Monthly Archive: May 2006

The story of Joe Volpe playing some sort of inverted Santa Claus and accepting gifts from children is interesting:

The national Liberal Party said yesterday it has no reason to investigate donations to leadership candidate Joe Volpe from current and former executives of a generic drug firm and their relatives, but some Liberal MPs said they have qualms about accepting money from minors.

Mr. Volpe has received donations of $5,400 each from five current and former executives of Apotex Inc. and 15 of their relatives, including some who are under 18.

But the real interesting thing here is not that Volpe and his supporters are playing fast and loose with the rules. It's about who is giving the money:

Apotex chairman Barry Sherman, his wife Honey, and four of his children each donated $5,400, as did Apotex president Jack Kay, his wife Patricia, and two of his children.

A former vice-president of Apotex, Allen Shechtman, his wife Mary, and three of his children, also donated $5,400. Mr. Shechtman told The Globe on Monday that not all of the donors are adults, but did not specify their ages. He did not return a telephone call yesterday.

Bernard "Barry" Sherman of Apotex is a well known name. Apotex is a maker of generic drugs, and as such, is involved in intense lobbying. "Intense" is definitely a word used to describe Barry Sherman:

Sherman's tactics have made him infamous in the industry. Everyone has a Barry Sherman story. His associates praise his brilliance and integrity. His detractors say he has a chip on his shoulder, that he's paranoid, bombastic, opportunistic. Paul Lucas, president of Glaxo Wellcome Inc., the Canadian arm of Glaxo Wellcome PLC, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, calls Sherman's conspiracy theories "ludicrous." Apotex and Novopharm together control the Canadian generic market in what amounts to an oligopoly, Lucas argues. Even Dan [Leslie Dan, the chairman of the generic goliath Novopharm Ltd], who juggles his personal dislike for Sherman with the interests they share as independent generic manufacturers, says Sherman's litigious, bulldog approach has not been constructive for the sector.

Physician and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Morton Shulman, who has tussled with Apotex several times over the years, has called Sherman "the only person I have ever met with no redeeming features whatsoever."

Nice company Volpe keeps. To be fair, Sherman has some choice words for his competitors too, and as a generic drug manufacturer, his products, which can sell for nearly 20% less than the brand name drugs, have saved the health care system millions.

But then, profitability is what drives the big multi-nationals to find new drugs.

Still, Sherman is more than just a guy looking to make more affordable drugs. He pushes the envelope and gets in trouble for it. Remember that fellow Shechtman who also gave money to Volpe (along with his wife and his three kids, not all of whom were adults)? Shechtman was described as a former VP of Apotex. So two families are donating to Volpe?

Turns out it is the same family, and that Shechtman and Sherman are as close as only two guys who have had run-ins with the FBI can be:

There was also that small clash with the FBI and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over a mail-order scheme Sherman engaged in with his brother-in-law, Allen Shechtman. It involved a Bahamas-based company called Medicine Club International Inc., which mailed Apotex-manufactured generic drugs, including generic Prozac and Deprenyl, from Canada to 500,000 households in the United States without prescription. The FBI was allegedly tipped off by U.S. drug manufacturers, no fans of Sherman.

In 1995, Medicine Club pleaded guilty to one count of illegal interstate commerce and was fined $500,000 (U.S.) for selling drugs without approval. It was also forced to pay $339,000 for investigative costs.

So Shechtman and Sherman are brothers-in-law and partners in crime. Eleven members of this extended family has signed cheques to Volpe for $5,400 each.

For a guy who is so hyper-sensitive to jokes relating the Liberals to organized crime, Joe Volpe really doesn't make an effort to avoid the whole "crime family" thing.

But back to the issue of generic drugs and patent protection. Do you think Joe Volpe is going to promote a particular position when it comes to generic drugs?

Bill C-91 was passed by the Mulroney Conservatives in 1993, and it extended patent protection for name brand drugs to twenty years. In part, it was done as a realignment of Canadian laws to meet NAFTA obligations. The Liberals opposed the legislation intensely. True to form, though, when they formed the government in 1993, the Liberals became strong supporters of C-91. This was because the name brand manufacturers are headquartered in Quebec, and any law that guaranteed their profitability was a sure vote-getter in Quebec.

Principles be dammed when votes are to be had, right?

C-91 required that the effect of the new law be reviewed in 1997. By then the Liberals were in power, and so had an opportunity to kill the bill and make it easier for Canadian generic drug manufacturers to make their knock-offs.

The review in 1997 was conducted by David Dingwall, then the Minister of Health, and the end result is that C-91 is still the law of the land today.

Of course, we all remember David Dingwall for getting in trouble in 2005 for accepting $350,000 in continency fees as a lobbyist from Bioniche. Bioniche is, as it turns out, a pharmaceutical company with original discoveries to protect, including drug discoveries.

