The price of doing democracy

In the 2006 federal election, Tony Clement won his won his Parry Sound-Muskoka riding by a mere 28 votes.

In 2008, following election endorsements from local mayors on his G8 slush fund tailgate committee which he used to misdirect public funds intended for border infrastructure to gazebos and flower pots in his riding, he increased that vote margin to almost 11,000.

Fun with math : $50-million divided by the 21,831 that voted for him in 2008 = $2,290 per vote.

h/t DAMMIT JANET
.

Steve & Dimitri - Ethical Asbestos

Sooey Says :

"The good widow taking our government to task for exporting asbestos to the third world – without warning labels on the bags of death dust – should just tell the bastards threatening to sue her (over using the Conservative Party of Canada logo on her petition) that she saw it on those cheques the Harper Government was handing out on behalf of taxpayers and assumed it belonged to all Canadians."

Petition !

Dear Prime Minister Harper:
 
I support Michaela Keyserlingk, whose husband died from asbestos cancer and who is asking you to stop supporting the deadly asbestos trade and creating more asbestos victims.

I call on you to heed the message of Michaela Keyserlingk and Canada's medical authorities. Stop the export of asbestos. Provide transition assistance to the remaining 300 asbestos miners.

Sincerely,
Your name here. Plus whatever editing you may care to add.

And a poster from Pale :



in solidarity with Michaela Keyserlingk.

Her story in her own words.







We're leaning on Steve here for his appalling outsized support of "ethical asbestos", but truly, Canada's record on asbestos has always been abysmal.
.
Update : Pale has now also made a blog badge for your sidebar. Grab it and pass it on!
.

The Treasury Board President of Gazebos and Funny Funneling

Steve was evidently so pleased with ShamWow Tony Clement's ability to put one over on Auditor General Sheila Fraser by leaving no paper trail of the funneling of $50M of our tax dollars through his own riding office - money purportedly intended for G8 border security - that right after the election Steve made him the boss of all our money - President of the Treasury Board - responsible for ethics, transparency, accountability, and the financial and administrative management of government.

Collateral damage : the compromising of public servants from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Industry Canada, and Infrastructure Canada who may or may not have helped him do it. Now we'll never know. Certainly they denied their involvement to Sheila Fraser but they were there at the meetings with ShamWow Tony, the mayor, and the manager of the Deerhurst Resort when - as Minister of Pork, Gazebos, and Funny Funneling - Clement recommended 33 local projects to then Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Accountability John Baird, who approved 32 of them.

According to the new AG John Wiersema, apparently having a majority means never having to say you're sorry.

Hill Times . Toronto Star . Pogge. 
.
Wednesday Update : Hill Times again.
Seems the municipal leaders in Tony's select gazebo-vetting committee awarded their own projects $41.4-million of the $50-million total. Municipalities not on the committee got to share the $2.5-million remainder.
.

Steve & Dimitri do some ethical oiling of a government website

And that's just what they did.


On August 10th I noticed some Privy Council Office googling for "suncor third largest investor in Syria" that landed on the June 1st Creekside post Ethical oil in Syria explained.

Hmmm, I thought, better check to make sure that Canada government website I linked to is still good. Yup, still there :

"Canada is now the 3rd largest foreign direct investor in Syria due to a $1.2 billion Suncor/ Petro Canada gas project."

The next day that offending sentence was gone from their site.

Here's their new page dated Aug 11, 2011. It mentions "an embargo on certain trade sectors" in Syria but of course this does not apply to the Canadian oil and gas sector. Google cache of the old page here.
.
Tuesday Update : Ethical Oil Campaign Uses Stolen, Faked Photos
.

Steve & Dimitri - Canadian potty

Yesterday in Colombia, Harper attacked the critics of his Canada-Colombia free trade investment agreement who object to the deaths of a couple hundred unionists and the displacement of 4.9 million people in the struggle for control over land for the development of resources that over 70 Canadian extraction companies are heavily involved in. Steve  :

"We can’t block the progress of a country like this for protectionist reasons, and (they’re) trying to use human rights as a front for doing that."

If that line sounds familiar, yes, it's the same "human rights as a phony front" argument he uses to defend Israel's atrocities in Gaza.

Tomorrow it's on to Honduras where the Harper government was the first to sanction the right wing coup in 2009 that replaced leftist president Zelaya who coincidentally had put a moratorium on further foreign mining concessions.
Honduras is getting its own Canadian free investment agreement soon as well.
.
Update : DAMMIT JANET gets confirmation on Steve's toiletbunker incident
The Regina Mom launches a potty flashmail!
Biff Loman's toon looks ahead to the next FTA
Boris notes a more recent source for Steve's 'phony human rights' shtick
Dr. Dawg and Kev have updates on the moral bankruptcy of the Canada-Colombia Free Investment Agreement
.

