Inside Politics

Dealing with Dilma

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:19:48 -0500

In hockey and economics -- two subjects on which Stephen Harper knows his stuff -- it's not always obvious when a deft play has occurred. Was it the goal, or was it the clever pass that set it in motion? Was it the tax cut, or was it blind luck?

Latin America is a place where, well, Harper's no expert. His trip so far is not exactly blasting open the doors of the heavily-protected Brazilian market. But when called upon to handle the former Marxist guerrilla who now runs Brazil, Harper managed a deft play that was unmistakable.

What did he think of Dilma Rousseff's smackdown of Standard & Poor's?

President Rousseff, now managing a capitalist success story in the world's seventh-largest economy, didn't mince words about the downgrade decision that has made life harder for her country. As Harper looked on, she bluntly said she disagreed with it. It was "rushed." In fact, she added, "I would even say incorrect."

Brazilians are struggling with a sky-high currency, which makes their exports costly and is caused by a flight from the floundering U.S. greenback. S & P just made a bad situation worse.

When the leader of a two-trillion-dollar economy turns her guns on a credit rating agency, it matters. So, was Harper's new friend in Latin America correct about S & P being incorrect?

The Prime Minister's deft answer ... after the jump.

Wrong, wrong, wrong: How the voters made fools of us all - except maybe Jason Kenney

Tue, 03 May 2011 01:06:57 -0500

Before we all start spinning our brilliant theories to explain why Stephen Harper did so well, let's admit it. We got it wrong, wrong, wrong.

Oh, we'll get to those clever theories soon enough. But can we quickly get a fast mea culpa out of the way? With luck, no one will notice.

The fact is that the political geniuses on the campaign planes were hopelessly out of touch - political staffers and journalists alike. A senior aide to Stephen Harper said his best-case scenario was 157 seats. That was his most extravagant dream! A longtime Calgary MP picked 149. So did I.

A veteran cameraman picked 155, and we pitied him as we pitched our $10 into the pool. One respected reporter picked 139. We all thought, dammit, why didn't we do the same? One thing we were clear on: there was no way the Tories would get a majority.

'Rise up!' Ignatieff goes for broke

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:32:20 -0500

What exactly can Michael Ignatieff do to drive voters off their couches and into the streets with pitchforks, determined to turf Stephen Harper out of power?

So far, not much. He must be wondering what it takes. He damns the Tories in his professorial way and tempts voters with a "Family Pack" of goodies. He debates, he barbecues, he fields every question and calls them all "excellent!" But the polls barely move.

Now, here he is with the vote looming. He's in Sudbury, fielding still more questions from an adoring crowd. He apologizes for answering one with a "partisan shot at the other guy." A woman calls out, "that's what we want, Michael!" Another shouts, "two weeks of that, Michael!"

Then Ignatieff wraps up the night with a different face on. He pauses and recalls a Bruce Springsteen song, "The Rising," and launches into a riff on how voters seem to shrug off Harper's crimes against democracy. Contempt of Parliament? "People say, well, so what?" Cutting off questions? "So what?" Smearing Helena Guergis? "So what?" Crooks in the PMO? "So what?" Trying to scrap students' votes in Guelph? "People say, well, so what?"

Ignatieff then scans the crowd and shouts.

"Rise up! Rise up, Canada! Rise up!"

Video: Students say 'we will vote'

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:28:16 -0500

Harper the hawk goes to Paris. Or is he Goldilocks?

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 07:55:37 -0500

The world does not wait for the Canadian Parliament to debate contempt, confidence and Bev Oda. Although his own government may not last a week, Stephen Harper felt compelled to fly through the night to help end Muammar Gadhafi's.

Will it work? It depends on how ruthless the Western powers are prepared to be. Harper - a hawk who condemned the Chrétien government's decision to stay out of Iraq - may find that a muscular approach is more popular this time.

At least, as long as it goes well.