I'm not passing judgment on C-91. But the money involved in the realm of pharmaceutical patents is huge, and it looks like the players are shopping for potential ministers and prime ministers that can be counted upon to push their side of the debate. And these people are not satisfied with the ethical or financial strengths of their positions -- the stakes are too great. They are willing to throw lots of money around to make sure the right people are convinced the the righteousness of their position.

Liberal David Dingwall was a friend of the name-brand manufacturers, and was caught pulling a $350,000 cookie out of the cookie jar.

Today it looks like the generic drug manufacturers have found another Liberal, leadership candidate Joe Volpe, willing to argue the other side.

Seems like there are no right answers, or even principled positions, when it comes to the Liberal Party. On any issue, you are likely to find a senior member of the party who will take up your cause -- for consideration, of course. And when you don't have principles, accepting money from children is easy.

Warren Kinsella has been consistent and vociferous in his position that the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal was a waste. The RCMP could have handled the file and should have handled it, he maintains.

Of course, Kinsella's criticisms are not just about the RCMP being frozen out, but also about Justice Gomery's qualifications and his impartiality, or lack thereof.

But putting aside the particulars about Gomery, it looks like somebody other than the RCMP should have been given the task of investigating the Liberals after all:

The retired civilian watchdog over the RCMP says the Martin government "didn't want any waves" and tried to "shut her up" by offering to continue her salary if she stepped down early.

Shirley Heafey, the lawyer who chaired the RCMP Public Complaints Commission for eight years until last October, said she had a "dreadful" time due to what she called "direct interference" by the Martin government with her independent role.

The interference included being audited "to death" -- a clear misuse of the office of the auditor as a tool for punishing an independent watchdog. That's two strikes against the Martin government, if these allegations are true.

Too bad Anne McLellan lost her seat. She certainly has some explaining to do:

Ms. Heafey singled out what she saw as a lack of co-operation and support by then-deputy prime minister Anne McLellan, who as minister of public safety was responsible for the RCMP.

"She was very, very supportive of the RCMP and she didn't want any waves while the government was in a minority position, and I made waves whenever I had to," commented Ms. Heafey, who during her tenure criticized the RCMP for car chases that injured innocent bystanders and warned of looming disaster if Parliament fails to implement civilian oversight of the Mounties' burgeoning role in national security.

Interestingly, McLellan still has a spokesperson:

[Hilary] Geller, a spokeswoman for Ms. McLellan [and her former chief of staff], denied all of Ms. Heafey's allegations.

"Neither McLellan, myself or anybody in our office tried in any way to tell Shirley what she should or shouldn't do. And I think for her to speculate that Treasury Board audits were somehow Anne McLellan trying to interfere is simply baseless speculation. That's absolutely 100 per cent false."

Ms. Geller stated there was "absolutely not" any desire or attempt by Ms. McLellan or anyone else in the government to avert a public hearing into Kingsclear.

Much of the pressure was applied concerning a probe into a cover up of sexual abuse by an RCMP staff sergeant at the now-defunct Kingsclear youth training centre in New Brunswick.

But imagine if the RCMP had the Sponsorship file. How would that have played out? Would the RCMP have been as diligent in investigating a government that had been so supportive in helping the RCMP cover up their problems?

Indeed, if the RCMP was so tight with Martin, maybe the outcome of their investigation would have focused even more blame on Jean Chretien. As a way of currying favour, perhaps, or paying back a debt. Bears thinking about, especially by those who think Justice Gomery had it in for Jean Chretien.

This also casts the Ralph Goodale announcement in a new light. Recall that right in the middle of the election, a bombshell exploded in the Liberal campaign when the RCMP announced they were conducting a criminal investigation into whether Finance Minister Ralph Goodale or his office had been responsible for leaking the income trust taxation decision ahead of the announcement, allowing key investors to make a tidy profit.

Many people wondered why the RCMP had pulled the pin on that grenade instead of waiting three weeks until after the election. In retrospect, most agree that the Liberals never recovered from that announcement.

Could it be that the RCMP had come to the conclusion that they were too closely tied to a dying Martin government? Could it be that the RCMP decided that unless they made a bold move to separate themselves from the Liberal Party and the Paul Martin government in particular, they ran the risk of being pulled down with them, even if the Liberals limped into a victory in that election? Did the RCMP decide that they needed to make a gesture to the Conservatives in case Stephen Harper won, and the Goodale announcement was the ideal gesture to make?

Ironically, that gesture might have guaranteed a loss for the Liberals. In any case, if Heafey's allegations are true, then there needs to be a serious shake up at the top of the RCMP organization, and that's just a start.

Every once in a while you encounter a story that lets you compare, side by side, the coverage Canadians get from these two major dailies.

