The Quebec Construction Holiday Factor
June 17, 2009
What would happen if they held a general election during the third week of July? That’s the week the construction sites in Quebec shut down for a holiday. Now let’s say we held the vote at that time. What would the turnout be, and who would vote? Would the Quebec voters punish the two centrist parties and favour the Bloc? Would disgruntled Ontario residents favour the NDP or the Green? I would love to read an analysis of where the votes would likely go on a July 24th vote.
Passive aggressive Olympics
June 16, 2009
Let’s say that Harper and company have deep reservations about stimulus spending on any level, and have been forced into it by the combined opposition parties. Then let’s say that the leader of the opposition identifies the insincere effort and demands clarifications as a condition of further support. What better way to blame the opposition for cutting off the spending than by annoying them into bringing down the government? The election-shy media are accusing Ignatieff of passive-aggressive tactics, but they can’t compare with Harper’s on this one.
If a tree falls in the forest…
June 16, 2009
We all know the rest of that one, but how about this:
If all of the media in unison say that Canada doesn’t want a summer election, does that make it true? or does it just reflect their fear that they’ll lose their precious months at the cottage?
In a delicious bit of irony apparently lost on the Ottawa press corps, Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff inferred Monday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have to make up the time lost when he prorogued the House last winter before the Liberals allow summer recess. He didn’t say it in exactly that way, of course.
Instead he showed his disappointment with the wayward Stephen’s most recent economic report, but he chose to return the assignment for revisions before flunking it. Stephen must realize, however, that if he doesn’t do some major work before Friday, he and his party will spend the rest of June in the House until he upgrades his work to a level acceptable to the professor and the Canadians he represents as Leader of the Opposition.
“If the PM has something good to help the jobless, I will support it. I’m prepared to make compromises which will help the unemployed. I’m looking for co-operation, not confrontation, but I’m ready to vote against the estimates on Friday, and yes, the full Liberal Caucus will be present in the House for the vote.”
As well as criticizing the E.I. gap, Ignatieff noted that the current estimate has dropped any mention of a plan to get the Canadian economy out of deficit, and this shows a significant lack of leadership. Further, the spending statements and projections contained in the report failed to provide specific information Canadians need to know.
Ignatieff seems particularly concerned with the current medical isotope crisis. He mentioned that he has spoken to the supplier in Australia. “I asked, ‘O.K., can you scale up here?’ He responded that we can’t guarantee our supply will reach Canada.” “This is a big deal. Tell us honestly what the situation is. This is a very serious failure of leadership by this government and I can’t let this go on longer. This is a public health matter, not partisan politics.”
A journalist asked if Ignatieff would advocate taking funds from infrastructure spending to boost E.I. payments. He responded by saying that on the subject of infrastructure spending, the Harper government leaves the impression of an adolescent with a garden hose spraying a backyard. On the other hand, the numbers in Harper’s own report make it clear that the most effective stimulus spending during the recession has been E.I. payments: they provide immediate and effective help. “If Harper can convince me a large rise in E.I. would cause a big problem of public finance, I’ll listen. But I want to help the unemployed. I’d like to discuss this with the P.M. He knows my phone number. I’d like to work with him on this.”
“I don’t seek an election, but we need accountability and I want some answers. He promised changes in three months in his last report. Now he mentions some plans to look at E.I. in the fall. What counts is getting action to help the unemployed. If he’s got something good to help the unemployed, let’s get it out now, not later, after the seasonal workers have missed the benefits.”
“Any sensible person understands that Canadians want to work. There are 58 regional variations across Canada on E.I. The P.M. won’t get away with saying that in three months he may come back to it.”
Accused of giving Mr. Harper a way out, Ignatieff responded: “We just had an election. I’m just trying to work with the government to make Parliament work. I don’t want him to give in to me, I want solutions that are good for Canadians.
Tory cabinet minister John Baird had spent the quarter hour before Ignatieff’s speech today in front of a CTV camera attempting a pre-emptive strike on the Leader of the Opposition’s credibility by using the word “games” a lot. Ignatieff came back with, “I won’t put a grade on this economic statement. The stakes for Canadians are way too high for that. This is not a game. What Opposition is for is to ask real questions and seek real answers on behalf of Canadians. The big prize here is to make Canadians feel we have a pretty good system of government here which can work for them.”
