Welcome to New Hades

2002-10-23T16:33:00.000-04:00

Bad Language Warning

Another exercise in the politics of screeching was launched by Svend Robinson just this past hour. Stephen Harper made some comments about "mug shots in post offices" in the HoC, apparently a reference to the cover of the National Post today. The NDP champion of self-promotion promptly stood up to express his horrified outrage and Harper dismissed his objections by saying that he "... was sure that Robinson's photo appeared in better places than just post offices."

Right on cue, Robinson fairly races out into the lobby to call Harper "a homophobe and a scumbag." The media, of course, ignores every single fucking thing of substance that happened today and latches onto Robinson's moral indignation and you can rest assured that you'll hear nothing else in the news for the next few days.

Why in the fuck we have to pander to these juvenile assholes day in and day out is, quite frankly, bewildering to me. Robinson injects himself into a series of statements that have sweet dick-all to do with him and when Harper dismisses him as the useless asshole that he is Robinson starts screeching "HOMOPHOBE!!!" like he believes there is no other possible basis on which to dismiss him.

Newsflash for Svend Robinson; You are a pointless but noisy waste of time and that has everything to do with your character and nothing to do with your sex life. Take your false outrage and your consistently wounded sensibilities and open a one man show on Broadway where that kind of narcissism is appreciated.

Newsflash for Stephen Harper; Stephen, you can not say one word to, about, around or within earshot of Svend Robinson that will not be immediate fodder for a media more in love with their own agenda than with the truth. You are the bad guy and you will never be anything else. Don't expect one ounce of integrity or fairness from the media cause it's not forthcoming. Give Svend Robinson exactly as much attention as he deserves which is 4/5ths of fuck-all.

Goddamit, I am pissed off.

2002-10-08T22:54:00.000-04:00

Fresh Hell

Fresh Hell is a fridge magnet that's smaller than a matchbox! It flies like a rocket and keeps your breath fresh for up to twenty-four hours.

A fun and weird website via Flit

Here are some more;

Jean Chretien is a credit card that swears!
Howard Wilson is a first-aid kit! It is made from recycled cardboard!
Kyoto Protocol is a samurai sword that's also available in white! It is perfectly safe to use.

2002-10-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

Honest Howie is Heading East

Howard Wilson is taking his farewell tour to PEI "later" this week.

The federal ethics counsellor will travel to Prince Edward Island later this week to investigate Solicitor-General Lawrence MacAulay's awarding of an untendered contract to a political ally's accounting firm.

Howard Wilson said yesterday he needs to meet directly with those involved in the $140,000 contract to determine whether rules were broken. He and three other government officials conducted interviews in Ottawa on Friday and yesterday but won't finish their work until at least the end of this week, he said in an interview, adding, "It's our highest priority."

Please send in your predictions for the verdict and the timing. Since I get to go first (blogger's prerogative) I'll pick Friday, Oct 11 at 4:45 EST. The verdict? Innocent. It's probably silly to even include it as a category but we'll treat it like a wildcard. Old Howie might get unnaturally bold, what with his impending retirement and his hurt feelings over diplomatic goodies that have passed him by.

2002-10-08T17:05:00.000-04:00

If you get a chance, tune in CPAC tonight to catch the repeat of Question Period and catch John Manley's act. This guy is such a piece of slugbait. I'll be sure to link to Hansard tomorrow but the printed word does not really do this thing justice. Towards the end of QP some opposition backbencher (I did not catch his name) gets up and asks a fairly impassioned question about the changes to the disability provisions of the Income Tax act. This fellow's daughter is apparently in a wheelchair and the guy wants to know about the rationale for the changes and he makes the point that business lunches are 50% deductible whereas wheelchairs are only 20% deductible.

Manley gets up and comes on all offended and replies with wounded dignity that he doesn't see the need 'to get personal about it.' It's such an incredible display of arrogance and petty spitefulness that it could almost turn your stomach. Manley gives all the appearance of a social retard who suddenly finds himself in the spotlight and, believing himself deserving of that spotlight, promptly reaffirms the wisdom of his high school tormentors. I remember questioning Manley's ability to resist the moral rot at the head of this government and boy, oh boy, I wish I'd put some money on the question. He's right up there with the crème de la scum now.

2002-10-05T16:36:00.000-04:00

Kyoto Sucks but This Sucks Harder

There's nothing I hate more than a boneheaded move by the home team.

An Alberta medical officer of health says he has been fired because of his public support of the Kyoto Protocol, a dismissal he and the province's Liberals condemn as political meddling.

David Swann, a public-health officer in southeastern Alberta, was fired on Wednesday by the board of directors of the Palliser Health Region.

A stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do. Censorship is wrong in principle but it also makes a really bad impression in practice. Don't silence your opposition, refute them. You wouldn't think that such a basic tenet would need to be repeated so often. All the Board has done is discredited themselves and created a Kyoto/free speech martyr. That's a lose/lose/lose/lose/lose outcome. Reinstate the guy, apologize for being boneheads, and then make your case if you can.

2002-10-05T16:10:00.000-04:00

I've been scrambling to keep up with the news let alone comment on it... In order to overcome that 'who goes first' logjam - that's the one where four or five people do stutter steps and false starts at the elevator door for 20 seconds and then jamb the door simultaneously - I'm just going to start posting about the first thing that occurs to me and hope to catch up the rest later...

I got an email from Rick Glasel about the Kyoto Protocol. Rick is, if such a thing is possible, even more adamantly opposed to the thing than Ralph Klein.

I think Rex Murphy's 9/28 column in the Globe should be read by and to every Canadian. He is bang on, the Kyoto debate has absolutely nothing to do with science.

Here's the facts as I see them:

1. There is indeed some evidence, but no conclusive proof, that the planet, or at least a good portion of it, has experienced a general, but not continuous, trend towards statistically significant, but not dramatically so, higher average temperatures since the Seventies. There definitely isn't enough evidence to support any trend going back more than 30 years. It is not possible today, and it certainly wasn't possible thirty years ago, to calculate the total heat energy on earth with less than a 1% margin of error. A 3 degree Celsius temperature change is about a 1% change in degrees Kelvin. Those who beat the drum for Kyoto claim a warming trend of 0.2 to 0.3 degrees per decade. Temperatures close to the earth's surface appear to be affected by ocean temperatures, temperatures in the troposphere, microscopic dust particles in the atmosphere at all kinds of altitudes, and a number of other factors that we simply cannot measure all over the world all of the time. Even if we could measure them, we don't know enough to accurately predict their effect on weather. Climate is just weather viewed at a macro level. When was the last time Environment Canada consistently forecasted weather with 99% or better accuracy? Climate change that can cause the extinction of numerous species (never mind killing 16,000 clothed Canadians a year), or raise ocean levels enough to make New York or Tokyo unhabitable, probably has to
occur over hundreds or even thousands of years, although we don't even know that for sure. I'm pretty sure that less dramatic repercussions from global warming can be adapted to by humans and other living creatures.

2. Natural events have a bigger impact on climate than the rate of change in carbon dioxide emissions from industries in the northern hemisphere, which is all that the Kyoto Accord is concerned with. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, fine particles of volcanic ash stayed in the atmosphere for years, and there were claims that the eruption temporarily cooled the earth by as much as 1.0 degree Celsius. Surely the deforestation in Northern Africa and encroachment of the Sahara Desert (which may have begun two thousand years ago, or more), and the cutting down of forests in Europe and Asia over the last thousand years would have
led to climate change on a scale equal to what has been claimed for the last 30 years, and in fact the northern hemisphere experienced climatic cooling from about 1400 AD to about 1900 AD that was far more dramatic than the current perceived warming. But no one is blaming our ancestors for almost starting another ice age. As much as human beings would like to believe that they can alter the planet on a grand scale, human engineering is no match for natural forces. Does anyone believe we can eliminate
tornados or hurricanes by slowing down the rate of increase in greenhouse gases? How are we then going to alter the overall temperature of the globe? After all, Kyoto is based on the idea that if we reduce current and future emissions, then the overall percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere will eventually (in 50 years from now, or longer) stabilize. Even if we could somehow make CO2 levels stabilize, how can we make sure that the world doesn't get warmer for some other reason? It takes a special kind of
hubris to believe that global warming on a catastrophic scale is only happening because we make electricity by burning hydrocarbons instead of using hydro dams or because Canadians like to keep their homes warm in January. It also takes a lot of chutzpah to believe that a gaggle of politicians can put an end to climate change, when Mother Nature has been making climates change since the beginning of time.

3. You can only consciously control an enormously complex system through minute tinkering with only one variable if and only if you have a complete understanding of every aspect of the system. Even then, your perfect knowledge might only result in the realization that no matter how much you change that one variable, the system is going to produce different results than you wanted, anyway. That is why Kyoto will never produce the desired result. You don't have to argue that global warming isn't occurring, and you don't have to argue that increased CO2 levels haven't caused global warming, and you don't have to argue that life as we know it won't end
because global temperatures increase 3 degrees in fifty years, to know beyond a doubt that the Kyoto Accord is wrong. And you have to know beyond a doubt that implementing the Kyoto Accord has an economic cost, because if there were perceptible economic benefits to implementing it, the accord wouldn't have to be legislated into existence. Anyone who believes in the Kyoto Accord believes that they know how to run our lives better than we do ourselves. Legislating Kyoto isn't the end of life in the free world; the
world will find a way to ignore it, or make the global economy work in spite of the Kyoto Accord; but why go through all that grief if we don't have to?

Sorry about the long essay, Lawrence, but I get so choked up about this, I can't stand it. What I have put down here is available to anyone with high school physics, an Encyclopaedia Britannica, daily delivery of a newspaper, and a willingness to think it through. I feel better already.

No need to apologize, Rick, I quite enjoyed it. Besides it gives me the opportunity to point out a view good news links that I've seen recently; like this one about new polls in Alberta that show 72% of Albertans opposed to Kyoto, and this one about the apparent dissension within the Liberal government on meaningful Kyoto numbers. Chretien attempted to present Kyoto as a fait accompli but public opinion is swinging against it and the Liberal caucus is showing some signs of independence. I'd never call myself an optimist but I don't think that Kyoto is a done deal just yet.

P.S.

2002-10-01T19:31:00.000-04:00

Mark Wickens has been all up and down that "16,000 deaths" figure as presented by the Toronto Star. He even managed to get a correction notice out of the Star - good for Mark and good for all of us. I'm so cheered up by his success that I've decided to go ahead and post a bit of number-crunching I did the other day when this figure was first tossed out.

According to the OMA, "about 1900 deaths" occurred in Ontario in 2001 as a result of air pollution (let's ignore the fact that air pollution and greenhouse gases are different animals for the moment). So if 1,900 deaths occurred in Ontario, the industrial heartland of Canada, where did the other 14,100 deaths occur? Ontario accounts for only 12% of the alleged pollution deaths even though Ontario has 38% of the population of the entire country and the overwhelming majority of that population lives in the very belly of the smog-belching beast - industrial southern Ontario. I guess they must be dropping like flies in Vancouver and Montreal because Toronto, Hamilton, Sudbury and Oshawa are apparently safe-havens as far as environmentally-induced mortality is concerned. The OMA states that 88% of the deaths (14,100 deaths annually) are occurring outside of Ontario among 62% of the population. Your odds of biting it from smog in Ontario in any given year are .000016 but your odds outside of Ontario leap up to .000073. According to the OMA's figures, you are 4.5 times more likely to be killed by the environment in Brandon, Manitoba than by the environment in Windsor, Ontario.

Of course, I'm being a smartass. It's only folks like David Suzuki and the Toronto Star who present statements like that last one as if they expected you to believe it.

2002-09-30T12:04:00.000-04:00

I've been really disappointed with the media's non-reaction to the story about electoral commissions and the Speaker of the House that I was ranting about last week. I guess that it is judged to be too esoteric or too procedural to interest the average reader. Thank heavens for the Hill Times. They have printed an editorial this week that, while it isn't as hysterical as I'd make it, is at least addressing the issue.

We encourage MPs to continue to publicly discuss their concerns about the process because this is, as Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley said, "one of the pillars of our Parliamentary democracies," and these commissions are supposed to be independent bodies.

But MPs should not be personally interfering in picking members of the commissions. The commissions are supposed to be independent. Mr. Kingsley told the conference for chairs, members, secretaries of federal electoral Boundaries Commissions in 2002 in Ottawa that: "In 1964, Parliament decided to make independent commissions, one for each province, responsible for readjusting electoral boundaries. Your independence as a commission is a fundamental element of the readjustment process. It is one other element that sets Canada apart as a world leader in electoral democracy.

"Moreover, the fact that the act prohibits any Senator, any Member of Parliament or any member of a territorial or provincial legislative assembly or council from being part of a commission illustrates this firm intention to shield the process from undue political interference."

Some opposition MPs are alleging the opposite is happening. If the process is flawed, MPs from all parties should band together and make their arguments clear and strong. Otherwise, it looks like they're just fighting to protect their own political fiefdoms.

The point is well made. The only people who seem to be making any noise on this thing are those who are apparently getting the short end of the stick. I'd like to see the principle of independance defended on a purely abstract basis but, if we can't have that, then self-interest is better than no interest.

2002-09-30T11:25:00.000-04:00

Is there a connection between the cancelled Sea King helicoptors of 1993 and the used submarines that we got shafted on? Scott Taylor says yes...

Taylor said he believes Canada was pressured into buying the four Victoria-class submarines after it cancelled its 1993 contract with Britain for high-tech military helicopters to replace its aging Sea Kings.

The helicopters became an election issue in Canada in 1993, as the then-opposition Liberals criticized the proposed new choppers’ hefty price tags. After he was elected prime minister, Jean Chretien scrapped the deal. Taylor said sources told him immediately afterwards that Canada would be buying the submarines as an unofficial compensation for breaking the deal.

Canada was on the hook for $500 million after it cancelled the helicopter deal.

“It was never the choice of the Canadian navy to buy these (subs),” he said. He said there were other, better options, such as vessels being offered by Australia, but the political pressure swayed the decision.

I'd love to see some confirmation of this. If it's true then there is a much larger price tag than we first thought to that cynical and indefensible cancellation of 1993.

2002-09-28T09:37:00.000-04:00

This letter is printed in the National Post today. What is wrong with this country that we let this shit happen?

Just over two months ago, my brother, Captain Colin Sonoski, and Captain Julie-Anne McKenzie, were killed in Newfoundland after the military helicopter they were piloting crashed in the wilderness. Two others on-board were also seriously hurt.

Why did it crash? Because the tail rotor literally fell off the helicopter, in-flight, while they were out on a search and rescue mission trying to save the lives of other Canadians.

2002-09-28T09:26:00.000-04:00

Colby Cosh continues to surprise... Now he's actually come out and declared himself "a worse-than-average" driver. What the fu...? Nobody is a worse than average driver. Well. Maybe some girls and really old guys with hats. But for an average adult male to claim 'worse than average' as a driver is an affront to the natural order of things. Colby, don't blame yourself. Blame other drivers, blame stray animals darting into the street, blame the vehicle or the road conditions or the sun in your eyes, blame a freak reflection off of a tin roof, but don't ever, ever, blame your own driving skills. It upsets the entire balance of the automotive world. Take it back, Colby, say you were drunk or high or engaged in automotive sex but never, never say "mea culpa" or "my bad" - there's just too much at stake.

2002-09-28T08:31:00.000-04:00

Dalton McGuinty is the leader of the Liberal opposition in Ontario and, if you believe the polls, destined to become the next Premier. What I don't understand is why anyone takes this doofus seriously. Dalton has just announced his plan to turn schools into prisons for all children between the ages of 16 & 18.

Under an Ontario Liberal government, students would be forced to remain in school or a training program until the age of 18 and their parents would face cash fines if they drop out, Dalton McGuinty, the party leader, said yesterday.

Mr. McGuinty, who polls suggest could succeed Ernie Eves as premier of Ontario after an election expected next year, announced a $1.6-billion education and subsidized childcare program to be funded by cancelling $2.2-billion in corporate tax cuts planned by the Conservative government and scrapping private-school tax credits.

Along with raising the legal school-leaving age from 16, which is the standard across Canada, Mr. McGuinty said he would guarantee that 75% of students in Grades 3, 6 and 9 will pass province-wide reading, writing and mathematics tests within a Liberal government's first four years in office.

It's so typical of these morons, set yourself a goal that is admittedly worthwhile (who could argue with more and better education for our children?) and then work out the most intrusive, authoritarian, counter-productive measures you can imagine to create a whack of new problems and make the goal secondary to the implementation strategy. It's not just the stupidity of the idea that amazes me, it's the fact that this strategy was presumably conceived and discussed and debated and fine-tuned by a raft of (presumably) well-meaning political thinkers and it still saw the light of day.

Bulletin to Dalton McGuinty: There are some problems, some mundane human failings, that you simply can not legislate out of existence. You can punish those failings, if that's your inclination, but punishment will simply add resentment and bitterness to the existing problem. That's not win/win... that's lose/lose. The failing student becomes a captive and the willing student suddenly has to share his school with a group of disruptive, unco-operative prisoners who actually have the legitimate beef they've been looking for all along.

This idea sucks from top to bottom.

2002-09-28T08:08:00.000-04:00

Real science doesn't do polls.

Rex Murphy comes through again. This time he's questioning the same 16,000 deaths figures I did a couple days ago. If only I could write like him...