Canadian troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, in part to prevent the return of the Taliban, a minority who would impose their faith, in particular, an uncompromising brand of Islam, on an unwilling population.

Should it come as a surprise that the same fight is being fought at home?

By defiantly ending speeches with the words, "God bless Canada," [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] affirmed the sentiment expressed in our national anthem and on our coinage, and subtly but unmistakably held up a prominent middle finger to those who are trying to what might be called "atheize" the country.

They complained.

In one poll, 65% of Canadians told him to keep on doing it.

There is a battle being fought in this country against a minority who would impose their faith, in particular, an uncompromising brand of atheism, on an unwilling population.

Canadians generally are not uncomfortable about religious faith. Not deep down. But several decades of imposed atheism supported by the State (often under the guise of multiculturalism) has allowed a minority -- primarily liberal arts academia and their offspring, the media -- to cast Canada as a place where expressions of faith, especially Christian faith, is as welcome as public vomiting.

Here's an example of what they think of "God bless Canada!":

I hadn't realized until recently that Stephen Harper was using "God Bless Canada!" as a tagline for his speeches. Some may think this a harmless, or even beneficent, expression for a politician to use, but for those with knowledge of history, nothing could be a more frightening.

<snipped out all the requisite George W Bush comparisons>

Religion does not belong in public life, and Stephen Harper's efforts to drag it in says a great deal about him to those choosing to listen. This principle is as much a defense of freedom of religion as anything else: millions of Christians have been slain by other Christians over subtle differences of belief.

Religion in politics violates Canadians' traditional political civility. While God may be understood as a translation for Allah or Jehovah, the name is completely unsuitable for those embracing Buddhism or Hinduism or Humanism or no religion at all. This usage opens wounds where none need exist.

[emphasis added]

Got that? Religion is not to be seen, because it is the antithesis of civil behaviour. Note also that one problem is that Buddhists and Hindus would be offended. But then their offense would be a religious expression in of itself, would it not? Isn't being offended by someone's religious expression also a form of religious expression?

Well, Stephen Harper is one person who understands the absurdity of that position. And he won't kowtow to the absurd, no matter how many layers of postmodern bafflegab it gets wrapped up in.

But what is most interesting is that he has allies. A majority of the population who understand that suppressing religious expression is suppressing free speech. Indeed, it is probably the most precious form of free speech we enjoy -- the freedom to perceive the universe and our place in it as we see fit, and to not be embarrassed or persecuted for having and sharing that perception.

Will the forces of militant atheism ever understand that? Not likely, given that they'll never be able to separate the notion of free speech that I'm talking about from their visceral hatred of all things conservative:

"God Bless Canada" is a symbol of the coming realignment with US values. And it doesn't matter if a majority disagree with this shift. In the US, 30 per cent of the population are hard core believers who vote in large numbers and with the Republicans. No other group is so numerous and so united. While in Canada, this group is much smaller, they are getting a historic opportunity to govern as the Liberals and NDP split the shrinking center-left vote.

However, the new Conservatives aren't Tories, but smooth-talking serpents who have slithered out from underneath Prairie rocks to claim their new found dominion. Their wave has been a long time in coming, so we are finally seeing their breakthrough in this election with the United Right swamping the dying Liberal Party.

Ironically, the "smooth-talking serpent" analogy is one of the most ancient and powerful Judeo-Christian images of evil we have. I wonder of "ceti" realizes that he just offended a bunch of Buddhists and Hindus whose culture does not include the story of Genesis. Indeed the Hindus celebrate the Naga Panchami, the festival of snakes. The snake is seen as a symbol of immortality, not of duplicity and temptation.

No matter. The battle is being fought for freedom for Christians and Hindus both, and all people of faith, and it appears that the tide is turning. I expect the counterattacks to be vicious, even violent.

From CTV:

Imagine an invisibility cloak that works just like the one Harry Potter inherited from his father.

Researchers in England and the United States think they know how to do that. They are laying out the blueprint and calling for help in developing the exotic materials needed to build a cloak.

The keys are special manmade materials, unlike any in nature or the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. These materials are intended to steer light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation around an object, rendering it as invisible as something tucked into a hole in space.

I'll try to get some time to read the paper later, but for now, consider the fundamental problem with invisibility. Any system that makes you invisible immediately renders you blind. To see, light has to be absorbed by your retina. That's why the pupils of your eyes are black -- no light is coming back out. But in order to be invisible, light would either pass through you or around you, but either way, the retina would be cheated of the light it needs to function. If you arranged for the eyes to be exempt, you could see, but then everyone around you would see your eyes too, since they would be absorbing and reflecting light in the regular fashion.

A practical invisibility suit might include some sort of radar scanner or sonar that creates an image for the wearer of his surroundings using non-visible radiation or sound, respectively. Of course, you'd still be blind inasmuch as visible light was concerned, but once you were trained up on how to use the radar or sonar display, you might be able to move around, after a fashion.

