Election 2011 gnomenclature

Yes, those are exact quotes from Flaherty's interview with Mansbridge on why Canada should accept the budget and not go to the polls.

I imagine HRH the Queen is probably a bit hacked off - you'd think Jim would have found room in there somewhere to mention the Royal Wedding as a reason not to have an election.

It seems rather rude but it's probably just a gnome thing.

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The Harper Government - the record speaks for itself

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So what exactly is "perimeter security"?

As in Steve and Barry's new Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness?

None of our fracking business apparently, says the Public Safety Ministry.
Rather, it's "a matter of cabinet confidence."

Researcher Ken Rubin used federal Access to Information legislation to ask the Public Safety department for documents related to the definition of the term "perimeter security” in the context of the Canada-U.S. border.

Rubin also asked for documents defining the physical geographic borders, analyses that explain the implications of using the term “perimeter security,”and just how the term might be sold to us - but mostly he was just asking for a simple definition.
The department’s response was an unequivocal “no.”

In a letter written March 4, Public Safety officials said: “The records pertaining to your request have been entirely withheld.”

The department said the information could be injurious to international affairs, that it contained information developed for a government institution or minister, that it would provide an account of a government consultation, and that it is a matter of cabinet confidence."

No, it's a matter of public confidence.

Back in the fall Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ officials prepared a 14 page secret strategy for "big business groups and others" to "align supportive stakeholders to speak positively about the announcement" of the Shared Vision they were still keeping under wraps.

Even after a draft of it was leaked to the press in December, Steve still mustered the gall to stand in the House and deny opposition demands for more info by unequivocally denying its existence :

"There is no secret deal" and
"Canada already operates under what is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership with the United States and Mexico, something negotiated by the previous Liberal government."

Notable you should mention the SPP here, Steve, a deal designed to function entirely outside the purview of either Parliament or Congress.

So despite the fact Steve really really wants our input this time :

“We are committed to consulting with Canadians on the implementation of the shared vision for perimeter security and economic competitiveness,” said Minister of State Lebel.

... well, up until April 21st anyway ... Rubin wonders how we can possibly respond adequately if they don't want to tell us what perimeter security is.

Fortunately David Emerson has come up with a partial answer for us : "The primary security perimeter should ultimately be continental."
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Homeland perimeter security blanket

Up until it was taken down a couple of days ago, this was the front page for the 2011 Ottawa Conference on Defence and Security bunfest.

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It was hosted by the Conference of Defence Associations, CDA Institute, described on their website as "a non-partisan, independent, and non-profit organization" ... aka a military lobby group primarily funded by the Department of National Defence.

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I found it kind of touching - the way the logos of all the corporate defence contractors are laid out so boldly right under the word "AGENDA" like that.

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Some highlights from the first panel group, moderated by CDA/CDFAI deep integrationist Colin Robertson, on loan from DFAIT to direct the Canada-US Project, to which the new SPP Harper Obama perimeter security blanket bears a singular resemblance.

Everyone was very bumfed up about the Harper Obama plan for armouring NAFTA :

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Michael Wilson, former Canadian ambassador to the US and Nafta negotiator : "The definition of national security includes energy and the economy."

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James Blanchard, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and Nafta negotiator :

"We hear the phrase ‘security trumps trade’ but the fact is energy security is part of security. To suggest they are separate and apart is a lot of baloney.
I don’t think the average person understands how closely we co-operate already on information and technology in the military or people would not be throwing around the word sovereignty so loosely."

Lt.-Gen. Frank Grass, deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, on expanding NORAD to include land and sea:

"We’ve brought NORAD and NorthCom together - the Canadian and US staff below command level are fully integrated. The civil assistance program is already operational. Ready to help RCMP during the Olympics, we prepositioned forces south of the border – another example of the great cooperation we have with CanCom."

A question from the floor from retired diplomat John Noble : "BMD ... ballistic missile defence ...Is the door still open?"
Michael Wilson : "We should have joined the US in BMD. I hope discussions can be reopened."

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Yesterday Janet Napolitano addressed the US Senate Committee "Department of Homeland Security Oversight" :

Canada Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews and DHS announced a first of its kind plan to establish a comprehensive cross-border approach to critical infrastructure resilience, focused on sharing information and assessing and managing joint risks.

Moreover, last month, President Obama and Prime Minister Harper signed a landmark "Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness" that sets forth how our two countries will manage our shared homeland and economic security in the 21st century."

Our shared homeland and economic security?

A bit later on she mentions protecting "shared assets and key resources".

It's all about sharing evidently. Lots and lots of sharing.

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This deep integration stuff has always been pitched to Canada as : After 9/11, we have to go security for the Americans so they'll continue to buy our stuff. Security vs. trade.

But there is no balancing of opposites going on here really, is there? There's just the one deal - markets and resources wrapped up in a big old homeland perimeter security blanket. With logos.

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A smiling Daniel Ellsberg is led off to jail

The famous Vietnam war whistle blower, now age 79, was arrested in the snow today after chaining himself to the White House fence to protest efforts to prosecute WikiLeaks Julian Assange and Bradley Manning as terrorists.

