Other than the resulting election, it’s unclear how this finding can truly impact a change in our procedure for dealing with the Conservatives’ abuses. This finding ought to be a serious call on Canadians to remove this government from the power it has perpetually mishandled.The issues behind the contempt findings are two-fold but based on the same problem: the Conservatives wouldn’t release the proper information to parliament concerning costs of Conservative crime bills and the desired purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The CBC explained (21 March 2011)¹

“The dispute between the Conservatives and the opposition parties over the cost estimates has been dragging on since the fall of 2010.

The original request to the government, asking to see detailed cost breakdowns for the jets and on the impact of corporate tax cuts and crime bills on the federal treasury, came from the Commons finance committee….

The opposition argued that once a government announces its intentions publicly, on bills or other matters, the information is no longer protected by cabinet confidence.

It continued to push the Conservatives for the estimates, and some were provided on Feb.17, but the dispute ended up in the hands of Speaker Peter Milliken.

He ruled there appeared to be a breach of privilege, which put the matter back in the hands of MPs to decide the punishment.”

A Globe and Mail article (9 March 2011)², wrote:

“House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken ruled on Wednesday that, “on its face,” the government withheld information from a parliamentary committee, and that International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda may have misled the House.”

and cited Milliken:

““There is no doubt” that the government had failed to comply with a parliamentary committee’s demand for costs related to the Conservatives’ crime bills, Mr. Milliken concluded. “This is a serious matter that goes to the heart of the House’s undoubted role in holding the government to account.”

Considering this all started in 2010 and wasn’t resolved until months later (though a ruling of contempt is not exactly a fruitful resolution), that’s a very long time for parliament to be bickering over how to get their work done. It is however, consistent with Conservative delay tactics (like this or this)for upsetting parliamentary procedure.

On the same issue, The Toronto Star (9 March 2011)³noted

“In a highly-anticipated ruling, Milliken on Wednesday said that this government’s stonewalling was “unsettling.” Worse still was the refusal to provide an explanation for denying a perfectly legitimate request… Milliken also ruled against embattled International Aid Minister Bev Oda, who is accused of lying to Parliament with a tortured explanation of a political decision to deny funding to a long-standing charitable organization, KAIROS, that often disagreed with Conservative policies.”

At the beginning of this post I mentioned “almost a third” ruling of contempt. I was referring to the 2009/2010 issue of the Conservatives’ mismanagement of the Afghan detainee documents. The Conservatives were almost found in contempt then as well. They delayed and played games with parliament right up until the last minute when speaker, Milliken forced them to comply, explaining that

“No exceptions are made for any category of Government documents, even those related to national security. Therefore, the Chair must conclude that it is perfectly within the existing privileges of the House to order production of the documents in question. Bearing in mind that the fundamental role of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. . .”

One would think the Conservatives would have taken that chastising and public disgrace to account and shaped up to work properly in our democratic framework. Instead, they managed to eke out a strange compromise of document vetting. This was not fully in-line with what Milliken’s ruling required, but the other parties hesitantly agreed to try and see how it worked for the sake of cooperation and preventing the shame of a disfunctional parliament and contempt finding.

Unfortunately, the Harper Conservatives continued with their games, and to this day, still have not properly released the documents in question. This shows ultimate disrespect for the will of the Canadian people that elected all the MPs. Kate Heartfield writes more about this in the Ottawa Citizen (1 April 2011)⁴

Thomas Walkom wrote in the Toronto Star (25 March 2011)⁵ about this subject as well.

“Canadians who questioned Ottawa’s handling of Afghan prisoners were treated as traitors. Richard Colvin, the veteran diplomat who testified to this mistreatment, was savagely and personally attacked [link mine].

At one point, when it looked like his government might be defeated, Harper simply shut down the Commons.

The contempt motion on which the government fell Friday related specifically to the government’s refusal to tell elected MPs the full cost of its programs. That refusal in itself demonstrates the Conservatives’ profound disdain toward the only democratic national institution we have.

Yet it is also part of a pattern. This government is willing to sacrifice Canadian soldiers to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Libya. But it cavalierly dismisses democracy at home.”

Every time we’ve seen a scandal erupt within the Conservatives they either single out one of their own and publicly “flog” him or her, drawing attention away from the party as a whole, or they point fingers at the other parties. They never appear to accept the responsibility of their own actions and improve or change their manner of operating.

With the Conservatives’ unapologetic disrespect for our institutions, it’s time that voters restore respect to our democracy and move Harper’s Conservative party out of power.

The Globe and Mail¹ (6 June 2010) reported on even Conservatives questioning this method of communication.

“The MEP is the crucial communication instrument for a minority government that values staying on message above all else — a transformation that federal officials and public-policy analysts say is undermining democracy.

While all governments try to control the message, the ambitious sweep of MEPs is unprecedented in federal politics. Critics say it contradicts the core campaign promise that brought Prime Minister Stephen Harper to power — introducing a new era of transparency and accountability in government.

“We discussed every single issue and micromanaged every news release — everything,” said one former Harper-era PCO official.”

The Canadian Press reportedly has about a thousand of these MEPs and they extend into all sorts of realms of discourse, including foreign relations and events. The Star² (8 June 2010) also reported on MEPs saying

“There’s no question it has a bit of a chilling effect on people, because they know that they have to avoid being off-message at all — and that’s what the government wants,” said one currently serving diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of career reprisals.

The central direction of foreign service officers is unparalleled, says retired diplomat Gordon Smith, who served Conservative and Liberal prime ministers as Canada’s ambassador to NATO and the European Union, was a former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs and a senior official at PCO.

“What other conclusion can one draw? But it reflects a very considerable concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office,” said Smith, who left government to join the University of Victoria in 1997.”

When the Conservatives don’t want information spread they simply disappear a MEP. When they do want to manage how it’s spread, they approve the MEP and control its content. That way they can be prepared to respond to and test public perceptions. Furthermore it gives them the opportunity to always shape public perspective in favour of Conservative doctrine.

The CBC³ reported (7 June 2010) on one example of the use and effect of MEPs with respect to Canadian ivnolvement in Afganistan.

“The government used MEPs to script the words it wanted to hear from the mouths of its top diplomats, aid workers and cabinet ministers in 2007-08 to divert public attention from the soaring double-digit death toll of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.”

This is a frightening extension of control. It’s reminiscent of the propaganda techniques used in totalitarian regimes. In a democratic society we should not have a government exhibiting this degree of control over the context and content of information regarding our country and goings-ons.

We cannot yet fully understand the first issue because of the second issue. The second issue remains cloudy because the Conservatives have denied, attacked, and generally misdirected any attempts to understand the first issue, and now we know that they’ve done so in breach of parliamentary privilege. So to get to the bottom of the first issue, we’ve got to start by resolving the third. Fortunately, yesterday’s (28 April 2010) ruling by Commons Speaker, Peter Milliken¹ finally gets things moving.

Some background:

Since at least 2007, groups like the Canadian Military Police Complaints Commission, Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association have been attempting to uncover what may be an improper way in which detainees in Afghanistan were handled. They uncovered a fair amount of information to raise serious red flags. Sworn testimonies from senior officers that countered Conservative, Peter MacKay’s comments attempting to dismiss the allegations.

Back in 2007, we also started learning how the Conservatives’ orchestrated themselves to disrupt parliament. The Conservatives censored documents that they knew would prevent parliament from further investigating the Afghan detainee potential problem. But that was 2007. Things only got worse (from the perspective of accountability, transparency, and democratic governing) as the Conservatives launched a vicious attack on the respected whistle-blower Richard Colvin, then boycotted a special parliamentary committee that was supposed to look into the detainee abuse allegations. The Globe and Mail² has a timeline of some of the events that transpired between 2007 and 2010.

