Stephen Harper and his "rogue representatives"

Sept 4, 2008 : Harper says alleged Cadman bribe 'preposterous'

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper has told a court that an alleged offer to the late MP Chuck Cadman of a $1-million life insurance policy in exchange for his vote in the Commons in 2005 is “preposterous” and that only “rogue representatives” of the Conservative party could have done such a thing. 

Harper says he authorized party officials Doug Finley and Tom Flanagan to meet with Cadman May 19 to assure him that if he rejoined the Conservative caucus he would automatically secure the party nomination in his B.C. riding and get all the party help he needed to campaign. 

Harper said that when Dona Cadman first asked him in September 2005 if he knew anything about Conservative representatives offering her husband a $1-million life insurance policy, he did not know her husband had told her about it and did not ask where she heard that."

Sept 4 2008 : Harper testifies he OK'd approach to Cadman, unaware of insurance offer

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper has testified that he personally authorized an offer made to late MP Chuck Cadman in 2005 in exchange for his help defeating the Liberal government. But he maintained he knew nothing about an alleged offer of a $1 million life insurance policy to get Cadman's vote, saying he only approved an offer of campaign financial support in the event of an election."

Sept 9 2005.  Tom Zytaruk, biographer of independent MP Chuck Cadman, interviews Stephen Harper [h/t PaulGraham for audio] in the Cadman driveway on Sept 9 2005. Harper was accompanied by executive assistant Ray Novak and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, then Harper's press secretary. Excerpted : 

Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?" 

Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?" 

Zytaruk: "This (inaudible) for the book. Not for the newspaper. This is for the book." 

Harper: "Um, I don't know the details. I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time....But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues.

Zytaruk then asks how official these 'individuals' are.

Harper: "No, no, they were legitimately representing the party. I said don't press him. I mean, you have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity and, you know, just, you know, if that's what you're saying, make that case but don't press it...."

Dona Cadman affidavit :  

"After my meeting with Mr. Harper concluded, Mr. Tom Zytaruk interviewed Mr. Harper for approximately 10 minutes in my driveway. When that interview concluded Mr. Zytaruk came into my house and I told him that Mr. Harper told me that he had no knowledge about a $1 million insurance policy offer made to my husband by Conservative Party representatives." 

Mike Duffy tries unsuccessfully to tone the story down ...

Steve Vai on Mike Duffy's take on his interview with Chuck Cadman via Galloping Beaver :

"Duffy was trying to tone down the story, offering up a conversation he had with Cadman, wherein he said he didn't want to vote against the budget, for fear he would lose his seat in an election and the insurance he had as an MP because of it. Duffy said Cadman was concerned that he would die and his wife would suffer. What nobody has picked up, Duffy actually connects some dots here. If Cadman was concerned about his insurance as an MP, then what better way to allay his fears in voting with the Cons, than to offer him assurance on that score. Insurance was on Cadman's mind, according to Duffy, which puts the offer into complete context."

Update : Which brings us up to today ... and the RCMP's charges of "criminal conspiracy" within the PMO of breech of trust, fraud and bribery
PM didn't know staff asked Conservative Party to pay Duffy's expenses: spokesperson

"Harper’s director of communications, Jason MacDonald, says Harper had no idea his staff had asked the Conservative Party to pay Sen. Mike Duffy’s ineligible expenses, ... and didn’t know PMO staff wanted a Senate report into Duffy’s expenses sanitized, or that the party’s chief fundraiser tried to influence the independent audit of Duffy’s claims."

Just another case of "rogue representatives" in the PMO again.

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Image at top from CBC At Issue panel..

Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #6

Bunch up everyone to make room for Steve's latest Perp with Perks, Saulie Zajdel.

Arrested today and facing five counts of corruption, breach of trust, and fraud from 2006 to 2011 in the anti-corruption sweep that also bagged the mayor of Montreal, Zajdel is better known to us as the guy who was put on the public payroll as a "cultural liaison" by Heritage Min James Moore for an alleged $60G's to act as the Cons' shadow pretend MP in Irving Cotler's riding after he lost to him in the 2011 election.  