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"I have no doubt if I put out the Pentagon Papers in every detail, same as before, I would now be called a terrorist," said Ellsberg, whose leaks 39 years ago helped to turn public opinion against the Vietnam war.

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About 135 demonstrators were arrested at the protest organized by Veterans For Peace, including journalist Chris Hedges.

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Against this man's heart, your cynicism is as nothing.

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Peace now.

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Adventures in Con Leakage to lobbyists - Part 3.

On Tuesday the Procedures and House Affairs Committee heard from Russell Ullyatt, the former Con MP Kelly Block staffer who leaked a draft copy of the Finance Committee report to Con-connected lobbyists before MPs had seen it.

Today we got Con MP Kelly Block herself before the PROC committee, already ably live-blogged by Kady so I'm not going to blow-by-blow it, except to note that the meeting immediately descends into the committee Cons - Scott Reid, Tom Lukiwski, Ted Menzies, and the Chair Joe Preston - circling the wagons around Block to prevent her from answering any of the questions raised by Ullyatt's previous testimony. How they think this helps her personal credibility as an MP at all I have no idea.

This committee, like most of them, is composed of 50% Con MPs including a Con chair.
If the chair doesn't like a particular line of questioning, he disallows the witness from answering and that's the end of it.

Today Chair Joe Preston refused to hear any questions following on from Ullyatt's testimony on Tuesday, while the Con MPs used up their allotted time praising the apparently sainted Block for appearing before committee at all and hey isn't her son coming back from Australia today? and what are her plans for Christmas? OK, I made that last one up - only the last one.

Blocked line of questioning from opp members :
What about the printer with its pallets of boxes of mailouts stacked outside Block's office that were presumably part of Ullyatt's private direct mail business? Was it run out of her office? What was in them? More leaks? Didn't she ask him about them some time over the past two years he was in her employ?

NDP Mulcair elicits from Block that Ullyatt was recommended to her employ by Con MP Rob Clark. Ah. As already noted, when Ullyatt was Clark's campaign manager before coming to Block, RCMP in uniform were discovered using RCMP vehicles to deliver Clark campaign signs, causing a wee stir in the media about blurring use of gov resources for Party partisan reasons. You can guess where Mulcair is going with this and so does the chair who immediately shuts him down.

Much of the two hour meeting with Block posted on the committee agenda was taken up with opp members registering their outrage that Block mentioned she was only staying for one hour. Whose idea was that? Because it's going to take more than a couple of five minute attempts each by opp members to get any relevant questions past the chair.

My guess : As no one knew the two hour session was being cut to one hour before Block mentioned it after being escorted into the meeting by House Leader and veteran defender-of-witnesses-from-committees John Baird, I'm guessing we can draw our own conclusions where that particular one hour directive shutting down hour two with the committee came from.

Anyway Block declines to stay, down comes the gavel and she's whisked away by a posse - the meeting and the committee adjourned till next year - leaving us none the wiser about anything from her testimony.
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Time Magazine's 2010 Person of the Year

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Oh sorry - that is just Time's readers' poll.

Here ya go .
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BBC :

"A Time poll showed readers favoured naming WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this year but the magazine's editors and correspondents chose Zuckerberg.
The conservative Tea Party political movement was Time's second choice, followed by Assange, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the 33 trapped Chilean miners."

So. Facebook, then the Tea Party, then WikiLeaks, then Afghan President Karzai. In that order. Please adjust your headsets accordingly.

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Inside the Procedure and House Affairs Committee : Ullyatt

Further adventures in Con Leakage to lobbyists.

Russell Ullyatt, Con MP Kelly Block's staffer who leaked a pre-budget finance committee draft report to five Con-connected tax industry lobbyists before MPs had seen it, was grilled at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee today.

Mr. Ullyatt could not be more contrite. Mr. Ullyatt cannot say enough wonderful things about his totally blameless former employer Kelly Block, who he worked for for two years before leaking docs out of her office to exactly the same five lobbyists to whom he was applying for jobs. Mr. Ullyatt has a longer list of people he is apologizing to than Academy Awards winners have people to thank. Mr. Ullyatt is breaking my heart here.

First question is from Lib MP Ratansi - not usually my favorite committee interrogator but she has it totally pegged : "Who coached you for your appearance here today?"

Ullyatt responds well you know his family, his friends, but not the Cons - oh no, not the Cons.

Ratansi circles around, comes back at him. Um ok yes actually he did retain Con Party lawyer Paul Lepsoe of Con in-and-out court case fame to coach him today. Busted.

Ratansi also points out that eight hours elapsed between first and last leak, which pretty well blows the momentary lapse of judgement part of his heartbreaking apology all to shit.

And holy crap I'll bet Lepsoe wishes he had been allowed to sit next to Ullyatt in committee and stop him from scoring on his own goal by offering up the entirely unsolicited info that he asked one of the lobbyists he leaked the docs to - Egan, CEO of the Canadian Gas Association -if Egan had any specific questions he would like Block to put to Egan during Egan's appearance before the Finance committee. Oh dear.

