I must admit, it’s fantastic to live in a country where the Prime Minister can prorogue Parliament for two months because – well – he wants to.

Sure, Harper’s ladled out the usual horseshit – he’s done it so that the government can “consult” with Canadians and businesses as the Conservatives move into the “next phase” of their economic “action plan”.

Consult Canadians and businesses? How, exactly, is the federal government going to “consult” with tens of millions of people in two months directly? I was under the impression that elected members of Parliament were the people’s representatives – so shouldn’t Parliament be in session so that his government can “consult” with them directly?

It would seem not.

Mr. Harper has prorogued the government twice in one year – three times in three years. In short, the Prime Minister of this country has simply shut down Parliament because he’s “deemed it necessary”, and the Governor General, who basically has absolutely no backbone, has allowed it.

Now, if that doesn’t worry you, well, given how our government is supposed to operate – it damn well should.

Of course, there are reasons why Mr. Harper may have chosen to do it this time around, as MP Libby Davies rightly pointed out at the end of December…

“NDP House Leader Libby Davies said she was “appalled” by Harper’s decision and accused the prime minister of “running from” opposition demands for a public inquiry into what and when the government knew about allegations of torture of detainees transferred into Afghan custody by Canadian soldiers in 2006.

“By proroguing Parliament, he is unilaterally making a decision to stop any kind of disclosure from happening,” Davies told CBC News from Vancouver.”

Libby’s a smart cookie, and a friend, so I trust her instincts.

At the end of the day though, you’re government, the one you pay for, the one that is supposed to be at work running this country and dealing with more than just Mr. Haper’s economic “action plan”, will now sit on their asses and do jack shit until March 3rd.

Gather ‘round the fire. Time to do one of two things – read the kids The Hobbit or tell them the story of the “Legend of Canadian Democracy”.

January 14, 2010

There are those that will argue that the controversy regarding Mr. Harper and the speech that he gave in Parliament in 2003 that plagiarized a speech given by Australia’s then Prime Minister, John Howard, is little more than a political move on the part of the Liberals, who are waning in the polls.

Given that we’re in the midst of a federal election, I’ll certainly not deny that this revelation is incredibly timely, especially given the fact that the speech was made five years ago.

That said; as an independent observer, and someone that does not support the Liberal Party, nor any other party for that matter, confronting the actual issue behind the plagiarism is something I feel highly relevant.

The speech that Mr. Harper gave in 2003 was one in which he urged this country to join the ‘coalition of the willing’, and thus involve us in the US led invasion of Iraq. One therefore has to ask several fundamental questions.

1) Were the Prime Minister to gain a majority, would there be a reversal of policy regarding Iraq, even if such an alteration did not promise the inclusion of Canadian combat assistance?

2) Does the Prime Minister still hold to the belief that Canada should have supported the invasion of Iraq?

3) Given what has occurred since, would he have supported Canadian involvement in the occupation of that country?

These are fundamental questions that I feel are highly relevant.

Then there is the act of plagiarism itself. Obviously, Owen Lippert, the individual that wrote the speech given by Mr. Harper, has now resigned. Having done so, Lippert has claimed that neither Mr. Harper, nor his superiors, were aware that he had plagiarized Howard’s speech.

This is where the Prime Minister’s continual promotion of ethical government must be questioned. No matter who was responsible for writing the speech, it was one that Mr. Harper gave in the House, and therefore exists within the Parliamentary record as his own. Despite the fact that it was written by Lippert, for the Prime Minister to now claim that he cannot be held to account is entirely hypocritical given his steadfast promotion of government accountability and transparency. Five years have passed since the speech was made, and yet it is only now, after the truth was uncovered, that Lippert has resigned.

That, in and of itself, should say something to Canadians with regards to how Mr. Harper runs his shop.

October 1, 2008 13 Comments

Here are a few things of interest today…

The Azizabad Air Strike

Initially the US military denied that they had made a mistake. In fact, they continued to deny that they had made a mistake for days following the devastating air strike on the village of Azizabad in the Afghan province of Herat that left some 90 people dead, including women and children – which was independently confirmed by the United Nations.