Here's Steve campaigning for Zajdel three days before Election Day.

Here's Nick Kouvalis from Campaign Research defending their        "reprehensible" calls made into the riding on Steve and Zajdel's behalf implying Cotler would not run.

After his election loss to Cotler, Zajdel gave speeches in the Mount Royal riding, such as one advertised as : “How the Federal Government Relates to Israel.” 

A 2011 election campaign vid uploaded by Zajdel, along with the tagline :

"Let us thank our prime minister Stephen Harper for how he supports the land of Israel, he is its strongest advocate of any leader in the world."

Steve and Saulie in happier times in a photo op featuring brown paper bags - a prop usually avoided by the Cons after Brian Mulroney.
Mulroney spoke at a $600-a-plate fundraiser for Dean Del Mastro, another Perp with Perks, this past May. [h/t Toe at Bread 'n Roses]

Brown bag photo h/t : Robert Jensen2 via Holly Stick in comments.
And to Canadian Cynic for the nudge.

Previous Perps editions with bios.
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 5

Updated : h/t Canadian Cynic

Welcome Con MPs Devinder Shory, James Bezan, Shelly Glover, and update! House Speaker Andrew Scheer to the growing family scandal of Steve's Parade of Perps with Perks.  

Devinder Shory, Calgary Northeast, accused of providing legal work that supported allegedly fraudulent mortgages - in his case at least five straw-buyer cases of more than $3.7 million:

Promised a payment of up to $8,000, hundreds of straw buyers, mostly new immigrants, allowed their names to be used to obtain falsely inflated mortgages on over 200 properties. When the straw buyers could not pay up, the bank would foreclose and the "masterminds" would walk away, wiring proceeds from the alleged fraud to Lebanon, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. 

[T]he Alberta Lawyers Insurance Association (ALIA) has agreed to pay $9.2 million to BMO to settle the case on behalf of all 17 lawyers named in the suit."

April 28 2014 Update : Two Con candidates hoping to challenge Devinder Shory appear to have had their nomination papers quashed by Dimitri Soudas to protect Shory.

Two years after the election, Elections Canada is still waiting for campaign expenses compliance from Manitoba Con MPs James Bezan and law 'n order gal Shelly Glover regarding documents that put them over the top of their allowed amounts ... just like Perp with Perks veteran Peter Penashue in Labrador. Both Glover and Bezan have filed court applications to prevent their being barred from the House by EC's Marc Mayrand while Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton wrangles their cases.

ETA : Dear Mr. Hamilton : Clawing back campaign staffers' pay a year later in order to get Glover under the spending limit wire in what you refer to as "an honest mistake of fact" seems a bit mean. I also fail to see how having election campaign signs up in places where the traffic is poor disqualifies their existence as, you know, election campaign signs.

Belated addition of House Speaker Andrew Scheer, MP, for sitting on Mayrand's formal letter of May 24 advising him Bezan and Glover were in violation of election law and therefore ineligible to sit in the House. Scheer did not advise the House and the next day Glover filed a court challenge, followed by Bezan. 
We the public of course would not have known about any of this if the media had not dug into it - hats off to Kady and McMaher.

Very good post from Dr.Dawg on whether rule of law still exists if a sitting government can flout it without repercussion. Whether the court finds any mitigating factors in Bezan and Glover's applications or not and regardless of Scheer's eventual ruling, the Cons will claim it a victory and continue on as they like. 

Running out of perp parade room here and the month is yet young ... I'm going to have to start setting out benches at the back for the next batch to stand on.

Previous editions/perps' bios
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 4

Please welcome Senators David Tkachuk, Marjory LeBreton and Carolyn Stewart Olsen to the growing family scandal of Steve's Parade of Perps with Perks.  Click to enjoy.