“November, 2009: The Commons committee reports to the House what it considered to be a breach of its privileges in relation to its requests for documents from the government.

December, 2009: It is revealed that the government has blacked out large sections of relevant files handed over to the MPCC inquiry. The Commons committee’s efforts to obtain information, including the unredacted reports of Mr. Colvin, are similarly stymied.”

The great problem is the third point that I mentioned at the beginning. The Conservatives repeatedly censored or otherwise blocked parliament from seeing the information they had. Often they reported that they had to do this in the interest of security. But that’s not a believable statement. It’s unlcear how it can be ok for your own party to see the documents but not others in the House of Commons elected by the Canadian people. It’s never been clear why non-Conservatives operating with all kinds of other sensitive issues to run the country could be considered a security risk–and as I’ll point out below from Milliken’s ruling, it’s also contrary to how our form of government is supposed to work.

Fortunately, after significant and careful consideration, Speaker Peter Milliken ruled on the issue. The CBC³ reported (26 April 2010)

“The federal government breached parliamentary privilege with its refusal to produce uncensored documents related to the treatment of Afghan detainees and must provide the material to MPs within two weeks, Speaker Peter Milliken has ruled.”

And this all goes toward the title of this post… a dose of democracy. Harper’s Conservative government hasn’t been operating within our democratic framework. Milliken’s ruling re-sets our expectations–it is simply not acceptable to abuse our democratic institutions. Milliken remarks in his ruling on the gravity of what he had to determine:

“As Speaker, one of my principal duties is to safeguard the rights and privileges of Members and of the House. In doing so, the Chair is always mindful of the established precedents, usages, traditions and practices of the House and of the role of the Chair in their ongoing evolution. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a rare event for the Speaker to be seized of a matter as complex and as heavy with consequence as the matter before us now.”

Referring to parliament’s power to have access to the documents, Milliken said

“In the arguments presented, the Chair has heard this power described as ―unabridged, ―unconditional, ―unqualified, ―absolute and, furthermore, one which is limited only by the discretion of the House itself. But this view is not shared by all and so it is a privilege whose limits have now been called into question.”

Who was calling those limits into question? Harper’s Conservative Government, by refusing to deliver upon the Hosue of Common’s request. Milliken’s logic on this is quite clear. After he enumerates previously established expert insight on parliamentary power and procedure, all of which support the point that parliament has unlimited power to request the documents in question, he discusses the Conservative government’s position.

“With regard to the extent of the right, the Chair would like to address the contention of the Minister of Justice, made on March 31, that the Order of the House of December 10 is a breach of the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the legislature. Having noted that the three branches of government must respect the legitimate sphere of activity of the others, the Minister argued that the Order of the House was tantamount to an unlawful extension of the House’s privileges. This can only be true if one agrees with the notion that the House’s power to order the production of documents is not absolute. The question would then be whether this interpretation subjugates the legislature to the executive.”

In other words, the Conservatives (wrongly) tried to make parliament subservient while at the same time (rightly) reaffirming that the branches of government had to respect the “legitimate sphere and activity of the others.” It turns out the House hadn’t made an unlawful extension of its privileges. Thus the Conservative government must obey the House’s request.

“No exceptions are made for any category of Government documents, even those related to national security. Therefore, the Chair must conclude that it is perfectly within the existing privileges of the House to order production of the documents in question. Bearing in mind that the fundamental role of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. . .”

To finish things off Milliken gave the Conservative government two weeks to work with parliament to comply with the document requests. According to an article in the Toronto Star⁴ (27 April 2010)

“If they don’t, the Conservative government could stand charged with contempt of Parliament and the supreme law of the land.”

We’ll have to wait and see if the Conservatives take the ruling to heart and decide to operate in accord with our democratic institutions, rather than obstruct them.

(PS, here’s a link explaining the relevant parlimentary procedure)

The NDP, Liberals, Bloc Québécois, and Greens all had representatives speaking among a number of performers, which received applause and support from everyone. As the organizers pointed out, the issue of legitimate democracy is non-partisan.

I took the photos below (posted on a Picasa Web album) to try and capture a the variety of signs. Not all are entirely legible but I thought it was interesting to see that people protested issues like Harper’s poor environmental record, other than just the abuses of democracy. For example, the signs with oily maple leaves with the red bar through them have a message protesting the oil sands.

News reports from The Gazette¹, La Presse², La Presse³ (23 January 2010)

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

marching

marching

le Carré Philips

marching

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP)

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP), Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Québécois)

le Carré Philips, Justin Trudeau (Liberal)

le Carré Philips, les nanas déchaîné

le Carré Philips, Marc Garneau (Liberal)

le Carré Philips, Jacques Rivard (Green)

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP), I was pleasantly surprised
to hear him receive the loudest applause

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP)

le Carré Philips, Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Québécois)

le Carré Philips, the raging grannies

le Carré Philips

]]> http://www.conmem.ca/2010/01/23/la-manifestation-contre-la-prorogation-montreal-photos/feed/ 5 http://www.conmem.ca/2010/01/19/harpers-cabinet-shuffle-preaches-cuts/ http://www.conmem.ca/2010/01/19/harpers-cabinet-shuffle-preaches-cuts/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:17:50 +0000 Joshua Chalifour http://www.conmem.ca/?p=384 Since the Conservatives engineered their structural deficit, they’ve been chomping at the bit to pursue greater cuts in funding. Enter Stockwell Day. The Globe and Mail¹ (19 January 2010) reported on Harper’s changes to cabinet. It wasn’t a large number of changes, just a few, like the demotion of Lisa Raitt, and the promotion of Stockwell Day.

Stockwell Day is getting “glory” as a no-man. In other words he’s being praised for his ability to cut spending. Apparently Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper can’t do all the cutting themselves. The article states

“The Conservatives must to find $19-billion a year in savings if they want to balance the books by 2014 without raising taxes, according to the latest analysis from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page.”

Then again, cuts aren’t the only approach the Conservatives favour, they also seem to like firesales of crown assets. The Canadian Press² (28 May 2009)

“The Harper government plans to put Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s nuclear reactor business up for sale. It’s part of a major restructuring that will also mean private-sector management for AECL’s Chalk River research facility, which makes the medical isotopes used in diagnostic scans.”

Maybe they can sell Day’s “Prayer Force One” bus too.

(Update: 21 January 2010: Scott Ross blogged in detail about the costs of incurred during the prorogue, which seems to rise above $130 million. The CBC has a brief video overview on the cost subject and job/pension losses of many government employees through the unexpected prorogue. The Conservatives’ prorogue isn’t doing anyone any good, especially not our poor, battered, budget.)

First, there’s the Business News Network² (BNN) interview he did the previous day. When BNN asked him about the risk of the prorogue to our reputation in the world as a “reliable” and “stable” country he responded that there was

“…zero risk… The games begin when parliament returns. The government can take its time now to do the important work to prepare the economic agenda ahead.”

That little statement implies a lot. Harper gives the impression that important work doesn’t take place while parliament is in session, but rather games do. That’s something of a slap to our democratic institutions. The idea that the “important work” is done by just a small group of individuals, not even representing the majority of Canadian votes and outside of the government institutions created to democratically represent our will, is pretty presumptuous for a prime minister. The prime minister was once considered “first among equals”³ it’s too bad that Harper has so powerfully furthered the trend away from that stance.

In addition, it’s not too hard to recall that the Conservatives are the ones directly responsible for any games that may be taking place in parliament. Let’s review.

• 2007 there was the 200 page book the Conservatives made for their members on how to obstruct parliament.
• 2008 there was Harper’s prorogue precedent, which he pulled off largely in reaction to the crisis he provoked through his own parliamentary budgeting games.
• 2009 there was the underhanded procedural trick the Conservatives came up with to kill bills and invalidate parliament’s work.
• 2009 there was the Conservative boycott of a special committee looking into the Afghan detainee abuse issue

The Tories are guilty of causing parliament to operate in a dysfunctional way and then running from that dysfunction under a number a of guises, the most recent being Harper’s need to do “important work.”