A lot of scientists agreeing on something is not the same thing as a scientific consensus. Any sentence that begins "A majority of the world's scientists agree . . ." is not reporting a scientific finding; it's announcing a preference. It's a poll. Real science doesn't do polls. E = MC2 wasn't arrived at by a show of hands; the equations that spell out the workings of the universe were not put to a vote.

When we hear of a consensus on global warming we are being told -- covertly, but told nonetheless -- that it isn't a scientific fact. And when we're told that it "contributes" to the death of 16,000 Canadians, even when we're being told by David Suzuki, we're being hectored, as opposed to informed.

2002-09-26T22:50:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting item from CTV news. It concerns the fact that the PMO is hiding information from the Liberal caucus as well as the general public. It's a sad commentary that we can only be surprised at the former deception and accept the latter as the normal course of business. Anyway, there are a couple of secondary points that I wanted to make and this article seems as good a jumping off point as any.

1) David Suzuki is quoted - "I want to remind you that before the civil war in the U.S., the southern states said, 'We can't afford to abolish slavery. It'll ruin our economy.' Some things have to be done just because they're right,"

Surely that's the most inappropriate analogy under the sun, right?
You wish. Here's Environment Minister David Anderson on the same topic: "If Winston Churchill had said in 1939 that we are not going to challenge the Nazis until we know exactly how much it will cost and how long the war will last, then we would never have won the war," Gee David, I hadn't thought of it that way.

The other thing that's contained in the article is mention of the medical community jumping on the Kyoto Bandwagon.

Meanwhile, more than 2,000 doctors say the economic debate over Kyoto is overshadowing the public health benefits that would result from meeting the accord's targets.

Canadian scientist David Suzuki joined doctors supporting Kyoto, along with 50 medical and health associations from across the country, in signing a statement in support of ratifying the protocol.

Although the treaty focuses on greenhouse emissions, it also calls for the reduction in other smog-causing pollutants, which the doctors blame for an estimated 16,000 premature deaths annually.

Let's fact check these statements;

David Suzuki did not 'join' these civic minded physicians, he recruited them and formulated their statement for them. Are you curious how the doctors arrived at the 16,000 premature deaths figure? The government told them... According to the government of Canada, up to 16,000 Canadians die prematurely each year from air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.

Nifty trick eh? The government feeds them some complete horseshit statement and the doctors parrot it back to the media and the horseshit statement becomes an accepted factoid untainted by association with the government. How long before Chretien or one of his senior flunkies is repeating that '16,000 stiffs' garbage as independent corroboration of the wisdom of their views? I'd guess about 48-72 hours myself.

2002-09-26T19:33:00.000-04:00

2002-09-24T11:50:00.000-04:00

This is something I posted on Bourques Discussion Board today...

Arrogance in the large things is easy to identify but it's in the smallest things that you see the nature of arrogance most plainly revealed. Jets from Bombardier and suspect loans from the BDC garner all the attention but they also get spun (and spun hard) so that doubts creep in - "perhaps we're being too cynical," is the thought that is planted in the public mind. "Let's look at both sides, let's be fair." It's not even close to a public endorsement but spin is not intended to change minds, it's only meant to deflect attention, give the people a better interpretation which they can embrace reluctantly as they turn back to the hockey game. The sheer effort that the PMO puts into damage control is seen as the consolation prize, a recognition of the error of their ways. We'd like to see an apology or an admission but, in the absence of those admissions, we point to policy changes as 'tacit admission' and we take some cold comfort in that tacit - but illusory -admission of guilt.

I say 'illusory' because I think it is down in the day-to-day workings and machinations of the gov't that the true nature of a government is revealed. By that measure, the Liberal government is absolutely rotten with arrogance and corruption.

An article in the Hill Times yesterday says that Peter Milliken, the Speaker of the House of Commons, told MP Dick Proctor that '...members of the Electoral Commission are appointed on the advice of Regional Ministers of the government.'

http://www.thehilltimes.ca/2002/september/23/rana/

Every ten years, after the census, the electoral boundaries in Canada are redrawn to reflect changes in population levels and distribution. The purpose is to ensure that representation is balanced (more or less - within existing constitutional constraints) across the country. The job of drawing the lines on the map - setting the geography into ridings - is done by the electoral commissions. Each province has an electoral commission made up of a Chairman (appointed by the chief justice of the province) and two other members appointed by the Speaker of the House. These boards will accept submissions from interested parties, including effected MPs, but their final decisions are binding. It doesn't take much imagination to see what trouble these commissions could get up to if they weren't strictly non-partisan. They could, for instance, rejig boundaries so that a popular local incumbent is suddenly running in a new riding that excludes 90% of his previous constituents. They could redraw the boundaries between ridings so that a Liberal stronghold could lend some strength to a riding that seems a little shaky. Frankly, the opportunities for mischief are endless. Recognizing that fact, the commissions were designed to be independent, non-partisan and beholden to no party.

The Speaker of the House is a symbolic position. Recall the uproar when Keith Martin of the CA picked up the mace, the symbolic representation of the Speaker's authority. In Milliken's own words he is "...the personification of authority and impartiality..." in the House of Commons. One of his duties, a duty arising directly from his sworn impartiality and a task that demands the highest standard of integrity, is naming members to the Electoral Commissions of each province.

Regional Ministers of the government, on the other hand, are about nothing _but_ partisanship. They serve the interests of their parties first and last and at all points in between. Alfonso Gagliano was the Regional Minister for Quebec. Regional Ministers are about patronage and political favours and photo ops and detail work all designed to strengthen their party in their own territory. They may be fine human beings, family men or women, humanitarians, vegetarians, Rotarians or Shriners, but their job is to promote the interests of their party and the good ones do it very well.

So when Peter Milliken says that he's appointing electoral commissioners on the advice of regional ministers we've got a serious problem. First of all, the Commissions (all ten of them) are seriously compromised. If these commissions are being appointed by the Liberal party (and Milliken has stated that they are, if Dick Proctor is to be believed...) then their impartiality is completely destroyed. Whether or not any particular member was appointed by a Liberal Minister is irrelevant, all have been tainted with the suggestion of partisanship and all of their decisions will necessarily be suspect. Would an MP or a losing candidate be able to launch an appeal or a lawsuit against a commission decision?

The practical problem is one thing (and a very serious thing IMO) but it's the attitude underlying the problem that really speaks volumes. When the Speaker of the House just casually hands off his authority like it was some trinket - some small but handy device like a lighter or a penknife - and then offers a straightforward, unapologetic statement about the difference between theory and practice, then we have to wonder how deep the rot has penetrated. It reveals such a casual contempt for the trappings and methods of a working democracy. Everyone displays a certain level of cynicism about the spread between the theory and the practice of democratic institutions between when the Speaker himself displays such deep, unthinking cynicism about the system then we really are courting serious trouble.

Milliken refuses to confirm or deny Proctor's quotation of his statement. I phoned his spokeswoman today and she said that Milliken has made no public statement about this matter and "he will not be making any statement about it."
She agreed that Proctor's statements have cast serious doubt on Milliken's impartiality but, all the same, no statement will be forthcoming. She did assure me that Milliken made the appointments himself, for what that's worth. It's not worth a damn thing to me, but I thought I'd share it in the same spirit of generosity that Milliken displays.

"Here's some little thing that I've picked up somewhere, it's of no value to me but perhaps you can make some use of it."

2002-09-24T09:48:00.000-04:00

Jean Chretien is getting more press in the American media (detractors will claim that FrontPage Magazine is hardly the mainstream media - point granted). The article outlines the standard objections to Chretien's 9/11 statement which we will ignore since they have been thrashed out here -ad nauseum- for the past week. It's the conclusion drawn that interests me...

There is also more to Chrétien's latest shameful blatherings than meets the eye. While they appear to be the usual left-liberal, anti-Bush/Republican claptrap, his statements conceal a deeper purpose.

The Canadian Prime Minister announced a short time ago he will not run in the next election, scheduled to take place sixteen months from now. After serving three terms in office, Chrétien wanted a fourth, but was forced to bow out to a Liberal party rival. But an ego-driven Prime Minister like Chrétien, who has been at the public trough almost thirty years [almost 40 -ed.] didn't voluntarily leave one office without having his sights set on a bigger prize — the secretary-generalship of the United Nations. And he has been campaigning hard for the job.

Just this week, he appeared at a session of the UN general assembly where he called for a large aid program for Africa in an obvious solicitation of votes from that part of the world. Returning to his theme of September 11 remarks, he also indicated the West should give money to poor countries to ensure its safety from future attacks.

This must have been music to every Third World dictator's ears. Give us money and we won't attack you. If you don't, then it is your fault if we do. Chrétien definitely gets their votes now.

And the beauty of Chrétien's position is that he doesn't have to worry about Canadian public opinion any more, let alone the feelings of the families of Canadian victims of the 9/11 tragedy, since he isn't running for office in Canada again. So, in his campaign for the top UN job, he can safely ignore polls such as the one which showed the majority of Canadians strongly disagreed with his September 11 comments. Even more importantly, the Liberal leader gets to use the prestige and the resources of the Prime Minister's office to go after Kofi Annan's job.

So if you think Chrétien's September 11 comments were offensive, hold on to your hats. His worst is yet to come.

An interesting theory, I'm a bit skeptical myself but it bears some thought.

2002-09-23T14:45:00.000-04:00

In-freaking-credible!!!

The Hill Times headline reads "Opposition MPs cry foul over electoral boundaries."
Yeah, yeah, what else is new? Opposition MP's cry foul over scattered showers and broken shoelaces, tell me something I don't know. How about this, then; Liberal Partisans redrawing electoral boundaries to benefit of Liberal party.

Opposition MPs are now publicly questioning how some new electoral boundaries benefit incumbent Liberals while eliminating ridings currently held by the opposition parties.

NDP MP Yvon Godin (Acadie-Bathurst, N.B.) told The Hill Times that he still wonders why only Liberal MPs and Cabinet ministers had known that they can pass on or recommend the names of individuals to head up the commissions in each province to the House Speaker while opposition MPs seemed to be left in the dark about this right

My first reaction to this kind of news is frustration with the piss-poor quality of the opposition in this country. This sounds like the whining of a lazy student complaining about his poor marks. "Nobody told me we could re-write the test, Nobody told me we could get extra help, Nobody told me to get off my ass and do the research. It's just not fair."

There is a lot of this kind of complaining in the article but, further down, we get a fuller appreciation of what's going on...

NDP MP Dick Proctor (Pallister, Sask.), however, said in an interview with The Hill Times that in Saskatchewan, two of the names were submitted from the University of Regina to the Speaker's Office, but when the university didn't hear from the House Speaker's Office asked Mr. Proctor to look into it. Mr. Proctor said when he approached Speaker Milliken to find out what happened with the names, Mr. Milliken told him that theoretically the Speaker of the House makes the appointments of the three-member boundary commissions while in actual practice regional federal Cabinet ministers put forward the names and he confirms those names.

"The Speaker told me when I went to him to ask what happened to the names of professors whose names were submitted to his office for the [federal electoral boundaries] commission and he told me theoretically, I make the appointments but actually regional ministers make the recommendations and he confirms those names," said Mr. Proctor.

Milliken's office refuses to comment. Which we can safely conclude is an admission that Proctor is reporting the conversation accurately... Dick Proctor is the guy who busted Andy Scott for bragging about the fact that the fix was in on the APEC inquiry, a former journalist and a man you can't easily smear.

According to Milliken's own website the Speaker of the House is "the personification of authority and impartiality."

In order to ensure complete impartiality, the Speaker usually renounces all connections with any parliamentary party. The Speaker does not attend any party caucus nor take part in any outside partisan political activity. When an MP is elected Speaker, essentially he or she no longer belongs to any party. It is no longer their function to support the government, or any of the opposition parties. The Speaker’s allegiance is solely to the House of Commons and to the 300 other members of Parliament who are there.

This from the man who voluntarily passes over his authority and impartiality to "regional ministers" of the Liberal Party of Canada. If you're unsure what a 'regional minister' is, recall that Alfonso Gagliano was the 'regional minister for Quebec.' A regional minister is in charge of doling out favours and calling in favours - a regional minister is a fixer, a hack, his job is to preserve or promote the strength of his party in his region using all the tools and powers of the government. It's an unpleasant (but some say, necessary) part of party politics, but this shit is something else again. Petty crimes are expected from petty criminals but not from the very symbols of democratic authority. Milliken was given an additional measure of authority and power for the promise of a higher standard of integrity and he handed that power over to some backroom fixers like it was some bauble he picked up and slipped in his pocket like some habitual shoplifter. Here's a little trinket, use it if you like, I've no real need for it.

I think the opposition needs to introduce a motion to strip the Speaker of his position for blatantly abandoning even the pretence of impartiality. This is outrageous. I don't know how else to express it.

2002-09-23T12:16:00.000-04:00

Perhaps the least surprising news you'll read this week...

Officials close to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien intervened with civil servants in January, seeking information to justify the purchase of two new state-of-the-art Challenger 604 corporate jets, according to internal National Defence documents obtained by the Montreal Gazette.

However, documents made public under the federal Access to Information Act show top military brass felt the existing Challenger fleet was in good shape and hoped the briefing notes they were asked to prepare would dissuade the government from buying the new aircraft.

UNSURPRISING UPDATE:

The federal government's apparently rushed decision to spend $100-million in March on corporate jets for the Prime Minister and other ministers was, in fact, the culmination of a seven-month campaign by a Bombardier lobbyist, government documents reveal.

INEVITABLE ADDITIONAL UNSURPRISING UPDATE:

Opposition parties unanimously called yesterday for Auditor General Sheila Fraser to investigate the government's purchase of two of Bombardier's new state-of-the-art Challenger 604 jets for VIP travel, saying it's clear Prime Minister Jean Chrétien misled Parliament.

They also called upon Ms. Fraser to examine whether close links between Mr. Chrétien's Liberal party and Bombardier played any role in the purchase.

If Steven Harper opens Question Period with this issue then I'm ready to give up... It's not that I don't care about another $100,000,000 transferred from the public purse to Bombardier under the very thinnest veneer of sleaze. It's just the fact that we're setting off on another round of the mulberry bush and absolutely nothing will come of it. A lot of bluster and outrage and moral indignation (I know, I know, look who's talking) without a chance in a million of changing anything. It's so dreary and predictable and pointless.

2002-09-23T12:02:00.000-04:00

Ottawa-centric comment, Please Ignore

Lowell Green at CFRA makes me laugh... for a lot of reasons.

The thing that makes me laugh today is another of Lowell's impromptu "polls" in which people are invited to phone him up and express a 'yes or no' opinion on this or that burning issue. It's not the issue that makes me laugh though, it's Lowell's frequent exhortations to get people to call... "Call right away, we'll get you on and we'll get you off."

Is it just me or does it sound like Lowell is running an Express Phone Sex service for the busy exec. No time for that slow seductive build-up? Don't want to waste valuable time on setting the mood? Call CFRA!! We'll get you on and get you off. Call now! Call now! Call now!!! If you'd called 3 minutes ago you'd already be cleaning yourself up! DO IT NOW!!!

2002-09-23T11:02:00.000-04:00

My old friend and faithful correspondent, Rick Glasel, has found his way back to the Hellhole. Welcome back.

Now about that Kyoto thing: Other people have put forward the anti-Kyoto arguments better than me, so I won't rehash why it is a complete waste of economic output even if it only costs $1.00; but we are getting a flood of logically challenged pro-Kyoto arguments these days. It's like the pundits and politicians think they can convince us with a suffocating blanket of low-grade commentary. As far as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities goes, this is the playground of Mel Lastman, and Glen Murray, Winnipeg's mayor, and the two of them could generate enough hot air for statistically significant climate change by themselves. Municipal politics right across Canada is the domain of more nuts and flakes than all other flavors of political life combined. A lot of civic politicians are bottom-feeders, failed businessmen and unemployed socialists. The really talented ones, like Art Eggleton, get to be federal politicians. And the United Nations wants municipalities to receive more tax revenue? And what does a Lastman, Murray, or Bill Smith (Edmonton's mayor) know about carbon sinks and greenhouse effects?

I had a similar thought myself; it seems to me that the municipal governments see the Kyoto Protocol as a potential cash-cow. Money for public transit, retro-fitting, social engineering etc... etc... I'm actually growing quite alarmed about the Kyoto protocol because the Liberals are going very heavy on the carrot and very light on the stick in the run-up to the vote. I've a feeling that carrots and sticks will be switching positions in a big way in the aftermath of ratification.

You hear rumblings about a $5 billion dollar incentive fund without a tax raise(as if Jean Chretien had a spare $5B tucked away in his sock drawer all along). Chretien tells the oil producers that their end of the Kyoto load will be only 20% and consumers will pick up the other 80% but they tell us in the news this morning that consumers account for less than 30% of green-house gases and we'll only be accountable for 9% in any case (and look at this... FREE MONEY, FREE MONEY). Whoops! Where's the missing 50%? "Never mine dat, jus sign here."

2002-09-20T13:54:00.000-04:00

C.D. Harris has an outstanding commentary about Tumbling Woman, the sculpture that was removed from public display in New York.

Myself, I empathize most strongly with the direct victims of 9/11 by thinking of the ones who jumped. So, to me, the choice to memorialize the WTC atrocity by representing a single jumper is a stroke of genius - because for me they always represented the most essential aspect of the event: Horror. I look at this statue and am immediately reminded of what I felt watching them fall.

This seems bang on to me... It was almost certainly a mistake to place that sculpture so close to the towers so soon after the event but, in my opinion, this is not just good art - it is brilliant and valuable and compassionate art. Don't take my word though, read what Harris has to say because it is very well said.

