, and the news from them is simply being reported. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives managed to perpetuate a falsehood that the Cadman tape was altered in their widely circulated Statement of Claim, for example.

Still, political interference in freedom of information requests are, sadly, all too known.

Ibbitson and Taber agree with me

A few hours after I wrote The Liberals Going Forward, arguing that the Liberals have turned tables, and, rather than having only plans for a quick election, have a longer term strategy in effect here, a Globe and Mail article appeared outlining what I wrote.

Well, they wrote it better:

This latest turn of events leaves both Mr. Harper and NDP Leader Jack Layton facing the delicate political dance of keeping each other happy without surrendering the final vestiges of party ideology.

The winner in all of this, politically, may well be Michael Ignatieff. The Liberal Leader was determined at all costs to avoid the trap that ensnared his predecessor, Stéphane Dion, who was forced repeatedly to prop up Mr. Harper's first government, rather than fight an election the Liberals correctly suspected they would not win.

When the Liberals withdrew support for the government two weeks ago, conventional wisdom held that they had made a serious mistake, as the Tories pushed ahead in the polls and a fall vote seemed increasingly ill-omened for the Official Opposition.

But with the embattled NDP now apparently resigned to keeping the government alive, the Liberals can play the role of a proper government-in-waiting, while also deriding the NDP for its failure of political courage.

Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc told reporters outside the House of Commons that the day's events proved “the NDP is for sale and for not a very high price.”

Ouch!

And this, if true, hits on a theme I'm been pushing: You have to lead opinion to win, not follow it. At least, that's part of the key to this crazy electoral mess we are in:

And Mr. Ignatieff showed no signs of backing away from his pre-election strategy when he addressed his troops at the closed-door caucus session Wednesday.

“You need to stand up to win,” he told his MPs and senators, according to an insider. His words were greeted with enthusiastic applause, though many of those MPs are quietly relieved that they won't be compelled to meet the voters this fall.

Can he follow through? Here's my issue: Why would I vote for him? I like the political strategy in use, but I want to see good policy and reliability. (Queue the dippers...)

Why golf balls?

Government's obsession with golf balls appears to continue:

Documents tabled in the House of Commons this week reveal that while Canadians were tightening their belt and bracing for the recession, many civil servants were continuing to spend thousands of dollars of taxpayers money on frills and small perks of the job.

Moreover, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

While some of the more than 100 departments and agencies that reported Monday were able to come up with figures on how much they spent on a list of 21 items submitted by New Democratic Party MP Glenn Thibeault, many others including big spending departments like Foreign Affairs, pleaded their accounting systems didn’t allow them to access that level of detail, meaning the true bills are likely higher.

While government spending on golf balls became the subject of controversy after Justice John Gomery, head of the sponsorship inquiry described them as small town cheap — a charge former Prime Minister Jean Chretien rebutted — that didn’t stop civil servants from spending more than $30,000 on golf balls and golf tees in the 2008-09 fiscal year. The biggest single spender on golf balls was the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation which said they have put a halt to the practice.

How can the NDP support this government? LOL. Just kidding.

The Liberals going forward

Harper will survive Friday. Though the Liberals will oppose the non-confidence vote, I think they prefer Harper to hang on. They want more time to frame Ignatieff as the logical replacement to Harper, and intend to do so by in part vigorously opposing the Conservatives. Certainly, this had best be what they are intending, unless they want to go back from the brink, wishy-washy all the way.

I believe that Liberal strategists see an advantage to disengaging from Parliament beyond the short term. With the shoe on the other foot now (the NDP lefty foot), swing voters who originally backed the NDP over their opposition to Harper may find themselves pondering the Liberals a little more if this reorientation of Parliament remains. Likewise, if Harper continuing to cooperate with the NDP is palatable to swing voters on the right, then there isn't anything wrong with the Liberals having done so before, is there? (Though I doubt that hardcore Conservatives who spit the word 'socialist' will vote Liberal, regardless of who Harper cooperates with.) The Liberals are trying to strongly be the default ABC party for voters.

The Liberals feel that they are ready for an election. They have changed leaders, successfully, if anti-democratically. Their fundraising is way up. The NDP, on the other hand, don't want an election. Their polls aren't the best, and Parliament's dynamics are shifting them into an unfamiliar position, with several years of anti-Harper themes threatened. Ad into it rumours of poor finances, and of losing their Quebec ad agency, and the Liberals see an NDP on the ropes.

Certainly, the NDP's apparent surrender to a paltry EI change, backs up the view that the NDP are in no position to negotiate. Harper intended as far back as last June to never give the Liberals an inch on EI, which is why the EI working group was such a sham. He's more than pleased to hand some of the credit to the NDP. In Harper's world, this makes sense as it pits the NDP against the Liberals. Indeed, the NDP is a jealous dog here, trying to make a lot out of this table scrap.

The Liberals will spend the whole time performing for the cameras: Why did the NDP roll over? We have far better reforms planned which the NDP previously liked. Why did they lower their expectations. Oh, right, they're broke. Then out rolls their better ideas, and Iggy's great Narnia vision (whatever...).

