I recognize that Parliament always retains the ultimate sanction of voting no confidence in the government — or at least, on those days that the government will allow it to do so, or deigns to bring forward legislation, or recognizes confidence votes when they occur (see Paul Martin, above). But this is a very blunt instrument. It shouldn’t have to take a vote of non-confidence to get the government to obey basic norms of accountability.Sadly, Mr. Harper has left the opposition with one option only and that is a vote of confidence. It is the stick with which he and his cronies whack the opposition, even as they move to circumvent the will of Parliament. The only way this will stop is for the opposition to unite to call Mr. Harper's bluff and defeat him. I hope when the time comes, Mr. Coyne does not fall for the "another useless election" meme, we all know is coming from the Conservative attack machine. Defending the constitution from the likes of Stephen Harper is a good hill on which to die. Recommend this Post
In a recent Coyne column, Derek Lee appeared to draw a line in the sand, saying that Parliament would not allow itself to be dissolved. Coyne obviously concurs. Is that the Liberal plan, or was Lee just freelancing? Is the opposition serious about Harper being a despot? We have a way of dealing with despots in this country, it’s called a vote of non-confidence. Happily, there’s a speech from the throne coming up not two months from now.I am not sure how serious Mr. Potter is in issuing this challenge, but it is one the opposition parties, particularly the Liberals and NDP should seriously consider. Harper is punking you and he doubts you have the stones to call him on his challenge to the authority of parliament. Your only recourse is a vote of non-confidence. You have two months to work out the details of a new coalition between you, I suggest you use the time wisely, and very, very quietly.
We will seek Opposition agreement to proceed expeditiously with other Government legislation -- particularly laws urgently needed to fight crime -- that the Ignatieff Liberals have blocked and obstructed.It takes balls the size of the Jupiter to kill your own legislation and then claim the opposition is obstructing the business of the government. Congratulations PMO, you are winners of this week's Ballsy Award. Recommend this Post
The question of what to do, how to deal with such attacks is an ongoing one.No disrespect to Impolitical, but the Liberal Party has had four years to figure that out. It really does come down to whether or not the party is willing to take Jimmy Malone's advice.
1. Harper doesn't put on airs, like Iggy does. Oh and Harper is writing a hockey book.Recommend this Post
2. Harper is good to his base. Well, duh.
3. Canadians are deliberately bone ignorant about what is going on in their own government and cynical about politicians in general. I would say that if you beat a person long enough and shift his job to China, he will turn off politics and focus on survival.
4. Canada has an electoral system that favors Harper at the moment. I would say it is time to get rid of such a system, but it remains a difficult proposition because the people who control the means of mass communications in this country like the system as it is. It is much better to have one or two actors to lobby than five. So change, if it ever comes, will be very, very long term. So, I hope you like perpetual one party dictatorships as much as our owners do.
We have articulated and implemented a zero tolerance approach to anti-Semitism. What does this mean? It means that we eliminated the government funding relationship with organizations like for example, the Canadian Arab Federation, whose leadership apologized for terrorism or extremism, or who promote hatred, in particular anti-Semitism.If you read what he now says he is saying, he includes everything but the truth. His new sin, is a sin of omission. He needs to apologize to the Church, now. Recommend this Post
We have ended government contact with like-minded organizations like the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose President notoriously said that all Israelis over the age of 18 are legitimate targets for assassination. We have defunded organizations, most recently like KAIROS, who are taking a leadership role in the boycott. And we’re receiving a lot of criticism for these decisions. I can’t recall how many times I’ve been sued for some of the decisions that we have taken, but we believe that we’ve done these things for the right reasons and we stand by these decisions.
This was the year that threatened to put Canadians through the tedium of yet another federal election – the fourth in a five-year stretch. Smile, everyone. We avoided that as well. -- Lawrence MartinAs long as this remains the dominant notion in our politics, Harper wins. He knows that he can do what ever he wants as long as he keeps his base happy, so the polls stay roughly where they have been for five years. Harper gives the opposition two choices, back down or call an election. He knows that as long as the polls are stable and another minority is in the cards, the opposition will back down.
"We must learn lessons from Copenhagen and the tough negotiations that took place. Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down these talks. Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries."Even if he doesn't mean Canada, isn't sad that it is so damn easy to imagine Harper and his thugs holding the world to ransom? Recommend this Post
Today rich countries led by the United States are pressuring poorer nations to ditch the UN process and sign onto the Copenhagen Accord. They are threatening poor nations that refuse to sign on with the loss of their share of the $100 billion that rich countries have pledged to compensate for climate impacts the rich countries themselves have caused.Obama's approach sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? Obama has his own coalition of the willing and this time, Stephen Harper is in a position to jump on board.
