The "Vast and Immane, Interwoven, Interacting, Multivariate, Multinational Dominion of Dollars"

Manitoba Métis Federation, Inc. (MMF)

NEWS BULLETIN! Co-Defendant Pieuk caves in - offers MMF deal they can't refuse!

by Clare L. Pieuk

As originally posted on: CyberSmokeBlog.blogspot.com

May 16, 2006

Tansi/Good Day Folks:

Word has reached me David Chartrand is desperately looking for a way to end this turkey of a defamation lawsuit which has become an MMF public relations nightmare in the midst of an election! Therefore, to be Big about it, I've decided to help The President, his fellow Plaintiffs and Counsel Murray Norman Trachtenberg by making the following generous Offer To Settle which was surface mailed today.

Sincerely,

Clare L. Pieuk

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

File No. CI 05-01-41955

THE QUEEN’S BENCH

Winnipeg Centre

(Expedited Action – Rule 20A)

BETWEEN:

MANITOBA METIS FEDERATION INC., ANITA CAMPBELL, DAVID CHARTRAND, ELBERT CHARTRAND, RITA CULLEN, DARREL DESLAURIERS, JEAN DESROSIERS, WILLIAM FLETT, JOHN FLEURY, LAURA HYRICH, JULYDA LAGIMODIERE, JOYCE LANAGAN, LEAH LAPLANTE, JUDY MAYER, ROSEMARIE McPHERSON, CLAIRE RIDDLE and DENISE THOMAS

Plaintiffs

- and -

TERRY BELHUMEUR, CLARE L. PIEUK and VANESSA EVERTON

Defendants

__________________________________________________

OFFER TO SETTLE
__________________________________________________

CLARE L. PIEUK

2-371 Des Meurons Street

Winnipeg, Manitoba

R2H 2N6

OFFER TO SETTLE – WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Defendant Clare L. Pieuk offers to settle this action on the following terms and conditions:

1. Co-Defendant Pieuk shall pay to each Plaintiff the amount of $1.00 Canadian (one Loonie) with the exception of Mr. David N. Chartrand who will receive $2.00 Canadian (one Toonie) in recognition of his position as President, Manitoba Metis Federation. Such payment shall be by way of certified cheque or bank draft or lawyer’s trust cheque and shall be received by the Plaintiffs’ Counsel within 7 days of the acceptance of this Offer and in any event, no later than 12:01 on Friday May 26, 2006.

2. The Co-Defendant will provide an original signed letter of apology to Counsel for the Plaintiffs at the time the amount of $18.00 is paid.

3. The following apology/retraction letter will be posted on http://www.cybersmokeblog.blogspot.com for ten (10) calendar days:

There has been an exchange of opinions expressed by David Chartrand and his supporters, on one hand, and myself (and others) on the other in relation to Metis hunting rights and the role of the MMF. Some of these views have been expressed publicly through a number of media – websites, newspapers and public gatherings and meetings. A number of Metis, through various means, including letters to your website have expressed a level of discomfort with all of the "arguing" going on. Some of these opinions, on both sides, have bordered close to being personal attacks and possibly dafamatory – probably because both sides speak about issues close to their hearts and what they have been fighting for a longtime.

As some point there needs to be a re-examination of the process. I won’t repeat some of the comments made about me but I believe that some of them are undeserved and go beyond what is appropriate. As for my contributions – sure I disagree with and oppose the position of the MMF on how to further our people’s hunting, fishing, harvesting and other Section 35 constitutional rights. That is my right as an MMF member. If I do not agree with my politicians – I can express that along with my reasons. Similarly, the MMF and its President can be critical of any Metis Member or any lawyer’s opinion on how these issues should be handled.

For my part, I would like to say for the record that while I have my own personal views of handling these complicated issues arising from court decisions on harvesting rights, I respect our democratic system and rules for governance. I also respect our right to free speech and the fact that we can push through advocacy and through the courts if we feel this is the better way to make our points.

Once elected, the Board of Directors and the President have the mandate to act in the manner they believe is in the best interests of the Metis in Manitoba. Judging by the diverse comments on different websites, it is clear there are vast differences of opinion on what this may be. Some people have expressed to me the belief that my comments go too far. I want to make it clear that while I may have used strong language to make some of my points, I do not intend to suggest or insinuate that the MMF Inc. or its President are doing anything illegal or malicious. I also do not intend to cast any personal attacks about any person’s personal abilities, characteristics or their personal lives. I agree with one of your reader’s comments that the interests of the Metis Nation will not be promoted by any of us "going overboard" and commenting on things that go beyond the immediate issues we are giving our opinions about.

Lionel Chartrand

February 11, 2004

4. The Manitoba Metis Federation also post this apology on its website http://www.mmf.mb.ca for ten (10) calendar days.

5. The Plaintiffs agree to pay all Co-Defendant Pieuk's legal costs plus interest forthwith

6. Within 7 days from the receipt of the funds and documents referred to in paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4, Counsel for the Plaintiffs will provide:

(a) A Release in a form mutually acceptable to the Plaintiffs, their Counsel and Co-Defendant Pieuk

(b) A Notice of Discontinuance without costs in a form mutually acceptable to the Plaintiffs, their Counsel and Co-Defendant Pieuk

THIS OFFER IS OPEN for acceptance until 12:01 a.m. Friday May 26, 2006 after which time it will expire.

DATED May 16, 2006.

CLARE L. PIEUK

2-371 Des Meurons Street

Winnipeg, Manitoba

R2H 2N6

TO: POSNER & TRACHTENBERG

Barristers, Solicitors & Notaries Public

710 – 491 Portage Avenue

Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E4

MURRAY NORMAN TRACHTENBERG

Solicitor for the Plaintiffs

The Hershey Company (a/k/a Hershey's)

CHOCOLATE THAT ISN'T

by Jim Hightower

As originally posted on: Jim Hightower

September 26, 2008

Be careful out there. The corporate powers are messing with us again.

Here comes Hershey, the iconic candy company that claims to be “committed to making the world’s best chocolate.” For example, such brands as Mr. Goodbar, Milk Duds, and Take Five brag right on the label that they’re “made with chocolate.” Only … they’re not.

Chocolate, as you probably know, is made of cocoa butter. It’s yummy stuff. But get out your magnifying glass to read the labels of the Hershey bars that claim to be “made with chocolate,” and you’ll find oils from palm kernels, soybeans, sunflower, and safflower listed – but no cocoa butter. None.

How can this be? Trying to find the logic of it will cause your brain to explode, but here is the essence of the deception. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates candy contents, says flatly that cocoa butter is the required fat for chocolate. However – under pressure from most of the industry’s big players, the FDA allows the use of such tricky phrases as “made with chocolate,” “chocolately,” and “chocolate candy” to label products that actually have zero of the good stuff in them.

It is, in other words, a government-sanctioned consumer fraud. But the industry wants to deepen the fraud by getting FDA regulators to alter the very definition of chocolate so that it no longer mentions cocoa butter. It’d be like saying that wineries could eliminate grapes and still label their product “wine.” A spokesman for the big candy makers' lobbying group says that their attempt to pervert plain language is necessary in order to “modernize” FDA’s rules and “accommodate innovation.”

It's more like accommodating a blatant consumer rip-off. The good news is that independent chocolatiers and consumers are in rebellion against this sneaky push for non-chocolate chocolate. To learn what’s going on with your own favorite chocolates, check out http://www.candyblog.org.

“Chocolate Lovers Pained by Candy Changes,” http://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=5689239, September 2, 2008.

"The Rich"

Maybe the rich are the problem

by Linda McQuaig

As originally posted on: TheStar.com

October 21, 2008

John McCain clearly thought he'd found a winning issue last week when Barack Obama was caught on tape defending his plan to tax the rich and "spread the wealth around."

Gotcha! For days, the faltering Republican nominee relentlessly harangued Obama for saying such a thing, championing "Joe the Plumber," whose confrontation with Obama had provoked the remark.

Of course, many were surprised when Joe the Plumber turned out to be neither a real plumber nor a guy named Joe.

More surprising was the fact that – like the famous bridge in Alaska – McCain's attempt to vilify Obama for wanting to "spread the wealth around" ended up going nowhere.

For decades, conservatives have disparaged the notion of "spreading the wealth," relegating such economic populism to the margins of public debate. The vast pools of wealth at the top have been off-limits as a political issue – in the United States and Canada.

But a seismic shift could be underway. With the financial crisis exposing Wall Street's greedy and reckless behaviour, the public may be becoming less deferential to the super-rich. Last weekend, CNN ran a special on Wall Street called Fall of the Fat Cats – a damning take on the nation's financial elite that would have been inconceivable only a few months ago.

So far, the focus has been mostly on the misbehaviour of "fat cats," and the need, therefore, for tighter market regulations. But a more profound question lurks beneath the surface: Is extreme inequality itself part of the problem?

Some analysts are now arguing that the extreme concentration of wealth may have contributed to the crisis, just as a similarly extreme concentration of wealth in the 1920s contributed to the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

In his classic The Great Crash 1929, the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith put "the bad distribution of income" – the top 5 per cent of the population received one-third of all income – at the top of his list of key factors causing the disaster.

James Livingston, a historian at Rutgers University, sees strong similarities between then and now.

Livingston points out that in the 1920s there was a massive shift in the distribution of income away from wages toward corporate profits. With consumer demand suppressed by the restraint on wages, corporations had little incentive to invest their hefty profits in expanding production. So they turned to financial speculation.

Since the 1980s, there's been a similar income shift away from wages toward profits. Livingston argues that, with consumer demand suppressed, George W. Bush's massive tax cuts for the rich "produced a new tidal wave of surplus capital with no place to go except real estate," fuelling the housing bubble.

This suggests extreme inequality itself may lead to financial speculation. If so, meaningful solutions may have to go beyond re-regulation, and include a return to higher taxes on the rich.

Of course, the rich – and their think-tanks and media outlets – would insist such measures will stifle economic growth. But in the years between the Great Depression and the 1980s, financial markets were tightly regulated – and the rich were highly taxed. Yet – and this is crucial – those early post-war decades were times of great prosperity and growth.

Progressives have long argued for higher taxes on the wealthy – on grounds of fairness. But now, as the financial meltdown threatens to destroy the real economy, fairness may be secondary. Taxing the rich may boil down to a question of economic survival.

Linda McQuaig's column appears every other week. lmcquaig@sympatico.ca

"The Rich"

Here's How to Fix the Wall Street Mess

by Michael Moore

As originally posted on: The Huffington Post

October 1, 2008

Friends,

The richest 400 Americans - that's right, just four hundred people - own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. 400 rich Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion - the same amount that they are now demanding we give to them for the "bailout." Why don't they just spend the money they made under Bush to bail themselves out? They'd still have nearly a trillion dollars left over to spread amongst themselves!

Of course, they are not going to do that - at least not voluntarily. George W. Bush was handed a $127 billion surplus when Bill Clinton left office. Because that money was OUR money and not his, he did what the rich prefer to do - spend it and never look back. Now we have a $9.5 trillion debt. Why on earth would we even think of giving these robber barons any more of our money?

I would like to propose my own bailout plan. My suggestions, listed below, are predicated on the singular and simple belief that the rich must pull themselves up by their own platinum bootstraps. Sorry, fellows, but you drilled it into our heads one too many times: There... is... no... free... lunch. And thank you for encouraging us to hate people on welfare! So, there will be no handouts from us to you. The Senate, tonight, is going to try to rush their version of a "bailout" bill to a vote. They must be stopped. We did it on Monday with the House, and we can do it again today with the Senate.

It is clear, though, that we cannot simply keep protesting without proposing exactly what it is we think Congress should do. So, after consulting with a number of people smarter than Phil Gramm, here is my proposal, now known as "Mike's Rescue Plan." It has 10 simple, straightforward points. They are:

1. APPOINT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO CRIMINALLY INDICT ANYONE ON WALL STREET WHO KNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS COLLAPSE. Before any new money is expended, Congress must commit, by resolution, to criminally prosecute anyone who had anything to do with the attempted sacking of our economy. This means that anyone who committed insider trading, securities fraud or any action that helped bring about this collapse must go to jail. This Congress must call for a Special Prosecutor who will vigorously go after everyone who created the mess, and anyone else who attempts to scam the public in the future.

2. THE RICH MUST PAY FOR THEIR OWN BAILOUT. They may have to live in 5 houses instead of 7. They may have to drive 9 cars instead of 13. The chef for their mini-terriers may have to be reassigned. But there is no way in hell, after forcing family incomes to go down more than $2,000 dollars during the Bush years, that working people and the middle class are going to fork over one dime to underwrite the next yacht purchase.

If they truly need the $700 billion they say they need, well, here is an easy way they can raise it:

a) Every couple who makes over a million dollars a year and every single taxpayer who makes over $500,000 a year will pay a 10% surcharge tax for five years. (It's the Senator Sanders plan. He's like Colonel Sanders, only he's out to fry the right chickens.) That means the rich will still be paying less income tax than when Carter was president. This will raise a total of $300 billion.

b) Like nearly every other democracy, charge a 0.25% tax on every stock transaction. This will raise more than $200 billion in a year.

c) Because every stockholder is a patriotic American, stockholders will forgo receiving a dividend check for one quarter and instead this money will go the treasury to help pay for the bailout.

d) 25% of major U.S. corporations currently pay NO federal income tax. Federal corporate tax revenues currently amount to 1.7% of the GDP compared to 5% in the 1950s. If we raise the corporate income tax back to the level of the 1950s, that gives us an extra $500 billion.

All of this combined should be enough to end the calamity. The rich will get to keep their mansions and their servants, and our United States government ("COUNTRY FIRST!") will have a little leftover to repair some roads, bridges and schools.

3. BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE LOSING THEIR HOMES, NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BUILD AN EIGHTH HOME. There are 1.3 million homes in foreclosure right now. That is what is at the heart of this problem. So instead of giving the money to the banks as a gift, pay down each of these mortgages by $100,000. Force the banks to renegotiate the mortgage so the homeowner can pay on its current value. To insure that this help does no go to speculators and those who have tried to make money by flipping houses, this bailout is only for people's primary residence. And in return for the $100K paydown on the existing mortgage, the government gets to share in the holding of the mortgage so that it can get some of its money back. Thus, the total initial cost of fixing the mortgage crisis at its roots (instead of with the greedy lenders) is $150 billion, not $700 billion.

And let's set the record straight. People who have defaulted on their mortgages are not "bad risks." They are our fellow Americans, and all they wanted was what we all want and most of us still get: a home to call their own. But during the Bush years, millions of them lost the decent paying jobs they had. Six million fell into poverty. Seven million lost their health insurance. And every one of them saw their real wages go down by $2,000. Those who dare to look down on these Americans who got hit with one bad break after another should be ashamed. We are a better, stronger, safer and happier society when all of our citizens can afford to live in a home that they own.

4. IF YOUR BANK OR COMPANY GETS ANY OF OUR MONEY IN A "BAILOUT," THEN WE OWN YOU. Sorry, that's how it's done. If the bank gives me money so I can buy a house, the bank "owns" that house until I pay it all back - with interest. Same deal for Wall Street. Whatever money you need to stay afloat, if our government considers you a safe risk - and necessary for the good of the country - then you can get a loan, but we will own you. If you default, we will sell you. This is how the Swedish government did it and it worked.

5. ALL REGULATIONS MUST BE RESTORED. THE REAGAN REVOLUTION IS DEAD. This catastrophe happened because we let the fox have the keys to the henhouse. In 1999, Phil Gramm authored a bill to remove all the regulations that governed Wall Street and our banking system. The bill passed and Clinton signed it. Here's what Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain's chief economic advisor, said at the bill signing:

"In the 1930s ... it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.

"We are here today to repeal [that] because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

"I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality."

This bill must be repealed. Bill Clinton can help by leading the effort for the repeal of the Gramm bill and the reinstating of even tougher regulations regarding our financial institutions. And when they're done with that, they can restore the regulations for the airlines, the inspection of our food, the oil industry, OSHA, and every other entity that affects our daily lives. All oversight provisions for any "bailout" must have enforcement monies attached to them and criminal penalties for all offenders.

6. IF IT'S TOO BIG TO FAIL, THEN THAT MEANS IT'S TOO BIG TO EXIST. Allowing the creation of these mega-mergers and not enforcing the monopoly and anti-trust laws has allowed a number of financial institutions and corporations to become so large, the very thought of their collapse means an even bigger collapse across the entire economy. No one or two companies should have this kind of power. The so-called "economic Pearl Harbor" can't happen when you have hundreds - thousands - of institutions where people have their money. When you have a dozen auto companies, if one goes belly-up, we don't face a national disaster. If you have three separately-owned daily newspapers in your town, then one media company can't call all the shots (I know... What am I thinking?! Who reads a paper anymore? Sure glad all those mergers and buyouts left us with a strong and free press!). Laws must be enacted to prevent companies from being so large and dominant that with one slingshot to the eye, the giant falls and dies. And no institution should be allowed to set up money schemes that no one can understand. If you can't explain it in two sentences, you shouldn't be taking anyone's money.

7. NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD BE PAID MORE THAN 40 TIMES THEIR AVERAGE EMPLOYEE, AND NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD RECEIVE ANY KIND OF "PARACHUTE" OTHER THAN THE VERY GENEROUS SALARY HE OR SHE MADE WHILE WORKING FOR THE COMPANY. In 1980, the average American CEO made 45 times what their employees made. By 2003, they were making 254 times what their workers made. After 8 years of Bush, they now make over 400 times what their average employee makes. How this can happen at publicly held companies is beyond reason. In Britain, the average CEO makes 28 times what their average employee makes. In Japan, it's only 17 times! The last I heard, the CEO of Toyota was living the high life in Tokyo. How does he do it on so little money? Seriously, this is an outrage. We have created the mess we're in by letting the people at the top become bloated beyond belief with millions of dollars. This has to stop. Not only should no executive who receives help out of this mess profit from it, but any executive who was in charge of running his company into the ground should be fired before the company receives any help.

8. STRENGTHEN THE FDIC AND MAKE IT A MODEL FOR PROTECTING NOT ONLY PEOPLE'S SAVINGS, BUT ALSO THEIR PENSIONS AND THEIR HOMES. Obama was correct yesterday to propose expanding FDIC protection of people's savings in their banks to $250,000. But this same sort of government insurance must be given to our nation's pension funds. People should never have to worry about whether or not the money they've put away for their old age will be there. This will mean strict government oversight of companies who manage their employees' funds - or perhaps it means that the companies will have to turn over those funds and their management to the government. People's private retirement funds must also be protected, but perhaps it's time to consider not having one's retirement invested in the casino known as the stock market. Our government should have a solemn duty to guarantee that no one who grows old in this country has to worry about ending up destitute.

9. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, CALM DOWN, AND NOT LET FEAR RULE THE DAY. Turn off the TV! We are not in the Second Great Depression. The sky is not falling. Pundits and politicians are lying to us so fast and furious it's hard not to be affected by all the fear mongering. Even I, yesterday, wrote to you and repeated what I heard on the news, that the Dow had the biggest one day drop in its history. Well, that's true in terms of points, but its 7% drop came nowhere close to Black Monday in 1987 when the stock market in one day lost 23% of its value. In the '80s, 3,000 banks closed, but America didn't go out of business. These institutions have always had their ups and downs and eventually it works out. It has to, because the rich do not like their wealth being disrupted! They have a vested interest in calming things down and getting back into the Jacuzzi.

As crazy as things are right now, tens of thousands of people got a car loan this week. Thousands went to the bank and got a mortgage to buy a home. Students just back to college found banks more than happy to put them into hock for the next 15 years with a student loan. Life has gone on. Not a single person has lost any of their money if it's in a bank or a treasury note or a CD. And the most amazing thing is that the American public hasn't bought the scare campaign. The citizens didn't blink, and instead told Congress to take that bailout and shove it. THAT was impressive. Why didn't the population succumb to the fright-filled warnings from their president and his cronies? Well, you can only say 'Saddam has da bomb' so many times before the people realize you're a lying sack of shite. After eight long years, the nation is worn out and simply can't take it any longer.

10. CREATE A NATIONAL BANK, A "PEOPLE'S BANK." If we really are itching to print up a trillion dollars, instead of giving it to a few rich people, why don't we give it to ourselves? Now that we own Freddie and Fannie, why not set up a people's bank? One that can provide low-interest loans for all sorts of people who want to own a home, start a small business, go to school, come up with the cure for cancer or create the next great invention. And now that we own AIG, the country's largest insurance company, let's take the next step and provide health insurance for everyone. Medicare for all. It will save us so much money in the long run. And we won't be 12th on the life expectancy list. We'll be able to have a longer life, enjoying our government-protected pension, and living to see the day when the corporate criminals who caused so much misery are let out of prison so that we can help reacclimate them to civilian life - a life with one nice home and a gas-free car that was invented with help from the People's Bank.

Yours,

Michael Moore

MMFlint@aol.com

MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Call your Senators now. Here's a backup link in case we crash that site again. They are going to attempt their own version of the Looting of America tonight. And let your reps know if you agree with my 10-point plan.

The Conservative Party of Canada

Tory database draws ire of privacy experts

THE CANADIAN PRESS

October 18, 2007

OTTAWA - The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says a former Tory MP.

The issue spilled onto the floor of the House of Commons on Thursday when Garth Turner, the expelled Tory-turned-Liberal MP, accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of an "unethical invasion of Canadians' privacy.''

Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics - but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area.

A recent mailing by the prime minister to some Jewish households, and households with Jewish-sounding names, highlighted the micro targeting that sophisticated modern databases now facilitate.

The Rosh Hashanah greeting from Harper prompted several recipients to complain to the federal privacy commissioner, who has begun a preliminary inquiry.

It's cast a light on the 21st century art of political communication that may make some Canadians uneasy.

Virtually all federal and provincial parties have computerized databases, but the federal Conservatives are the acknowledged leader in the field of data management and mining.

Their fundraising efforts, based on small donations by thousands of donors, are unparalleled in federal politics.

Both the federal Liberals and the NDP have separate databases for constituency work and voter tracking. Data does not migrate between the two.

But the Conservatives use a single clearing house for all data collection, storage, datamining, mailing lists, voter tracking and any other partisan use such information may serve.

Turner, the Liberal maverick who was elected as a Conservative in 2006 and subsequently turfed from the party, says every Conservative MP is required to use something called CIMS, an acronym for Constituent Information Management System.

CIMS is used not only to track voter allegiance in a given riding - something every political party attempts - but also a host of other data gathered in the course of an MP's constituency office duties.

"Any time a constituent is engaged with the member of Parliament, they get zapped into the database,'' Turner said in an interview. "It's unethical and it's a shocking misuse of data.

"Because once you cotton on to what's going on here, it's not good constituency work at all to allow that data to fall into any kind of hands. But the party is desperate to get more and more data in there because the primary use is fundraising. The secondary use is voter tracking to get out the vote.''

Logging constituent files in a central party database that may also be used as part of election planning, fundraising, advertising strategy and policy deliberation appears to be clearly offside, two nationally respected privacy experts told The Canadian Press.

"If somebody contacts their MP because they're having a problem with their CPP benefit or their military pension, they don't expect to end up on a mailing list for a political party,'' said David Fraser, a Halifax lawyer who specializes in privacy issues with the firm McInnes Cooper.

"If they are going to end up on a mailing list, I think there's an ethical obligation to inform them and give them the opportunity to opt out.''

Michael Geist, a law professor who serves as the Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, agrees.

"When you're going to your local MP with a concern or a problem, there is a certain level of confidentiality,'' said Geist.

"The notion that it's simply a data point that gets used to characterize the particular constituent could have a bit of a chilling effect.''

Nonetheless, the Conservatives are likely within the letter of Canada's privacy laws, because they are neither a government agency nor considered a commercial operation.

Geist argues that political parties' fundraising efforts might make them liable under the commercial privacy law, known as PIPEDA, but Fraser says the legislation as written suggests otherwise.

"Generally, political parties aren't regulated with respect to how they collect, use and disclose personal information,'' said Fraser.

The Conservatives, who openly boasted about their state-of-the-art CIMS database after purchasing it in 2004, now refuse to discuss it.

"I will not talk about internal party databases,'' said party spokesman Ryan Sparrow. "I'm not disclosing what is in our database, who is in our database.''

When asked if Canadians can request to see their file on the CIMS database, Sparrow responded: "What would be their specific need to see?''

Asked a second time, Sparrow shut down the inquiry.

"I'm not going to help you with your story. It's internal party matters.''

The Liberal party says it voluntarily follows the principles of PIPEDA - including showing any individual who asks what is on their file - even though the act does not apply to political parties.

"We do not keep any information on individuals without their expressed consent,'' said Elizabeth Whiting, the party's communications director.

The NDP also said citizens are free to ask to see their file, although the party is not aware it has ever received such a request.

Fraser said political parties, regardless of the law, should follow the best-practice standards established by the Canadian Standards Association, upon which both federal privacy acts are based.

"Those best practices, which are almost universally recognized in most western democracies, would suggest that political parties should give notice, get consent and provide people access to their information,'' said Fraser.

"Whether or not they choose to do that would speak volumes to how they see themselves as responsible custodians of this personal information.''

Former Broadcom Corporation President Henry Nicholas III

Indictment: Broadcom Ex-CEO Built Drug Warehouse

Indictment: Broadcom Co-Founder Had Narcotics Warehouse, Hired Prostitutes, Drugged Associates

by Gillian Flaccus

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

June 6, 2008

SANTA ANA, Calif. - Federal prosecutors may have charged Broadcom co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III in one of the largest stock-option backdating cases in U.S. history, but it was allegations that the billionaire drugged his business cohorts, hired prostitutes and maintained a drug warehouse that grabbed headlines.

A pair of indictments unsealed Thursday charge the 48-year-old with conspiracy and securities fraud in an alleged scheme to backdate stock options that ultimately forced Broadcom to write down $2.2 billion in profits last year. But prosecutors also detailed a litany of drug charges that apparently came as a surprise to Nicholas and his attorneys.