I think that the Liberals have a game plan that includes having an election as late as December, when their remaining opposition days are to come up. What we have been seeing these past weeks are the Liberals repositioning themselves as the *only* Opposition. Several months of the Liberals banging away at Harper at every turn, with the other parties trying to defend their turnabout, can really change how people see the Liberals.

Of course, if the NDP continue to prop up Harper, there won't be an election until Harper wants one, which is likely this Spring. I have trouble seeing the NDP do that, without losing all credibility. The Liberals will be sure to place the NDP on the spot during opposition days, and in the media as often as possible. At some point, the NDP will have to go as well.

Will the Liberals gain voters from this strategy? Time will tell. It certainly may turn them into the anti-Harper party, and polarization, though it can hurt you, can also help your fortunes.

Must be a liberal plot: Rahim Jaffer caught drunk driving, with cocaine

That would be the former Conservative MP who lost his seat to the NDP... in Alberta. He's married to MP Helena Guergis.

I do not know if he was going to run again, but if he was, that now leaves a bit of a void for the Conservatives to fill.

And, yes, a conservative was doing cocaine and driving drunk. I refuse to make too much of that... Nah...

Okay, I will. Because if you're going to be the Law and Order Party of Canada, you'd best not have people onboard who drive drunk and snort coke. If you are going to carry that banner, you'd best behave yourself.

I wonder what he'll think of the judge if he gets jail time? If he doesn't will he accuse the 'liberal' judge of being soft on crime?

Of course, he's not guilty until proven otherwise.

CBC has the full story.

===
Update:

Oh! Right! Jaffer ran an anti-drug ad last year, attacking the NDP:

"Jack Layton and the Ottawa NDP have publicly supported the legalization of marijuana. In fact when asked about marijuana Jack Layton called it a wonderful substance which Canadians should be free to smoke at home or in a cafe. Edmontonians understand how difficult it is to make sure our children make the right choices especially on serious issues like drug use. The Conservative Party supports drug free schools and getting tough with drug dealers who sell illegal drugs to children. Don't let our schools go up in smoke..on October 14th vote Conservative. Authorized by the official agent for Rahim Jaffer."

Chantal Hébert thinks Layton should have resigned already

Well, she may be right. I certainly think the NDP now risk losing additional ground to the Liberals, though Harper may respond to that by using the old standby, seen used by Conservative everywhere when facing two opponents to their left: prop one up over the other in order to divode the vote.

Of course going against this is the cognitive distortion of both Harper declaring the NDP as socialists not worthy of working with, and of Jack working with a party he's made a virtue of opposing.

Over the past four years, the anti-Conservative approach of the NDP to the minority Parliaments may not have allowed the party to overtake the Liberals, but it still paid off, and there are political costs associated with relinquishing it.

Standing up to the Conservatives made the iconic New Democrat victory in Outremont possible. In 2007, a significant shift of Bloc voters, driven to the NDP by Gilles Duceppe's support for the first two Tory budgets, brought Thomas Mulcair to the Commons.

The black-and-white NDP position also allowed the party to more or less hold its own in voting intentions through successive changes at the Liberal helm.

On Monday, an Ipsos Reid poll had the NDP down to 12 per cent in voting intentions. A Nanos poll published by La Presse last week also showed a downward trend in NDP fortunes. The latest Harris-Decima poll has the party trailing badly in Ontario and Quebec and well behind in British Columbia.

Those who most want the current Parliament to work are largely spoken for by the Conservatives, and many of those who bought into Layton's previous rhetoric are losing the thread of his changing narrative.

Norman Spector mentioned yesterday that the NDP may have lost their ad agency in Quebec? Also, the NDP are behind on their fundraising. If true, an election is not something the NDP are ready for, and I think it shows.

And, ah, the Liberals know all this, don't they?

Section 15 joins The Blogging Alliance of Non- Partisan Canadians

I have officially joined The Blogging Alliance of Non-Partisan Canadians.

I am no longer the member of any political party. I officially dropped my membership with Liblogs just the other day, and am greatly enjoying the sense of freedom I have to support and criticize whomever I want, without any party bigwig calling me with a complaint (that has happened, by the way).

Looking forward to it.

Hyperlinking is safer from libel claims, but not by much

The BC Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of p2pnet in its ongoing libel defense case. Michael Geist has written a bit on it this morning as well.

Basically, in discussing a lawsuit by the plaintiff against the site OpenPolitics, p2pnet had published certain hyperlinks as references. The plaintiff responded by demanding, though a libel notice, the removal of the links. p2pnet refused, and the matter went to court.

Note that under our outdated libel law, even if p2pnet had removed the links and had published an apology, a lawsuit could still progress on the matter.

No court has yet ruled on whether or not the material on the other end of the hyperlinks is libelous.

p2pnet pleaded that the hyperlinks were references, much like footnotes, and were not recommended or stated to be factual. Furthermore, the author of the p2pnet article, Jon Newton, argued that he was not familiar with the content linked to.