UN officials are struggling to figure out what the Accord even means and how it's related to the UN process, but what's is clear is that it was not approved by the 192 countries that are members of the UNFCCC.
By signing onto the Accord, poor countries risk displacing the legitimate negotiation process taking place under the auspices of the UN.
The US is so desperate to claim a Copenhagen success that it is now attempting to destroy the existing climate process and sideline 20 years of real multilateral negotiation.
Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth International Chair, said:
"First the US came to Copenhagen with nothing new to offer, and now it's trying to package the weak, flawed, unjust 'Copenhagen Accord' as a replacement for the UN process -- and armtwist poor countries into signing on.
"President Bush ignored the UN process, now President Obama risks to torpedo it.
“The Copenhagen Accord is an excellent agreement and a very, very positive agreement for Canada,” he told The Canadian Press on Saturday.You see, I know you achieved your negotiating objectives. That's why it Copenhagen is being described as a failure, around the world, except by the leaders of the big polluters. So, thanks for admitting you helped produce a steaming pile, but I pretty much already knew that. Recommend this Post
“It sits within the principles we put forward as a Canadian government and it essentially achieved all our negotiating objectives.”
Liberal and New Democrat MPs said Oda should be brought before a House of Commons committee to explain the KAIROS decision.Which committees are left? Recommend this Post
"There needs to be a larger discussion about CIDA's decision-making than merely what's happened to KAIROS, but KAIROS would be the classic example," said the Liberals' John McKay.
It's in Harper's interest to take to the streets a message shaped by control and insulated by secrecy. Beyond Parliament Hill there are fewer annoying questions, contrarian quibbles or suspicious fingers running down the ruling party's approved facts and figures.I would answer Travers by saying that a majority of Canadians are worried about Harper and his thugs. It is proven in poll after poll, where Conservatives never get more than roughly one third of the vote. However, thanks to the twin miracles of the first past the post electoral system and a seat distribution that favors the rural vote, a majority of voters means practically nothing. Our democracy is an illusion and Harper is merely a symptom of the system's diseased core. Recommend this Post
Out there, where the undecided and skeptics are kept at arm's length, Ottawa's secrecy culture isn't a kitchen table worry. Out there it would be rude to ask when the buck last stopped at a minister, how civil servants became fall guys or how watchdogs lost their bark. Out there, if Conservatives have it figured right, the manipulation of an inconvenient Parliament will slide by with the same ease as the piece-by-piece deconstruction of democracy.
Something is terribly wrong. So many Canadians want to see courageous, principled progressive leadership both on specific issues and the overall direction of the country, and yet they're obviously not finding it in the NDP. New Democrats are hardly unaware of this great blown opportunity.If waiting on our own Obama is our only hope (especially given how shitty the real one is), we are totally fucked. Recommend this Post
The country is deeply weary of political game-playing and deeply sour about its politicians. Who can blame them? It's as if we're all waiting for something new and special, for our own Obama. But as the real thing drowns in the lethal political swamps of Washington, no one remotely of his calibre appears on the Canadian horizon.
“The few people … in Foreign Affairs that had been working on the [torture] file up until that point were basically told, there's a new regime in town, and it's going to be top-down. We're not looking so much for advice,”Is it a stretch to believe Harper's people would carry that message? Not for me, either. Recommend this Post
Okay, reality check here, one Afghan getting whacked around by some shoes in the middle of a war zone does not fit my definition of torture.Don Martin, are you willing to take the Shoe Torture Challenge? Recommend this Post
The more pertinent question is why Canadian troops are handing over suspects to Afghan military commanders and their intelligence services when everybody knows that one of two things will likely happen Either the suspects will be let go, out of tribal and ethnic sympathies (the "get out of jail free card," as one exasperated Canadian major in Afghanistan put it to me last month), probably to redouble insurgency efforts, or, alternately, if their intelligence value is deemed to be sufficiently high, those prisoners will disappear into a black hole of injustice, somewhere inside Afghanistan's miserable jail system, never to be heard from again, subjected to who knows what tortures.So, a few in the media anyway were giving warnings (but not in any sustained way). It is clear, at least to me that they were merely repeating what was common knowledge by everyone involved in the Afghan mission. Protests of "We didn't know" from the government are ludicrous on their face. Recommend this Post
Canada quietly made that agreement with the Afghan government in a bilateral treaty signed last December, the thrust of which was to avoid handing over captured prisoners to the Americans because Canadians do not run their own military jails. Assuredly, some American soldiers, particularly military interrogators, disgraced themselves, and their country, by the indignities and even lethal treatment inflicted on captives in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
But so out of proportion to reality have these dismal incidents become - so exaggerated the scathing indictment of all U.S. troops, and America itself - that political optics now demand Canada abandon prisoners to the tender mercies of Afghan authorities instead, even though that country has no judicial institutions to speak of, no prisoner oversight system and a deeply ingrained culture of vengeance.