A CBC commentator concluded, however, with another games metaphor: “The ball’s in Harper’s court.”
Canadians are unlikely to share the pain of parliamentarians if Ignatieff makes them sit through the month of June and even longer while they finish the work of a session cut short by last winter’s prorogation. Serves them right.
The Attack Ad
May 31, 2009
I hate attack ads. There I was, settled in for a Saturday evening of Hockey Night In Canada. The tempo of the game riveted me to my seat. At the end of the period I didn ’t dash away, perhaps because of the quality of the game, or perhaps because of fatigue after a day of gardening. I sat there, willing even to listen to Don Cherry’s rants. And on it came, the “Just Visiting” ad. It doesn’t say much, just that Michael Ignatieff spent an entire career outside Canada and now wants to be Prime Minister out of personal ambition. My first reaction when I saw the ad on You Tube was to ridicule it as a feeble attempt to weaken the powerhouse that is Michael Grant Ignatieff.
I remembered that Ignatieff’s uncle, George Grant, wrote Lament for a Nation. Since its publication in 1960 this book has defined what it is to be Canadian. I further remembered that among Michael’s ancestors lie two principals of Upper Canada College, one principal of Queen’s University, and Vincent Massey, perhaps Canada’s greatest Governor General.
“Just in it for himself?” No. That’s Stephen Harper using Flaherty’s fall economic update to attack personal enemies: women, the public service, opposition parties. That’s Stephen Harper proroguing parliament to save his own political career. That’s Stephen Harper’s attack on Quebec during question period because they refused to give him the seats he needed for a majority.
I know these things, but when I’m watching Hockey Night In Canada I’m not in the mood for political debate. I’m watching two romantic groups of men competing with all their hearts for the holy grail of sport. My mind is far from the rational, pragmatic attitude which protects me from the demagoguery of an election campaign.
This is the genius of the attack ad long before an election call: it hits the viewer in a deep, emotional place, far from the intellect which can tell fact from fiction, and it repeats the attack many times per night at the one time of the year when the Canadian male is at his most vulnerable, the Stanley Cup final.
So I know in my mind that Michael Ignatieff has one ancestor who was the first Canadian-born Governor General. Another family member wrote the book on what it is to be Canadian. His father was a diplomat, and Michael is following a strong family tradition of public service. But that’s another part of my brain. The television says that he’s just in it for himself, and as the song goes, so does my heart: “I know it’s true, oh so true, ‘cause I saw it on T.V.”
Harper takes a page from Obama’s notebook
January 27, 2009
I wrote this as a parody of Obama’s inauguration address and thought I might use it as a column in The Review Mirror. My wife said it was too creepy, so I wrote something else. Then I read the text of Harper’s throne speech. His Obama-write-alike was a bit shorter and a lot less candid.
We are here to mark the continuation of our journey to a majority. This is fitting because it in this city, in the office of the Governor General of Canada, that we took the step to prevent the death of this government. It was here that an oil man from Alberta and a Quebec T.V. host gathered to prorogue parliament and avoid the destiny to which my career seemed doomed.
It was a risky thing, asking the Governor General to prorogue the house. There was no guarantee that she would go along with my request. More than once she asked me if I was crazy, but after a long while she agreed and I found a way to avoid the prospect of defeat.
We had to put it all on the line – our political lives, our fortunes, and our integrity – for our government’s right to do the job that fully 22% of Canadians chose us to do. To govern this country with the set of ideals that continue to light the world. That lower taxes are best. That our lives, liberty and happiness come from laws which protect us from people who are not like us. And that a Conservative government, by and for conservatives, can endure. It was these ideals that led us to close down the House until we had time for our propaganda to work, producing documents and leaks which were imperfect, but over time, with the help of polls, could be made to work.
We are here today not simply to pay tribute to the Finance Minister for his work this fall, but to pick up his work again. The trials we face are very different now, and much more severe than expected. Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast. An economy that is faltering. A coalition prepared to overthrow the government. A war we have no prospect of ending responsibly, a continent turning away from its love for Alberta oil.
