Ignatieff's Big Mistake

Michael Ignatieff left the Quebec gathering of Liberals on the weekend feeling good. His supporters had shouted down the other leading candidates for the leadership.His Quebec base of support seemed strong. But that gathering may have sown the seeds of Ignatieff's ultimate downfall.Mr. Ignatieff and his organization made their mark by persuading the provincial wing to back his notion to recognize Quebec as a nation.The motion to recognize Quebec as a nation passed by a two-thirds majority. Ignatieff staked out his position: "I will speak for all those Quebeckers who say, 'Quebec is my nation, but Canada is my country,' " Ignatieff said in his opening statement.

This may help Ignatieff win the Liberal leadership on the grounds that he is best positioned to win support in Quebec. But when he gets to the broader arena of a federal election Ignatieff may find that he has won the battle only to lose the war. There is no willingness in English Canada to re-open the Constitution to give Quebec special status as a nation within the country, Canada. But that is what Ignatieff has promised. He will finding it exceedingly difficult to persuade Canadians that this file should be re-opened.And that, coupled with his foreign policy gaffes, will cost him the election should he win the leadership.

Harper's fatal error

On October 6th I speculated that the next government would be another minority government. Since then we've had new polls showing the leaderless Liberals tied with the Conservatives. And this week Harper's Conservatives have sealed their fate with middle-of-the-road Canadians like myself who voted Conservative last time. The charade purporting to be an environmental plan will alienate all Canadians concerned about environmental issue. Targets for 2050! Who can take this malarky seriously?

Harper cannot secure a majority or even maintain a minority by only appealing to hardcore rightwingers and yet his every action now seems to be aimed at solidifying his core base and and to hell with the rest. That way lies electoral defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

Kudos to Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe who dismissed the Conservative environmental plan as “made in Alberta, written in Washington.”

The next election will give us another minority government

You heard it here first. The next federal election will produce another minority government.

Chantal Hebert has an excellent article in today's Star, arguing that the Bloc is likely etching for a spring election. She sets out the following reasons:

In a reversal of his earlier concern that another election would see the Conservatives soar in Quebec, Gilles Duceppe is now

"more concerned that a backlash against Conservative policies will send his supporters straight into the embrace of the next Liberal leader.

"This fall, Michael Ignatieff, Stéphane Dion and Bob Rae all have more presence in Quebec than Harper's ministers. None of the Quebec members of the Conservative cabinet has emerged as a strong voice. On the contrary, there are reasons to question their influence."

"If they had any of the latter, they would have stopped the minority government from proceeding with some of the cuts announced last week. If the Conservatives wanted a lot of bang for the relatively few bucks saved in the process, they certainly achieved their purpose. In Quebec, that bang was overwhelmingly negative."

"A government that had solid intelligence on Quebec would have known that literacy has been a big deal in the province since Jacques Demers, the last coach that brought the Stanley Cup to the Montreal Canadiens, wrote a book about life without basic reading and writing skills."

"It would have thought long and hard before eliminating the federal Courts Challenge Program that has allowed francophone minorities across Canada to assert their constitutional rights."

"Not so long ago, the program financed an Ontario legal battle to keep Montfort, the only French-language university hospital west of Quebec, open. It has not escaped attention in Quebec that the federal ministers who killed the program last week used to be part of the Ontario government that tried and failed to close down Montfort."

In other words Stephen Harper has screwed up his plans to build a majority in Quebec. According to Hebert's analysis, he will be extremely fortunate to hold the Quebec seats he currently has.

Meanwhile the Liberals continue their dance in search of a new leader. Will the leading candidate Michael Ignatieff (30% of elected delegates) make it to leader on the final ballot? Or will Rae or one of Dion or Kennedy break through to take the prize? Who knows?

Whichever of these gentlemen secures the Liberal crown, will he be able to beat back the Conservative hordes and snatch victory from the man who looks every inch a Prime minister and already acts as though he has a majority. Possible, but the Liberals are extremely unlikely to secure a majority.

So, Stephen Harper, by acting decisively and in accordance with his convictions, is eroding his chances of a majority. The Liberals, likely to choose either an untested academic who has spent most of his life outside Canada or the jaded former NDP Premier of Ontario, are unlikely to bounce back from Opposition status to a majority. Hence, my conclusion that another minority is amost inevitable. The colour of that minority government is another question. That will depend on what issues arise to trip up Harper between now the election.

Failure of Tsunami Reconstruction

18 months after the tsunami of 2004 in Southeast Asia triggered the biggest humanitarian response in history, recriminations are rife about failed reconstruction efforts. Canadians and the Canadian government gave generously to aid victims of the disaster. A new report indicates that much of that aid may have been wasted.Aid agencies are being accused of "planning poorly, raising unrealistic expectations and simply being incompetent".