2002-09-20T13:22:00.000-04:00

David Janes (The Reluctant Blogger) is organizing a worthwhile project to bring James Lileks to a wider audience. I'm in.

2002-09-20T13:13:00.000-04:00

Fellow blogger Steven Martinovich has an opinion piece in the Jerusalam Post.

Although Chr tien may believe himself in good company by subscribing to a belief shared by people like Gore, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Ted Rall and Noam Chomsky, he should have been reminded of the old admonition that no matter how many people say a wrong thing, it is still wrong.

Good job Steven. It's good to see that the dissenting Canadian voice is getting some exposure in the wider world.

2002-09-20T12:39:00.000-04:00

James Brown Sued by Co-writers. Eddie Murphy Crushed.

JAMES Brown's daughters have filed a federal lawsuit against the Godfather of Soul, seeking more than $1 million in back royalties and damages for 25 songs they say they co-wrote.

Even though they were children when the songs were written — 3 and 6 when Get Up Offa That Thing was a hit in 1976 — Brown's daughters helped write them, said their attorney, Gregory Reed.

The Brown siblings also claim to have contributed to such lesser known titles as Getchya Ass Outside, Pickup Dis Mess and Why, oh Why? ( Can't cha gimme sum peace).

Link via Fark

2002-09-19T08:49:00.000-04:00

John Barber, from Toronto, is trolling for attention this morning. It's the old 'let them eat cake' attitude but with an extra helping of gleeful celebration.

Once again the hewers of wheat and drawers of oil are coming to town to tell us what's good for us.

Previously, they've come during elections, urging us to support political parties founded on the promise to repress our interests in favour of theirs.

This time they want us to rise up against ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that couldn't be more attractive if it were written specifically to boost the competitive advantage of Southern Ontario.

Do they think we're stupid?

I don't know who 'we' is supposed to represent, but I certainly think Barber is acting stupid and spiteful. You have to love that opening line for it's sheer economy in setting the tone that runs through this piece like a vein of rancid fat. "Oh look, here come the peasants out of the fields - 'coming to town.' Let's hope they wipe their feet before coming in the big house."

Well, okay: That's usually a safe bet.

But even the dunderheads at Toronto City Council don't need much of an environmental conscience to know that Kyoto would be good for us.

Council supported ratification last spring without a word of debate and with only a handful of members dissenting.

Nationally, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities took the same position and has played a lead role in the effort to promote Kyoto -- once again motivated by advantage as much as conscience. Unlike the broad public, whose strong Kyoto support the oil diggers consider ignorant, the cities have a vested interest.

Urban populations will find it easier to comply with Kyoto, and the advantages of doing so will accrue disproportionately within city limits.

Leaving aside the slur of 'oil diggers' - suspiciously close to ditch-diggers as it is - let's look at the message. Barber is talking very specifically to an urban audience but his argument is dishonest even if you ignore the disrespect inherent in it. The only urbanites who are going to find Kyoto realtively painless are those who already live in the very heart of the cities. And that holds true only if you believe that increased heating, transportation, and production costs are not going to find their way into the cost of consumer products. Suburbanites who make up the vast majority of the GTA population will be dinged quite a bit harder since they log more hours sitting over a hot engine than any but the most footloose of rural dwellers. They also seem determined to maintain those wasteful single-family homes with a private heating plant in each and every one!

The FCM supports Kyoto on condition that "no region of the country bears an unreasonable cost related to reducing greenhouse gas emissions," but that is a fantasy.

It's like calling for the abolition of private cars so long as no autoworkers are affected. The oil diggers would hurt.

But we're on the lucky side of the equation. Long before anyone heard of Kyoto, devising clever ways to avoid sending dollars to Alberta was good business in these parts.

So he admits that the support of the FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities) is predicated on a condition that simply can not be satisfied. Does that sway Barber from his support? Oh, no. Quite the contrary, he supports the Kyoto Protocol precisely because it screws the 'oil diggers' and favours the type of smug urbanite that he professes to represent.

That's why we rely more on uranium than gas to produce electricity; perhaps more virtuously, it also explains why industry and commercial landlords spend billions on conservation.

Instead of shipping dollars to Fort McMurray to buy fuel, they prefer to spend them in Mississauga, where skilled workers design and manufacture high-efficiency windows and ventilation systems.

How can you argue with that logic? The 'skilled workers' of the GTA will benefit and the 'oil diggers' will suffer. Sounds like a win/win proposition to me. And the best part of all? The 'skilled workers' can buy solar-powered big screen TVs and watch the devastation of the 'oil diggers' in glorious living colour on the CBC.

For our energy-dependent manufacturing region, replacing imported oil sets purely virtuous circles in motion, and any policies that create new incentives to replace more oil can only help.

Any policy? Presumably, a total ban on the private ownership of internal combustion engines would be just hunky-dory with Mr. Barber. "Sure, it would be a little inconvenient for some, but let's look at the big picture here."

But just as the advantages of compliance flow disproportionately our way, the costs will be easier to absorb.

Say the cost of Kyoto compliance is a new tax on the use of carbon fuels. Every farmer in Canada might go broke (wouldn't want that), but the urbanite -- especially the hundreds of thousands of subway-commuting apartment and townhouse dwellers in big cities -- might hardly notice. Where one Canadian faces fundamental life choices, a Torontonian shrugs, deciding to ditch the ranch house in favour of a condo, or deciding to buy a Metropass instead of a second family car, a choice eased considerably by the fact that transit service has improved dramatically due to the new investment made possible by the carbon tax.

Do you think that Barber is really doing a satire here? Perhaps I'm being taken in by a clever criticism of the flawed thinking of Kyoto supporters. If I were Ralph Klein I would send a copy of this column to every voter in the country who lives outside of urban Toronto much like hockey coaches post inflammatory criticisms of their own teams in the dressing room before the big game. Is this really the mindset of Kyoto supporters? I don't think it is. I think the vast majority of Canadians simply haven't become engaged in the topic yet. I hope we get engaged before the damn thing is rammed through parliament but I refuse to believe that Kyoto's supporters are really driven by sheer small-minded vindictiveness and greed like this moron appears to be.

Even if I overlook the offensive presentation of the argument I can't help but be struck by how poorly reasoned it is. Barber is arguing that the Kyoto targets could be met with relative ease if only those backward, fuel sucking idiots living outside of metro Toronto would change their lives and live like he does. You know, in some efficient and luxurious high-rise condo with a fleet of bicycles for the sunny days and TTC hydrogen-powered buses passing by your doorstep every 3-5 minutes in the damp weather (buses & trains won't run on sunny days, of course.) Canada should simply move all those folks living in the north into a proper city. Let's face it, these people are generating a huge portion of our greenhouses gases in relation to their population. Move em all to Toronto and do it right away. Barber has already identified the need to eliminate the agricultural sector - we'll move them all to Toronto as well. Small towns? Sorry, they'll have to go... come to Toronto and get a job as a 'skilled worker.' Sure it'll be a bit of an adjustment, but you'll get over it.

2002-09-18T17:43:00.000-04:00

A bitchy but satisfying review of two recent books about Anti-Americanism. The first, The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World by Mark Hertsgaard, gets a pretty rough reception but it's the second, After the Terror by Ted Honderich, that really comes in for a thrashing.

Professor Honderich has tried to stick closer to the really big issues. Instead of anecdotes and vox pops, his book (Edinburgh UP, £15.99, 160 pp) is filled with abstract argumentation about moral philosophy, the nature of democracy, the definition of political violence, and so on. As a result, this book is able to be bad in a much more serious way. Indeed, I think it is one of the worst books I have ever read.

The key points of the argument are as follows. There is no real difference between an act of omission and an act of commission. This means that each time I fail to give money to Oxfam to save the lives of starving Africans - for example, each time I spend money on a holiday - I am responsible for killing people. Therefore we are all, in a real sense, murderers, and the West is collectively responsible for the elimination of human life on a colossal scale. (Western interventions to help starving Africans, such as the ill-fated American operation in Somalia, naturally pass unmentioned here.)

If terrorists were to try to correct this injustice by murdering thousands of people in New York, that action would not be justified - because it would be "irrational", that is, not likely to achieve its intended effect. (Note in passing that if a more rationally calculated method could be devised - eg kidnapping the children of rich Westerners and demanding ransoms - this argument would apparently support it.) But even so, Honderich insists, if such terrorists did massacre people in New York in such an unjustified way, we, the people of the West, would bear "moral responsibility" for their actions.

Hmmm... Maybe Chretien is more well-read then we had given him credit for.

2002-09-18T13:41:00.000-04:00

My local talk-radio station is quoting John Manley to the effect that he'd "... sooner jump off the Peace Tower than raise the GST to 10%."

Memo to: Mr. Manley
From: The Canadian Taxpayers
Re: GST and Peace Tower

John,

We'd be prepared to go as high as 9% if you toss Chretien from the Tower.
Call us, we'll talk.

2002-09-17T16:39:00.000-04:00

Damian Penny links to a jaw-dropping story out of France.

PARIS (Reuters) - Provocative French novelist Michel Houellebecq faced a Paris court on Tuesday for allegedly inciting racial hatred by calling Islam "the stupidest religion" and its holy book the Koran a depressing read.

Sacre Blue! What the hell is wrong with those people? It defies reason to imagine that he will be convicted but, all the same, the man has to go into court and answer the charges. This is insanity.

2002-09-17T11:27:00.000-04:00

You know, I really don't consider myself a conservative and I'm defensive about it. That's why I find myself sometimes passing over topics that are the traditional hobbyhorses of the "Right."

But the %##@%&* CBC has done it to me again. They've driven me into another 'rightist' screed about propaganda and revisionism and the vast leftwing conspiracy.

To explain... the CBC invites reader's comments on it's website and I submitted a comment to this page on either the 12th or 13th of Sept. My comment never showed up (and no, it was not profane) which was irritating but hardly worth a post to the ol' hellhole, right?

So, a couple of days later, I send an email to the CBC... here it is;

I submitted a comment about the post 911 interview with Jean Chretien either late on the 12th or early on the 13th of Sept. I note that many subsequent comments have been posted to your comments page but mine have not. Can you explain your policy about which submissions are posted and which are rejected?

I sent that on Saturday, no response as yet. Again, the kind of thing to make you mumble mild expletives but surely too petty and predictable to warrant a public complaint, right? (You have to remember, I am Canadian... and not exactly a speedy typist at that).

So this morning, I'm over at the CBC site (checking for my comment again) and while poking around I stumble upon a seeming discrepancy between what I remember of Chretien's comments and the transcript that the CBC has posted on it's website.

Now this is going to get a little link-heavy but I think it points out something pretty interesting;
The CBC has a short video clip of Chretien's interview here.
The original CBC item about this story is here
The PMO's transcript of the interview, rushed out for damage control, is available here and it's also available in a slightly different format below since I posted it a couple of days ago.
Finally, here is the current version of the CBC transcript as it appears today.

Okay, so what's my beef? Firstly, I noticed that the video clip and the PMO transcript don't match exactly. The PMO transcript has Chretien saying that the Western world "is going to be too rich" but the video reveals quite clearly that Chretien said the Western world "is getting too rich". Check the tape. Now that might seem a small discrepancy on it's surface, but it's a subtle shift that allows the PMO to claim that Chretien was speaking of the future, making a warning, rather than speaking of the present circumstances. Big deal, it's a bit of spin, hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. It's naive to even remark on it, right?

But it gets worse. Comparing the video and the PMO transcript also reveals another change; in the video Chretien says "we're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and without limits" but in the PMO version he says "we look upon us being arrogant, self-satisfying, greedy and with no limits." I guess the PMO counts on the fact that everything Chretien says comes with a base level of incoherence so that Canadians don't balk at the sheer illogic of that change. Well, that doesn't prove much of anything new even if you or I find it extremely cynical and slimy. The PMO's job is to cover Chretien's ass come hell or high water and that’s all they are trying to do, right?

So I decide to check the CBC transcript against the video and I find out that their transcript is an exact copy of the PMO transcript. "Well, maybe the transcript was provided to the PMO by the CBC, anything's possible and that would explain why the transcripts are identical" says my scrupulously fair and evenhanded side to my other side which I will not describe at this time.
Check out the original CBC story:

In the television interview, Chrétien said the Western world is "looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. The 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more."

Then check out the 'official CBC transcript of today;

"And necessarily, you know, we look upon us being arrogant, self-satisfying, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize that it's even more."

Canada's Public Broadcaster, ladies and gentlemen.

2002-09-16T20:51:00.000-04:00

Mark Steyn gives Jean Chretien a good Rogering...

Steyn's comic timing just keeps getting better.

What is it the Islamists want?

In the words of Hussein Mussawi, former leader of Hezbollah: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

OK, that's just his opening position.

Steyn doesn't hit every target squarely but he is always fun to read.

2002-09-16T14:47:00.000-04:00

So long, don't forget to rot...

I've always predicted that Bin Laden will be harder to kill than Elvis. But there seems to be more and more evidence that Osama has left the building. First there was a slip-up and now there is a flat admission by a close associate. U.S. intelligence officials are 'skeptical' but I think their skepticism is tactical.

2002-09-16T05:45:00.000-04:00

Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
-Leonard Cohen

That's a good Canadian sentiment, don't you think?

I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how much time I've wasted over the weekend debating Chretien's comments with some folks over on Pierre Bourque's Discussion Forum. Needless to say, I've convinced no-one but myself of the wisdom of my position but at least I wrasseled the bastards to a stand-still. There are a lot of Liberal apologists who will point with glee at the Ipsos-Reid Poll that says 80%+ of the Canadian people think the Americans deserve some portion of the blame for the 9/11 attacks. The trouble is, when you try to pin them down on what specifically the Americans have done to bring this on themselves, they tend to squirm and wriggle and obfuscate until, when pressed very hard, the blurt out their reasoning; "everybody knows it." "The Americans are nasty bullies who tromp all around the world with their big muddy boots and they talk too loud and they don't share their stuff and they support the wrong people and the rotten pricks are really only interested in cheap oil and 'fuck the rest of the world' and Everybody knows it."

So I spent some time challenging this attitude which is more work than you might think... the first thing you have to do is get people to admit to it which can be a very tedious process. People are very protective of their prejudices. Then you have to challenge them to defend their prejudices logically. Some will make a half-hearted attempt, some will battle quite fiercely, but most will simply shy away from the discussion and none of them, whatever tactic they adopt, can make a logical defence of an emotional prejudice. I'm not sure if it can be done or not but I haven't yet seen it done.

Anyway, I see this morning that someone has posted an article from today's Toronto Star (sorry, no link) indicating that Chretien plans to continue 'distancing' himself from the US.

Buoyed by a groundswell of support for his comments linking terrorism and the western world's "greed," Prime Minister Jean Chrétien today will take the same message to the United Nations in New York.

In his speech to a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on Africa, Chrétien will repeat the thrust of controversial comments broadcast on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a senior official in Chrétien's office said yesterday.

"It will be similar to the language that was broadcast last week," the official said, referring to the text prepared for today's speech.

"He'll use language like, `We've seen the results right here (in New York) of things that go wrong.'"

Apparently (or allegedly. if you've a cynical nature) the PMO has been swamped with supportive calls and e-mails which heartily endorse Mr. Chretien's eulogy over the victims of 9/11. Predictably the Liberal hordes, having been re-assured that "everybody knows" have come roaring back, chattering and back-patting, because they have been confirmed in the wisdom of their collective prejudice. "I can't defend this prejudice but, by god, look at all the people who agree with me."

I'll be interested to hear what the PM actually says in NY today. I'm beginning to think that the PMO and Ipsos-Reid are engaged in the creation of 'public opinion.' My son is starting to study stats and surveying in school. Last night, as he was working on his homework, he asked me what 'bias' meant in terms of surveying. I used the Ipsos-Reid poll as an example, I drew a stick diagram on the back of an envelope with three categories marked ALL, SOME and NONE. Under those respective headings I placed subheadings of 100%, 1%-99%, and 0%. And then we discussed the fact that the SOME column covers 98% of the range of responses and the fact that ALL or NONE covered only 2% of the range. He seemed to get the point.

I'm very curious as to why this poll was conducted and I'm obviously skeptical as hell of the result but there is no denying that a large number of Canadians share Mr. Chretien's belief that America bears some responsibility for 9/11. They just can't explain why.

2002-09-16T05:36:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Damian Penny and Colby Cosh for the 'welcome backs'. I didn't really think I'd been gone that long but... scrolling down I see that entries from May are still showing on this page... Ahem! Not exactly "fresh" I'd have to agree. I'm hoping to get back to regular updating now that the summer disruption is over. It seems there is too much to discuss rather than too little but I'll probably continue to concentrate on shrieking about the Liberals for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure what I'll be posting about when Chretien finally retires but I can't wait to find out.

2002-09-15T08:44:00.000-04:00

Robert Mugabe continues to trash his country in full view of the entire world...

Tawanda Majoni, a reporter for the Zimbabwe Daily Mirror was arrested this week after reporting on mounting pressure on the police commissioner to retire, editors for his newspaper said Saturday. Police said they could not confirm Mr. Majoni's arrest.

Since Mr. Mugabe introduced draconian new media laws earlier this year, 12 journalists have been charged with publishing false stories. Such violations carry a two-year prison sentence.

News of the arrests followed Friday's arrest of a recently retired judge who had tried to sentence the justice minister to prison.

Former High Court Judge Feargus Blackie, 65, appeared in court Saturday as his lawyers appealed for a bail hearing.