A summary trial was held, and the trial judge ruled that the hyperlinks in this instance did not constitute publication, and without publication there can be no libel, so he dismissed the case.

The plaintiff appealed, but the dismissal was upheld. Sadly, it was not a unanimous decision, with one judge actually arguing that it could be inferred that at least one person used the hyperlink, and that was enough to constitute publication, and that just having the link was enough to imply that the link was endorsed by the author (hey, there's only billions in commerce here, important political and social discourse... what's that in the face of someone's unproven allegation of libel?). As a result, the plaintiff has some ammunition if he decides to head to the Supreme Court of Canada with this. He must do so within the next two months.

One issue remains unresolved, identified by the appellate court. After receiving the legal notice from the plaintiff to remove the hyperlinks, the defendant did not do so. Unfortunately, the defendant may have liability from that point in time on. It all depends on whether the plaintiff pursues it, and what the trial judge has to say.

No one should interpret this as meaning you can just link to anything or ignore libel notices. If you are clearly aware of what lies on the other side of the link, a judge may be less inclined to let you go. If you at all recommend what is on the other side, you are likely to be held accountable. When someone sends you a libel notice concerning a link, you are probably going to be held responsible if you do not promptly remove it.

Libel law in Canada is still very badly broken. The reverse onus nature of it -- that is, you are actually guilty until proven innocent -- and the other plaintiff-friendly assumptions about it (damage is assumed and need not be proven, publication is easily assumed, it takes a trial to determine libel) make for long drawn-out and expensive processes, even when the material in question is quite defensible. Even after a successful defense, costs awarded do not come near to covering expenses. There is no recognition of the damage done to the defendant's reputation though public knowledge of the allegations made by the plaintiff. Also, as the common law places many restrictions upon parties discussing in public matters before a court, the restriction of the right of free expression the defendant suffers is also not recognized. This is especially problematic when the matter in dispute is of public importance, such as PM Stephen Harper using libel law to silence Opposition criticism of his actions in the Cadman affair -- a matter which remains still unclear due to a private deal with the Liberal Party to settle the lawsuit. As parties are forced to be largely silent, plaintiffs can use libel law to gain a reprieve from public scrutiny, even when guilty as hell. (Ironically, the Conservative Party is currently a defendant in a libel case, and, inter alia, is arguing that the needs of public discourse in the political realm should exempt political parties from libel claims.)

Garth Drabinsky falsely sued for libel to leverage a defendant into submission. The defendant, Alex Winch, had gone public warning of financial irregularities in Livent corp 14 years ago. He was right, as we all now know, but, buried under legal bills, he relented, and publicly apologized with ads in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and The Globe and Mail. No, Winch has no avenue of remedy today, even given Drabinsky's conviction for bilking some $500 million from investors. Winch was a whistle blower, doing everyone a service. Too bad his reasonable concerns for the public were treated as a private matter.

You can read all about that grave abuse of Canada's libel law here.

The p2pnet case is but of several still ongoing lawsuits filed by one plaintiff in relation to disputes centered around internal political matters within the Green Party of Canada (GPC) 2004-2006. I found himself dragged into court as well, over so-called remote hyperlinking, that is, having a link to a site which had a link to site to plaintiff objected to. I was administrator to the site, not the author, and I did not control what was on the other side of the links, nor did I often know. The site I administered featured a slate of candidates for the GPC council.

Quite a disincentive to volunteer politically, I can tell you.

Famous law professor Michael Geist similarly found himself as a defendant against the same plaintiff for having links on his blog. Fellow blogger Chris Tindal, in writing about the foolishness of suing a wiki for libel (the original case was over a wiki named OpenPolitics, which started out as an independent legal copy of the GPC's living platform wiki) was also sued for having hyperlinks. Both are still before the courts. The OpenPolitics case remains before the courts, but still adjourned indefinitely.

There are more, including mine, but I'm all but officially extricated.

The full court ruling is here.

Canada needs to reform its libel law, and fast. We are falling out of line with the rest of the West. Some companies have expressed fears that libel liability is far too easy to acquire in Canada, even for material published in another jurisdiction, raising the possibility that companies such as Google (another defendant) and PBworks (formerly pbwiki, another defendant) could exclude our jurisdiction from their services. It's just to onerous to police what people write, and libel is actually often quite hard to independently spot.

You are not safe out there.

Comments are closed on this post. You can guess why. Sorry.

Stormtroopers reflect on the anniversary of the Death Star's destruction

Some help with Parliament stats, please

Does anyone have or know of a reliable source for stats pertaining to party votes on non-confidence motions in the House? I'm specifically after the number of times just one other party supported the Conservatives.

You all know why, I'm sure.

Oh, I like this one

This one is effective. Though technically a negative ad, it illustrates a flip flop close to everyone's heart: A clear promise to not increase taxes, contrasted with the recent news the EI rates are goign to go up.