According to the Associated Press, brand-new homes infested with termites are being torn down in Indonesia while families in India were put into shelters deemed of "poor quality" and "uninhabitable" because of the heat. Thousands of boats donated to fishermen in Indonesia and Sri Lanka sit idle because they are unseaworthy or too small. Only 23 percent of the $10.4 billion in disaster aid to the worst hit countries, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, has been spent, according to the United Nations, because so much of it is earmarked for long-term construction projects.

As the NGOs shifted to reconstruction, excessive amounts of money meant that spending decisions were often driven by "politics and funds, not assessment and needs," according to the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition or TEC, an independent body that includes over 40 humanitarian agencies and donors.

In a July report, TEC called the aid effort "a missed opportunity." It said there were too many inexperienced NGOs working in disaster zones, while seasoned agencies jumped into areas they knew nothing about -- Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium built boats while Save the Children constructed houses.

The report also accused NGOs of leaving many survivors ignorant about their plans or failing to deliver promised aid. "A combination of arrogance and ignorance characterized how much of the aid community misled people," it said.

More on the Arar affair

Haroon Siddiqui has an excellent article in today's Star in which he sets out clearly what needs to be done in response to the O'Connor report. He suggests:

O'Connor, still on the job, should appeal Ottawa's decision to censor parts of his report. Given the government's low credibility and its conflict of interest, let the courts decide what should or should not be held back in the name of national security.

RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli should, or be made to, resign, as suggested even by Shirley Heafey, former RCMP complaints commissioner.

Ottawa ought to discipline those in the RCMP and at the Canadian embassy in Damascus who not only kept the government in the dark about the Arar case but also actively misled it and undermined its diplomatic efforts to free him. Such tactics belong in a banana republic, not a mature democracy.

Discipline those officials who leaked false information to malign Arar as one way to cover up their own misdeeds. (The Ottawa Citizen and CTV, which carried stories from that smear campaign, may want to conduct internal investigations and share the results with the public, the way The New York Times did for having relied in 2003 on official leaks about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq).

Get the RCMP out of the business of investigating national security. That's the job of the spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, created in 1985 after RCMP abuses in Quebec. Let CSIS gather and analyze intelligence and let the Mounties act on it through criminal investigations. Such specialization ensures professionalism, on the one hand, and better protection for law-abiding citizens, on the other.

Establish rules on how a citizen is put on a watch list.

Develop a protocol on how to better protect Canadians abroad. In Arar's case, our embassy in Damascus acted more as an apologist for the RCMP and CSIS, in cahoots with Syrian intelligence, than as a protector of a Canadian citizen in dire need of help.

Apologize to Arar, compensate him, give him a government job or help him find one, as O'Connor suggests. Honour his indefatigable wife, Monia Mazigh, for not only helping set him free but also forcing us all to look in the mirror.

I agree totally with his suggestions. In particular , as I mentioned last night, media like the Ottawa Citizen and Ms O'Neill, who allowed themselves to be used as tools for those in the RCMP who wished to smear Arar, should apologize for their role in this affair and take steps to ensure this does not happen again.

Zaccardelli should resign or be fired

In light of Justice O'Connor's report, which concluded that the RCMP passed along erroneous and damaging intelligence to the U.S. about Maher Arar,RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli should resign or be fired. Justice O'Connor found that it is very likely that the RCMP's erroneous intelligence about Mr. Arar led to his apprehension by the U.S. and deportation to Syria where he was tortured.

When Mr. Arar was eventually released the RCMP tried to hide the extent of its early involvement in the Arar case from senior federal officials, in order to head off a judicial inquiry. Certain RCMP officials leaked misleading information about Mr. Arar to the media to paint him in a bad light and cast doubt upon his story, thereby compounding their original bungling. Reporters like Juliet O'Neil of the Ottawa Citizen fell for the bait.

It is now clear that Mr.Arar has suffered greatly as a result of the RCMP's inappropriate provision of inaccurate allegations to the U.S. While Commissioner Zaccardelli may not have been personally involved in the original cock-up or the subsequent cover-up, nonetheless he is accountable for the actions of his employees and for not clearing up the mess once it became clear what they had done. Therefore, he should do the honourable thing and resign. If not, the government should fire him. And they should ensure that those who actually participated in the transmission of false information to the U.S. and subsequently covered it up are brought to justice.

In a democracy the police are not above the law.

Is B.C. violating Canada Health Act?