But then strapping a radar system to a person, transmitter and receiver and power system and computers and displays, and then making the person and his radar invisible, is hardly something that would impress Professor McGonagall. Typical muggle nonsense, she would say.

A politician is judged by the electorate.

Seems like a simple enough concept, doesn't it? You make promises, you try to implement them, you show the results, the voters decide.

Short of committing a criminal act, that is the only judgment a politician need submit to.

So what good is an Ethics Commissioner? He is not a judge, at least not in the sense of handing out punishments. His role is to ensure that elected officials and their staff understand the rules for ethical behaviour (a concept that focuses almost entirely on private financial interests versus the public trust, according to the code), most importantly where conflicts of interest arise. It's a bit sad that we have to have someone explain those concepts, but an argument can be made that having one person provide a consistent interpretation (as long as it is a good one) is better than hundreds of different interpretations.

But even if someone is caught in a conflict of interest, the Commissioner can only recommend appropriate "sanctions", which aren't defined. Presumably such sanctions would be limited to requiring an MP to divest himself of a certain financial interest found to be causing a conflict of interest.

Even the implementation of those recommended sanctions is left up to the government, where a political decision is made concerning those sanctions.

But some people don't get it. They think the Ethics Commissioner is some sort of watchdog whose job it is to compel politicians to implement a particular policy or piece of legislation:

The lobby group Democracy Watch has launched a formal complaint with the federal Ethics Commissioner accusing the Conservative government of breaking election promises.

The same letter of complaint also repeats Democracy Watch's call for ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro to resign for failing to vigorously enforce ethics rules.

Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch said Thursday that Bill C-2 - the federal Accountability Act - breaks or omits 13 specific promises made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the run-up to the Jan. 23 vote.

Breaking a promise is not an ethical lapse in the sense defined in the code. It is an ethical problem if the promise was broken because of a financial conflict that had not been disclosed. But it's the financial conflict, and not the promise, that is the concern of the Ethics Commissioner.

How to keep promises, in what order, and which to forgo altogether, are political decisions. Sometimes they are made for reasons of crass political expediency, and sometimes for very obvious pragmatic reasons. Sometimes it becomes clear that the promise was just dumb. Sometimes the promise is kept, but had to be modified in some manner, and people mistakenly think that the promise was not kept.

At the end of the day, though, these are issues of politics, not ethics, at least not in the sense defined by the code. The judgment lies with the voters, not with the Ethics Commissioner. Duff Conacher is way off base by trying to pull the Ethics Commissioner into this.

Oh, and by the way, he is also wasting his time. The Ethics Commissioner only responds to complaints from MPs, not from the public (see 72.08 of the enabling statute). I think Conacher knows this. I think he knows his "complaint" will go into the shredder. I think, though, he is doing this to get press attention. The funny thing is, he has a venue in which to make his concerns known. After second reading, the committee reviewing the bill will accept submissions from the public on how to improve the bill. It's part of how our democracy works. If he knows that his complaint is a waste of time, then Conacher is being a lot more cynical and a fair bit more duplicitous than I would have thought a member of Democracy Watch ought to be.

A final thought. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the scope of the Ethics Commissioner's mandate included evaluating proposed legislation and making decisions concerning how well that legislation conformed to prior statements made outside of the House of Commons (which statements? how far back in time? by whom? -- leave the practicalities out of this for the moment) that have been deemed to be "promises". Let's say also that the Ethics Commissioner could impose sanctions on legislators who have proposed legislation determined to be flawed by the Commissioner in order to prod for changes in the legislation. And let's also say that this one-man unelected pseudo-legislative-branch called the Ethics Commissioner could be set on the track of bad legislation not by an elected member of parliament but by a private citizen, elected by no one, representing only himself when he complains that he doesn't like the proposed bill. Doesn't that sound like something that undermines democracy? Doesn't that sound a process Democracy Watch would be very concerned about?

Madonna manages to keep in the news, which is quite the accomplishment for a popstar of her age.

You'd think that after the David Emerson thing, the Conservatives would have learned.

But no.

Here they are, treating another MP who is not a member of the caucus with respect, offering him a role with responsibility, being inclusive instead of exclusive.

It's that sort of dirty and underhanded political scheming that prompted David Emerson to bolt from his proper place among the Liberals, paragons of political virtue that they are.

This time, it is independent Quebec MP Andre Arthur in the sights:

Rookie Quebec Independent MP Andre Arthur, a former shock radio jock, is not ruling out the possibility of joining the federal Conservatives in this Parliament.

A controversial former radio personality whom the governing Tories put on the Commons Industry, Science and Technology Committee recently, Mr. Arthur said that he has not been approached by anyone from the Conservative Party, either formally or informally, to join their party.

