$3.1-billion : Now is the time to commit accounting

The Sixth Estate : Who is the Auditor General Protecting on $3 Billion Boondoggle?

Auditor General Michael Ferguson on As It Happens yesterday :

"... or maybe in fact it was spent on things other than the public, uh, the anti-terrorism-type initiatives. Now there was also the ability for government, for departments, to get approval to re-allocate some of the funding so that could have been part of the story as well."

So $3.1-billion, nearly 25% of the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative, was perhaps re-allocated and spent on "things other than the anti-terrorism initiative" it was budgeted for.  Then in 2010, the Treasury Board stopped tracking it altogether.

Awesome.

Fun fact : The day before 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held a presser to "declare war on the Pentagon bureaucracy", citing that the Pentagon's own auditors couldn't account for 25% of their spending either.

But this is Canada so instead we have an auditor general who says : "We didn’t find anything that gave us cause for concern that money was used in any way it should not have been."
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Vic Toews : To serve and protect the Con agenda

So after the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews tacked a few additional "terrorism" charges onto Omar Khadr's Canadian file that were not in his original conviction by the discredited Guantánamo Bay military tribunal (h/t Cathie from Canada): 

Ottawa’s file on Omar Khadr contains faulty information based on a memo prepared by a senior policy analyst for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews ... Among other things, the government alleges the late terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was an accomplice of a 15-year-old Khadr, and that the Canadian citizen killed two Afghan militia men. 

“Mr. Khadr engaged U.S. military and coalition personnel with small-arms fire, killing two members of the Afghan militia force. He threw and/or fired grenades at nearby coalition forces, resulting in numerous injuries to them.”

The assertions are important given they will help inform decisions Canadian prison and parole authorities make on Khadr. [Khadr's appeal coming up in July]

a Public Safety spokesy now opens the door to not releasing Khadr even if his Guantánamo conviction is overturned in the US :

"Canadian authorities insist they will decide what happens to Omar Khadr if his conviction for killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan more than a decade ago is overturned in the United States. 

Lawyers for Mr. Khadr, now 26, said Friday they will appeal his guilty plea and conviction on murder and terrorism charges in a U.S. federal court that has already tossed out several similar Guantanamo military tribunal convictions."

In January, in what a number of public officials anonymously referred to as "highly unusual extraordinary political interference", the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews twice overturned a Canadian Press request for a phone interview with Khadr after it had already been approved by the warden at Millhaven where Khadr is being held, citing "access could pose a security risk".

Because a child soldier who has spent the last 10 years in Guantánamo since the age of 16 is naturally "a security risk" to Canada and must be silenced.

The request had been flagged by the Privy Council Office.

In another example of extraordinary political interference that came to light this week, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson ordered all senior Mounties to get clearance from Toews and his office before meeting with any MPs or senators via a liaison office that co-ordinates RCMP strategy with the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. (h/t DammitJanet!)

Last year Paulson told Liberal Senator Colin Kenny that he himself could not commit to a meeting until he got the stamp of approval from the Department of Public Safety. The meeting never took place.

Toews parlsec Candice Bergen, formerly Hoeppner, who introduced final reading of the Combating Terrorism Act in the House last week, explained on Friday:

"If parliamentarians need to, or want to, meet with RCMP or other officials, the appropriate place for them to do that is in parliamentary committees."

NDP MP Randall Garrison : 

"It's not appropriate for the government to reach into the police operation. It's a very, very fundamental part of what we must be assured exists so that the police aren't doing the work of the government, they're doing the work of the public." 

Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell said he feared the "politicization of the police force."

Bit late for that.

More on recent Toews RCMP Police State escapades : Montreal Simon and DammitJanet!

Fun fact : G&M Editor's note on Omar Khadr’s freedom in Ottawa’s hands despite U.S. appeal, Safety Minister insists : "An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Vic Toews as the Public Security Minister".

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DILBIT does Neanderthal

CBC : Top U.S. climate expert calls Conservatives 'Neanderthal'

Former NASA scientist James Hansen fires back at Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver

Foreign special interests and their deep pocket puppets

Previous DILBIT toons   

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The root causes of not committing sociology

"This is not a time to commit sociology," said Stephen Harper, asked when is the right time to study the root causes of acts of terrorism like those by the alleged Trainspotter Two.