According to the Globe and Mail, patients willing to pay up to $1,400 to a private medical broker have been able to receive MRIs within days at one of British Columbia's largest public hospitals, while those sticking with the public health-care system languish for months on long waiting lists:

Heidi Bozek, who suffers from painful tumours on her knees and right hand, said this week that she paid the money to Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., after learning she faced a four-month wait for a publicly funded MRI.

A few days later, much to her surprise, she received a daytime MRI session lasting three hours at busy St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Vancouver.

"I couldn't quite understand how a public facility could be contracted out to a private organization for me to have my MRI," Ms. Bozek told reporters, adding that she had expected to be referred to a private clinic.

How does this square with the provisions of the Canada Health Act? Is B.C. in violation for allowing public facilities to be used for private gain? And what about the newly elected President of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Brian day, who is committed to advancing two-tier for-profit health care in Canada?

Afghanistan: Harper's Achilles Heel?

On July 20 I suggested that Afhanistan might well cost Harper his desired majority. In the weeks since then, as the body count has mounted, polls are increasingly confirming the majority of Canadians are uncomfortable with Canada's current involvement in full-scale battle in Afghan. Indeed, foreign policy appears to be the Achilles'Heel of Harper's plans to secure a majority.

The vaunted five priorities have been long forgotten by many Canadians. If an election were held today, as Chantal Hebert observed in the Star, Afghanistan would likely be the central issue and would deny Harper his majority. Indeed the potential loss of seats in Quebec and perhaps elsewhere might well cost him the government.

As Hebert observed:

While opposition to the deployment is highest in Quebec, unease over the gist of Conservative foreign policy is running rampant across the country.

The scenario of a federal election turning into a national referendum on the Afghan mission is one that the government's decision to rush a parliamentary vote on a two-year extension of the deployment last spring was supposed to pre-empt.

Back then, the political rationale for the early vote was to remove the issue from the radar of the next election by pushing the deadline for reconsidering Canada's commitment to Afghanistan off to 2009.

In hindsight, it is increasingly apparent the Prime Minister has outsmarted himself.

By committing quickly to an extension, Stephen Harper has foreclosed on the option to bring the troops home in February as had originally been planned, leaving him with no political exit strategy from the Afghan file.

Why are we in Afghanistan?

As Canadians are coping with the deaths and injury of further Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan,a new story out of there leads one to wonder: what in the h--- are we doing there anyway? Yesterday Afghanistan ordered hundreds of South Korean Christians to leave the country, accusing them of seeking to undermine its Islamic culture. As reported in the Star, the accusations come amid increasing intolerance and violence against foreign troops in Afghanistan, a crackdown in the capital on drinking and prostitution linked to foreign influences, and the recent announcement of a plan to reinstate the vice and virtues ministry, which enforced its harsh version of Islamic morality under the ousted Taliban regime. So I ask: are Canadian troops dying to prop up another version of the Taliban? Is it time to bring them home and force George Bush to deliver on his promise of democratic change?

Will Iraq split apart?

According to a confidential report,Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq,William Patey, warned the country is sliding toward civil war and is likely to divide eventually along ethnic lines. Civil war and a de facto division of Iraq among the ethnic factions seem likely. So much for Bush's predictions of a seamless transition to democracy!

With all the focus on the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict in recent in recent weeks, Iraq has been all but forgotten by the media. Meanwhile the carnage and drift to civil war continues.

Ignatieff re Middle East

Michael Ignatieff emerged from solitude today and pronounced on the Middle East conflict in an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail. He criticized the Harper government's response to the Middle East crisis as "inadequate" and called for an immediate ceasefire. In doing so he joined other Liberal leadership candidates who had already called for a ceasefire.

Ignatieff's three-week silence is puzzling. This is not academe where you can take weeks or years to formulate your position. This is the real world in all its horror which calls for real leadership. While Harper's prompt support of Israel may yet prove unwise, at least the man is decisive. Which is more than we can say about Ignatieff's belated comments on a critical issue of the day.

The Middle East situation is perplexing. It has bedevilled world leaders for the past 60 years. A two-state solution is necessary but it is not obvious how we can achieve it given the irreconciable positions of the protaganists.

Patronage alive and well in Conservative govt

The Conservative government of Stephen Harper is handling out a lucrative sole source contract to former Conservative cabinet minister Harvie Andre. Details of the proposed contract can be found on the government's contracting website www.merx.com
Mr. Andre is being hired for a period of 6-8 months for a sum somewhere between $250,000-$500,0000 to serve as Chief Federal Negotiator to manage, direct and conduct negotiations with the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Aboriginal Summit to transfer DIAND’s land and resource management responsibilities in the Northwest Territories (NWT) to the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT).The rationale for the sole sourcing of the contract states that:
"The Honourable Harvie Andre, as a former Member of Parliament for 21 years and with portfolios including Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion, Minister of State for Science and Technology, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Associate Minister of Defence and Minister Responsible for the Post Office, has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to resolve highly sensitive issues and conclude complex negotiations which are beneficial to the parties specifically and to Canadians generally....The Honourable Harvie Andre is, therefore, considered uniquely capable of performing the proposed contract work."