"The only thing that I've been approached with is an extraordinary treatment. They gave an Independent a seat on a major Parliamentary Committee--Industry, Science and Technology and that is something that I have to measure, in terms of respect and seduction," he said.

"I think it was Jay Hill [who said in answering a reporter's question] that do you expect Arthur to vote with you all the time and he answered, 'Not all the time but once in a while would be fun.' It's quite evident that for me, this is a hand that's stretched in my direction, I shook it, I appreciate what they did."

That "hand" hides a sinister motive:

[Chief Government Whip Jay Hill ] added that the unusual step of putting Mr. Arthur on the Commons Industry committee has nothing to do with the possibility of enticing him to join the Conservative caucus. Rather, he said that the Prime Minister wants to empower each and every MP so that he or she could play a productive and constructive role in the Parliament.

It's enough to make my blood boil! How are we to have true electoral reform in this country with all these empowered and respected MPs gumming up the works, not doing as they are told by party leaders and spin doctors. Bev Dejarlais, the NDP MP for Churchill, was severely punished by Jack Layton for voting her conscience and according to the wishes of her constituents. No longer an MP, she now works for the Conservatives. Keep this up, and we'll have MPs from all three opposition parties wondering if they might not be happier working for an organization that values their thoughts, and not just their votes.

Imagine how much trouble the Conservatives will be in if that happens.

Ex-president Jimmy Carter seems to live in some sort of parallel universe:

Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life.

Of course, we know that the problem is that providing funding for the Palestinians while Hamas holds the reins of power means vast sums of money are likely to end up in Hamas coffers to be used to by weapons with which to kill Israelis. This is not just a suspicion -- Yasser Arafat enriched himself to the tune of hundreds of millions, maybe more, in the same way. In any case, Hamas has not renounced violence or otherwise indicated a willingness to behave in the manner of a responsible sovereign power, and so the money will not flow.

But we can agree to disagree on what Hamas might or might not do. What we can't disagree on are the facts:

t is almost a miracle that the Palestinians have been able to orchestrate three elections during the past 10 years, all of which have been honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with the results accepted by winners and losers. Among the 62 elections that have been monitored by us at the Carter Center, these are among the best in portraying the will of the people.

Among the best elections monitored? The results accepted by the winners and losers? Really?

A Gaza security chief loyal to moderate president Mahmoud Abbas was killed when his car blew up Wednesday, the second attack on security commanders in the volatile area in less than a week.

It was not immediately clear who planted the bomb. The attack came during an increasingly bloody power struggle between the Hamas government and Mr. Abbas.

The security chief killed Wednesday was identified as Nabil Hodhod, head of the elite Preventive Security Service in central Gaza. The security branch has been spearheading the confrontation against the Hamas militia.

In Gaza, Hamas blamed Mr. Abbas' rival Fatah group for the kidnapping and shooting of its militants near the southern town of Khan Younis. Hamas activists said the kidnappers served in the Preventive Security Service.

Armed clashes between Hamas and Fatah intensified last week after the Hamas government deployed its own 3,000-member force of militants to the streets.

The three Hamas militants emerged from morning prayers at a mosque near the town of Khan Younis. A car with masked gunmen pulled up, bundled them into the vehicle and sped off, Hamas officials said.

About 15 minutes later, the three Hamas men were found lying in the street near a gas station. Two had been shot in the legs and the third in the abdomen and leg. Hamas officials said the man with the stomach and leg injuries died at a nearby hospital.

Fatah declined to comment on the incident.

I wonder just how violent things have to be before the observers from the Carter Center decide that these people are not really in an accepting mood, and that maybe these Palestinian elections have not really been all that successful.

In one of the biggest scandals to hit our oh-so-untouchable health-care system, Ontario and federal taxpayers lost millions funding a nursing home that was run by serial fraud artists.

The bankruptcy of the Royal Crest Lifecare chain and the horror stories of life in these publicly-funded tortue chambers prompted a forensic audit. I've been told that the audit has been completed. However, it has yet to see the light of day.

Why? Maybe because the health-care bureaucracy in this country is terrified of having their inept performance revealed for all to see.

Update: small dead animals asks the same question -- where is the audit?

A massive opportunity for bloggers in Canada:

The parliamentary press gallery launched its latest salvo Tuesday in an ongoing cold war with the Harper government over media access and procedures for reporting on federal politics.

Prior to the start of a news conference in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada would contribute $40 million in humanitarian and military assistance to the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, members of the press gallery simultaneously got up and left, moments before the prime minister arrived in the room, in an act of defiance against new news conference rules imposed against the media.

So the old media doesn't want to cover Stephen Harper under these new rules? Fine. Start shooting some press releases and doing online Q&A sessions with us bloggers. Might not be as engaging as video for the evening news, but if it keeps Canadians informed, why not? It gives the government a means of getting its message out, and subjects the government to questions from people with a fresh perspective. A no one thinks bloggers are uniformly left-wing the way the old media is perceived (not entirely fairly, by the way).

