Author: pogge

Peace, order and good government, eh?: Mostly competent government

It’s been almost exactly a year since then Industry Minister Tony Clement announced that the census long form would no longer be mandatory. Among the lies he told us at the time was that the government would work hard to ensure that the new, voluntary household survey would be a suitable replacement. So how’s that working out? Census workers are settling for incomplete long questionnaires in the final push of the summer collection period, raising concerns the data will be even more compromised than originally feared. … Former Industry Minister Tony Clement urged Canadians to fill out the forms anyway, but the government is doing less to ensure they are returned and fully filled out. As you review the recent press releases masquerading as journalism that report on how Clement intends to pursue his new mission to balance the government’s books, you might want to bear in mind that our new Treasury Board president’s credibility has been hopelessly compromised. Just because newspaper editors across the nation may have forgotten that doesn’t mean that you should….

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Simple Answers to Simple Questions

This could also be titled: Can’t anybody here play this game? There’s a post up at Let Freedom Rain based on a media story announcing the intention of the Liberal Party to adopt the Conservative tactic of running ads, and particularly negative ads, outside of election campaigns. Towards the end of the post, the blogger asks: …is it a great idea to announce to the Cons that a battle is brewing, giving them more than adequate time to gather their superior advertising work force? No. Anyone who’s been paying attention to Stephen Harper’s career in politics, and especially since he became leader of the CPC, will have noticed that if you give him the opportunity to plan how to beat you, he’ll do the planning and he’ll beat you. If you give him a chance to craft a messaging strategy to defeat (or deflect) your arguments and get that strategy distributed to the troops, you’ll shortly see countless Conservatives taking every opportunity to say exactly the same thing to anyone who will listen. Repeatedly. Over and over….

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: QotD: On Peter MacKay

The whole column by Paul Robinson is worth a read but I was particularly struck by this part: When Peter MacKay is, as so often, praised for being popular with the troops, this is meant to imply that he is therefore a good defence minister. In fact this may merely show that he is a weak defence minister, unable or unwilling to stand up to the military and prone to grant its every wish. Armed forces have bureaucratic interests in the same way as every other organization, and firm control is needed to hold them in check, even if this means becoming unpopular. MacKay has seemed more interested in playing Mr. Dressup and being a fanboy of the military than in holding the DND to account on our behalf, which is a rather large part of his job. (Of course his boss, the prime minister, has not only been happy to let MacKay operate this way but has taken to playing Mr. Dressup himself — look up and to the right.) Somewhere along the line "support the troops" has morphed into "fetishize the troops" both because it makes for good photo ops and because it provides a prop to use…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Mostly competent government

Since the Harper Government™ spent as much money on security for 2010’s G8/G20 summits as any other ten countries would have, you’d think they’d at least have earned high marks for, you know, security. You’d be wrong. An internal RCMP review says the Conservative government’s choice of Ontario cottage country as the 2010 G8 Summit venue offered would-be snipers "ideal conditions" to assassinate a world leader. It says the hilly, wooded terrain around Huntsville, Ont., featured not only excellent vantage points for gunmen, but covered approaches for intruders, and problematic land and water routes leading in and out of the area. … It also says the decision to host the G20 Summit in Toronto immediately afterwards "added a significant planning challenge" that prompted a "complete re-examination of the G8 Summit security." And here I thought security was one of those areas that ranked right up there with the economy as a core competency of Conservatives. The editorial board at the Globe and Mail must be so proud….

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Fire them all

This isn’t the first time I’ve suggested we should just turf everyone in the House of Commons and start over. But this is a brand new parliament and it only took a couple of weeks. As The Hill Times points out, Sheila Fraser, the outgoing Auditor General, just finished urging much closer scrutiny of government spending by MPs. But while they all profess to have the greatest respect and admiration for Ms Fraser, they have no interest in listening to her. The government and the opposition parties are facing criticism for a snap unanimous motion they passed on June 3 that means $250.8-billion in government spending estimates for the next year will not be scrutinized as Parliamentary rules normally require by the 24 House committees. … The motion that passed with unanimous consent–although Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) told The Hill Times on Thursday she had no idea the procedure took place and was not informed beforehand–temporarily changed the House Standing Orders to designate the House Government Operations and Estimates Committee as the scrutineer of all 519 pages of main estimates and that a report on its work would be "deemed" to have been submitted by this…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: "The Conservative government’s position on asbestos is morally bankrupt."

And the editorial board at the Ottawa Citizen isn’t mincing words on the issue. On June 20, the Canadian government will have a chance to do again what it has done in the past: block the addition of chrysotile asbestos to the list of hazardous materials governed by the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent. Note the convention’s full name. If our government were to reverse course here, it wouldn’t actually be voting to ban the trade in asbestos. Mia Robson at the Winnipeg Free Press explains: Substances on the list are not banned but countries exporting them must provide written warnings to the importing nation about their hazards and include information on how to safely handle them. … To date Canada has blocked repeated recommendations by the convention’s Chemical Review Committee to add chrysotile asbestos to the list. And Canada has maintained that position despite repeated advice to reconsider from scientists, physicians and its own public health officials. The government that boasts it will always adhere to principled foreign policy is against giving other countries the opportunity to fully understand what they’re buying when they buy what Canada has to sell. Good to know. Canada’s back….