It seems that patronage is alive and well in the Harper government, notwithstanding promises to clean up the system.

Should obscene oil company profits be more heavily taxed?

Exxon Mobil reported a 36 percent gain in second-quarter earnings yesterday, bolstered by robust oil and gas prices. When you drive up to the pump to fill up your car's gas tank, do you stop to ponder whether you are being gouged by corporate greed? Oil company profits indicate that indeed is the case. If there is no rational way to better regulate prices to avoid such ripoffs, should governments not be intervening through taxation of these obscene profits to return some of the excess to taxpayers?

Canadians dying to prop up reactionary Afghan regime

The Taliban were notorious for their suppression of individual freedoms and rule by religious clerics. Has the West merely replaced one reactionary regime with another? Afghan President Hamid Karzai has apparently approved a request by religious clerics to reinstate the notorious vice-and-virtue department despite protests from human-rights groups and female politicians. Does this mark a return to the ways of the Taliban? Are Western, including Canadian soldiers', lives being sacrificed to prop up a regime which in several respects may be as reactionary as the one it replaced? Should Canadian troops be in Afghanistan given these disturbing developments?

Canada ranks second in Afghan casualities

With the latest two casualties Canada now ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of coalition deaths by nationality.

Canadians want to bring troops home from Afghanistan

As a follow-up to yesterday's post I was interested in today's online Globe and Mail poll. Results are below:

The Globe and Mail recently surveyed Canadians on our military's mission in Afghanistan, the results suggest most are not in favour of mission. What do you think the government should do:

Bring Canadian troops home now
(58%) 17855 votes
Remain in Afghanistan for a limited time, perhaps two years or more
(15%) 4524 votes
Stay as long as it takes to stabilize the country
(27%) 8234 votes
Total votes: 30613

Harper majority slipping away

There are signs that the anticipated Harper majority in the next election is slipping away:

1. The inept manner in which the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon has been handled is a public relations disaster for the government. Today the Globe reported that this debacle was being attributed to micromanagement by PMO causing delays of several days in mounting the evacuation.

2. Also today we have the results of a new poll which indicates that support for the Afghan mission is falling sharply.Almost half of voters surveyed said they want the Prime Minister to immediately withdraw troops from Afghanistan. If the situation worsens there in the coming months, the electoral prospects for the Conservatives could diminish significantly.

The best thing the Conservatives have going for them is the leaderless Liberals, coupled with the fact that the perceived front runner Michael Ignatieff is out on the same foreign policy limb as Harper.

Stay tuned.

BigPharma Misuses Petitions to FDA to delay generics

According to a report in the Washington Post BigPharma companies are abusing petition process to FDA to delay generics and hence keep drug prices artificially high:

"A procedure designed to alert the Food and Drug Administration to scientific and safety issues is getting a hard look from members of Congress, who say they are concerned that it may be getting subverted by the brand-name drug industry.

"Some at the FDA, as well as leaders in the generic drug industry, complain that "citizen petitions" -- requests for agency action that any individual, group or company can file -- are being misused by brand-name drugmakers to stave off generic competition.

"The simple act of filing a petition, they say, triggers another round of time-consuming and often redundant reviews of the generics by the FDA, which can take months or years. In the process, consumers continue to pay millions of dollars more for the brand-name drugs."

Bush:'planted fake news stories on TV'

The U.K.Independent reports that George Bush is being accused of planting fake news stories on TV. According to the Independent,federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

A report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."

Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. "They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like," she said.

The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer's product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe'en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.

Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world's largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. "We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video," said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. "In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure."

The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. "Essentially it's corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news," he said. "The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told."

British MP says assassination of Blair 'morally justified'

British MP George Galloway claims that an assassination try on Blair would be 'morally justified." Galloway reportedly said that an attack on Tony Blair that caused no other casualties would be a justifiable response to Britain's support for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"It would be entirely logical and explicable -- and morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did," the monthly GQ magazine quoted Mr. Galloway as saying.

Backpedalling later, Galloway stated:"But I've made my position clear. I would not support anyone seeking to assassinate the prime minister," he said.

While there are many who oppose the Iraq initiative by Bush and Blair, clearly Galloway's comments go far beyond the realm of reasonable discourse.