The charges threaten to ground a high-flying lifestyle that prosecutors say featured the former CEO jetting around the world in his two private planes, building a secret lair under his house and hiring strippers to party at a private warehouse stocked with cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy.

Defense attorney Gregory Craig said that Nicholas was innocent and would prevail.

"It's a kitchen-sink attack on Dr. Nicholas. They're trying to throw everything at him from eight years ago," Craig said.

At a court hearing, U.S. Magistrate Arthur Nakazato set Nicholas' bail at $3.3 million. He also ordered random weapons searches and drug tests by the government, home detention, electronic monitoring and the disabling of Nicholas' two private planes. Nicholas, in handcuffs and wearing gray slacks and a white shirt with no tie or belt, nodded vigorously when asked if he agreed to the conditions of release.

Nakazato said he was concerned that Nicholas' extreme wealth could allow him to flee at any moment. He indicated that Nicholas' current Newport Coast home, valued at $15 million to $18 million, would be no impediment to flight for "one of the wealthiest men in the world." Nakazato also said he was bothered by government allegations that Nicholas had threatened and hit a grand jury witness last year during an argument on a private jet.

"If you flee, I will detain you and I will order an arrest warrant and I'll have the marshals and the FBI going on a hunt for you," Nakazato said. "And when they bring you back, I'm not going to show much mercy."

An arraignment hearing was set for June 16. Nicholas did not enter a plea.

Also indicted on the stock-option backdating was Broadcom's former chief financial officer, William J. Ruehle. He was not charged with the drug violations.

Ruehle, 66, was released on $2.6 million bail and surrendered his passport, although he will be allowed to take three international trips that were already planned. He will also be arraigned on June 16.

Ruehle's attorney, Richard Marmaro, said in a statement, "Bill Ruehle is innocent of the charges in the indictment, and he looks forward to the opportunity to clear his good name in a court of law."

Nicholas, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, co-founded Broadcom Corp. in 1991 with Henry Samueli. The company, which makes microchips for cell phones and broadband Internet devices, reported a strong first-quarter profit in April and forecast second-quarter sales of $1.08 billion to $1.13 billion, ahead of Wall Street expectations.

The 18-page indictment on drug charges alleges that Nicholas kept four properties in Orange County and Las Vegas, including a warehouse in Laguna Niguel, Calif., where he stashed and distributed cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy.

He later remodeled the warehouse with private rooms and furnished it with art and high-end electronics.

The court documents also claim Nicholas hired prostitutes and escorts for himself, his employees and customers and conspired to get illegal prescriptions for drugs such as Valium.

In 2001, Nicholas smoked so much marijuana during a flight on a private jet between Orange County and Las Vegas that the pilot had to put on an oxygen mask, the indictment states.

broadcom2 - Upload a Document to Scribd

At a July 1999 Woodstock concert in Rome, N.Y., Nicholas gave a technology executive ecstasy without the executive's knowledge, the indictment states. Nicholas also allegedly spiked a technology executive's drink with ecstacy in New Orleans in early 2000.

Nicholas required his unnamed co-conspirators to provide detailed invoices for drugs they sold to him, and used code names such as "party favors" and "refreshments" to conceal what was being sold, prosecutors claimed.

The allegations recall two earlier civil lawsuits filed against Nicholas that accused him of rampant drug use and hiring prostitutes. One lawsuit was cited by prosecutors in a motion filed Thursday that sought to deny bail for Nicholas.

That suit was filed by Nicholas' former bodyguard and personal assistant, Kenji Kato. A second lawsuit was filed last year by a construction crew that claimed they were hired to build an underground lair for Nicholas where he could indulge in sex with prostitutes and drug use.

The workers claimed Nicholas failed to pay them millions of dollars and used intimidation and death threats to prevent them from leaving the project, which was kept secret from Nicholas' wife and city inspectors.

Nicholas faces a total of 21 counts in both indictments. The drug charges carry a maximum combined sentence of 20 years in prison. He could face up to 340 years in prison on the stock backdating charges.

Ruehle faces 21 counts in the stock options indictment, which accuses him of filing false statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, falsely certified financial reports and committed wire fraud. Ruehle could face up to 370 years if convicted of all counts.

broadcom1 - Upload a Document to Scribd

Backdating stock options, which often are granted as hiring and retention incentives, is legal. Companies across the company have run into trouble when they failed to account for the true cost that the backdating created because omitting that cost sometimes inflated the companies' income.

Last month, securities regulators cited Nicholas, Samueli and Ruehle in a civil suit alleging they falsified the company's reported income. The SEC also cited Broadcom general counsel David Dull, but Dull and Samueli were not named in Thursday's criminal indictments.

Nicholas served as CEO and president from Broadcom's inception until he resigned in 2003. At the time, he said he stepped down to try to repair his relationship with his wife.

Nicholas' attorneys said in court Thursday that he has been at a $66,000-a-month Malibu drug rehabilitation center since April.

Ruehle joined the company in 1997 as vice president and chief financial officer and retired in 2006.

Samueli, Nicholas' one-time doctoral adviser, stepped down as chairman of the company's board of directors after the SEC action last month.

Shares rose 65 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $28.75 on Thursday, amid a general upswing in the stock market. Its 52-week trading range was between $16.38 and $43.07.

Florida State Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Aleman

Supreme Court of Florida


____________

No. SC07-198
____________

INQUIRY CONCERNING A JUDGE, NO. 06-52,
RE: CHERYL ALEMAN.

[September 29, 2008]

PER CURIAM.

In this case we review the determination by the Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC) that Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Judge Cheryl Aleman violated the Code of Judicial Conduct and its recommendation that Judge Aleman be publicly reprimanded and charged the costs of investigation and prosecution. For the reasons discussed below, we approve the JQC’s determination and recommendation.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The charges stem from Judge Aleman’s behavior in response to three motions to disqualify her made by Assistant Public Defenders Sandra Perlman and Bruce Raticoff on January 24, 2006, the second day of jury selection in State v. Braynen, a first-degree murder case.[1] On the morning of January 24, Perlman sought to disqualify Judge Aleman based on what Perlman perceived to be Judge Aleman’s aggressive and intimidating questioning of prospective jurors during voir dire the previous afternoon. Because the motion was oral, Perlman requested a reasonable amount of time to reduce the motion to writing as required by Rogers v. State, 630 So. 2d 513 (Fla. 1993).[2] Judge Aleman denied the request for additional time and immediately denied the motion on its merits.

The second motion to disqualify related to Judge Aleman’s allegedly preferential treatment of Assistant State Attorney Peter Holden. Judge Aleman had granted Holden a fifteen-minute delay in the start of the afternoon proceedings while denying a similar request from Perlman. When Perlman requested "at least an hour" to reduce this second oral motion to writing, Judge Aleman responded that the court would be in recess for five minutes. During this time, Judge Aleman conferred with another jurist, who suggested that defense counsel be given a pad of paper and a pen to prepare a written motion. When the proceeding resumed at 2:20 p.m., Judge Aleman did just that; she gave Perlman paper and pen and stated that, if defense counsel subsequently wished to substitute a typed motion, she would allow it. But rather than giving counsel an hour, Judge Aleman gave the defense attorneys fifteen minutes to transcribe the motion, stating that the court would adjourn until 2:35 p.m.

Intending to research and type the motion, Perlman and Raticoff left the courtroom to return to their office. In their haste, they ran past a number of prospective jurors who were sitting and standing in the hallway. At 2:42 p.m., when the proceeding reconvened, neither assistant public defender was in the courtroom. Judge Aleman took a recess until defense counsel returned.

By 2:48 p.m., Raticoff had returned, but Perlman had not. At that point, Judge Aleman mentioned the prospect of holding both public defenders in contempt:


The Court: The Court’s go[ing] to issue a rule to show cause, and we’ll hold this in abeyance until conclusion of the trial. The Court had [given] counsel 15 additional minutes to handwrite a motion, provided a paper and pen for counsel to do so, and when the Court returned back neither Defense Counsel was here, and now it’s 2:49 and we’re still missing one of defense counsel.

Again, good grounds for the rule to show cause is failure to abide by the Court’s order with respect, and we’ll hold that in abeyance until the concluding of the proceeding.

Mr. Raticoff: Judge, just so the record –

The Court: Directly to both Counsel, Mr. Raticoff and Ms. Perlman. And we’ll be in recess until Ms. Perlman arrives.


Upon returning to the courtroom at 2:57 p.m., Perlman inquired into the status of the contempt charge. There was some confusion as to whether Judge Aleman actually issued the order to show cause. At first, Judge Aleman suggested that she did not. Upon further inquiry by defense counsel, however, Judge Aleman indicated that she had, in fact, issued the order.

Raticoff then moved to withdraw from the case, citing the conflict between defending his client on one hand and defending himself on the other. In addition, Raticoff expressed his concern that he would not be able to represent Braynen effectively. Judge Aleman denied the motion, finding no reason to believe that the defendant had not received effective assistance of counsel. Judge Aleman eventually denied the second motion to disqualify, finding it legally insufficient.

Judge Aleman’s order to show cause triggered defense counsel’s third motion to disqualify. Again, Perlman requested a reasonable time to reduce the motion to writing, and again Judge Aleman granted fifteen minutes. When Perlman objected, reminding Judge Aleman that fifteen minutes was previously insufficient, Judge Aleman instead granted twelve minutes. Once again, Perlman objected, and Judge Aleman eventually gave defense counsel twenty-two minutes to prepare the written motion.

This time, when the court reconvened, both Public Defenders were present—but the motion was not. Afraid to violate the court’s order, Perlman had returned to the courtroom without finishing the motion and requested an additional five minutes to do so. Judge Aleman expressed her concern for the jurors who had been sitting in the hallway since 1:30 p.m., but agreed. When presented with this third motion, Judge Aleman denied it as well.

The next day, when Raticoff asked Judge Aleman to reconsider or vacate her order to show cause, Judge Aleman declined to hold a hearing on the matter, stating instead that "I believe everyone is entitled to due process." Ultimately, Judge Aleman never issued a written order to show cause, and the issue of contempt was never acted upon.

Based on these events, an Investigative Panel of the JQC charged Judge Aleman with violating Canons 1, 2A and 3B(4) of the Code of Judicial Conduct. A Hearing Panel of the JQC heard testimony from several witnesses, including Public Defenders Perlman and Raticoff, Assistant State Attorney Holden, and Judge Aleman. The JQC concluded that:


Judge Aleman’s conduct involving her denial of the motions for disqualifications [sic] without giving counsel a reasonable time to prepare the motions in writing and in threatening contempt by announcing entry of an order to show cause and then refusing to vacate the order to show cause constituted conduct which was arrogant, discourteous, and impatient to the lawyers appearing before her and others appearing in the Braynen case. . . . She acted in a manner that erodes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.


More specifically, the JQC Hearing Panel found that Judge Aleman "did not give the Public Defender adequate time to prepare [the first] motion in writing before denying it," "it was . . . improper to have the lawyers in the case run up and down in front of the prospective jurors in order to avoid being held in contempt," "[t]he order to show cause which was never reduced to writing and which was never acted upon caused conflicts and further delays," the time limits imposed by Judge Aleman were "unreasonable under all of the circumstances," and "[f]orcing an attorney to prepare a handwritten motion for disqualification of a judge within 15 minutes or within 22 minutes was improper in the context of this first-degree murder case in which the death penalty was being sought."

As a result, the JQC Hearing Panel found by a two-thirds vote that Judge Aleman was guilty of misconduct and recommended that Judge Aleman be publicly reprimanded and charged the costs of the investigation.

II. ANALYSIS

Judge Aleman disputes the JQC’s findings, arguing: (a) the JQC’s findings are not supported by clear and convincing evidence; and (b) rather than requiring her to pay the costs of the investigation, the JQC should pay her costs because Judge Aleman was the prevailing party.[3] We conclude that each argument lacks merit.


A. Clear and Convincing Evidence

First, Judge Aleman argues that there is no clear and convincing evidence to support the JQC’s conclusion that her conduct was unreasonable or that she threatened the public defenders with contempt. To the contrary, we find that sufficient evidence supports the JQC’s conclusion in both respects.

The Florida Constitution vests this Court with the ultimate decision in determining what constitutes judicial misconduct. Specifically, article V, section 12(c)(1) provides that "[t]he supreme court may accept, reject, or modify in whole or in part the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the [judicial qualifications] commission and it may order that the justice or judge be subjected to appropriate discipline." In In re Graziano, 696 So. 2d 744, 753 (Fla. 1997), we described how we review the JQC’s findings of fact:


Before reporting findings of fact to this Court, the JQC must conclude that they are established by clear and convincing evidence. In re McAllister, 646 So. 2d 173, 177 (Fla. 1994). This Court must then review the findings and determine whether they meet this quantum of proof, a standard which requires more proof than a "preponderance of the evidence" but the less than "beyond and to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt." In re Davey, 645 So. 2d 398, 404 (Fla. 1994). If the findings meet this intermediate standard, then they are of persuasive force and are given great weight by this Court. See In re LaMotte, 341 So. 2d 513, 516 (Fla. 1977). This is so because the JQC is in a position to evaluate the testimony and evidence first-hand. See In re Crowell, 379 So. 2d 107 (Fla. 1979). However, the ultimate power and responsibility in making a determination rests with this Court. Id


Furthermore, this Court has "relied upon the clear and convincing evidence standard without distinguishing findings of fact from whether the facts as found warrant particular discipline." In re Henson, 913 So. 2d 579, 589 (Fla. 2005) (citing In re Kinsey, 842 So. 2d 77, 85 (Fla. 2003)).

Based on generally undisputed facts, the JQC concluded that Judge Aleman’s conduct violated Canons 1, 2A, and 3B(4) of the Code of Judicial Conduct.[4] Judge Aleman admits, and the Braynen transcript reflects, the facts upon which the JQC relied in making its decision.[5] Far from patient, dignified, or courteous, the JQC concluded that Judge Aleman’s undisputed conduct was "arrogant, discourteous, and impatient," as well as "[in]adequate," "improper," "unacceptable," and "unreasonable."

We find that clear and convincing evidence supports the JQC’s findings of fact as well as its conclusion that Judge Aleman violated Canons 1, 2A, and 3B(4). We agree with the JQC’s conclusion that, with respect to the time limitations, "forcing an attorney to prepare a handwritten motion for disqualification of a judge within 15 minutes or within 22 minutes was improper in the context of this first degree murder case in which the death penalty was being sought." This is true particularly in light of our decision in Rogers, which entitles counsel to a reasonable amount of time to prepare a written motion. By imposing unreasonably strict time limits, Judge Aleman forced defense counsel to decide between diligently representing their client and abiding by the court’s order. Such conduct is improper.

In addition, Judge Aleman’s use or threat to use her contempt power is even more unsettling. A judge’s power of contempt must be exercised with care. This Court has stated that:


[O]ne of the most important and essential powers of a court is the authority to protect itself against those who disregard its dignity and authority or disobey its orders. This authority is appropriately administered through a court’s power to punish by contempt. South Dade Farms, Inc. v. Peters, 88 So. 2d 891 (Fla. 1956). Nevertheless, although the power of contempt is an extremely important power for the judiciary, it is also a very awesome power and is one that should never be abused.


In re Perry, 641 So. 2d 366, 368 (Fla. 1994). A judge’s abuse of contempt powers has, on several occasions, resulted in discipline. See id. at 366-68 (reprimanding a judge for holding six defendants in contempt for driving away from courthouse with suspended licenses, for which one defendant spent twenty-six days in jail); see also In re Shea, 759 So. 2d 631, 632 (Fla. 2000) (imposing discipline for, among other things, entering an order to show cause after a litigant sent a letter to the Governor complaining of Judge Shea’s handling of a support case); In re Wright, 694 So. 2d 734, 735 (Fla. 1997) (reprimanding a judge for, among other things, threatening a prosecutor by stating "if you talk any more[,] it’s an Order that you don’t open your mouth anymore until I invite you to do so, and if you do I’m gonna hold you in contempt"); In re Muszynski, 471 So. 2d 1284, 1285 (Fla. 1985) (imposing discipline for demanding a police officer to lower the volume on his police radio while dining in a restaurant and, when the officer refused, directing him to appear in court to explain his "contemptuous conduct"); In re Crowell, 379 So. 2d 107, 108 (Fla. 1979) (removing a judge for abusing his contempt powers which demonstrated a "propensity to summarily adjudicate and incarcerate a citizen . . . without according to the accused a right to be heard or any opportunity to defend himself").

Here, after Judge Aleman announced her intention to issue an order to show cause, the prospect of defense counsel being held in contempt had a palpable impact on the proceeding. Perlman sought to disqualify Judge Aleman for the fifth time, and Raticoff moved to withdraw, citing the conflict between defending his client and defending himself. Raticoff later testified that the order to show cause had a "chilling effect" on his representation. The fear of being held in contempt, Raticoff recalled, limited his ability to zealously represent his client. In sum, Judge Aleman’s threat of contempt was unnecessary and harmful under the circumstances.

Accordingly, we approve the JQC’s findings of fact and its conclusion that Judge Aleman committed misconduct by imposing unreasonable time limits on counsel and then threatening counsel with contempt.

B. Discipline

Having approved the JQC’s conclusion that Judge Aleman committed misconduct, the final matter is the appropriate discipline. The JQC recommends that we issue a public reprimand of Judge Aleman and require her to pay the costs of the investigation and prosecution. We agree.

Judge Aleman does not challenge the propriety of a public reprimand, and we find it to be a suitable punishment considering the nature of her conduct. We have employed a public reprimand to sanction judges for similar misconduct. See Perry, 641 So. 2d at 366-368 (abuse of contempt powers and, to a lesser extent, the admonition of army recruiter for wearing his uniform in court); see also In re Schapiro, 845 So. 2d 170 (Fla. 2003) (intemperate courtroom behavior); In re Schwartz, 755 So. 2d 110 (Fla. 2000) (rude remarks during oral argument). And, because the JQC prevailed in the matter of whether Judge Aleman committed misconduct with respect to her actions in Braynen, we likewise order Judge Aleman to pay the cost of the JQC’s investigation and prosecution relating to that charge. See art. V, § 12(c)(2), Fla. Const.

III. CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated, we approve the JQC’s conclusion that Judge Aleman violated the Code of Judicial Conduct, and we approve the JQC’s recommendation that Judge Aleman be reprimanded and charged the cost of the investigation and prosecution relating to her conduct in State v. Braynen. In accordance with the policy announced in In re Frank, 753 So. 2d 1228, 1242 (Fla. 2000), we hereby command Judge Cheryl Aleman to appear before this Court for the administration of a public reprimand at a time to be established by the Clerk of this Court.

It is so ordered.

QUINCE, C.J., and WELLS, ANSTEAD, PARIENTE, LEWIS, and BELL, JJ., concur.

NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND IF FILED, DETERMINED.

Original Proceeding – Judicial Qualifications Commission

Lansing C. Scriven of Lansing C. Scriven, P.A., Special Counsel, Tampa, Florida, Michael Louis Schneider, General Counsel, Tallahassee, Florida, and Marvin E. Barkin, Special Consulting Counsel, Tampa, Florida,

for Judicial Qualifications Commission , Petitioner

J. David Bogenshutz, of Bogenschutz, Dutko, and Kroll, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Perry W. Hodges, Jr. of Rogers, Morris and Ziegler, LLP, Fort Lauderdale, Florida,

for Respondent


1. Prior to trial, defense counsel filed two motions to disqualify Judge Aleman. Perlman first moved to disqualify Judge Aleman because Ms. Perlman supported Judge Aleman’s opponent in the 2004 election. Judge Aleman denied the motion, and the Fourth District affirmed this ruling on appeal. See Braynen v. State, 895 So. 2d 1169 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005). The defense then sought review of the Fourth District’s decision in this Court and moved to stay the trial proceedings. Judge Aleman denied the motion to stay and instructed Ms. Perlman to prepare an order reflecting this ruling. When Ms. Perlman handed the proposed order to Judge Aleman, Judge Aleman ripped it up and wrote her own. This led to the second motion to disqualify, which Judge Aleman likewise denied. However, these first two motions to disqualify were not the basis for the JQC investigation.

2. When a motion to disqualify a judge occurs "mid-trial or mid-hearing," the trial court must give counsel a "reasonable opportunity" to write and file the motion. Rogers, 630 So. 2d at 516.

3. Judge Aleman also argues that the JQC does not have jurisdiction over her conduct in Braynen. We disagree. See art. V, § 12(a)(1), Fla. Const.

4. Canon 1 provides, in pertinent part, that judges "should participate in establishing, maintaining, and enforcing high standards of conduct, and shall personally observe those standards so that the integrity and independence of the judiciary may be preserved." Canon 2A provides that judges shall "respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary." Canon 3B(4) provides that judges shall be "patient, dignified, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity, and shall require similar conduct of lawyers, and of staff, court officials, and others subject to the judge’s direction and control."

5. Judge Aleman disputes one aspect of the JQC’s findings: that she threatened contempt by "announcing entry of an order to show cause and then refusing to vacate the order to show cause." Judge Aleman argues that she never actually entered a written order, but only stated her intention to do so at a later date, and thus there was no order to vacate. Indeed, the JQC’s findings are somewhat unclear on this point. In addition to the language quoted above, the JQC, in a section entitled "The Threat of Contempt," seemed to espouse Judge Aleman’s version of the events, stating: "The basis for the order to show cause which was never reduced to writing, was that the attorneys were late in returning with the written motion which they had been given 15 minutes to prepare." (emphasis provided). The difference, though, is largely semantic. The thrust of the JQC’s finding was that the specter of contempt loomed over the public defenders, and this remained true whether Judge Aleman entered a written order or merely stated an intention to do so.

State Capitalism and "the Virtual Parliament"

Anti-democratic nature of US capitalism is being exposed

Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people who created the banking crisis writes Noam Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

As originally published in: The Irish Times

October 10, 2008

THE SIMULTANEOUS unfolding of the US presidential campaign and unravelling of the financial markets presents one of those occasions where the political and economic systems starkly reveal their nature.

Passion about the campaign may not be universally shared but almost everybody can feel the anxiety from the foreclosure of a million homes, and concerns about jobs, savings and healthcare at risk.

The initial Bush proposals to deal with the crisis so reeked of totalitarianism that they were quickly modified. Under intense lobbyist pressure, they were reshaped as "a clear win for the largest institutions in the system . . . a way of dumping assets without having to fail or close", as described by James Rickards, who negotiated the federal bailout for the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998, reminding us that we are treading familiar turf. The immediate origins of the current meltdown lie in the collapse of the housing bubble supervised by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which sustained the struggling economy through the Bush years by debt-based consumer spending along with borrowing from abroad. But the roots are deeper. In part they lie in the triumph of financial liberalisation in the past 30 years - that is, freeing the markets as much as possible from government regulation.

These steps predictably increased the frequency and depth of severe reversals, which now threaten to bring about the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

Also predictably, the narrow sectors that reaped enormous profits from liberalisation are calling for massive state intervention to rescue collapsing financial institutions.

Such interventionism is a regular feature of state capitalism, though the scale today is unusual. A study by international economists Winfried Ruigrok and Rob van Tulder 15 years ago found that at least 20 companies in the Fortune 100 would not have survived if they had not been saved by their respective governments, and that many of the rest gained substantially by demanding that governments "socialise their losses," as in today's taxpayer-financed bailout. Such government intervention "has been the rule rather than the exception over the past two centuries", they conclude.

In a functioning democratic society, a political campaign would address such fundamental issues, looking into root causes and cures, and proposing the means by which people suffering the consequences can take effective control.

The financial market "underprices risk" and is "systematically inefficient", as economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalisation and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and proposing solutions, which have been ignored. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These "externalities" can be huge. Ignoring systemic risk leads to more risk-taking than would take place in an efficient economy, even by the narrowest measures.

The task of financial institutions is to take risks and, if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. The emphasis is on "to themselves". Under state capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others - the "externalities" of decent survival - if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do.

Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the economy. It has long been understood that it is a powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital movement creates what some have called a "virtual parliament" of investors and lenders, who closely monitor government programmes and "vote" against them if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of people, rather than concentrated private power.

Investors and lenders can "vote" by capital flight, attacks on currencies and other devices offered by financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the Bretton Woods system established by the United States and Britain after the second World War instituted capital controls and regulated currencies.*

The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-fascist resistance to working class organisation. These pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part to create a space for government action responding to public will - for some measure of democracy.

John Maynard Keynes, the British negotiator, considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be the establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement.

In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a "fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security and other rights that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths".

In earlier years, the public had not been much of a problem. The reasons are reviewed by Barry Eichengreen in his standard scholarly history of the international monetary system. He explains that in the 19th century, governments had not yet been "politicised by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labour parties". Therefore, the severe costs imposed by the virtual parliament could be transferred to the general population.

But with the radicalisation of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures".

The obvious corollary is that after the dismantling of the postwar system, democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalise the public in some fashion, processes particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. The management of electoral extravaganzas by the public relations industry is one illustration.

"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," concluded America's leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".

The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them. In his study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the past six decades "real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans".

Differences can be detected in the current election as well. Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistently over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above.

Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback. They must be waged every day, not just once every four years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to the workplace.

* The Bretton Woods system of global financial management was created by 730 delegates from all 44 Allied second World War nations who attended a UN-hosted Monetary and Financial Conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in 1944.

Bretton Woods, which collapsed in 1971, was the system of rules, institutions, and procedures that regulated the international monetary system, under which were set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (now one of five institutions in the World Bank Group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which came into effect in 1945.

The chief feature of Bretton Woods was an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value.

The system collapsed when the US suspended convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the unique situation whereby the US dollar became the "reserve currency" for the other countries within Bretton Woods.

