Steve's G8 Slush Fund

[updated below]

When the G8 leaders stayed for one night at the Deerhurst Resort as part of the G8/G20 $1.2-billion bunfest, their one-night stay probably didn't afford them the opportunity to fully appreciate all the benefits of the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Slush Fund spent in Industry Minister Tony Clement's riding.

"32 projects that received funding, many of which appear to have no connection to the needs of the G8 summit, chosen by Industry Minister Tony Clement, the mayor of Hunstville, and the general manager of Deerhurst Resort"

And "reducing congestion" at the border by putting up gazebos 50k away is a neat trick

The (Jan. 13th) draft report says that in November 2009, the government tabled supplementary spending estimates which requested $83 million for a Border Infrastructure Fund aimed at reducing congestion at border crossings. But the government did not reveal that it intended to devote $50 million of that money to a G8 legacy fund, even though Huntsville is nowhere near the Canada-U.S. border.

Also ... Auditor general Sheila Fraser is not pleased the Cons misquoted her about the G8 slush fund the day Parliament dissolved last month. Their dissenting opinion to the committee report to the House read :

All witnesses brought forwarded testimony demonstrating strong endorsement of the government's unprecedented transparency to summit costs. [lols]

The Auditor General, Sheila Fraser commented in this regard the following: "We found that the processes and controls around that were very good, and that the monies were spent as they were intended to be spent."

Well actually :

Fraser said the quote had nothing to do with the summits. Instead, the Conservatives falsely recycled an old comment she made on security spending by a previous Liberal government after the 9/11 terrorist attacks a decade ago. (emphasis mine)

Ouch.

Oh well, at least we still have all those nice Economic Action Plan signs.

Tuesday Update : More shenanigans. It would seem the dissenting Con report from the committee hearings into the G8/20 bunfest expenses that misquoted AG Sheila Fraser also managed to misquote Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page as well :

"The document suggests Mr. Page gave security costs for the summits a passing grade after they were held, when in fact the quotation the Conservatives attribute to him was plucked from a report on government estimates he prepared before the meetings."

Yeah. Steve the Economist wants this election to be all about the economy and the Cons' supposed record for solid fiscal management. Yet their best rebuttal to a committee report critical of that record at the G8/20 is to appropriate a ten year old positive assessment that was actually about the Libs and a quote the PBO issued before the summits even began. .

Bruce Carson : "stickhandling" the Afghan file

Five times convicted fraudster Bruce Carson - currently under RCMP investigation for influence peddling and illegal lobbying of Indian Affairs to obtain a water filtration contract that would have netted his 22-year old fiancee 20% of sales - was granted a secret security clearance in 2006 by some "low level staffer", just so he could be Harper's "main player "and "point man" on the top secret and sensitive Afghanistan file.

"... starting in 2007, Carson was a regular participant in daily telephone briefings on Afghanistan involving senior officials from departments such as foreign affairs, defence, RCMP, justice and corrections. “It was evident to all the departments that he was the main player, Harper’s point man on the file,” said one source familiar with the briefings. “He was given the most sensitive file to work on."

So while Stockwell Day was braying in the House in 2007 that even to question the treatment of detainees was tantamount to treason, a convicted felon was briefing his Correction Services Canada inspections team in Afghanistan "on a daily basis" and possibly figuring out what to do about Corrections Canada requests for boots suitable for "walking through blood and fecal matter on patrol or in the prison".

While Harper has a national security adviser, it was left to Carson, chief policy analyst, to stickhandle the Afghan file on a daily basis. His focus was usually on how the mission was being communicated here in Canada rather than on developments in the field, the source said."

Ah yes, putting the happy face on war crimes :

Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan were ordered in 2007 to hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners, say defence and foreign affairs sources. The instruction — issued soon after allegations of torture by Afghan authorities began appearing in public — was aimed at defusing the explosive human-rights controversy, said sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The controversy was seen as “detracting from the narrative” the Harper government was trying to weave around the mission, said one official. “It was meant to put on a happy face,” he added.

