The National Implicates Ian Brodie

According to this evening's The National, the origins of the Naftagate began when Ian Brodie blabbed about the meeting of Obama's economic advisor and Canadian consulate officials with members of the press at the budget lockup a few weeks ago. I wonder if Mr.Brodie recalls that?

UPDATE: The Globe and Mail's got the details, and what's even better is that the original slip of the tongue was about Clinton assuring Canada over NAFTA, not Obama.

And let me play Obama partisan for a second here. Obama actually won more delegates last night than Hillary in Texas, the next two states of Wyoming and Mississippi favour Obama, and while Pennsylvania has a ton of delegates, North Carolina which is Obama territory, has quite a few as well.

Whither Orchard?

John Dorion is now supporting Joan Beatty's appointment and is taking shots at Orchard. Seems like Mr.Orchard is reaching the point of no return if he hasn't already crossed it. Orchard may want to look at what's happenening with John McCain in the United States. McCain was savaged by Bush in the 2000 Primaries and many could not believe that all these years since McCain could keep silent and support the men that slandered his name. And yet here he is today on top of the Republican heap not far from a certain nomination.

He who guards his mouth preserves his life,
But he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction.

Proverbs 13:3

Conservative MP Kickback Controversy

No not the in-and-out issue, but Global is reporting that Conservative MP Gary Goodyear from Cambridge is in a little hot water for handling of election expenses in 2004. Global National reports that Goodyear's campain manager expensed $3,875,76 to rent their campaign office with an agreement with the landlord saying he'd then make a campaign contribution in return for half the amount.

In response the Conservatives have said it's only a clerical error.

There's no article on the subject yet, but the video is accessible at canada.com. Under the heading, "Did MP flout finance laws?" Kady O'Malley had some details on the story yesterday on her blog.

What The Other Guy Thinks

Dorion Upset With Media Attention On Orchard
Friday, January 11, 2008 at 13:30

One of two men hoping to become the Liberal nominee in a northern Saskatchewan by-election says he can't believe the attention being paid to his competitor.

Cumberland House native John Dorion says it was his campaign that sparked hundreds of constituents to buy Liberal party memberships, and not David Orchard.

Dorion feels Orchard has been given credit by the media for much of his work, and Dorion believes he would beat Orchard if a nomination vote were held today.

He says he's disappointed with how things have turned out, but acknowledges his people heard months ago that Liberal Leader Stephane Dion might appoint a woman to represent the Liberals in the North.

LINK

Correction

Well I'm obviously not as pleased with the situation in Northern Saskatchewan as I was. I think I was just being hopeful. Talk about a lot of bad decisions being made by a lot of people. Amazingly enough the byelection is so far away there's still a possibility things could get straightened out. Or it could get subsumed into a general election. Doubt it though. When you're dealing with accusations of racism, people claiming they have a right to nominate their own candidate, and David Orchard it seems unlikely.

Longing for the days of Jean Chretien...

Ownage All Around

Hillary owns the pollsters, every pundit around, Obama, and me. Experienced bureaucrat totally owns Gary Lunn. Joy Smith, oddly enough, owns Vic Toews.

That's My Boy!

Barack has won the all too important Iowa caucus. That's great news. I don't think it's over for Hillary but I still feel for her. Sometimes no matter how deserving a person is, the right situation just doesn't materialize.

Also pleased to see that Joan Beatty has joined the Liberals in Northern Saskatchewan. It's obviously a tough situation but when you are able to take one of the most popular provincial dippers and put them on your team it would be hard to resist. This should make it very tough for the Conservatives to win this seat especially if David Orchard can put the party and his leader first. We'll see.

Tip For David Orchard

I'm overstepping here, as I don't know much about Saskatchewan politics or David Orchard. But I'm going to say it anyways. If Joan Beatty really wants to run, and David Orchard really wants to become a fixture and not a distraction within the Liberal Party in Saskatchewan he should step aside and throw his full support behind Beatty in Northern Saskatchewan.

As I understand it there is another candidate in the running for the nomination so this could make what I wrote above totally irrelevant.

Story

Make No Mistake About Harper Foreign Policy

In March of this year a world poll indicated that of all the leading countries in the world Canada is viewed most positively. This is one poll in a long line of polls indicating how well Canada is perceived globally. You wouldn't be stupid to assume that this is a great thing, and an endorsement of the way successive governments have run the country at home and abroad. But make no mistake, our current government does not think this is a good thing. Harper Conservatives believe this is an indication of weakness, and somehow a lack of principles. There is no other way to explain the Harper Government's complete break from Canada's foreign policy conventions. Whether it's becoming a block to multilateral action, ending support for the human rights of Canadians, or consistently repeating that their way of foreign policy is a positive break from past policy.

This may seem like one of my post partisan posts ever, but it's pretty much how I feel.

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Also what's with the NDP moving to the right these days? Supporting a pretty useless bill on veiled voters? Or how about this article that went by pretty much unnoticed by everyone. Obviously looking to grasp any publicity of his own in the story of Kevin Rudd's Labour Party in Australia. Jack Layton says he's encouraged by Rudd's success and plans to model his next campaign on Rudd's. Of course it might upset your average Dipper to understand that the Labour Party of Australia is actually probably even further to the right than the Liberal Party of Canada. Kevin Rudd himself is somewhat of a social conservative, opposing gay marriage, and despite media claims otherwise, Rudd's position on the environment is not far from that of the Harper government. I wonder how your average NDP voter would feel if they realized that the leadership of their party dislikes centrist Liberals more than Conservatives, all the while acting more like centrists than at any other time in their recent history.