While Steve is still going with the lone topgun chief of staff on the Duffy knoll with the chequebook story from his temporary hideout in South America, his perps at home are busy fucking that up for him. 

We were most relieved to hear from Senator Tkachuk that even though he was soliciting advice from the Prime Minister's Office on how to do his audit of Duffy, and Nigel Wright was calling him up wanting to know "When is this thing over with?", Senator Tkachuk assures us that "no one came to my room and told me what to do."

Well that's good to know but with Steve's former-press-secretary-now-Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen spearheading the Duffy audit whitewash/rewrite in the steering committee for you, your own room was pretty well always safe, wasn't it? 

That whitewashed audit is now winging its way back to the same perps for further review and Steve's buddy, government leader in the senate Marjory LeBreton, has refused to open the hearings, complaining she lives in a town "populated by Liberal elitists and their lickspittle media” and is not getting enough credit for opening up the senate to Steve's scandal.

Excellent piece on this from Mound of Sound

Updated Perps with Perks and their bios.
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 3

Please welcome Nigel Wright, Steve's chief of staff on loan from Onex Corp and the latest member of Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks, for secretly cutting Mike Duffy a $90,000 personal cheque to paper over the senate investigation and Deloitte audit into Mike Duffy's creative housing expense claims and reports he billed the Senate for travel while campaigning for the Cons .

Duffy isn't co-operating with the investigations now he has the cash but that didn't stop House leader Peter Van Loan from praising him for his "leadership" in returning money that didn't belong to him. 
Duffy : 

"It's become a major distraction so my wife and I discussed it and we decided that in order to turn the page and put all this behind us, we are going to voluntarily pay back the living expenses related to the house we have in Ottawa"

Ah yes the Royal Bank loan and the PMO instruction to keep his little head down.
Unfortunately Duffy then blabbed around town about his secret cheque from Wright.

So which is it then? A bank loan or a personal cheque from Steve's chief of staff? 
Both? Given he purportedly has secured the bank loan to cover the senate repayment, what's the cash bonanza from Nigel Wright for exactly?

“The PM was not aware of the specifics,” Andrew MacDougall, Mr. Harper’s director of communications, has said of this transaction when asked.

I think that's called implausible deniability.

Nigel Wright, a founding director of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, has resigned.
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Updated Perps with perks and their bios.

Arrgh update. Typo correction : That should have been "a founding director"; without that "a", it made him sound like the only one.  Apologies.
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks

Time to update Harper's Parade of Perps again, says Canadian Cynic.
Ok then ... let's add three more to make it an even ten Parade of Perps with Perks.

New entrant below the still unidentified Mr RoboCon is Saskatchewan Senator Pamela Wallin, seen here in 2000 advertizing her stint as host of  Who Wants to Buy a Millionaire? in New York where she owns an apartment. Senator Wallin is not currently being investigated for clocking $321,027 in "other" senate travel expenses because she does visit her Saskatchewan residence even she holds an Ontario residency health card just like PEI Senator Mike Duffy. However the former investigative journalist does not want to discuss it, explaining it's a "point of privacy". 

Between Duffy and Bruce Carson stands Labrador MP and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Peter Penashue, who resigned from both yesterday following reports of illegal overspending and accepting corporate contributions disguised as individual donations in his 79-vote win over the Liberal incumbent in the last election. The Conservative Party transferred $44,350 to his campaign last November and this month to cover his overspending repayment debts.
Penashue explained that "mistakes were made by an inexperienced volunteer" - Reg Bowers, the campaign's official agent - who was subsequently appointed by Resources Minister Joe Oliver to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. The CNLOPB bio describes Bowers as "having extensive business involvement" and "a Bachelor of Commerce" as well as "post secondary work with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants." Still, you know ... math.
Penashue intends to have a do-over election, presumably before Elections Canada gets around to finishing an investigation which could bar him from running for election again.
Yesterday a Conservative Party spokesman explained : Nice riding you got there, Labrador, be a shame if something happened to it :

He will be the Conservative Party candidate in the by-election and if Newfoundland and Labrador want to continue to have a strong voice within government they need to re-elect him as the Member of Parliament for Labrador.

