Tories spending like drunken sailors

What happened to all this fiscal discipline that Stephen Harper promised us? The http://www.thestar.com/article/183221 reports that the Conservatives are on a spending spree with taxpayers' money, doling out about $10 billion in the past three months. Harper's surprise $1.5 billion announcement in Quebec last week for a national EcoTrust program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants is new money, money Harper, on the eve of an expected Quebec election, said he would draw from the 2006-07 year-end surplus. When the Liberals were in power the Conservatives criticized such year-end spending as "March madness." The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the government has failed to keep its promises on two counts: it is not reining in spending growth, and it is "spending down the surplus" just as the Liberals used to do.Apparently, program spending is growing at a rate of around 7.8 per cent, far in excess of the 3 % level the Conservatives promised in the election. More hypocrisy!

Is Hillier a public servant or a Conservative politician?

General Rick Hillier has described the decade of Liberal rule as the military's 'decade of darkness'. This is not the first time General Hillier has stumbled into the political domain. The fact that the Conservatives are giving the military all the toys they want doesn't justify Hillier's crossing of the line. The miltary was not the only public service to suffer cutbacks while the Liberals fought to cut the deficit and bring public expenditures under control. I worked in a government department where we had to implement a one-third reduction in staff and a substantial reduction in service.

General Hillier should stop his bootlicking of Stephen Harper and get on with his real job. If not, quit and run for the Conservatives in the next election. The last thing we need is a politicized military force in this country.

An Apology to Goodale

Last winter during the election campaign Ralph Goodale and the Liberals came under great attack when the RCMP Commissioner revealed that the RCMP had launched an investigation into possible leaks of a planned announcement concerning income trusts. Now the RCMP has exxonerated Goodale and the Liberals of any wrong-doing in this matter. Meanwhile the Conservatives are running ads in Quebec perpetrating the allegation that Goodale did something wrong. Goodale is owed an apology. I, like others, was guilty of prejudging Goodale and the Liberals on this matter while blogging on the election. I offer Mr. Goodale my modest apology. Stephen Harper should have the decency to apologize and to pull the ad now playing in Quebec.

Harper wants more law-and-order judges

PM Harper today admitted that he wants more law-and-order judges. That is why he is stacking the judicial appointee committes with Tory partisans. This is the guy who promised to clean up government.Imagine the right-wing agenda he would impose if Canadians fooolishly gave him a majority!

Patronage Thrives under Conservatives

Patronage is alive and well under the Harper Conservatives. Just a couple of weeks ago the Conservatives appointed former NL Finance Minister Loyola Sullivan as Ambassador of Fisheries Conservation, a position vacant since the mid-90s and formerly filled by foreign affairs officials with knowledge of fisheries matters.

The Globe and Mail> reports that the Conservative government has loaded the committees that determine who can become a judge, selecting a series of Tories including former politicians, aides to ministers, riding association officials and defeated candidates. Half -- at least 16 out of 33 -- of the people chosen by the federal justice minister as his nominees are conservative partisans.

This stinks to high heaven. The Cons intend to pack the courts with right-wing ideologues! And to think I voted for this bunch last January because they promised change. Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me! Bring on the election soon, please.

Exxon's obscene profits

Exxon,the world's largest publicly owned oil company, announced the largest corporate profit ever, a near $40-billion (U.S.) windfall in 2006.This has sparked an angry backlash, since the announcement was made on the eve of the IPCC report blaming the use of fossil fuels for wreaking devastation on the planet.

Apparently Exxon has been using some of those obscene profits to fund initiatives to create skepticism about the impact of climate change and opposition to policies that would reduce the use of gasoline and other oil products.

Good corporate citizen,eh?

Tory ads show fear of Dion

The cat is out of the bag. The Conservative party intends to run TV attack ads against new Liberal leader Stephane Dion and will reveal tomorrow several ads attacking Dion's environmental credentials. Environment Minister John Baird, the crackie from Ottawa/Nepean, has been quoted as saying Dion didn't get it done in 10 years, referring to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Last I heard Dion was environment minister for only 18 months and was widely praised by environmentalists, especially for his leadership at the UN Climate Change summit in Montreal in December 2005.

Which leads to the question: why are the Tories running negative attack ads this early? Could it be that they are running scared of Dion's environmental credentials and reputation for personal integrity? Stalled in the polls, having made no gains in a year, do they think that the only way to maintain a minority is to try to tar and feather Dion? The last time the Tories tried that under Kim Campbell by smearing Chretien, they set the stage for Chretien's three successsive victories.

Harper facing non-confidence over Afghanistan

The opposition parties are threatening to pull the plug on the Tory minority government over its handling of the mission in Afghanistan.This could put Dion between "a rock and a hard place" or in the sweet spot, depending on how he plays it. If the Liberals united behind him to vote with the NDP to back the BQ motion, then Harper would be in a hell of a fight on the last issue he would want to fight an election on, foreign policy.Bring on the election!

Liberals make gains under Dion

Stephen Harper and his aides are no doubt now second-guessing their initial reaction to the selection of Stephane Dion as Liberal leader. Like the pundits they underestimated Dion's geeky manner. The author of the Clarity Act is now enjoying the first laugh as several polls put the Liberals well into the lead for the first time in many moons.

An EKOS Research Associates poll indicated the Liberals would be in striking distance of a majority government if an election were held now.

Here's how support broke down:

Liberals: 40.1 per cent
Conservatives: 33.5 per cent
NDP: 10.2 per cent
Bloc Quebecois: 8.2 per cent
Green Party: 7.6 per cent
EKOS conducted the polling on Dec. 5 and 6. Liberal leadership convention delegates selected Stephane Dion to be their party's leader on Dec. 2. This result showed the highest Liberal support in an EKOS poll since Jean Chretien stepped down as prime minister and party leader three years ago.

On Dec. 3, a Strategic Counsel poll conducted for CTV and The Globe and Mail showed the Liberals also well in the lead:

Liberals: 37 per cent
Conservatives: 31 per cent
NDP: 14 per cent
Bloc Quebecois: 11 per cent
Green Party: 7 per cent

Sure there is a honeymoon effect at work here. But the pundits miscalculated the reaction to Dion in Quebec and Ontario. Stephen Harper may not be so quick to rush into a spring election as originally anticipated by the media gurus.

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.