But can we really believe this latest excuse for running from Parliament? In the same Globe and Mail article we find out that Tom Flanagan, who was the former chief of staff to Stephen Harper was interviewed on CBC. Flanagan seems to have made the point that Harper requested the prorogue in order to put an end to the inquiry on the Conservatives’ Afghan torture scandal.

(Update 13 January 2010 – MP Charlie Angus (NDP) wrote up a good piece on Harper’s “coup of pinstripes” notion that parliamentary democracy creates instability)

Backtracking, I’ll start with the recent news reporting that Harper will ask the Governor-General to prorogue parliament today, until the end of March 2010 (after the Winter Olympics). Without the prorogue, parliament would otherwise resume on 25 January 2010.

Why would Harper want this extended prorogue? Several reasons seem to benefit the Conservatives: one is that a bunch of bills will die¹, another is that it buys them time to dilute their scandals or otherwise cause the scandals to fade from the public memory (e.g. afghan torture, imbalanced stimulus money, environmental inaction, etc.), finally it gives Harper a chance to take over the Senate with Conservatives. According to CTV’s² (30 December 2009) chief political correspondent, Craig Oliver:

“”(Prorogation) has the great convenience of course of getting this government out of any kind of political trouble, because Parliament will not be sitting until after the Olympics. . . The plan is for the government to come back with a very brief throne speech just talking about what’s to come in the economy, and then a budget probably in days.”

Prorogation will also serve another purpose, Oliver said. Harper will likely appoint another group of new Senators, which will mean the Conservatives will finally hold a majority in the Red Chamber, and by extension, on Senate committees, Oliver said.”

Shouldn’t we be surprised that Harper wants to appoint unelected Senators? No, it’s perfectly consistent with his lies about reforming the Senate. He’s striving for Conservative control with a total disregard toward improving the democratic process. He already acted contrary to his own words on the subject and has proven he has no accountability in this regard.

The London Free Press³ (30 December 2009) pointed out how the prorogue would shut down further inquiry to the Conservative Afghan torture scandal.

“Preventing the return of Parliament until after the Olympics would effectively shut down all government committees, which would stop MPs from pursuing the Afghan detainee controversy until Parliament returned.

“If the government attempts this manoeuvre, it’s a shocking insult to democracy,” said Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale. “The government is in a very sticky place with respect to Afghan detainees and they’re running from accountability here — this is a cut and run government.”"

It’s worth noting as well, that preventing Parliament from functioning until after the Olympics, stands a good chance of replacing the negative opinions on the Conservative minority government from fomenting in the public eye and instead replacing them with the optimism and goodwill likely produced through the spectacle of the Olympics. The world’s eyes will be on Canada and all the press will be covering the events. Not only would Parliament resume at a time when the public is in a generally positive mood toward Canada but also much of what had happened prior to 2010, will have effectively been wiped clean from the public memory. The Tories are masters of spin.

So what was going on this time last year: the Conservative minority government found itself in very hot water. It had just come out of an election in which Canadians were once again unwilling to vote-in a Conservative majority government. As parliament met, the Conservatives washed aside real consideration for the economic crisis, instead presenting an inadequate budget that did more to play partisan games than to suit Canadian needs or to develop an effective parliament (minority government are supposed to get the other parties of parliament to cooperate with them on a mutual agenda, the Tories prefer to obstruct parliament).

The opposition parties met and decided two things. First, that they’d lost confidence in the minority Conservative government (Stephen Harper as PM lost the confidence of the house), and second that they could form a stable coalition to serve as an alternate government. According to a Globe and Mail⁴ (3 December 2008) article, which included this point from University of Saskatchewan constitutional scholar David Smith

“As for the opposition parties and their coalition plan, the expert consensus is that they’re following to the letter the precedent established in Canada for the sovereign’s representative to approve a change of government without an election.

The test that has to be met is, first, has the government lost the confidence of Parliament?; second, has an election just occurred?; and, third, is there a viable alternative to the government?”

Nevertheless Stephen Harper ran and asked the Governor General to either dissolve (require a new election–an unlikely option after just coming out of one) or prorogue parliament rather than face the vote of non-confidence by the opposition.

He used this delay tactic to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the proper plan of the opposition and our democratic process. The Conservatives presented the public with false rhetoric about the options (going to the polls again or accepting a coalition representing the majority of the votes).

In the same Globe and Mail article cited above, it identifies some of the difficulties involved in the situation.

“Using prorogation to duck a confidence vote that would terminate the Conservative government is unprecedented, and, although the Governor-General has the power to refuse Mr. Harper’s request, she likely would find herself in stormy constitutional waters if she did.

However, she’d be on firm ground if she granted him a qualified prorogation, severely limiting his ability to govern until he faces the opposition parties in the House of Commons, one of Canada’s leading experts on parliamentary procedure said yesterday.

Queen’s University political scientist C.E.S. Franks said an unprecedented use of prorogation could validly be met with an unprecedented use of the reserve power of the Queen’s representative – the power that can be exercised by the head of state in a parliamentary system without the approval of another branch of the government.

In effect, the Governor-General, by agreeing only to a qualified prorogation, would declare that the government exists in the same state as during an election campaign: unable to carry out anything but the most routine operations, barred from making appointments, executing new policies or authorizing major expenditures. The reason for this is that nobody knows which party ultimately will have the confidence of Parliament.”

Another Globe and Mail article⁵ (2 December 2008) discussed the Governor-General’s options (written by historian Bob Beal). It explains

“If the House decides it does not have confidence in the present government, the Governor-General will have to wonder if the House might have confidence in a different government drawn from the same House. . . .

Constitutional experts say in that situation the most minimal use of the Royal Prerogative would be to let the House get on with its work and let a new prime minister test the confidence of the House.

Accepting the prime minister’s advice for dissolution and an election in the present situation is also a possible, and proper, use of the prerogative. But that would establish a precedent, so far unknown, of the Crown interfering in the work of a newly elected House when it seems possible a new prime minister might be able to command the confidence of the House.

The current Prime Minister could ask the Governor-General to prorogue this session of Parliament, to delay the work of the House until the New Year, an exercise of the Crown’s reserve powers. That request would raise questions that have never been raised before. It seems a murkier situation than a request for dissolution would be.

The Governor-General could refuse a prorogation request on the same grounds as refusing a dissolution request, that the refusal would represent the most minimal use of the Crown’s powers and the least Crown interference with the work of the House. This session has hardly begun, and a confidence vote is scheduled within days.”

As we now know of course, the Governor-General did accept the prorogation request but oddly, not as a qualified prorogation. This stance did not seem to fall in-line with the regular process that would be expected to occur. The process I would have expected, would be that the non-confidence vote would have been allowed, and then the alternate government would be given its chance. But it also allowed the Conservatives to continue governing, making appointments, policies, etc. In fact, as the CBC⁶ reported (22 December 2008), Harper went ahead and appointed eighteen people to the Senate during the prorogue–trying to increase its total number of Conservatives.

“The deluge of appointments sets a record for the most Senate seats filled in a single day and is part of Harper’s efforts to ensure a Tory toehold in the upper chamber. Until now, the prime minister refrained from filling most of the vacancies — with the exception of two — because of his long-held position that those sitting in the Red Chamber should be elected.”

Even though the majority of Canadians did not vote for the Conservatives, even though all opposition parties (which did, collectively enjoy the majority of Canadian votes) were set to vote non-confidence in Harper and his Conservatives, the Governor-General allowed parliament to be put on hold, while Harper had free reign to continue acting against the majority of the Canadian will. Why?