Under Steve is Dean Del Mastro, Steve's parliamentary secretary and pointman on the robocall election scandal, being investigated over his $21,000 personal cheque to Frank Hall at Holinshed Research Group for voter ID/GOTV services. Ah, I see the Frank Hall vid I reposted a month ago is "no longer available" at Youtube. So how's the rest of the RCMP/Elections Canada investigation into Del Mastro's scandal-ridden 2008 election campaign going, huh?
Fun fact : Del Mastro has now missed 26 consecutive Ethics committee meetings.

Well that's all for now, folks. Stay tuned though - it's only March.

Update : Collect the whole set!
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Manning conference : Big Brother's big data

The Cons opposed collecting data for the long gun registry and the Canada long form census as "too intrusive" - and also muzzled Canadian federal scientists to keep any of their data from leaking out - but on Saturday they eagerly attended a conference to hear 'big data' proponents discuss how to collect more data about you in order to win elections.

Canada ‘light years’ behind U.S. on data mining in election campaigns, time to catch up, say experts 

Innovations in big data have started a “revolution” in the way political parties target voters and win election campaigns ...

 “There is a revolution in the way campaigns are not only run, but won,” said Mike Martens, director of the Manning Centre’s School of Practical Politics, at the Manning Centre Conference March 9 in Ottawa, at a session called, “The Cutting Edge in Practical Politics, The Data Revolution.” 

At the conference, Washington Slate columnist Sasha Issenberg explained in the years since the 2000 election in the United States, detailed voter registration information has been combined with information on individual customers from corporations to produce a detailed portrait of voters, how much they earn, their ethnicity, political affiliations, age, gender, annual income, and more.

It’s “a breakthrough,” said Mr. Issenberg, who wrote The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.

Tom Flanagan, "the godfather of CIMS" the Cons' voter database, told the G&M last year that purchased consumer data on spending habits was not added to CIMS while he was with the party.
But last year I posted a 2008 vid of CBC's Keith Boag getting a walk-through of CIMS by a Con staffer, augmented by commentary from Garth Turner and Michael Geist. Google took it down sometime this year so you can't watch it now and all that remains is a quote beneath it left by an outraged commenter :

"All of them have access to the list of voters provided by Elections Canada - from there they are free to buy data commercially."
What!

But there's this :
Can Press, October 18, 2007 : Tory database draws ire of privacy experts

The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says former Tory MP Garth Turner. Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics -- but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area. 

Both the federal Liberals and the NDP have separate databases for constituency work and voter tracking. Data does not migrate between the two. But the Conservatives use a single clearing house for all data collection, storage, data mining, mailing lists, voter tracking and any other partisan use such information may serve.

A single clearing house for all data. 
And now a further blurred line between "the Party" and the government, courtesy of Michael Sona last week :

Really? Government staffers in the public service working on the Hill "were encouraged" to add info about Canadians to a partisan Con Party election campaign database? Government subsidizing a political party?

I guess that's why they call it "the Harper government".

Update : Kai Nagata covered the Manning Conference for The Tyee. Here he catches Blogging Tory founder Stephen Taylor, who now holds Harper's old job as head of the National Citizens Coalition, bragging on the 'big data' panel about the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau's use of public funds for micro-targeting voters in 2008 :

"We sent out, I think, probably a hundred million pieces of mail. Paid for by the taxpayer, I should say. They were each barcoded, and they were each very issue-specific. Most people would sort of ignore it or say 'this is garbage.' But the few people who would actually send it back and say 'Hell yeah, that's what I'm all about' -- you would be able to put them in a database." 

Taylor's group, the NCC, gathers and cross-references sets of data to build pictures of voter types and figure out how to speak to them. 