NDP MP Mulcair wants to know about the "slats and pallets, with boxes piled high and a very elaborate printing machine" he has seen sitting outside Block's office when he walks by. Would that would be Ullyatt's on-the-side business R. U. Thinking, "Canada’s only completely political mail provider," that has sent out "over 5 million mailouts in the last two years"? Yes, it would. How long did he work for Block again? Two years. Does Block know about his on-the-side biz? Um.................yes. But Ullyatt assures the committee he didn't operate his private business out of her office which would, incidentally, be totally illegal. [slats of mailouts out side her office? what slats?] No, he operated it out of his garage. Oh dear again.

Rather handy, isn't it, that the upshot of yet another low level staffer being busted is that the final committee report will now be shelved, leaving opposition parties and the over 400 witnesses who have appeared before finance committee without any input at all into next federal budget, so now the whole show belongs entirely to Flaherty. The problem is that it was the draft committee report that was leaked and drafts reveal all the horse-trading the opposition parties do in camera - and none of them wants that aired in public. This is just total bullshit on your part, opposition parties.


Next up - Ullyatt's five "friends" as he refers to them at least 50 times - the lobbyists who received Ullyatt's clearly marked Confidential report.

Lynne Hamilton, former Mike Harris alumnus and media co-ordinator for Walkerton water tragedy, now a VP at GCI Group and author of the "I heart you" response to Ullyatt upon receiving the leaked doc, says she never read it. Moreover she points out that as a former Senior Special Assistant to Secretary of State Helena Guergis, Ullyart can not be hired as a lobbyist by her company anyway.

Andy Gibbons, former legislative assistant to Con MP Leon Benoit and now at Hill and Knowlton, said Ullyatt knew he was following the finance committee but he did not solicit the report. Gibbons sent a paragraph of the leaked report on to his client Merck Frosst and someone else at Hill and Knowlton.

Clarke Cross, former Legislative Assistant to Con/Alliance MPs James Lunney and Leon Benoit, and now senior consultant with Tactix Government Relations and Public Affairs Group, forwarded "a summation of two points" from the report on to "one person at the University of Calgary". Huh.

Howard Mains, formerly with the Mulroney government and now Co-President of Tactix, never read Ullyatt's email and is hearing the contents of the email for the first time just now apparently.

Tim Egan, CEO of the Canadian Gas Association and founding director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, the Tim Ball and Tom Harris climate change skeptics group, also never read Ullyatt's email because it caught in his spam filter.

Testimony from these lobbyists, btw, marks the single greatest number of times I have ever heard the term 'pro-active' used to describe the failure to anticipate an oncoming shitstorm.

Pro-active. For those days when "going forward" just isn't strong enough.

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Avi Lewis : The Canada-Israel special relationship

Avi Lewis : "There's no wave of anti-Semitism in Canada?"

Scott Reid : "No, no, no, no, absolutely not. It's funny I've heard people who have criticized us saying that we think this but there is absolutely no spike in the kinds of anti-Semitic incidents that I think appall us."

Con MP Scott Reid is Chair of Steering Committee of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism and vice-chair of the CPCCA's inquiry panel on domestic anti-Semitism.

Thanks, Scott. Good to know. It seems the US Anti-Defamation League agrees with you on that.

Perhaps the misconception about the rise of, you know, actual recorded incidents of anti-Semitism in Canada has arisen from the original CPCCA mission statement put out by yourself and Lib MP Mario Silva in June last year :

"Recorded incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise both locally and globally."

Last week the phrase "rising tide of anti-Semitism" was used in the Ontario legislature to hysterically condemn a two year old MA thesis written by Jenny Peto, a Jewish Palestinian solidarity activist and one of the people interviewed in the vid above. Really reaching here, guys.

Meanwhile the World Zionist Organization is launching a new hasbara program targetting students and Canada was represented there :

"Dozens of students from 14 countries around the world joined together this weekend at a seminar in Paris that launched the World Zionist Organization’s new Global Network for Countering Anti-Semitism.

The students and others like them will be the soldiers on the ground who will report to the WZO about anti-Semitism in their countries and receive advice about how to tackle future incidents. To that end, the WZO launched a media room that will be in touch with activists around the world in several languages.

The global network’s media room will be ... in contact with students acting as antennas on campuses around the world. For instance, if there is a problem on a particular campus, the WZO can contact the university and ask for security or bring in other activists from close by to help counteract the problem.

Media room director Eitan Behar : "With the right work of all our activists around the world and if we are unified, we can win the battle that is going on around the world for Israel’s image."

Because clearly that's what all this is about : Israel's image.

What is less clear is why Canada is so determined to identify with it.

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WikiRebels - The Documentary

The rough cut advance of a new documentary on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, released today in English by the Swedish broadcaster SVT for the press and available on their site til Monday.

Openleaks.org, the WikiLeaks breakaway group also profiled in the doc, goes online on Monday.

h/t WL Central

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