That said; authorities in Afghanistan have arrested three men suspected of providing false intelligence regarding the strike, claiming that there was a Taliban presence in the village. The US continues to assert that a top Taliban commander and other insurgents were killed during the attack.

More from Tom Dispatch.

Harper Promises To Withdraw Canadian Forces In 2011

Campaign promises are one thing, following through on them is another matter altogether.

Two days ago, while campaigning in Toronto, the Prime Minister pledged to withdraw the majority of Canadian Forces from Afghanistan in 2011, which is when the current mandate ends…

“He said that by 2011, Canadians will have been in Kandahar for six years. He acknowledged that neither the public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer and that only a small group of advisers might remain.

Mr Harper made his pledge as recent opinion polls showed that there was lukewarm public support for the mission.

Canada has lost 97 soldiers and a diplomat in Afghanistan.

Mr Harper faces the very real possibility of the number of Canadian soldiers killed there rising to the symbolic figure of 100 during the election campaign.”

Take note of one very important assertion in that quote – “He acknowledged that neither the public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer”.

That, right there, is something that should not be forgotten in the future if Harper remains Prime Minister and uses the deaths of more Canadians as justification for ‘seeing the mission through in their name’.

FBI On The Verge Of Being Granted Unprecedented Powers

From the New York Times…

“The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing.

Justice Department officials said the plan, which is likely to be completed by the end of the month despite criticism from civil rights advocates, is intended to allow F.B.I. agents to be more aggressive and pre-emptive in assessing possible threats to national security.

It would allow an agent, for instance, to pursue an anonymous tip about terrorism by conducting an undercover interview or watching someone in a public place. Such steps are now prohibited unless there is more specific evidence of wrongdoing.”

I can just see it now. Some xenophobic asshole that’s having a dispute with his ‘ethnic’ neighbour over a tree’s branches extending over his back fence is going to be on the phone with the local Bureau Office claiming that suspicious activity has been taking place next door.

Polar Bears

It’s God’s world, we just happen to live in it. Which means that global warming is a myth, despite the fact that chunks of Greenland are falling into the North Atlantic and a whole host of other fun stuff. To those that believe it a ‘leftist hoax’, the earth has undergone changes in the past and therefore there’s really no need to panic. It doesn’t matter than the world’s scientific community overwhelmingly believes it to be a real threat, nor that they represent the world’s preeminent experts on the subject. Any fool with a computer can discount global warming by doing a Google search and finding ‘evidence’ to the contrary.

For every scientist out there that believes it an ‘overblown’ issue, there are a thousand that don’t. That right there should say something.

Moving on to the affects of global warming on the natural world, some of you might recall that not too long ago the government of Alaska moved to counter the Polar Bear being listed as a threatened species. As The Nation’s Mark Hertsgaard points out, we shouldn’t overlook who played a key role in Alaska’s opposition to it…

“It wasn’t much noticed at the time, but three weeks before she was chosen as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin played a key supporting role in the latest episode of the Bush Administration’s eight-year war on the Endangered Species Act, one of the cornerstones of American environmental law. On August 4 Alaska sued the government for listing the polar bear as a “threatened” species, an action, the lawsuit asserted, that would harm “oil and gas…development” in the state. In an accompanying statement, Palin complained that the listing “was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available” and should be rescinded.

The Bush Administration had not wanted to designate the polar bear as threatened in the first place; now Palin’s lawsuit provided cover to backtrack on the decision. The Interior Department had issued the listing only after environmental groups filed two lawsuits, and the courts ordered compliance. While the polar bear population was currently stable, the plaintiffs argued, greenhouse gas emissions were melting the Arctic ice that polar bears rely on to hunt seals, their main food source. A study by the US Geological Survey supported this argument, concluding that two-thirds of all polar bears could be gone by 2050 if Arctic ice continues to melt as scientists project. The listing was the first time global warming had been cited as the sole premise in an Endangered Species Act case, and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne clearly wanted it to be the last. When Kempthorne announced the polar bear listing on May 14, he emphasized that it would not affect federal policy on global warming or block development of “our natural resources in the Arctic.”