Lawyers for Blackie said he spent the night in an overcrowded prison cell and was denied food, warm clothes, and blood pressure medicine. They dismissed as "preposterous" charges against him of obstructing justice.

Did I say "in full view of the entire world"? Well, that is being remedied as we speak.

Most foreign correspondents have been refused permission to visit the country, and this week the government refused to renew the work permit of a U.S. citizen working for the French news agency Agence France Presse. He left the country Saturday.

The government has accused foreign reporters of fueling an international propaganda campaign led by Britain, the former colonial power, the European Union and the United States to discredit Zimbabwe and topple Mr. Mugabe.

Now where the heck would Zimbabwe get the ridiculous notion that the United States is to blame for their image troubles?

Oh! Right.

2002-09-14T13:40:00.000-04:00

'When you're powerful like you are, you guys, is the time to be nice.'

2002-09-14T09:25:00.000-04:00

Paul Wells usually makes some sense, but not today. He's falling into the increasingly common bit of idiocy which holds that strong disagreement is a form of censorship. Raising your voice is apparently the new oppression.

At the risk of cutting and pasting from a wildly incomprehensible string of sentences, Jean Chrétien had told the CBC that "the rest of the world" -- "not only the Americans, the Western world" -- "is a bit too selfish, and that there is a lot of resentment." These thoughts occurred to him, he told Peter Mansbridge, at the end of the day on Sept. 11, 2001. "And I knew that it was the inspiration of it."

Wells then proceeds to 'cut and paste' a number of statements from a number of sources in an attempt to prove some point that even he can't articulate.

Perhaps you're wondering what my point is. Sometimes I wonder myself. I guess it's that one way to celebrate the democratic values that madmen attacked 367 days ago is to stop shouting at one another. Did American arrogance cause the Sept. 11 attacks? No. Shame on anyone who would suggest it did. But shame, too, on anyone who would shout down a fellow citizen for trying to find a deeper meaning and a broader resolution.

There it is... Wells is just engaged in some juvenile contrarian exercise. If everyone agrees that Chretien said something horrifying then he will rush to Chretien's defence even if he has to cobble together a ridiculous defence from threads picked up from the library and the movie theater.

From a speech by Bill Clinton: "We must get rid of our arrogant self-righteousness so that we don't claim for ourselves things that we deny for others."

From the Declaration of Independance; "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"

From the movie Spiderman: "great power brings great responsibility"

Apparently even Wells doesn't have the stomach to defend what Chretien actually said so he's decided to swap in some quotes that have at least a surface similarity to Chretien's words and hope that no-one notices the difference. Wells simply discards context entirely and hopes that no-one notices.

We noticed Paul , a very poor effort indeed.

2002-09-14T09:01:00.000-04:00

A good column by Margaret Wente about the Americans and their culpability for 9/11.

And the failure of America was not that it is rich and greedy, but that its leaders forgot one fact of life. You can't protect your freedom by making yourself inoffensive to your enemies.

I hope someone reads that aloud to Jean Chretien

2002-09-12T17:31:00.000-04:00

The Liberals are doing damage control and this is how little they have to work with nowadays...

Somebody just posted this to a discussion group. It's the very freshest of Liberal spin on Chretien's comments regarding the "shared" responsibility for the terrorist attacks of a year ago.

Subject: PM interview / entrevue du PM
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 16:07:32 -0400
From: LPC/PLC

September 12, 2002

RELEVANT PORTION OF CBC INTERVIEW RELEASED

It is being wrongly reported today that in an interview broadcast on CBC television last night Prime Minister Jean Chrétien singled out the United States for responsibility for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In fact, in response to a question about how he thought the world had changed on September 11th, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to point to the need for all Western developed countries to reflect on the long-term consequences of the growing divide between rich and poor nations - a divide which has clearly been used by fanatics to fan resentment toward the developed world. It is a gross misconstruction of his remarks to suggest that he was blaming the United States for the attacks. Indeed, the forceful action Canada has taken, shoulder to shoulder with the United States, to track down and bring to justice those behind the attacks is unequivocal proof of the views of the Prime Minister, the government and the people of Canada as to who is responsible for September 11th .

In order for Canadians to come to an unfiltered judgement as to the intent and meaning of the Prime Minister’s remarks, a transcript of the relevant portion of the interview is enclosed. In this regard, we also encourage Canadians to view the interview as it was broadcast on the CBC. It was part of a documentary entitled “Untold Story” and can be viewed on the CBC website at cbc.ca.

RELEVANT PORTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE INTERVIEW

Peter Mansbridge: By the end of the day, what were you thinking about in terms of how the world had changed?

Prime Minister Chrétien: But I’ve said that it is a division in the world that is building up. And I knew that it was the inspiration of it. For me, I think that the rest of the world is a bit too selfish, and that there is a lot of resentment. I felt it when I dealt with the African file for the Summit of the G8. You know, the poor, relatively, get poorer all the time. And the rich are getting richer all the time. You know, now we see the abuse of the system with problems in the United States at this moment with the corporate world, you know. When you think that, you know, you have to let go somebody in the Cabinet because perhaps relatively very minor things…of guidelines. And there was billions of dollars that were basically stolen from the shareholders. And we have to you know solving the problems when you read history. Everybody don’t know when to stop. There is a moment, you know, when you have to stop. There is a moment when you have very powerful (inaudible).

I said that in New York one day. I said, you know talking, it was Wall Street, and it was a crowd of capitalists, of course, and they were complaining because we have a normal relation with Cuba, and this and that, and, you know, we cannot do everything we want. And I said...if I recall, it was probably these words: ‘When you’re powerful like you are, you guys, is the time to be nice.’ And it is one of the problems. You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point that of humiliation for the others. And that is what the Western world, not only the Americans, the Western world has to realize, because they are human beings too, and there are long term consequences if you don’t look hard at the reality in 10 or 20, or 30 years from now. And I do think that the Western world is going to be too rich in relation to the poor world. And necessarily, you know, we look upon us being arrogant, self satisfying, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize that it’s even more.”

There you have it. The Liberals are reduced to claiming "gibberish" as their defence.

The CBC is quickly falling inline with the new spin and is now claiming that Chretien was scolding the "Western World" rather than directing his comments at the USA.

I call Bullshit... Chretien was talking about the US from point A to point Z. His "western world" cover is nothing but a sham, a deliberately transparent euphemism meant to appeal to the smug superiority of those Canadians who profess their love of their neighbour but enjoy a secret thrill of affirmation when that neighbour suffers a tragedy. You can almost see the exaggerated wink that Chretien telegraphs as he takes on some of the burden of shame that has to be borne by the "western world". We, the noble Canadians will gently scold the US and temper that scolding by speaking in terms of "we" and "us" but it's hard to ignore the true message;

I think that the rest of the world is a bit too selfish (not us)
I felt it when I dealt with the African file (not us, me)
now we see the abuse of the system with problems in the United States at this moment with the corporate world (not us)
When you’re powerful like you are, you guys, is the time to be nice (not us, you)

Nice how Chretien also slips in another denial of his own govt's culpability for corruption in the middle of wagging his finger at "the west" isn't it? You'd almost think he wasn't serious about including Canada in 'the west.'

2002-06-17T10:39:00.000-04:00

The Ottawa Citizen published a series of longer pieces about the Chretien government a couple of weeks ago and they even called for Chretien to resign in an editorial. Last night Russell Mills, the man responsible for those pieces being published, was fired. Way back when I started this website, the concentration of media and CanWest Global were favourite subjects of mine. The situation is getting worse, much worse. Mr. Mills was interviewed on CFRA this morning... he reports that CanWest tried to get him to sign a gag order and announce his retirement, he refused and was fired. I guess CanWest has just decided to brazen it out. Why not, when you've got people like Sheila Copps acting as an apologist for Canwest in the House of Commons. When Copps was asked about media convergence last week she made some idle slur against Conrad Black and made it crystal clear that she had no interest in the topic. Oddly enough, the follow-up question, about the NHL & the French service on CBC, got the exact opposite treatment. Copps said that 'interventions were being contemplated' in order to rectify the problem of no French coverage of Hockey Night in Canada outside of Quebec. Incredible isn't it? In one breath a serious threat to freedom of the press is completely shrugged off and in the next, a paper-cut to the sacred cow of bilingualism gets the full 'concern' of the government.

You'd think that the hypocrisy would be so glaring as to embarass even these clowns. Apparently not.

2002-06-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

I'm back... and I'm going to resist the temptation to 'correct' my predictions that are visible just below. I'll just post so much stuff that they scroll right off the page. My call on McCallum was particularly bad, why the hell would Chretien appoint anyone but John Manley to such an important position? Still, McCallum has managed to distinguish himself as something other than a drunken chipmunk by withholding not one, but two (2) recent reports. The ombudsman's 70 page report on the State of the Defence Department and the report on the Canadian investigation into the friendly-fire deaths in Afghanistan. Pretty impressive display of adaptation by McCallum. You'd think he'd been burying damaging information since birth.

2002-06-02T13:35:00.000-04:00

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to "Some Stale Hell" since I have been pretty slow to update over the past few weeks. What can I say? The days are longer and warmer, the grass keeps growing and the world is just spinning too fast. I'm glad to see that the real media is actually starting to write about the fact that the Liberals have been scamming the whole country for years on end.

So I will probably not be updating all that often for the next little while... Unless I feel the urge to say something else about something else.

In the meantime... here are a few predictions;

Paul Martin will quit the cabinet - either today or tomorrow.
John McCallum will be named as Finance Minister and he will flame out horribly.
Denis Coderre will get a lot dirtier before this sponsership thing is over but he will survive.
Chretien will not stay to face the leadership review.

No warranties stated or implied, void where prohibited by law.

2002-05-23T17:48:00.000-04:00

WHAT NEXT!???!!

Apparently, someone posted some false information on the net. Let's be careful out there, people.

2002-05-23T09:49:00.000-04:00

Don Boudria was spotted at a breakfast meeting with Roman Catholic Archbishop Marcel Gervais this morning. The meeting was held in the basement of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Ottawa. An unidentified source claims that Boudria was attempting to borrow "... enough Nuns to fill a Mini-Van." The Nuns were apparently to be used as part of his damage control efforts in the aftermath of a ski weekend in March. No word was available on whether or not the Archbishop was able to comply with the request.

2002-05-17T08:47:00.000-04:00

I'm off camping in Algonquin Park for the weekend... will return Tuesday, or perhaps Monday if the weather is poor, or perhaps never if the bears are hungry. Enjoy your central heating and access to electricity.

2002-05-14T22:21:00.000-04:00

Rick Glasel writes about CPAC...

I spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, and CPAC is now up to #3 on my viewing list (after hockey games and TLC shows with nudity). Actually this sounds just like when Newsworld goes whining to the CRTC to complain that CTV Newsnet is actually showing live news footage instead of just reading headlines. CBC Newsworld has simply become a complete waste of taxpayer money, and mandatory cable fees. If I want to watch Antiques Traveling Road Show, I can watch PBS and feel like I'm getting something in return for the money I give to Shaw Cable every month. Let's not forget about Counterspin, which is the single stupidest show on television, bar none. The whole idea is to do a loonie-left-wing only version of Crossfire, with one token "right-winger" who gets shouted down after the second word by at least six pseudo-intellectuals whose aggregate IQ is less than my shoe size ( 11, in case you were wondering) with the same result every show, America baaaaaad, Judy Rebnick good. Even with government subsidies, Newsworld can't actually produce enough news, they have to repeat Counterspin ad nauseum, in between showing The National six times a night. CPAC is giving us far more value for our money, and cable operators aren't forced to give it a low channel number like Newsworld.

Have you ever tried to follow CRTC proceedings? Hour after hour of various parties trying to be as obtuse and baffling as possible in order to put one over the regulators and make a few more bucks, as if the private broadcasters and cable operators don't make enough money already. Let's abolish the CRTC, it serves no purpose whatsoever, and it doesn't do a damn thing to build a Canadian identity, at least an identity I could be proud of. As far as I can tell, the only thing the CRTC has accomplished is drive local phone service rates up to $25 a month.

There's my rant for the day, I feel much better now.

Good one, Rick. I keep meaning to do a rant on the CRTC but I never seem to get to it. Believe it or not, I have a whole shopping bag full of complaints that I have barely touched on yet. Basically, I think the CRTC is an evil and expensive hoax; but that is obviously an oversimplified statement of the argument.

2002-05-14T22:08:00.000-04:00

A little ketchup with that crow?

Okay, Okay... Time to face the music. My Sens went down to an ignoble defeat at the hands of the hated Maple Leafs. They say there are good deaths and there are bad deaths - well this was a very bad death. The Sens didn't even start playing until the Leafs had scored, they had no shots in the second period, the Leafs played as though they wanted to play more hockey and the Sens just did not. Hard to watch. But next year will be better - this team lacks for nothing but confidence.

I think I mentioned it already but... I hate the Leafs. You have to respect the bastards though, they played with tons of heart and determination and they earned this series. Good luck in the final.

2002-05-13T14:54:00.000-04:00

Part of the Liberal strategy for handling the Groupaction fiasco is to come on all wide-eyed and offended that anyone would question the impartiality of the RCMP. Besides the fact that the head of the RCMP is now a deputy minister (a de facto member of the government) there is the matter of Airbus. The RCMP has kept open a politically charged file years after apologizing to Mulroney for making false allegations. In another example of compromised integrity; the RCMP initially stated that there was no evidence that any documents were forged in the BDC - Grand-Mere - mess but quickly retracted that statement and the investigation remains "Open". In other words, this is another RCMP investigation that remains open because it serves the Liberal government's purposes to have it remain open. The Groupaction file is going to be handed off to the RCMP and it will be buried and forgotten, just like Grand-Mere.

We get what we deserve... We get what we accept... We get what we settle for...

What a shameful job we are doing.

2002-05-13T14:20:00.000-04:00

Understatement of the Week

... and it's only Monday

"It is unique that the Parliament of Canada doesn't have a code of conduct whereas virtually all of the other provinces do," Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson told The Hill Times. "This may be a timely moment to take a look at it."

2002-05-10T13:12:00.000-04:00

Susan Riley is a writer for the Ottawa Citizen.

She has a fine example of moral equivocating displayed in the pages of that paper today. I'm in a critical mood and today's target is Susan Riley. I'm going to give her the full treatment.

The air is charged with dire predictions, dark warnings, foreshadowings of apocalypse: The Groupaction affair, it is said, is the final straw for the Chrétien government, the coup de grace.

The first signs of this disaffection may be evident Monday in the results of six federal by-elections, suggests a CBC pundit. After years of corruption, the corpse is decomposing from the inside and the stench is unmistakable, says Tory Peter MacKay -- or words to that effect. The jig is finally up, say several hopeful columnists.

These couple of paragraphs are classic straw man positioning. Riley exaggerates and ridicules the position that she wants to deride because an accurate reporting of that position would not lend itself to the dramatics she wants to engage in... I haven't heard anyone claiming that this is an 'apocalyptic' development, have you? Riley mentions a number of columnists and a 'CBC pundit' but she doesn't use any names, why? Because using a name would place upon her the burden of accuracy in reporting their comments and accuracy is not the point of this exercise. The point of this exercise is to downplay the seriousness of this Groupaction episode.

Not so. In fact, this scandal could be over before it has even begun. The three smelly advertising contracts that Auditor General Sheila Fraser says "broke every rule in the book" are already being reviewed by the RCMP. The police report will likely take weeks, if not months; in the meantime, cabinet ministers will deflect pointed questions by claiming they cannot comment on an ongoing inquiry.

They can run, but they can't hide, indignant editorialists will say. Fraser was so appalled by the mismanagement of the Groupaction file that she has ordered a second audit of all federal advertising, polling and sponsorship contracts. That will uncover a cesspool of patronage and sleaze, offences so blatant and numerous they will destroy the Liberal government, says just about everyone.

Problem is, Fraser's investigation won't conclude until the end of next year-- after Jean Chrétien announces his resignation, if common sense prevails, or long enough before another election for remedial action to be taken, grudging apologies to be offered, scapegoats to be found. If Fraser's report is anything like the extensive APEC commission report, it will have long since been overtaken by events.

Opposition parties are aware of this. That is why they are pressing for an independent judicial inquiry into the Liberals' "culture of corruption." Unnecessary, say the Liberals, with some justification: Both the RCMP and the auditor general are looking into the affair. That's hardly a coverup.

Riley here describes, pretty accurately, the tactic of covering up an issue through delays and procedural wrangling. But then she turns around to say that there is no cover-up because it's only delays. I guess she has a quota of words to deliver, there's nothing else to explain four paragraphs that describe such a perfect circle.

The problem with the Groupaction scandal is that, so far, it isn't interesting enough. And scandal cannot, by definition, be dull.

Sounds surprisingly similar to Chretien's defence of his own actions in the Grand-Mere business, doesn't it?

What we know is that senior Public Works bureaucrats disregarded existing rules and shovelled some $1.6 million to a Montreal advertising agency to help the federal government buy visibility in Quebec in the wake of the whisker-close 1995 referendum.

