The Preston Manning Centre for Building Buildings

Covert cell phone video catches a Calgary developer homebuilder referring to buying the campaigns of development-friendly local candidates. In his speech to 150 Calgary industry nobs in November, his remarks about Preston Manning, who also attended and spoke at the meeting, appear at the 1:54 mark: 

"... keeping in mind, in order to bring Preston on board, 11 of us put up 100 thousand - so $1.1-million. So it's not like we haven't put up our money you know, and we are also going to be there to put up it again and yet we're also supporting the candidates."

Hey, those Manning Centre free marketeer courses put on for those Calgary municipal councilors don't pay for themselves, you know. 

They are run by Manning Centre Municipal Governance Project manager Dimitri Pantazopoulos, a former Republican pollster and Harper policy advisor, who was also Christy Clark's Trade and Intergovernmental Relations ADM and former principal secretary, now listed at his Manning Centre bio as one of her key advisors.  A "Dimitri" is mentioned by Cal Wenzel in the video above, asking Wenzel if anyone can beat Mayor Nenshi.

Even before seeing the vid, Mr Pantazopoulos had talking points circulated advising that Preston would be unable to respond to media questions because he was out of the country, however : 

"Incoming Manning Centre chair Chuck Strahl is prepared to respond to media as needed in Preston’s absence."

Chuck Strahl? Former BC ReformaCon MP Chuck Strahl is chair of the Manning Centre and chair of CSIS watchdog the Security Intelligence Review Committee since last June, and, along with Stockwell Day, helping Christy Clark with her BC election campaign ?

Another developer CEO at the conference said that it's : 

“up to Preston” if he needs more money beyond the $1.1 million. 

“He really appreciated getting funding. It helped to finish off the offices and other things, their training facilities.”

Ah yes, the brand new Manning Centre offices in Calgary ... home of the Manning Centre For Building Democracy Buildings. 

You know, you're really better off reading the locals on this one :
Alberta Diary and Daveberta
h/t Holly Stick
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Update : Calgary Mayor Nenshi tonight : 

" This has to do with the Manning Centre and I don't want to get into an enormous amount of detail on this but this is a challenge. I think the Canada Revenue needs to take a look at this.  

We've had the Manning Centre say over the last couple of days that the donors did not intend to enrich themselves, that they were giving the money generally to the work of the Manning Centre, but we have the donor himself saying on tape that he gave the money to bring Preston Manning onboard and to hire an employee for his campaign. In law, if the donation benefits the donor, it's not a donation. And a tax-exempt organization may not be a tax-exempt organization if it's working to the benefit of its donors. Now we understand that Preston Manning was in the room, another employee of the Manning Centre was in the room, so they cannot now claim they didn't realize that that was the donor's intent."

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Keith Martin on the democratic deficit

Retiring from politics after 17 years, MP Dr. Keith Martin, (Reform, Alliance, Ind, Lib), spoke on CBC's The Current yesterday about the "serious, serious lack of democracy in Parliament ... the tragedy of the commons".

Martin began as a Reform MP in '93, attracted by the Reform Party Contract which listed MP's duties in the following order : first your conscience, then your constituents, and lastly your party and leader.

So what went wrong with that?
Harper beat out the more populist Preston Manning.

"Mr. Harper is a follower of a political philosopher in the US called Leo Strauss, and essentially Mr. Harper's philosophy is that a small number of people would rule and tell everybody else what to do and that is the best form of government.

"The larger problem is that within leaders' offices, prime minister's offices, the people around them are unelected, generally very young and tend to be extremely partisan. They're hired by leaders to do the job and they have much more power than members of parliament do. They control much of what goes on on a day-to-day basis with respect to the tactics and strategy. But these are very young people - they are not terribly experienced in the real world - they may be smart in certain ways, but they haven't knocked on doors, they haven't run for political office, they are not as connected to the citizens on the ground as those who have gone through the election process.

So the people calling the shots, the rabid partisanship, tends to revolve around leaders' offices and they basically tell the MPs what to do. And that's a complete perversion of democracy."

Martin says the vast majority of his colleagues and friends from across party lines regret the change to the damaging rabid hyper partisanship imported from the US which silences innovation, debate, and bipartisan co-operation while rewarding juvenile mudslinging with career advances.

While the Korys and the Dimitris call the shots, and are protected from appearing before parliamentary committees to account for their actions, elected MPs' chances of career advancement increasingly depend merely upon their ability to fling poo.

And in this way Harper, never much of a democracy fan, has sidelined parliament from dealing with any of the real issues facing Canada, opting instead for inventing mock problems that can only be solved by further attacks on democracy.
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"Here's how we fix Canada's political mess"

is an article by Preston Manning in today's G&M, in which he advises dissolving the coalition and preparing for "the next election" to "give Canada the broadly supported majority government it needs in times like these."