"We found that CBC privatization petition signers are most likely Molson Canadian drinkers, they watch Dexter on television, they enjoy Sun News Network, they vote Conservative, they're from Toronto, and they donate to World Vision." Those discoveries help shape the messaging. 

A voter who proves unusually engaged on an issue can often be recruited as a volunteer. That's where Mike Martens comes in. Formerly the regional organizer for the federal Conservative Party in B.C., he now runs the School of Practical Politics at the Manning Centre. From now until the next election, Martens will be training thousands of volunteers online and at the school's new campus in Calgary.

From the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau to CIMS to your ear - your tax dollars hard at work re-electing the Harper government.


Best irony overload at the conference came from Tony Clement, MNC big data panelist and President of the Treasury Board of the most secretive government in Canadian history :

“I happen to think of data as Canada’s 21st century resource. … When all the information is supplied to the citizenry, why does government have to make the decision?"

And speaking of Tom Flanagan ... You know all those writers' and academics' editorials coming to Flanagan's defence over his child pornography remarks :

Jonathan Kay : The mobbing of Tom Flanagan is unwarranted and cruel 
Barry Cooper : Some academics are coming to the defence 
Rainer Knopff : U of C owes Tom Flanagan an apology 
William Watson : Tom Flanagan, meet George Orwell
Conrad Black : Turning public discourse into a never-ending shriek of ‘unclean!’
Jonathan Kay again : Tom Flanagan’s media critics leave their spines at the door

They all write for the Manning Centre's C2C Journal,  financed by Gwyn Morgan, his spouse Patricia Trottier, and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy 

Photo of Knopff at MNC 2013 sporting Flanagan button : David Climenhaga, Alberta Diary

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Harper's parade of perps

Notable how many of Steve's patronage peeps are grifters, conmen, or alleged perps .

Starting from the left ... picture updated to include Pierre Poutine and the robocon network [h/t Beijing York in comments] - no charges and no arrests, 21 months and counting... 

Dr. Arthur Porter, "His Excellency, Ambassador Plenipotentiary, Republic of Sierra Leone", also Harper-appointed chair of CSIS watchdog SIRC and lead investigator into CSIS' treatment of Abdelrazik. Money once paid to former Israeli arms trafficker to sell infrastructure deals to Sierra Leone, and now subject of an arrest warrant for fraud, money laundering and bribes/kickbacks in connection with SNC Lavelin's successful bid to build a $1.3-billion hospital in Montreal.
Viv Toews, minister responsible for CSIS and SIRC, says somehow it's the fault of the NDP and Libs.

Senator Mike Duffy, Harper-appointed lollypop, whose very useful 2008 election coverage included running Stephane Dion's three time stumbled interview restarts 5 days before election day. Duffy now being investigated for his housing expenses as a senator due to apparently having no idea which province he lives in.

Bruce Carson, Harper's "The Fixer". A lawyer disbarred for fraud in the 80's, Carson was charged last year with influence peddling on behalf of his 22-year-old ex-callgirl fiancee - the only bit anyone remembers - to sell water purifiers to First Nations and lobbying for a $25 million government grant within 5 years of leaving government. 

Senator Patrick Brazeau, 38, suspended from the Senate he barely attended with full salary. Dodgy alleged financial record going into the Senate, now highlighted by sexual assault arrest and an investigation into questionable Senate housing expenses. 

Tom Flanagan, Harper's one-time Calgary School mentor and election mastermind. Fired from CBC and on leave from U of Calgary till retirement since yesterday for framing the watching of child pornography as a victimless crime and an issue of 'personal liberty'. Accused Paul Martin of supporting child pornography during 2004 election. Toast but his legacy lives on.

Con MP Rahim Jaffer, once Harper's Chair of Con Caucus. Ran election campaign ads accusing Jack Layton of being soft on marijuana. When Jaffer arrested for drunk driving, cops and defense lawyers couldn't agree whether the cocaine was in Jaffer's pants pocket or in his jacket pocket so he got off.