"Harper went to the bathroom for 'regular reasons' "

reports Brazilian Foreign Ministry official Carlos de Abreu, hoping to refute an earlier story in the local Brazilian press that Steve had locked himself in the bathroom in a hissy fit over press arrangements not to his liking and wouldn't come out till they were changed.

Personally I think the revised explanation of Steve's actions on the world stage lacks a certain gravitas.
.

CSIS recycles old leaks slagging Abdelrazik, Charkaoui

A leaked 2004 CSIS report from LaPresse on Thursday purports to be a summary of a conversation between Abousfian Abdelrazik and Adil Charkaoui  in 2000 in which they plotted to blow up an airplane enroute between Montreal and France. It has already been enthusiastically repeated across our national press :
CBC : CSIS file reveals plot to bomb plane: La Presse
Gosh, CBC, your previous nice pix of Abdelrazik and Charkaoui are now replaced by scary ones
G&M : Abdelrazik and Charkaoui plotted plane bomb: report
AFP : Two Canada terror suspects plotted France attack: report

etc. ... etc. ...
Never mind that this 'news' was already reported nearly two years ago after a federal court judge annulled Charkaoui's security certificate because government lawyers refused the judge's order to reveal their wiretap evidence, citing "security concerns".
About now you are probably wondering what kind of "security concerns" trumps giving evidence about someone you allege was plotting to blow up a plane.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney :

"I read the protected confidential dossiers on such individuals, and I can tell you that, without commenting on any one individual, some of this intelligence makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck,” he said. “I just think people should be patient and thoughtful and give the government and its agencies the benefit of the doubt."

The re-leak has nonetheless been greeted with skepticism by Boris, Dr. Dawg, Pogge, Sixth Estate and no doubt many others because we all remember previous security leaks from government officials who are more than happy to anonymously rejig conveniently-timed select bits of complete bullshit to a cooperative media.


Let's review just the anonymous bullshit security leaks about Maher Arar for instance, for which no public officials were ever called to account and who are presumably still happily at it.

In 2002 while Arar was being tortured in Syria, an anonymous official source linked Arar to "a suspected member of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network." That suspected member was Abdullah Almalki - later cleared by the Iacobucci inquiry.

Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar :

CanWest bureau chief Robert Fife, July 24, 2003 :"Terror threats in Ottawa: Two kinds of fear: Report says
Syrian intelligence helped U.S. to foil al-Qaeda plot on target in Ottawa : One official would only tell CanWest News Service that Mr. Arar, a 36-year-old Ottawa engineer, is a 'very bad guy' who apparently received military training at an Al-Qaeda base. "

As noted by Justice O'Connor in the report : "the apparent purpose behind this leak is not attractive: to attempt to influence public opinion against Mr. Arar at a time when his release from imprisonment in Syria was being sought by the government of Canada"
Coincidentally the sudden re-issuing of this "new" leak about blowing up planes happens to coincide with Abdelrazik's attempt to get his name off the UN 1267 terror list this month.
To continue :

G&M, Oct 10, 2003 : unnamed Canadian government sources said that Mr. Arar had been “roughed up,” but not tortured, while in detention in Syria

CTV, Oct. 23, 2003 : “senior government officials in various departments” said that Mr. Arar had provided information to the Syrians about al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and cells operating in Canada.

Juliet O'Neill, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 2003 : “Canada’s dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to al-Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case.”

Fife : Dec. 30, 2003 : "US, Canada '100% sure' Arar trained with al-Qaeda" : “a senior Canadian intelligence source said the United States had an extensive dossier on Mr. Arar and that “if the Americans were ever to declassify the stuff, there would be some hair standing on end."

Toronto Star : Learning from media mistakes in Arar case May 2009 :

"Unnamed officials also told Craig Oliver at CTV News that Arar was only released because he had given information to the Syrians about Al Qaeda and about other Canadians suspected of terrorism activities. Oliver later explained that he felt the story was credible because his sources were senior officials in two different government departments. Nonetheless, years after the Arar inquiry's report, he apologized to Arar in person for running the story. He also told him of an offer he had turned down – a photograph of Arar training in a camp in Afghanistan. As he describes: "The source wanted me to use the information without showing me the photograph. That was a very solid source... This experience has made me more skeptical... I knew these people very well."