I'm not attacking Afghans, whom I admire. Their practices have always worked for them. They shouldn't work for us.
Canada, unlike the Dutch, did not even build into their prisoner transfer treaty assurances that humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross monitor the treatment of these captives. And that makes us culpable in whatever harm befalls them. From: Military tries to massage message May 15, 2006
I spent a good part of 2006 in Kandahar - three tours of between four to six weeks each in about 10 months, with another tour in '07 - as an embedded reporter, which means I traveled with Canadian troops. I counted on them to keep my ass safe, and they did. I liked them hugely. The experience was one of the most significant of my life (if not on a par with the drama of being, say, in a budget lockup) and I treasure every minute of it. I made some lifelong friends, and I love some of these men.Yesterday it was reported that Richard Colvin wrote in 2007, about Asadullah Khalid :
"He runs at least one private detention facility, at which he personally has tortured detainees. ... His record is well known in Kandahar, including among the Canadian press corps."If you put the two quotes together, they open some interesting avenues of questioning. The MSM needs to explain why, if this was common knowledge "among the Canadian press corps", its reporters were silent in 2006?
Among the most glaring differences between the two agreements is that the Dutch government insists on the right to follow, monitor and visit detainees it hands over to Afghan authorities.Recommend this Post
Dutch military officers and diplomats can check up on the condition of anyone originally captured by Dutch troops.
No such provision appears in the Canadian "arrangement," as it is officially described.
"The Dutch agreement is written to genuinely protect detainees; the Canadian agreement is written with the clear intention of laundering them," said Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, who believes that Canada may be complicit in the torture or abuse of detainees by handing them over without sufficient safeguards to the Afghan military.
The Canadian "arrangement" -- a two-page, 13-clause document signed Dec. 18 in Kabul by Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier -- includes no provision for Canadian officials to check up on what happens to detainees once they are handed over.
It does require that the International Committee of the Red Cross has that right.
Gen. Hillier, who signed the arrangement "for the minister of defence" has defended handing detainees over to Kabul's military and police as an important part of Canada's nation-building effort in Afghanistan.
But neither can Opposition members casually toss around words like torture and phrases like complicity in torture and expect to be simultaneously seen as defenders of the troops: After all who, if not the Canadian Forces, would have been complicit in the torture they allege?To which I reply, the government dear lady, the government. The same folks who are hiding the documents and heading the country toward a constitutional crisis. The people who are responsible are the ones who put our troops in an untenable position and then did nothing to fix it until forced to by bad press. Simple. Recommend this Post
The Conservatives' blatant wooing of Canadian Jews doesn't add up. What do they want from such a tiny, privileged group anyway?Prime Minister Harper wants to win the Electoral College votes in New York and Florida. Simple. Recommend this Post
According to a CBC-EKOS poll completed earlier in the week, a majority of Canadians already did not buy the government's assertion that it did not overlook the strong possibility the prisoners Canada was handing over to the Afghan authorities would be tortured.In other words, objectively torture is wrong. However, subjectively, in Canada, torture is politically survivable and so is, if not accepted, tolerated. If Hebert is correct in her assessment, we are totally, totally fucked. We may as well throw in the towel and declare Harper president for life. Recommend this Post
That makes the detainee issue one of this government's biggest public relations flops since it was caught off guard on the environment in the fall of 2006.