This is the heart of the Liberal lie about Groupaction. "Sure mistakes were made, sure we were a little fast and loose with the regulations, sure we could have done better, BUT look what was at stake!!! The very future of the country was hanging in the balance." It's an unacceptable excuse for criminal behaviour. Riley's acceptance, and repetition, of that premise is what makes me suspect her motives. Perhaps she is merely too credulous but I tend to suspect that she knows exactly what she is doing. It is a dishonest rationalization of a criminal act. This was not an error, it was theft. It drives me nuts that so many people, even in the House of Commons, accept this rationalization unthinkingly. The Liberals continue to point the finger back at the opposition parties saying that 'this member got a sponsorship contract in his riding' and 'that member attempted to get a sponsorship contract in her riding' and all the Liberal lemmings 'OOOHHH' and "AAAAHHH' on cue. Not one of these rubes in the opposition point out the glaringly obvious point; sponsorship itself is a questionable political policy but we are not talking about sponsorship we are talking about payments made to Liberal supporters for trinkets and beads. You might as well trade a suitcase full of cash for a suitcase full of flypaper and claim that you're simply trading luggage. And no-one seems to catch on to that. Not one of these sad sacks on the opposition benches has pointed out the difference between a bad policy and a criminal act. Why?

The contracts weren't properly tendered, the work wasn't fully described and what was asked for was never delivered. Yet the money was paid to Groupaction, a contributor to the federal Liberal party, with no questions asked.

The woman understands what happened but she's determined to play down it's importance I guess.

Bad, even shocking -- especially, as Fraser points out, since Public Works is the government's chief purchaser. More disturbing is testimony from long-time Public Works bureaucrat, Chuck Guite, that he always did business this way. But the scandal will remain localized -- a matter of a few bad apples in a department with a dubious history -- unless it is linked directly to the former minister, Alfonso Gagliano.

Even if that happens -- and, as Joe Clark points out, it would be surprising if senior bureaucrats ignored rules so blithely without ministerial approval -- Gagliano is gone. Gone to Denmark, not dragged away in leg-irons, but gone. By the time Fraser reports again, the controversial minister will be a distant memory. His successor, Don Boudria, is already ordering audits, tightening up scrutiny, ensuring no single firm gets too many contracts -- cleaning up the shop, in so many words.

This activity is an indirect acknowledgement of past abuses, but it may be enough to blunt opposition attacks. So will the fact that all political parties send advertising and polling work to friendly companies. It is a system ripe for abuse, but the abuse isn't Liberal-specific.

Here she is doing it again. She's smearing all the other parties - 'everyone does it' - without backing up the accusation. Give us some examples Ms. Riley. She's intentionally blurring the line between patronage (which indeed everyone does) and criminality. Shame on her for that.

In the end, the opposition wastes its time chasing mosquitoes while real outrages go ignored. There is cabinet's cavalier reluctance to sign Kyoto; its impotence in the face of the softwood-lumber dispute; its paralysis over threatening new U.S. agriculture subsidies; the fact that nearly as much is being spent on security at the upcoming Kananaskis G8 summit as is earmarked to fight African poverty. Now those are scandals worth fretting about.

Isn't it funny that all of Ms. Riley's 'scandals' originate and resonate outside of Canada? Isn't it funny that Ms. Riley who obviously understands the truth of what's happened still wants to downplay the matter? It's a 'mosquito' and there are 'real outrages' to concern ourselves with. It's not worth 'fretting about' a little theft in lowly old Canada. Let's focus on the rest of the world and quit making such a big deal over a few million dollars worth of fraud here and there. How unCanadian to make such a fuss about such a petty little theft.

2002-05-10T09:40:00.000-04:00

HEY!!! That's not FAIR!!!

CPAC is probably the best channel on Canadian television and that doesn't sit too well with some people at the CBC and other channels.

The CBC says CPAC is straying into Newsworld's territory by running talk shows on public affairs in prime time and relegating low-rated repeats of the Parliamentary day to as late as 2 a.m. It wants CPAC pushed back to just running Parliamentary debates, accusing it of causing a "harmful competitive impact."

Only in the rarified atmosphere of the CBC is competition seen as a harmful influence. It's the Mr. Dress-up ethos; don't compete, co-operate. Let's not duplicate efforts, eh? Don't these CPACers understand that catering to the interests of the viewers just creates more work for everyone?

The private broadcasters, through the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, oppose CPAC's desire to expand into more analysis and documentaries, saying its members, among them CTV Newsnet and the History Channel, don't need the competition.

Now, in all fairness, the private broadcasters have a bit of a case. CPAC is not a market-driven channel but is funded by the cable companies, and now the satellite companies, to the tune of 6.5 million dollars a year. The CRTC is looking at changing the funding formula so that consumers start paying directly for a service they are funding indirectly already. I have no sympathy for the cable companies - it's a small surcharge for operating in a protected environment - but I can see how a private interest like CTV Newsnet could object to competing with a channel that runs on subsidies. I have no such sympathy for the CBC.

Colette Watson, president and general manager of CPAC, said she is disappointed at the vehemence of the attacks on the channel. She said CPAC needs the new funding arrangement since the cable and satellite companies have made it clear the money tap could otherwise run dry. "It could be the end of CPAC if we get turned down.," she said before the CRTC hearing.

Ms. Watson was brought in last year to spiff up CPAC image. She upgraded the sets and hired new hosts, but said CPAC has been doing for years the kind of round tables and chats with journalists that are now drawing complaints.

"What's changed is we're doing them better," she said. "Now it's getting attention."

And therein lies the problem for the CBC.

2002-05-09T13:54:00.000-04:00

To the surprise of no-one, the Liberals are now attacking the Auditor General.
Liberal MPs Dominic LeBlanc and Dan McTeague (the chattiest backbencher in Canada it seems) are slagging the Auditor General for a dog's breakfast of sins including leaking the contents of the report.

Miffed by Ms. Fraser's harsh criticism of the $40-million sponsorship program, Liberal MPs argued that the Auditor-General's office is not itself infallible and has made mistakes worth considerably more. They pointed out that the Auditor-General's office failed to notice for 30 years an accounting error that resulted in a $4-billion federal overpayment to the provinces.

"I hope before anybody gets too exercised about what the Auditor-General might think, they look at the mistakes that her office made, including a $4-billion overpayment to provinces," said Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal MP for the New Brunswick riding of Beauséjour-Petitcodiac.

What a cute accusation. I hope that Mr. LeBlanc is aware that the Auditor-General doesn't actually make payments to anyone and that it would therefore be quite difficult for her to make a four billion dollar overpayment. That error was made by the Tax department. If he's complaining that the AG didn't catch the mistake that's one thing - neither did hundreds of people who were in a better position to catch it - but if he's trying to blame the actual error on the AG then he has a little trouble with the concepts of time and space. I'd say that he also has trouble with the concept of responsibility but that almost goes without saying.

2002-05-09T12:04:00.000-04:00

No Cry Zone declared in Ottawa

Ottawa council tackled Toronto Maple Leaf player whining yesterday by putting a 500-metre "no cry" zone around the Corel Centre.

Coun. Rick Chiarelli made the motion after first watching the Senators lose to the Toronto Maple Leafs in triple overtime in Saturday's Game 2 without complaining.

He then dubbed the motion banning tears and sniffles the "Cujo Law" after Toronto goalie Curtis Joseph whined loudly about the validity of an Ottawa goal in Game 3 Monday.

He said professional athletes need to remember they serve as role models for kids.

2002-05-09T09:09:00.000-04:00

Is it just me?

I read that Jean Chretien is making off-the-cuff, completely unprovoked, offers of asylum for terrorists.

During a joint press conference with José María Aznar, the President of Spain, the Prime Minister made his surprising initiative to break the deadlock.

"Anything we could do, we will do. There is at this time no request from anybody to ask these people to come to Canada.

"If we were to be requested to do something, you know, Canada is always willing to be helpful in that very tragic situation in the Middle East with the violence that occur again yesterday, and so on. We are all very disturbed by that and anything we could do, we will do."

His comments were unprompted, having followed a question by a Spanish reporter about whether he considered the United States was justified in including Cuba in its expanded Axis of Evil.

You'll have to excuse my language but; is this fucker even stable? This kind of stupidity just blows my mind... Is he trying to create some new headlines to deflect attention from his crooked government? Can he no longer follow a simple line of questioning from a reporter? And what's this thing about 'being asked'... ? Every bloody time some question about foreign policy comes up this Liberal government starts the soft-peddling about 'not being asked for this' and not being 'asked for that'. I've seen waiters with more initiative than this fucking joke of a government. If you want to open your arms wide to these murdering scumbags why not approach the concerned governments like a fucking HEAD OF STATE instead of making half-assed, half cute, offers to a fucking REPORTER who was asking your opinion about something entirely different.

Jesus Christ! It's like watching a bloody child jumping on the couch to try to attract a little attention while the adults talk. Can somebody clamp a gag on that moron? PLEASE?!?!

These gentlemen that Chretien has sorta kinda invited to come and live in your country were rejected by Spain because they are considered the most hard-core of the hard-core. Spain has agreed to take 26 of the lesser criminals but rejected these 13.

"If we take in the 13 Palestinians we will expose our country to a series of serious risks," Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini told La Stampa newspaper in an interview, indicating that extremist attacks were his prime concern.

The hardline Islamic militant group Hamas had already "threatened countries who would declare themselves ready to welcome them," Mr. Fini added.

The 13 militants have been targeted by the Israelis as the most dangerous of the Palestinians inside the church, but the Israelis have agreed to allow them to be sent into exile if a country will agree to take them.

Beauty eh?

2002-05-08T10:18:00.000-04:00

It Just Might Work!!!!

Alex Mogilny says "Hey guys! I've got an idea. Let's try acting like grown-ups!"

It is time for the Toronto Maple Leafs to shut up and play hockey, says Alexander Mogilny.

The Maple Leafs winger said the team is getting too caught up in complaining about referees. The constant whining is working against the Leafs, he said yesterday.

It was Mogilny that corrected Darcy Tucker on Monday night when he launched into the sideshow act. It's nice to see that even some of the Maple Leaf players are getting sick of this carping and whining.

2002-05-04T08:11:00.000-04:00

An interesting commentary from Jeffrey Simpson this morning;

Mr. Chrétien, a deeply conservative man, likes to think of himself as a progressive, even if he is not. The "petit gars de Shawinigan" shtick, that tired vaudeville routine of his, works best when Mr. Chrétien can point to something being done for "ordinary Canadians."

Behind the vaudeville lurks a streak of terrible pettiness and vengeance directed against those who have crossed him, Exhibit A being Mr. Martin.

This Chrétien animus toward the Finance Minister runs so deep that ministers have emerged shocked from conversations with the Prime Minister who went on and on and on about Mr. Martin's statements and tactics during the Liberal leadership race of 1990.

Three different senior ministers have recounted their astonishment at these conversations, or more properly monologues, about events that occurred more than a decade ago but still poison Mr. Chrétien's soul.

More and more I find myself comparing Chretien to Richard Nixon during the time of his slow sure decline. A man who nurses his grudges, a man who seems to fear the thought of losing power more than anything else, a fighter, a brawler, etc... etc...

This week we even got the word about Chretien compiling 'lists' of un-cooperative backbenchers. Fans of Richard Nixon will recognize the pattern.

2002-05-03T18:52:00.000-04:00

Toronto penalty to # 16, Darcy Tucker.

Two Minutes for Charging

2002-05-03T10:40:00.000-04:00

An interesting commentary on the Israeli refusal to allow a UN 'fact-finding' mission in Jenin. It's very hard to argue with the quite logical question ' what is Israel trying to hide'? Perhaps a better question is: 'what is the UN trying to find'?

This is the problem with the fact-finding mission over which Israel, the United Nations, the United States, and Arab governments are now quarreling. The mission's stated premise is that it can settle "the facts" about Jenin. But the mission has failed to get off the ground precisely because that premise is false. Israel and its critics can't agree which facts to find. The mystery of the Jenin investigation—namely, why a country with nothing to hide would resist a search for truth—dissolves when you realize how much of the battle for public opinion takes place not between truth and falsehood, but between one truth and another. To control the answer, you must control the question. That's the game Israel is playing-and its opponent, the United Nations, is winning.

2002-05-03T10:17:00.000-04:00

Canada salutes you, Tie Domi.

In years past, anyone who described Tie Domi as a skilled hockey player would have been jeered and derided as an idiot. And rightly so... The only possible way to make Domi look good as a hockey player is to surround him with slack-jawed, cementheads who are even less disciplined, less focused, and less capable of playing the game. Thankfully, the Maple Leafs think so highly of Domi that they have gone ahead and done that. Tie Domi, the goon who grew by staying the same.

2002-05-02T12:40:00.000-04:00

Denis Coderre... What the hell are we going to do with this bonehead?

There are all kinds of comments in the news about Denis Coderre and his comparing the Alliance to a "Le Pen franchise." An editorial in the Post claims that this idiotic smear was not the result of high emotions or hyperbole... He planned to say it and he refuses to back away from it... Here's the exact context in which he used it...

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary--Nose Hill, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister can huff and puff all he wants but the fact of the matter is that the former chief of strategic planning for CSIS, the former director of Canada's immigration system and the auditor general have all been saying that Canada's refugee system is a problem as far as security is concerned and it is rife with abuse.

The auditor general says that there is inadequate training for frontline officers and that airlines are not made to return passengers arriving with no documents. The government has ignored all these warnings--

Hon. Denis Coderre (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to congratulate my colleague for her new appointment as the critic for immigration. I hope she sees that as a promotion and not as a demotion. However I would say that she needs more briefings.

When we consider every refugee or immigrant as a terrorist, it is not the case. Maybe now Le Pen has a franchise in Canada.

So that's the play... wait for someone in the Alliance to object to an immigration policy that simply screams out for criticism and then call them a 'racist' without the slightest pretence that the slur has anything to do with the question. I swear, if I could find a single Canadian who'd admit to voting Liberal, I would wrestle him to the ground and demand an explanation of this nauseating government. What a slimebucket individual is Mr. Coderre and what a slimebucket government bred him...

2002-05-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

I'm back after a long, unplanned hiatus. Work got workier, taxes got more taxing and the playoffs took care of my evening playtime. How about them Sens! WHOO HOOO! How about them HABS! WHOO HOOO! How about those evil clowns in Blue? BOOO BOOO!

Ottawa fans will be quite happy to see Toronto go down to defeat (in 5 games) but we really would have enjoyed watching the amazing disappearing 10 million dollar man (Alexei Cashin) do his amazing vanishing act again. Eh! It would have been a tainted victory in any case since Toronto fans could rightly claim that they had crippled the Islanders for us before the second round.

2002-04-19T10:29:00.000-04:00

Something unusual happened in the House of Commons on Wednesday evening. Dr. Keith Martin, an Alliance MP, lifted the ceremonial mace, the symbol of the speaker's authority, over his head and said "Parliament is not a democracy anymore." He then placed the mace back on the table and walked out. The Liberals want to kick him out of Parliament 'for a very long time' as a result. It was a serious breach of decorum. Andrew Coyne of the National Post first wrote about it yesterday.

Sitting in the House of Commons watching four years of work go down the drain, feeling more than usually despondent about the irrelevancy of the ordinary MP, Keith Martin finally snapped.

Moments before, his private member's bill calling for simple possession of marijuana to be decriminalized had been killed when Liberal MPs, on the Prime Minister's strict orders, stood and voted for a "poison pill" amendment denying it second reading -- an unprecedented bit of parliamentary sleight of hand designed to sidestep the convention that private member's bills are not "whipped." His Alliance caucus mates rose to walk out in protest. The member for Esquimault-Juan de Fuca had another idea.

"I said to myself, this is your last, best chance to draw attention to this issue, so you'd better have the courage to pick that thing up."

So, it's really a simple matter of civil disobedience. In order to draw attention to what is happening in Parliament, he deliberately breaches one of the most serious protocols of the House. Good for him. I approve 100%.

This mornings Post has two versions of the events, Keith Martin's version and Ralph Goodale's version. Mr. Goodale is the Liberal House Leader and the very fact that he attempts to justify the government's actions is testimony to the effectiveness of Martin's tactic. The Liberals prefer to do their back-stabbing and knee-capping quietly and discreetly in the backrooms of Parliament Hill, in the dull, plodding committees where they are protected from public scrutiny by the sheer mind-numbing drudgery of their activity. That way they can quite effectively stifle any hint of independent thinking. Even when they are faced with tiny backbench revolts they can very quickly put down the revolution. Remember that Finance Committee stuff I was on about a couple of weeks ago? It's the same damn thing... If the devil is in the details then Committees are the seven circles of Liberal Hell. Well Martin's actions have drawn this thing into the light of day and I say that's a good thing.

Now the substance of what happened is pretty straightforward. The convention in the House is that private member's bills are 'free votes,' not subject to being 'whipped' by the government. Very, very few private member's bills ever make it to a vote - the government doesn't like them. Theoretically speaking, private member's bills are a chance for ordinary MP's to introduce and promote legislation on their own initiative. Practically speaking, they are an illusion, a mirage for the backbencher and the committed opposition MP designed to give a sense of faint hope. Wednesday, the government saw an opposition Member approaching the mirage and they had to stomp him. Nothing personal, the Liberals simply don't want private members (let alone opposition members) getting anywhere close to the levers of power. It's the principle of the thing.
"Sure you did everything according to the rules, sure you jumped through all the hoops, sure you won the lottery fair and square, but you didn't really expect that we would let you succeed? If the rules allowed you to succeed, then the rules are flawed and we are changing them effective immediately."

So here's the Liberal justification. It was written by the hacks in the PMO, no doubt, but it bears the signature of Ralph Goodale and it promises 'the other side of the story.' I'm going to go through the whole damn thing...

Mr. Coyne suggested the Member of Parliament was so overwrought when a motion about his bill was amended that, in a fit of emotion, he seized the Mace from its place in the House of Commons and brandished it about while he made a little speech -- all just to highlight his personal grievance.