Nathan Jacobson, busted in the US in 2008 for fraud, $46-million in money laundering, and running online no-prescription pharmacies, but neglected to tell his Canadian hosts he was a fugitive due back in US to serve his sentence. Arrested in Toronto last October. 
Nice photos of Jacobson with Harper and Benjamin Netanyahu presumably no longer available on government website. 

As noted at DJ, Con propaganda machine stressed to the breaking point here but Steve still scraping them off when and only when their public behavior becomes an embarrassment. 
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A further updated picture : Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks

Update : Collect the whole set!
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Stephen Harper : Election 1997 2008 2011

In every election now, Stephen Harper's June 1997 speech to a right-wing U.S. think tank in Montreal comes up. You know the one :

"Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term"

"the NDP is simply the left-wing agenda to basically disintegrate our society"

"the PC party were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country."

"the Liberal party ... enacted comprehensive gun control ... believes in gay rights, put sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act"

"a constitutional package which ... included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things"

And every election, Steve's supporters make the same two objections to bringing it up : . 1) Harper says he was only speaking in jest, and 2) it's an old speech and he's 'evolved' since then.

Let's deal with Steve the funny guy first.

A couple of months after making this supposedly jokey speech, he co-authored a policy paper with Tom Flanagan in which he repeats many of the same points. Celebrating Conrad Black's purchase of the Southam newspaper chain, Steve looked forward to the end of its previously "monolithically liberal and feminist" stance.

"Public policy reflects the growing conservatism of public opinion. Canada is not the same country it was 10 years ago. Almost everyone in public life now takes ... free trade, privatization of public enterprise and targeting of social welfare programs for granted."

And as for 1997 being a long time ago ... well here's Steve on the campaign trail 18 months ago, stumping for a majority with the same old complaints about feminism and gun control and social programs :

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Excellent column from Antonia Zerbisias yesterday on how Harper is 'targeting' women : both in the sense of wooing their votes with an income-splitting "family tax cut" that will only benefit the wealthiest 13% of Canadian families sometime after 2016 if he gets a majority in the next two elections, while in the meantime cutting programs that benefit the rest of Canadian women and enacting policies that don't. A solid read.

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Steve and Sandra and Grover

And here's the article : Harper's 'nation of shopping centres'

"Tom Flanagan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's longtime confidant and former chief of staff, is delighted at the Conservatives' success in "tightening the screws on the federal government" to dramatically reduce its significance in the daily lives of Canadians.
The Conservatives' three budgets have left Ottawa financially incapable of offering any new national social program like affordable housing, higher education or day care. Although overall spending went up, mostly on the military, measures were taken to deplete revenues to the point future governments' hands will be tied unless they raise taxes or run deficits, both prescriptions for political suicide.

Flanagan is impressed that Harper managed to execute his stealthy revolution in Canadian public policy with barely a whimper from the public. But that, too, was the strategy according to the University of Calgary professor and Reform party founder.

"Part of the execution of the plan was that there would be conservatives attacking him, like John Williamson (of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation) and Gerry Nicholls (Harper's successor as head of the far-right National Citizens' Coalition). That's extremely useful, to have that kind of pressure there, berating the prime minister for not doing enough."

A wide variety of "No comments"

from the scandal we wish everyone would quit calling "Cadscam" :

On Wednesday Harper's office released a statement : "The then-leader of the Opposition [Harper] looked into the matter with party officials and could find no confirmation."

You will recall that former Con MP John Reynolds, who was also Harper's campaign manager, facilitated the meeting at which Finlay and Flanagan are alleged to have offered the $1M bribe to the late Chuck Cadman.

Asked about the incident, former Conservative MP John Reynolds told Canwest News Service he did not wish to comment.
"I'm not involved in politics anymore,"said Mr. Reynolds. "I have no comment at all."