The instruction was passed over the telephone by senior officials in the Privy Council Office."

Impolitical says : "Incompetent leadership that left the highest, most sensitive affairs of Canada in Bruce Carson's hands without the proper security clearance"

but I think Harper knew exactly why he wanted the felon they called 'The Mechanic'.

By the way, how is the more recent stickhandling of the Afghan detainee documents progressing, 16 months after they were demanded by Parliament?

March 3, 2011 : Secret Afghan documents could be ready in two weeks, say Liberals a month ago.

The Cons have been stonewalling on handing over the Afghan detainee documents to our duly elected members of Parliament, while some unelected convicted felon buddy of Harper's was the Afghan file "point man" doing the "stickhandling" during the time in question. Unbelievable.

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Harper's Tea Party ad

Just over a year ago we were all surprised to learn that Stephen Harper had hired former Bush WH press secretary and Freedom's Watch leader Ari Fleischer not once but twice -first to promote Harper to the US media, the second time for unspecified duties.

Fleischer's facebook page continues to describes him as "an international media consultant to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper", although as noted by Emily, Harper is not exactly lacking in alternative tea party support.
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UPDATE : Here ya go, Steve - I fixed your ad up for ya.
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Known country for old men

EKOS, April 1, 2011 dual landline/cell phone sampling of 2929 Canadians over 18. Margin of error +/- 1.8% point 19 times out of 20.

According to Elections Canada, only 37% of eligible voters under 25 voted in the 2008 election, compared to 59% among all age groups. In 1988, 75.3 % of all eligible voters voted.

Update : "Surprise. We are voting" Good on you, Canadian youth.

Meanwhile Steve's handlers throw a couple of 19 year old first time voters out of a Con rally after they discovered one of them had a picture of herself with Iggy posted on her facebook page. Because it would obviously be a really really bad thing if she were to check out all the parties first before voting.

Another student is arrested for walking across a parking lot to his car while not being one of the many other Con supporters in the parking lot and yet another student is reportedly "barred because she had participated with the Sierra youth coalition on climate change at the Cancun conference last December".

Can't have that.

Several students who were participants in the non-partisan "Surprise. Youth are voting" flash mob outside the Con rally in Guelph were refused entry into the Con rally afterwards by the RCMP despite having registered for it :

"A Conservative Party of Canada official approached them and indicated they were not welcome because of their involvement in an action that was perceived as a protest by party insiders".

Flash mob to promote youth participation in voting = protest - to Con "party insiders".

Well done, dickheads.

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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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Coalition Steve

Fourteen years ago Stephen Harper co-authored a passionate plea for electoral reform and coalitions - including one with the Bloc. . . CBC's Terry Milewski has unearthed a position paper written by Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan in 1997 on the necessity of forming a coalition of conservative parties in order to overcome the "benign dictatorship" of a century of predominantly Liberal governments. . . .

Well we know how that worked out for the PC Tories - a not very benign coup by the Reform Party. But what's interesting is their acknowledgement of the Bloc/ separatists/ Quebec nationalists as necessary partners in their gaining and maintaining power in the past :

"Brian Mulroney swept to victory in 1984 by allying with Quebec separatists"

and the future :

ALONG THE TRANS-CANADA HIGHWAY FROM CALGARY TO BANFF lies a prominent mountain called The Three Sisters. Legend has it that an Indian chief placed each of his three daughters on a separate peak to keep them away from unworthy suitors. The strategy succeeded so well that the three daughters died up there. Canadian conservatism is also a family of three sisters fated to perish in isolation unless they descend from their mountain tops and embrace more realistic expectations.

After the next federal election, Canadian conservatives may begin to encourage limited cooperation between Reform and the PCs, leading to a system of sister parties.