The ominous background music gets a little loud, and I didn't like the Harper slowdown bit, but otherwise the whole look and feel is great!

At least one more could be done on this theme. Harper ran during the last election promising to run the EI fund at an arms-length, zero-balance curve. Instead, he's going to use it to raise money to pay down the debt.



I have little doubt that Harper will come to try to claim that the raise in EI rates is going to be due to the proposed changes in benefits we are now hearing about (amazing what opposition sabre rattling accomplishes). But we all know that the rate increase is coming regardless.

Stephen Harper, Just Visiting

Wish I had time to do this kind of work. This ad using the same style Harper is using to attack Ignatieff. Despite agreeing with the subject matter, and not at all liking Harper, I still find these types of ads rub me the wrong way.

Canadian, Please

Okay. Eh. Sure.

More photos of the Tea Baggers protests in DC

This is a photo show making the rounds of the 'Tea Baggers' protest in Washngton DC the other day. Take a  good hard look at the demographic for Fox News and right-wing talk radio. And, once again, please try to find anyone who isn't white. Even just one person.

Meet Your Conservative Movement

Clement does Gilbert and Sullivan

With appreciation to The Canadian Press' photographer...

Of course, the underlying story is no parody, though they do behave like pirates more and more these days. More on that tomorrow...

The worst of white privilege on display

For your daily dose of extreme wingnutery, visit Red Tory 3.0, who is more than pleased to exploit the tea baggers' self-promotion.

Watch the video of the protesters and let me know if you actually see anyone who isn't white in them.

Enviromental legal precedent: Court orders policy rewrite

A court ruling which says that government must follow law. It's never been done before? That explains a lot...

Several environmental groups including the David Suzuki Foundation challenged the Fisheries Department in Federal Court over its management of the Nooksack dace, a small minnow that only lives in four freshwater streams near Vancouver.

Don't do it Jack II

Scott Tribe has an excellent theory: Jack is making a go of it with Harper over EI reforms only because he knows it will fail. That places Jack on top of the moral heap ('I tried making Parliament work...'), and also gives the Liberals justification to continue to seek an election, with the NDP supporting that vote.

I agree Scott may be right, and saw this possibility as well; however, I thought it more reasonable to take Jack at face value given the risks that come with making deals with someone like Harper, who is inherently unreliable and cunning.

As such, my plea of "Don't do it Jack" is reasonable. What if Jack is trying to do that, but then Harper gives him everything he asks for? Harper may do so just to put Jack on the spot. After all, the EI modifications being sought are only temporary, and cheap given how much red ink is flowing these days.

Temporarily improving  EI is not enough reason to keep Harper afloat until next year, when he will push hard for his majority, citing economic victory with a likely false good-news budget in hand. I still maintain we should have taken him down last January after camping out on the Hill protesting Harper's pseudo-fascist closing of Parliament. So, don't do it, Jack!


But if Jack doesn't get what he wants, and also pleads that 'you can't work with these guys' well, I agree. All the better.


But, I suspect Harper understands this, and will work hard to go negative on him as well in the lead up to the vote. Let's hope Jack has a counter.

(I call every other leader by their last name, except Jack. Why? I have no idea.)

I've been usurped!

There's now a Canadian feminist site named Section 15 at section15.ca. I guess I should have registered that domain a few years back.

Don't do it Jack!

Don't take the bribe!

Jack is making conciliatory noises towards Harper.

Harper averted a summer election by placating Ignatieff with a special EI committee. As we all know, Harper had the committee stonewalled, and then had his government produce partisan numbers to discredit the otherwise credible Liberal proposal.

Why, Jack, would you ever think that Harper wouldn't toy with you on this all the way to budget time, introduce a good news (read: filled with lies) budget and then call an election on his terms.

Is four years of a Conservative majority really worth it?

Think about it. You already know that you'll get more done with a Liberal minority. You should help pursue one.

Why isn't this Adscam?

Via Impolitical:

The media are picking up on the new government ads that are running, the advertising in support of the government's "action plan." The new ads differ from previous ones put out by the government this year in that there's an additional messaging angle thrown in. There is, for example, an elderly man who states at one point in the ad that we have to "stay on track," with the clear implication that there should be no election. You can watch that part here (it occurs around the 1:25 onwards point).

And here:

Tories like Transport Minister John Baird have argued an election would slow stimulus spending of infrastructure projects. The government’s new taxpayer-funded $4.1-million TV ad campaign to tout the stimulus package – purchased in August – airs commercials that include the tag line: “We can’t stop now.” 

So they are running government ads using public money spouting the same theme as their partisan electioneering. Just this current ad buy is cited at $5.6 million.

If the Conservatives were to redirect funds from the Government and use it for their purposes, we'd call it, well, Adscam. But instruct the civil service to do it, and it's... okay?

Sorry! Not enough to buy even a single seat

With an election in the air, you know that Toronto had to finally get some money from Flaherty and Baird: $600 million -- if Toronto can kick in the first $400 million of it. So that's $200 million. For potholes and buildings.