Noam Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His writings on linguistics and politics have just been collected in The Essential Chomsky, edited by Anthony Arnove, from the New Press. This article appeared first in the New York Times

United States Senator / Vice-Presidential Candidate Joseph Biden (a/k/a Joe Biden)

Sheldon Alberts: Joe Biden does his best to make Sarah Palin look good

by Sheldon Alberts

As originally posted on: Full Comment

September 23, 2008

WASHINGTON • Senator Joe Biden was spinning folksy one-liners with CBS News anchor Katie Couric the other night when he offered this pearl of wisdom about how real leaders act during times of national crisis.

“When the stock market crashed (in 1929), Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ”

It was a great sound bite except for two things – Herbert Hoover, not Roosevelt, was president at the time, and commercial television didn’t exist.

The good news for Biden was that hardly anyone noticed the historical error. The bad news? The blunder was overlooked only because the Democratic vice presidential candidate was busy doing damage control Tuesday over two bigger gaffes that have landed him in Barack Obama’s doghouse.

After weeks of being overshadowed in the U.S. media by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Obama’s running mate is suddenly making headline news for all the wrong reasons. First, he blasted his own campaign for running a “terrible” ad that claimed Republican presidential candidate John McCain did not know how to operate a computer or send email.

Then video surfaced of Biden telling an environmentalist voter in coal-rich Ohio – a vital battleground state – that there would be “no coal plants here in America” in an Obama administration.

McCain’s campaign made political hay out of both comments, using them to underscore Republican claims Obama is waging a dirty campaign and to cast him as out-of-touch with working-class voters in the American heartland.

“Barack Obama and Joe Biden must really think they can win this election without Ohio, because they're doing their best to lose it with stupid comments like these,” Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, said in a statement. “Keep talking, Joe.”

Biden’s slipups have underscored Democrats’ biggest concern about the loquacious senator – that his unscripted, freewheeling speaking style might lead to embarrassing distractions for a campaign with little room for political error.

In recent days, Biden has claimed it was the “patriotic” duty of wealthy Americans to pay higher taxes, urged a wheelchair-bound man to “stand up” at a Democratic rally, and suggested Hillary Clinton “might have been a better pick than me” as Obama’s running mate.

But many of those remarks were lost amid the media fascination with Palin.

Biden’s real trouble only began when CBS aired its feature interview with him on Monday.

Asked about an Obama campaign ad that mocked McCain for admitting he doesn’t use computers or email, Biden retorted: “I thought that was terrible, by the way.”

McCain’s campaign has said the Arizona senator has difficulty using computers because of injuries to his arms incurred during the Vietnam War. Pressed by Couric about why the ad was aired, Biden offered up more criticism of his own campaign: “I didn't know we did it, and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it.”

Biden backtracked within hours, protesting that he had never actually seen the ad and was “reacting merely to press reports.”

Potentially more damaging for Obama was Biden’s comments about coal. “No coal plants here in America,” Biden told woman in Ohio who had asked him if why the Obama campaign supported clean-coal technology.

“We’re not supporting clean coal,” he said.

“Build them, if they're going to build them, over there (in China). Make ’em clean because they're killing you.”

Biden got it wrong. Obama has vowed to “develop and deploy clean coal technology” as part of a plan to create “green jobs” in the U.S. Midwest.

The more Biden talks, the more Obama seems to be concerned. The Illinois senator on Tuesday publicly chastised his running mate for saying last week he did not believe insurance giant American International Group “should be bailed out by the federal government.” The comment undermined Obama, who had criticized McCain for saying the same thing.

“I think Joe should have waited, as well,” Obama said on NBC’s Today show.

The anxiety among Democrats about Biden is likely to grow as he prepares to debate Palin on Oct. 2 in St. Louis – the most important single event for both vice presidential candidates.

But even as Democrats fret over the challenges of debating a woman – especially amid Republican claims Palin has been subjected to sexism – Biden doesn’t sound worried.

“There are an awful lot of very, very accomplished women holding high public office that I debate,” he said during a recent campaign stop, “and we beat each other up every day.”

National Post

"Religion"

The Federation of Malaysia

Malaysian blogger jailed for 2 years

by Vijay Joshi

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 23, 2008

Malaysia jailed a prominent anti-government blogger for two years under a strict security law that can keep him in prison indefinitely for allegedly inciting racial tensions with his writings, a lawyer said today.

Online commentator Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin was already in police custody and was served a detention order last night under the Internal Security Act, said his lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar.

"He was taken this morning to Kamunting (Detention Center)," Malik said. "This is definitely a big blow to the idea of civil liberties, especially in a climate when everybody is asking for greater rights."

The order was signed by Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar, who has said Raja Petra's writings on Islam pose a threat to national security by creating racial tension.

The minister has the final word on how long a person stays in jail under the act, and courts can only review the procedure of the detention but not the detention itself.

Raja Petra has increasingly infuriated authorities by publishing numerous claims about alleged wrongdoings by government leaders on his popular site, Malaysia Today, which serves as his blog as well as a news portal. The government has denounced most of Raja Petra's allegations as lies.

Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The detention comes at a time when the government's popularity is at an all-time low and is riven with factional fighting and faces the threat of being ousted by the opposition.

"I don't think the government did itself any favors in attempting to regain popular confidence," Malik said.

Raja Petra was arrested Sept. 12 under the security act, which allows for an initial detention of two months for investigation, followed by a two-year jail period that can be renewed indefinitely.

He will be held at the Kamunting Detention Center in the central state of Perak. The center houses about 60 detainees held under the security law, most of whom are suspected Islamic extremists.

Raja Petra's arrest triggered widespread protests by civil society groups, lawyers and other online commentators. Along with Raja Petra, authorities also arrested an opposition lawmaker and a journalist on Sept. 12, but they were released subsequently.

Five ethnic Indian activists who organized a massive anti-government rally last year are also being held in Kamunting under the security law.

The law is a holdover from British colonial days, when it was used against communist insurgents. Independent Malaysia's postcolonial government has kept it in the statute books and has used it sparingly against political dissidents, ignoring calls from opposition groups and others to disband the law.

"The Establishment Elites"

"To Build One America, End the Game"

Speech delivered by U.S. National Democratic Party Presidential Nomination Candidate John Edwards
Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
August 23, 2007


This election is unlike any we have faced before. The stakes are higher. And the challenges we face as a nation are greater than at any time in memory.

We as a nation must choose whether to do what America has always done in times like these - change direction and move boldly into the future for the sake of our children, if not for ourselves, or wander in the same stale direction we have traveled in our recent past.

The choice we must make is as important as it is clear.

It is a choice between looking back and looking forward.

A choice between the way we've always done it and the way we could do it if we dared.

A choice between corporate power and the power of democracy.

Between a corrupt and corroded system and a government that works for us again.

It is caution versus courage. Old versus new. Calculation versus principle.

It is the establishment elites versus the American people.

It is a choice between the failed compromises of the past and the bright possibilities of our future. Between resigning ourselves to Two Americas or fighting for the One America we all believe in.

As always, at these moments, the choice we make is not for us, but for our children and our great country. And this time, like no other time, the consequences for our children are truly profound.

Will we halt global warming, protect our environment and humanity from the cataclysmic consequences of inaction and leave our children a livable world rich in the resources that were left to us?

Will we prevail against terrorism by stopping those who would harm us and winning over the minds of those who have yet to take sides so that instead of an ever more dangerous and war-torn world, our children live in a nation that is safe, strong and once again viewed throughout the world as a truly moral leader?

Will corporate greed be all we value as we move further into the global economy, or will we put workers and families first, so that all jobs pay fair wages, every American has health care and corporate profits work for democracy and not the other way around?

Will we face our future as individuals, each of us asking, "What's in it for me?" Or will we return to the central value that makes our nation great? That we are all in this together and each of has a responsibility to the common good.

The choices we make will determine not just the quality of life our children will inherit, but the fate of the world we leave behind.

To succeed for our children where we have too often failed for ourselves, we must choose a new course. Those wedded to the policies of the 70s, 80s, or 90s are wedded to the past - ideas and policies that are tired, shop worn and obsolete. We will find no answers there.

But small thinking and outdated answers aren't the only problems with a vision for the future that is rooted in nostalgia. The trouble with nostalgia is that you tend to remember what you liked and forget what you didn't. It's not just that the answers of the past aren't up to the job today, it's that the system that produced them was corrupt - and still is. It's controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it's perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don't stand a chance.

Real change starts with being honest - the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it's rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They'll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are - not for the country, but for themselves.

Politicians who care more about their careers than their constituents go along to get elected. They make easy promises to voters instead of challenging them to take responsibility for our country. And then they compromise even those promises to keep the lobbyists happy and the contributions coming.

Instead of serving the people and the nation, too many play the parlor game of Washington -- trading favors and campaign money, influencing votes and compromising legislation. It's a game that never ends, but every American knows - it's time to end the game.

And it's time for the Democratic Party - the party of the people - to end it.

The choice for our party could not be more clear. We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.

The American people deserve to know that their presidency is not for sale, the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent, and lobbyist money can no longer influence policy in the House or the Senate.

It's time to end the game. It's time to tell the big corporations and the lobbyists who have been running things for too long that their time is over. It's time to challenge politicians to put the American people's interests ahead of their own calculated political interests, to look the lobbyists in the eye and just say no.

And it's time for the American people to take responsibility for our government - for in our democracy it is truly ours. If we have come to mistrust and question it, it is because we were not vigilant against the forces that have taken it from us. That their game has played on for so long is the fault of each of us - ending the game and returning government of the people to the people is the responsibility of all of us.

But cleaning up Washington isn't enough. If we are going to meet the challenges we face and prevail over them, two principles must guide us - yes, we must end the Washington game, but we must also think as big as the challenges we face. Our ideas must be bold enough to succeed and our government must be free to enact them without compromising principle or sacrificing results.

One without the other isn't good enough. All the big ideas in the world won't make a difference if they have to go through this broken system that remains controlled by big business and their lobbyists. And if we fix the system, but aren't honest with the American people about the scope of our challenges and what's required of each of us to meet them, then we'll be left with the baby steps and incremental measures that are Washington's poor excuse for progress.

As Bobby Kennedy said, "If we fail to dare, if we do not try, the next generation will harvest the fruit of our indifference; a world we did not want, a world we did not choose, but a world we could have made better by caring more for the results of our labors."

But if we do both - if we have the courage to offer real change and the determination to change Washington - then we will be build the One America we dream of, where every man, woman and child is blessed with the same, great opportunity and held to the same, just rules.

For more than 20 years, Democrats have talked about universal health care. And for more than 20 years, we've gotten nowhere, because lobbyists for the big insurance companies, drug companies and HMOs spent millions to block real reform. Instead, they've grudgingly allowed incremental measures that do nothing but tinker around the edges - or worse, they've hijacked reform to improve their own bottom line. So today, more Americans go without health care than ever before. Instead of prescription drug reform that brought down the cost of drugs, the lobbyists for the big drug companies got us a prescription drug bill that boosts drug company profits but doesn't cut patient costs.

I have a bold plan to finally guarantee true universal health care for every single American and cut health care costs for everyone. My plan will require everyone - business, government and individuals - to contribute something to reach universal coverage. And I am honest about the cost: $90 to $120 billion a year, and I'll pay for it by repealing the Bush tax cuts for families above $200,000. If we end the game in Washington, we can finally have a health care system that treats the health of all our people with equal worth.

Dependence on foreign oil is smothering our economy and choking our environment. Everybody knows it - politicians from both parties have been calling for energy independence for 30 years. So what did the oilmen in the White House do? They handed the keys to the corridors of government over to the lobbyists for the big oil companies and let them literally write the energy bill. Now, gas prices are through the roof, carbon emissions are unchecked, and global warming is likely getting worse.

When I am president, we will cap greenhouse gas pollution and ratchet it down every year. We will avoid mistakes like nuclear power and liquid coal. We will invest in clean renewable energies generated in America and create a new era in efficient cars, made by union members here at home.

And look at our economic policies - from top to bottom, they're a twisted reflection of American values. Instead of expanding opportunity for all and preventing special privileges for any, they hoard opportunity and protect special privileges for the very few at the very top.

Trade policy is all about corporate profits for big multinationals and not at all about lifting workers' wages or creating American jobs. The tax code provides breaks for hedge fund managers - amazingly, even Democrats backed down from asking them to pay their fair share when Wall Street lobbyists put the pressure on. By the time a decade of corporate opposition to a minimal increase in the minimum wage is overcome, even its own supporters admit that the increase isn't enough - so another decade of corporate opposition begins anew, and workers lose again.

It's time we put our economy back in line with our values. Let's restore fairness to our tax code by insisting on a simple principle - nobody in the middle class should pay higher taxes on the money they make from hard work than the wealthiest pay on the money they make from their investments. Let's restore opportunity and responsibility to our trade policy by requiring that every new trade deal puts workers and wages first. Let's reward work by strengthening unions, raising the minimum wage, cutting taxes on working families and with a national commitment to end poverty within a generation.

And let's support our troops and end this war in Iraq. We should immediately withdraw 40-50,000 combat troops immediately and have the rest out in about a year. And when President Bush refuses to act, Congress should use its funding power to force him to act.

None of this will be easy, but all of it is possible.

I know. I've been doing it my entire life.

I am the son of Wallace and Bobbie Edwards. My father had to borrow $50 to bring me and my mother home from the hospital. I am here today because, like all the people my father worked with in the mill, my parents got up every day believing in the promise of America, and they worked hard - no matter what obstacles were thrown against them - to give me the chance for a better life.

That's the promise at the heart of the American Dream. What matters to our generation is of little consequence - in America what has always mattered most is the consequences for our children and their children after them. And no amount of power or money gives anyone the right to break that promise with our future.

I have stood with ordinary Americans at the most difficult times in their lives, when all the power of corporate America was arrayed against them. I have walked into courtrooms alone to face an army of corporate lawyers with all the money in the world. I have walked off the Senate elevator and been besieged by an army of corporate lobbyists. And I have beaten them over and over again.

But let me tell you one thing I have learned from my experience - you cannot deal with them on their terms. You cannot play by their rules, sit at their table, or give them a seat at yours. They will not give up their power - you have to take it from them.

We cannot triangulate our way to real change. We cannot compromise our way to real change. But we can lead to real change. And we can start today.

Nearly ten years ago, I made the decision that I would never take a dime from a Washington lobbyist - I wasn't going to work for them, and I didn't want their money.

Because in the courtroom, when you present your case to the jury, you can offer facts and evidence, you can argue your heart out - and I have - but the one thing you can't do, is pay the jury. We call that a bribe. But in Washington when an oil lobbyist gives money to office holders to influence our energy policy, they call it politics. That's exactly what's wrong with this system.

Money flies like lightning between corporations, lobbyists, and politicians. We need full public financing to reform the system once and for all. But we don't need to wait to reform our party. Two weeks ago, I called on all Democrats to reject contributions from federal lobbyists. To tell them - we know that you give money to influence politicians on behalf of your corporate clients. Well, we're not going to take it anymore. Your money's no good here.

I repeat that challenge today. Let's show America exactly whose side we're on. We can reform our party and truly be the party of the people. And we can expose for all time who the Republicans in Washington are really working for.

There are 60 lobbyists in Washington for every member of Congress. The big corporations don't need another president that looks out for them - they've got all the power they need. I want to be the people's president.

A few weeks, ago I met a man named James Lowe in Wise, Virginia. James spent the first fifty years of his life without a voice - literally without a voice - because he didn't have health care. All he needed was a simple operation to fix a cleft palate. That a man in the richest country in the world could go unable to speak for 50 years because he couldn't pay for a $3,000 operation is something that should outrage every American. We are better than that. America is better that that.

It's a stark reminder of our broken political system that leaves millions of Americans without a voice in their government - a government that is supposed to work for them.

But it doesn't have to be that way. And we can change it together.

We must think big and end the game.

It's not about being ready to grab the reigns of establishment Washington and stand on the side of corporate elites. If it is, there are plenty who will do a better job than me at protecting the status quo, and preserving the policies and politics of the past.

It's about being ready to lift our country up, reform our party, and remake our government in line with the values of our people. It's about real change and a new vision that meets the challenges of the future and inspires the American people to work together for the common good.

We're all angry at what George Bush has done to our country. But with courage and conviction, with an unblinking eye on the future we believe in and an unbending knee on the road to get there, not only can we undo the damage, we can transform the world. No matter what life has thrown at us, Elizabeth and I have always chosen to be optimistic about the future - and determined to make a difference as we strive toward it everyday.

I carry the promise of America in my heart, where my parents placed it. Because of them, I believe in people, hard work and the American Dream. I believe the future belongs to us if we only dare to seize it. And I believe to seize it, we must blaze a new path, firmly grounded in the values that first made America great. We must cast aside the established ways of Washington and replace them with the timeless values of the American people. We must end the game controlled by a privileged few and restore the promise that America owes to us all.

On that new path lies One America, where possibility is unbound and opportunity is the birthright of every American. Where the voices of the people are heard again in the halls of government, and government heeds their call. One America, where every individual takes responsibility for our common good, and the chance to reach one's God-given potential is every individual's common right.

I am the son of Wallace and Bobbie Edwards.

And I believe in the promise of America.

"Disaster Capitalism"

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

As originally published in: The Nation

April 14, 2005

Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush Administration's doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time," each lasting "five to seven years."

Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction.

Gone are the days of waiting for wars to break out and then drawing up ad hoc plans to pick up the pieces. In close cooperation with the National Intelligence Council, Pascual's office keeps "high risk" countries on a "watch list" and assembles rapid-response teams ready to engage in prewar planning and to "mobilize and deploy quickly" after a conflict has gone down. The teams are made up of private companies, nongovernmental organizations and members of think tanks - some, Pascual told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in October, will have "pre-completed" contracts to rebuild countries that are not yet broken. Doing this paperwork in advance could "cut off three to six months in your response time."

The plans Pascual's teams have been drawing up in his little-known office in the State Department are about changing "the very social fabric of a nation," he told CSIS. The office's mandate is not to rebuild any old states, you see, but to create "democratic and market-oriented" ones. So, for instance (and he was just pulling this example out of his hat, no doubt), his fast-acting reconstructors might help sell off "state-owned enterprises that created a nonviable economy." Sometimes rebuilding, he explained, means "tearing apart the old."

Few ideologues can resist the allure of a blank slate - that was colonialism's seductive promise: "discovering" wide-open new lands where utopia seemed possible. But colonialism is dead, or so we are told; there are no new places to discover, no terra nullius (there never was), no more blank pages on which, as Mao once said, "the newest and most beautiful words can be written." There is, however, plenty of destruction - countries smashed to rubble, whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bush (on orders from God). And where there is destruction there is reconstruction, a chance to grab hold of "the terrible barrenness," as a UN official recently described the devastation in Aceh, and fill it with the most perfect, beautiful plans.

"We used to have vulgar colonialism," says Shalmali Guttal, a Bangalore-based researcher with Focus on the Global South. "Now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it 'reconstruction.'"

It certainly seems that ever-larger portions of the globe are under active reconstruction: being rebuilt by a parallel government made up of a familiar cast of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, government and UN aid agencies and international financial institutions. And from the people living in these reconstruction sites--Iraq to Aceh, Afghanistan to Haiti - a similar chorus of complaints can be heard. The work is far too slow, if it is happening at all. Foreign consultants live high on cost-plus expense accounts and thousand- dollar-a-day salaries, while locals are shut out of much-needed jobs, training and decision-making. Expert "democracy builders" lecture governments on the importance of transparency and "good governance," yet most contractors and NGOs refuse to open their books to those same governments, let alone give them control over how their aid money is spent.

Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times ran a distressing story reporting that "almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding." The dispatch could easily have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times just reported, all of Bechtel's allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in an endless litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could also have come from Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai recently blasted "corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable" foreign contractors for "squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid." Or from Sri Lanka, where 600,000 people who lost their homes in the tsunami are still languishing in temporary camps. One hundred days after the giant waves hit, Herman Kumara, head of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement in Negombo, Sri Lanka, sent out a desperate e-mail to colleagues around the world. "The funds received for the benefit of the victims are directed to the benefit of the privileged few, not to the real victims," he wrote. "Our voices are not heard and not allowed to be voiced."

But if the reconstruction industry is stunningly inept at rebuilding, that may be because rebuilding is not its primary purpose. According to Guttal, "It's not reconstruction at all - it's about reshaping everything." If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. And on this front, the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that the privatizations and land grabs are usually locked in before the local population knows what hit them. Kumara, in another e-mail, warns that Sri Lanka is now facing "a second tsunami of corporate globalization and militarization," potentially even more devastating than the first. "We see this as a plan of action amidst the tsunami crisis to hand over the sea and the coast to foreign corporations and tourism, with military assistance from the US Marines."

As Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz designed and oversaw a strikingly similar project in Iraq: The fires were still burning in Baghdad when US occupation officials rewrote the investment laws and announced that the country's state-owned companies would be privatized. Some have pointed to this track record to argue that Wolfowitz is unfit to lead the World Bank; in fact, nothing could have prepared him better for his new job. In Iraq, Wolfowitz was just doing what the World Bank is already doing in virtually every war-torn and disaster-struck country in the world - albeit with fewer bureaucratic niceties and more ideological bravado.

"Post-conflict" countries now receive 20-25 percent of the World Bank's total lending, up from 16 percent in 1998 - itself an 800 percent increase since 1980, according to a Congressional Research Service study. Rapid response to wars and natural disasters has traditionally been the domain of United Nations agencies, which worked with NGOs to provide emergency aid, build temporary housing and the like. But now reconstruction work has been revealed as a tremendously lucrative industry, too important to be left to the do-gooders at the UN. So today it is the World Bank, already devoted to the principle of poverty-alleviation through profit-making, that leads the charge.

And there is no doubt that there are profits to be made in the reconstruction business. There are massive engineering and supplies contracts ($10 billion to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone); "democracy building" has exploded into a $2 billion industry; and times have never been better for public-sector consultants - the private firms that advise governments on selling off their assets, often running government services themselves as subcontractors. (Bearing Point, the favored of these firms in the United States, reported that the revenues for its "public services" division "had quadrupled in just five years," and the profits are huge: $342 million in 2002 - a profit margin of 35 percent.)

But shattered countries are attractive to the World Bank for another reason: They take orders well. After a cataclysmic event, governments will usually do whatever it takes to get aid dollars - even if it means racking up huge debts and agreeing to sweeping policy reforms. And with the local population struggling to find shelter and food, political organizing against privatization can seem like an unimaginable luxury.

Even better from the bank's perspective, many war-ravaged countries are in states of "limited sovereignty": They are considered too unstable and unskilled to manage the aid money pouring in, so it is often put in a trust fund managed by the World Bank. This is the case in East Timor, where the bank doles out money to the government as long as it shows it is spending responsibly. Apparently, this means slashing public-sector jobs (Timor's government is half the size it was under Indonesian occupation) but lavishing aid money on foreign consultants the bank insists the government hire (researcher Ben Moxham writes, "In one government department, a single international consultant earns in one month the same as his twenty Timorese colleagues earn together in an entire year").

In Afghanistan, where the World Bank also administers the country's aid through a trust fund, it has already managed to privatize healthcare by refusing to give funds to the Ministry of Health to build hospitals. Instead it funnels money directly to NGOs, which are running their own private health clinics on three-year contracts. It has also mandated "an increased role for the private sector" in the water system, telecommunications, oil, gas and mining and directed the government to "withdraw" from the electricity sector and leave it to "foreign private investors." These profound transformations of Afghan society were never debated or reported on, because few outside the bank know they took place: The changes were buried deep in a "technical annex" attached to a grant providing "emergency" aid to Afghanistan's war-torn infrastructure--two years before the country had an elected government.

It has been much the same story in Haiti, following the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In exchange for a $61 million loan, the bank is requiring "public-private partnership and governance in the education and health sectors," according to bank documents - i.e., private companies running schools and hospitals. Roger Noriega, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, has made it clear that the Bush Administration shares these goals. "We will also encourage the government of Haiti to move forward, at the appropriate time, with restructuring and privatization of some public sector enterprises," he told the American Enterprise Institute on April 14, 2004.

These are extraordinarily controversial plans in a country with a powerful socialist base, and the bank admits that this is precisely why it is pushing them now, with Haiti under what approaches military rule. "The Transitional Government provide[s] a window of opportunity for implementing economic governance reforms...that may be hard for a future government to undo," the bank notes in its Economic Governance Reform Operation Project agreement. For Haitians, this is a particularly bitter irony: Many blame multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, for deepening the political crisis that led to Aristide's ouster by withholding hundreds of millions in promised loans. At the time, the Inter-American Development Bank, under pressure from the State Department, claimed Haiti was insufficiently democratic to receive the money, pointing to minor irregularities in a legislative election. But now that Aristide is out, the World Bank is openly celebrating the perks of operating in a democracy-free zone.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been imposing shock therapy on countries in various states of shock for at least three decades, most notably after Latin America's military coups and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet many observers say that today's disaster capitalism really hit its stride with Hurricane Mitch. For a week in October 1998, Mitch parked itself over Central America, swallowing villages whole and killing more than 9,000. Already impoverished countries were desperate for reconstruction aid - and it came, but with strings attached. In the two months after Mitch struck, with the country still knee-deep in rubble, corpses and mud, the Honduran congress initiated what the Financial Times called "speed sell-offs after the storm." It passed laws allowing the privatization of airports, seaports and highways and fast-tracked plans to privatize the state telephone company, the national electric company and parts of the water sector. It overturned land-reform laws and made it easier for foreigners to buy and sell property. It was much the same in neighboring countries: In the same two months, Guatemala announced plans to sell off its phone system, and Nicaragua did likewise, along with its electric company and its petroleum sector.

All of the privatization plans were pushed aggressively by the usual suspects. According to the Wall Street Journal, "the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had thrown their weight behind the [telecom] sale, making it a condition for release of roughly $47 million in aid annually over three years and linking it to about $4.4 billion in foreign-debt relief for Nicaragua."