A week after Palin’s lawsuit, Kempthorne delivered on that pledge. On August 11 he proposed new rules that could allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether their actions will imperil a threatened or endangered species. The rule reverses precedent: since passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, scientists from the Fish and Wildlife Service have made such determinations independent of the agency involved. Under the new rule, if the Army Corps of Engineers is building a dam, the corps can decide whether it is putting species at risk. To make sure no one missed the point, Kempthorne told reporters that the new rule, which he termed “a narrow regulatory change,” would keep the Endangered Species Act from becoming “a back door” to making climate change policy.

Hated by the right wing as an infringement on property rights, the Endangered Species Act has been on Bush’s hit list since the beginning of his presidency, when he chose Gale Norton as his first Interior Secretary. A Republican woman of the West like Palin, Norton assailed the act and did all she could to undermine it. “The Bush Administration has listed only sixty species as threatened or endangered, compared with 522 under Clinton and 231 under the first President Bush,” says Noah Greenwald, science director of the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead plaintiff in the polar bear case. “And it took a court order to make each of those sixty listings happen.”

September 13, 2008 8 Comments

We have lost another three brave young men in Afghanistan because of a reckless foreign policy agenda bent more on placating our southern neighbours than ushering in any sort of realistic ‘new day’ in a country that has been at war for decades.

In a country where international relief supplies are easier to obtained on the Black Market than anywhere else, where promises made by foreign powers have rarely become a reality despite propaganda to the contrary, one has to seriously wonder why the people of this country have remained largely silent while 96 Canadians have returned home in coffins. To some that might not seem like a lot, but, in truth, we have lost more lives given the small size of our contingent in Afghanistan than any nation involved in combat operations.

As I have exhaustively pointed out in the past, there is a vast difference between supporting our fighting men and women and supporting the policies that place them in harms way. They are, by no means, one in the same. That said; I will not launch into a protracted entry about my views regarding the conflict itself, as I have written a myriad of entries that can be sourced using the search function.

The Looming Election

It’s no secret that Stephen Harper intends to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and force a federal election, most likely on October 14th, breaking a legislative election pledge passed in the House that there would not be a federal election until October 19th of 2009. Given the disarray of the Federal Liberal Party, and its lack of what I consider a real leader, it makes sense. By breaking the legislative promise that Harper himself proposed and was successful in passing, the Conservatives have a chance at gaining a majority.

The truth is that Stéphane Dion is not, in my opinion, PM material. The NDP, of course, do not have the sort of national support required to win the PM’s office, with the Bloc’s potential remaining as limited as ever given their mandate. Thus, by the end of next month we could very well see a Conservative majority in the House and the dawning of a new age of unobstructed Conservative rule in Canada. The groundwork is already being laid…

» Tories pledge $80M to reopen Ford plant in Windsor, Ont.
» Tories unveil $60 million of pre-election goodies.

September 3, 2008 21 Comments

It was only a matter of time until a second investigation was opened into the Bernier affair. The Prime Minister has already stated that the Department of Foreign Affairs will be internally investigating the matter, but as I’ve learned through a source on the Hill, there’s basically no one left at Foreign Affairs that can realistically undertake it in a timely fashion.

The House of Commons Committee that will be looking into the affair will begin proceedings next Tuesday and will conduct hearings for four days, agreeing to continue even if the House breaks for the summer.

From the CBC…

“Opposition MPs on the public safety committee, led by the Bloc Québécois, out-voted the Conservative minority on Monday to expedite an investigation into the political storm involving Bernier and ex-girlfriend Julie Couillard, who had ties to criminal biker gang members.

The move came after Harper dismissed calls for an independent inquiry or an RCMP investigation on Monday in the House.

The committee probe will begin next Tuesday.”

Now that’s leadership for you. A breach in national security occurs and the Prime Minister dismisses calls for the RCMP to investigate the matter. Even more, suggestions that an independent inquiry be held were also summarily dismissed.

Transparency? Accountability? I vaguely remember Mr. Harper using those words infinitum some time ago.

Not surprisingly, coverage by Canadian Conservative pundits on the web has been extremely limited.

June 3, 2008 3 Comments