Meet the monarch. But no loud noises, please

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:28:03 -0500

Stephen Harper visits Morocco - carefully

A protester stands in front of the prime minister's office in Tunis this week to demand the removal of members of the ousted president's regime still in the government. (Christophe Ena/Associated Press)

At first, we all figured the Morocco leg of the prime minister's trip was an afterthought on the way home from the real business in Switzerland.

Stephen Harper went to Geneva, of course, to discuss the UN's vast maternal health initiative, which involves billions of dollars and millions of lives. The stop in Rabat was surely just a courtesy call on the way home. Morocco, after all, is often dismissed as a sleepy, post-colonial backwater with no oil.

After Tunisia, everything changed.

Accountability? At the UN? This should be interesting...

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:51:38 -0500

First, we must save the mothers and children. No, wait! First, we must make sure this isn't another gigantic, United Nations festival of corruption.

Then, we must save the mothers and children.

It's no secret that great humanitarian schemes can go horribly awry. Remember the UN's Oil-for-Food program in Iraq? Yes, that was the mother of all boondoggles. To this day, nobody knows how many billions were stolen.

This time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is wading into a program which is certainly gigantic: the UN's $40-billion project to cut the death rate among the world's most impoverished women and children.

Is it possible that some of that enormous pile of money could go astray? Definitely. Remember, this kind of funding is directed at places like Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen...

So, having pledged more than a billion dollars of Canadians' money to the cause as the chair of last year's G8 summit in Muskoka, Harper is now co-chairing a UN "Accountability Commission" to make sure the cash isn't pocketed by sticky-fingered autocrats and bureaucrats.

Thus far, the omens are not good. At the UN last year, Harper pledged $540 million to another grand scheme to cut the death rate of the most vulnerable. And...?

And now, donors are getting queasy.

Crazy or dumb? Do the math.

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:44:18 -0500

Calculating the odds of an election

Nobody loves mathematics - and electoral math is especially dreary. Typically, it ensures that we don't get what we want. Take the last federal election. Only 59 per cent of the voters even bothered to turn out. Only a minority of those picked the party in power and even they had to make do with a minority government.

But math is not just dreary; it's also relentless. Resistance is futile. So we'd better keep an eye on some key numbers as Canada lurches into another season of election speculation.

Try these: 308 and 6 billion.

The Air India emails: families' lawyer told to 'listen and observe only' at ministers' meeting with victims' relatives

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:34:41 -0500

The following is an email exchange between Air India family member Anil Hanse and Tom Jarmyn, an official with Canada's Department of Public Safety:

Sent: Sat Nov 27 01:43:29 2010
Received: From: Jarmyn, Tom
To: Anil Singh Hanse

Hello

The purpose of the meeting is to allow the Ministers to have a discussion with family members about the government's response to the Major Report. If Mr Quance wishes to attend the meeting to listen and observe only then the Ministers have no problem with that.

Thanks

Tom Jarmyn

----- Original Message -----
From: Anil Singh Hanse
To: WEBMAIL
Cc: Jarmyn, Tom; Rick Quance
Sent: Thu Nov 25 18:49:16 2010
Subject: Air India family meeting - 28.11.10

Dear Minister Toews / Mr Jarymn

Listed below are the e mails for family members in India,Singapore and Australia. As you can understand sir that it is very difficult for these families to get first hand information from meetings in Canada , hence we request that our representative Mr Rick Quance be present with Ms Shipra Rana on Sunday, Mr Quance was refused entry for the meet last month much to my suprise ( as he was there to fact find ) upon the family's request in a non aggressive or demanding way . Rick has been included with private family

meetings with Mr Major and with out issue ( as Rick is a through gentleman ) . Once again on behalf of family all over the world who cannot be present please let Rick enter this meet with the respect required.