Both the Reform party and the Bloc Quebecois, or even the PCs, could go on for decades without ever becoming national parties; and through their survival as regional parties they could prevent the emergence of a national conservative party.

The lack of any strategic alliance among the sister parties, argues Steve and Tom, leads to "a war of attrition" among them due to our first-past-the-post system.

In the longer term, however, and assuming that Quebec remains in Canada, the alliance would find it hard to form a stable government without some Quebec support. On that basis, a strategic alliance of Quebec nationalists with conservatives outside Quebec might become possible, and it might be enough to sustain a government.

None of this will be easy or even likely. But experience shows that a monolithic conservative party is unworkable; so conservatives who are unhappy with a one-party-plus system featuring the Liberals as the perpetual governing party may have little choice but to construct an alliance, at least of the two anglophone sisters, and perhaps ultimately including a third sister.

... Quebec nationalism, while not in itself a conservative movement, appeals to the kinds of voters who in other provinces support conservative parties. The Bloc Quebecois is strongest in rural Quebec, among voters who would not be out of place in Red Deer, except that they speak French rather than English.

It may be that the third sister can never be brought back in. In the last century, Quebec nationalists, content with provincial autonomy and cultural preservation, could participate in Sir John A. Macdonald's Liberal-Conservative Party -- a single party in name but a coalition in substance, always with a strong "Quebec lieutenant." But now that Quebec nationalists have discovered sovereignty, they may never again see merit in a conservative coalition."

How to fix this. What follows is a passionate plea for electoral reform and proportional representation like they have in Europe.

Our parliamentary government creates a concentrated power structure out of step with other aspects of society. For Canadian democracy to mature, Canadian citizens must face these facts, as citizens in other countries have, and update our political structures to reflect the diverse political aspirations of our diverse communities.

Only in politics do we still entrust power to a single faction expected to prevail every time over the opposition by sheer force of numbers. Even more anachronistically, we persist in structuring the governing team like a military regiment under a single commander with almost total power to appoint, discipline and expel subordinates.

Some - *cough* - more than others.

Among major democracies, only Great Britain so ruthlessly concentrates power.

In most of the rest of Europe, proportional representation ensures that coalition governments routinely form cabinets. ... In New Zealand, which used to have a Canadian-style system of concentrated power, the voters rebelled against alternating Labour party and National party dictatorships: electoral reform now ensures coalition cabinets.

Modernizing Canadian politics would not only be good for conservatism, it might be the key to Canada's survival as a nation.

It's a fascinating read. And as a bonus - sure to outrage the Con cheerleaders who bought into Steve's current coalition monkey.
Yet I wonder if part of Harper's enraged obsession around "coalitions with separatists" is due to his feeling betrayed by the "third sister" he once envisioned as part of a conservative coalition. . . .

Many thanks to Kev in comments below for the Milewski link.
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Harper advocates for coalition

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That was old Steve as a right wing lobbyist back in 1997, explaining how parties could form a "coalition" to oust the Liberals even if the Liberals won the "largest number of seats" in the House. . .

New Steve, unsurprisingly, not a fan of coalitions. Today new Steve said that old Steve was only talking about "uniting the right". Somehow, for Steve, a coalition for "uniting the right" is imbued with a certain caché not extended to the other parties that the majority of us voted for in the last election. . .

Excellent crib notes on how the Canadian parliamentary system works from Relentlessly Progressive Political Economy : . 10 basic facts : .

1.) We elect individual candidates who may or may not belong to a political party. .

2.) We do not elect the prime minister, parliaments do. .

3.) Political parties elect their leaders. .

4.) The prime minister is the person who enjoys a majority of the support of the elected members of parliament. .

5.) When a party wins the majority of individual ridings it forms the government with its leader as the prime minister. .

6.) A majority government may change its leader any time the party decides to and continue to rule for the duration of their mandate in virtue of their majority in the house of commons. .

7.) Political parties only have a mandate to govern if they have a majority. If not, they have to coalesce* to form the government. .