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: QOTD

John Cole at Balloon Juice translates the latest White House attempt to explain why the Obama administration doesn’t need congressional approval to continue military action against Libya: We’re not engaged in hostilities, we’re just launching courtesy bombs! They’re cuddly metal ambassadors of good will with a high explosive tip! Apparently, you are only at war when you have troops at high risk- launching drones into other nations isn’t war, it’s just aggressive foreign policy!…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Paging John Baird

Abdelrazik can’t get child benefits while on terror list The Quebec government has told a Montreal man that he cannot receive child-assistance benefits because his name appears on a United Nations terror watchlist. It’s the latest in an ongoing saga for Abousfian Abdelrazik, who spent six years in forced exile in Sudan including time in prison where he says he was tortured. Despite being exonerated, he still finds himself on the UN Security Council’s 1267 list — which means Abdelrazik can’t leave Canada and all of his financial assets remain frozen. It also means he can’t have a bank account, can’t work and can’t benefit from government programs like child tax credits. As Abdelrazik himself points out, we’re effectively penalizing his children for crimes he himself has never been convicted of committing. So why bring John Baird into it now? The letter advised him to get a certificate signed by the minister of foreign affairs stating he can collect child-care benefits. The behaviour of the previous minister, Lawrence Cannon, with regard to the Abdelrazik case was nothing short of contemptible. Here’s an opportunity for Baird to demonstrate that he’s prepared to be at least marginally better than that. Abdelrazik is…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Another myth in the making?

Jason Kenney made an appearance at the Ontario Progressive Conservative convention yesterday to promote his own brand of politics. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says immigrants allowed the Conservatives to take Ontario away from the Liberals in the federal election. He says the Ontario Tories can do the same this fall if they stick to their conservative values and keep courting new Canadians. I’m no fan of Tim Hudak so perhaps I should hope that he listens closely and takes Kenney’s advice since it appears to be bad advice. The Canadian Election Study bases its analysis on a huge amount of polling data, carried out by phone, mail and over the Internet, during and after the campaign, and it is generally deemed to be the most accurate look into election dynamics… The Canadian Election Study has found little evidence to back up the suggestion — now almost conventional wisdom — that the Conservatives owe their majority to Kenney’s wooing of the immigrant vote, at least on a national scale. … The academics involved with the Canadian Election Study calculated what they call the "immigrant vote gap" — the percentage of votes from immigrants minus the percentage of vote from…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: QOTD: The Worst Outcome of G20 Policing

This is just one paragraph plucked out of the middle of a long post at A Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land. The post makes the case for this conclusion and then goes on to a thoughtful discussion about where activists go from there. This sums up something important and it comes at a time when the actions of the police last June are once again in the headlines. The worst thing about the policing at the G20 summit was that it delivered both a symbolic and a material message to keep us passive and inert precisely in anticipation of this moment when a majority Harper government could begin amping up its attacks on ordinary people. The messages were "protesters are dangerous" and "protest is risky." The brutality then was to encourage as many people as possible now to stay home. Elites want us to mistrust the people who are saying, "We can do something about this if we do it together." They want us to look at the billy clubs and the tear gas and the sexual harassment and the rape threats and all the rest of the nastiness from the cops and say, "Yeah, this Harper stuff sucks, but…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: All your information are belong to us

There’s an interesting report in today’s Telegraph — the one in England — that’s filed under Travel News. British airline passengers flying to the United States face having their personal information, including addresses, phone numbers and credit card details, stored for 15 years under under a proposed agreement between the US and the European Union. Details of millions of travellers from Europe, including addresses, phone numbers and credit card information, would be kept for the extended period by the US Department of Homeland Security, which also wants airlines to furnish the data up to 96 hours ahead of scheduled flight departures. The current requirement is for data to be supplied 72 hours before departure. Since the computer hardware employed to match that data against terrorist watch lists is only getting faster, I have to assume that the Americans want the extra day because those watch lists are getting that much longer and they need the extra processing time. Given what we already know about the efficacy of those lists, this thought doesn’t make me feel any safer. It does inspire me to stay home. I draw this evidence of the increasing American appetite for personal data to your attention because…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: QOTD

Twitter is in the midst of a minor nervous breakdown so I can’t tweet this post from Josh Marshall. But that’s what blogs are for. I’m going to gamble that the copyright police won’t come after me and quote the whole thing. Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t want a two state solution. Period. End of story. Whether this is a principle of deeply held belief (probably) or just a desire not to see his coalition government fall (certainly) doesn’t really matter. His clear aim is to perpetuate the status quo indefinitely — something that is simply not compatible with Israel’s security, America’s security or the Palestinians need for a state. This is hardly surprising for anyone who has followed the issue closely. But any remaining ambiguity is destructive in itself. His attack against a sitting American president for proposing the 1967 borders (which are actually the 1949 borders) with land swaps as the basis of negotiations is the final tell. His policy is perpetual occupation. Time to accept that reality and draw the appropriate implications. I wonder if the members of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism would take issue with my saying that I agree with Marshall completely. I…

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