In a Globe and Mail roundtable discussion⁷ (2 December 2008), John Manley (former liberal MP), referring to the Governor-General said

“I think the advice that she would probably receive would be that if the purpose of the prorogation is simply for the government to avoid facing a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, then that’s not an appropriate use of the prorogation of power. I’d be surprised if she agreed to that.

I also think that refusing the advice of the Prime Minister to grant prorogation would be entirely unprecedented. We’re going to see something for the very first time with this. . .”

She didn’t refuse the PM. I would guess that the argument in favour of the Governor-General’s position at that time was that she should act in the way that involves only the most minimal use of the Crown’s powers so as to interfere as little as possible with with the work of elected representatives.

Thus her decision could have been based on an idea that granting whatever the prime minister wanted would be the least interfering action. In other words not asserting her will, which could be contrary to the PM’s. Unfortunately, in that situation, her action actually interfered far more with the functioning of our democratically elected representatives than if she had either allowed the non-confidence vote (and then the alternate coalition to govern), or even granted a qualified prorogation.

It also set a precedent that the Governor-General essentially rubber stamps the PM’s advice when it comes to proroguing parliament. Stephen Harper, having caused that precedent to be set is unashamed to repeatedly use it to his advantage.

December 2009 and we’ve learned that when the Conservative minority government is most likely to fall, is faced with Canada’s greatest hardships, holds no confidence, or is being battered by its own scandals, it runs away. It tries to buy itself time to diffuse its problems or whitewash them in the public eye.

Stephen Harper has a free pass to buy himself time with another extended prorogue because of the precedent he established with the Governor-General in December 2008. While parliament is stuck doing nothing, he gets to continue his Conservative agenda by stuffing the Senate with his cherry-picked, unelected officials–remember his pattern, it’s what he did last year.

To leave this subject, I’d like to ask, aside from political opportunism (the Senate issue), why else might Harper go so far as to request the extended prorogue?

He has more information about the goings-on of the Conservative minority government, he has the information on the Conservative Afghan torture scandal, which won’t be released. While that’s a hot issue, it isn’t threatening his government to the extreme that 2008′s non-confidence vote/coalition did. Perhaps Harper knows that what is yet to come from the Conservative scandals will reach a point that boils past the level we saw in 2008.

(Follow up from the Toronto Star after the Governor-General granted Harper’s request)

“Robert Marleau, the information commissioner of Canada, says that contrary to Mr. Harper’s election pledge to make transparency a hallmark of his administration, a “fog over information” has crept across the government’s activities. Marleau said complaints to the commissioner’s office about lack of access to government information have doubled in the past year.

. . . public servants, ambassadors, as well as cabinet ministers and Conservative MPs are muzzled or kept on a short leash. Canwest News Service revealed last week that Environment Canada’s scientists, once among the most media-accessible specialists, have been slapped with orders to refer all journalists’ queries to the government where communications officers will help them respond with “approved lines.”"

It’s not a good sign when the information comissioner complains that the government is putting a fog over information.

Getting information out to the public is one issue, how it’s presented is another and Harper’s Conservatives have a machine for that too. The Toronto Star² reported (26 May 2008) about the Con machine (first part of a good series they wrote on the topic).

“Questions on the hot issues of the day all get funnelled through this office, the “communications and consultations” unit of the Privy Council Office. . . Public appearances by cabinet ministers – whether it’s a speech or an interview – are carefully staged, starting with a “message event proposal” vetted by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

And in a marked change from previous governments, now even basic demands for information from reporters, once easily fielded by department spokespersons, are sent to this office for review – and often heavy editing – before they are okayed for public release, government insiders say.”

It shows how contolled the information we receive from the government is, everything is crafted for the spin the Conservatives desire.

It goes further than information and messaging though, government appointed watchdogs that were supposed to ensure more accountability also get silenced when their message isn’t helpful to the Conservative cause. There are a number of examples, I won’t try to point them all out but consider what the National Post³ (18 June 2009) said of budget watchdog, Kevin Page (PBO).

“the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (OPBO) provides authoritative, non-partisan financial and economic analysis to support Parliament and parliamentarians in exercising their oversight role over the government’s stewardship of public funds and in ensuring budget transparency.

Kevin Page was appointed as the first budget officer in March of 2008. It was a move intended to create more transparency in government by explaining to Canadians about fiscal planning and scrutiny of budget estimates. In government there is so much spending that goes unaccounted for, unexamined, and unexplained that I had high hopes for Mr.Page. Unfortunately, it appears his job has been hampered by a plague of budget cuts.

Mr. Page has said a lack of consistent reporting and transparency from the government has made estimating difficult, but he has still projected far larger deficits than the government. From reworking the estimates, to revising corporate revenue projections, he has angered the Conservative government by challenging its forecasts. For essentially doing his job. For holding to account Mr.Flaherty when he makes predictions like this. Part of being “accountable” is having an authority which is able to hold the government to their projections.”

The Globe and Mail⁴ (26 June 2009) corroborates this issue. Kevin Page was supposed to more or less say what the Conservatives liked and when he didn’t, they implied they wouldn’t fund his office anymore. That threat would essentially have shut him down, but instead they offered this.

“Mr. Page has been offered the $2.8-million budget he was promised more than a year ago. But the condition is that he no longer report on “the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy” directly to the House of Commons and the public.”

So he gets to keep doing what he was supposed to do, just so long as it doesn’t get easily released to the public, without presumably going through the Conservative stamp of approval machine.

Finally, the Toronto Star⁵ (24 December 2009) reported on the muzzling phenomenon, as I mentioned, it extends well beyond Page.

“Three essential oversight agencies will begin 2010 without leadership and wearing government-issued blinkers. By hook and crook, Harper Conservatives have gutted the effectiveness of the Military Complaints Commission, the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP and the Office of the Information Commissioner.

All three top posts are now empty. Not one was vacated quietly.

Peter Tinsley is howling that pushing him out of the job will effectively kneecap the already crippled inquiry into claims that Afghans tortured prisoners. Paul Kennedy is furious not to be staying to bring fully independent investigations and civilian oversight to the RCMP. Robert Marleau retired as information commissioner in June, a few months after issuing a set of failing-grade report cards that blamed those “at the very top” for systematically denying Canadians information about what the government is doing in their name.”

For a party that spoke a lot about accountability and claimed not to have secret agendas, the actions they’ve taken while in office give every impression that they’re anything but accountable or open.

For more information about Canadian access to information take a look at Stanley Tromp’s site⁶, where he’s published an extensive report on the issue. It’s a very long report, several hundred pages, but you can focus in on the issue of the Conservative minority government’s secrecy with the brief and informative postcript⁷ (PDF).

Informative read from the University of Alberta’s Centre for Constitutional studies, regarding Freedom of the Press and Harper’s Media Policy.

I remember reflecting at the time of the initial GST cuts what the real rationale might be–it couldn’t be what the Conservatives were saying publicly because that had too many holes to make sense. When the Tories kept announcing what seemed like short-sighted cuts to the taxes, which would have little to no economic affect on the majority of Canadians, why did they consistently tout these as putting money back into the hands of consumers (a sham).

What is the real rationale for the Conservatives’ GST cuts? The GST cuts affect the government’s ability to support various services and programs that impact the well-being of our society. Ah, but that’s right, the Conservatives aren’t generally in favour of such services and programs, they want to shrink government, preferring to leave everyone to fare for themselves. But they can’t come out and tell everyone they want to cut federal programs and services, because then they’d risk losing the minority popular support that they have. So what to do? How about engineering some great big deficits? A deficit situation enables the Conservatives to justify cutting federal programs and services, to justify selling off our crown assets to private interests, all under the guise of being fiscally responsible.

Let’s see how this adds up.