Baird and Mayor Miller even hugged. <- look at that photo. Are our politicans getting even uglier?

Conservative EI shenanigans

The Conservatives are planning to dare the opposition parties to vote against an EI ways and means motion this coming Friday. It being a money bill, defeat means we'll have an election.

Well, provided Harper doesn't run tail-between-legs to the Governor General and try to close Parliament down again.

There's a two-prong attack here by Harper. First, he's daring the parties to vote against a proposal to help workers out, which the parties have been correctly fighting for for some time. Second, he's trying to appease the NDP, in the hope they will vote with him to sustain the government, increasing the noisy crosstalk between parties. If so, not much of a coalition there, Harper.

Curiously, he's relying at least in part on the opposition parties' goodwill to support needed changes he has dragged his feet on for some time. Harper doesn't act in the interests of Canada very often, but he relies on the opposition to do so. Ironic.

It seems to take brinkmanship to get this government to actually do anything.

In related news, I remind readers that the Parliamentary Budget Office released figures yestereday showing that the Conservative government completely misrepresented the cost of the Liberal EI proposal before the EI sham committee this past summer. Dianne Finlay was waving these false figures around just the other day, while also hinting that EI recipients are lazy. Sadly, these false figures came out of our government, which is not supposed to produce such partisan numbers. Harper never has appreciated our institutions.

In even more related news, the Conservatives are planning to break an election promise and increase EI rates for reasons none other than deficit reduction. This is something they used to go on about (quite correctly) under the Liberals, and had promised during the 2008 election to place the entire administration of the fund under arms-length management based on a zero surplus curve. Nada. Their grubby hands are all over the fund now, and they will be raising rates to fight their deficit, one mostly unrelated to the need for stimulus spending.

Stimulus spending Harper claimed we never needed, which is what brought about the formation of the Coalition last year and ultimately forced him to produce a proper budget. I wonder how many jobs the stimulus has saved?

Running counter to this, the Conservatives are increasing payroll taxes with the planned EI increases in order to make up for too deeply slashing the GST. Workers will be getting more expensive in Canada during an economic recovery.

Which doesn't sound very prudent.

Also: Worth Repeating

Now that the media have had their fun asking Ignatieff to rule out a coalition after the next election, for consistency's sake, how about if those same reporters start asking Stephen Harper to similarly promise that he will not go running off to the Governor General begging to prorogue the House after a throne speech?

-- Nottawa

Our mounting debt not due to recession

It is always worth remembering that the growing mountain of Federal debt is not being caused by stimulus spending. Oh, sure, it makes for some of it, but it doesn't explain why we will have a deficit continuing to add to the debt pile until well past 2015 -- if Jim Flaherty is to be believed (um, no).

No, we have a systemic deficit because Harper slashed taxes while increasing spending before the recession came.

Fiscal imprudence.


Remember, up until he shat on democracy and prorogued Parliament, Harper claimed Canada's fundamentals were strong and that we didn't need to do any stimulus spending. He actually said to have foreseen the problem and taken steps with the ill-advised GST cuts to (he argued) stimulate the economy. Given that the cuts were in the Conservative's platform years earlier, Harper's ability to prognosticate on economic ebbs and flows should be legendary. If he's that good, he should have quit politics and made a fortune shorting stocks.

Then again, remember him recommending people buy stocks last election? Just before the market spiral?

Harper so pared back the budget surplus the Liberals left us, he actually forced us into a deficit position.

And now, the plan by the Conservatives is to increase the EI surplus starting in 2011, with all the moral hazard of penalizing employment it creates. Didn't these Conservatives used to justifiably whine against using the EI funds like this when the Liberals were in power?

Does blurry video show Bryant -cyclist collision?

I hesitate to delve into the Bryant case in any way which appears to be taking sides, but I thought this online article in NOW to be worth a check. It shows a video of what is claimed to be Bryant's car possibly hitting what appears to be a cyclist.

I'm making no claims as to it's accuracy. And the video is blurry.


Note that there's a reference to dueling Twitter accounts, one for Bryant, one for Sheppard. Both claim to be piping the truth (in 140 characters or less, no less!) .

I'd advise everyone to pull up a chair and wait for one party start papering the less well-financed of the two with libel letters. Of course, for all I know, it may be called for.

Too controversial for the US?

The US of A.Where even the most insane tinfoil hat theories and accusations aren't too controversial to throw around, a new movie about Charles Darwin can't be seen because no movie distributor can be found who wants to touch the 'controversial' topic of the father of evolutionary theory.

Why is this? Because "...according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution."

 This from a country which placed human beings on the moon.

Hidden Agenda video

Hidden AGENDA- Nominee for BEST Documentary- 2009 Toronto Film Festival



And, yes, there is a hidden agenda. Conservatives call it incrementalism, and some have long called for the charade to be dropped. Here's Gerry Nicholls' famous column concerning that: Time for Tories to drop incrementalism

And, no, this isn't really a documentary at TIFF.