Now the bank is using the December 26 tsunami to push through its cookie-cutter policies. The most devastated countries have seen almost no debt relief, and most of the World Bank's emergency aid has come in the form of loans, not grants. Rather than emphasizing the need to help the small fishing communities - more than 80 percent of the wave's victims - the bank is pushing for expansion of the tourism sector and industrial fish farms. As for the damaged public infrastructure, like roads and schools, bank documents recognize that rebuilding them "may strain public finances" and suggest that governments consider privatization (yes, they have only one idea). "For certain investments," notes the bank's tsunami-response plan, "it may be appropriate to utilize private financing."

As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was - dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.

In January Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us." Many were horrified at the idea of treating a massive human tragedy as a chance to seek advantage. But, if anything, Rice was understating the case. A group calling itself Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says that for "businessmen-politicians, the tsunami was the answer to their prayers, since it literally wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities which had previously stood in the way of their plans for resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms. To them, all these coastal areas are now open land!"

Disaster, it seems, is the new terra nullius.

Manitoba Provincial Legislative Assembly Opposition Leader / Progressive Conservative Party Leader Hugh McFadyen

Grinnin' Gary sweeping the scorecards as Spanky can't land a punch

by "The Black Rod"

As originally posted on: The Black Rod

November 22, 2006

If this was a prizefight, the crowd would be screaming at the referee to stop it.

We never thought we'd use the words 'Muhammed Ali' and 'Gary Doer' in the same sentence. But then we never thought we'd see "Hugh McFadyen" and "Manitoba Tory leader" juxtaposed either.

Since McFadyen stepped into Stuart Murray's shoes, NDP Premier Gary Doer has out-jabbed, out-danced, out-flanked, and out-smarted him at every step. The Throne Speech and the current mini-session of the Legislature has brought nothing but humiliation to the new Tory leader, who was elected because of his supposed smarts as a backroom politico.

McFadyen has become the palooka hoping to land a lucky punch, while Gary Doer gives him a lesson in ring generalship. Doer has boxed his ears, tripped him, and, spanked his heinie for good measure.

Spanky McFadyen talked a good fight, but after each day in the Legislature, his face is as red as his backside when Doer gets through with him.

It wasn't so long ago that the Tories had Doer and the NDP on the ropes.

The Conservatives and their Liberal Party allies had brought the Legislature to a standstill, stalling the budget by forcing vote after vote on procedure to get the NDP to agree to a public inquiry into the Crocus Fund debacle.

Enter Spanky McFadyen.

The NDP spread a rumour that they were prepared to call a snap election and blame the Conservatives for obstructing the Legislature. McFadyen fell for it hook, line and sinker. He scrapped Murray's Crocus strategy and threw away his best chance for winning the next election.

In its place he announced the creation of Orchard's Irregulars, a secret task force under former MLA Don Orchard, tasked to develop "leaks" from within and uncover the awful truth about Crocus. This bunch doesn't have James Bond's double-o status; they're strictly single O, as in zer-0, which describes the sum total of their efforts so far.

Where Stu Murray landed some hard blows by attacking the NDP's decision to close the maternity ward at Victoria Hospital, Spanky McFadyen has abandoned health care as a front-line issue.

He got lucky in June when Doer got cocky and claimed there were no patients in hospital hallways, a claim absolutely nobody in the province believed.

But when an 89-year-old man was forced to lie down on the floor of the hallway at Seven Oaks hospital because there were no beds for him (Winnipeg Sun, Nov. 18), McFadyen yawned.

When Harry Lehotsky died of cancer six months after writing how he couldn't get to see a doctor to diagnose the severe pain he was in, McFadyen blinked. Harry who? Health care, how yesterday.

Doer shuffled his cabinet before the current session of the Legislature, leaving the Tories punching at air since the rules prevent them from asking the current ministers about decisions made by their predecessors.

In September, Spanky made his maiden speech to the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce, which seemed appropos, given his previous declarations that he intended to distinguish himself from the NDP by his plans to make Manitoba a "have" province.

The Winnipeg Free Press summed up his speech this way:

"A Conservative government would maintain the post-secondary tuition freeze, re-instate standards testing in public schools, cut taxes and rein in spending, Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen said yesterday".

The CBC had this take:

"But McFadyen added there is hope Manitoba can improve under a Conservative government, which he said will come up with long-term plans to protect water resources, address doctor shortages and reinvest in highways."

But all anybody talked about was McFadyen's dig at the Communist leanings of Howard Pawley's NDP government (1981-88). Spanky spent the next few weeks on the defensive, trying to explain what he meant.

Then Gary Doer brought down the latest throne speech promising billions in new spending, with lots of it on McFadyen's pet projects like highways. Oh, and tax cuts.

He promised to start building the Conawapa dam ($5 billion and counting). McFadyen rose to the bait.

Who would buy the power, he asked. Ontario's long-term energy strategy, released in December 2005, made no mention of getting hydroelectricity from Manitoba, he declared.

Did too, counted Doer.

Once.

Which is still one more than zero.

Then he closed the trap.

The Ontario Power Authority's 20-year-plan, released the day before, mentions Manitoba eight times.

Huh? said McFadyen.

Doer knew about the report and suckered Spanky. Again.

Did anyone notice that the NDP plan to run in the new election as conservatives? Yes, its all there in the Throne Speech. The NDP plan to contrast their seven years in office with Manitoba in 1999, highlighting their steady string of tax cuts and debt reduction. McFadyen is left gasping.

Tuesday in the Legislature, he lambasted the NDP for cutting a number of bridges from plans to rebuild the Winnipeg Floodway.

The NDP announced the cuts to try and stay on budget.

Spanky once said he wanted to rein in spending.

Now he wants to outspend the NDP.

With only three weeks in this session, probably the last before an expected spring election, you'd think the Tories would want to make a mark. Gary Doer had them wasting a day voting on a motion to hold a non-binding plebiscite into the future of the Wheat Board. The Tories voted against it, a vote which will be used as a club against them in the coming election.

Damn, fell for it again.

When Spanky McFadyen tried to attack the NDP for not caring about smoking on reserves, Premier Gary Doer thanked the member from Carman, Denis Rocan, for his foresight in bringing forward a private members bill to ban smoking in public places. McFadyen, who engineered Rocan's defeat at the nomination meeting for the next election, was left with the usual fixed grin on his face and nothing to say.

McFadyen's promises of bold plans to harness Manitoba's economy seem to have been replaced with a series of musings.

Maybe, he told the annual Tory convention, Manitoba's electoral laws should be changed to introduce proportional representation so that more Liberals were in the Legislature.

Maybe, he told the Winnipeg Sun, the private sector should finance hydro projects.

Or maybe not.

The li'l rascal. You can't hit what you can't see.

But maybe somebody should tell him that rope-a-dope means avoiding punches, until your opponent gets tired - not taking them all on the chin, until your opponent gets tired of smacking you around.

Wall Street and the United States Federal Reserve System

No Amnesty for Wall Street

by Chuck Baldwin

As originally posted on: Novakeo.com
September 27, 2008


At the time of this writing, the U.S. House and Senate are poised to pass a $700 billion bailout to Wall Street. At the behest of President George W. Bush, the U.S. taxpayers are going to be on the hook for what can only be referred to as the biggest fraud in U.S. history.

Virtually our entire financial system is based on an illusion. We spend more than we earn, we consume more than we produce, we borrow more than we save, and we cling to the fantasy that this can go on forever. The glue that holds this crumbling scheme together is a fiat currency known as the Federal Reserve Note, which was created out of thin air by an international banking cartel called the Federal Reserve.

According to Congressman Ron Paul, in the last three years, the Federal Reserve has created over $4 trillion in new money. The result of all this “money-out-of-thin-air” fraud is never-ending inflation. And the more prices rise, the more the dollar collapses. Folks, this is not sustainable.

Already, Bear Stearns was awarded a $29 billion bailout, followed quickly by the bailout of Freddie and Fannie that will cost the taxpayers up to $200 billion. Then the Fed announced the bailout of AIG to the tune of $85 billion. Mind you, AIG is an enormous global entity with assets totaling more than $1.1 trillion. Moreover, the Feds agreed to pump $180 billion into global money markets. And the Treasury Department promised $50 billion to insure the holdings of money market mutual funds for a year. Now, taxpayers are being asked to provide $700 billion to Wall Street. (I hope readers are aware that, not only will American banks be bailed out, but foreign banks will also be bailed out. Then again, at least half of the Federal Reserve is comprised of foreign banks, anyway.) In other words, the Federal Reserve is preparing to spend upwards of $1 trillion or more. Remember again, this is fiat money, meaning it is money printed out of thin air.

All of this began when the U.S. Congress abrogated its responsibility to maintain sound money principles on behalf of the American people (as required by the Constitution) and created the Federal Reserve. This took place in 1913. The President was Woodrow Wilson. (I strongly encourage readers to buy G. Edward Griffin’s book, The Creature from Jekyll Island.) Since then, the U.S. economy has suffered through one Great Depression and several recessions–all of which have been orchestrated by this international banking cartel. Now, we are facing total economic collapse.

But don’t worry: the international bankers will lose nothing – not even their bonuses. They will maintain their mansions, yachts, private jets, and Swiss bank accounts. No matter how bad it gets on Main Street, the banksters on Wall Street will still have the best of it – President Bush and the Congress will make sure of that. This is one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on.

America’s founders were rightfully skeptical of granting too much power to bankers. Thomas Jefferson said, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Jefferson also believed that “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Daniel Webster warned, “Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money.”

Webster also said, “We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no, Sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people.”

Our first and greatest President George Washington said, “Paper money has had the effect in your State [Rhode Island] that it ever will have, to ruin commerce – oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”

If George W. Bush, John McCain, or Barack Obama had any honesty and integrity, they would approach the current banking malady in much the same way that President Andrew Jackson did. In discussing the Bank Renewal bill with a delegation of bankers in 1832, Jackson said, “Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”

What President Andrew Jackson said to the bankers in 1832 is exactly what an American President should say to these criminal international bankers today. But what George Bush, John McCain, and Barack Obama want to do is provide amnesty for the international bankers, just as they want to provide amnesty for illegal aliens. I say, No amnesty for Wall Street, and no amnesty for illegal aliens, either. Instead of sending these banksters on extended vacations to the Bahamas with millions of taxpayer dollars in their pockets, we should be sending them straight to jail!

The only way to fix this economic mess that the international bankers have created is to return America to sound money principles, as prescribed in the U.S. Constitution. This means dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver. Anything short of this will only delay and worsen the inevitable collapse that has already begun.


Chuck Baldwin is a regular columnist for Novakeo.com

You can reach him at: chuck@chuckbaldwinlive.com

Please visit Chuck’s web site at: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com

Political Parties

The following aphorisms are reprinted from Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

The martyr against his will. - In one party, there was a man who was too anxious and cowardly ever to contradict his comrades. They used him for every service; they demanded everything of him, because he was more afraid of the bad opinions of his companions than of death itself. His was a miserable, weak soul. They recognized this and on the basis of those qualities they made him first into a hero and finally into a martyr. Although the cowardly man always said "no" inwardly, he always said "yes" with his lips, even on the scaffold, when he died for the views of his party. Next to him stood one of his old comrades, who tyrannized him so by word and glance that he really did suffer death in the most seemly way, and has since been celebrated as a martyr and a man of great character.

The most dangerous party member. - In every party there is one who through his all too credulous avowal of the party's principles incites the others to apostasy.

Permission to speak! - The demagogic character and the intention to appeal to the masses is at present common to all political parties: on account of this intention they are all compelled to transform their principles into great al fresco stupidities and thus to paint them on the wall. This is no longer alterable, indeed it would be pointless to raise so much as a finger against it; for in this domain there apply the words of Voltaire: quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu. ["When the mob joins in and adds its voice, all is lost."] Since this has happened one has to accommodate oneself when an earthquake has displaced the former boundaries and contours of the ground and altered the value of one's property. Moreover, if the purpose of all politics really is to make life endurable for as many as possible, then these as-many-as-possible are entitled to determine what they understand by an endurable life; if they trust to their intellect also to discover the right means of attaining this goal, what good is there in doubting it? They want for once to forge for themselves their own fortunes and misfortunes; and if this feeling of self-determination, pride in the five or six ideas their head contains and brings forth, in fact renders their life so pleasant to them they are happy to bear the calamitous consequences of their narrow-mindedness, there is little to be objected to, always presupposing that this narrow-mindedness does not go so far as to demand that everything should become politics in this sense, that everyone should live and work according to such a standard. For a few must first of all be allowed, now more than ever, to refrain from politics and to step a little aside: they too are prompted to this by pleasure in self-determination; and there may also be a degree of pride attached to staying silent when too many, or even just many, are speaking. Then these few must be forgiven if they fail to take the happiness of the many, whether by the many one understands nations or social classes, so very seriously and are now and then guilty of an ironic posture; for their seriousness is located elsewhere, their happiness is something quite different, their goal is not to be encompassed by any clumsy hand that has only five fingers. Finally, from time to time there comes to them—what it will certainly be hardest to concede to them but must be conceded to them nonetheless—a moment when they emerge from their silent solitude and again try the power of their lungs: for then they call to one another like those gone astray in a wood in order to locate and encourage one another; whereby much becomes audible, to be sure, that sounds ill to ears for which it is not intended.— Soon afterwards, though, it is again still in the wood, so still that the buzzing, humming and fluttering of the countless insects that live in, above and beneath it can again clearly be heard.

Not suitable as a party member. - Whoever thinks much is not suitable as a party member: he soon thinks himself right out of the party.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Harper insults rural Canadians

As originally posted on: Liberal.ca

September 10, 2008

OTTAWA—The “culture of defeat” remark has dogged Prime Minister Stephen Harper for years, and today the National President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union has revealed another questionable Harper comment.

Dave Coles told Newfoundland and Labrador’s VOCM radio today that Prime Minister Harper personally told him that there would be no package to support the newsprint industry. The union leader said Prime Minister Harper told him in a private meeting that anyone who loses their jobs can move to Fort McMurray, Alberta.

“Forest industry workers should just let the market decide, and if you lose your job, and he (Harper) said this to me personally, you could always go to Fort McMurray. And I think that’s insulting for forestry workers and pulp and paper workers who live in rural Canada to hear that kind of answer from the Prime Minister,” said Mr. Coles.

Why is Stephen Harper abandoning our forestry sector and insulting rural Canadians?

An audio clip of Mr. Coles’ interview is on http://www.vocm.com.

The Harper Conservatives

Tories use RCMP to block media from talking to candidate Cadman

THE CANADIAN PRESS

September 24, 2008

The Conservatives called on the RCMP Tuesday night to block reporters from speaking with B.C. candidate Dona Cadman, in a scene reminiscent of the last election when they stashed a local candidate in a restaurant kitchen.

Cadman, a candidate in Surrey-North, has fallen silent since alleging months ago that her dying husband was offered a lucrative life-insurance policy to side with the Tories in a 2005 confidence vote.

A dispute over exactly what kind of deal the Tories tried to strike with the late Chuck Cadman now lies at the heart of a legal battle between Stephen Harper and the Liberal party.

Reporters following the prime minister's national tour asked to interview Dona Cadman after a campaign rally in Surrey — a request that Harper aides initially laughed off in apparent disbelief that the media would even bother asking.

They later told reporters to go ahead and try speaking with her at the end of the rally, but when the media pack got too close, the prime minister's staff ordered the RCMP to block journalists from the exit door.

"Keep them out," one aide shouted at the guards.

Cadman and other local candidates, meanwhile, were whisked out the door.

Harper spokesman Kory Teneycke later said he didn't see the exchange involving the RCMP. But he insisted there was no need for local candidates to be interviewed.

"Local candidates' priority is campaigning in their local ridings, and not talking to the national media," said Teneycke.

He said the Conservatives hold daily news conferences with the party's most prominent members — and that should be enough.

"We have media availabilities every morning in which journalists can ask questions of the prime minister," Teneycke said. "We have events every day in our war room, generally with members of cabinet."

Local access has been an issue for the party since the 2004 campaign when candidates musing about official bilingualism, abortion and the Charter of Rights helped torpedo the national effort.

Tight message discipline was ramped up in the 2006 election and has remained a party mantra ever since. In particular, attempts to speak with socially conservative candidates have been aggressively thwarted.

One of those candidates, Harold Albrecht, was whisked away by a Harper aide and hidden in the kitchen when journalists tried approaching him before the 2006 vote.

As for the so-called Cadman affair, an audio tape the Liberals were hoping to use as a weapon against Harper in the current campaign has effectively been silenced by courtroom delays.

Harper recently won an adjournment putting off a hearing that had been scheduled on the affair, and he's still seeking an injunction to keep the tape out of Liberal hands in the longer term.

Harper also launched a $3.5-million defamation suit last March against the Liberal party, which had used media reports about the tape to accuse the prime minister of "immoral," "illegal" and "unethical" behaviour.

The prime minister says the 2005 tape, in which he discussed the party's overtures to Chuck Cadman, was doctored by the journalist who conducted the interview.

The Conservative Party of Canada

Tory members sue party over nomination process

THE CANADIAN PRESS

September 6, 2006

The federal Conservative party is facing a lawsuit from grassroots members over its nomination process, as would-be candidates complain that officials continue to reject them with no explanation.

The latest snub is to Doug Campbell, an international agricultural economist and one-time adviser to Tory cabinet ministers, who wanted to run against MP Myron Thompson for the nomination in the southwestern Alberta riding of Wild Rose.

Campbell was not given any reasons for his rejection in the riding, which includes Banff, Canmore, Cochrane, Airdrie, Olds and other communities. Instead, he was told he could submit additional documentation in an effort to appeal the party's decision.

Campbell said the nomination committee that interviewed him was handpicked by the sitting MP and his supporters. And because of gag agreements he signed with the party, he is not allowed to speak specifically about certain parts of his application process.

"The possible innuendo that I failed a criminal check or security check or credit check — I just totally know that there's nothing there…," he said.

"I have to say on the record, I didn't do anything wrong."

Calgary West lawsuit cites many complaints

The party, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, publicly announced over the summer that no incumbent MP would be protected from challenges to his or her nomination in the interest of an open and democratic process.

But some members have complained that what has resulted is secretive and patently unjust.

In Calgary West, where MP Rob Anders is the incumbent, 11 members of the riding association have asked a provincial judge to review the nomination process that took place there over the past month.

They complain that the party did not widely enough advertise the date of a nomination meeting, did not hold it within the minimum 30-day guideline, and failed to do a search for qualified potential candidates — all part of the organization's rule book.

The members say they tried to get the party to address the problems through its own arbitration process, but for two weeks got no response. During that period, however, party brass found the time to disqualify a would-be candidate in the riding, Walter Wakula, and also to reject his subsequent appeal.

"The integrity of the process is paramount because that is what people trust, and what they have to trust," Calgary West party member John Knox said on the Calgary radio program The Rutherford Show on Tuesday.

"We're the Conservative party and our members expect us to be much better than the Liberal party."

Party arranges arbitration

Party officials did not immediately return calls.

But executive director Michael Donison wrote to the party members named in the lawsuit on Sept. 1, telling them the issue was finally being sent to the party's arbitration panel. The group is still pursuing the case in court.

"One of the most fundamental rights of any party member is to vote for whom they think would be the best representative for them, and that's what we want to the court to ensure takes place," said Knox.

Ottawa ex-candidate sues

In Ottawa, former electoral candidate Alan Riddell is also suing the party for alleged breach of contract.

Riddell said he was asked to step aside in the Ottawa South riding during the last election to allow Allan Cutler — the bureaucrat who blew the whistle on the sponsorship program scandal — to run for the nomination.

Riddell did so with the agreement the party would pay back some of his $50,000 in expenses already incurred. The party has yet to do that, and Riddell is now in court fighting for his money and his reputation.

The party's national council responded to Riddell's actions a week ago by revoking his party membership, a move that his friends in the riding association say is unjustified.

Canadian Federal International Trade Minister / Federal Parliamentary Election Candidate / Former Canadian Senator Michael Fortier

Michael Fortier Hates Democracy

by Eric Grenier

As originally posted on: Sovereignty en Anglais

September 22, 2008

Michael Fortier, the cabinet minister who sat in the Senate, is now undertaking a campaign against the Bloc Québécois. With a huge poster on the side of a truck, the Conservatives are claiming that over the last 18 years the cost of the Bloc to taxpayers has been $350 million in salary for nothing in return.

The poster says, and Fortier repeats, that there has been zero realisations of the Bloc in that time, and so the money has been wasted. Aside from this simplistically ignorant assessment of the democratic process, Fortier goes on to say that only 4 out of their 255 proposed bills have passed.

Now, I'm no mathematician. But 4 out of 255 is still more than zero. They might want to be a little more accurate when they are standing in front of a huge mathematical error.

In any case, the benefits the Bloc have given to Quebec cannot be calculated in terms of bills that have turned into laws. The Bloc has brought to the House of Commons issues that matter to Quebecers, issues that wouldn't have been picked up by other pan-Canadian parties. Remember, it was the Bloc that pushed for answers in the sponsorship scandal. It is the Bloc who has forced the Liberals and Conservatives to act in order to win any ridings in Quebec. No longer can it be taken for granted, and in many cases both parties have adopted Bloc proposals and language in order to win votes. Would that have happened otherwise?

Ex-senator Michael Fortier needs a lesson in democracy. Electing an MP who doesn't sit in cabinet but who represents his constituents well is not without use. And Fortier should not be giving any lessons to anyone. The un-elected Fortier got to sit in Cabinet without being accountable to a single voter, and he decided not to run in the multitude of by-elections that have sprung up since 2006.

In 2006, he didn't run in Repentigny. In 2007, he was too busy to run in St-Hyacinthe. He felt it wasn't necessary to run in Roberval. This purported cabinet representative of Montreal felt Outremont wasn't Montreal-y enough. In August he felt that Westmount-Ville-Marie wasn't worth his attention, and that St-Lambert was a waste of time.

Instead, he chose Vaudreuil-Soulanges, a riding outside of Montreal he felt he might possibly win because it is a suburb. In the end, he probably won't win because of his arrogance.

Unlike Michael Fortier, the Bloc Québécois has the support of voters. About, oh I don't know, over 1.5 million of them. How many votes has Michael Fortier earned in his career? Oh right, about 3,600 back in 2000 when he placed fourth in Laval West behind, of all parties, the Canadian Alliance.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Democratic Reform Minister Peter Van Loan

Van Loan to McGuinty: "nyah nyah nyah, so's your mother"

by Kelly McParland

As originally posted on: Posted

November 22, 2007

Before launching his responses to Dalton McGuinty’s complaints about Ontario’s proposed new seat quota in the House of Commons, Peter Van Loan must have studied deeply from the Book of Mulroney.

The knock against the former prime minister has been that he had 15 years and a thousand-page autobiography - to explain away his dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber, but never availed himself of the opportunity. Similarly, Van Loan has had several chances to detail exactly why Ontario should be shortchanged when the House grows from 308 seats to 330 in 2011, but has used the time to hurl insults instead. Fairly childish ones, too.

“Dalton McGuinty doesn’t even understand the problem or the solution,” he sneered last week.

“[McGuinty seems to prefer to become the small man of Confederation,” he jeered on Tuesday. He could have stuck his thumb on his nose and wiggled his fingers and it wouldn’t have come across as any more juvenile.

The thing is, it was pretty obvious Ontario’s premier was bound to beef once he learned how the new seats were to be divvied up. B.C.’s growth earned it 7 new seats, so it got 7 seats; Alberta’s growth rated 5 seats so it got 5 seats. The same calculation should give Ontario 21 seats, so it got ... 10 seats.

Um, excuse me? Ah, Mr. Van Loan ... I think there’s been a miscalculation here?

The complaint being predictable, the smart thing would have been for the Tory House Leader to work up a credible explanation he could use to send the lowly premier packing back to Queen’s Park. Instead he’s played the surly waiter, glancing at the bill but refusing to admit he forgot to bring the fries, and charging for it anyway.

His performance leads one to suspect he hasn’t offered a credible answer because he hasn’t got one. If the purpose of the exercise was to reapportion seats in the House to take into account regional growth, then Ontario’s portion should presumably be calculated using the same formula used for B.C. and Alberta. Van Loan’s original announcement stressed that point, but when McGuinty pointed out the results didn’t back up the claim, he quickly turned nasty. Rather than explain the government’s reasoning, he tried to smear the premier. First he suggested McGuinty didn’t get it. Then he questioned his devotion to the federation. Then he accused him of pitting province against province.

What he thinks he’s achieving with this isn’t quite clear. Maybe, having watched the prime minister successfully make the leader of the opposition look silly for the past several weeks, he wanted to get in on the fun. If so, it isn’t working. Instead he has succeeded in feeding suspicion the real motive for the seat split is to send more seats to western provinces where the Tories are strong, at the expense of bad old unreliable Ontario, which insists on voting for Liberals. Not at all an impressive performance, overall.

Kelly McParland is Politics Editor of the National Post

Canadian Prime Minister / Federal Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper

Harper's running on flawed record

As originally posted on: TheStar.com

September 8, 2008

It is clear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is running in this election on his government's record while portraying his opponents – notably Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion – as pointy-headed academics who would expose the country to "risky adventures" and "untested schemes."

In his campaign kick-off remarks yesterday, Harper stressed that his party has a "proven record" in government and has set a "clear direction" for the future.

But just what is the record that Harper is running on?

His government has been secretive and manipulative, with all power concentrated in the prime minister's office and cabinet ministers reduced to mere ciphers. The public service has been effectively muzzled, too, with the chief of the nuclear regulatory commission being fired for daring to stand her ground.

Harper was elected in 2006 on a promise to bring "a culture of accountability" to Ottawa, then furiously evaded attempts by parliamentary committees to hold his government accountable.

As for Harper's stewardship of the economy, on his watch the country is experiencing its slowest growth in almost two decades. While many of the circumstances (such as a slumping U.S. economy) are beyond the government's control, Harper's laissez-faire approach has not helped matters.