Reuter’s¹ reported (25 July 2008) that the Conservative-led government wasn’t off to a good start to the fiscal year.

“. . . posting a deficit of C$517 million ($507 million) for April and May as corporate and sales tax collection fell sharply. The deficit compares with a surplus of C$2.78 billion in the same two months of 2007. The weak results were due to a 17 percent decline in corporate income tax revenue as well as a 21 percent drop in intake from the goods and services sales tax, the Department of Finance said in a report on Friday.” [emphasis mine]

The article continues to note that the Conservative government estimated it would have a surplus of $2 to $3 billion for the year. It contrasts sharply with the prior year’s surplus of about $10 B. Striking however, that the Conservatives were still publicly estimating a surplus, not a deficit. It suggests that either they weren’t very good at taking stock of the economic situation or else they were simply trying to keep things quiet and control public perception over eventually slipping into a deficit.

Continuing with Reuter’s reports² (18 November 2008), we can see how much the Conservatives tried to veil the situation. This is about the time that budget officer, Kevin Page, prepared to release his first forecast.

“The idea of running a budget deficit in Canada has been political anathema since the 1990s when the previous Liberal government painfully eliminated it over a period of several years. Ottawa has subsequently posted annual surpluses, the only major industrialized country to do so.

The newly re-elected Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper insisted throughout this year’s election campaign that it would continue to balance the books. However, it has since allowed that a temporary deficit is likely. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has said he expects to post a small surplus in the 2008-09 fiscal year but the budget might slide into deficit after that as the result of possible stimulus measures that have yet to be defined. In February, when the government laid out its spending plans for 2008-09, Flaherty saw . . . the surplus slimming down to C$1.3 billion in 2009-10.

Economists, including the influential chief economist of Toronto-Dominion Bank, Don Drummond, have estimated Canada could face a budget shortfall of up to C$10 billion next year.”

At about the same time, the Montreal Gazette reported³ (14 November 2008) Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty’s intentions to sell crown assets.

“Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said yesterday the Harper government is considering selling real estate and other crown assets to help keep the budget balanced as the economy worsens. . . . “We are going to review the corporate assets, the capital assets, of the government of Canada, to see whether they still perform a useful function for the Canadian people. If that review shows that there should be some assets that should be sold, then we’ll go ahead with them.”"

Clearly (because Flaherty says so) the Conservatives knew at this point that they would have at least a difficult time balancing the budget. But he puts the blame on a worsening economy, totally neglecting his own government’s reckless GST cuts. Or were they reckless? Maybe they served the Conservative strategy of reducing federal programs and services. Flaherty’s talking about selling off crown assets–those belong to us don’t they, not private parties. But this talking strategy will prove consistent with future Conservative announcements and with current Conservative ideology.

Jumping ahead, the Conservatives started predicting they’d run a $34 billion deficit for 2009/10, and a $30 B deficit the year after. Harper said the budget they’d introduce would have “permanent tax cuts”–interesting way to deal with a shortfall: lose more money.

The CBC reporting⁴ (22 June 2009) on the massive federal deficit expectation points out that we’re likely to see what had been estimated as a $1.3 billion surplus changed into a $50 billion deficit. Roughly $10 billion of that can be attributed to the GST cut. That’s $10 billion in federal social programs down the drain. The article quotes Canadian autoworks economist Jim Stanford on the link between cutting the GST and the purchasing decisions “The links are not as strong as you might think…” which corroborates others’s positions at the time of the announced cuts (I called attention to these just above).

To be fair, the article also notes that $10 B is only a portion of the ~$50 B deficit. But much of what led to the deficit was not as predictable or controllable as the $10 B portion. Part of the deficit comes from measures, like the economic stimulus taken (and to varying degrees pushed by the other parties) to deal with the severe recession.

Nevertheless $10 B of the deficit was within the purvue of the Conservatives’ decisions. That’s $10 B that could have been used toward stimulus and social programs. That’s $10 B that could have been considered a safety net for a worsening economy (which as we know now, it did). The Conservatives had a safety net coming into office, which gave them some  room to manage our country even while the world was heading into a deep recession. Rather than recognize their good fortune in having that wiggle room they put policies in place, which even at the time signalled an end to such a safety net. That’s an intentional act.

So I ask, can it be reckless planning? Lack of forsight? Or is it part of the Conservative strategy to reduce the government–recognizing that if anything dire did happen, they’d get their opportunity to cut federal programs to support only the most essential of federal duties? I think it’s the latter. While I may disagree with their goals, calling them short-sighted, I don’t actually think the Conservatives are stupidly bumbling around with these measures, rather they’re carrying through with their policies for a reason.

The United Press reported⁵ (11 September 2009)

“Canada’s budget deficit was adjusted upward to $55.9 billion this year . . . Flaherty said much of the effort to get the deficit down to $5.2 billion by 2015 will “require decisions of government that won’t always be popular or pain free,” and “it will require a lot of saying ‘no’ to pet projects and special interests.”"

In order to reduce the deficit (not even talking about hitting a surplus again) by 2015, Flaherty starts trying to get the public used to the idea that cuts will come, and that they’ll be painful. Wondering what he characterizes as “pet projects and special interests”?

My guess is that’s just about anything outside current Conservative doctrine. How long before the Conservatives proceed with deeper cuts to cultural programs, social services, and more? Could cuts required to get us out of this deficit eventually be a rationale for the Conservatives to open the door to privatized health care? So much of the Conservative agenda, reigning in the social infrastructure, which characterizes (in part) the well-being of Canadian life, comes down to cutting the programs and services that are now Canadian institutions.

The National Post⁸ (2 November 2009) discussed Kevin Page’s report (Parliamentary Budget Office) examining our future deficit in relation to the Conservatives’ plans. His office is of course, supposed to shed light on what goes on within their domain and has sometimes been at odds with the Conservatives’ numbers. Page says the federal government will be in a substanatial structural deficit for a number of years and that the government will have to raise taxes or else make cuts in its programs. He also brought up an interesting issue.

“According to Mr. Page, the government’s projections include $5.8-billion in unidentified savings over the next five years through reviews of program spending, including $2-billion this year. Mr. Page says his office has requested expenditure planning documents from the federal Treasury Board, but has thus far been rebuffed.”

And now that the holidays are upon us, the Conservatives are releasing plenty of bits warning that they’ll begin making cuts–are these the unidentified savings, Page mentioned? Perhaps the Conservatives think people will forget these warnings over the holidays, or that the warnings will sink into the background of our consciousness so we’re more receptive when they finally do occur. The Globe and Mail⁶ (21 December 2009) talks about Harper’s stimulus plan exit strategy involving years of “belt-tightening”. They quote Stephen Harper saying:

“The government’s approach will be clear. We won’t be raising taxes, but we will be constraining growth . . . And within four to five years, if we follow that path, we should be back to a balanced budget.”

Harper uses the euphemism “restraining growth” but as his government noted previously, they mean cuts to federal programs and services, along with selling off crown assets. Reading the language used by Harper and his Conservatives, and the way it gets reported frequently you can see that they use words like frugal and belt-tightening, which imply wisdom and resolve rather than the actual short-sightedness or cunning strategy. The article continues with insightful counterpoints from respected economists and ministers

“Mr. Harper’s view that his government will be able to chip away at deficits by squeezing the growth of public spending has been questioned by economists and by former officials with the Finance Department. Former deputy ministers Scott Clark and David Dodge [former Governor of the Bank of Canada] have already stepped forward to challenge the government’s plans for eliminating the deficit, which is projected to reach $56-billion this fiscal year. Mr. Clark has said that Ottawa will have to raise the GST, which Mr. Harper cut in 2006.

“I don’t think it’s very likely that they can balance the budget without some very severe spending restraint,” said Bank of Montreal deputy chief economist Douglas Porter.”"