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And I guess I was right about Van Loan's bizarre logic, and I'm pleased PVL's had to pay a price for it. The story still doesn't seem to quite dead yet.

Harper in Kampala

I don't understand what was going on in Kampala, I really don't. Maybe Harper's right, or maybe he's just not very interested in cutting emissions. But I do know that if he's using the excuse that "developing countries or the United States aren't willing to cut emissions so neither should we," it's very disappointing. I certainly don't understand how altering this communiqué will help get the U.S. and China on board. It's also very distressing that some 50 world leaders go back to their countries today with less incentive and obligation to reduce emissions. I really hope the Harper Government can move heaven and earth at the Bali Conference, but I doubt they can, and I'm not sure they want to.

I wish the media could cover this story better. I also hope that if Canada is really being a roadblock to global emissions cuts then other countries will stop with their diplomatic niceties, and get vocal about it.

PVL Logic?

Does this make any sense?

The federal government sent Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty a scathing letter Tuesday in defence of its plan to add 22 seats to the House of Commons.

...

In one final dig at the premier, Van Loan accuses McGuinty of moving away from representation by population in his own province.

He says McGuinty's decision in 2005 to add just four ridings in Southern Ontario while keeping the same number in the sparsely populated north shortchanged many voters.

He says McGuinty's democratic reform bill left the average size of a Northern Ontario riding at 76,256 votes - 44 per cent fewer than the Southern Ontario average of 110,123.

Doesn't make much sense to me. I would think that adding seats to Southern Ontario where there are more voters to riding than in Northern Ontario would increase parity. Either I'm not getting it, Peter Van Loan is using some bizarre partisan logic, or the Canadian Press article is wrong. All that being said I hope for the Liberals sake that the Harper Government gets in a fight with Dalton McGuinty.

More detailed article here. It's not clear what Van Loan meant, but it's probably more a case of Canadian Press having too much trouble explaining the situation in one article.

Mulroney Now Tangling with Harper?

Top news tonight is that Brian Mulroney is now calling for a full independent inquiry into his dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber and Air Bus. This is far and away more than Stephen Harper has said he was willing to do.

So... opening to the opposition? "Why won't the Prime Minister at least go as far as Mr.Mulroney and start a full judicial inquiry?"

That, or Mulroney's setting up Stephen Harper to do just that, call a judicial inquiry, albeit in an unorthodox way. I seem to think that Brian Mulroney is just going over Harper's head protecting his own arse, notwithstanding the impacts on Stephen Harper. Even purposefully hurting Harper.

Nonetheless this all seems like bad news for Stephen Harper. He's now stuck doing everything he and his party isn't very good at. Admitting mistakes and backtracking, maybe now even double backtracking. He's also going to have to do a lot of improvisation. And we've seen how well that's gone in the past with Afghan torture allegations. Harper's agenda is totally thrown out the window for now if anything.

Oh, and if you're wondering the effect on the polls? Well that's still unclear. Last week there was a poll showing the Conservatives led by 14 points, now Strategic Counsel says the Liberals and Conservatives are tied at 32 with the Liberals leading the Conservatives in Ontario by 18 points (perphaps capitalizing on Harper's writing off of Toronto). That same poll also had the Greens actually ahead of the NDP. At the same time Dion's leadership numbers are still bad. Can't help but think this mess with Mulroney will help Dion and the Liberals though.

What Goes Around Comes Around

I know most Conservative supporters won't be able to resist their most basic human emotion to decry the "Liberal/liberal/socialist/anti-Conservative media" that this headline they'll claim demonstrates. Of course it won't matter to them that it came from the Toronto Star, Canada's most prominent, and perhaps only, progressive newspaper. Or that politicians of other stripes get similar treatment by other media outlets.

But does anyone really think that after booting city friendly candidate Mark Warner for no reason, calling for Dalton McGuinty to be ousted in favour of John Tory, and generally having no platform for city issues like environment, poverty and immigration that city newspapers would put up with it forever?

Of course the article headline is not accurate, and would have made more sense saying Harper writes off cities, Toronto, or something like that. I don't think I'd even use something like that as a blog headline.

But of course Harper, the principled evangelical knows a thing or two about accuracy, claiming yesterday that Stéphane Dion has opposed every tax cut that he has ever proposed...

Oh, and I'm surprised how quickly Stephen Harper left Brian Mulroney out to dry. We'll have to see what kind of independent inquiry he's actually proposing. And this looks like good stuff, bring that message to all the cities.

Bernier Contradicts New Death Penalty Position

Le ministre des Affaires étrangères assure que le Canada n'a pas de nouvelle politique pour ne plus intervenir lorsqu'un Canadien va être exécuté aux États-Unis.

Le ministre Maxime Bernier contredit ainsi le premier ministre Stephen Harper et tous ses collègues conservateurs qui se sont exprimés sur le sujet.

...

Intercepté à sa sortie du parlement par des journalistes, vendredi après-midi, le ministre Bernier a maintenu que le Canada n'a pas de nouvelle politique en cette matière.

LINK

Backtrack? Off-message? Who knows?

Canada's Back... to 1962!

The Canadian Government will no longer protest the death penalty for Canadians in countries it considers are democratic that support the rule of law.

Hmmm, I wonder what kind of confusion those qualifiers present.

I doubt the maneuver has much impact in reality but it has deep symbolic meaning. Canada now condones the death penalty.

Canada has always dealt with violence differently than the United States and it's a source of pride for many Canadians, and an important aspect of what makes many of us Canadian. The Harper Government obviously doesn't agree.

Canada's back!