"The root causes of terrorism is terrorists", said Pierre Poilievre three times on CBC Power and Politics yesterday.

Politics and its Discontents has clips up of both Steve and Poilieve's statements.

Neither statement has anything to do with terrorism at all of course; they were just manufacturing an attack on Justin Trudeau's "root causes" response to a terrorism question in his interview with Peter Mansbridge.

In 2004 journalist and author Ron Suskind related the following conversation with a senior Goerge W Bush advisor :

"The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' 

I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' 

So, how are y'all enjoying the 'other new realities' Steve has created in his 39% empire ?

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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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The Combating Terrorism Act vs Justin Trudeau

On Thursday, three days after the Boston Marathon bombings, the Cons still had scheduled an opposition day for Monday - a day on which the opposition parties set the day's agenda. But then on Friday, an hour after learning that Justin Trudeau would spend it introducing his Backbenchers' Spring motion, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan suddenly announced that opp day was cancelled due to the vital national importance of debating the Combating Terrorism Act on Monday instead ... because of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Sure, whatever.

Notable that the S-7 Combating Terrorism Act would have passed already in its previous incarnations as Bill C-17 and C-19 if Steve hadn't prorogued Parliament. On September 22, 2010 the entire Liberal Party but one voted along with the Cons to pass C-17. Then on October 23 2012, the entire Liberal Party save 5 voted in favour of S-7.

Dear Libs : and this is why you can't be taken seriously as a credible opposition to Steve or a partner in any coalition against Steve. Prior to the last election, you expected to be given a pass for voting along with Steve hundreds of times owing to the fact you couldn't afford to bring down the government because you weren't ready to have an election. You don't have that excuse any longer. Really looking forward to hearing your cautious mousy noises against innocent citizens being incarcerated without trial before you all vote along with Steve once again, just so no one can call you soft on terrorism :

Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia said that the Liberals will be supporting Bill S-7 and noted that many of the original measures were first introduced by the Chretien government in 2001.

S-7. Let's suppose you know someone, perhaps your landlord or a colleague at work, that the government suspects may one day in the future commit an act of terrorism. You can be detained for up to 3 days without charge while being questioned. You don't get to hear, let alone challenge, any evidence given against you or your colleague, even if it's tortured out of someone you've never heard of in Syria, and you can be held without trial for a year if you don't co-operate.

Sure, you're a model citizen but are you sure you don't know any of these suspected terrorists for instance? ...

Building Resilience Against Terrorism : Canada’s Counter-terrorism Strategy
Public Safety Canada 2012 , introduced by Vic Toews :

"...domestic extremism that is “based on grievances – real or perceived – revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism."

which is merely a rehash of the language in :
2010 G8 Summit - Integrated Security Unit Joint Intelligence Group 
but minus the reference to "First nations' resource-based grievances" :
1a The Terrorist Threat
     1b The Public Order Threat

"The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville ... will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies. These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism. These ideologies may also include notions of racial supremacy and white power ... 

"The important commonality is that these ideologies ... place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society. 

In addition to these generally held tenets, a variety of grievances exist: These grievances are based upon notions/expectations regarding the environment, animal rights, First nations'(sic) resource-based grievances, gender/racial equality, and distribution of wealth etc."

 The G8/G20 - in which thousands of people got locked up for days for no reason whatsoever.

So who wants to see the G8/G20 pilot project experiment in "terrorism" law enforcement expanded into law right across Canada? 

The Cons have had this version of the terrorism bill lying around for months, just waiting for a day when they needed to change the channel, and today is that day - they've decided to have the third reading on embedding preventative arrest and secret trials in law for no other reason than to change the channel on Justin Trudeau. 
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10:45 Update : 
After watching the proceedings for an hour and a half now, I must apologize for writing re the Libs:

Really looking forward to hearing your cautious mousy noises against innocent citizens being incarcerated without trial before you all vote along with Steve once again, just so no one can call you soft on terrorism.