It’s not just Flaherty and Harper talking cuts, but well-known economists saying the Conservatives cannot follow through on their promises without backtracking their initial decisions on the GST cut or else severely cutting spending. And last but not least, let’s follow this up with the most recent news coming from Jim Flaherty’s mouth and reported by The Globe and Mail⁷ (22 December 2009).

“”Over time, what we’re going to see in the federal government in any event is some attrition because of the demographics and aging public service and we’ll have to be mindful of that as we try to watch growth in spending and restrain growth in spending,”"

Which is an oblique way of saying the Conservative minority government would look toward cutting public services. How can I justify that comment? Consider that if you don’t rehire public workers, or worse, you eliminate their jobs, then you no longer can offer the public services they were responsible for delivering. The article says

“Aiming for a leaner civil service, and looking to the salary savings of a reduced federal work force, provides a new twist on what has long been viewed as the public service’s demographic challenge. . . . “I hope he realizes that when you cut public servants, you cut public service,” said Gary Corbett, the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Mr. Corbett said cutting public-service jobs means cutting back on important jobs like food safety inspectors and scientific research.”

The Star⁹ (23 December 2009) also has a piece on Flaherty’s recent announcements. It provides some other details such as marking a flippant sounding attitude toward the situation and this point of Flaherty history:

“In his 2001 Ontario budget, Flaherty handed $2.4 billion in tax cuts to the province’s corporations, promised personal tax breaks and paid down $3 billion in provincial debt – all while balancing the books by holding down badly needed expenditures for universities, hospitals and infrastructure projects.”

Furthermore, according to the Globe and Mal article, Flaherty believes government revenues will largely stem from economic growth. That’s sure a positive outlook. While that would be welcome and might even be likely, it’s far from certain. Things could even take a turn for the worse.

“The concern expressed by the deputy ministers and others is that the government’s revenues have fallen so steeply that Mr. Flaherty simply will not be able to find enough savings to wipe out the deficit. They argue that even when economic growth returns to normal, the Conservatives’ two point GST cut has left Ottawa with a continuing deficit.”

The Conservatives have thus set up the game board for a future election campaign. With the spectre of permanent deficits, they can pit their party’s harsh cuts to federal services against the other parties’ options, which will likely be to either mimic the Conservative choice or to reverse the tax cuts that the Conservatives propaganda’d their minority public support into applauding in the first place.

“”When I become prime minister I will undertake an unprecedented overhaul of the federal government… That is my commitment to you.”

“Cleaning up government begins at the top,” he added, accusing Prime Minister Paul Martin of deflecting blame whenever the taint of scandal touches him.”

In principle of course, I don’t think many would argue that greater government accountability is not only important but necessary for the well-being of our democracy. Unfortunately, the Conservatives’ act was largely just an act. It did little of what the Conservatives led Canadian citizens to believe they’d do. Worse, the Conservatives have repeatedly acted against the spirit of not the letter of the act. Here’s some background and evidence.

Democracy Watch² (16 December 2009) reported on the Conservatives progress since 2006, noting that they’d increased or attempted to increase accountability in a few instances but also that they’d weakened it in eight ways, failed on 29 promises, and ignored 90 loopholes or flaws in the accountability system. Thus they gave the Conservatives a much lower grade than the Conservatives originally set out to earn. Democracy Watch also graded the main parties’ platforms^2b, with the NDP in the lead.

CBC reported³ (25 October 2006) about Justice John Gomery’s concerns his commissions studied recommendations on accountability had fallen into a black hole. John Gomery of course was responsible for the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal and so the 18 recommendations in his reports would have been incredibly relevant to for the Conservatives’ push on accountability. The article states

“Gomery said he thought the government would have taken action on the recommendations by now, or at the very least, started a debate on the issues covered by the inquiry. The inquiry covered a lot more ground than does the accountability act, he said. The act is designed to make the government more transparent and to crack down on unethical government actions. It also tightens political financing laws in Canada. It has not yet been proclaimed into law, although it has passed second reading in the Senate. Gomery said his request for a report on implementation did not mean that the government should do nothing for two years.”

Since Gomery’s report recommended solutions to the very lack of accountability that enabled both the sponsorship scandal to occur and the Conservatives to trumpet their accountability credo and thus eake their way into an minority government, why didn’t the Conservatives pay attention to it?

Gomery was back in the news with a Calgary Herald⁴ report (13 March 2008).

“Gomery told MPs on the government operations committee he was profoundly disappointed the Harper government ignored many of his recommendations because its signature Federal Accountability Act will not fix the imbalance of power between MPs, the prime minister and cabinet.”

According to the article the Harper government never responded to Gomery’s recommendations. Instead the Harper government has let the power of unelected political aides increase.

CBC reported⁵ (12 January 2007) that the Conservatives were already neglecting their own Accountability Act. It had become law in December of 2006. That same month Harper’s Conservatives made 118 appointments but were accused of violating the spirit of their act, which required that an independent body oversee such appointments. This trend would continue.

The Globe and Mail⁶ (5 January 2008) reported about a broken election promise the Conservatives had made requiring “ministers to record their contacts with lobbyists.” the article states

“In the 2006 election campaign, the Conservative Party platform pledged a new law to “require ministers and senior government officials to record their contacts with lobbyists.”

However, a federal spokesman said the new rules are not going in that direction. The new regulations are the details of how the Lobbying Act, which was passed in 2006 [emphasis mine], will work.

“The balanced approach that we determined as a Parliament was to put the positive obligation on the lobbyists,” said Mike Storeshaw, a spokesman for Treasury Board President Vic Toews.”

It doesn’t sound like the Conservatives followed through with a regulation that would make government more accountable, rather one that introduces easy ways out for officials communicating with lobbyists.

That year continued to show Harper breaking his promises for more accountability in government. After he talked up a storm about reforming the senate, pushing to turn it into an elected body, his actions went in the opposite direction. The Star⁷ (29 December 2008) pointed out that

“With his appointment of 18 Senators, most of whom are Conservative party cronies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has added another broken promise to the 27 democratic reform and government accountability promises the Conservatives have already broken since they were elected in January 2006.”

Note that Stephen Harper⁸ addressed a senate committee (7 Septemeber 2006) regarding his plans for senate reform.

“As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform – on their way to the top… But once they are elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the Government’s agenda. Nothing ever gets done. And the status quo goes on. Honourable Senators, this has got to stop… As yet another step in fulfilling our commitment to make the Senate more effective and more democratic, the Government – hopefully this fall, – will introduce a bill in the House to create a process to choose elected Senators. This bill will further demonstrate how seriously the Government takes the issue of Senate reform.”

Look back at that same Star (29 Dec ’08) article, which recalls that the Conservatives

“promised to establish an independent Public Appointments Commission to ensure fair, merit-based and widely publicized searches for qualified candidates for the PM and his cabinet to appoint to government agencies, boards and commissions.”

As stated previously the Conservatives already had a problem with their 118 appointments made in 2007, when they also pledged to have that Public Appointments Commission set up in no time. It seems that almost two years later, instead of setting up the commission they continued appointing people, actually over 1000 appointments. So it’s perfectly consistent that they’d do nothing on senate reform after two years either. Stephen Harper succeeded with his own right of passage to get elected and do nothing about senate reform.

These few examples show that Harper’s Conservatives cannot be trusted to act on their own accountability act. There are other examples including questionable use of campaign money, mistreatment of the financial watchdog, and mistreatment of a whistleblower, I’ll get to those in other posts but Greg Weston summarizes nicely in his Toronto Sun article (13 December 2009)⁹.

Other perspectives on the Conservative accountability problem include

• Keith Martin, M.P. — Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca¹⁰ (12 May 2006)
• Doug Banwell’s Blog¹¹ (4 April 2009)

This is of course important in terms of respecting the Geneva convention, human rights in general, but also because of how it reveals the nasty and counterproductive character of a government run by a party that seems incapable of the most basic levels of respect.