Ben Stein is an icon in American conservatism. But most people know him from his work in entertainment where his monotone delivery is guaranteed to evoke a laugh.

Interestingly, it's where the two aspects of Stein intersect that gives me the giggles.

Stein is also the spokesman for Clear Eyes, a brand of eye drop to relieve bloodshot eyes. A pciture of Stein appears at the top of the Clear Eyes web site. In a new commercial that has just started airing, Stein is shown wearing a beret and neck scarf while extolling the virtues of the eye drops. Behind him on the wall is a drawing of a bloodshot eye. He turns and throws a bucket of water onto the drawing, and the red lines are washed away.

His getup and the water gag evoke for me the image of Jackson Pollack, also known as Jack the Dripper. Jackson was a famous American artist from the 40s and 50s who is best known for dripping and splashing paint on a canvas and calling it art. Maybe it was art -- I admit to being somewhat art-blind.

What is less well known is that Pollack was a radical and a communist during the 30s.

What is even less well known is his membership in the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist advocacy group that formed in 1950 as a response to the urging of many leftists and pacifists to make peace with Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union. The ACCF was hardly a nest of right-wing Republicans -- politically, their only disagreement with the pro-Stalin group was whether radicalism in art and politics could thrive in a bourgeois democracy, or whether that freedom required embracing communism, specifically Stalin's. In 1967, eleven years after Pollack's death in a drunk-driving accident, it was revealed that the CIA had covertly provided much of the funding for the organization (as well as other non-communist leftist groups), much to the embarrassment of both the CIA (embarrassed that the secret had gotten out) and the artists (embarrassed by their association with the CIA, even it was unintended).

I'm certain Stein knows all this, being one of the smartest guys around. So I wonder if he is having a bit of fun with the radical artistes of today, aping the style and manners of one of the founders of the art-doesn't-require-skill school, amused that radical Pollack is yet again being used by conservatives. Not for politics, but by corporate interests to schlep eye drops.

I'm sure the commercial was developed by an advertising agency, but I'd like to think Stein had a hand in it. If so, maybe Stein is saying something about the long-term influence of people like Pollack and their radical politics and their avant-garde tastes. That is, not much influence at all, as their innate silliness dooms them to become subjects of parody. I'd love to ask him one day.

Let me start off by admitting I have not read The Da Vinci Code, and I probably won't anytime soon. I have less intention of going to see the movie.

I have a strange feeling I've seen it already.

This piece appears in the May 22 print edition of the Western Standard.

There are plenty of rules when it comes to donating to Canadian election campaigns. But what about un-elections? The "Campaign to De-Elect David Emerson" -- a supposedly local effort to force the Vancouver-Kingsway MP to run in a byelection after defecting from the Liberals to the Tories -- has been soliciting donations for lawn signs, buttons and who knows what else. Actually, that no one knows how donations are being spent is just one reason voters might be concerned.

Elections Canada's finance rules are supposed to stop special interest groups from using big spending to promote narrow agendas, by limiting donation sizes and making contributions publicly known -- measures that don't apply to "de-elections." No one knows, in this case, which groups are using money to influence the democratic process, or how.

Industry Minister Emerson has called the agitators "partisan zealots" -- as opposed to any real grassroots movement in the riding. He may be right. When one group hired a plane to fly over Parliament Hill on opening day, trailing a banner reading, "Emerson: Call home!," it published the names of the 250 people who subsidized the stunt (though not their donations). Turns out, there were many special interests involved -- from unionists to anti-war activists to anarchists -- loads of whom don't even live in Emerson's riding. Shouldn't Vancouver-Kingsway residents know which groups are trying to influence their riding's politics -- even in a de-election? Until Elections Canada says so, the best we can do is offer a glimpse of some of the folks who paid for the airplane prank, and the opportunity to bring their own politics to bear on the voters of Vancouver-Kingsway.

- STEVE JANKE

The people for and against the long-gun registry have been tossing allegations back and forth about how effective the registry has been in fighting crime. Often this takes the form of statistics. For: An average of 5,000 queries a day are made by law enforcement agencies. Against: Virtually all the queries are automatically generated by local police computers whenever any kind of information is accessed, including outstanding parking fines.

The problem is that it is hard to really understand how useful the registry is when you look at broad collections of numbers.

So I decided to focus on one particular event, chosen at random, described by the Coalition for Gun Control:

In May 2000, the firearm registry played a pivotal role in uncovering what is alleged to be one of the largest and most sophisticated firearm smuggling rings in North America. Likely destined for the black market, nearly 23,000 firearms and their components were seized.

Wow, 23,000 firearms kept off of Canadian streets! That is impressive.