In foreign affairs, Canada under Harper has lost its standing as a respected independent voice as his government has cozied up to the Bush administration in the U.S.

On the environmental front, Harper abrogated the Kyoto accord and implemented a permissive plan that will allow Canada's greenhouse gas emissions to continue rising.

On two other issues, health care and the cities, Harper has essentially abandoned all responsibility to the provinces. And he has failed to engage in the war on poverty.

Harper yesterday listed the election promises his government has kept, including cuts to the GST, the new child care allowance, and anti-crime legislation. Unmentioned were the broken promises, including a fixed election date in October, 2009. By calling the election early, Harper has broken not only the promise, but his own government's law. His lame excuse is that he needs a new mandate from the voters.

He didn't say what the mandate is for. "I'm not in this election running on any big or grandiose ideas," he explained in a television interview.

Harper dismissed suggestions that he had a "hidden agenda" that will be sprung on the public post-election. "I don't think that's a credible charge," said Harper, adding that Canadians have seen what kind of government he runs over the past 32 months.

Of course, it was a minority government, held in check by the opposition parties.

The leaders of all the opposition parties were certainly ringing alarm bells about Harper's agenda yesterday. That's fair game, but over the coming weeks they should also outline their parties' positions on a range of issues, including the economy, the environment, cities, poverty, Afghanistan, health care and child care, as well as fair treatment of Ontario. Then voters can judge whether the opposition plans are as "risky" as Harper suggests.

For Harper, the task ahead is to convince Canadians that he can be trusted with another term in government – especially if, as the polls are suggesting, it is a majority, unfettered by the opposition.

The Axel Kuhn 2008 Canadian Federal Parliamentary Election Campaign and the Conservative Party of Canada

Toronto-area Liberal MP wins injunction against Tory rival

Conservative candidate's flyers 'clearly defamatory,' judge rules

THE CANADIAN PRESS

October 13, 2008

A Toronto Liberal incumbent has won a court injunction against his Conservative rival ordering him and his campaign to pull a defamatory campaign flyer that alleges he has a poor attendance record.

Ontario Superior Court Justice George Strathy ruled Sunday that Conservative candidate Axel Kuhn and his staff must stop publishing and distributing a brochure that makes false claims about Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

The pamphlet claims Wrzesnewskyj skipped dozens of parliamentary committee meetings, but the Liberal incumbent for the riding of Etobicoke Centre said he's only a full-time member of one of the six committees listed in the brochure.

In his ruling, the judge wrote that the words in Kuhn's flyer are "clearly defamatory."

"They imply that the plaintiff has been derelict in his duties as a member of Parliament and that he does not deserve to be paid his salary," Strathy wrote. "Based upon the sworn evidence of the plaintiff, the words cannot be justified."

In a statement released after the ruling, Wrzesnewskyj defended his record in Parliament and called on Kuhn to withdraw his candidacy ahead of Tuesday's election.

"The Conservative candidate and the Conservative Party of Canada have made blatantly false statements about my voting record and attendance in the House of Commons and at committee meetings," Wrzesnewskyj said.

"He's dropping flyers with these statements on Thanksgiving weekend just before the election knowing that there's a virtual impossibility to respond."

In the injunction papers, Wrzesnewskyj alleges that Kuhn's campaign team distributed tens of thousands of the brochures in the riding and that the Liberal candidate only found out about it this weekend after his campaign was contacted about the claims made in the document.

The Conservative candidate's campaign was not immediately available for comment.

The Harper Conservatives

“Shame”

by the Honourable Garth Turner, Canadian MP

As originally posted on: The Turner Report
February 28, 2008


THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA – The following is a transcript of a portion of author Tom Zytaruk’s tape of a 2005 interview with Stephen Harper, then leader of the Opposition, for his biography of the late Chuck Cadman:

Zytaruk: “I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?”

Harper: “I don’t know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?”

Read the full transcript of the Cadman biographer’s interview with Stephen Harper here.

__________________________________________________

Members of Mr. Harper’s caucus yelled “Shame” at the top of their lungs during QP on Thursday, trying to drown out Stephane Dion’s questions regarding Chuck Cadman. They did not succeed. The prime minister then denied that the former Indie MP had been offered a bribe to rejoin the Conservative Party and defeat the Liberal government, on that fateful day of May 19, 2005.

At the time, Mr. Cadman was dying of cancer. His vote alone would determine whether the Martin government survived, or if the country would be plunged into an election.

Cadman’s widow, Dona, confirmed in an interview broadcast on CTV on Thursday afternoon what’s in a new book on her husband, and what Chuck had told her: Two operatives of the Conservative Party had offered him various things, including a $1 million life insurance policy. Mrs. Cadman, by the way, is a card-carrying federal Conservative. She is also the Conservative candidate in her riding of Surrey North. Therefore she appears to have no incentive whatsoever to lie.

Thursday night, Cadman’s adult daughter, Jodi, also appeared on national television to back up her mother’s story, and her father’s words to them - that he’d been offered an insurance policy to take care of them both after his death.

The Harper administration replied to question after question in the Commons on Thursday with one simple defence: Mr. Cadman gave an interview the night of the vote to CTV, in which, the Conservatives say, he denied being offered any deal.

“End of story,” says government spokesguy James Moore, himself a BC MP.

Not exactly true. For those who have since heard Mr. Cadman’s exact, and carefully chosen words, he says he “received no offers from any other party.” He was not asked about a financial incentive to vote with the Conservatives. He was not asked about a bribe or an insurance policy. His clip was shortened by Moore to just “received no offers.”

Furthermore, the author of the new Cadman biography interviewed Stephen Harper in Mr. Cadman’s driveway, an audio tape of which has also been broadcast. “Of the offer to Chuck,” he quotes Mr. Harper as saying, “it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election, OK. That’s my understanding of what they were talking about.”

So what did happen?

We know this: On that day, May 19th, Harper strategist and mentor Tom Flanagan called Conservative MP John Reynolds, who would be the national Conservative election chair, to arrange a meeting with Cadman prior to the critical vote. Reynolds then called Gary Lunn, also a BC member, who Harper would later take into his cabinet, to intervene. Lunn did so, and set up the meeting with Cadman for 3 pm.

Flanagan took Doug Finley with him. Finley is now Harper’s Director of Political Operations, and his wife, Diane, was taken into cabinet by Mr. Harper after he became prime minister. Flanagan and Finley met with Cadman, who was in the final stages of skin cancer and very fatigued.

Finley says the two of them made a “last desperate try” to convince Cadman to rejoin the party and vote against the Liberals. Two years later, in his own book, Flanagan admitted to the rashness of this meeting, saying, “It’s an excellent example of how the passion of politics lead to decisions that later make you scratch your head.”

Thus, we have Mr. Harper admitting he knew in advance that this meeting would take place. He told a journalist that the meeting was about “financial considerations” for Mr. Cadman. The widow of Chuck Cadman, herself a Conservative candidate, has told an author and a broadcaster the same thing – her husband confided he was offered a $1 million policy to sign on with Finley and Flanagan. This was confirmed by her daughter. And, finally, Mr. Flanagan himself says the meeting was “desperate” on his party’s part and an “excellent example” of behaviour which is later deemed questionable.

Even if the insurance policy aspect cannot be proven, the prime minister admits his party representatives discussed “financial considerations” with a member of Parliament in an attempt to secure his vote. That is unethical and amoral. Soon the RCMP will determine if it might also be illegal.

As I said here last night when news of this shocking allegation became public: This is consistent with what I have seen Mr. Harper do, with what he said of Mr. Cadman within the Conservative caucus, and the way he micromanages even the smallest strategic actions within his political party. It speaks not only to his character and his motives, but to his fundamental moral compass.

Based on what we know, let alone what we fear, it is broken.
___________________________________________________

Below is a transcript of the CTV interview with Chuck Cadman, the night of the vote in May, 2005. These words were used repeatedly by the Harper government to ‘prove’ nothing had been offered to the MP in exchange for his vote. Come to your own conclusions. — Garth


Duffy: “Craig Oliver reported… that the Conservatives offered you an unopposed nomination if you would vote with them, and also help with campaign financing and so on. Was that offer actually made?”

Cadman: “Well, there was some talk about that. As far as an unopposed nomination, you know, the discussion did come up, the talk did come up, yeah.”

Duffy: “So they were making and offer to you and in the end you refused.”

Cadman: “Yeah, well, you know, that was the only offer on anything I had from anybody, you know, there was no offers on the table up to that point about anything from any, uh, from any party.”

Canadian Federal Parliamentary Election Candidate Alice Wong and the Harper Conservatives

Tories undermine candidates

As originally published in: The Richmond News

September 10, 2008

The last time Stephen Harper was in Richmond, he refused to answer any questions from the local media. That was not long after he had been elected prime minister and had already earned a reputation for being evasive and controlling when it came to dealing with the press.

On Monday, he blew into town with a whole busload of reporters tagging along to document the various staged photo ops his campaign had set up.

Given that Richmond was the first stop on the western leg of his election campaign, you would think his campaign team would have let the local press know. But neither the Richmond News nor Richmond Review were notified by Harper's campaign office that the PM was in town.

We managed to crash Harper's party because we got lucky - one of our reporters happened to see the Harper retinue in town on his way to work. We almost didn't get in because we didn't have accreditation. We didn't have accreditation, of course, because we weren't invited. We have RCMP media spokesman Peter Thiessen to thank for vouching for us.

Failing to notify the local press is pretty typical of Harper's style, and it doesn't do his local candidates any good either. Remember the last election, when local Conservative candidate Darrel Reid refused to be interviewed by us as well as other media and minimally participated in local debates?

Given that Reid is a knowledgeable politician who had no trouble answering questions intelligently, it was suspected that he had been muzzled by Harper during the election because his views were considered a too overtly Christian right and could hurt the party.

And now we have this rigidly scripted photo op taking place here, where the local candidate, Alice Wong, does not say a word during the press conference (although she was later scrummed).

Our issue here is not about Harper's policies. We'll save that for another editorial. Our concern is with the federal Conservative organization, which seems to undermine local candidates and impedes local constituents' ability to get the news.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Feared but not much loved

PM effectively muzzled bureaucrats, diplomats, members of his caucus and cabinet ministers

by Haroon Siddiqui

As originally posted on: TheStar.com

October 12, 2008

Stephen Harper is clearly not the right-wing ideologue he once was. Whether he has abandoned his views, especially on domestic issues, or is merely holding them back, only he would know.

He has certainly grown in the job and does exude a prime ministerial presence, albeit in scripted settings. He is disciplined and hard-working.

Yet a significant percentage of Canadians do not trust him. In fact, they fear him. The concern is not confined to partisan Liberals or New Democrats. It permeates large swaths of the electorate.

The explanation surely is more than that he looks so smug or that he failed to shed a crocodile tear on TV in empathy for the growing economic fears of Canadians.

There are more substantial reasons: the Prime Minister's track record on policy, his public pronouncements and his personality traits that do impact on his job.

That he has been a clone of George W. Bush on Kyoto, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Israel, Hamas and Lebanon does matter to a whole lot of Canadians.

There's a debate over whether he feels that Ottawa must always stand with Washington to protect our trade, or because he's ideologically committed to the Bush doctrine.

This much is certain: Harper did knowingly join Bush's sinking ship. That was either an act of great courage or stunningly bad judgment.

Harper shares several traits with Bush. He can be excessively partisan: you're either with him or against him. If you don't back his disastrous and costly Afghan policy, you are unpatriotic, unfaithful to Canadian troops and an apologist for the Taliban.

He is secretive and authoritarian. He does not tolerate dissent.

As is well-known, he muzzled his caucus, including ministers, and the federal bureaucrats, including our diplomats. Never before in my 40 years of travelling abroad have I run into so many envoys at our embassies so fearful of giving even off-the-record briefings on the countries they are posted in. The John Manley commission on Afghanistan found this appalling, saying it has prevented our diplomats from representing our interests.

We also know what Harper did to the heads of three independent commissions who challenged him.

Linda Keen was fired as head of the Nuclear Safety Commission, hours before she was to appear before a parliamentary committee, over disagreements on the shutdown of the Chalk River reactor.

Chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand was berated and taken to court for prosecuting the Tories for accounting tricks to get around the Elections Act limits on spending.

Peter Tinsley, chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission, has been blocked at every turn from probing allegations of possible Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees.

"In each of these dust-ups," wrote professor Lorne Sossin of the faculty of law at the U of T, the Harper government looked "reckless, petty, arrogant, incompetent, paranoid, sinister and/or just plain vindictive."

Harper and his close associates are known to settle scores. Last year, he shocked the legal community by bypassing Dennis O'Connor for the job of Ontario chief justice.

The Court of Appeal judge had been number two to then retiring chief justice Roy McMurtry, who endorsed his candidacy, as did all the other judges on that bench.

It was speculated that perhaps the Prime Minister was unhappy with O'Connor's conclusions as chair of two commissions, one probing the Maher Arar tragedy and the other the Walkerton disaster, in which seven died after drinking contaminated water.

It was said that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, in particular, had been miffed over the Walkerton report. It turns out that he was and did have something to do with turning Harper against O'Connor, two senior Tories have told me.

In separate interviews, both said that in his private conversations Flaherty made no secret of his displeasure with O'Connor.

Flaherty had been a key minister under Mike Harris and he blamed the judge for the Tories losing the 2003 election under Harris's successor, Ernie Eves. Now that Flaherty was the senior Harper minister from Ontario, O'Connor wasn't going to get the top job.

Harper has also been accused of saying one thing and doing another. Almost all politicians are a bundle of contradictions but he seems more so than most.

He says he is a private man. But he goes on TV to proclaim his love for his son. He invites the cameras to record him escorting his daughter to school. He drags his mother into a discussion of how the market meltdown might affect her.

He is a law-and-order man who broke his own fixed election date law to call a snap election.

He promised to re-establish the primacy of Parliament but repeatedly shut down committees and derailed witnesses.

All politicians cater, first, to their respective constituencies. Some pursue, as Mike Harris did, a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Harris pitted Toronto against rural Ontario. Harper pits Ontario against the rest of Canada. Harris pitted teachers against parents. Harper pits "subsidized, gala-going" artists against "ordinary working people."

Harper told the Star's Tonda MacCharles that he governs in the interest of all Canada and won't offer "a different program in every province or every region." Yet he just promised Quebec it would be exempt from his proposal that 14-year-old criminals be jailed for life.

Finally, on the economy, Harper's shrill warnings that a Liberal government would spell doom for Canada ring hollow, given that he and Flaherty have blown a $12 billion surplus left by Paul Martin.

Harper and most conservative leaders talk of fiscal responsibility but end up emptying the treasury through massive tax cuts, mostly to corporations while resisting increases in minimum wages, and through high defence spending.

Brian Mulroney left a $42 billion deficit; Harris-Eves a $5 billion deficit and a record $111 billion debt; Ronald Reagan left a massive deficit and debt, while Bush turned a $230 billion surplus into a deficit of about $500 billion, and accumulated a debt of $10 trillion.

As Stéphane Dion said Wednesday: "History shows us that in tough economic times, it is progressive governments that put economies back on track. Clinton after Reagan and Bush. Blair after Thatcher and Major. Chrétien and Martin after Mulroney. And, of course, McGuinty after Harris."

Canadian Prime Minister / Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada

Riding uproar over Tories' decision to oust executive

by Richard Foot

CANWEST NEWS SERVICE

October 29, 2007

HALIFAX - The Conservative association in a totally Tory Nova Scotia riding are caught in a family brawl with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and national party headquarters.

The riding's MP, Bill Casey - a genteel and popular local figure - was expelled from the Conservative caucus in June for voting against the budget to protest the government's decision to change an agreement over sharing offshore petroleum revenues.

Although the issue was recently settled, the affair has mushroomed into a messy standoff in the riding (Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodo-boit Valley).

The prime minister has made it clear Casey will not be allowed back into the party. Armstrong and other executive members are standing by their MP.

Old friendships are under pressure and loyalties strained in a riding that has gone Tory in 16 of the past 17 elections.

The affair also is shining a light on Harper's hardline approach to internal party discipline, one that may cost him a crucial seat in his quest for a majority.

"As long as the prime minister and Mr. Casey stick to their guns, we'll have two conservative candidates running here in the next election," said Armstrong.

Two weeks ago, the association's 30-member executive board was suspended by head office.

A new executive will be elected at a meeting of association members on Nov. 27. Armstrong says a majority of the membership wants Casey as the candidate and will elect an executive that supports him.

Conservative Party national president Don Plett says if that happens, the party will have no choice but to disband that executive and find an alternative candidate.

Casey's stand on the Atlantic accord has made him a minor folk hero.

"My riding association is not one to be bullied or pushed around," Casey says. "They're in an awful spot, to have to choose between the party and me."

The Harper Conservatives

Harper urged to apologize for MPs' rude gestures

As originally reported by: CTV.ca

June 14, 2006

Opposition MPs are calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to apologize after at least three Conservative MPs made crude arm gestures across the floor of the House of Commons.

"It was regrettable last night all of us in the House witnessed a member of the Conservative caucus acting in a totally unacceptable matter," Interim Liberal Leader Bill Graham said during question period on Wednesday.

"We raise the matter today because these actions were not only insulting to Parliament, it showed contempt and disrespect for all Canadians."

Oshawa MP Colin Carrie; Jacques Gourde, parliamentary secretary to Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl; and Pierre Poilievre, parliamentary secretary to Treasury Board President John Baird, acted out the crude motion as MPs voted on a farm bill Tuesday evening -- with the latter two members caught making the gestures on the House of Commons camera.

"It's outrageous. It's a disgrace for the institution. We have to be respectful of the institution," Quebec Liberal MP Denis Coderre said Wednesday.

"I'm against that kind of thing," added Manitoba New Democrat MP Pat Martin. "I carry a picture of my mother in my pocket so I want thing to be at a high standard of decorum in the House of Commons."

Conservative Parliamentary Secretary Jason Kenney conceded that parliamentarians get carried away from time to time.

"It's appropriate when they do so, to apologize," said the Calgary-area MP.

"But I find it strange that there is nothing else for the Leader of the Opposition to ask questions about, when the member has already apologized," Kenney said.

Several MPs also alleged that they saw Poilievre standing behind the curtains in the House of Commons mocking Speaker Peter Milliken.

He was "mocking you, Mr. Speaker, and with you the dignities of the members of this House and every Canadian citizen that sent us here to respect our democracy, Mr. Speaker," said Graham.

Poilievre and Gourde expressed regret Wednesday for the gestures.

But Gourde said he believes the House "misinterpreted" his gesture. "If the individuals misinterpreted my hand gesture, I would apologize for that, I would apologize to the house," he said.

Poilievre said, meanwhile: "I wish to say that as I am a gentleman of this house, that if any of my gestures have offended them or any member in this house, I wish to apologize and withdraw them."

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings charged that this apology did not go far enough.

"He said the members misinterpreted his gesture and he said 'If I offended someone, I apologize.' That's not a real apology," said the Montreal-area MP.

"The prime minister should answer for him in the House today. He should say he doesn't accept this type of behaviour and he should dismiss him immediately."

But Kenney called Jennings' charges "ridiculous," accusing the Liberals of trying to distract the government from the important issues at hand.

The opposition, particularly the Bloc Quebecois, had been heckling the government during the vote when the MPs made the gesture.

The gesticulation - suggesting an anatomically impossible act - involves crossing both arms at the elbow, with one moving in an upward direction.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Federal Parliamentary Election Candidate Rob Anders

Anders' absence angers seniors

Double-booked Tory chose 'other' event

by Trent Edwards

As originally published in: The Calgary Herald

October 2, 2008

Seniors who packed a lunch room at the Spruce Cliff Community Association vented their frustration Wednesday when Conservative incumbent Rob Anders didn't attend an all-candidates forum Wednesday.

"I'm very angry," said Betty Wheatley, 80, who has met every Tory MP for the riding - except Anders - since moving into the area in 1952.

"I'm a died-in-the-wool Conservative and I'm embarrassed by my local candidate," she said.

Tracey Braun, moderator of the forum and executive director of the Bowcliff Seniors group, said she confirmed Anders' attendance twice with his campaign team on Monday.

"It was very frustrating for me because (the seniors) all want to meet him. They were very keen to talk to him," Braun said.

Anders could not be reached on Wednesday.

Andrew Constantinidis, Anders' communications manager, said the incumbent was "double-booked and he chose the other one. I don't know what the other event was."

On the International Day of Older Persons, some seniors criticized the no-show.

NDP candidate Teale Phelps Bondaroff said Anders and his party have a history of snubbing constituents in a province that consistently votes Tory.

"It's a question of respect, it's a question of accountability and it's a trend of Conservatives taking our votes for granted in Alberta," he said.

Anders was absent on the same day the Herald reported a local lawyer and humanitarian said the Tory candidate told her Canadian diplomacy and humanitarian work should focus on changing outsiders' language to English and their faith to Christianity.

Donna Kennedy-Glans said, during a private dinner in June, Anders remarked he only supports "constructive engagement" internationally if Canadian aid workers are able to influence others to be "more like us."

In an interview Tuesday, Anders said Kennedy-Glans was "badly torquing and twisting the conversation we had."

Meanwhile, Wednesday's forum also focused on seniors' issues, such as how each party would deal with an aging population.

Liberal candidate Jennifer Pollock, a mother of four, said the government needs to increase immigration, while men must "convince women to have more children" to ensure there are new workers supporting the economy as seniors retire.

"Canadians' birth rate is so low," Pollock said later. "I don't suggest trying to control women's reproduction. But the truth is, if we don't have an increase in our birth rate, then immigration is the only other solution."

Green candidate Randy Weeks said his party would help seniors on fixed pensions by creating social safety nets for them, such as guaranteed minimum income and legislation to protect their right to work "as long as they want."

Independent candidate Kirk Schmidt said he would ask Parliament to invest half of any surplus from each federal budget in an endowment fund to "help other parts of the economy."

tedwards@theherald.canwest.com

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Environment Minister John Baird

Beer buggy Baird blasted

Front-page photo 'disgusts' recovering alcoholic

by Earl McRae

As originally posted on: Canada Votes 2008

September 9, 2008

John Baird pretending he's drunk?

John Baird making light of alcoholism?

Phil thinks he was, and he wants Baird to publicly apologize.

Phil is a recovering alcoholic. A former member of AA. He's in his 50s.

Alcoholism, he told me in his phone message, is a terrible thing. "It almost ruined my life. It's not something to make fun of. I've been a Baird supporter, but not after this. I'm not the only one upset over that picture."

He was referring to the photo on the front of Sunday's Ottawa Sun of Ottawa West-Nepean MP, and Conservative environment minister, John Baird. Baird is returning cases of beer to the Beer Store on Baseline Rd. as part of a fundraiser for Roger's House.

TWISTED MOUTH

Baird is sitting on a beer buggy The Senators mascot Spartacat is behind Baird, pushing the buggy. Baird has a case of empties in his hands. Baird is splaying his legs out in front on him. Baird is cocking his head to one side. Baird is opening his mouth wide and twisted.

"Look at the face," said Phil. "I've seen that look on a lot of guys staggering drunk out of bars. Assuming he wasn't actually drunk in the picture, there was no need for him to fake that he was. It's pretty disgusting. He's a pretty bright guy, but I'd tell him to grow up."

I take a copy of the paper to Carlingwood Mall, which is in Baird's riding.

The food court. Amelia Cooper and her husband Al are sitting, eating.

They're both 68. I show them the photo of John Baird on the front page.

"Yeah, no, I don't think he's acting like he's drunk," says Al, "I think he's just goofing around."

He studies the picture some more. "I can see where someone would think he's pretending he's bombed because it's a beer store and he's holding all those bottles, but - I don't know, who knows? It doesn't bother me any, though."

'HAS MORE BRAINS...'

"It does look like he's trying to look like a drunk person," says Amelia, "but I think a better explanation is the lion. It's pushing the cart and maybe he (Baird) is looking that way to suggest that it's going fast and he's afraid. I don't think he'd make fun of getting drunk. Surely he has more brains than that."

"He owes us an explanation," said Phil.

I go to Baird's campaign headquarters on Carling Ave. looking for him. I miss him by an hour. A volunteer worker gives me the cellphone number of Chris Froggatt, his campaign manager.

I phone Froggatt, I ask: "The photo of John Baird on the front page of the Sunday Sun was he deliberately trying to look drunk? If he was, there's some suggestion he was being insensitive to alcoholism."

"Not at all," says Froggatt. "He was just having fun."

"So he wasn't pretending he was blitzed?"

GOOD CAUSE

"Him and Sparty were having fun. He was hamming it up. It was for a good cause, Roger's House."

"Right. And, of course, he wasn't drunk, nor was he acting like he was?"

"He was just having fun. Everybody thought it was a fun picture. He was having fun and promoting a great cause."

"And not trying to look as if he was drunk."

"No. He was having fun."

Last resort: Sun photographer Tony Caldwell, who took the picture.

"He was just having fun. I was trying to get him to smile for the camera and that's what he came up with. He had that look on his face for quite some time while I shot frames of him. He wasn't trying to look drunk, that was just his way of hamming it up."

Okay, benefit of the doubt to John Baird - but, having said that, there are less suspicious "fun" ways to look when sitting on a beer buggy outside a beer store and holding a box of empties.

The Harper Conservatives

Outspoken MP defies Tory eviction notice

by Mike De Souza

As originally published in: The Ottawa Citizen

February 26, 2007

Maverick MP Garth Turner is planning to stage a sit-in at his own Parliament Hill office to defy an eviction notice he says is spearheaded by Conservatives who want to punish him for joining the federal Liberals.

"I'm not about to spend my time packing boxes instead of doing my work," Mr. Turner, the MP for Halton, Ont., said in an interview.

"If they want to move me, they're going to have to snap on their latex gloves, move in there like CSI Miami and pack me up. I'm not doing it. It's a waste of my time."