According to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act¹ (25 November 2005),

“…it is in the public interest to maintain and enhance public confidence in the integrity of public servants;
confidence in public institutions can be enhanced by establishing effective procedures for the disclosure of wrongdoings and for protecting public servants who disclose wrongdoings, and by establishing a code of conduct for the public sector;

public servants owe a duty of loyalty to their employer and enjoy the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that this Act strives to achieve an appropriate balance between those two important principles;

the Government of Canada commits to establishing a Charter of Values of Public Service setting out the values that should guide public servants in their work and professional conduct;…”

And so the Act continues to detail responsibilities, procedures, etc. around whistleblowing activities. It clearly says that we need to have effective procedures for protecting public servants who disclose wrongdoings. Richard Colvin disclosed a public wrongdoing so why are the Tories lieing and lambasting him rather than protecting him and following the procedures to investigate?

In case the links above aren’t enough evidence of the Conservatives’ lies and stalling tactics, The Toronto Star² (16 December 2009) reported on the Tories preventing parliament from delving into Richard Colvin’s account, especially with respect to his rebuttal³ to Conservative counterclaims of the evidence.

“Seven Conservative MPs boycotted a special sitting of the committee probing allegations of detainee abuse, forcing its cancellation and leaving the opposition fuming at the government’s “dismissive” attitude to Parliament.”

In a Toronto Star opinion piece, James Travers noted

“Honesty would have ended the Afghan prisoner abuse controversy now testing the ruling party’s commitment to accountability and the Prime Minister’s campaign to neuter Parliament. Instead of candour, Harper hung the Conservative defence on the suspect argument that there is no proof Afghans tortured Canadian prisoners.”

Even if history proves Colvin’s accusations incorrect, his treatment in this situation is off-base. The Conservative minority government has not protected him and has not tried to maintain or enhance public confidence in the integrity of public servants (quite the opposite), thus the Conservatives are on the wrong side of values set in the Charter.

The CBC reported¹ (14 October 2009) about Conservative logos appearing on federal (not party) stimulus cheques being presented at funding announcements. One striking example (images at the CBC link) was a large cheque handed out by Conservative MP Gerald Keddy in Nova Scotia. In other words, Canadian taxpayer money is used to produce publicity linking a federal program to the Conservative party (though the Conservative party cannot and should not claim 100% responsibility for the program). The other parties have called on the ethics commissioner to investigate.

That type of publicity stunt just continued as The Star² shed light (9 November 2009) on Conservatives making themselves very visible at public events to announce funding, while they kept their colleagues from the other parties in the dark. Again, it’s a federal program. The article says

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government have been using taxpayer-funding announcements to boost the fortunes of unelected Conservative candidates, critics charge…

In Edmonton-Strathcona, the only Alberta riding the Conservatives do not hold, local Tory candidate Ryan Hastman has participated in at least five government announcements over the past few months, while the local NDP MP, Linda Duncan, says she has been excluded from all of them. Hastman boasts of his participation in pictures on his Facebook page. Duncan… says it becomes doubly irritating when a Conservative candidate claims credit for funds she helped to get for the community, as the duly elected MP.”

Finally, The Star³ reported (12 November 2009) about the greater than $3 million dollars Conservatives spent, in one month, of taxpayer money advertising the notion that the stimulus spending was creating jobs. One has to wonder how useful this advertising is in a deep recession, when the $3 M could be put to far more effective use, say boosting unemployment payments to the thousands or workers that lost their jobs, or else assisting fledgling industries. According to the article, Liberal MP, Martha Hall Findlay said

“…she could understand if the money was spent educating Canadians about H1N1 flu, ‘but patting yourself on the back and making big pronouncements is not part of what taxpayers’ money should be spent on.’”

The advertising gets further criticized as promoting the Conservative brand without informing citizens of how the plan supposedly might have created any jobs.

One rule is that if the sponsor doesn’t show up twice for debate on the bill, then it will automatically die. This Toronto Star article (6 July 2009) explains how Tory MPs have been quickly sponsoring bills even when they aren’t in favour of the bills. An explanation for this counterintuitive behaviour is that the MP can then simply not show up for the debates, and thus by normal procedures the bill dies.

In other words, subverting procedural rules allows the Conservatives to stop the flow of potential progress and halt the work of the senate. Hardly seems within the spirit of good governance. I’m also not sure how this could possibly represent the collaborative working methodology a minority government ought to be pursuing to best represent the populace that elected it.

I’ll quote just a few of the statements below.

First, the Conservative message says

“Canadians passed judgment on Stephen Harper when they awarded the Conservative Party a strengthened mandate.”

I’d argue that in our last election while Canadians may have passed any type of judgement on Stephen Harper, we didn’t award the Conservative Party a strengthened mandate. The Conservatives ended up with only a plurality of the seats, it did not win a majority government, thus its mandate was no stronger than before the election. If anything, I’d argue it was weaker. Why weaker? Because it was well publicized how before the election the Conservatives tried to govern as though they were a majority. Playing political games to force policies through without obtaining agreement or concensus from the other parties. What they did accomplish, they accomplished without the will of the majority of Canadians. To trigger an election and end up back where they started should have been received as a message that they haven’t won the majority of Canadians’ support and needed to work with the other parties in order to find that support.

Second, the Conservative message says

“Voters offered no mandate to Stéphane Dion and the Liberals to govern the country.  They offered no mandate to Jack Layton and the NDP to influence the economy.”

It’s a bit of an odd thing to say. Like the Conservatives, neither of these parties won a majority, however upon forming a coalition with the support of the Bloc Québécois, they do have a majority. So this coalition represents the majority of Canadian voters, and that is not something the Conservatives can claim⁴ for themselves. It seems like the coalition has more of a mandate than the minority Conservatives do.

Finally, the Conservative message ends with

“The Liberals, NDP and separatist must first face the Canadian voters.  Otherwise any coalition will be an illegitimate regime without any mandate to govern.”

Actually the Liberal/NDP and Bloc already faced the Canadian voters (see above). Their coalition is not an illegitimate regime. It’s a democratically elected one, where the majority of the parties are working together (the Conservatives failed to do this). In fact, it’s in keeping with our Parliamentary rules².

“If no party gets a clear majority, the Cabinet that was in office before and during the election has two choices. It can resign, in which case the Governor General or Lieutenant-Governor will call on the leader of the largest opposition party to form a Cabinet. Or the Cabinet already in office can choose to stay in office and meet the newly elected House — which, however, it must do promptly…

…if a minority government is defeated on a motion of want of confidence very early in the first session of a new Parliament, and there is a reasonable possibility that a government of another party can be formed and get the support of the House of Commons, then the Governor General could refuse the request for a fresh election. The same is true for the Lieutenant-Governors of the provinces.”

Finally, Ed Broadbent wrote a concise and well formulated article³ that reveals the facts on the situation that Harper and his Conservatives have been trying to distort. Broadbent observes:

Instead of following constitutional precedent and allowing a democratic confidence vote to take place when it should, we have a power-hungry man who will be recorded as the first prime minister in Canada’s history to deliberately create a political crisis and set the fire of national disunity.

Follow the links for more details

1) PDF of the Conservative page of errors, for reliable reference, review, and criticism.

2) PDF of the Parliament of Canada Web page explaining how parliamentary government operates, for reliable reference, review, and criticism.