Well, the truth is more complicated, as it always is.

A tragedy in Sault Ste. Marie, the death of Constable Don Doucet in a traffic accident involving a drunk driver, is being used by one labour union as a springboard for media attention:

The Canadian Union of Public Employees has chosen tomorrow, a day on which MPP David Orazietti and hundreds of other Saultites will mourn the death of Constable Don Doucet, to picket outside Orazietti's office.

Gilles Bouffard of CUPE's Ontario regional office in Scarborough advised SooToday.com this afternoon that CUPE-represented long-term care workers from the Davey Home will hold an information picket starting at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow outside Orazietti's office, protesting recent cutbacks at the home and a lack of adequate provincial funding for long-term care services in Ontario.

So what has the local paper, SooToday, decided to do? Will it provide the union the attention it so desperately wants?

SooToday.com News has informed Bouffard that we will be boycotting tomorrow's event out of respect for Constable Doucet's family, friends and the hundreds of grieving peace officers who are travelling to our community from across North America for tomorrow's funeral mass at the Sault Armoury.

A local resident pointed me towards this story, and tells me people are very upset with the union leadership:

[This] story has certainly made me and many other residents of my community angry.

Members of CUPE are going to be picketing our local MPP's office tommorow because Premiere McGuinty is going to be in town.

What is making people angry is that McGuinty is in town to honor a police officer, Constable Don Doucet, who was killed in the line of duty by a drunk driver.

Here's hoping that anger does not boil over. The only thing that could make this situation worse is a confrontation.

Where leaders lead, others follow:

Canadian troops will spend two extra years fighting to bring democracy and security to Afghanistan’s most perilous corner after Prime Minister Stephen Harper won a tense political showdown over his divided opposition rivals.

A motion to extend the deployment barely passed 149 to 145 Wednesday night. The NDP, Bloc Quebecois and most Liberals, including key leadership candidates such as Stephane Dion, Ken Dryden and Joe Volpe, voted against it.

Other leadership candidates, Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison, voted for the longer commitment in perilous Afghanistan, as did interim Liberal leader Bill Graham.

Former prime minister Paul Martin was absent.

Put aside, for a brief moment, the strategic issues of Canadians holding off the Taliban, and by extension, Al Qaeda (Canada as a target for terrorists, our relationship with the US, etc, etc) and consider the political implications.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in a weak minority situation put forward a motion that is roundly opposed by all three opposition parties on a topic that for many Canadians represents the deepest held misgivings about where post-9/11 Canada is going...and Stephen Harper wins!

The vote is a political victory for Harper, who can characterize the result as an indication of the will of Parliament, while exposing divisions within the Liberal ranks.

Coming out of the House, Harper took a few shots at the opposition.

“I think the truth of the matter is support for the mission is a lot stronger than the vote,” Harper said. “There were a lot of people in there who just wanted to vote against the government. But certain Liberals took a principled position and Canada is much better for it.”

For the Liberals, a split is forming. Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison for the extension. Ken Dryden, Joe Volpe, Stephane Dion, Hedy Fry against. With the Conservatives achieving another parliamentary victory, there will be bitter recriminations lobbed during the Liberal leadership race. The party itself will crack violently along this fault line, and it's anyone guess what will be the end result. Meanwhile, any "Unite-the-Left" push to merge the Liberals and the NDP will be shelved until the Liberals sort this out. The NDP will not easily forgive the Liberal Party for allowing a free vote for the Liberal caucus.

For the Canadian left in general, a panic will start. If Stephen Harper can win this vote, what other votes can he win? Joining the US in developing a ballistic missile defense system? Redefining marriage as a heterosexuals-only institution? Property rights? For the left, there has been an assumption that Stephen Harper would be hobbled in a minority government. Bide their time, and at the next election in a year or so, the left would win again. The Conservatives could do little lasting damage -- lower taxes a modest amount, for example, which would be hard to increase, but most things could be rolled back. Instead, to the horror of the left, who have assumed that though they lost the election they still ruled the country, Stephen Harper is succeeding at far more substantive and transformative changes, and might continue to do so.

For the Conservatives, more headlines tomorrow about another parliamentary win. More comparisons of the accomplishments of Stephen Harper versus the ineffectual run of Paul Martin as prime minister. And the hard work of making sure this new commitment in Afghanistan is a success. But if anyone can make this work, this government can.

From the Toronto Sun, on the release of the auditor general's report on the long-gun registry:

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler denied the Liberals deliberately tried to hide money.

Well, the accusation in the auditor general's is far more specific than just "the Liberals".