8.) There is thus NO SUCH THING AS A MINORITY MANDATE TO GOVERN. Parliamentary tradition says that the incumbent government has the right to try and form the new government. But parliamentary tradition also says that any majority group of MPs can form a government. Why? because we elect individual MPs not political parties to represent us in the House of Commons. .

9.) There is such a thing as a minority parliament which receives a mandate from parliament at each moment there is a vote on major money bill or when the legislation in question is deemed a confidence vote. .

10.) All minority parliaments in this sense are run by coalition governments in that they require the support of other parties to stay in power. .
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Another improved EAP! election sign

... this time on a fence. Just a small portion of the $53.2M total in public money Steve is using to advertise his Canada Economic Action Plan to you.

Now far be it from me to suggest peeps go out there and deface public property like this. That would be wrong. Especially if you were to use 1/8" ply, a portable drill, and grind down the heads on the screws. But these are your signs - you paid for them - and charming as they are, they do appear to be a tad thin on content.

H/t to EH! Enough Harper for use of their Conservative Priorities graph. A better look at it all in one piece here. Ceasefire's No Stealth Fighters petition here.

P.S. The government's EAP! website seems to be 404'd at the moment. What rotten luck. Score one for Rick Mercer.

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Public Safety Committee Report on the G20

The Public Safety Committee report on the G-20 tabled in the House yesterday calls for an independent inquiry into the decision-making by all levels of government that resulted in the outrageous cost, the unprecedented arrests of over 1100 people including journalists and people on their way home from work, the serious civil liberties violations perpetrated by security forces who appeared to be operating under the mistaken belief that martial law was in effect, the property damage, and the patronage funding. Excerpts :

"the Minister of Public Safety and government witnesses [refused] to identify the person or persons responsible for making the decisions that led to the mass arrests and mass rights violations."

"The Committee finds it difficult to understand why the Toronto Police Force decided to arrest the more than 70 people who were sleeping in the University of Toronto gymnasium rather than arrest the many masked individuals who were in the crowd and were known to police."

Condemns the partisan spending in the Industry Minister’s constituency and asks the Government of Canada to develop a strategy to prevent future vote-buying with public funds.

Strong language but entirely commensurate with the abuses catalogued.

Unmentioned in news articles about the committee's report is the peculiar dissenting supplementary opinion appended to the report by the five Con members of the 11 member multi-party committee.
In eight paragraphs describing the G20 summit as "an unmitigated success", the "Conservative Party of Canada" complains about "the Opposition Coalition" a total of five times.

And just in case you need a reminder of exactly how appalling the behavior of the "Conservative Party of Canada" was in these G20 committee hearings :

Thugs, hooligans and anarchists. Oh my.

Finished with the G20? Not even close.

Inside the Public Safety Committee : G20 preventative arrests

The Cons' contempt for Parliament was just a part of their contempt for all of us.
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Oh look - an election lawn sign.

Much whining out there in the Con press about the cost of unnecessary elections. For the same cost as the entirely unnecessary G20 bunfest, we could have had three elections already, two of which would have already happened had Steve not shuttered Parliament to avoid answering to it.

Susan Delacourt : A Parliament of Shutdowns - a recap of the 40th Parliament, and

Ignore what Canadians politicians say about a coalition government
at the kids' table because grownups, "Canada’s leading thinkers on constitutional law and the formation of government", have begun "mapping out an instruction manual to guide the country when and if an election produces an unclear result". Including Tom Flanagan, you say?

"Other countries, such as Britain and New Zealand, have such manuals, and that’s largely why you didn’t see political hysteria in those nations when it came time to hammer out a government out of hung parliaments after their elections."

Well they better get a friggin move on then coz the Con-engineered booga booga coalition hysteria is already heating up.

Looking for something a little more grassroots to go with ?
DAMMIT JANET : Democracy's Future
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