First off, it was not a 'personal' grievance, it's a grievance that has been expressed over and over and over again by thousands of people including many Liberal backbenchers. Jeffery Simpson wrote an entire book about the lack of democracy in Canada. It is the endless refrain of anyone who is not personally compromised by the PMO. Secondly, the 'overwrought' and 'fit of emotion' descriptors are inaccurate, as you know. It's obvious that Goodale would rather discuss Martin's specific actions rather than the symbolism of what he did.

There is no doubt that this was a serious and premeditated violation of Parliamentary rules. Mr. Martin, Mr. Coyne and other various apologists readily admit that. What's at issue is whether Mr. Martin's grievance justified his publicity stunt. Was there substance behind the show?

In any democratic institution, motions are made and amended, votes are won and lost. There is nothing untoward about Mr. Martin's motion being subject to an amendment. Put the shoe on the other foot. Why is it OK for any Opposition MP to offer an amendment to any bill, but it's not OK for a Liberal MP to do so?

How dishonest. "It's only a little amendment, you guys propose amendments all the time and you don't see us whining about it!"
The amendment, accurately described as a "poison pill amendment" would have sent the bill to a committee where it would have been unceremoniously killed. Everyone knows it and only a complete idiot, or someone who believes he is talking to complete idiots, would offer such an insultingly stupid rationalization. If anyone doubted it before, here is proof positive that Liberals count on sheer slack-jawed stupidity among the electorate for their success.

Now, what about the substance of the amendment?

The Martin bill proposed some degree of decriminalization with respect to marijuana. The specific motion Mr. Martin moved was to give the bill approval in principle and refer it to the House Standing Committee on Justice.

Does Goodale think it does him any credit to pretend that he is unclear on the substance of the proposed bill? Mr. Goodale, are you so determined to belittle Mr. Martin's bill that you don't mind looking like a complete amateur yourself? Don't you think you should have made some effort to inform yourself before submitting your justifications to a national newspaper?

The amendment presented by a Liberal MP suggested that the subject matter of the bill ought to be referred instead to the Special Parliamentary Committee on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs. This is surely not unreasonable -- not an assault upon democracy as Mr. Coyne and others suggest.

It is indeed. Your slippery little amendment would deny the bill it's 'approval in principle' and end the matter.

The Special Committee on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs already exists. It has been duly authorized by the House to examine issues like those raised in Mr. Martin's bill. It was created on the suggestion of the Alliance Opposition. It's vice-chair is an Alliance MP (Randy White). It has an approved budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it is already hard at work -- within a framework and a mandate given by Parliament to ensure full examination and consultation about all dimensions of the non-medical use of drugs.

This is exactly why I loathe the Liberals, Goodale is making the argument that the bill still had a chance to succeed because the vice-chair of the committee is an Alliance member and because the Alliance had suggested the committee in the first place. Both of these considerations are meaningless. All committee vice-chairs are opposition members and no committee is struck unless it serves the interests of the Liberal government. All committees have Liberal majorities and the government is not the least bit shy about swapping Liberal members in and out of the committees if they show any sign of acting independently. This Liberal amendment was designed to kill the bill and it did kill the bill on Wednesday evening. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise is lying. Mr. Goodale is lying.

And then, out of the blue, comes Mr. Martin with his own out-of-context, one-off proposition. He wants it dealt with all on its own, right away -- his way or the doorway -- without any reference to the special committee. He must believe that he's just smarter than everybody else (inside or outside the Alliance), and he should tolerate no contrary views.

This is just pure smear... Mr. Martin's bill was the work of 4 years, done within the established framework, made votable by a Liberal dominated committee, and enjoying widespread support among all parties. There was a convention that private member's bills are free votes and if the bill had not been flawlessly researched and presented it would not have come to a vote. In order to give the appearance of honouring that convention, a convention that would not allow an enforced vote on the motion, the Liberal's introduced an amendment which killed the bill and enforced, or "whipped' the vote on the amendment.

Mr. Martin's original motion would have infringed upon the very special committee that his party requested. Furthermore, if his motion had been adopted, the House could have faced the contradiction of different committees moving in conflicting directions on the same topic.

What a conundrum! If Mr. Martin's bill had succeeded then simple possession of marijuana would have been decriminalized, not legalized, but reclassified as a misdemeanor offence. How this would have hindered the work of another committee is a complete mystery.

The amendment by a Liberal MP -- which was adopted and which triggered the Martin outburst -- actually salvaged the situation. It did not kill the subject matter. Instead, it provided for a rational, thoughtful analysis in a comprehensive and coherent policy framework by an existing and competent group of parliamentarians who are due to report to the House within a specified time-line later this year.

Just more bafflegap... the amendment was the end of the matter.

Before getting all lathered up in such a state of high dudgeon -- as Messrs. Martin, Coyne and some others have done -- it might be useful to do two things. First, don't just mindlessly mouth convenient allegations which may fit your conspiracy theories but have no basis in reality. Second, examine the substance of "the other side of the story" for its own merit, without assuming there is none.

Well, Mr. Goodale, I took your advice to examine the substance of your side of the story. There is no substance, it is a dishonest display of insults and false rationalizations. Shame on you all. Politicians have never enjoyed a high level of public respect but you Liberals are setting newer and lower standards with every passing week.

2002-04-19T08:57:00.000-04:00

The conflicting versions about what happened in Jenin still continue to come in. I don't have a lot of comments on that; the versions are just too far apart and I'm sure the truth will emerge eventually. I'm pre-disposed to believe Israel's version of events but everyone agrees that not all the facts are available yet.

The thing that has struck me about these news reports is the continued use of 'camps' in describing these Palestinian towns. Since when do multi-storey apartment blocks with electricity and plumbing become 'camps?' It just goes to show the power of words to shape our perceptions.

2002-04-19T08:27:00.000-04:00

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

An op/ed piece in today's Globe & Mail was signed by the following luminaries;

WARREN ALLMAND, MARGARET ATWOOD, PIERRE BERTON, KEITH BRANSCOMBE, ED BROADBENT, HARRY BRUCE, STEVIE CAMERON, DAVID CAMERON, SILVER DONALD CAMERON, GERRY CAPLAN, MATTHEW COON COME, KEN DANBY, MOHAMED ELMASRY, GEORGES ERASMUS, FIL FRASER, KEN GEORGETTI, GRAEME GIBSON, JACK GRANATSTEIN, TOM KENT, STEPHEN KIMBER, NAOMI KLEIN, MICHELE LANDSBERG, MARGARET LYONS, FLORA MACDONALD, ROBERT MACNEIL, WILLIAM MARSDEN, STEWART MCINNES, JOHN MEISEL, JOHN MILLER, RAYMOND MORIYAMA, GRAND CHIEF TED MOSES, FARLEY MOWAT, HOWARD PAWLEY, JOHN POLANYI, ENN RAUDSEPP, JUDY REBICK, ABRAHAM ROTSTEIN, CLAYTON RUBY, PETER RUSSELL, CLAUDE RYAN, FLORIAN SAUVAGEAU, JOHN SEWELL, PADDY SHERMAN, DENIS SMITH, HAMILTON SOUTHAM, WILSON SOUTHAM, KEITH SPICER, GILLIAN STEWARD, DAVID SUZUKI, CHARLES TAYLOR, JANE URQUHART, PATRICK WATSON, RONALD WRIGHT

They are concerned about the excessive media concentration in Canada. Well, I don't care. I'm still opposed to CanWest's editorial policy and I'm not responsible for every crackpot who agrees with me.

... And I'm not defensive about it!

... Shut UP!

2002-04-18T09:08:00.000-04:00

Stephen Harper is gradually increasing his visibility and I'm pleased to see that.

Stephen Harper, the Canadian Alliance leader, made his first major foray into foreign policy yesterday, urging the Liberal government to ban all charitable fundraising for the political wing of Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terrorist group.

Bill Graham is standing firmly behind Hezbollah

Unless Canada is provided with solid evidence, the government assumes money Hezbollah raises in Canada goes toward its humanitarian efforts in Lebanon and not terrorism in Palestinian-controlled territories, [Graham] said.

Remember when John Manley had his brief moment of fame as a Liberal with integrity? Trust me, it's true. There was a very brief period when Manley made a series of sensible and principled statements. During that brief period, Manley made a comment in the House about Hezbollah.

Hon. John Manley (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Crown Corporations, Lib.): Many weeks ago Hamas and Hezbollah were listed as terrorist organizations by the Government of Canadian.
Feb. 5th, 2002

2002-04-18T08:38:00.000-04:00

Svend Robinson has been fired as NDP foreign affairs critic. Stand by for the self-righteous blow-up from Svend. It will come very soon, I expect.

Update: Sure enough, Svend has come through with flying colours. The CBC has 10 full minutes of video on Svend's statement and that's only because they cut away when he switched over to French... What a flipping windbag.

Among the highlights...

Svend starts right into the Anti-Semite straw man saying that some people, who he declines to name, have suggested that he has been acting out of anti-Semitism. Now, I don't claim to be infallible, but I do follow the news fairly closely and I am not aware of a single instance of anyone in the media, anyone in political circles, even anyone in blogland, who has suggested anti-Semitism as Robinson's motive. It seems to be universally accepted that the man is simply an idiot.

The CBC gives him quite a sympathetic write-up (there's a surprise, eh?)

They quote him;

"What happened in Jenin is a humanitarian disaster," he said. "There must be a full inquiry to determine precisely what has taken place in Jenin. It appears that there was a massacre in Jenin at the hands of Israeli defense forces. And if that's happened, that is a war crime."

Sounds pretty balanced doesn't it? Then the CBC tells us, again, that 79% of Canadians support neither side in the middle east conflict as if that were some kind of vindication of Robinson.

The CBC failed to quote Robinson when, during the same speech, he referred repeatedly to "... the massacre in Jenin."
Why would the CBC choose to quote Robinson's most moderate passages and ignore his most inflammatory remarks?

2002-04-18T08:27:00.000-04:00

Quote of the Day

"We're not hiding surpluses, because you know about it, eh?"
Treasury Board president Lucienne Robillard.

2002-04-18T08:16:00.000-04:00

Canadian troops were killed in a training exercise in Afghanistan yesterday. Four died and eight others sustained serious injuries. A terrible accident and a horrible loss. Condolences to the families.

2002-04-17T08:28:00.000-04:00

More Plane Facts

Don Boudria changed his story about where the extra $25 million went yesterday...

Here's Don on Monday:
The two planes are $38.2 million each. That is $76.4 million plus the extra parts, a one year process that is normal in any acquisition of this kind, plus pilot training, plus other associated costs, plus taxes. The total is $101 million.

That is the way it is. It is mathematics.

Here's Don on Tuesday:
In addition to the purchase of the plane, and the hon. member asked about that yesterday, there is equipment, such as communications hardware, electronic equipment, flight data recorder, monitors, security equipment, communications equipment, provisioning of parts, ground support equipment, installation of security and of course pilot training. All those things are there.

Art Eggleton doesn't want to talk about it. Presumably, Eggleton was against the purchase. But he is only the Minister of Defence so he has to accept that his opinion doesn't count for much.

Defence Minister Art Eggleton refused to say yesterday whether he supported the government's decision last month to buy two new Challenger executive jets for the Canadian Forces.

Meanwhile, defence officials disclosed that it will cost more than $512,000 to train each of the 16 military pilots who will fly the VIP jets.

New Democrat Bev Desjarlais seemed taken aback when she was told that the training cost for 16 pilots adds $8.2-million, particularly since at least some of the pilots will already have experience on the older Challengers. She wondered whether the pilot training costs are "from birth."

Good one, Bev. I think the training thing is quite telling. If we recall the original excuse for why the contract was not tendered, as Treasury Board rules require, it was that Pilots were already trained to fly these aircraft.

The contract was awarded to Bombardier without a competitive tendering process because the government wanted the new aircraft to be compatible with 412 Squadron's fleet of six Challengers. Also, there will be no need to train the pilots on a different type of aircraft.

In our next installment we look at the PM's statement that 'the American's just bought 20 jets for $2.4 Billion.' Is it relevant? Is it true?

2002-04-16T09:11:00.000-04:00

"D'Plane, Boss, D'Plane"

Please forgive me, I just can't seem to resist those bad visual puns. They are one of the reasons I love the net.

I did want to talk about these damn planes for a couple of minutes.

The PMO has purchased two new Challenger jets from Bombardier for $101,000,000.
They announced this untendered purchase late in the day on March 28th, just prior to the Easter weekend, just prior to the end of the fiscal year, against the advice of three gov't departments. The entire process took ten days and broke a number of standard acquisition procedures. There was a bit of a rush because someone discovered this unspent money in the defence budget and, if the money had not been spent on something, it would have gone to pay down the accumulated national debt of $547,400,000,000. Look at the size of that debt! $101,000,000 is nothing but a drop in the bucket, why bother making such a piddly little payment against such an incredibly large debt when you can buy yourself something as cool as two new Challenger jets?

Besides, if budgeted money is not spent by the end of the fiscal year, then the next years budget will actually be reduced. That's the way your government operates and that's why you always see this mad scramble to spend like a drunken sailor just prior to the end of every fiscal year. Nobody wants to see their budget shrink and spending the money is the only way to ensure that you get more money the next year. Which raises another question; the PM has promised to repay the $101,000,000 taken from the defence budget; it addresses the 'optics' of having our PM jetting around in new zoom-zooms while our soldiers line up at food banks and dab Home Depot paint on their green uniforms. So if the PMO actually borrowed the money from the Defence budget then the money wasn't actually spent, was it? It was loaned. Doesn't this set a troubling precedent? Following this lead, various departments could easily start transferring unspent funds back and forth, and to and fro, and all budgets would rise like boats on the tide, forever and ever, amen.

I wish I was better at finance, I've always heard that the government plays pretty fast and loose with the normal accounting principles, but this is the first time I've see a loan accounted as an expenditure.

Speaking of fast & loose... Don Boudria, the man who makes weasels look respectable, could not contain his charming personality when an opposition member said that he was quoted a price of $77,000,000 from an aircraft broker for those particular jets. Boudria leapt to his feet to proclaim, with the pride of the terminally inane, "We only paid $76,400,000." He looked and sounded exactly like a particularly obnoxious child snatching candy away from a smaller child. If there were prizes for pettiness, Boudria would win the smallest, cheapest one. What a maroon. Anyway, Boudria went on to explain that the $24,600,000 difference between the announced price and the actual price, was made up of "parts, training, taxes, and other infrastructure."

"The total is $101-[million]. It's called mathematics," Mr. Boudria told the House.

Let's look a little closer. I spoke to a lady at Public Works yesterday, I had called to ask why the government would be paying taxes to itself. She 'wasn't sure' that taxes were actually part of the equation. I'm not sure either. I've tried to find out but that has been a complete waste of time.

Remind me to do a rant on the complete incomprehensibility of the gov't information available online someday. If you want an example of a horrible website - go here Remember all the excitement when the web was first emerging? "Hyperlinks will allow instant access to information, linked references that will allow you to skim a document or get right into the nuts and bolts of it, it'll be entirely up to the reader. Customize your information!!!" The folks at Treasury Board still haven't heard about that. This lengthy document - the purchasing policy of your government - contains at least a dozen references to other documents in the first paragraph alone, yet none of those documents are hyperlinked. The document probably runs into the 100's of paragraphs and there are probably 1000's of cross-references between sections and documents. You know how many links there are? One. One link to another website in the whole bloody thing. What's the point of putting the damn thing online? Oopps! I've gone ahead and done my rant now. Don't bother to remind me later.

2002-04-15T17:03:00.000-04:00

I was looking through my archives for something else when I came across this prediction from March 17th about Bill Graham. I'd say that things have shaken out pretty much as I predicted.

While I'm on the topic of Mr. Graham, I watched the pompous twit lecturing the House again today. This time it was a passionate defence of the 'social' and 'humanitarian' aspects of Hezbollah. Little did I know that Hezbollah, despite it's more publicized terrorist activities, has a ladies auxiliary that prepares hot meals for shut-ins and knits little toques for preemies - (40% of all body-heat escapes through the top of the head, toques for premature babies save lives).

Anyway, Mr. Graham was faced with some frightfully rude questions in the House of Commons because some of those ruffians in the Opposition parties can't understand the subtle differences between a terrorist organization (which we would NEVER support) and a humanitarian/social/charitable organization (which we support unreservedly). These distasteful and ill-informed rogues on the opposition benches are so gauche that they confuse these two purposes - which can not fairly be described as even remotely similar - simply because both functions are carried out under the single name of Hezbollah. I swear these people have no concept of nuance at all.

Graham made it very clear that any money raised in Canada for the Hezbollah organization is absolutely, positively not allowed to be used to fund terrorism. It sounds like he really is putting his foot down quite forcefully on this matter. In another delightful twist, Mr. Graham challenged those who questioned the integrity of the Hezbollah organization to either prove duplicity on the part of the good people of Hezbollah or refrain from further comment. I swear, that Mr. Graham is such a wit!

Sure they fund and train terrorists - and we strongly disapprove of that, let's be very clear - but to suggest that they lie about the purposes of their fundraising here in Canada?!?!?! Well, that's just uncivil. A person who would even raise such a question is more to be pitied than reproached.

2002-04-15T08:33:00.000-04:00

David Janes writes about the latest flag flap and says that he came up with a better headline than me. I have to agree.