I take it back - they are not even bothering to do that much. 
Aside from the two Lib MPs questioning the timing of bringing this bill forward now to offset Trudeau's backbencher freedom motion, the only debate going on is among NDP MPs regarding provisions of the act. After opening remarks from Con Public Safety parlsec Candice Bergen, the Cons have not responded once. 

2pm Update : So "Operation Smooth", carried out by Homeland Security, FBI, and Canadian law enforcement, thwarted the Trainspotter Two without the benefit of the Combating Terrorism Act. Huh.
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Wednesday April 24 2013 Update : S-7 passes into law.

Libs and Cons - 183 Yes     vs      NDP, Bloc and Green - 93 No

Feb 2 2014 Update : C-44 - An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other Acts   Passed
Libs and Cons - 174 Yes       vs        NDP, Green - 81No
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Backbenchers Spring officially over

Two weeks ago the Backbenchers Spring was full of hope as Langley Con MP Mark Warawa and his five brave Con backbenchers rose up to defend the very soul of democracy, and incidentally, Wawawa's right to independent Steve-free abortion speech in the House of Commons in the form of Motion 408.

Sadly it was not to be.  Yesterday ...

Wawawa will drop bid for vote on sex-selective abortion :

"Over that last couple of weeks, I seriously considered my options and how best to move this issue forward.

I've decided to continue working on the sex selection, gendercide issue by speaking at university campuses, giving lectures and engaging in debates." 

Feel free to sing along with me : Bravely bold Sir Wawa, brave Sir Wawa ...

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Wednesday April 24 Backbencher Spring update :  Our story so far ..... Justin's backbenchers freedom motion gets bumped by Cons sudden need to debate/pass the Combating Terrorism Act on Monday, during which the Trainspotter Two get busted for terrorism. Yeah, I know. 

Anyway, Speaker Scheer tells backbenchers to grow a pair and if they want to speak in the House, he will recognize them. So today ... and can you stand the tension, the anticipation, the drama? ... Wawawa catches Scheer's eye, rises, and delivers a homily to his riding's arts centre contest, Langley Has Talent.

So there you have it - the new self-censoring backbencher robots may now speak. What a historic victory for democracy and local talent contests everywhere.

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CORE-outsourcing/Amanda Lang/iGATE - on the milk carton

On Saturday I posted a screencap of CBC's 'senior business correspondent' Amanda Lang as keynote speaker at the upcoming CORE-Outsourcing's 8th Annual Conference : Fast Forward - What's Next for Outsourcing?.
CORE displayed Lang's bio above the logos of their 'Corporate Sponsors' - which unhappily included iGATE.  My link to that page subsequently went down over the weekend:








"Oops! The page you are looking for cannot be found."

This seemed most unlikely for an "annual global conference" about to open in 6 days so I fixed it. It went down again. Go ahead - try it yourself. It's gone.

CORE's helpful Oops! advice to try looking for the page in their menu links brings up no mention of the conference at all.                                                                                                                                                                 
    
                                                                         


Their most recent twitter entry on March 13 which provided a link to the conference is also "Oops", while links to it from various conference participants like Everest Group are also pining for the fjords.





The whole CORE-outsourcing April 23 conference page is all just one great big Oops now apparently.

In the course of looking for it, I ran into a CORE page from their 2011 conference advertizing Lang as the Conference Moderator :

as well as iGATE's proud corporate  sponsorship there in presumably happier days :

But the page at CORE-Outsourcing's 8th Annual Conference : Fast Forward - What's Next for Outsourcing? , featuring Lang and C.J. Ritchie "Assistant Deputy Minister of the Strategic Partnerships Office, Government of British Columbia, which provides leadership to BC’s $5.8-billion portfolio of strategic outsourcing contracts" is nowhere to be found.

Did they just go indoors?  Are they making corrections?  
All I know is that CBC has visited that Creekside page upwards of 20 times in the last 24 hours.

If anyone knows what happened, please let me know. After all - it's CORE's 8th Annual Outsourcing Conference - practically a Canadian tradition now.