So you'll have to forgive the rest of us if we also share Craig Oliver's reluctance to be conned into accepting any more conveniently-timed leaks and smears from anonymous security officials who for all we know are the same ones who previously set out to turn public opinion against Arar even as they destroyed his life for reasons they have yet to account for.
.

Steve & Dimitri on loyalty to Canada

.
Firewall Steve plays the bash Quebec card; dumbass corporate media eats it up.
.
Pogge ... Sinister Greg ... Thwap ... Dr. Dawg ...
.

Canadian media : It can't happen here.

We're getting a lot of stories from our media who are at pains to assure us a Canadian equivalent to the Rupert Murdoch scandal of cozy incestuous relationships with British politicians and illegal phone hacking/dirty tricks couldn't possibly happen here in Canada.

Really? No cozy incestuous relationships? No dirty tricks?

On March 30, 2009, Stephen Harper, PMO staffer Kory Teneycke, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and former communications adviser to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., all sat down to lunch.

We know this because it showed up in the mandatory disclosures media consultant and former White House flack Ari Fleischer made to the U.S. Justice Department. Ari, you will recall, had a personal contract with Steve to grease US media wheels for him. Teneycke had a dream of a Canadian Fox news channel.

Four months later, Teneycke had left the PMO - barely a year into his job as Harper's chief spokesman - only to pick up a contract with Quebecor to explore a project that Ottawa insiders almost immediately described as a fledgling "Fox News North."

Three more PMO staffers followed Teneyke to SunMedia : an issues management adviser, an advertising manager, and an issues management researcher, described as "a guy who could dig up any dirt on the opposition in a jiffy".

Teneycke himself had to take a brief three and half month leave from heading his new project after conflict-of-interest embarrassments ramped up following his Sun op-ed and public admission to prior knowledge of the hacking of an Avaaz petition hostile to his setting up of a Fox News North in Canada.

Teneycke was back in the Sun saddle during Steve's re-election campaign in April this year when a fifth former PMO staffer, Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart, sent him a photo of an Ignatieff look-alike posing in full combat gear in Kuwait in 2002.
"Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning" ran the SunMedia headline and story, sans photo, before Teneycke apparently tumbled to the ruse.

Patrick Muttart was working for the Con election war room at the time, while simultaneously heading the "Canada/US practice" at the US PR firm Mercury Public Affairs, where he works under Terry Nelson. Nelson, former political director of the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign and McCain-Palin campaign manager, now a Senior Advisor to teabagger and 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, is famous for the race-baiting campaign ads and phonejamming dirty tricks done under his GOP watch, and for employing the media advisor on the original Swiftboat Veterans For Truth ads which used lies and doctored photos to smear John Kerry's war record during his run for US president.

Amusingly, the CTV piece, Harper immune from Murdoch-style scandal, makes extensive use of analysis from Muttart to assure us a similar scandal could not happen here. We just don't have the same "intense, quasi-incestuous" clique of political and media elites, Muttart says without irony.
Besides, another Harper former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, explains about Canadian papers: "so few people actually read most of them."

Yet somehow the rightwing National Post muddles on for 13 years losing $9-million a year, no one seems to know who owns CanWest/PostMedia now besides it being some US hedge fund and so much for the rule limiting foreign media ownership to a third, and 99% of the papers which endorsed a candidate in the last election all endorsed Steve.

We could have a Murdoch-style scandal here and it would be out of the news cycle again the same week, no damage done.

Update : More from David Climenhaga at Rabble
.

Hello ... hello? Is this thing on?

Only 660 signatures so far in support of Canadian artist Franke James - whose tour Steve is trying to shut down?

Seriously? That's all the support we can muster?


"The Government of Canada is trying to shut down an international tour by artist Franke James because of her criticism of its environmental record.

Top officials are using intimidation tactics to prevent her from being supported by any Canadian embassies or agencies. They pressured her corporate sponsor into dropping its offer of $75,000 in support. They tried to coerce Nektarina Non Profit in Croatia into rescinding their invitation. (Nektarina refused.)

This kind of anti-democratic intimidation must stop. Insist the Government of Canada stop trying to muzzle free speech.

We the undersigned urge you to support the international tour of artist Franke James and to put an end to the Government of Canada's intimidation of embassies and agencies who wish to promote her work abroad.

Ms. James is a credit to Canada. Her work is internationally recognized because of her ability to address difficult environmental issues through art and storytelling, without preaching or insisting on a particular viewpoint.

Canada's reputation as a free and just society will be enhanced by your leadership on this. Thank you for your consideration of our request."

Your signature here.

Thank you. Please pass it on.
.