And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not. What is required is the same procedural and propaganda tricks which worked to defeat our opponents two times before. What is also required is a new policy, not just in our nation, but in our own lives, to spend, spend, spend like a Liberal, and in so doing to buy as many votes as sixty-four billion dollars can purchase before voters again go to the polls.
That is the reason I called the election in the fall of 2008. I did so in the belief that the time for a majority was slipping out of reach, that the time of the interests of the few would give way to the interests of the many before we could bring it about.
And so I broke my own law. I believed that we can only face the future if we control the vast numbers in Canada who do not believe as we do. Then and only then can we bring back a Canada where oil is king and the lights shine bright only west of Thunder Bay.
This is what I believed, but Mme. Jean, you have made this belief real. You proved once more that a man and his vision for this country can change it. And as I prepare for this session of parliament, I know that I will not be traveling alone. Guy Giorno, Patrick Muttart , Darrell Reid and Jasmine Igneski are with me. Kory Teneyckeare’s propaganda machine grinds merrily along even as I speak, and Don Cherry can be counted upon to pour out his heart each Saturday night on CBC.
Theirs are the voices I will carry with me every day in the PMO. Theirs are the strategies I will be thinking of when I deliver the changes you elected me to make.
When affordable health care fades from the memory of Canadians, I’ll think back to the massive deficit of this budget and how it gave me the justification to sell off health care to the private sector.
When we extend the Canadian Mission to Afghanistan for another five years to protect the Auto Pact, I’ll think of my visits to the troops for photo ops, and how they gave me the boost to win two successive minority governments.
These are the stories that will comfort me in the days ahead. They are different stories, told by men and women whose journeys may seem separate, yet you showed me time and again that no matter where we come from or what party we vote for, we are a common people of soaring hopes and fearful dreams and quiet greed, who ask only for what was promised us as Canadians: cheap fuel, good hockey, and a lottery win to let us retire.
I recognize that the coalition is an enormous challenge which must be solved quickly. If we can survive as a government for the next week, we should be fine.
But we should never forget that we are the heirs of that first band of patriots, Ronald Reagan, David Frumm, Mike Harris, George W. Bush, who refused to give up when liberalism seemed unstoppable, and who somehow believed that they could make the world just like it was, before Trudeau.
For the Common Sense Revolution did not end when Mike retired. It was never something to be won only on an electoral battleground or fulfilled only in our budget documents. It was not simply a struggle to break free from the evil Liberal empire and declare a Tory Canada. The Common Sense Revolution was — and remains – an ongoing struggle for the minds and hearts of the voters to live up to our founding creed of small government, lower taxes, and no same-sex marriages.
Let’s build this government that is responsible to its founders: Imperial Oil, Suncor Energy, Matco Investments, The Royal Bank of Canada, CTV, The National Post and the Canada West Foundation. Let’s all of us do our part to rebuild the status of Alberta Oil and the National Post as the foundation of this country.
Let’s all of us do our part to rebuild this country. Let’s make this deficit not the end of Tory frugality, but rather a brief interval in which we buy enough votes to ensure a majority in two years. Join me in this effort, and let’s seek a better world with a balanced budget and lower taxes in two years’ time. Thank you.
Public-Private Partnerships and the PMO
January 26, 2009
A few weeks ago Dr. Al Drummond of Perth drew attention to the problem local hospital staff had in finding a bed for a patient who was a suicide risk. The chronic shortage of acute care facilities for mental health patients impacts daily upon emergency room staff.
January 26, reporter Mohammed Adam of the Ottawa Citizen ran a front-page story “Audit on Royal Ottawa sought” in which he described the case of the private consortium-built Brampton Civic Hospital. “Conceived as a 716-bed hospital, (it) opened with 479 beds in October, 2007. Two months later public protests over medical deficiencies and shortages of beds and staff forced the Ontario government to appoint a supervisor to run the hospital.” Adam goes on to quote the Ontario auditor general’s report which showed that the hospital had an initial cost overrun of $194 million. Because of the higher interest rate charged by the consortium, over the life of the lease it will have cost taxpayers an additional $200 million more than if the project had been financed by government.