May this be confirmed asap and before the said meeting

With regards

Anil Singh Hanse - Australia

The Air India families: Shut out again

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 20:57:28 -0500

The Harper government feels the lash as Air India families complain about the "shocking" exclusion of their lawyer from a meeting with ministers

Family members look for names of loved ones on a Vancouver memorial honouring the victims of Air India Flight 182. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Families of the Air India victims are complaining that the government's Air India Action Plan, announced today, does not even mention one of the Air India Inquiry's key recommendations: government payments to the families. They also say their lawyer, Richard Quance of Toronto, was barred from a meeting with two cabinet ministers to discuss the matter.

Quance confirmed this to CBC News.

"It's shocking, to say the least," said Quance, "that I was not allowed to attend the meeting."

After pleas from the families - many of whom live overseas - Quance was allowed to attend a second meeting - but only on the condition, imposed by the government, that he was not allowed to say anything.

The inquiry, under retired Supreme Court justice John Major, called for so-called "ex-gratia" payments to compensate families for the "disdain" with which the families were treated by the government over the past 25 years.

Family members who hired Quance say that treatment continues.

CBC News has obtained an email from an official of the Public Safety Ministry showing that Quance was "refused entry" to a meeting with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

CSIS in Wonderland

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:31:15 -0500

A spy boss takes on Canada's "specialty:" moral outrage

So now we know the view from the CSIS director's window: besieged by the enemy within!

As if fighting Hezbollah and Al Qaeda wasn't tough enough, CSIS must fight while "tied in knots" by the "Alice-in-Wonderland" law courts. Why, these courts even suggest that it's illegal to use evidence that "may have been derived from torture." And that video of a weeping Omar Khadr being grilled by CSIS agents at Guantanamo? Well, that would surely provoke Canadians to indulge their "knee-jerk anti-Americanism" and "paroxysms of moral outrage" - a "Canadian specialty," it seems.

Ouch!

These, the U.S. Embassy reported, were the views expressed in 2008 by former CSIS director Jim Judd to a visiting State Department official. Judd retired last year after five years at the helm of Canada's Security and Interlligence Service. The cable zinged off to Washington and everyone thought his complaint would never see the light of day.

WikiLeaks has decided otherwise. What to make of it?

What? No kimonos?

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:48:33 -0500

The "dismal science" dominates Harper's trip to Asia

Prime Minister Stephen Harper waves as he boards a plane in Winnipeg on Tuesday at the start of his six-day trip to South Korea and Japan. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)We knew this would be no fun when we found out that, no, we will not see Stephen Harper in a kimono at the traditional APEC photo-op in Japan.

Darn it, that was the only reason photo editors ever gave space to APEC! They called it the "silly shirts" photo, where the hosts hand out some charming item of national dress and force the visiting leaders to grin and wear it. Remember the batik shirts in Indonesia in '94? Or the Chilean ponchos in '04? Ever see the leaders wear 'em again?

Me neither. One pines for APEC '97 in Vancouver, where at least we gave out leather Roots jackets along with the pepper spray.

Well, somebody put their foot down.

'Losers don't get to form coalitions'

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:09:35 -0500

Sometimes, your brilliant question doesn't seem so smart when they've answered it.

So it was under a perfect blue sky on the manicured lawn of 10 Downing Street, where the Canadian media pack plotted to ensnare two prime ministers with a question about... of course! Coalitions!

The pack is, alas, normally limited to two questions so we tend to huddle and select questions that will satisfy most editors. Sure, we had to ask about the bank tax. But coalitions? That could make 'em squirm!

On the right stood Conservative David Cameron, fresh from his shotgun wedding with Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats. Cameron is the very exemplar of contemporary coalition politics.

But next to him stood the scourge of coalitions himself, Stephen Harper. Would Harper continue to damn coalitions while face-to-face with Cameron?

Answer: yes. Harper must have seen this one coming. It's a completely different situation, said Harper smoothly. In Cameron's case, his party got the most votes. In Canada, he went on, the voters clearly believed that "losers don't get to form coalitions." He referred to the Liberals, the NDP and to the Bloc -- the latter, Harper said, being a party that wants to break up the country. So there's no comparison.