Conservatives promoting Trudeau

The Conservatives are running ads (see sidebar in the link) in Quebec featuring historical outtakes of Justin Trudeau criticizing Ignatieff during the Liberal leadership debate several years ago (has it been that long?).

What I find interesting is that the Conservatives are implicitly boosting Trudeau's image, promoting him as a person whose opinions are worth listening to. It's not what they intend, but it is a by-product of the ad.

“Ignatieff, he’s a little all over the place sometimes,” Trudeau says in the spot, in a clip drawn from a 2006 TV interview.

“He says this, he says that — he contradicts himself.”

Trudeau then delivers this little parting shot: “For me, he’s not someone with... maybe he has the intelligence, but maybe not the wisdom required.”

At the time, the young Trudeau and candidate Ignatieff had crossed swords over whether Quebec should be recognized as a nation — something Ignatieff supported.

The ad’s narrator ends the spot by asking viewers: “Liberals themselves doubt (Ignatieff’s) judgment. How can we trust him?”

Ignatieff :“As compared to Mr. Harper, I can work very well with people who have opinions that differ from mine... Justin Trudeau is a man with a remarkable future in the party and I’m proud that he’s part of my team and that’s all I have to say.”

Trudeau's response: "If I accused him of lacking wisdom, when I look at those words today and all the trouble they could cause even three years later, taken out of context . . . I am prepared to admit that maybe I'm the one who lacked wisdom."

Not that these quotes will counter the ad, as they get far less exposure. But I suggest this ad will have little effect in of itself. People expect politicans to bicker amongst themselves. As there is nothing inherently scandalous about the content, there will be little to no effect.

Will this build into some sort of sucessful theme? We'll see.

Is Harper's current object to scare Ignatieff?

Just a thought: Harper's anti-coalition ads against Ignatieff are an attempt to depress Liberal poll numbers sufficiently so as to cause Ignatieff to retreat.

Otherwise, this is a case of Harper using what should actually be a campaign closer (cite: Tom Flanagan). It would have occupied the airwaves as a final week closer. Does Harper have another election closer in mind? Maybe. But I've never bought the 'Harper as master strategist' crap. He's good, but he's really just regurgitating tactics we've seen in use in the US for well over a generation now. (Likewise, the opposition has been running scared for most of the past few years, much like the Democrats did for the past generation.) I think he's trying to blow as much of his ballast now, because he knows he's going to have trouble keeping his current seat count, with Quebec so rocky, and the Liberals flush with cash, and there's little left to gain in seats in Reform country.

If Harper fails to get a majority, he's gone as leader. His best bet right now is to avoid an election altogether and hang on until Spring for a good news budget. (Is Flaherty even capable of doing that any more?)

Crap, Harper had better not try to prorogue Parliament again.

Report calls for complete reform of political debates

A proposal for an independent body to oversee political debates instead of an unaccountable consortium? Heavens!

I agree with this, except for the part excluding the Bloc from English debates. Anglophones in Quebec are more comfortable in English, and the rest of Canada is not sufficiently bilingual. We need to know what the Bloc has to say.

Conservative tricks with crime bills

Once again, Conservatives are claiming that crime bills they have refused to progress with will be thrown out if an election is called. They, of course, are blaming the Liberals for it already.

What is refreshing is that The Globe and Mail is calling the Conservatives out over it.

...it was the Tories themselves who killed crime bills last year, when it was Prime Minister Stephen Harper who called the election.

As the Conservatives ratchet up a campaign to make the Liberals and other opposition parties bear the blame for a fall election, some of the criticisms may clash with the record. Their attack on an opposition forcing the fourth election in 51/2 years may be weakened because they triggered the past two.

On Wednesday, Mr. Van Loan was complaining that an “unnecessary election” would kill 13 bills winding their way through Parliament that would end “faint-hope” parole for murderers, stiffen drug sentences and reduce house arrest.

What he didn't mention was that Mr. Harper's 2008 election call also killed bills on drug crime, youth crime and identity theft.

One of the bills Mr. Van Loan fretted over is legislation to address identity theft – a bill that was also killed when Mr. Harper called last year's election.

“This will be the third election we've had that bill before the House,” said New Democrat justice critic Joe Comartin, complaining that Canada's identity-theft laws are years behind those in Europe and the U.S.

Crime has proved to be such a no-risk political winner that the Harper government has for three years stacked up a long queue of crime bills in Parliament, sometimes letting them sit without debate, and blaming the opposition for stalling them.
Mr. Comartin said the Conservatives are transparently slowing the progress of some crime bills so that they can use it as a political weapon, mainly against the Liberals.

“Pushing the crime button has worked for them fairly effectively,” he said. “They'd love to be able to beat up on the Liberals.”

The pile-up occurs in part because the government introduces its crime bills as small amendments, forcing the justice committee to consider them one at a time, in sequence, often hearing the same witnesses repeatedly – instead of combining them in an omnibus bill.