The justification for the audit call in the case of the Royal Ottawa, another P3 consortium contract, is that while in its two years of operation it has had “serious problems, including building quality and equipment failures,” its management has remained extremely secretive. “Hospitals are not bound by provincial freedom-of-information laws…and the Royal Ottawa has been particularly reluctant to disclose information on its project and the only way to get it is through the auditor general,” said a spokesperson for The Ontario Health Coalition in the article.
The P3 program is a legacy of the Harris government. Its dealings are conducted well away from the public eye, and the history of cost overruns puts one in mind of the carpetbaggers who plundered the American south after the Civil War. In Mike Harris’s home town, the North Bay hospital was budgeted at $551 million. It cost $1 billion. Sarnia’s figures were $140 million and $320 million. The Royal Ottawa’s budget was $100 million and the final figure was $146 million.
These figures remain numbers on a page until it is your relative or your patient who can’t find a hospital bed.
So what does this have to do with the return of parliament after the Christmas recess? I’m worried. The idea of Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty with $64 million in their pockets scares me even more than Mike Harris’s giddy cut-fast-cut-deep-don’t-flinch mantra which he and his staff (including Flaherty and Guy Giorno) chanted as they lay waste to the public sector of Ontario.
Political pressure for stimulus spending in this budget leaves Harper in the enviable position of having a huge sum of money with which to buy votes. With his hyper-partisan attitude, I can’t imagine him seeing beyond that initial thought.
Today’s Citizen shows two examples of the complexity of government spending: Harper has ordered 1,300 non-combat trucks for the military, a contract with the U.S. company Navistar worth $274 million. But the trucks will be built in Texas, and 500 workers at Navistar’s Chatham plant have received layoff notices, with another 200 expected in the spring (David Pugliese “Make sure defence projects create jobs here, Tories told”). So far Harper’s spending to upgrade Canadian military equipment has not generated the promised benefits for Canada’s defence and aero-space firms. Peter McKay wants to buy $3.1 billion worth of Italian search and rescue aircraft which will be built in the U.S.A. Alenia has made no real commitment to create Canadian jobs in return for the deal.
According to Pugliese, the worry is that the Harper government doesn’t take enough care to look after Canadian jobs in these deals.
Spending money calls for wisdom and integrity. Do you remember Pierre Trudeau taking $100,000 for harbour improvements away from Westport because of a fight with MP Tom Cossitt, and then bestowing the same money, unasked, upon Perth? Can you imagine John Baird doing better? Remember the mess he made of the light rail portfolio in Ottawa just to give pal Larry O’Brien a boost in the polls?
Through the hype of the budget this week, we should bear in mind who, apart from Stephen Harper, really calls the shots in Canada at this time. The PMO is run by Guy Giorno who was Mike Harris’s right hand man. The massive program cuts of the Harris era were his idea. His deputy Patrick Muttart, an ardent neo-conservative, tries to remain invisible, but has been implicated by Maclean’s magazine in the In and Out scandal. Darrel Reid campaigned against divorce, abortion and same-sex relationships as head of Focus on the Family Canada. Then he became chief of staff for Rona Ambrose on the way to his current position as deputy director of policy and research in Harper’s office. “Jasmine Igneski is an adviser on economic affairs, environment and energy security. Kory Teneycke, the director of communications, is advising on how to sell the budget – and its whopping fiscal shortfall – to the media and, through them, to Canadians” (Les Whittington, Toronto Star).
If the PMO manages to turn the stimulus money into votes – and it’s hard to imagine them doing anything else with it – I wonder how they will get the Canadian finances back out of the deficit? My guess is that, if this cabal is still in power, they will push Harper to sell the health care system to the highest bidder.
I think of this and then I think of Obama’s call last week for the interests of the few to give way to the interests of the many, and I want to weep.