If you're thinking that, hey, the Bloc may have supported, but didn't sign that agreement -- too bad. We don't get follow-up questions. No fair trying to ask, well, the wicked coalitionists got more votes than you! And Harper's warm welcome for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was out of order, too. (Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party got the most votes. But Netanhayu managed to form a coalition of..."losers.")

As for Cameron, he dealt with the matter deftly. He, too, used to object to coalitions, he said -- but, now, he admitted, he's "trying to prove myself wrong."

A little candour goes a long way at stilted "press conferences" like this where follow-ups are forbidden. But next time we really must think up a harder question. On to Paris and Nicolas Sarkozy!

Onward to Muskoka! (By way of London and Paris.)

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:07:20 -0500

Ask most Canadians to list their top five adjectives for Stephen Harper and "back-slapping" might hobble in at around a hundred and fifty.

Did you ever see him bound into a room and light up at the sight of old buddies, hugging them, punching them in the shoulder, drawing them in with his animal magnetism?

Me neither. Even so, this most reserved prime minister must soon follow where the famously haughty Valèry Giscard d'Estaing led when, as President of France, he tried to bond with his fellow leaders at the first summit of the G7 (as it then was) at a chateau in Rambouillet, 35 years ago. It's summit-time! Everyone in the pool!

Seeing double in Ottawa

Tue, 18 May 2010 12:28:27 -0500

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

If you stick around long enough, the differences between governments seem to fade.

Is it the eyes failing? Or are the differences not quite as stark as the parties paint them?

Of course, the Conservatives pretend that the difference is like night and day -- and so do the Liberals. Their government: the devil's work! Our government: manna from heaven! There's no resemblance!

But it's hard to see the diff when you're seeing double.

That's what happened when the cannons roared anew over the alleged wickedness of the CBC. As the Conservative government launched another broadside at the supposed Liberal bias of the Mother Corp, the Globe and Mail found itself in need of a picture for its story. How to illustrate a boring press release and grab some eyeballs for the Globe website?

A cunning editor found the solution: Brian Gable's deft cartoon of a Darth Vader figure in a CBC News studio, stamping scripts as "defensible" or "indefensible" while telling the anchorman, "Please, just carry on as if I weren't here."

That cartoon was so good, they used it twice. And they didn't have to change a thing.

But greybeards at the CBC recognized it.

First published on Nov. 13, 1998, the cartoon originally lampooned the Chrétien government's attacks on the Liberals' supposed enemies at, yes, the CBC. Reduce, re-use, recycle: the Globe goes green!

This kind of flashback makes it easier to remember, now that the CBC is being damned as a Liberal propaganda machine, that the Liberals in their day were equally incensed that it was, apparently, an anti-Liberal propaganda machine. We were "biassed," the Chretien PMO alleged, in an unfortunate piece of spelling, and we were "conspiring" against the Liberal government.

Such were the heated claims made by Jean Chrétien's Press Secretary, Peter Donolo, as CBC News peppered his boss with a fusillade of leaks about the 1997 APEC "pepper-spray" summit in Vancouver. The angry reaction of the government reverberated through the Liberals' remaining years in power and the Conservatives sided resolutely with the poor, abused CBC. Five years later, in June of 2002, Opposition Leader Stephen Harper was still railing about it in question period, accusing Chrétien of "the silencing of a CBC reporter" -- meaning yours truly. How he loved us when the other guys were taking the heat!

Now, it seems, the shoe's on the other foot. Today, Peter Donolo is Chief of Staff to the leader of a Liberal Party that is shocked, shocked at the Conservatives' assault on the CBC.

But you have to wonder: if the cartoon works no matter who's in power, and if the parties take turns at damning the CBC ... isn't that more or less the way it should be?