The GST enables the federal government to collect a sizeable amount of money that supports all sorts of programs improving the well-being of Canadian living. With respect to the Conservatives’ reducing the GST from 7 percent (in 2006) to ultimately 5 percent in 2007, The Toronto Star said¹ (2 November 2007)

“Economists winced. (Reducing a consumption tax neither boosts productivity nor encourages investment.) . . .  Cash-strapped mayors, weary anti-poverty activists and disheartened aboriginal leaders looked wistfully at the foregone $5.2 billion. And shoppers quickly forgot they had an extra $3.04 a week jangling in their pockets. . . . Ottawa is passing up the chance to strengthen Canada’s industrial base, shore up its aging infrastructure and upgrade the skills of its workers. It is saying that cities can solve their own financial problems, aboriginal communities can continue to languish and the gap between rich and poor can keep growing. . . . Urban voters could have been spared a steep rise in property taxes if Harper had shared 1 cent of the GST with municipalities, rather than giving consumers a bit of extra change at the cash register.”

So if cutting the GST would cause such difficulties for fixing our infrastructure and all sorts of societal issues, who and how exactly would it help? A CanWest News article on Dose² (1 January 2008) explained

“Patti Croft, chief economist with the investment firm Phillips, Hager and North, said anyone making big-ticket purchases will benefit from the consumption tax reduction. But, she said: “In general most economists would prefer a cut in income taxes. It’s a more efficient way to reduce the tax burden. . . . “”

According to the article the cut puts $5 billion ($6 according to Harper) back into the economy. But that equates to only between $150 – $200 per family, per year.

The cut in the GST is really only felt by those capable of making very large purchases, as The Star article noted: “The biggest beneficiaries will be the affluent. A corporate executive purchasing an $80,000 luxury sport utility vehicle will save $800. A single mother buying a $10 child’s snowsuit at Goodwill will save 10 cents.”

In other words the GST cut has almost no real effect on the majority of people’s disposable income but it rips roughly $5 billion dollars out of the government’s hands to effectively use on the programs that make Canadian life better.

The Chalk River reactor/medical isotope problem put the Conservatives in a particularly difficult quandary. Although I think it would have been possible to find a more positive and dynamic solution than to simply choose option a over option b, that’s beside the point. This post is about how the Conservatives chose to deal with the situation rather than what the end result was.

The Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario is a research facility operating a reactor that produces much of the world’s supply of medical isotopes. It is supposed to be regulated by the independent Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which in 2007 found that the facility needed repairs. The Conservatives pushed through orders that overrode the CNSC’s shutdown of the facility, and the story behind that is what looks rather unseemly. The CBC¹ reported on 13 December 2007

“The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) had ordered the 50-year-old Chalk River reactor closed because its emergency power system was not connected to the cooling pumps, as required to prevent overheating during a disaster such as an earthquake.

But the federal government bypassed the regulatory body’s order by fast-tracking an emergency bill allowing AECL to restart the reactor for 120 days.”

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post that was one solution, a debatable one, but the way they went about accomplishing it was not. They drafted emergency legislation and ousted the head of CNSC, Linda Keen. According to CTV News² 18 December 2007

“The Conservative government issued a cabinet order last week to federal nuclear regulators in an apparent effort to pressure them into letting medical isotope production resume at the Chalk River nuclear reactor.

But the directive, dated Dec. 10, failed to resolve a dispute between Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., which operates the reactor, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission which sets licensing, health and safety rules.

The government brought in emergency legislation the next day that made a temporary end run around the rules to enable isotope production to resume.”

The CBC article mentioned above also said

“…Earlier in the week, Keen told a committee of MPs the government removed the CNSC’s legal counsel so the agency could not dispute the legislation.”

Harper, as he frequently does, wasted no time making the controversy over a dangerously critical situation, political, suggesting the Liberals fought against the Conservatives’ actions because, Linda Keen, had originally been appointed by liberals. But she was just doing her job. Had the CNSC given the go ahead for the reactor to start up after its last maintenance, it would have been acting contrarily to its responsibilities. It wouldn’t have been ensuring that the proper safety was met. But then, Harper is notorious for ridding us of oversight committees and watchdogs. The political gaming was intensified through Conservative MP Lisa Raitt, but I’ll get to that.

Bolstering the public understanding of Keen’s job description is Thomas Walkom’s 17 January 2008 article³ in The Star explaining

“The government’s case, articulated by Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn at a Commons committee yesterday, is that it was Keen’s job to get Chalk River up and running. In fact, as the minister responsible for AECL, that task belonged to him. Her job under the law was to set and enforce nuclear safety standards – which she did… Certainly, Lunn’s arguments yesterday made little sense. He characterized AECL’s failure to meet the regulator’s safety standards as a “dispute” between two agencies – which is rather like suggesting that someone who breaks the law is having a “dispute” with the convicting judge.”

As promised, here is where things go downhill. Lunn got shuffled out of his job as Natural Resources Minister, and was replaced by Lisa Raitt. As reported by Canwest News Service⁴ (9 June 2009) Lisa Raitt, in conversation with an aide made some unfortunate remarks.

“‘…when we win on this, we get all the credit. I’m ready to roll the dice on this. This is an easy one. You know what solves this problem? Money. And if it’s just about money, we’ll figure it out. It’s not a moral issue.

‘It’s really clear,’ said Raitt. ‘Oh, Leona. I’m so disappointed.’

Later on the tape, the aide says the isotope issue is difficult to manage ‘because it’s confusing to a lot of people.’

‘But it’s sexy,’ Raitt responds. ‘Radioactive leaks. Cancer.’

‘Nuclear contamination,’ the aide says.”

Of course this was a private tape before released to the press. It’s arguable that some of what she said ought not to be taken too seriously, but rather as off-the-cuff remarks. Nevetheless it portrays the attitude that this Conservative representative has toward her responsibilities.

The issue revolves around a reactor, radioactivity, people’s health, our environment. It’s insufficient to reduce it to simply money. Raitt’s flippant remark about it being a sexy issue belies her greater interest in the shallow side of politicking than her deeper responsibility of serving the Canadian public. One would think her career would see better results if she undertook her job responsibilities more earnestly.

(Update: The Globe and Mail reported 19 January 2010 that in Harper’s latest cabinet reshuffling, “Lisa Raitt was downgraded to Labour from Natural Resources after a string of 2009 gaffes”)

Had this issue been consistently present in new reports just before 2008′s sham dissolution of parliament and during the election, would it have influenced the results more?

Quote from the Toronto Star¹ article (18 May 2007).

OTTAWA – The Harper government is being accused of a Machiavellian plot to wreak parliamentary havoc after a secret Tory handbook on obstructing and manipulating Commons committees was leaked to the press.

Opposition parties pounced on news reports Friday about the 200-page handbook as proof that the Conservatives are to blame for the toxic atmosphere that has paralyzed Parliament this week.

“The government’s deliberate plan is to cause a dysfunctional, chaotic Parliament,” Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale told the House of Commons.

New Democrat Libby Davies said the manual explodes the Tories’ contention that opposition parties are to blame for the parliamentary constipation.

“So much for blaming the opposition for the obstruction of Parliament,” she said.

Follow the links for more detailed information.

The Globe and Mail² (15 August 2008) also reminded us of the situation when a year later, the Conservatives tried to scam us into believing the opposition parties were the ones obstructing parliament.

“Last year, the governing Conservatives prepared a secret handbook on how to disrupt parliamentary committees and create chaos. No mere pamphlet, the book ran to 200 pages.

It instructed committee chairmen to select blatantly biased witnesses and tutor them in advance. It gave the chairmen pointers on how to obstruct parliamentary business, to storm out of meetings if necessary. . . .

All along, Team Harper has been quite faithful to its manipulation manual. We recall, among the many examples, the tricks they pulled to avoid being called to account on the censorship of documents regarding the Afghan detainees file. We recall Auditor-General Sheila Fraser saying they were out to gag officers of Parliament.”

It’s hard to understand how the Conservatives could still be respected by Canadians after this blatant puncture through the proper workings of our democracy.