2002-04-15T08:25:00.000-04:00

Rick Glasel writes;

The Winnipeg Free Press has decided to tackle Western Canadian Issues on a permanent basis. The series is available online for free. It started well enough, with columns by Preston Manning and Doug Cuthand, but both efforts were on the tame side, and careful not to say very much. I don't think Winnipeg has been able to speak for the West since 1929, so I find the Free Press's actions a little puzzling. Winnipeg is almost exactly at the geographic centre of Canada, and it sits at the far eastern edge of the Prairies. Politically, the city is socialist on a local level, pragmatically Liberal on a federal level, and determines the ruling party provincially. Nonetheless, Manning's little history lesson in the April 11th Free Press brought back a memory for me.

Just over twenty years ago I attended a "Free The West" rally at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton. Between 1100 and 1500 raving loonies sat in the theatre seats and vented against Trudeau, bilingualism, Central Canada and the economic collapse of Alberta. In the lobby you could buy novelty Alberta passports and bumper stickers that said "The West needs Quebec like a fish needs a bicycle." Strangers would come up to you and whisper about the latest rumour of a bounty on Trudeau's head, paid for some anonymous oilmen. The rumours started at $250,000 and the last one I heard was "close to a million." One burly, bearded man, later identified in the newspaper as a dentist from Calgary, did nothing but bellow, shake and writhe for at least 15 minutes non-stop. The late Nick Taylor, ex-oilman and provincial Liberal leader, got on stage and was immediately drowned out by screams, boos and vague death threats. I swear I'm not making any of this up.

What brought this hysteria on was the oil boom and bust. By November 1981, there was so much money going into the Alberta Heritage Trust Fund, the feds were making noises about taking away the provinces' right to their natural resources for the "greater good of the nation." Several years of artificially low oil prices in Canada had already diverted tens of billions of dollars of potential revenue from the Alberta economy, and now Trudeau wanted oil royalties for the federal treasury. Peter Lougheed, a politician I still have a lot of respect for, went to Ottawa to strike a deal to protect provincial rights by distributing the wealth, and in a photo op that will go down in infamy in the office towers of Calgary, Trudeau and Lougheed raised glasses of champagne to toast the National Energy Plan. Only weeks later, the price of oil started to drop, the dreamed of royalties disappeared, and within a year, unemployment in Alberta topped 10%, housing prices dropped as much as 30%, and the Saudi Arabia of the North was in shock.

There was another rally held after the one I attended, but it only drew a few hundred people, and didn't have the same raw fury. However, some time later, a separatist was elected to the Alberta Legislature, the Western Canada Concept party held conventions and made a bit of a splash before they drained away, and a Calgary mayor told Eastern bums to go home. Eventually, Mulroney became PM, the NEP was repealed, and the Alberta economy recovered. But just like Quebecers, Albertans don't forget. There is a collective memory in both of these provinces about how the rest of the country screwed them, and don't try to convince them otherwise. Preston Manning had the vision to turn the paranoia around, get the kind of people who went bananas twenty years ago to believe they could bring about real change within the framework of a federal system of government. These people had earlier hoped that a Conservative federal government would be different, but when Mulroney ignored the West to appease Quebec nationalists who eventually betrayed him anyway, all four Western provinces were ready to march to a new beat. Thus begat the Reform Party. In Manning's column, he writes about "big" and "little" Westerners. I fear that all the "big" Westerners have abandoned the Canadian Alliance. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the "little" Westerners.

Thanks Rick.

2002-04-12T10:03:00.000-04:00

Globe & Mail Truth Watch

Two quick observations this morning.

The Globe headlines a story like this; Alliance MP defends antigay remark

I watched the interview that this story is based on... the headline is simply untrue. John Reynolds did not defend any antigay remarks, he said that he hadn't heard any anti-gay remarks and that there had been no complaint about anti-gay remarks in the House of Commons. The Globe's own story does not back up the headline;

Canadian Alliance interim leader John Reynolds defended fellow Alliance MP Cheryl Gallant for antigay comments she made in the House of Commons this week, saying they were "not an issue."

"I didn't hear it. If the Speaker doesn't hear it, and nobody complains about it, it doesn't happen. There's no issue in this," Mr. Reynolds told reporters Thursday outside the House of Commons.

The remark that Gallant allegedly made was " Ask your boyfriend." The comment was reportedly directed at Bill Graham. There is nothing in Hansard and Mr. Graham has not mentioned it. Svend Robinson, of course, is blowing a gasket (he had one gasket left after his visit to the Middle East.) So what's the story? How does a denial of the remarks (which is what Reynolds offered) morph into a defence of the remarks? The rest of the story is a boilerplate smear of the intolerant Alliance and then it changes into a puff piece for Alan Rock. Apparently a sense of focus is no longer required to write for Canada's national newspaper. Either that or they were trying to cover all the bases on the Homosexuality front in a single piece. Tip to the Globe; if you have to choose between efficiency and coherence - go with coherence. Newsprint can't be that expensive.

You have to wonder what editorial decisions went into this story. "Hey Allison! Gimme 12 inches on the Boyfriend thing. Oh! and stick in this other thing about the Prom Queen. It'll be a sort-of 'queer catchall piece.' Oh! Don't forget to mention any other confirmed or alleged homosexuals on Parliament Hill. Just stick that in at the end under some pretence or another. And for god sakes don't forget to stress how homophobic the Alliance is. Don't be shy about a misleading headline if you think it'll help our readers feel superior."

Okay so that was not quite as quick a hit as I had intended...

This one will be brief.

In a story about Chretiens vanity planes is the following line;

The four Challengers now in use are 19 years old and have reportedly experienced serious problems in the past year.

My question, what problems? where are the reports? who is claiming that there have been serious problems?

This is the kind of assertion that simply screams out for some support but none is offered. Why?

2002-04-12T08:57:00.000-04:00

Where will Jean Carle turn up next?

Here's a fun little recap of the career of Jean Carle up to this point. Seems like Mr. Carle is not exactly a million laughs. I'm going to head over to Frank magazine and see if there is any vicious gossip being disseminated.

2002-04-11T11:58:00.000-04:00

Does anybody else miss Richard Nixon?

Here's a nostalgic little quiz for you.

2002-04-11T09:50:00.000-04:00

Pennywise and Poundstupid

A Canadian delegation, on an official tour of Africa, went to the village of Garamoye yesterday to draw the first drops of water from one of the new pumps.

Canadian and Ethiopian officials had prepared a colourful inauguration, featuring village children, elders and dignitaries. Dozens of little paper Canadian flags were given to children to wave for the cameras.

Everything was in place when the Canadian delegation of MPs and other senior federal officials arrived. The children had formed two ceremonial rows leading to the main stage, singing and waving their Maple Leaves.

But an hour later, after the well was unveiled and the dignitaries were gone, Canadian embassy officials took back the flags, one by one. They were needed for another event with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien today in Addis Ababa.

Apparently Jean has been stung by recent criticisms of his free-spending ways. Think of the amount of callousness involved here; you give these children, some of the most impoverished in the world, some small, colourful souvenir of an event that is very likely the most exotic thing they have ever experienced. You line them all up in a ceremony that smacks of exploitation and racism, snap a few photos for Chretien's retirement stroke-book, and then pluck back the worthless trinkets from the rubes so that you can use them again for your next hit.

It's a small thing, a pathetically small thing, but it says so much about the attitude of Chretien and his culture. Everyone and everything is just a prop, nothing exists except for your convenience, right and wrong do not exist - there's only good optics and bad optics.

Scum - they are scum.

2002-04-11T09:27:00.000-04:00

When the Laughter Ends...

Jean Carle, a former aide to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, is leaving his job as executive vice-president of the Just For Laughs entertainment company in Montreal. A news release from the company said Mr. Carle, a former director of operations for Mr. Chrétien and onetime senior vice-president of the Business Development Bank of Canada, was leaving for personal reasons.

2002-04-11T09:08:00.000-04:00

The National Post points out the folly of speaking for 'the whole world.'

2002-04-11T08:49:00.000-04:00

Paul Martin, while insisting that there is no conflict of interest, is returning a $25,000 cheque to Trans-Alta.
Howard Wilson, the Prime Minister's ethics counsellor, said Wednesday that Mr. Martin's fundraiser, Jim Palmer, had called to advise him that he is in the process of returning the cheque to Calgary-based TransAlta Corp.

Tip to Paul Martin. If you want to be the grand pooh-bah you have to learn the lessons of your master Jean Chretien.

Jean Chretien: "You never, ever, ever, admit there is a problem. Never back down, never apologize, never explain. The Canadian people are sheep who will gladly eat mud but only as long as you never waver in your insistence that the mud is chocolate. It's obvious that Martin still doesn't understand the nature of sheep. It's not that sheep can't think it's just that they would rather not if they can help it. That's why it is always a mistake to make a concession to appearances, you are forcing the sheep to think.

You can lie to sheep until your very teeth rot from exposure to the toxins you spew and they will lap it up quietly and ask you for more. But if you change your story then you are forcing the sheep to think, they really hate that. They may not stampede and trample you (they are sheep after all) but they may decide to follow some other Shepard and then you'll be a leader without a flock. Kinda like Joe Clark. BWAAHHAAHHAAHA!!!"

2002-04-10T14:07:00.000-04:00

I'm listening to talk radio while I work this afternoon. It's a bad habit that I've fallen into... This item won't mean much to anyone outside of the Ottawa area but I have to write it down before I bite my own tongue. Michael Harris, the afternoon host on CFRA, is an apologist for terrorists and a fool to boot. The other day I heard him quote approvingly from an opinion piece by Pat Buchanan saying, 'this man is no anti-Semite.' Excuse me Michael? Are you talking about the same Pat Buchanan who called Capitol Hill "Israeli-occupied territory?" The Pat Buchanan who has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and questioned the veracity of the Holocaust?

Anyway, that's not what's got me ticked off today. Every time that people make a point in favour of Israel's actions in the current conflict Harris starts in with his fuzzifying, obfuscating crap about how it is 'unproductive' to talk about historical grievances, how we should 'forget sequencing' and 'turn the page.' He claims that death threats against Lowell Green, another talk-show host, are the product of 'frustration,' and '... not just hatred.' Over and over and over again he harps on the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians (no interest in turning that page, eh Michael?) and excuses suicide bombings with cries of 'desperation, hopelessness and despair.' All Israeli violence is evil and abhorrent, all Palestinian violence is 'evil but...'

I swear this guy is pissing me off.

2002-04-10T10:43:00.000-04:00

David Artemiw writes about the NDP's skewed worldview. David Janes & Damian have also commented on this item. The article that sparked this gang-debunking reports that Alexa McDonough wants to impose sanctions against Israel and calls Israeli military action 'terrorism'

NDP Leader Alexa McDonough equated Israeli military policy with terrorism Tuesday, while foreign affairs critic Svend Robinson went even further, accusing Israeli troops of torture and murder in their operations in Palestinian territory.

Poor Bill Blaikie. You have to wonder how the guy manages to contain his embarrassment sometimes. It' must be tough for a principled leftist to be smeared by association with the likes of McDonough and Robinson. Blaikie's comments during the emergency debate last night were a small gem of common sense in a sea of utter foolishness. It is hard to excerpt from it because it is all so sensible.

Israelis have a right to ask that this history of trying to eliminate them be repudiated. If they are going to give up land which they acquired in wars of self-defence, the land in the West Bank and Gaza that we refer to as the occupied territories and much of which was already ceded in recent years from various aspects of the peace process, then they have a right to ask that there be zero tolerance for rejection of Israel's right to exist and zero tolerance for the promotion of hatred against Israel and against Jews.

It cannot be a question of land for false peace or tactical or temporary peace. It has to be a question of real peace being offered for the return of land by a people who have a right to fear the consequences of returning to pre-1967 boundaries without a peace in which they can have confidence.

The Palestinian people are victims also. They are victims of the original miscalculation by the Arab world when Israel was created, especially those who left what was Israel on the basis that they would soon return after the elimination of Israel. Those who are refugees because of what happened at that time and who have lived as refugees for generations now have a right to be depressed, distraught and distressed about the situation. I can try to understand their feelings toward Israel which appears to be the immediate cause of their miserable historical fate.

I urge people to read the whole speech, there are points that can be argued but it seems a pretty fair encapsulation of the situation.

In stark contrast we have Svend Robinson, Misery Leech, and his considered opinions

I have been accused of taking sides in this tragic dispute. I want to say yes, I plead guilty. I have taken sides. I take the side of life over death. I take the side of peace over war. I take the side of the oppressed over the oppressor. I take the side of justice over dehumanization and tyranny.

A couple of other speechs that stood out from the crowd;

Stock Day did pretty well in his new role as Foreign Affairs Critic.

From the comfort of North America we can criticize the Israeli response and wish that it had been more restrained or that Israel had waited longer for diplomatic and political solutions, but we must consider the incredible pressure that the nation of Israel is under from these brutal, suicidal terrorist attacks on innocent civilians.

It is interesting to note that at this very moment Canadian soldiers are in the field helping to root out the terrorist cells of al-Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan. We are present in that conflict thousands of miles from here in response to other terrorist suicide bombings, in response to the deliberate crashing of airplanes into the world trade towers and into the Pentagon, attacks in which thousands of civilians, including Canadians, were murdered.

Therefore some are asking a difficult question. They are asking the following. If the events of September 11 justify Canadian, American, British and other allied nations invading a country thousands of miles away to root out terrorists, how are the Israelis supposed to respond to these ongoing murderous terrorist threats right on their borders, a few scant miles from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?

Reading over the debates I have to admit that I am often impressed with the honesty and thoughtfulness of many of our MP's (glaring exceptions noted.)
What a bloody shame that the PMO won't allow them to govern the country.

2002-04-09T22:37:00.000-04:00

Acceptable Losses

My Sens tried to stage a rally in the third period tonight but the fell to the Canadiens. That's okay. Saku Koivu, cancer survivor and team captain, made his amazing comeback tonight and Montreal's win clinched them a play-off spot. The timing could not be better.

2002-04-09T22:12:00.000-04:00

Hey 10,000 Hits!!!

I was so busy getting together the prize package that I forgot to announce the contest. Sometime around 10 a.m. EST today, this Fresh Hell had it's 10,000th visit. Thanks very much for dropping in, whoever you were. I'm very, very sorry about the prize package, I really have to get more organized.

I had arranged a weekend getaway prize package for my 10,000th visitor but the event just kind of snuck up on me. It was a great package too. An All-expenses trip to the Renfrew Quality Inn from anywhere in Canada or the U.S. Two nights in the Mayor's suite with free continental breakfast in the Tiki Taki Hawaiian Luau Lounge. One liter of this year's vintage maple syrup. His n' Hers matching Rooots Brand O'lympik** Souvenir Track Suits. A selection of edible undergarments from Rude Rudy's Shack o' Love. A $30.00 gift certificate from the Cobden Bowling & Country Club and (C$)112.00 in spending money.

** Not affiliated with Roots Canada Inc. under penalty of law.

I guess I'll have to arrange something for my 20,000th visit. I promise to get my shit together and organize the thing properly next time.

Thanks to everyone who's been dropping in. I do appreciate the traffic and the mail.

2002-04-09T21:42:00.000-04:00

Not surprised but saddened a little...

Put those pipedreams away. The right will stay divided.

Most of the pundits seem to agree that the dissidents will jump the fence back to Team Harper and poor old Joe (why can I not help but sympathize with that sad old goat?) is standing in the parking lot at 2 a.m. watching his prom date drive off in a flashy sportscar. He sighs in his long-suffering way, turns to his reliable old Rambler, and finds he's locked himself out again.

2002-04-08T15:25:00.000-04:00

An amusing little story from the Hill Times.

So, just how hated is Brian Tobin in his native province?

Very much so, judging from the results of a contest put on by St. John's CBC Radio One which asked listeners last month to come up with possible titles for Captain Canada's upcoming memoirs.

Causing the radio's switchboard to light up like the First of July, up to 160 irate Newfs called in to give their two-cents. All painted the former industry minister as a self-centred, egomaniac who never did much of anything good for his home province.

"Not one of [the responses] was complimentary," said one of the producers of The Morning Show, the program which aired the results on March 21. "It was amazing. We've never had a response like that. Not one of them wasn't some kind of backhanded... well, backhand."

The big winner proved to be Sleazy Come, Sleazy Go, a sly reference to Tobin's decision to abandon his post as premier of Newfoundland half way through his second mandate so that he could pursue leadership aspirations in Ottawa.

Honourable mention went to Shameless and Lipservice, which placed second and third respectively.

I wonder if anyone submitted The Family Man ?

2002-04-08T11:47:00.000-04:00

A good editorial in the National Post today. I know I said I was going to get back to Canadian politics but the mind wanders where it will...

The Post apparently surveyed the Canadian political parties about their stand on the Israeli conflict and got some interesting responses.

The most perplexing and troubling answer on civilian deaths, though, may have been come from the ruling Liberals. Civilian deaths of any kind, the PMO replied, were "not justifiable." This answer impugns the morality of our own Armed Forces' involvement in the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan -- where, as in every conflict in modern history, a great many civilians have been accidentally killed. The answer is also naive as a matter of law: According to international conventions, attackers who hide among civilians, as Palestinian gunmen do, are generally responsible should civilians be killed when their enemies counterattack.

It seems to me that far too many people simply support the underdog unthinkingly. They see the Palestinians throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails against Israel with it's tanks and gunships and they automatically conclude that Israel is in the wrong and the Palestinians are in the right. How could it be otherwise? Strength = corruption and weakness = virtue, doesn't it? The fact is that Israel is both stronger and more justified and that simply doesn't mesh with the worldview of those who 'fight the power' as some kind of fashion statement.