My cynicism can't keep up.

Was the red meat speech deliberately leaked by the Conservatives?

There's a barely plausible conspiracy theory making the rounds that Harper's 'red meat' speech was actually deliberately spread by the Conservatives themselves as a plot to get more media exposure, and to overlap Flaherty's bad news economic update yesterday.

Niccolo Machiavelli himself would scratch his head over this one.

If there truly was Conservative advantage to having this speech leaked, then the Conservatives could not have counted on the Liberals to pass the information on. They could have not guaranteed getting airtime to overlap Flaherty's update.

There would be far better ways to guarantee airtime. They could have just leaked the video directly to the press themselves, or through a trusted intermediary. The media doesn't care who gives it to them. They care only about the content.

Finally, to get even more press, Harper could have done a similar speech in the open with some media watching, no sneaky complex plots needed, and have gotten considerable media coverage.

The speech is only attractive to Harper's base. Harper has effective ways to reach them already. The content of this speech is the sort of thing which alienates swing voters. I can't see the Conservatives wanting to spread it. There are good reasons why Harper does not speak like this in public.

Update:

Finally, who thinks this speech of Harper's is going to help the Conservatives in Quebec? Via Cowboys for Social Responsibility, I see that six of Harper's meager 10 seats there are in danger.

Thatcher didn't support German unification?

Margaret Thatcher told Gorbachev that she opposed German unification, according to Soviet records:

Two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev that neither Britain nor Western Europe wanted the reunification of Germany and made clear that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.

In an extraordinary frank meeting with Mr Gorbachev in Moscow in 1989 — never before fully reported — Mrs Thatcher said the destabilisation of Eastern Europe and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact were also not in the West’s interests. She noted the huge changes happening across Eastern Europe, but she insisted that the West would not push for its decommunisation. Nor would it do anything to risk the security of the Soviet Union.

Even 20 years later, her remarks are likely to cause uproar. They are all the more explosive as she admitted that what she said was quite different from the West’s public pronouncements and official Nato communiqués. She told Mr Gorbachev that he should pay no attention to these.

“We do not want a united Germany,” she said. “This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”

Well, if you think about it, redrawing borders is always a big deal, and having millions of unemployed persons suddenly slide into the Western European economy couldn't be seen to be a good thing by some. Finally, a resurgent Germany successfully integrated into the West would be just another strong competitor for Britain to deal with.

I'm not following this. I'm sure scholars will have a field day with this stuff.

Time for some relevant entertainment:

Harper's squeeze play

Following Harper's red meat speech? It's going to work like this:

1. Harper raises last year's coalition as a bogeyman
2. Harper pressures Ignatieff to publicly state that he won't be part of a coalition
3. Ignatieff will either
  a) succumb and speak out against one,
  b) waffle, or
  c) endorse a coalition

3 c) will not happen. Too bad.

3 b) is the worst. It lets the Conservatives claim whatever they want unchallenged. This won't happen. Even this current batch of  Liberals knows better.

3 a) is most likely. This matches Liberal hubris and Ignatieff ambition.

So, no coalition. Now, if the Conservatives lose the election, but we don't have a Liberal majority, and if Ignatieff has done anything except endorse a coalition, the Conservatives will rinse and repeat the performance of last year, declaring a coalition undemocratic as it was not declared during the election. Out with the red meat.

It will get nasty.

If no coalition is formed, but the Liberals form a minority government, the Conservatives will repeatedly make the coalition claim anyway.


Keep in mind this is a PM who had no qualms about abruptly proroguing Parliament. Do you not think he will fight tooth and nail with the Governor General and in our courts and in the streets over this issue? Harper has had no qualms about creating a unity crisis before. He'll do it now.

The only safe option is to form a coalition, one willing to let some ridings slide to former opponents in the name of increasing the non-Conservative seat count.

This won't happen, of course. And we'll be one step closer to a crisis because of it.

Ironically, Harper's speech making the rounds today -- courtesy of the Liberals -- is serving Harper's squeeze play by promoting the 'coalition as a bogeyman' theme.

I am looking for signs of strategic intelligence from the Liberals here. Do they have a good response? Even better, do they have a line of attack? We're already into a campaign. If the Liberals can't get an upper hand now, that'll tell us a lot of how this is all going to go down.

Conservatives claim EI makes people lazy?

Does Human Resources Minister Diane Finley think people on EI are lazy? Or that people needing retraining for losing their jobs actually have any EI left?

...Finley says it would be "irresponsible" to ease employment insurance rules to help tens of thousands of laid-off workers who cannot qualify for EI payments.

"It would be exceptionally expensive, and it would be irresponsible because we had – going into this recession, unlike previous recessions – a shortage of skills and labour. Our focus is on helping people get back to work," she said.

Liberal human resources critic Mike Savage (Dartmouth-Cole Harbour) says the underlying Conservative message is that the government believes more lenient EI eligibility would encourage Canadians to collect handouts rather than hunt for employment.