The office battle is the latest in a series of public spats between Mr. Turner and the Tories since last year, when he criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper for appointing an unelected senator and a floor-crossing Liberal to his cabinet.

Although Mr. Turner, an ex-revenue minister in the short-lived government of former prime minister Kim Campbell in 1993, was elected as a Conservative, the caucus voted to get rid of him last fall, accusing him of leaking details of their private discussions.

Mr. Turner has suggested he was silenced for being too critical of Mr. Harper a few days before the government unveiled its plan to fight climate change and air pollution.

Conservative MP Jay Hill, who assigns office space for Tories as part of his duties as the government's chief whip, says Mr. Turner is to blame for the eviction because of his decision to join the Liberals.

In a letter sent to a constituent last week, Mr. Hill said the Conservatives didn't bother Mr. Turner when he sat as an independent, since they held out hope he would eventually return to the party fold.

"Mr. Turner was allowed to remain in a Conservative office during his brief tenure as an independent MP because there was always the possibility he could redeem himself with his Conservative colleagues and be allowed back into our Conservative caucus," Mr. Hill wrote in the letter obtained by CanWest News Service.

"Effectively, when Mr. Turner chose to change political parties and sit as a Liberal member, he chose to change offices. The choice was his and he made it."

Mr. Turner, who joined the Liberals a few weeks ago, calls it a "petty, partisan" attack from an "evil" man.

"I think he's evil to the extent that he's doing something without point, and it seems to be just to mess around a political opponent," Mr. Turner said.

Mr. Turner also noted the Liberals didn't try to push Wajid Khan, the MP for Mississauga-Streetsville, out of his current office when he joined the Tories.

He added that the move could waste thousands of taxpayer dollars, along with the cost of replacing thousands of pages of letterhead and business cards.

The episode has sparked a flood of e-mail complaints over the past week from readers of Mr. Turner's personal website, http://www.garth.ca.

But Mr. Hill insisted in the letter that taxpayers wouldn't have to pay anything extra for the move, nor for the cost of moving electronic equipment used by Mr. Turner to broadcast interviews and commentary on his website.

Security on Parliament Hill was asked to move Mr. Turner's office equipment and staff within weeks.

Canadian Federal Conservative Party Political Operations Director Doug Finley

Harper's 'political pit bull'

by Linda Diebel

As originally posted on: TheStar.com

September 6, 2008

Doug Finley has a puckish face and a macho swagger. He loves the two-fisted Celtic rock of the Pogues, likes to laugh at himself and wears the weirdest ties and a wistful comb-over.

He is, according to former Liberal MP Rod Blaker, "a very gentle person – gentle to every human being I ever saw."

Such is one image.

But there are other takes on Finley. They are blisteringly negative and come from ousted Tory candidates with crushed self-esteem, blacklisted party members and former ministers struggling to grasp their inconsequence in the Conservative hierarchy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

They attribute their fate to the bullying character of the most important man the Canadian public doesn't know.

Finley is Harper's hammer. He's No. 2 to the PM's No. 1, apparently with more clout than cabinet ministers and more access than anyone except, possibly, Laureen Harper.

At 62, his job is to win this election for "the boss" – his all-consuming passion since joining then-Canadian Alliance leader Harper in early 2003 and going on to orchestrate his leadership win of the merged Alliance and Progressive Conservatives later that year.

It may be the English-born, Scottish-raised Finley, with an MBA and career in the aircraft industry, is almost there. Married to Immigration Minister Diane Finley, his life is politics. Campaign manager and director of political operations (which used to be two jobs), he's changing the landscape of Tory politics and centralizing power to an astonishing degree.

Finley evokes fear in many, nervous at his very name. Some spoke to the Toronto Star only on background. He's described as a "political pit bull" and a "bully" who models himself on the "in-your-face" style of American GOP honchos Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes, oblivious to the trail of human detritus.

"It got so bad I couldn't look my wife in the eyes," says Phil Green, former Mississauga South candidate, of his humiliation during his ouster in 2006-07. It was a long process during which he was frozen out, with Finley refusing to take his calls or answer his emails.

Requests from the Toronto Star for an interview were ignored.

Green, an environmental management consultant with community awards and grassroots support, ran twice for the Conservatives, losing in 2006 to Liberal Paul Szabo by 2,160 votes. His were the best Tory results in four Mississauga ridings and he was excited about running again, but Finley refused to grant the expected waiver from the "two strikes" rule.

"You don't run for the Conservative party unless Doug Finley says you can run," says Green. "Canadians need to be aware of what is happening in the Conservative party. Candidate selection should be coming from the grassroots and not the backrooms.

"This is not about me. It's about the state of our democracy."

Amidst a litany of hurt, there's praise for Finley. He's a maverick, with a kind of "I'll rip-your-lungs-out" bravado that can appeal to politicos and pundits.

The Pogues began as Pogue Mahone, Gaelic for "kiss my a--."

Tom Flanagan, University of Calgary political scientist and former Harper adviser, worked closely with Finley in Ottawa.

"He's tough and focused and that's a good thing," says Flanagan. "Candidates need discipline. They have big egos and these people need a disciplinarian to keep them in line. ... Maybe you get bruised egos occasionally but you need all the candidates toeing the party line."

Adds Flanagan: "Doug's not there to argue with Stephen Harper; he's there to implement what he wants."

Winning the Conservative nomination in Toronto Centre in 2007 became a nightmare for international lawyer Mark Warner. Before it blew up in what sounds like a Keystone Kops showdown in an Ottawa boardroom, he clashed with Finley's hard line.

In an urban riding with a diverse population that includes a large gay and lesbian community, party operations people told Warner to omit any reference in his campaign profile to his attendance at a 2006 international conference on AIDS in Toronto ignored by Harper.

Finley "doesn't understand the city at all, he has no clue about Toronto," says Warner. "I don't think he wants to know. ... I never met with him in Toronto." He portrays Finley as a man obsessed with his own strait-laced image of Canada who talked about his "Reform-Alliance" roots and what would play in conservative Canada.

"I wasn't supposed to talk to the media," says Warner. "I told them I couldn't have a non-existent media campaign when I was running against Bob Rae because I'd get killed."

He was told he could go to a Star forum on poverty where Rae spoke, but "not to say anything."

Warner says Finley's office summoned him to Ottawa, where he met with Finley on the 12th floor of Tory headquarters at 130 Albert St. Finley apparently yelled at Warner several times during the five-hour session, including over his edict Warner couldn't fill out a questionnaire about equality from a gay-lesbian alliance. "He said if I answered it, I would be denounced by the Prime Minister and everybody else in caucus."

Warner tried to explain "Harper was desperately unpopular in the riding and running strongly on Harper may work in much of the country, but not in Toronto. I'll lose." Warner calls the session a "Star Chamber."

Finley finally "lost it," according to Warner, a scene Warner says he can't forget, complete with heavy Scottish brogue soundtrack.

"Wheeerrrrrrrrr have you ever run before? Wheeerrrrrrrrr?

Tell me, wheeerrrrrrrrr? Wheeerrrrrrrrr?"

Warner was officially fired by senior official Don Plett, in a hotel room near the Toronto airport.

In late 2007, Guelph Tories had problems with candidate Brent Barr, a business leader. Despite her nomination loss to Barr, party officials in Ottawa installed city councillor Gloria Kovach as candidate.

"At no time did (Finley) ever answer any of my emails," says former Tory science minister Bill Winegard, who supported Barr. "It was pretty silly. They said (Barr) wasn't working hard enough but he had a business to run and he would have as we moved closer to the election."

Winegard still asks: "Who are these people in Guelph who got rid of Brent? Did these folks have a board meeting? Did they talk to anybody? ... They complained to Ottawa and he was thrown out."

In Mississauga South, Green didn't get a reason either. "I heard the PMO didn't like something I said to somebody – who knows? The whole thing is nuts."

Finley is a backroom master. He sent a complaint to the CBC about parliamentary reporter Krista Erickson for feeding questions to a Liberal MP during parliamentary hearings into business dealings between Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber, then used media bias as a fundraising tool.

"Doug Finley was in my face in a big way," says John Cruickshank, publisher of CBC News, agreeing there was "no question she did it." After a leave, Erickson returns to Ottawa this fall, but won't report on camera until January.

"I wasn't at all surprised. I've seen other political parties do the same thing," adds Cruikshank. "It was very opportunistic, very entrepreneurial. He just understood how to do some fundraising based on the problems with the CBC. ... I have a certain amount of admiration for (Finley) despite the personal pain. It wasn't any fun at all."

If Finley has surfaced in the public consciousness at all, it's likely as the guy being escorted by security from the Commons ethics committee last month after showing up unexpectedly and refusing to budge. The committee had tried to serve him with a subpoena to testify later that week about allegations of election misspending, but the bailiff couldn't find him.

"Remember, we are talking about the issue of respect for Parliament," says Liberal committee chair Paul Szabo. A Liberal strategist sees hubris in Finley's stunt, "as if they're already tasting victory."

Still, Finley is a patient man. Through organizing stints for the Scottish National Party to the Liberals, Reform, Alliance and Conservatives, his is an enduring love of politics.

"He is quite fascinated with concepts of organization and he enjoys the parallels between politics and the military," says Blaker. It's about order and organization "and he thinks about the work to be delivered, the problems to be analyzed and the goals to be achieved."

In other words, about winning.

The Conservative Party of Canada

Red Tory Purging?

by Raphael Alexander

As originally posted on: Unambiguously Ambidextrous
November 4, 2007


Some bloggers have begun suggesting the federal Conservatives are ousting some of the more centrist candidates in the party. Mark Warner, for example, was barred from running in Toronto Centre because he wanted to focus on issues important to constituents in his particular riding. Now former Conservative Gary Caldwell says that the Conservatives muzzled him from the media, or encouraged him to speak on matters only approved by the party. Mark Warner learned the hard way, when a reference in his biography to his 2006 AIDS conference attendance in Toronto was deleted, as well as a book he co-wrote with Liberal Bill Graham. Because, you know, that's consorting with the enemy. Isn't it?

Gary Caldwell says he had to ignore gag orders from the brass in order to speak to the media. Candidates were told not to speak to local media, leaving Mr.Caldwell to believe he wasn't able to continue a public debate in his riding. A self-described "Red Tory", he says Parliament [an accusation which implies all parties] is run by parties, not MPs who represent constituents. "

Parliament, of course, was a deliberative forum. It was a place where people who were representatives of the electors engaged in a public debate," he said.

"There have been a lot of things that contribute to that changing, and now we have cynical power machines who ... have reduced candidates and members of Parliament to the role of puppets. It's a real issue, a real concern, and it can only be changed by grass-roots parties."

Gary Caldwell will now run for the Green Party in Quebec in Compton-Stanstead.

I've searched for news stories on this other than CTV and came up empty. Anybody have any other information? An interesting sidebar is that Mr.Caldwell was involved in the so-called in-out "scandal" in which he was among the candidates last election who was asked by the Conservatives to redirect surplus money received from the party for local campaigns to fund the party's national advertising campaign. Mr.Caldwell was one of two candidates to accept Elections Canada’s ruling that the national advertisements were not legitimate local campaign expenses. He resubmitted his return to reflect local expenses only.

The Larry O'Brien 2006 Ottawa Mayoral Election Campaign and the Harper Conservatives

O'Brien bribery probe reaches PM's inner circle

Mayor's confidant told me that some kind of offer to Kilrea was 'in the works' through Harper's campaign chairman, aide to Tory MP told police; Tory officials say allegations in documents are 'completely untrue.'

by Gary Dimmock

As originally published in: The Ottawa Citizen

October 12, 2007

A political aide to a Tory MP has told police that Mayor Larry O'Brien's 2006 campaign team was secretly working on a plan to offer Terry Kilrea "something" to drop out of last year's mayoral race, and that the unspecified offer was "in the works" through Doug Finley, the campaign director for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Mr. O'Brien is the subject of an Ontario Provincial Police bribery investigation launched March 27 following an investigative report in the Citizen that documented two meetings - including one in the parking lot behind a Tim Hortons - between the mayor and Mr. Kilrea, who alleged that Mr. O'Brien offered him up to $30,000 and help to get a federal appointment if he bowed out of last year's mayoral race.

In a recorded statement to detectives on April 18, at 1:06 p.m., John Light, an aide to Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre, said he got a call last year from Greg Strong, a former vice-president at Calian, a staffing-services firm founded by Mr. O'Brien.

According to his police statement, Mr. Light said he was asked by Mr. O'Brien's team to manage the 2006 campaign. He responded that he was flattered, but said he'd rather work on Mr. Kilrea's campaign.

The OPP executive summary of Mr. Light's recorded interview notes: "Strong replied not to worry, as Kilrea is being taken care of and that he is going to be offered something. Strong said that there was something in the works and that he couldn't tell anyone about it and they were working through Doug Finlay(sic) who was the Campaign Chair for the Conservative Party."

Ryan Sparrow, the communications manager for the Conservative Party of Canada, yesterday said: "Mr. Finley has never been in touch with either of the people in question (John Light and Greg Strong) and in fact has never even heard of them.

"These allegations are absolute fiction and completely untrue," Mr. Sparrow said in a statement to the Citizen.

Mr. Strong, the founder of the Curam Group, a public relations firm, told the Citizen yesterday he had "no knowledge" of any of the conversations documented in the bribery investigation report.

Mr. Light told the Citizen yesterday: "That's my testimony."

Mr. O'Brien has declined to comment on the bribery case against him. In a Jan. 12 interview, Mr. O'Brien said he never said or did anything inappropriate. He acknowledged that he spoke to Mr. Kilrea about his rival's out-of-pocket campaign expenses and added that he talked to his lawyer about what he could and couldn't do to entice someone out of a political campaign.

At the request and expense of the Citizen, Mr. Kilrea swore to his allegations in an affidavit, and later passed a polygraph about its contents.

Mr. Kilrea also admitted that Mr. O'Brien's alleged offer was so "tempting" that he sat on it for 25 days before turning it down in the parking lot behind a Tim Hortons.

In a May 1 interview with police, Tim Tierney, a Kilrea campaign worker, said he was aware of the parking lot meeting, and said: "Kilrea said that O'Brien had told him that he was 'going to ratfuck you' after learning that Kilrea was declining his offer and supporting (Bob) Chiarelli (a 2006 mayoral candidate)."

In statements to OPP detectives, Mr. Light also revealed that the mayor's niece, Heather Tessier, said "that Larry O'Brien was calling Kilrea every day pressuring him."

"Heather Tessier told (Mr. Light) that O'Brien had offered to pay his (campaign) expenses."

According to the OPP documents, formally called an information to obtain a search warrant, the police, under a heading titled "Grounds to believe an offence has been committed," wrote: "It is clear that Larry O'Brien made attempts to see what influence he had, if any, to have Terry Kilrea's name put forward for the National Parole Board appointment.

"The fact that Terry Kilrea emailed John Baird (then Treasury Board president) directly following their meeting to address the issue indicates the subject was discussed."

In May, the Citizen featured the e-mail correspondence. The OPP later got a search warrant and seized them as evidence in their criminal investigation against the mayor.

The May 29 information to obtain a search warrant also states: "It is clear that Larry O'Brien was making every best effort to ascertain whether or not he could facilitate this appointment."

Mr. Light, according to the executive summary of his interview with the OPP's anti-rackets unit, said that Tom Bennett, a Conservative fundraiser, told him: "You don't have to worry about (Kilrea) because they're working on something."

In a recorded May 1 police interview, Mr. Tierney told detectives: "Heather Tessier (the mayor's niece and former executive assistant) said that Terry Kilrea had been offered some really good things. Tierney stated that Tessier didn't know about the money but she mentioned that she knew about the National Parole Board (appointment)."

In the police documents, Det. Sgt. Brian Mason cited two suspected offences under Section 125 of the Criminal Code: Influencing or negotiating appointments or dealing in offices. The search warrant specifies that police are investigating whether: "... Larry O'Brien, between the 01st of July 2006 and the 31st of August 2006 did in the expectation of a benefit of $30,000 solicit the resignation of Terry Kilrea from the City of Ottawa Mayoral race of 2006 contrary to section 125 (b) of the Criminal Code."

The warrant also outlines the police theory for another suspected offence under investigation: "That Larry O'Brien, between the 01st of July 2006 and the 31st of August 2006 did procure to be given to Terry Kilrea a reward of an appointment to the National Parole Board as consideration for the co-operation by Terry Kilrea to withdraw from the 2006 City of Ottawa Mayoral race which would improve Larry O'Brien's chances of winning the election contrary to section 125 (a) of the Criminal Code."

Gary Dimmock can be reached at gdimmock@thecitizen.canwest.com

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Industry Minister Jim Prentice and Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Heritage Minister Josée Verner

Copyright Bill's Fine Print Makes For a Disturbing Read

by Michael Geist

As originally posted on: Michael Geist

June 13, 2008

In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a landmark copyright decision in a battle between the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Ontario legal bar association, and CCH Canadian, a leading legal publisher. The court was faced with a dispute over an old technology - photocopying in a law library - and in a unanimous decision it ruled that the underlying purpose of copyright law is to serve the public interest. That interest, reasoned Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, is best served by balancing both user rights and creator rights.

Yesterday Industry Minister Jim Prentice and Canadian Heritage Minister Josee Verner delivered what amounts to a stinging rebuke to the Supreme Court's copyright vision of public interest and balance. After months of internal discussions (though precious little public consultation), the government unveiled its much-anticipated copyright reform bill.

Casting aside the concerns of major business, education, and consumer groups, the bill seeks to dramatically tilt Canadian law toward greater enforcement and restrictions on the use of digital content, leading Liberal Industry critic Scott Brison to warn that it could result in a “police state.”

Prentice's strategy appears to have been to include a series of headline-grabbing provisions that would attract the support of the Canadian public and simultaneously mask rules that will reshape Canadians' rights over their personal property. Accordingly, the bill includes a time shifting provision that legalizes recording of television programs, a private copying of music provision that allows consumers to copy music onto their iPods, and a format shifting provision that permits transferring content from analog to digital formats.

While those provisions sound attractive, Canadians would do well to read the fine print. The new rules are subject to a host of limitations - Canadians can't retain recorded programs and backing up DVDs is not permitted - that lessen their attractiveness.

More worrisome are the “anti-circumvention provisions,” which undermine not only these new consumer rights but also hold the prospect of locking Canadians out of their own digital content. The law creates a blanket prohibition on picking the digital locks (often referred to as circumventing technological protection measures) that frequently accompany consumer products such as CDs, DVDs, and electronic books. In other words, Canadians that seek to circumvent those products - even if the Copyright Act permits their intended use - will now violate the law.

While this sounds technical, circumvention is not uncommon. Under the Prentice bill, transferring music from a copy-protected CD to an iPod could violate the law. So too could efforts to play a region-coded DVD from a non-Canadian region or students' attempts to copy-and-paste content from some electronic books.

The bill includes a few limited circumvention exceptions for privacy, encryption research, interoperable computer programs, and security. Yet the exceptions are largely illusory since the software programs needed to pick the digital lock in order to protect privacy or engage in research are banned. Canadians should therefore check the fine print again - the law suggests that they can protect their privacy, but renders the distribution of the tools to do so illegal.

The need to read the fine print does not end there - a new statutory damage award of $500 for personal use infringement applies to music downloading that many believe is legal, while it does not cover uploading files onto peer-to-peer networks or even posting videos to YouTube. Similarly, a provision designed to allow librarians to create digital copies for patrons suffers from an exception that requires the digital copy to self-destruct within five days, effectively turning librarians into digital locksmiths.

Had Prentice and Verner respected the Supreme Court's emphasis on balance and the public interest, they could have easily avoided this one sided approach. Canada's earlier copyright bill, which died on the order paper in 2005, along with the approach in countries such as New Zealand, have identified a more balanced framework that preserves user rights by only prohibiting circumvention where the underlying purpose is to infringe copyright. That approach ensures that the law targets commercial piracy rather than consumer property.

Instead, their self-described “made in Canada” solution actually looks an awful lot like the much-criticized U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Once Canadians read the fine print on this bill, many may demand that the government go back to the drawing board.

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He created the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that has over 42,000 members and advocates for balanced copyright reform. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

The Conservative Party of Canada

Ex-candidates say Tories urged them to accept in-out plan

Party officials said money transfers were 'legitimate'

by Glen McGregor

As originally published in: The Ottawa Citizen

August 12, 2008

Four former Conservative candidates described yesterday how their campaigns were approached by party officials and asked to agree to wire-transfers that would move money in and out of their bank accounts during the 2006 election.

Three Quebec candidates and one from Labrador told the House of Commons ethics committee of their involvement in a Tory plan to shuttle money into their campaign accounts and out again shortly after, allowing the candidates to claim larger rebates from Elections Canada. Liberato Martelli, a long-shot Tory candidate running against then-Liberal cabinet minister Denis Coderre in the Montreal Island riding of Bourassa, said a Conservative official contacted his campaign and asked if the Conservative Fund could electronically move $14,000 through the campaign account.

"I was told it would be deposited and quickly withdrawn," he said. "I was told there would be invoices, but I never saw them."

Mr. Martelli said he was never told how the money moving through the account would be spent, but he said he was told by a party official that the same transactions were commonly performed by other candidates.

"Everything is legitimate, nothing to worry about," he said he was told.

Elections Canada reimburses 60 per cent of the expenses for candidates who get 10 per cent of the vote. But the agency declined to rebate expenses for advertising filed by 67 Conservative candidates, worth a total of $1.3 million, saying there was insufficient proof they were incurred by the candidates themselves. The Tories have filed a lawsuit against Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand over that decision. If the candidates are not allowed to claim the costs, they could count against the party's national budget and push it over the $18.3-million spending limit.

The Conservatives contend the transactions, used to pool money to buy advertising in the form of "regional media buys," were entirely legal and are practised by all parties.

Mr. Martelli said he was disappointed that a party he had faith in would arrange these transactions.

"When I joined that party, I believed its vision at the time," Mr. Martelli said. "I came to the realization they don't have as much integrity as they claim."

But when questioned by Conservative MPs, Mr. Martelli seemed unfamiliar with basic details of campaign finance and showed he was unaware of some principles governing candidate expenses. The Tories claimed Mr. Martelli was not involved in their program to buy regional broadcast advertising and at one point erroneously claimed he didn't get enough votes to qualify for the 60-per-cent reimbursement.

Gary Caldwell, the former Tory candidate in the Sherbrooke, Que., riding of Compton-Stanstead, described in-and-out transactions of $37,000 flowing through his campaign account. Money was transferred into the account, then paid back to the party and listed as campaign expenses, he said. Like Mr. Martelli, Mr. Caldwell said he was assured by a party official that the process was legal.

When challenged by Elections Canada about the expenses after the election, he agreed to amend his financial report, he said. Mr. Caldwell, who plans to run as a Green Party candidate in the next election, said he agreed the costs he originally claimed were not legitimate.

Joe Goudie, the Tory candidate in Labrador and former provincial cabinet minister, said his campaign was also approached and asked to participate in the ad buys. Mr. Goudie said he was campaigning when the transaction was proposed and he was not aware of the details until after the election.

When he saw a story about the in-and-out financing on television last year, Mr. Goudie sought legal advice. He later filed an affidavit with Elections Canada clarifying the role of his campaign.

"I did not wish to be identified as a person who was doing something illegal or wrong or questionable," he said.

The commissioner of Canada Elections is conducting his own investigation into Tory campaign finances. On his behalf, Elections Canada officials aided by the RCMP raided the party's Ottawa headquarters in Ottawa last April in a search for records.

Ann Julie Fortier told the committee her refusal to participate in the in-and-out transactions was the reason she was dropped as the Tory candidate in Berthier-Maskinongé in December 2005, after running the year before.

She said she brought her concerns to an official in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office and elsewhere on Parliament Hill, but received no serious response.

"My reputation was tainted by my former party," she said.

The acrimonious committee hearings began with a bizarre twist yesterday when the Conservative party's chief campaign strategist was escorted from the witness table by House of Commons security.

National campaign director Doug Finley refused to leave the committee table when instructed to by Mr. Szabo. Mr. Finley and his lawyer sat impassively for six minutes until two Commons constables arrived and told Mr. Finley to leave.

Mr. Finley was summonsed to testify about the in-and-out affair tomorrow. But owing to a scheduling conflict, he had asked to appear two days earlier. There is no indication his request was granted. Mr. Szabo, a Liberal, said other witnesses had already been scheduled to appear and Mr. Finley could not be accommodated.

Conservative MP Gary Goodyear shouted, "They don't want to hear from you, Doug."

New Democrat Pat Martin, another MP on the opposition-dominated committee, described Mr. Finley's appearance as a stunt to discredit the hearings and intimidate the former Tories scheduled to testify.

A Tory official later released a text that Mr. Finley had intended to deliver. It showed that Mr. Finley was planning to tell MPs they are looking into "a rather arcane legal dispute as to how some of that spending, which has all been fully disclosed, was or should be accounted for. That's all this is."

Mr. Finley's statement said it is "absurd to try to compare this to the blatant wrongdoings" unearthed by the Gomery commission that probed the previous Liberal government's Quebec sponsorship scandal.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament Joy Smith

Conservative MP Introduces 'Clean Internet Act'

by Michael Geist

As originally posted on: Michael Geist

April 19, 2007

Conservative MP Joy Smith yesterday introduced the Clean Internet Act (Bill C-427). The private member's bill would establish an Internet service provider licensing system to be administered by the CRTC along with "know your subscriber" requirements and content blocking powers. Just about everything associated with this bill is (to be charitable) rather odd. Smith introduced it by warning against the use of the Internet to support human trafficking and added that "the bill would address the fact that child pornography is not okay to put on the Internet throughout our nation," though the Criminal Code already does that.