2pm Update : Frank at Back of the Book found another way in :
http://www.core-outsourcing.org/events/event-directory/Archive/Conferenc2013/index.php

Thursday update from comments below :
Saskboy said : Ombudsman tweeted me that Lang is off the CORE event.

Mystery Solved !          CBC Ombudsman, May 3, 2013
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Penashue's Extortion Action Plan

                               Peter Penashue's Extortion Action! Plan! concept via Canadian Cynic

Former Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Peter Penashue ran for office in 2011 under the campaign slogan "Peter for All". Winning that election by just 79 votes, he resigned his Labrador seat last month over an ongoing Elections Canada investigation that found his campaign overspent and accepted illegal donations. 

So it was a bit of a surprise when he was back on the campaign trail last week bragging to his constituents that he held up a Newfoundland project for six months in order to get $85-million in funding for a highway for Labrador. 
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister for All indeed. 

He also claimed that when re-elected and re-installed as a Con cabinet minister, he would be instrumental in boosting pork to the Canadian Forces Base in his riding.

Tony Gazebo won his Parry Sound-Muskoka riding in 2006 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 $50-million in public funds intended for border infrastructure to gazebos and flower pots in his riding, he increased that vote margin to almost 11,000.  A pretty good deal at $2,290 per vote. 
Now he's President of the Treasury Board.

So however laughable it may seem to us at the moment, there's still a glimmer of hope for Penashue and his Economic Extortion Action Plan buy-election.

Creekside will resume its all-outsourcing-all-the-time coverage shortly.
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Boycott the Royal Bank ... and Amanda Lang - Part 4

 "Information technology workers displaced in Canada are being replaced not by cheap Indian workers but by better ones." 

So says CBC's Amanda Lang, senior business correspondent for CBC News and good cop to Kevin O'Leary's bad cop on the Lang and O'Leary Exchange, in yesterday's Globe and Mail.

She wonders if Canadians have returned to 1990 or perhaps to "campaign trail rhetoric in America" - so aghast is she that people are angry about the Royal Bank in-and-outsourcing of Canadian jobs to iGATE in India.  

In her rousing paeon to globalization and "the natural forces of capitalism", she explains :

"a job moved from Canada to India creates a new kind of prosperity. It creates a job in a country we sell goods and services to, increasing the opportunity for our businesses to flourish even more."

If you have $699.00 you can hear more of Amanda's thoughts when she gives the keynote address on April 23 at CORE-Outsourcing's 8th Annual Conference : Fast Forward - What's Next for Outsourcing? sponsored by IBM, HP, and iGATE :

"CORE's mandate is to help member organizations maximize the value of outsourcing by providing independent and unbiased information ... "

Also presenting will be 
C.J. Ritchie, Asst Deputy Minister, Strategic Partnerships Office, Government of British Columbia, providing "leadership to BC’s $5.8-billion portfolio of outsourcing contracts".

A list of CORE's extensive corp members here, and no, Royal Bank isn't on that list including RBC Financial Group and you'll recognize the rest of them.  
In May, CORE is running a course focusing on "the transition from insourced service delivery to outsourced service delivery and through to steady-state operations".

About that...

Walkom : Former outsourcer describes how job destruction works.
Informative interview with a 10 year veteran of doing it in Canada.

But here's what I don't get, Amanda. If you bring in foreign workers in order to save money and drive down wages in Canada by paying those indentured foreign workers 15% less in a market that just lost 54,500 jobs last month, who is going to be able to to afford to buy the stuff and pay for the services you sent offshore?  

And who is going to look into fixing this for us? The same guy who set it up for us.

Boycott the Royal Bank of Canada - Part 1.  


Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 2


Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 3


Sunday update : Great post from Laura K @ wmtc on related issues :
Unpaid labour used to be called slavery. Now it's an internship
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Wednesday update : CORE-outsourcing/Amanda Lang/ iGATE - on the milk carton
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Thursday update :
Saskboy said : Ombudsman tweeted me that Lang is off the CORE event.

May 3, 2013   CBC Ombudsman

March 5, 2014 CBC issues no foul no harm report :
Conflict of Interest and CBC News coverage of RBC and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program
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