8 entries filed this month:
Stephen Harper has an impressive skill set. He had a chance, himself, to bring more honour to governance. But since the opening bell when he elevated a floor-crosser and an unelected senator to his Cabinet, he has shown himself to be a leader whose abiding imperative is political opportunism.Lawrence Martin, The Globe and Mail (Dion’s defining moments, 2006–12-14)
Speaking to a teachers conference in Ottawa on November 9th, British Columbia Senator and senior Conservative Party figure Gerry St. Germain said:
You just can’t tinker with [senate] reform
Apparently Stephen Harper wasn’t listening to Germain. His plan to tinker with the Senate would bypass constitutional change and see in the Senate some elected members, some non-elected, some with lifetime terms, and some with 8 year terms.
In short: Franken-Senate.
Its all a smokescreen, a charade which he’ll employ in an election in order to paint as ‘undemocratic’ anyone who defends the senate’s construction and purpose. Since few understand how the senate works, what its role is in our government and society, and why tinkering with it is so mind-bogglingly dangerous, we shall look at the senate in detail in the near future.
If Harper were serious about democratic reform in Canada, he’d first fix the House of Commons and his own sorry record.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper today launched his latest attack on the Senate, following up on threats he made during his appearance before the senate earlier this year.
Senator Munson: Prime Minister, welcome. I cannot help myself; once a reporter, always a reporter. You suggested in French that there would be political consequences if the Senate said no to an eight-year term.
As you know, we are studying the proposed accountability act and Senate reform in a serious way and there may be amendments. It may take some time and it is serious work. There are critics who believe you would like nothing better than to fight an election on the backs of the Senate.
Mr. Harper: Well, do not give me the opportunity.
Senator Munson: There will be political consequences then.Thursday September 7, 2006 – Senate Committee on Senate Reform
Harper claims that he’s interested in improving Canada’s democracy.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, demonstrated by Harper’s own actions.
Stephen Harper thumbed his nose at our democracy by secretly negotiating a cabinet seat for former Liberal David Emerson, mere hours after the votes were counted on January 23rd, without requiring that Emerson get a real mandate from his constituents.
Harper isn’t interested in democracy but does want to change Canada, fundamentally, using the United States model as the mirror image he’d like to see reflected in Canada. Canadians ought not to sleep walk into supporting Harper’s vision. Properly informed, I am certain they will reject such a vision.
Harper doesn’t want democracy, he wants a presidency.
Brian Mulroney steps in it, commenting on the ineffectual “Clean Air Act” being promoted by Rona Ambrose and Stephen Harper:
“And I think there is more work to be done on that, both substantively and ‘presentationally’, and my guess [is] that is where the government is heading,” he said. CBC – Environment key to courting middle-class vote: Mulroney
When voters go next to the polls they’ll have to decide whether they believe that the current crop of Conservatives actually believe, and care, about climate change – beyond how the issue effects their electoral results.
The track record on the issue of those who control the party – largely ex Canadian Alliance and Reformers like Stephen Harper – underscores clearly that it was those same folks who have fought any attempt to a) recognize that there is an issue and b) create policies and legislation and a cultural / political climate where change could be made possible. But climate-change denial is not strictly a western conservative trait, and here we have Mulroney exhorting the current crop of Conservatives to change the optics of the situation, rather than make substantive change.
Entrusting Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, Canada’s new government, on the climate change file is truly like putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.
It should also be noted that Harper is hell-bent on weakening the federal government in every way imaginable (taxation, private property legislation, the so-called triple E senate) in order to make Canada’s federal government impotent on such issues of national importance.
In the next election there will be four federal parties (Green, Liberal, New Democratic, and Progressive Canadian (‘PC Party’) parties), plus the Bloc Quebecois, who truly support policies aimed at turning around Canada’s sorry record on environmental and climate change issues. The Conservative Party, my party, won’t be one of them, but they certainly will try to spin the situation and fool voters into believing they are.
I am a Conservative who hailed from the Progressive Conservative Party and have always championed environmental issues as my colleagues will attest to. But there are too few voices like mine within the party to make a difference. The only reason the Conservative leadership is talking about these issues at all today is because public opinion is forcing them to – they would much prefer to ignore the climate change file completely.