Asked about that, Finley said, easing EI qualifications "would not help people get back to work."

So, the Conservatives want to -- supposedly -- only help those with a very long work history in positions identified as being in decline who are recently out of work? Of course, Finley doesn't seem to realize that a lot of those people have been out of work now for some time, can't get a meaningful job and no longer have any EI. They will never qualify for whatever program Finley will propose.


Of course, retraining is what part of the EI fund is used for already. Every Federal government we've had recently has argued this as part of its rationalization for keeping a surplus in the EI fund.

Did you know -- true story -- that there's some neoclassical economists who actually believe that entire recessions are caused by workers deciding that they don't want to work quite so hard? I kid you not. This is stuff right out of the so-called Chicago School of economics.

Hey, aren't Harper and his gang adherents to that school?

Next up, the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer (one of my favourite people) will be releasing stats tomorrow showing that the Conservatives have completely overestimated the costs of the Liberal's EI proposal. I believe he will argue it's $1.2 billion versus the Conservatives inflated $4 billion estimate. What is 'curious' about this is that the Conservatives claimed their estimate was unbiased and produced by civil servants. It now appears that the civil service may well be getting politicized.

It's a shame the Budget Officer is releasing the numbers on a Friday. New news released on Fridays almost always dies then and there as journalists rush home, and there's little continuity over the weekend.

The EI fight continues. I'd advise peopel to watch how this plays out in the next week or two. If the opposition parties can't get traction on this, it'll be an indication of how the election will go.

Why Democracy Watch should have averted its gaze

“What we have is a situation where the prime minister is able to choose the date of the election, not based necessarily on the best interests of the country but on the best interests of his or her political party.  I believe Bill C-16 would address those concerns. . . . "Instead of the Prime Minister and a small group of advisers being the only ones who know when the country will move into the next general election, when this bill is passed, all Canadians will have that knowledge, which makes it fair. . . . This Prime Minister will live by the law and spirit of this particular piece of legislation.  He and this government are driving this democratic reform. ”

(Hon. Rob Nicholson (then-Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform), speaking in the House of Commons on September 18, 2006 about the fixed election date measures in Bill C-16, which became law on May 3, 2007)

Last year, Harper walked up to the Governor General, and asked for Parliament to be dissolved. Parliament wasn't even in session. No non-confidence vote had been held.

Harper got his wish, and we found ourselves in a general election. $300 million later, it ended with much the same result it started with.

Was the election legal? Strange as it may seem, it is convention that the Governor General agree to any such request by the Prime Minister, even without a non-confidence vote. Conventions are considered constitutional, though they are not codified; however, Harper, with much fanfare, had previously passed though Parliament a fixed-term election statute forbidding the calling of an election prior to the end of a term unless a non-confidence vote occurred.

The problem is, 'convention' is a constitutional issue, and if Harper followed convention, than an Act of Parliament cannot override it. The problem likely isn't that the law was broken, the problem likely is that Parliament passed an unconstitutional law. An Act of Parliament cannot amend the powers of the Head of State. It is likewise unlikely that the convention Harper used to approach the Governor General can be amended either.

Yes, of course Harper knew this when he crafted the fixed term election law.

Democracy Watch has taken the matter to Federal court and has argued for Harper's election call to be found illegal. Win or lose, Democracy Watch has an interesting angle to play:

"If Democracy Watch wins, the Federal Court will rule that Prime Minister Harper is a dishonest lawbreaker because he gave false reasons for calling the snap federal election last September in violation of his own fixed-election-date law.  If Democracy Watch loses, the court will rule that Prime Minister Harper is a dishonest promise-breaker because he failed to keep his 2006 election promise to pass a law fixing election dates," said  Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch

Impressive as this is, I expect failure. I suspect the judge will rule in the government's favour for reasons stated above, and for all the posturing of Democracy Watch, Harper's rebuttal -- if he even bothers -- will be to say "The court agreed with me, of course." Harper will not bother to explain why the law he pushed was ineffective. He'll ignore that, and will simply press that the courts sided with him (those damn liberal judges...). Forevermore, those will be Harper's words, long after Democracy Watch's PR on this issue quickly fades.

I think it likely that Democracy Watch will fail, and we'll lose another piece in our arsenal: the plausible, though not that defensible, claim that Harper violated the law when he called the 2008 election.

Hopefully, the Judge rules against Harper. But I think it would have been better if this had stayed out of the courts.

h/t to Five of Five

Ok, Scott, you win

I've thought it over, and will post at times when I can't help myself but to do so. With an election coming, it is inevitable.

I suppose the world can do something with my occasionally bright insights.

I already have one about to spill out...

Follow me on Facebook

If you want to follow anything that I have to say -- and I do have much to say -- please befriend me on Facebook. I no longer blog. I prefer non-verbose FB postings.

You can directly visit my Facebook profile by clicking on the FB badge on the right sidebar.

And if you really have any worth saying, it's usually better to wiki it instead. I've seen some bloggers do great work, and then let it pour all down the memory hole.