But first, let's review some quotes from a book Preston wrote with Mike Harris last year, published by the Fraser Institute and "guided" by the Montreal Economic Institute, with help from Michael Hart, member of the Task Force on the Future of North America. You can read the whole thing yourself online :

International Leadership by a Canada Strong and Free :

~ Deepening integration with the US economy must be on the agenda as the best way for Canadians to increase our trade, prosperity, and leadership potential.

~For Canada, Mexico’s presence at the NAFTA table is no reason to avoid action on our urgent national interest in pursuing a formal structure to manage irreversible economic and security integration with the United States.

~The 2005 Security and Prosperity Initiative adopted by Prime Minister Martin and President Bush and confirmed by the Harper government a year later laid a promising foundation. Both governments now receive regular status reports on its implementation. The earlier Smart Border Accord gave security and access to the United States a higher priority than before September 11. Both, however, operate within existing laws and policies and are therefore limited in scope. Extracting the full benefit of deeper integration requires a more ambitious initiative.

~ The federal government should revisit the decision not to participate in the Ballistic Missile Defence program

~The central importance of good US-Canada relations to Canada’s interests across virtually every domestic and international issue requires that the federal government make that relationship its highest international priority.

~ In order to facilitate the integrated coordination of their two economies, the two governments need to create a customs union involving a common external tariff, a joint approach to the treatment of third-country goods, a fully integrated energy market, a common approach to trade remedies, and an integrated government procurement regime.

~Government has no place in the decision-making of Canadian consumers, importers, or exporters.

~If Canadians wish to contribute to global peace and security they can only do so effectively as partners with the United States.

~There is much to be said for Canada and the United States developing a North American energy security accord that looks at the best way to develop and distribute the continent’s resources to the benefit of people on both sides of the border.

Thanks, Presto, for coming out for Steve like this. I'm sure he appreciates your continued support in today's G&M.

"International Leadership by a Canada Strong and Free"
Available at Chapters.Indigo.ca for just $19.95!

The Manning Centre for Building Democracy

Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, and Rona Ambrose with "the first graduates of the Manning Centre's Executive Program in Political Management at the Future Leaders Series Dinner held at the historic Chateau Laurier in Ottawa on April 18th, 2007"

... one of whom appears to be doing up his fly.

I didn't even know about this rightwing think tank till I saw The Cylinder's post this morning with a link to Sooey for a G&M article from 2005 :

"Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning and a small group of friends have raised an initial $10-million from wealthy Albertans to launch a new non-political institution designed to promote conservative ideas in Canada...The aim of those supporting the Manning centre is to have conservative political forces win two of every three elections by changing the way Canadians view public issues, instead of losing two out of three, or three out of four, as conservative parties have done throughout Canadian history."

Ok so who'd ya get?


Preston Manning - founder of Reform and Alliance parties, Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute
Gwyn Morgan - EnCana Corp
Rick Anderson - ASCI-Anderson Strategic Consulting Inc and chairman of Hill & Knowlton Canada
Tom Long - chair of Ont Premier Mike Harris’ campaigns, co-chair of the founding convention of the Canadian Alliance Party
Tasha Kheiriddin - CBC Newsworld producer, Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, VP of the Montreal Economic Institute, member Fraser Institute
Nigel S. Wright - Managing Director of Onex Corporation aerospace and defence group

Patrons - Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, Bernard Lord

Fellowships - Blogging Tory Stephen Taylor, seen here being recognized by Preston Manning "for outstanding contributions to conservative online communications"

Advisors - Andrew Coyne, Tom Long, Hon. Tony Clement, Michael Walker - founder of the Fraser Institute, Michel Kelly-Gagnon - president of the Montreal Economic Institute.



Small world, huh?

There's a "Student Leadership Seminar" coming up...
Ottawa, Nov. 21 & 22

"Calling all students: Learn the effective practices for campus activism, and how to plan for political participation
The intention is to ensure each participant develops the social and intellectual skills to realize their respective goals, and be an asset to Canada’s democratic-conservative tradition.
You will hear from some of our country's most respected politicians, campaigners, strategists, journalists, and activists."

Presenters : Monte Solberg, Michael Coren, Tasha Kheiriddin, and Blogging Tories Stephen Taylor and Aaron Lee Wudrick.

Alrighty then.

A page of members' contacts and their specific areas of expertise is provided for media requiring experts to interview, thus going some distance toward answering the question of why the experts interviewed by the media are so often conservative.

They also support an online journal, C2C, featuring the writing of many of those mentioned above plus David Frum, Tom Flanagan, Kenneth P. Green of the American Enterprise Institute, Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute, and a not altogether surprising number of familiar newspaper editors and columnists from across Canada.

Do stop by the photo gallery to see Ottawa mayor Larry O'Brien, Joseph Ben Ami, Dave Quist of the Institute of Marriage and Family, and, of course, Steve.

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