The leadership of the Conservative Party – kowtowing to Alberta oil interests and manufacturers in Central Canada – is not likely to change the anti-environmental course they’ve been on since Preston Manning and Stephen Harper started the Reform Party. Change will be skin deep, not transformational. That’s simply not good enough.
Congressional hearings can be dry, dull, affairs, but the Kucinich-Paul Congressional Hearing on Civilian Casualties in Iraq is riveting:
So, in the 2004 study, I went and I led the study, and I paid a guy $200 to smuggle me into Iraq. So I flew to Jordan, and gave him 200 bucks, and he smuggled me in. He had really dark tinted windows. And so he smuggled me across the border—even though they searched the car, somehow we made it—and we went through a checkpoint in Fallujah as we were coming in.
This guy who smuggled me in—he’s a professional smuggler. He’s a tough guy. He’d been in the military 21 years, the U.S. had come, and now he was suddenly unemployed and driving a car. As we drove past Abu Ghraib prison—I’m lying on the floor in the back, and he goes, “Abu Ghraib! Abu Ghraib!” And I sort of looked up, and my driver was up front, and I said, “Do you mean the prison?” And he looked back over his shoulder, and he was weeping.
You know, there are consequences to every American family that’s lost a loved one that dwarf the economic concerns. And the notion that there might be hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families with scars that deep should scare us profoundly, I think. Les Roberts, Associate Professor, Clinical Public Health, Columbia University
The hearing looks into the recent Lancet study which pegs the number of Iraqi deaths at over 650,000 since the start of George W. Bush’s foolhardy, illegal, and pointless war in that country. When the study was released in October it was greeted by howls of protests by both the U.S. and U.K. governments, however as time has past the conclusions reached in the report have only gained additional credibility and currency among the press and many policy makers.
P.S.: Lets not forget: the Iraq war is a war Stephen Harper wanted Canada to support.
Pierre Bourque runs a news clipping service which is widely followed among political junkies, although its difficult to understand why at times given his editorial propensities.
Today he ran a poll:
Should a citizen of France be Prime Minister of Canada ?
Yes: 22%
No: 76%
This poll refers to Stephane Dion’s dual citizenship – he’s a citizen of France only because his mother was born there. For a period of time, I could have easily obtained citizenship in the United Kingdom. No doubt more than one of our provincial and federal politicians have that distinction today. Where’s the outrage?
More to the point, the ultra-right buddy of Stephen Harper, one Ted Morton, is a dual citizen: born in the U.S., Morton only obtained his Canadian citizenship in 1991. Morton was almost elected Premier of Alberta.
Where was the outrage from Bourque and the wing-nutty right over Morton? There was none, of course, and this is no surprise as hypocrisy is the name of the game in Conservative “Rovian” politics on either side of the 49th parallel. I tell you, its embarrassing to be a Conservative these days.
This afternoon on CBC‘s national Sunday afternoon radio show, Cross Country Checkup, I weighed in on Stephane Dion, congratulating his party for making a choice which was to some degree not the “establishment” choice. I also said:
There are actually some Conservatives who place environmental issues at the top of their policy lists. Sadly the current Minister of Environment isn’t one of them.
Meant every word.
I hereby take back any nice thing I have ever said about James Moore.
2006–12-02 (CP) MONTREAL—A gaggle of beaming Conservative operatives waited mere minutes after Bob Rae was knocked out of the Liberal leadership race before boasting about the role they played in the former Ontario premier’s defeat.
Just seconds after Rae was knocked out, a prominent Tory MP wandering the convention floor pulled out a handful of buttons mocking Rae and winked mischievously.
“There’s a reason we handed out so many of these,’’ said B.C. [Conservative] MP James Moore, pointing to buttons that ridiculed Rae’s track record as Ontario premier.
“They (Liberals) don’t know how to play poker… The NDP is also feeling happy right now.’’
Harper Conservatives care much more about power than principle. Dirty tricks becoming of Karl Rove and the dirtiest U.S. Republicans are to be emulated, if Harper is your boss. Damn democracy, full speed ahead.
That’s NOT the Canadian way.