Later Reynolds remarked to CBC : "the story seems fishy." and "Sounds to me like some kind of fiction story."

OK then, anyone else?

"Ryan Sparrow, a Conservative party spokesman, refused to comment on the allegations."

"Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he's never heard anything about any buyout. "I've never even spoken with Chuck Cadman," he said."

"Jay Hill, now the Conservative government whip and Opposition whip at the time of the vote in question, told NaPo he had never heard of the events," which he also characterized later as a case of "unfortunate miscommunication" and "a so-called make-believe fairy-tale scandal."

Con MP and Treasury Board chairman Vic Toews : "He [Cadman] cared about legislation not money. We've heard this story for years. It's bullshit."

Defence Minister Peter MacKay was deputy Con leader at the time of the alleged offer : "I don't know anything about how this has come about. Certainly it was something that I was not involved with,'' said MacKay, "I think it's sad, quite frankly, that this seems to have come up. It's very unfortunate.''

Ok, so it didn't happen but if it did, it isn't true. Got it.

Update : Chet reminds me in comments that the $1M meeting and the Flanagan/Finlay meeting are not one and the same meeting. Allegedly two days apart in fact. Quite right, my bad. I think I keep forgetting that little detail because it has that - oh no, it was two completely other guys who did that - whiff about it. Thanks, Chet.

Upperdate : Ok, now we're back to just one meeting again. Allegedly.

"Um, is this thing on?"

There's something amiss here.
Tom Flanagan, Harper's eminence grease, and Doug Findlay, his in-house hatchet man, are alleged to have offered the dying Vancouver Independent MP Chuck Cadman a $1M insurance bribe to bring down the Libs in a non-confidence vote in 2005. Cadman, who did not vote with the Cons, was purportedly worried about money. The bribery charge is made by Cadman's wife, Dona, in an upcoming biography of Cadman by author Tom Zytaruk. Dona Cadman is now running as a Con in her husband's old riding. !!!

Read the transcript or listen to the audio of author Zytaruk's tape of a 2005 interview with Harper, then leader of the Opposition :

Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?"
Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?"
Zytaruk: "This (inaudible) for the book. Not for the newspaper. This is for the book."
Harper: "Um, I don't know the details. I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time....But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues.

Zytaruk then asks how official these 'individuals' are.

Harper: "No, no, they were legitimately representing the party. I said don't press him. I mean, you have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity and, you know, just, you know, if that's what you're saying, make that case but don't press it...."

I just don't see Harper copping to knowledge of an illegal bribe to a journalist, do you?
I mean, he was about to base an election campaign on Liberal bribes and kickbacks.
There's definitely something missing here.

We're just not that into you.

Ipsos Reid : "In four polls in November, 43% of men said they would vote for the Conservatives, compared with only 28% of women.
"There really seems to be a very strong gender effect in Conservative voting," said Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker."

Well, duh, Darrell.
In fact compared to a number of polls over the previous year, like this one from Strategic Council in July, 28% actually represents a highwater mark for the Cons with women, who more usually only give them around 24% to 26% approval.

From this latest Ipsos Reid poll for CanWest :
Women's priorities : Environment 29%, Healthcare 27%, and Education and Poverty placing 3rd and 4th.
Men's priorities : Environment 28%, Healthcare 18%, and the Economy and Military Defence in 3rd and 4th place.
Darrell explains this divergent disparity in gender priorities :
"Women tend to not to be as interested in the big-P political-power issues. For them politics isn't necessarily about the cut and thrust of party politics or big-dollar economics or relationships among states," said Bricker. "They tend to be focused more locally; they tend to be more interested in things that affect them and their families."

Apparently we're just too dumb to properly appreciate the importance of all that "cutting and thrusting" stuff.

Happily Harper's old eminence grease, Tom Flanagan, is on hand to explain why women's votes don't count if you're a Con : "Why are women's votes so uniquely important? Each vote counts one," he said in an email.