But that is not to say that anyone on Parliament Hill believes it could lead to a snap election. The government is hoping the storm will blow over during the parliamentary break. But even if it flares up again in the new year, few opposition strategists believe it will resonate loudly at the ballot box. (emphasis mine)
Gen. Natynczyk claimed the case wasn't one of a Canadian-transferred detainee being maltreated by Afghans because the man was never officially listed as captured, even though Canadian soldiers stopped, questioned, and photographed him.The government's defense seems to be we knew prisoners were being tortured, but we didn't "know" ours were. So, since this man was not checked off on our forms correctly, the government closed its eyes and didn't investigate how our captured prisoners were being treated. Is that about right? I suspect the prosecutors in the Hague would not look too kindly on that defense. "Me'lud we would have done something if only that soldier had ticked the correct box on his form." Recommend this Post
New Democratic Party MP Thomas Mulcair presented a letter to the Commons from 15 women's groups in Quebec, arguing that the firearms registry was still vital to protecting women against violence.Save your sympathy for someone who gives a shit. Your party had a chance to take a stand for women and you sold them out for the "rural" vote. Do you expect people not to remind you of this fact, every time you open your mouth to wail about it being "tragic", as if it was a natural disaster, like an earthquake or fire? Your caucus enabled this "tragedy". This "tragic" outcome is on Jack Layton's head, not God's. Recommend this Post
Mulcair, talking to reporters later, agreed it would be "tragic" if the long-gun registry is dismantled after the Conservatives' private-members' bill passes through the committee stage and further votes in the Commons. It cleared an important hurdle last month with second reading, approval by a majority of MPs, including a number of New Democrats and Liberals. (emphasis mine)
Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering studentHélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering studentOpposition members who voted to kill the long gun registry:
Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student
Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student
Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department
Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student
Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student
Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student
Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student
NDP Malcom Allen (Welland)We will remember. Recommend this Post
Lib Scott Andrews (Avalon)
NDP Charlie Angus (Timmons-James Bay)
IND Andre Arthur (Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier)
NDP Niki Ashton (Churchill)
Lib Larry Bagnell (Yukon)
NDP Dennis Bevington (Western Arctic)
NDP Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley)
Lib Jean-Claude D'Amours (Madawaska—Restigouche)
Lib Wayne Easter (Malpeque)
NDP Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt)
NDP Carol Hughes (Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing)
NDP Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay—Superior North)
NDP Mark Maloway (Elmwood—Transcona)
Lib Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca)
NDP John Rafferty (Thunder Bay—Rainy River)
Lib Anthony Rota (Nipissing—Timiskaming)
Lib Todd Russel (Labrador)
Lib Scott Simms (Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor)
NDP Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Eastern Shore)
NDP Glen Thibeault (Sudbury)
Canada does not have to have a fundamentally illegitimate, hyper-centralized, artificial “majority” government elected through the quirks of our antiquated electoral system, against the wishes of the real majority of our citizens. We are not eternally condemned to elected dictatorship or to Napoleonic politics.This is true. We don't have to have these things. But, as long as the elites of this country see their interests best served by this dysfunctional system, and as long as the population at large can be cowed into submission by fear politics and tribalism, this is what we will have. Canada, as a country, would benefit from time in counseling. It is a sick place. Sick at its very core. Recommend this Post
Nor does Canada have to be governed by isolated minority administrations, surviving through inaction or Parliamentary blackmail and brinksmanship.
The Prime Minister’s very first line captured the whole Conservative case: “Mr. Speaker, the highest principle of Canadian democracy is that if one wants to be prime minister one gets one’s mandate from the Canadian people and not from Quebec separatists.”I don't live in the country Topp describes. Objectively, what he says is true, but the Conservatives (who decry everything post-modern) have adopted subjective truth with both hands. In their opinion, Canadians directly elect the Prime Minister. That this is not so and never has been, in the whole of our constitutional history means nothing. They "believe it is so" and so it is. As Mr. Flanagan so aptly put it (in another context), "It doesn't have to be true. It just has to be plausible." Recommend this Post
That, of course, is not true. The highest principle of Canadian democracy is that Parliament gets its mandate from the Canadian people, and then selects a ministry from among its ranks to do its bidding. But truth had nothing to do with what happened next.
Recommend this Postan angel is cast out of Heavenbaby Jesus catches a colda puppy is put to deaththe elephants holding up the world get weakerI make a frowny face in my diary
CTV News obtained 180 pages of e-mails, including ones written by Colvin, that are among the documents. They were heavily censored, and what could be seen shed little light on the controversy.If our foreign service is being forced to lie to itself by politicians, then the products of its labors are useless and any real intelligence they have to offer will be dismissed as partisan spin. This puts the security of the country at risk for the greater glory of the current occupants of the PMO. Recommend this Post
But one e-mail underlined Colvin's frustration. He complained about "hyper secrecy" on the detainee issue, and orders from Ottawa to put "nothing in writing."
He said the apparent restrictions amounted to "a very troubling politicization of reporting" and effectively told diplomats, "We must lie to each other."
From the start, Canadian soldiers were using gunshot residue tests (this was mentioned by the former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier in his testimony to the committee this week, but the significance of the remark went unnoticed) to sift the wheat from the chaff.Since Saturday, the GSR as proof that the people caught up in the sweeps by Canadian soldiers were not "simple farmers" line, has been taken up by others in comments in other places. I find this to be a fascinating argument. I mean, it's not as if farmers shoot guns, right? That's why Canadian farmers are such strong proponents of the long gun registry. I wonder how random GSR testing (with the threat of immediate arrest if positive) would go over in rural Canada? Recommend this Post