The bill itself includes (and I am not making this up):

• an ISP licensing system to be administered by the CRTC that is defined so broadly that it would seemingly capture anyone offering a wifi connection
• a "know your subscriber" requirement where ISPs would be required to deny service to past offenders (though the ISP would escape liability if upon learning of an offending customer, it terminated service and notified the Minister of Industry)
• a new power that would allow the Minister of Industry to order an ISP to block access to content that promotes violence against women, promotes hatred, or contains child pornography. ISPs that fail to block face possible jail time for the company's directors and officers.
• the Minister of Industry can prescribe special powers to facilitate searches of electronic data systems (ie. lawful access)

Given that this is a private member's bill, it is very unlikely to become law. That said, this bill would not look out-of-place in countries that aggressively censor the Internet and it makes the dangerous Jennings lawful access bill look positively harmless by comparison.

Canadian Federal Parliamentary Election Candidate Devinder Shory and the Conservative Party of Canada

Runner-up disputes Tory nomination vote

As originally reported by: The Calgary Herald

September 12, 2008

An unsuccessful candidate for the Conservative party nomination in Calgary Northeast said he's filed a complaint with Elections Canada over the process that saw lawyer Devinder Shory win the battle.

Perry Cavanagh, who runs Hockey Calgary, narrowly lost to Shory in a nomination vote last February to replace long-time MP Art Hanger.

Cavanagh subsequently filed a complaint with the Conservative party, writing to president Don Plett, campaign chairman Doug Finley and then-executive director Susan Kehoe to request an investigation into the nomination process.

In the letter, obtained by Canwest News Service, he cited what he claimed were party membership sales violations, missing ballots and alleged breaches of a spending cap.

The party national council must address the dispute, he wrote, because "this type of illicit misconduct by a Conservative party nomination contestant is professionally and ethically deplorable."

The matter went to an internal arbitration process, but the party decided to uphold the nomination, Cavanagh said.

"I have reason to believe there were irregularities that took place during the event," he said. "I have filed a formal complaint with Elections Canada. I'm waiting for the results of that."

Cavanagh said the agency received his complaint in mid-August. It is not a case of sour grapes from a losing contestant, he added.

"I don't have a problem not finishing first," he said. "But what I do have a problem with is, when I play by the rules and others don't, how that can be deemed representative of the wishes of the public?"

Shory declined to comment on Cavanagh's allegations, saying that "anybody can say anything."

He referred questions to the party. A party spokesman said in an e-mail this week: "The Conservative party does not have spending limits for nomination races. If Elections Canada has a problem we do not know."

Elections Canada would neither confirm nor deny receiving the complaint.

The Feb. 23 nomination vote in the city's northeast riding saw about 6,000 ballots cast out of about 16,000 memberships sold.

Shory ran on a family-first platform focused on justice and tax reform, as well as improved day-care access. Cavanagh had also been committed to an improved justice system. His son, Adam, 18, was shot and killed last year. The case is still unsolved.

Cavanagh said he's been a card-carrying Conservative all his life and supports Tory Leader Stephen Harper.

However, he won't vote for Shory and said many of his supporters are having a tough time with the Oct. 14 vote.

"There's a lot of soul searching going on," Cavanagh said. "I will not support him."

Shory, though, isn't worried it will hurt his chances.

"Every single Conservative will vote for me," he said.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Federal Parliamentary Election Candidate Jason Kenney

Accusations fly over Calgary incumbent's pamphlet

CBC NEWS

September 11, 2008

A flyer mailed to voters by Conservative MP Jason Kenney may be technically legal, but it leaves the impression of a politician trying to skirt election financing rules, says a political scientist.

The brochure, appearing this week at the homes of people living in the riding of Calgary Southeast, doesn't mention Calgary or the neighbourhoods in the incumbent's riding.

Instead, it shows a mock ballot with the names of four party leaders.

"The Conservative government is cracking down on car thieves," reads the flyer. "Who do you think is on the right track on crime? Check one."

The flyer was paid out of Kenney's MP expenses and sent out before the election was called, according to Kenney's assistant.

Optics not good: political scientist

Lori Williams, a political scientist at Calgary's Mount Royal College, said the flyer looks like campaign material. She said the optics are not good, especially for a party that's already involved in a controversy about its 2006 election expenses.

"Typically, they are more informational in character," she said of the leaflet.

"The timing of it, the fact that a ballot box appears in the mail out. I mean, it is clearly intended to be something that will motivate people to get out and vote in the coming election."

Under the Elections Act, campaign material is supposed to be an election expense for the party, not charged to the taxpayer.

Kenney is in Ottawa and wasn't available for an interview. But his executive assistant Jamie Ellerton told CBC News the flyer was sent to the post office on Aug. 27, well before the Oct. 14 election was called.

"This is not campaign material," he said.

"I don't think we are worried about the optics of this. We are going forward and communicating with the constituents of Calgary Southeast. This is within the rules put forth by the House of Commons and that is that."

Calgary Southeast Liberal candidate Brad Carroll said his Conservative rival was misusing his privileges as an MP.

"I can understand that perhaps it was mailed out just prior to an election call," said Carroll. "I'm uncomfortable with the fact the Conservative party knew when they were going to call an election and dumped these on the doorsteps just prior to it so it would show up during an election."

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament Cheryl Gallant

Conservative MP calls for repeal of hate law

CBC NEWS

June 6, 2004

In what is becoming a repeated pattern, a senior Conservative official was forced to distance the party from a candidate's controversial remarks – this time about Canada's amended hate law.

Conservative House leader John Reynolds downplayed comments Sunday by his Tory colleague calling for the repeal of Canada's new law.

In an interview with CTV News, Ottawa-area MP Cheryl Gallant said she opposed the new law, that was recently amended to include sexual orientation as one of the protected groups.

"The danger in having sexual orientation just listed, that encompasses, for example, pedophiles," Gallant said.

"I believe that the caucus as a whole would like to see it repealed," she said.

But Reynolds said Gallant was expressing her own views, and that her comments are not party policy.

"I'm the House leader and I've seen no line-up of letters in my office asking us to repeal that law," Reynolds told CTV News. "It's a bill that passed the House of Commons."

"She'll have every right to bring that up with a new caucus in Ottawa – which will be greater in numbers. But it's certainly not something that is going to get us off an agenda."

Gallant is the latest Conservative MP candidate to express an opinion that later had to be clarified by leader Stephen Harper as not being party policy.

Last week, Conservative health critic Rob Merrifield said women should seek independent counselling before having an abortion.

Also last week, Hamilton Mountain Conservative candidate Tom Jackson spoke out in favour of the death penalty. Harper said his party would not introduce legislation on either issue but that they could be put to a free vote in the House of Commons.

Last month, Scott Reid resigned as the Conservative party's official languages critic after saying bilingual services would be reduced if the Conservatives form the next government.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Harper Knew About Bribe Offer... Dona Cadman Told Him

by "JimBobby"

As originally posted on: JimBobby Sez

March 4, 2008

Whooee! The big kerfuffle in the House o' Comments is all about whether or not Harper knew about the bribe offered to Chuck Cadman. Very few observers are still claiming there was no offer. To make such a claim is to call the Cadman family a bunch of liars. It's hard to rely on Mrs. Cadman's statement regarding Harper's ignorance of the bribery offer and, at the same time, say she and her daughter and son-in-law are lying about the existence of an offer.

Here's something that raises a question. Dona Cadman is now saying she confronted Stephen Harper about the insurance policy 2 1/2 years ago. According to Mrs. Cadman, Harper denied knowing anything about it and she believed him.

In a statement, Dona Cadman said she asked then-Opposition leader Harper more than two years ago if he knew about the alleged life-insurance offer to her husband in exchange for his support in a crucial confidence vote.

"He looked me straight in the eyes and told me he had no knowledge of an insurance policy offer," Dona Cadman said in the statement. "I knew he was telling me the truth; I could see it in his eyes."

She added: "From that point forward ... I didn't regard it as a 'party' initiative, but rather the overzealous indiscretion of a couple of individuals ... whose identity Chuck never revealed to me."

Dona Cadman - now the Tory candidate in her late husband's Surrey North, B.C., riding - did not recant on her characterization of the alleged offer as a bribe. (Source)

Okay. Fair enough. Let's accept that as fact, shall we? The Con's are all citing Mrs. Cadman's statement as proof Harper didn't know.

But, here's the big question:

After being informed of the insurance policy offer 2 1/2 years ago, what actions did the CPC leader take?

Upon hearing from Mrs. Cadman that an illegal offer was put forward by Finley and Flanagan, did Mr. Harper attempt to delve further into this shocking accusation? Were Finley and Flanagan chastised in any way? Top level CPC operatives had been accused of offering a bribe. The accusation was made directly to Mr. Harper when Mrs. Cadman asked him if he was aware of the offer. Was there an internal party investigation?

The libel chill revolves around a headline on the official LPC website. The headline reads:

"Harper Knew of Conservative Bribery"

Perhaps, as Mr. Harper and Mrs. Cadman agree, Harper didn't know before the offer was made. Not long after that, however, Mrs. Cadman acknowledges that she did, in fact, bring up the offer to Harper. Unless Mr. Harper thought Mrs. Cadman was lying about the offer 2 1/2 years ago, he did know. At least, he knew that Mrs. Cadman believed an illegal offer was made.

We may never know if Harper was privy to the insurance offer prior to Finley and Flanagan making it. We only need to listen to the tape to ascertain that Harper did know about financial considerations. Mrs. Cadman's statements confirm that Harper was informed about the insurance offer shortly after it was made.

Does Harper deny that Mrs. Cadman asked him about the offer 2 1/2 years ago? After that allegation was made, didn't Harper have a legal obligation to follow up and make sure illegal offers were not made in the name of the party?

Mrs. Cadman was able to determine Harper's truthfulness by looking into his eyes. When she raised the spectre of Finley and Flanagan making an illegal offer, did Harper's eyes reveal shock? After all, the widow of a respected MP had just informed him that his top advisers had offered a bribe.

JB

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Finance Minister Jim Flaherty

Flaherty broke rules to hire ex-Harris aide

Finance minister handed untendered contract worth $122K to speechwriter for former premier

by Richard Brennan

As originally posted on: TheStar.com

February 2, 2008

OTTAWA – Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has broken federal rules by handing a former Mike Harris speechwriter an untendered contract worth more than $120,000, the Toronto Star has learned.

The $122,430 contract to Hugh MacPhie, who worked in the former Ontario Conservative premier's office, violated Treasury Board guidelines requiring multiple bids for contracts over $25,000.

The contract called for MacPhie to work on last year's budget speech and to provide communications advice to the finance department.

"Here's the finance minister awarding a single-source contract for $122,000 for two months of work to an old Harris spin doctor. This is really an egregious abuse of his position," NDP critic MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) said yesterday.

Late yesterday, Dan Miles, a senior communications adviser to Flaherty, admitted that federal contracting rules had been broken.

"Administrative functions were not followed with respect to contracting, but those procedures are now being followed," Miles said in an email in response to questions from the Star.

The confirmation of the untendered communications contract was included in information provided to the New Democrats through an Access to Information request, which also revealed that an untendered $24,900 contract – $100 below the required tender level – was given to Sara Beth Mintz, a vice-president of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.

The Toronto lawyer was paid for "analysis, assessment and advice" to Flaherty and staff, the documents given to the NDP show.

"What's going on here? This just looks exactly like what the Conservatives went after (former Liberal prime minister) Paul Martin for (with) all the single-source contracts to Earnscliffe," Angus said, referring to Earnscliffe Strategy Group, a government relations and strategic communications firm.

On March 29, 2004, then opposition Conservative MP Monte Solberg assailed the Liberal government: "I think it breaks (Canadians') heart when they see their tax dollars go to the finance minister, who then turns around and gives it to his friends in the form of untendered contracts."

MacPhie, who supported Flaherty in his failed bid to lead the Ontario Tories, said his firm lived up to requirements of the contract, which included providing a communications strategy. He declined to answer a series of questions.

"We worked very hard and provided value for money to the federal Department of Finance, as we do in all client engagements we undertake," MacPhie said in an email statement.

"MacPhie and Company had already worked extensively on the government's long-term economic plan, Advantage Canada. Through this work, we gained a unique and extremely detailed content knowledge of the government's economic plan, which was the foundation for Budget 2007."

In fact, the original contract was for $98,580, but MacPhie then billed for another $24,000.

Angus said it is clear that Flaherty is "using taxpayers' money to help out a lot of Conservative friends and they are basically breaking the rules to do it."

He said it is particularly galling because the Conservatives ran in the last election on a promise to end the patronage and special deals.

"Now they are giving these untendered contracts to the old Mike Harris gang," he said.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament Peter MacKay

MacKay apologizes for 'knitting' remark

CBC NEWS

January 20, 2006

Peter MacKay, deputy leader of the Conservative party, has apologized to New Democrat Alexa McDonough for telling her to "stick to her knitting."

The two longtime Nova Scotia MPs running for re-election appeared on a Halifax radio show on News 95.7 Friday.

McDonough and MacKay were sparring about constituency races in Nova Scotia. When he said she was using her reputation to drag NDP candidates across the finish line, she defended the NDP candidate running in his riding.

"We'll just see what happens," MacKay replied. "I think you better stick to your knitting and win your own riding."

McDonough immediately asked him if that was a sexist reference, and he said it wasn't. Then she said she would be delighted to have time to knit after the election because she has five grandchildren.

But after the radio program, McDonough told reporters she was surprised by his "sexist slur."

MacKay says he didn't mean to offend McDonough and called her personally to apologize.

It's not the first time the two have needled each other during an election campaign.

In 2004, McDonough challenged MacKay to a debate. He agreed but only if she travelled to his Central Nova riding. He said the challenge was typical of McDonough because "she likes her stunts and gimmicks and she likes to rant."

McDonough laughed off the reaction to her challenge.

The Harper Conservatives

Tory campaign manager crashes financing hearing

by Tim Naumetz

THE CANADIAN PRESS

August 11, 2008

OTTAWA — They warned about a kangaroo court, but the Conservatives seemed more interested in a media circus Monday as parliamentary hearings into the Tory “in-and-out” scheme began.

The Commons ethics committee hearings got off to a raucous start with a top Tory being ejected after showing up two days early and refusing to leave voluntarily.

The spectacle overshadowed testimony from two former Conservative candidates who told the committee how party officials orchestrated campaign advertising in their ridings that may have violated federal election law.

Doug Finley, who ran the Tories' 2006 election campaign, surprised committee members by showing up two days before he was scheduled to appear — in what seemed to be an orchestrated attempt to create controversy.

Mr. Finley then stunned MPs by ignoring requests from Liberal committee chair Paul Szabo to leave and return for his scheduled appearance on Wednesday. Mr. Szabo eventually ordered in Commons security guards who escorted Finley from the room.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had warned recently about “Kangaroo court” committee inquiries.

As reporters trailed him down hallways, Finley refused to explain why he could not appear later in the week as the committee had requested. When asked if he would return voluntarily, replied: “Not likely.”

Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc said the bizarre standoff was unquestionably planned by the Tories to take attention away from a former Tory candidates who later testified that campaign advertising the party arranged for their electoral districts was in fact advertising for the party's national campaign.

A year-long controversy over the in-and-out scheme centres on Elections Canada's allegation the party overspent its national campaign spending limit by $1.1 million by transferring a total of $1.3 million in expenses for radio and television advertising to local candidates.

Elections Canada also alleges that the scheme allowed candidates who had no hope of winning — or collecting enough money to reach their own local campaign spending limits — to claim reimbursements from Elections Canada for advertising expenses the agency says should have been assigned to the party's national campaign.

The agency has refused to reimburse 67 candidates for the cost, saying it should instead by assigned to the party's national campaign.

Gary Caldwall, the party's candidate in the Quebec riding of Compton-Stanstead, told the committee that once Elections Canada informed him his campaign could not claim $33,000 in expenses for ads arranged by the party, he withdrew his claim for a rebate and later left the party.

He and the former Tory candidate in Labrador — who likewise failed to qualify for $2,000 in expenses for national television advertising — both told the committee that once the affair became public last year party officials warned them not to talk to news media about it.

Shocked by the confrontation between Mr. Finley and the committee, Mr. Caldwell told the MPs he was “quite frightened” by what happened.

Mr. LeBlanc called Mr. Finley's tactic “typical bullying” that was intended to intimate the former candidates and a campaign agent who were testifying.

“These people take no prisoners,” said Mr. LeBlanc.

Opposition MPs want to question Mr. Finley after they hear from nearly 40 former Conservative candidates and officials who took part in the in-and-out scheme during the last election campaign.

The list of witnesses include 31 who were issued summonses to appear after not responding to invitations to testify or signalling they would not come without a summons.

Among the witnesses are Patrick Muttart, one of Harper's closest aides, and Irving Gerstein, a prominent Toronto businessman who chairs the party's fundraising arm.

The in-and-out scheme involved thousands of dollars in cash transfers from Conservative headquarters to candidates. The money was earmarked to pay for radio and television ads that had been produced for the party's national campaign and then broadcast regionally, ostensibly as part of the individual candidates' campaigns.

But agents for the candidates first had to fax signed bank wire-transfer agreements to headquarters, guaranteeing the party could initiate withdrawal payments for the ads from the candidates' campaign bank accounts, according to documents filed in Federal Court.

The Elections Canada allegations are contained in a 68-page affidavit that the assistant chief investigator for the federal elections commissioner signed last April to obtain a search warrant allowing Elections Canada to seize thousands of documents and computer storage systems from Conservative headquarters in Ottawa.

That investigation continues under elections commissioner William Corbett, a retired Crown prosecutor who was named to his Elections Canada post by former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are in the final stages of a Federal Court civil lawsuit against current chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand, attempting to force him to reimburse 67 candidates for the radio and television advertising that Mr. Mayrand says should actually be logged in the party's campaign books.

Witnesses at the ethics committee this week will include a campaign agent in Vancouver whose comments first alerted Elections Canada to the possibility something was awry. The agent, Denny Paktakhan, told an Elections Canada auditor he believed $29,999 the campaign paid to party headquarters “contributed to TV national advertising”.

“There was no way we can spend our limit so we were asked by the party if we can help contribute,” Elections Canada documents quote Mr. Paktakhan as saying.

Another witness will be Sam Goldstein, the Conservative candidate in a futile campaign in the Toronto riding of Trinity Spadina. Mr. Goldstein refused to talk to Elections Canada investigators in September 2007, according to the Elections Canada affidavit.

But the previous month, he told a news reporter the $49,999 his campaign paid to the party for television advertising was not for his campaign.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Environment Minister John Baird

More bull than pit?

by the Honourable Garth Turner, Canadian MP

As originally posted on: The Turner Report

February 8, 2007

Environment minister John Baird, self-styled House of Commons QP pit bull, hand-picked by PMSH to chew the Dion opposition into unrecognizable body parts, was reduced to puppyhood Thursday. It happened during a Commons committee meeting in Ottawa when the green one was outted by Bloc and Liberal MPs. Sadly, when it comes to that thing he's now in charge of, er, oh yeah, the environment, John fails.

As I wrote here a month ago when the guy was given the most important portfolio on the planet, without a whisp of experience, this was not going to go well. And it isn't.

I probably know John Baird better than you do. I don't traipse around official Ottawa on his arm, the way Laureen Harper does, but I've spent enough time near the guy to make a few observations. First, I never heard the word "environment" come out of his mouth before the cabinet shuffle last week.

Second, he is the most vicious partisan in the government, who has become a caricature of himself. In the opposition lobby outside the House of Commons, there are cartoons of him with a giant, six-foot-wide mouth. MPs often laugh when he stands up, in anticipation of the instant outrage he'll manufacture. The man simply is not taken seriously - and the fault is his own.

After having a month to read his briefing books, the minister's performance was so sub-standard that clips of his incompetence actually made it onto national newscasts. When asked about serious stuff - like a carbon tax and emission-trading markets - the canine hormones welled up and Baird attacked the questioner (Lib David McGuinty), instead of the question.

Baird slammed emission-control plans of the former government, which his government cancelled, and is now re-announcing - but starting in three years - and then showed clearly he doesn't actually know what Kyoto means. He rejected the notion of a tax on emissions, but gave no hint how the feds will control how much crap industry throws into the air without one. He also did not know what Ottawa is spending on the environment. And, worse, he played the fear card.

The economy will collapse if we try to do Kyoto, he said. Think Russia.

Of course, environmental experts at the committee hearings dismissed him as an airhead pooch, saying an effective climate change strategy that tries to hit Kyoto targets will cost billions, but hardly put the lights out. And they're right. As a smart blogger wrote the other day, if we just put on-off switches on kitchen appliances to shut off power (stoves, microwaves, coffee makers) when not in use, we could save a third of the power generated by the country's worst polluter, Nanticoke. And what would it cost the feds to mandate switches on all new appliances? You bet - sweet nothing.

For the record, our snarly minister has said he'll soon announce aggressive targets for the emission of greenhouse-gases by industries which will take effect in three years. The experts ask why that cannot be done now. After all, the Cons have been in office for more than a year already, and have done nothing on this file - while global warming rises to the top of the charts for voters.

Strikes me Canadians are looking for something simple here. Not politicians trying to shiv each other on CPAC. Not fear mongering about shuttered factories and lost jobs. Not excuses why we cannot even start to get the job done. But instead, just a plan and some hope.

Imagine Churchill telling the Brits during the impossible days of 1941 that the odds were too great, allies too few and time too short. Defeat would be inevitable. Instead, "Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days," he said. "These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race."

Are we ready to play our part, John? Or just snap at the wind?

"The Crazies in Parliament"

The crazies in Parliament

FEDERAL ELECTION / Look for homophobes to be muzzled

by Krishna Rau

As originally posted on: Xtra.ca

September 15, 2008

All parties struggle to keep their candidates on tight leashes during election campaigns, worried that extremist views and beliefs might scare off voters.

The prime example in recent years is Conservative MP Randy White's outburst about overriding the courts on same-sex marriage on the eve of the 2004 federal election.

"The heck with the courts, eh?" said White. "You know, one of these days we in this country are going to stand up and say, 'The politicians make the laws and the courts do not.' The courts interpret that law. And if we don't like that interpretation, there's the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which the Liberal government has never invoked and said they will not use. I believe we'll see that with us in the House of Commons because enough is enough of this stuff."

White's outburst is widely credited with provoking a last-minute swing of voters to the Liberals that cost Stephen Harper the election.

Since then Harper has kept his candidates gagged. With White retired the chances of a similar outburst are slim. Nonetheless it's illuminating to examine the views of a number of candidates on gay issues, and not necessarily just Conservatives.

Cheryl Gallant, the Conservative MP for Ontario's Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke riding, has been strangely silent for the past few years. But she's certainly made her beliefs known in the past.

"The danger in having sexual orientation just listed, that encompasses, for example, paedophiles," Gallant told CTV in 2004, talking about including gay men and lesbians in hate propaganda legislation. "I believe that the caucus as a whole would like to see it repealed."

Gallant also sent a flyer to her constituents claiming the then Liberal government had launched a concerted attack on Christians.

"Hostility in Canada to Christian teachings about the sanctity of the family and life has resulted in persecution here at home." she wrote. "The government has launched a campaign of intimidation to silence churches by dispatching tax collectors to threaten the charitable tax status of denominations who speak out against the Liberal government."

In the 2004 election Gallant compared abortion to the beheading of Iraq war hostage Nick Berg. After that remark the party announced she had laryngitis and could not participate in debates.

Garry Breitkreuz, the Conservative MP for Saskatchewan's Yorkton-Melville riding, accused the federal government of pandering to homosexuals in 2000.

"In the 1950s buggery was a criminal offence," he said. "Now it's a requirement to receive benefits from the federal government."

Harold Albrecht, the Conservative MP for Ontario's Kitchener-Conestoga riding, was bitterly opposed to same-sex marriage when he was the pastor of a Kitchener church.

In a letter to a local paper in 2003 he wrote that same-sex unions "would succeed in wiping out an entire society in just one generation. Marriage is God's idea, not man's, therefore, He alone has the authority to redefine it," he wrote.

Albrecht is probably best known for being hustled into a kitchen by party aides during the 2006 election so he would not be able to talk to reporters.

Maurice Vellacott, the Conservative MP for the Saskatchewan-Wanuskewin riding, has been another vociferous opponent of same-sex marriage.

In 1999 he wrote an editorial arguing that marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman because of the need to have and raise children. He wrote that "homosexuals already have the right to marry, providing that — like everybody else — they marry someone of the opposite sex."

He also opposed spousal benefits for same-sex couples, saying supporters of the initiative were "activist liberal judges and a small but aggressive homosexual lobby."

In 2002 Vellacott mailed out a pamphlet opposing the inclusion of sexual orientation as a protected category under Canada's hate crimes legislation. Vellacott wrote that the policy change "substantially interferes with the right of religious and education leaders to communicate essential matters of faith."

Another Conservative Saskatchewan MP, Tom Lukiwski of the Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre riding, was in the news this year when a video of him from 1991 surfaced. The video, shot when he was a provincial Tory organizer, showed him celebrating an electoral victory.

"There's As and there's Bs," Lukiwski says on the tape. "The As are guys like me, the Bs are homosexual faggots with dirt under their fingernails that transmit diseases."

Lukiwski apologized, saying, "If I could take those comments back I would. They do not reflect the type of person that I am."

He promised to spend his life promoting tolerance for all groups but failed to show up when invited to attend the Regina Pride Parade in May."

Mr. Lukiwski stated in his public apology... that he would spend the rest of his life making amends," said Pride spokesman Nathan Markwart. "Well, when exactly does that kick in?"

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, from Ontario's Nepean-Carleton riding, blew up when the provincial government announced it was relisting sex-reassignment surgery under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Poilievre said in May that he was going to write to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty asking that federal health transfers to the province pay only for "vital" healthcare treatments, not sexual reassignment surgery.

Poilievre said he would also ask Flaherty to withhold from federal transfer payments any money spent by the Ontario government on the sex-change program.

"I think if people want this medically unnecessary treatment, they have that right," Poilievre said. "But taxpayers should not have to pick up the tab for it."