Yes! Someone put this old Milton Friedman fan back in charge of the Cons' electoral fortunes, because I can't think of a better strategy for going down in fucking flames than going into an election with a firm grip on the idea that the concerns of 52% of the electorate don't matter a damn.

SPP : Naomi Klein vs Tom Flanagan

Tom Flanagan, US poli-sci prof at the University of Calgary; Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute; and all-round 'eminence grease' to Stephen Harper, this Tom Flanagan, writes in Saturday's G&M : "In times of perceived crisis, a conservative party can win by positioning itself further to the right, as shown by the victories of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, and Goerdon Campbell."

G&M, Saturday Sept 8 :

 "In Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine : The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, she argues that an idea that began with Chicago School economist Milton Friedman has determined much of the course of recent history – that a time of crisis, whether a war or a hurricane, offers a strategic opportunity to overwrite the resulting “blank slate” with market privatization and corporatism."

She also argues that such a crisis can be a man-made destabilization of public infrastructure.

Flanagan also has a book out : Harper's Team : Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power.
I'm guessing it isn't going to be "behind the scenes" enough for us though, so I thought we'd have a look at a 2003 policy paper from the Fraser Institute, the think tank where Flanagan is a Senior Fellow.


Mandate for Leadership for the New Prime Minister

• Bank of Canada : Create a new currency—the amero—and a North American Central Bank for Canada,Mexico and the United States.
• Convert existing dollars into ameros. 
• Retain Canadian national symbols on notes and coins.
• Exchange Rates : Remove the Bank of Canada’s power to set interest rates and leave as its main responsibility the convertibility of Canadian into US dollars at par.
• Environment : Withdraw from Kyoto protocol
• Allow export of water for use in non-irrigation projects.
• Labour : Increase flexibility in labour market by, for example, introducing worker choice legislation for those covered by federal labour laws.
• Int Trade & Foreign Aid : Remove Canadian regulations that restrict free trade (unilaterally if necessary), such as the Wheat Board.
• Remove Canadian restrictions on foreign ownership of banks and other financial institutions; airlines and railroads; newspapers and electronic media.
• Allow individuals and firms to sue provinces for damages if trade barriers remain in place.
• Health : Repeal or change the Canada Health Act to remove limits on provincial autonomy over health care, as recognized by the constitution.
• Allow competition in health-care delivery, including, private insurance, for-profit and non-profit hospitals, and private surgery and other treatment facilities.
• Defence : Work for inter-operability with NATO and US for air, naval and ground forces.
• Introduce biometric screening of travelers.  Share air passenger information with the United States.
• Judiciary : Abolish the Court Challenges Program to discourage special interest groups from bypassing the political process to obtain special privileges.
• Aboriginal Policies : Restructure aboriginal policy to empower the individual, not band elites.
• Create a new overseas intelligence service to coordinate counter-terrorism efforts.
• Abolish all policies related to “industrial strategy,” particularly regional economic development agencies.  In Atlantic Canada, the money saved could be used to virtually eliminate corporate taxes.

And skipping down a bit :

"When Canada did not agree to take part in the US ballistic missile defence (BMD) program, the US worked around it, locating the necessary radars in Alaska and Greenland. Space-based assets have made Canada’s geographic position less important than that of Poland or Rumania. 

All of these issues (and there are many others) must be addressed in the very near future. They all point in the same direction: Canada can preserve its sovereignty and its prosperity only by a closer relationship, particularly in military and security policy, with the United States."

Gosh, those all seem so familiar to us now, don't they?
From Flanagan and the Fraser Institute' lips to Harper's ear.
And he who has the ear of the king is more important than the king, yadda, yadda.

Actually the above disaster capitalism wish list is so complete a description of Harper's SPP policies, I'm somewhat disappointed to find no mention in it anywhere of his infamous jelly beans.

Link fixed : Mandate for Leadership for the New Prime Minister
.