On Democracy
January 18, 2009
In The Voyage to Lilliput Jonathan Swift portrayed a class of men whose fortunes depended upon their skill at balancing on a tightrope. Another group analyzed such performances and predicted who would fall and when. Swift’s light satire of the British Parliament takes an ugly turn, however, when Gulliver realizes that these beautiful miniature humans routinely use their laws to justify savage acts of aggression and greed, and there is no virtue in them.
I fear Swift’s words apply as well to democracy in the 21st Century as they did in the 18th. The signature moment of the last quarter of the 20th Century had to be the death of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first quarter of the 21st may well mark the death of democracy.
Let’s look at the last two years in Canada as an example. The Liberal leadership convention was manipulated by Gerard Kennedy, a clever rope-balancer who would not have appeared out of place in Gulliver’s Travels. In hopes of personal benefit he formed an alliance with Stephane Dion to leapfrog the two leading contenders. Delegates with an eye on little but victory went along with the plan, and almost by luck of the draw Stephane Dion ended up the deeply-flawed leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
This left the door open for Stephen Harper, a man of unsteady balance, to take power and keep it by a ruthless campaign of partisan attacks upon any and all opponents.
I am disgusted at the gleeful way that Harper and his minions pick over the bones of what was once the great institution of Parliament, but I recall what has happened to leaders in Canada who have attempted to act unselfishly. At his retirement Bill Davis extended full funding to Catholic schools. John Tory promoted equitable funding for the schools of all religious denominations. Voters rejected the plans resoundingly. An election campaign is no place for ideals.
Stephane Dion’s carbon tax was the right approach to lead Canada into a new century, but citizens voted their wallets, their prejudices, and the images created for them on television. All Harper had to do was claim loudly that the plan was “crazy” and “would screw everybody” – even when his own studies proved the opposite to be true – and voters gleefully torpedoed the Liberal Party.
Then we come to Count Ignatieff, a man who shows little interest in democracy, but seems willing to listen to Canadians. His reluctant philosopher-king persona harkens back to a time when wisdom, vision, and commitment to the greater good were what mattered in a leader, not fund-raising ability or the willingness to savage opponents. Perhaps it is appropriate that he took office by coronation. Democracy hasn’t exactly distinguished itself lately.
Then we look below the border to the Obama inauguration. I like Obama and I love his oratory. The doubt in the back of my mind has to do with the nature of his democratic mandate. Admittedly, the Republican Party was so bankrupt after eight years of George Bush that they had lost the will to govern. They selected the most liberal of all their candidates and then wondered why few Republicans supported him. They cheered when McCain brought in the Palin soap opera to energize the most conservative Republican voters. Neither of these tactical errors ensured the victory of Obama, but one blooper killed the McCain campaign: they failed to raise enough money.
Obama may come to be known as the Internet president. While McCain made the fatal error of admitting that he couldn’t use email, Obama’s political machine used social networking sites to raise millions of small contributions from individuals. It is here that his “democratic” mandate lies. The flow of cash left no doubt that many, many people bought into Obama’s vision of a better world.
These funds enabled his campaign to blanket the culture with advertising, even to the point of buying space for billboards in video games. The U.S. Presidential Election was won not on the debating podium, but in the battle of the budgets. Obama had four times the money to spend that McCain had. That’s democratic in some sense, but I still have my doubts.
So what’s wrong with selecting leaders by vote? It should work fine in a village to hire a dog catcher. It might conceivably work to elect a president in the U.S. system. But Canada is a vast mosaic of cultural, regional, and economic groups. To cram all of their needs and aspirations into a single ballot is to enable the tyranny of the winner over the vast majority.
All it took to form the government of Canada the last time was 37.6% of the vote, with a turnout of 59.1%. But Stephen Harper took the choices of the 22% of Canadian citizens who voted for his party as a personal mandate to bludgeon the 78% who did not support him. Thus in his first economic statement Jim Flaherty went after the opposition parties, public servants and women, and Harper showed his spite after a failed courtship with bridge-blowing tactics designed to cut Quebec off from the rest of Canada.
So now comes the new budget. That pall over Ottawa these days is the smell of Stephen Harper’s Hush Puppies smouldering as Iggie holds the PM’s feet to the Parliamentary furnace. This undignified Anglo Saxon method of encouraging a man to keep his word might very well work. Be ready for plenty of squeals from Harper and his minions this week, though.