Conservative MP Gary Goodyear, from the Ontario riding of Cambridge, fired one of his staff after she ordered tickets to a special screening of the film Young People Fucking. The film had been the centrepiece of the debate over the government's plan to give the heritage minister the power to deny tax credits to films she deemed "contrary to public policy."

But the Liberals, too, have their homophobic members. While the leader of their far-right pack, Scarborough's Tom Wappel, isn't running this election, Dan McTeague, the MP for Pickering-Scarborough East, is.

In 2003 McTeague — best known for his self-appointed stance as Canada's gas price watchdog — sent an open letter to then-prime minister Jean Chretien.

"It cannot be argued that the courts are merely adhering to what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires when, in fact, sexual orientation and gay rights are not even in the Charter," he wrote. "The issue of advancing homosexual rights and the ensuing edict aimed at redefining marriage are therefore entirely the products of erroneous judge-made law....

"What has occurred over the last few years has been a series of court rulings, followed by kowtowing legislative initiatives by a complacent federal government, aimed at placating a small but vocal minority of individuals under the guise of providing equality. Little consideration was ever given to the impact these actions would have at tearing away at the social fabric of the nation and the degrading of strongly held beliefs held by many Canadians. No wonder then that these initiatives would eventually lead to an attack on the definition and institution of marriage."

But the one MP who may be most missed in Parliament is Raymond Gravel, the Catholic priest who represented riding of Repentigny for the Bloc Quebecois. Gravel has been ordered by the Catholic church not to run again and to return to his work as a priest.

Gravel — who worked as a gay prostitute as a teen and later in a leather bar — said he had received letters from Vatican officials condemning his stances on abortion and homosexuality.

In 2003, while still a priest, Gravel condemned the Church's opposition to same-sex marriage. As an MP he opposed a private member's bill that would have made it a crime to take the life of a fetus.

"I am against abortion but I am not in favour of the pro-life campaign that condemns all women who get an abortion," he told the Globe and Mail earlier this month, in announcing he wouldn't run again.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

No mystery to Harper's unpopularity

PM is as likeable as a movie villain

by Scott Reid

As originally posted on: TheStar.com

April 28, 2007

At the risk of angering the acolytes of conventional wisdom, it's time someone pointed out the obvious: Maybe Stephen Harper isn't so damn smart after all.

Of course, in Ottawa these days, such an utterance passes for sacrilege. Those who dare question the Prime Minister's infallibility are called names like heretical, bedlamite or Garth Turner.

Remarkably, it's not just the Conservative caucus who seem captivated. Media and political observers describe Harper with a blend of terror and admiration previously reserved for cinematic bogeyman Keyser Soze. Even members of the opposition parties sermonize on Harper's shrewd, strategic brilliance.

To a degree, you can forgive the Liberals and the NDP. In politics, it is wise to never underestimate your opponent. At the same time, it is equally important to not overestimate his advantage.

In truth, there is plenty of evidence that Harper's political strategy is crude, over-calculated and fundamentally schizophrenic. One thing more: It's not working.

A spate of recent polls show support for Harper's Conservatives once again in retreat, leaving the political class in a twitter. How can this be? Isn't Harper's triumph inevitable?

The inability of the Prime Minister to march confidently into majority territory has left official Ottawa baffled. Like the whereabouts of Wajid Khan's Middle East report or John Baird's shame reflex, Smart Stephen's inability to pocket 40 per cent of voters is treated by media as one of the shocking mysteries of contemporary politics.

Except it's not so shocking. The reasons for Harper's difficulty are not impossible to spot.

First, he isn't remotely likeable. That, alone, isn't necessarily fatal. Pierre Trudeau, for example, was loathed by whole chunks of the electorate.

But Harper is different. He has a mean streak, a thin-skinned nastiness that he can't even be bothered to conceal. Never before has a prime minister sought to serve as his own hatchetman. Yet, Harper revels in the role.

He spitefully labels his political opponents Taliban sympathizers or child pornographers. Small wonder that Canadians haven't warmed to him. The guy's miserable. And with this week's debacle surrounding Afghan detainees, he can't even continue to claim the mantle of competence.

Second, he champions policies that most Canadians oppose. He's extended our stay in Kandahar, walked away from Kyoto and is going to kill the country's most effective gun-control tool.

He's torn up 10 provincial agreements to expand child-care spaces, ignored the issue of health care wait times and, after two budgets, has yet to cut personal income taxes. If you can't get a tax cut out of a Conservative, what's the point of even voting?

Finally, his political strategy is at war with itself.

In English Canada, the Prime Minister pursues what American political types call a "retail" effort, with a direct appeal to voters based on bread-and-butter issues.

In a retail campaign, the media are shunned as a hindrance, an unwelcome filter of the government's message. Often exploiting people's prejudices, this can be a particularly unsophisticated brand of politics. It preys on fear and appeals to the least, rather than the best, in human nature. It also assumes that voters are dumb – that simple, selfish gimmicks will attract support. Much of what you see from this government is built around these principles.

In Quebec, however, Harper's approach could not be more different. There, his agenda is designed exclusively for elite consumption. The fiscal imbalance. Recognizing Quebec as a nation. Rebalancing of constitutional powers. These are all music to the ears of a political class that has long offered unwise counsel to vote-seeking federal leaders.

Individual Quebecers – with their enthusiasm for affordable child care, combating climate change and withdrawing troops from Afghanistan – are treated as a distraction. Instead, Harper toils away with his salon supporters hoping to patch together an electoral breakthrough based on supportive editorials.

By pursuing this two-pronged approach, Harper is in risk of outfoxing himself. One political strategy is difficult enough to sustain. Running two conflicting strategies simultaneously is simply asking for trouble.

Not only is he dividing his political brand equity in two halves, he is constantly risking the relatively small base of support he enjoys among each. Every time he celebrates "three strikes and you're out" in Alberta, he risks support in Quebec. Each story in La Presse about plans to shrink the federal government's role to 1867 dimensions trims his Ontario seat count.

In short, the Prime Minister's stalled fortunes are not so hard to explain if you look at Stephen Harper as he truly is: His political strategy is stretched beyond common sense; his policies rankle; and his political demeanour is acidic.

Other than that, he is obviously very smart.

Scott Reid was communications director for former prime minister Paul Martin.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Federal Parliamentary Election Candidate John Baird

Flyers you paid for hit hustings

by Bruce Cheadle

THE CANADIAN PRESS
September 20, 2008


OTTAWA — Civil servants on Parliament Hill worked overtime the day before Prime Minister Stephen Harper dissolved Parliament to ensure MP mailouts were legally in transit before the election writ was dropped.

Now a Liberal candidate and former cabinet minister has formally complained to the auditor general that voters are receiving deeply partisan, taxpayer-funded flyers in the mail from his Conservative adversary John Baird during the election period.

"I was appalled when I saw that Mr. Baird’s MP communiques to constituents flagrantly attack the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and feature messaging, images and rhetoric essentially identical to that found on campaign literature and the Conservative party’s own website," Ottawa West-Nepean candidate David Pratt wrote to Sheila Fraser.

"A series of these politicized flyers have arrived in constituents’ mailboxes during the election writ period."

A Baird spokeswoman said the flyers are little different from those used by MPs from other parties. "They are creative, but they follow all the rules and they are factual," Courtney Payne, Baird’s campaign communications director, said in an e-mail.

Under House of Commons rules, MPs can send so-called householders to constituents four times a year, and can also send such mailings — called 10-percenters — to other ridings in numbers not exceeding 10 per cent of their riding’s households.

The flyers are printed and bulk-mailed at taxpayer expense.

The rules stipulate they are to focus on informing constituents about an MP’s parliamentary actions, duties and performance.

"It is important to clarify that the re-election of Members is not considered to be within the exercise of their parliamentary functions," says the official manual on MP allowances.

Commons Speaker Peter Milliken sent an e-mail to all MPs on Sept. 7, the day the election began, reminding them of rules for householders "immediately before and during an election."

"A householder that is in transit at the issue of the writ will not be considered to have been issued during the election period if, at the time of the issue of the writ, the member of Parliament does not have the ability to stop its delivery," Milliken noted.

But the rules are silent on MPs who, knowing an election is to be called the following day, send out householders on a Saturday in the full knowledge they cannot possibly be delivered by Canada Post until the following week.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon

Quebec residents rap MP for not helping man facing extradition

Popular local businessman wanted for trial in Texas

CBC NEWS

June 20, 2008

Some residents of the Pontiac region of western Quebec are angry and disappointed that their member of Parliament hasn't done more to help a local businessman facing extradition to the United States.

Stuart Collins is wanted in Harris County, Texas, on two counts of theft that date from the early 1990s, when he was an attorney in Houston. He maintains he is innocent and won't get a fair trial if he's sent back.

The Supreme Court of Canada decided Thursday it will not hear his appeal to stay in Canada.

That means his only hope is to ask federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to review his case and stay the extradition.

Collins's supporters have been lobbying for months to get their local MP, Lawrence Cannon, who is minister of transport, to support their efforts to get his fellow cabinet minister to intervene.

In March, Cannon wrote a letter to local newspapers saying he had written to both the former justice minister, Vic Toews, and to Nicholson.

Cannon's office refused to release the letters to CBC News. However, when CBC News filed an access to information request to see the letters, it turned out Cannon had written only to Nicholson.

"The fact that he told us that he would write a letter of support to Mr. Toews and Mr. Nicholson, when in fact he did not, and this is not a letter of support … it's just shocking," Collins said Wednesday.

Collins said the least he expected from Cannon was a request to Nicholson that his extradition be put on hold until the matter is reviewed.

Another of Cannon's constituents, Christine Douaire said: "This is a joke. This isn't a letter of support. Maybe he doesn't want to be in politics anymore."

Collins employs about 45 people at his Bryson Farms tomato-and-lettuce greenhouses near Shawville, Que., and local residents say the jobs are vital to the region, which used to rely heavily on forestry but has been hit hard by mill closures.

Jerry Barber is the owner of Petro-Pontiac, just a five-minutes drive from Bryson Farms.

"From the letter, I see he hasn't done any more than any ordinary citizen. Maybe that's all he could do, but we were expecting more, that's for sure," Barber said.

A spokeswoman in Cannon's office, Karine White, recently confirmed the minister had not written to Toews and that the letter never existed. On Wednesday, she said the minister did speak to Toews about the Collins case.

An American, Collins arrived in Canada in 1994 and started Bryson Farms with his partner Terry Stewart in 1999.

Shortly after his arrival in Canada, the Harris County district attorney charged him with two counts of theft. The prosecutors allege tens of thousands of dollars were taken out of a trust account in the hands of a law firm in which Collins was a partner.

Collins alleges that the district attorney has a vendetta against him since they were lawyers on opposite sides of a murder and corruption case in the 1990s, and he cannot get a fair trial.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Industry Minister Jim Prentice

Jim Prentice Wishes People Wouldn't Be So Specific In Their Questions Over Canadian Copyright Law

by Mike Masnick

As originally posted on: Techdirt
July 9, 2008


It would be mildly amusing to watch how Canadian politician Jim Prentice was squirming away from any serious discussion around his new copyright bill, if it weren't such a serious issue. After Prentice was forced to delay the bill originally planned for late last year, he promised to consult with all parties before coming out with a better bill. He did not. Instead, he just kept waiting, making minor changes, and then announced the bill at a time where he hoped it wouldn't garner that much attention. However, it has received plenty of attention from people asking a bunch of questions, and Prentice's response has hardly been compelling. If anything, he's made it abundantly clear that he doesn't want to actually discuss the specifics.

Michael Geist discusses the various tactics Prentice has used to avoid actually dealing with the massive shortcomings of the bill, including hanging up on radio interviewers and now saying that he won't answer the questions being raised until it's debated in Parliamentary committee. But, perhaps the most ridiculous of all is that Prentice's chief of staff is complaining that the complaints and questions about the bill are "too specific." Apparently, they were hoping for vague questions that could be brushed off with vague answers. Unfortunately, an awful lot of people (not, apparently, including Prentice) understand the terrible impact this bill would have and would like him to respond to those concerns. Prentice, apparently, doesn't like that line of "specific" questions and will hide behind the Parliamentary committee (and his ability to hang up) rather than answer them.

Canadian Prime Minister / Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper and the Harper Conservatives

Hidden-agenda concerns keep Conservatives from majority

Only ten percent in poll think Harper has told them the whole truth about his plans.

As originally posted on: The Harper Index

October 3, 2008

OTTAWA, October 3, 2008: Stephen Harper attempted in the federal leaders' debate last night to dispel the fear many Canadians have that he has a hidden ideological agenda that will not come into full view until he has a majority government.

Despite a political career built on contempt for public services, marketing boards, social programs and unions, Harper steered a cautious path during his two-plus years of minority government, avoiding hot-button social issues. In last night's debate, he boasted about having increased spending on social programs as Prime Minister.

"There's no ideological agenda there," he claimed, about cuts to some arts programs while increasing funding to others. Later he chided the other leaders about funding he said his government had put into economic development. "This is hardly a laissez-faire attitude."

Harper knows that Canadians are concerned about what may be, as Jack Layton put it in the debate, under Harper's blue sweater. (This was a reference to Harper's attempts to soften his image in this campaign by appearing in sweaters rather than suits.)

A May poll by Vector Research™ was one of many that have pointed to the distrust many voters feel for Harper. "Some people feel that Harper has a hidden agenda and that if the Conservatives win a majority government in the next federal election he will do things he did not talk about in the election campaign," said Vector's Marc Zwelling.

"Forty two percent of Canadians, including 46 percent of the women we talked to, told us they feel Harper is holding back or covering up information about a lot of his plans that voters ought to know."

Only ten percent of those polled thought that Harper has told the voters the whole truth about his plans.

In a September 29 poll, two thirds of respondents said they thought a Harper majority government would expand the role of private health care, something Harper downplayed last night and throughout the campaign.

Harper's debate strategy confirmed what many observers have written, that he is running to attract voters in the political centre and establish a long-term majority by staying relaxed and in control, with barely a hint of ideology. He never used right-wing catch-phrases like "privatize," "war on terror," or "war on drugs," nor did he refer to religion, morality or any of the other ideas that would mark him as a right-winger. He boasted he does not use private health care.

The often-aggressive Harper took a much more subdued tone in the debates than he often does in the House. Both in the debate and through most of his tightly-scripted and heavily-guarded campaign, Harper has managed to skirt discussion of issues that provoked much of the distrust he now encounters.

Dozens of trust-disturbing incidents and policies from the past two years might have been raised that weren't: including a government culture of authoritarianism, blocking access to public documents, a revolving door between the government and top corporate lobbyists, tying the hands of future governments with secret deals like the SPP and TILMA. The Harper government's ideological attacks on Canadian Wheat Board haven't achieved much campaign notice. The politicization and muzzling of the public service did not come up in the debate. Neither did the government's outright hostility to the news media and its relentless attempts to control their access to government officials.

The final vote on October 14 will tell whether his performance last night and throughout the campaign successfully assured voters he is a moderate without a hidden agenda.

Harper Conservative vs. Public Values Frame

"Sweater guy" / Expose right-wing idealogue

Hidden agenda / Openness

Public service and program cuts / Public values, support public services and spaces

Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca

Lawrence Cannon 2008 Canadian Federal Parliamentary Election Campaign Office Assistant Darlene Lannigan

Another Apology From Conservatives, This Time For Racist Remark Toward Aboriginals

by Alexander Panetta

THE CANADIAN PRESS
September 19, 2008


The Conservatives were forced to say sorry Thursday for a careless remark about aboriginal drinking - the latest apology in a campaign chockablock with mea culpas.

With the election campaign still in its second week, the Tories found themselves apologizing for the fourth time over distasteful incidents.

In this case, it came after aboriginal protesters expressed outrage at what they described as a racist slur by a member of Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon's staff.

The protesters attended an event in Cannon's riding this week and demanded a meeting to discuss local governance issues with the Conservatives' senior Quebec minister.

A member of Cannon's staff was caught on tape responding: "If you behave and you're sober and there's no problems and if you don't do a sit down and whatever, I don't care."

The staff member, Darlene Lannigan, then added: "One of them showed up the other day and was drinking."

The remark was apparently made to Norman Matchewan, a 25-year-old community school teacher and part-time police officer. He said he didn't know why Lannigan would feel it necessary to mention alcohol, or what incident involving drinking she had been referring to.

He issued a statement Thursday condemning the comment.

"These patronizing, racist remarks from a representative of Cannon are just another example of the Conservative government's disrespect for our community," Matchewan said.

In an interview, he described how a group of about 10 protesters attended Cannon's campaign launch in Maniwaki, Que., and crowded into a small room where the minister was doing media interviews.

He said Cannon left the building without acknowledging their request for a meeting and they followed him outside. That's when Lannigan followed them out and made the comment, he said.

The Algonquin community group spokesman said successive federal governments have reneged on agreements to give the community greater political control over its affairs.

He said residents are also upset that the federal government this year recognized as a legitimate local representative a minority leadership faction with little community support.

The group wants the federal government to monitor local elections and respect the outcome.

Cannon's office apologized for the comments.

A spokeswoman for the minister said the remark was made by a riding office employee and it did not reflect the views of the government of Canada.

She also said the minister's staff had agreed to meet with the protesters later this week.

"We would like to take this opportunity to apologize for any offence given," said Cannon spokeswoman Catherine Loubier.

"We also understand these comments were made in a difficult context. That is regrettable. The good news is that the parties have committed to meet later this week, in a spirit of collaboration."

But Matchewan wasn't pleased.

"We don't want to meet with (Lannigan). We want to meet with Cannon," he said.

"It's hard to accept his apology if he's not going to put it into action. We want him to put his words into action."

And the president of the union of BC Indian Chiefs issued a statement blasting the Conservatives.

"We are absolutely outraged and deeply angered by the blatantly racist remarks uttered by Conservative MP Lawrence Canon's personal assistant," said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip in the statement. "Such highly offensive remarks only serve to further poison the brittle relationship between Aboriginal People and the Harper government."

Canadian Federal Member of Parliamentary / Heritage Minister Josée Verner

Josée Verner Minister of Censorship

by "psa"

As originally posted on: Canadian Cynic

April 21, 2008

Josée Verner has come out of the blocks, waving her arms in the air, demanding that her every statement be discounted, mocked and laughed at. As the champion of the Conservative's dirty little censorship act, Bill C-10, she can't understand why a film maker would criticize the legislation. If Verner has anything going for her at this moment, her stupidity almost surely precludes active corruption. Even as poorly as the Cons have managed their election fund cheating fiasco, there was an initial moment of cunning. Verner couldn't find her hands in her pockets.

The Globe notes the ruffling of her feathers. Her little outburst comes in response to statements made by Oscar winning director Ang Lee. Addressing Vancouver film makers he told them that they had to fight for their freedom to create.

During a talk with young Vancouver filmmakers on Saturday, Lee urged them to “make a noise, whatever” to stop Bill C-10. “It's almost like censorship.”

Let's recall that Charlie McVety, the evangelical fundie clown that has his tongue in Stockwell's, um, ear, (and runs an endless string of pressure groups from one phone number, out of one office at his tax exempt University of Jeebus) claims to be behind this bill. Of course when put to the test in the Senate he recanted those boasts but you can't get the egg back into the chicken. He was quite clear in expressing that Bill C-10 would be used to quash productions that dealt with stories of gay life and whatever other alternative lifestyles scared his fat little self so.

So given those posts as context, there's no lack of comic irony to have the New Canadian Minister of New Heritage, Josée Verner pop up like a mousse poisoned whack-a-mole to bluster and scramble for traction.

Upon hearing of his comments, Verner issued a statement Monday: “I'm surprised about the comments of Mr. Ang Lee, director of the world acclaimed movie Brokeback Mountain.”

What a fuck wit. Stockwell old boy, you have competition, you just might not be the most laughably stupid creature infesting fat Steve's cabinet of horrors. Somehow creative artists and Canadians are supposed to accept that a woman this blazingly stupid will be the one determining what is "offensive".

The goal of the stealth retards behind this travesty is to enact a morality regime in the government that impedes the process of creation and freedom in the arts. Verner is actually stupid enough to profess surprise that the Oscar winning director of a film about two men's drama of denial and temptation for each other in a gay relationship would suggest fighting the bigots. Cripes. Does she wear a CCM helmet to bed? Not content to bumble into the statement, she pauses to reflect on other reasons to detest this transparently bigoted piece of legislation.

In addition to pointing out that Lee, as a non-Canadian, is himself exempt from being denied the particular tax credit included in the bill, Verner denied Lee's charges of censorship.

I hope she wears flavoured socks, her feet are wedged into her mouth like some kind of fetish porn. Under her stewardship, 'Brokeback Mountain' is exactly the sort of movie that a Canadian wouldn't be assisted in producing. But a foreigner like Mr. Lee would face no such restrictions when he brought his crew to Alberta, home of gay cowboy moving pictures. So this festering idiocy serves only to hamper and impede the work of Canadian artists, how very fucking reassuring.

“Our government is determined to ensure freedom of expression and will continue to support the production of entertaining and high quality content,” the statement said. “We are reaching out to industry to work with them on Bill C-10. Together, we will find the best solution for the industry, for Canadian citizens and tax payers.”

Yes indeed. Freedom of expression exept not about fags and stuff. Or anything that would make Stockwell cry. The best solution for the industry? Tear little ol' Bill C-10 into tiny pieces and force feed them to puritanical manipulators like Charles McVety and his dinosaur riding BFF, Stockwell Day. The solution is that Telefilm Canada and the other funding agencies be allowed to do their jobs. It is not up to the Verners of the world to determine what represents high quality, entertaining or appropriate content. That would reduce the Canadian film industry to a terminal miasma of heart warming shite. Don't fix what ain't broken Josée.

That raises another issue for critics of the bill such as writer Susan Swan, the chair of The Writer's Union of Canada. Swan says the arts community has no intention of working out guidelines with the Minister. Swan was in Ottawa last week to deliver this message to a senate committee.

“None of the delegates from the other arts organizations at the senate banking committee last week expressed any interest in doing it,” she said. “There are already guidelines in place for government funding of film. Why would we want to add another tier? The Writers' Union, like Ang Lee, believes artistic freedom is the best public policy for film funding.”

These idiot Cons are actually upset that the people they don't like or respect would bridle at being asked to help pick out the colour of the straight jacket they'll be forced to wear. They are desperate to feed their base, the terrified, the backward and the superstitious, at any cost. And that includes the destruction of any form of domestic film and television industry. There are already enough hurdles facing a Canadian film maker and now these fools want to make things more difficult. At the same time, leaving the advantages in place for off shore producers. Yeah. That'll work. Reverse protectionism, fucking genius.

Update: Hats off to Ang Lee! Should any of you readers care to drop a line to the Senate, I would appreciate your effort.

You can reach Senator Hervieux-Payette at HERVIC@SEN.PARL.GC.CA I received the following in a timely response to my note:

Liberals to Shed Light on Conservative Censorship Attempt

OTTAWA – Liberal Senators will ensure that hearings are held to consider amendments to controversial legislation so that a tiny clause in the Income Tax Act does not become a tool of government censorship, Liberal Senate Leader Céline Hervieux-Payette and Liberal Heritage Critic Mauril Bélanger said today.“

We are concerned that if Bill C-10 is allowed to pass in its current form, the way will be paved for the use of Canada’s tax system as a de facto censor of film and video production in Canada,” said Senator Hervieux-Payette.

Bill C-10, an omnibus bill which makes numerous, mostly technical, changes to Canada’s Income Tax Act, also includes provisions which would give the Minister of Heritage the authority to deny tax benefits to any production not meeting standards of their choosing.

Today’s announcement followed a Bloc motion calling on the Government to amend the bill “as soon as possible.” Senator Hervieux-Payette said that the swiftest possible action that can be taken is not through the Government, but through the Senate Banking, Trade and Commerce Committee, which is currently studying the Bill.

“Thankfully the bill is still in front of a Senate Committee that can give this important issue the close scrutiny it deserves,” said Senator Hervieux-Payette. “If necessary, we will not hesitate to offer amendments to ensure the tax code is not abused in this manner.”

The impact of the measures in Bill C-10 first came to light thanks to the boasting of socially conservative activist Charles McVety, who claimed he had influenced the government’s crafting of the bill.

“The arts community has already widely condemned the government’s attempts to twist the tax law into a means of censorship-by-stealth,” said Mr. Bélanger. “Liberals understand that artistic freedom is good public policy. We stand with Canada’s artists and the public in their desire to protect their freedom of expression.”

On the topic of responses, today I received a content free, form letter response to the several letters I have written to Liberal leader Stephane Dion. In the most non-specific of terms I am assured that my concerns have been noted. Traditionally, the rhetoric has been that the Senate is a sleepy retirement village full of aging patronage loafers, yet when I write to the Senate I get a detailed, on point and considered response to my concern. My Member of Parliament, Karen Redman, Liberal Party whip has yet to muster the energy to produce so much as a form letter. Jack Layton and the NDP were also quick to respond to a letter I sent and were also on point and detailed. Jim Prentice's office took months to manage to respond with a form letter that was so obviously tossed off that it assured me that the very opposite of my concerns were being addressed. And last but certainly not least the PMO has also pushed the send button to ship me a vague and meaningless form letter. I am left to determine from my own limited anecdotal evidence that the Senate is a far better and more considered branch of government than they are credited and the Liberal Party is asleep at the switch. Perhaps I should write to the Bloc and see what I get.

Canadian Federal Member of Parliament / Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Helena Guergis

MP chose party over Mexican prison visit

by Steve Rennie

THE CANADIAN PRESS

May 24, 2008

OTTAWA – Brenda Martin was waiting anxiously in a Mexican prison while the MP then handling her file mingled with Canadian expatriates at a private reception nearby in Guadalajara, The Canadian Press has learned.

Conservative MP Helena Guergis rubbed elbows in late January with Canadians as they nibb