2002-04-08T11:08:00.000-04:00

Rick Glasel sent some comments on the Alliance and my call for the return of the DRC dissidents...

Of all the scenarios I can think of, the best for Chuck and Deb is to play this coalition gig right up to the next election. It gives the two rebels more impact and more publicity if they don't consummate the courtship until the very end. If the Alliance dies in the meantime, Chuck and Deb are off the hook with any diehard Alliance supporters in their constituencies, since they stayed out of the PC bed until there was no alternative. If Harper leads the Alliance to the Promised Land, then the two former stars will be able to rejoin the flock. If the Alliance party refuses to take them back, it's because the party still has its head stuck in its butt and they will really look like idiots if they run candidates against Strahl and Gray. Both of them have strong support in their ridings, and today's Alliance party would never be able to defeat them. Actually, if I was Deb Gray, I would be more concerned about losing to a Liberal candidate. If the Liberals take a run at any of the DRC, the individual MP's need to keep their options open, and only pick a side when it becomes obvious where the votes are.

That kind of pragmatism could get you labelled as a Liberal, Rick. Just kidding. You make a good point but I think that sitting on the fence waiting to see which way the wind is going to blow is not the kind of leadership that people expect from people like Gray and Strahl. There's a time to sit in the bush and there's a time to use your influence - I think that Gray and Strahl (and isn't it funny that I can hardly remember the names of the other dissidents?) need to commit. I thought Strahl's 'Dear Joe' letter was a silly move but an indication that he was going back to the Alliance. Apparently not. At least not yet, anyway.

The public is bored with the whole thing, right across the country. If you ignore the Alliance faithful, who are still fighting among themselves even after the leadership vote, no one is getting worked up about what's happening in the Alliance party. It's a long time until the next election, so why would anyone put their money on a horse that might not be in the race in 2004? When in doubt, wait. I'm waiting for Clark to gently push a few of Harper's hot buttons in the upcoming unite-the-right meetings, and then sit back and see how much damage Harper does to the Alliance party. Don't expect a lot of dramatic activity in the meantime. I think it's already a given that the Tories are going to concede their rule about running 301 candidates, after all, it was Joe Clark who insisted on it anyway, and the Alliance are still trying to remember what it was like when they were taken seriously by voters in the West. Hopefully we will see some opposition members grab the spotlight and do something useful with it, but if the opposition can't generate any heat, maybe the implosion of the Liberal party will set off a few fireworks.

That's a cheery thought. I'll be posting a few items about the woes of the Liberals in a couple of minutes. You sure know how to cheer a guy up. Liberal-bashing, is there anything more satisfying?

2002-04-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

I've done very limited posting in recent weeks because my main concern, Canadian political happenings, have looked pretty small and unimportant compared to what is going on in the Middle East. I've been doing a lot of reading and a little debating about the topic but I think a person could study the issue for years and still not feel qualified to comment. Besides, there are more than enough people pontificating on that topic, so I've been pretty quiet. Having said all that, it's time for me to shake off this slump and get busy...

2002-04-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

I've just been watching Marc Lalonde mop the floor with Rick Salutin on Counterspin for the last 20 minutes. What an intellectual fraud Salutin is!! Every single point he makes is promptly jammed back down his throat sideways but he is completely incapable of adjusting his thinking to account for this unfortunate circumstance. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would believe that Salutin was a product of the vast right-wing conspiracy... a composite caricature of the fuzzy-headed leftist who couldn't recognize the truth even if it served his cause. I wish that CounterSpin made transcripts available. This is highly amusing.

They have been discussing Trudeau and the War Measures Act. Salutin made the ridiculous claim that it was the War Measures Act that launched the nationalist movement in Quebec. Even an old style gentleman like Mr. Lalonde could not completely hide his contempt for such stupidity. Lalonde replied that the War Measures Act nipped domestic terrorism in the bud and could as easily be credited with constraining the entire sovereignty movement to play out in an environment free of violence.

2002-04-02T19:25:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in the Hill Times about Chretien's animosity towards Paul Martin.

The PM's fingerprints are all over the mud balls being thrown at Finance Minister Paul Martin of late. Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson, who answers directly to Mr. Chrétien and never before said boo to a Liberal, slapped Mr. Martin's wrist over tax consulting contracts awarded by Finance to Alberta lawyer Jim Palmer, who is not only a big fundraiser for the Grits, but also for Mr. Martin, the leading candidate in the unofficial race to succeed the current Prime Minister.

Need more proof? The mud pies kept coming, with leaked reports that the next target would be Mr. Martin's widely-known connection with Ottawa consulting firm Earnscliffe, which does a lot of contract work for Finance and is also home to key Martin players David Herle, Scott Reid and others.

According to my sources, the leaks came directly from Mr. Chrétien's most trusted and all-powerful adviser Eddie Goldenberg.

Does Chretien plan to stick around for another term or does he just jerk Paul Martin around for the fun of it?

2002-04-02T18:38:00.000-05:00

Jay Mckeown wrote to say...

The National Post reports today that the Liberals have decided not to field
a candidate in the Calgary by-election. The PC's have made the same
announcement.
And Ezra Levant has stepped aside for his leader.

Your rant seems to have been very effective.

It would be nice (but silly) to think that my rant played any part in the events of the past week. I am pleased that Levant managed to slam on the brakes just before driving himself and one third of his party over a cliff.

Now that Levant is (temporarily?) on ice, I think it is time that the DRC dissidents got serious about their futures. I have some sympathy for Strahl and Deb Gray who seem to be trying to keep one foot in each camp in order to bring the camps together. But the time has come to choose a side. If Clark is going to get all petulant and sulky when they leave then the problem lies with Clark. If they are still waiting to see which way the wind blows then the problem lies with them. Their Constituents, and the public at large, have been pretty patient up to this point but the time to make a decision is approaching fast. I'd suggest that they have until April 8th to make the call. I don't think anyone wants to see the dissidents still waffling when the house resumes. They still have some reserve of goodwill but they'll burn through it pretty quickly if they don't commit to somebody soon.

2002-04-02T18:13:00.000-05:00

A Massive Case of Bloggers Block has been overcome at last...

Apologies to those who have sent comments over the past week. I've been strangely tongue-tied but I think I'm ready to come out of it. Alan Cameron sent me a copy of an open letter he sent to his Liberal MP.

To Dan McTeague,

Your government's approach to the conflict in the Middle East is shameful. It dishonours the memory of every Canadian who sacrificed their lives to face down the threat of evil in the past. Appeasement didn't work then, and nothing has changed. How dare you denounce Israel's "disproportionate use of force"? To suggest that "the reoccupation of Palestinian controlled areas will only lead to further violence" is to presume that their is a civilized or governmental body controlling the Palestinian areas now. Not a valid presumption even if we are to take Arafat at his word that he is incapable of stopping the suicide attacks. What level of Israeli carnage would Canada deem sufficient in justifying an Israeli attempt to stem the flow of bombers? Given that Israel has overwhelming military superiority in the region, is it not obvious that they have already shown great restraint? If the Palestinians were the ones with the military advantage now enjoyed by Israel do you doubt that there would be no state of Israel today? Arafat lives; would the same be true of Sharon if the roles were reversed? The very existence of a Palestinian nation confirms that the Israelis hold the superior moral ground in this conflict and therefore deserve Canada's unwavering support.

I have never been politically active before. Either renounce your party's position on this conflict or consider me your political enemy. I will support opposition candidates with time and money in your next election bid.

I don't even know where to begin with the situation in the Middle East. I listen to some of the crap coming out of my radio and I question my own perceptions sometimes. I heard Bill Graham, speaking from some beach somewhere today, trying to split some sub-atomic hair over 'the international community' and I found myself hoping for some newer, hotter, sharper circle in hell for such an evil fraudulent whore. When people talk about Liberal politicians they use the word 'shameless' so often that this latest example is barely touched by the word. To think about some pompous twit, flabby and greased up on some southern beach, lecturing the people of Israel about tolerance and 'forbearance,' as if they had not personified those qualities over the past years and decades, as if they are not displaying tremendous restraint even now, it's just jarring. 'Shameless' doesn't begin to touch it and I can't even hope to express my disgust with these cowards, these evil, equivocating, scheming vultures. They plot and pose to gain some advantage while the Jews bury another generation of wives and husbands and children. Shame on all of them, shame on all of us too.

Sorry, I really shouldn't touch this topic.

2002-03-26T12:50:00.000-05:00

I wrote last week about the goings on at the Finance Committee. Just to refresh your memory, the Liberals were reduced to wholesale member swapping in order to ram through their report on the new airline tax. A bunch of the regular Liberal members had gone all wobbly, or more accurately, some had started to show signs of being vertebrates after all. So a game of musical chairs was commenced by the Liberal traffic cops and the 'proper' report was produced. At that time, three weeks after the meeting in question, the minutes were not posted. The transcript of the meeting is still not available but the minutes (finally posted) do reveal the extent of the traffic in and out of that meeting.

Members of the Committee present: Sue Barnes, Carolyn Bennett, Scott Brison, Roy Cullen, Ken Epp, Albina Guarnieri, Jason Kenney, Yvan Loubier, Shawn Murphy, Lorne Nystrom, Pauline Picard, Monte Solberg, Bryon Wilfert.

Acting Members present: Mac Harb for Maurizio Bevilacqua, John O’Reilly for Roy Cullen, Dominic LeBlanc for Nick Discepola, John O’Reilly for Sophia Leung, Tony Valeri for Gary Pillitteri, James Moore for Rahim Jaffer, Joe McGuire for Shawn Murphy, John O’Reilly for Maurizio Bevilacqua, Joe McGuire for Shawn Murphy, Larry Bagnell for Sophia Leung, Stan Dromisky for Nick Discepola, Steve Mahoney for Maurizio Bevilacqua, John O’Reilly for Shawn Murphy, Reg Alcock for Shawn Murphy, Reg Alcock for Gary Pillitteri, Mac Harb for Gary Pillitteri, Joe McGuire for Nick Discepola, Raymonde Folco for Sophia Leung, Joe Fontana for Nick Discepola, Robert Bertrand for Sophia Leung, Gérard Binet for Shawn Murphy, Jim Peterson for Carolyn Bennett, Mac Harb for Nick Discepola, André Harvey for Maurizio Bevilacqua, Tony Valeri for Gary Pillitteri, Gérard Binet for Nick Discepola, Jim Peterson for Maurizio Bevilacqua, Jim Pankiw for Scott Brison, Charlie Penson for Rahim Jaffer, Jim Peterson for Maurizio Bevilacqua, Serge Marcil for Carolyn Bennett, James Moore for Rahim Jaffer.

I wonder if they had a traffic cop.

2002-03-26T11:24:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting this space recently due to any number of reasons. But the continuing farce that's going on with Harper/Levant is driving me to distraction and a rant from me is long overdue.

Listen Up, Canadian Alliance IDIOTS

Is there no one in that gawd-forsaken organization who can recognize an ENORMOUS opportunity when it is pounding on your door, screeching through a bullhorn, "QUIT YOUR BLOODY SQUABBLING AND ANSWER THE DOOR!!!"

The voters of this country, including the voters in Ontario, are dancing around with their knees crossed and bladders bursting, saying, "please, please, please!! give us something to vote for, some tiny little sign that you people are interested in forming an opposition party instead of pointing fingers like a bunch of hyperactive Wal-Mart Greeters. Are you all so desperate for the media's attention that a mere glance will get you all performing somersaults, back flips, and back stabbings in order to get some validation seeing your names in the paper? Of course the media is going to ask you about conflicts - that's what sells - but you idiots are under no obligation to keep up the Three Stooges eye-gouging and face-slapping in order to keep them entertained.

I'm one of your Ontario supporters and I think I speak for a lot of us when I say "Grow Up or Fu*k Off." I've never seen any group more stubbornly self-destructive in my life. Get this thing settled quickly and PRIVATELY and get on with it.

2002-03-24T09:50:00.000-05:00

Spin Cycle

Mulroney the Younger, writing in the Toronto Sun today, says that the Alliance is just a regional party again;

Having been rejected by voters east of Manitoba, the Alliance will return to its grassroots -- at least temporarily.

This premise is put forth so often and so confidently that it's often accepted as true. A person could be forgiven for thinking that the Alliance was in decline in Ontario while the PC's were gaining (or at least maintaining strength). But let's go to the tale of the tape;

The Reform/Alliance party took 19.1% of the Ontario vote in 1997 and 23.6% of the Ontario vote in 2000.
The PC's took 18.8% of Ontario votes in 97 and 14.4% in 2000.

So the Alliance is in decline ? The Alliance has been 'shut out' east of Manitoba? Hell, the Alliance beat the PC's in total votes cast in Quebec in 2000! Where is the PC stronghold? The Atlantic provinces gave the PC's 9 of their 12 seats in the last election. Who's a regional party again?

2002-03-23T09:20:00.000-05:00

Sacred Cattle Crossing

According to its Web site, the federal government spends taxpayer money on cultural, sporting and municipal events in order to show that Ottawa is "active" in local communities. Unfortunately, the government is mostly inactive in nine provinces and hyperactive in one. About 78% of all sponsorship money goes to Quebec, a province that contains fewer than 25% of Canada's people.

Among Liberal MPs, the traditional excuse for Quebec boondoggles is that this is simply the way politics work in that province, and that bribery is the best way to fight off separatists. The same reasoning was recently applied by some Liberal MPs from Quebec to justify individual $100,000 slush funds they could use at their discretion, a crass exercise in political corruption at which Maurice Duplessis himself might have blushed.

Mr. Boudria did right when he called on the Auditor General. But the problem is a larger one, and costs Canadians hundreds of millions of tax dollars annually. There is no greater symptom of Liberal arrogance and institutional corruption than the fact that its officers continue to use the fisc as their own personal election fund.

2002-03-23T09:14:00.000-05:00

Ducka you head , Lollobrigida

Canadian taxpayers paid Gina Lollobrigida US$10,000 to appear with Alfonso Gagliano, the controversial former minister of public works, at an event last September in Bologna, Italy, to help sell a commemorative coin.

2002-03-21T09:25:00.000-05:00

Looks like I spoke too soon about Harper's getting into Ezra Levant's riding. Edward Greenspon says otherwise.

Mr. Levant has jammed Mr. Harper into a corner. He has already taken control of the local constituency association, won an uncontested nomination and is spending wildly on a by-election that has not been called.

At one time, Mr. Levant indicated he would step aside if Mr. Harper wanted to run in Calgary Southwest. But his supporters say he has already sunk more than $100,000 of his own money into the campaign and that Mr. Harper missed his opportunity to claim the riding for himself.

Mr. Harper's operatives are seething. Some suggest Mr. Levant won't find many friends in a Harper-led caucus if he should arrive on the scene before the new leader.

But they admit that Mr. Levant probably has them snookered: It wouldn't look good in a grassroots party for a new leader to shove aside a duly nominated candidate. In the case of the self-described Stock-o-holic, it may even appear as if the new leader is behaving vindictively.

Unless the normally combative Mr. Levant uncharacteristically withdraws to fight another day, Mr. Harper will have to find another seat. He has mused about wanting to run in his native Ontario, a sort of John Turner gesture in reverse, but only in a general election.

Trying for an Ontario riding would be a gutsy move... A high risk of embarrassment but quite a blow against the 'regional party' label if he were to take the riding. The only Ontario riding available is Windsor-West which elected Herb Gray for the last four decades. Not exactly fertile ground for an Alliance incursion, I don't think.

2002-03-21T08:50:00.000-05:00

Somewhat surprised this morning to hear that Stephen Harper won the CA leadership on the first ballot. It's not the result I was hoping for but I'll certainly be wishing Harper godspeed in rebuilding his party. I'm sure the Liberals are rubbing their hands with glee this morning. Harper's election means that the CA is off it's deathbed and the battle for conservative voters is back on. If the DRC members (Strahl, Deb Gray, et al) make the jump back to the CA, then it is Joe Clark that ends up the second place loser (Stockwell Day being number one, of course).

Ideologically, I like Harper well enough. But on the practical level, I question whether or not he has the right stuff to build a national alternative to the Liberals. Perhaps that's a logical contradiction that a lot of us fall into. After all, Day was brought in on the strength of his charisma and look what he achieved - nearly complete disaster. I wish Mr. Harper well and I'll gladly support the Alliance if they can put up a slate of credible candidates. I'm very encouraged that Harper seems to have no patience for social conservatism but I hope he has some good advisors around him that can moderate his Libertarian excesses. Also, he needs to take some concrete measures to counteract the 'firewalls' outburst after the last election.

It will be interesting to see how he is treated by the media. It strikes me that the younger members of the media are becoming increasingly Libertarian themselves and I expect that he will enjoy a fairly sympathetic press, at least initially. Perhaps Mr. Harper really is the start of a generational swing. God knows the Liberals are looking horribly old, tired, corrupt and pointless. Joe Clark is going to have an awful time bouncing out of the gate this morning but perhaps there is reason for optimism in Canada this morning after all.

Everything hinges on how Mr. Harper handles himself in the next year. First he has to get elected of course. Ezra Levant is apparently ready to step aside and let Harper run in his Calgary riding. Those elections should take place this spring/summer so Harper will presumably be on Parliament Hill, leading his party, by September. If he can avoid any boneheaded mistakes he might very well rebuild the fortunes of his party. If he does really well he might put the nail in a couple of political careers - starting with Joe Clark and finishing with Jean Chretien.

I'm ready to support Harper.