Elevation
December 11, 2008
It’s official: they’ve discovered a new emotion. Psychologists are now theorizing that Obama’s electoral victory was the direct result of his high-flown oratory, creating the feeling in listeners that they want to be better people and causing them to forget the cynicism of the past.
O.K., Michael Ignatieff, the time is ripe. You’re probably the best orator in Canadian politics in the last decade, so go for it. End our feelings of cynicism and uplift us.
The Allegory of Sarah the Squirrel
September 11, 2008
She burst into our consciousness a week ago when she chased my wife out of the garage. This splendid, feisty gray squirrel announced that she had taken over our garage, and that was it. The cottage roof slopes down close to the heads of passers-by, and there Sarah would perch, just out of reach, chattering her personal brand of trash talk at anyone who came near.
My wife was flat-out afraid of her. The first time Sarah chattered in her ear I heard this high-pitched “ERK!” from Bet and the sound of scurrying feet. Bet’s, not the squirrel’s.
Janice, our neighbour, chimed in. “You guys must have really done something to make a squirrel that mad at you!”
As long as one was in a safe place, Sarah was a lot of fun to watch. She’d patrol the ridgepole of the garage, scolding merrily, then either duck down into the hedge at the front or launch herself in a grand leap to a branch of the ash tree nearby. Then away she’d go, only to reappear from somewhere else a couple of minutes later.
My wife declared war, so I brought a box trap from the farm, along with a half-dozen fresh walnuts for bait. Five minutes later I heard a “snap” in the garage, so I opened up to find no squirrel, just five remaining walnuts and a sprung Have-a-Hart. As I was coming out of the garage after resetting it, Sarah lit into me with the worst tongue-lashing I have ever received. She seemed almost to be gloating about how easy it had been to fool me as she crouched there on the edge of the roof, just out of arm’s reach, daring me to just try it, Buster.
In defeat, but rather admiring my opponent, I retreated to the house for the evening.
In the morning I checked the trap. Three walnuts remained and the trap was sprung again. Sarah heard me and soon leaped from the hedge to her pulpit on the roof and started in anew. Gritting my teeth, I reset the thing and placed a plastic gas can at one end to complicate things.
Nothing happened for the rest of the day, but every time I stuck my head in through the side door of the garage I’d see Sarah ducking out through the slight gap between the overhead door and the concrete. I think she was trying to figure out how the gas can was part of the trap.
This morning when I checked, the gas can had been shoved aside, the nuts were all gone, and a disgusted Sarah was in the trap. I guess she had moved the can and carefully hauled the walnuts away, but then couldn’t stand thinking there might be another she had missed, so she went back and looked under that funny trapdoor in the middle.
Last week Roz had brought me a book entitled Outwitting Squirrels, by Bill Adler Jr. He suggests treating squirrels like chickens. “There’s no chicken recipe which won’t work for squirrel.” Yeah, but… This is a really pretty squirrel, and she’s as funny as all get out, as long as she doesn’t get into a position where she can do real damage. I put a blanket over the cage and loaded her into the back of my truck for a trip to the farm. I know you’re not supposed to do that, but I kinda liked her, okay?
When I removed the blanket in the woodlot and opened the cage door, Sarah went out of there and up a maple tree in one continuous motion. She hid behind the tree for a few seconds, but then, true to form, she popped around and scolded me again.
But the vast canopy beckoned, and the last I saw of Sarah she was doing a Tarzan across the tops of the maples, striking a beeline for the grove of walnuts I thought I’d avoid by taking her to the northwestern corner of the woodlot. Yeah, right. I’ll keep an eye out for her when I’m hunting: “Don’t shoot the one that comes down the tree and yells at you.” You’ve gotta admire her spirit, but I’m glad she’s no longer in control of our garage.
UPDATE Sept 13: And now she’s brought her family into this. One of her half-grown kits (?) has just joined Sarah in the woodlot by way of the Have-A-Hart. Her name is Bristol. I must be nuts!
the Walnut Diary 