Here are some choice quotes from the report itself (my emphasis added):

We examined the progress made in the management of the Canadian Firearms Program since 2002, when we reported that we were unable to complete our audit of the cost of implementing the program. We said the financial information was unreliable and did not fairly present the net costs of the program. We also reported that the Department of Justice was not giving Parliament enough information to allow for effective scrutiny of the program or to explain the dramatic increase in its costs. We made only one recommendation in 2002: The Department of Justice should rectify these gaps in financial reporting.

4.1 In 1995, Parliament passed the Firearms Act and amendments to the Criminal Code to establish the Canadian Firearms Program under the principal responsibility of the Department of Justice Canada.

4.4 In our December 2002 Report, Chapter 10, we examined the costs of implementing the Canadian Firearms Program. We stopped the audit of the program's financial information because the data was unreliable, and we reported that the Department of Justice had not fairly presented the net cost of the program. We also reported that the Department had not provided Parliament with enough information to allow for effective scrutiny of the program or to explain the dramatic increase in its costs.

4.12 In December 2002, the Department of Justice had requested Parliament's approval for Supplementary Estimates to bring the Centre's 2002-03 planned spending to $113.5 million. Parliament at first would not approve the Supplementary Estimates as presented, but in March 2003 it agreed to do so based on the Minister's commitment that the Centre's spending for 2002-03 would not exceed $100.2 million.

4.13 The first accounting error. The Department later reported the Centre's actual spending for 2002-03 at $78.3 million . However, this amount did not include the estimated $39 million in CFIS II development costs incurred that year.

4.14 In our opinion, in leaving the $39 million unrecorded the Department of Justice did not comply with the Treasury Board's Policy on Payables at Year-End (PAYE). This policy states that costs for large system development are to be recorded as expenditures against a departmental appropriation in the year when they are incurred, rather than when they become due and payable under a contract. Furthermore, had the Department of Justice recorded this amount in its 2002-03 expenditures, while its total spending would have remained within its voted appropriation, the Centre's actual spending would have been $117.3 million, $17.1 million over the limit to which the Minister had committed.

The first audit was delivered in December of 2002. Martin Cauchon was Minister of Justice. He would be minister for one more year -- in December 2003 he was tossed out of cabinet as part of the purge of Chretienites when Paul Martin took over the leadership of the Liberal Party. The new minister was responsible for following through on the issues raised by the audit. Martin Cauchon's successor was minister from December 12, 2003 until February 5, 2006, when Conservative Vic Toews took over the ministry.

Just over two years.

And what a busy two years!

That minister promised to parliament in March 2003 that the Centre would not spend more than $100.2 million. That minister later reported to parliament that the spending was actually $78.3 million, and pulled this trick off by shuffling $39 million to the following year.

Of course, you would think that 2004 would now be a problem. But not for this minister.

In January 2004, that minister selectively recorded costs to keep the expenditures below the promised levels. At first, the Treasury Board Secretariat (that arm of Treasury Board responsible for accountability of ethics) required those costs to be reported as part of the Centre's expenditures, but "subsequent consultations" convinced the Secretariat to approve taking $21.8 million off the books altogether, hiding the money in the consolidated Accounts of Canada, instead of in the Centre's budget.

The name of this minister of justice? Irwin Cotler, of course.

So when Irwin Cotler insists that "the Liberals" were not deliberately hiding the money, he really means he was not deliberately hiding the money. What a modest guy.

In a way, Cotler did not hide the money. The extra expenditures were subsequently reported. But only after it was too late to do anything about it.

The subtle difference between that and hiding the money is lost on me. Maybe Irwin Cotler can explain it in detail while sitting in a witness box at a board of inquiry.

The long-gun registry has always been a target of the Conservatives, who apparently are going to try to kill it now, in this minority government:

According to CTV News, the Tories will start taking action to dismantle that registry as early as today.

CTV reported last night that Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day is expected to announce an amnesty for rifle and shotgun owners. That would mean the registry would only apply to handguns and semi-automatic weapons.

CTV also reported the responsibility for the registry will be transferred to the RCMP from the Canada Firearms Centre.

But all three opposition parties, the Liberals (who created this boondoggle), the NDP (which has become essentially an urban-only party, so has little reason to care about rural sensibilities when it comes to rifles and shotguns), and the Bloc Quebecois (which shares similar sensibilities with the NDP when it comes to social issues), are all against dismantling the registry:

But the minority Conservative government can expect a rough ride.

The Conservatives face three opposition parties in Parliament that all support gun control and have said they will oppose moves to scrap it.

The registry has been a financial and managerial nightmare from its inception:

[Auditor General Sheila Fraser's] report today is coming more than three years after she dropped a bombshell audit that detailed a nearly $1 billion cost overrun in the gun control program, and criticized the Liberal government for not bringing the ballooning budget to Parliament's attention.

The Canada Firearms Centre, which administers the program, operates on a budget of roughly $83 million a year. Of that amount, supporters say, just $10 million to $15 million goes to the costs of the long-gun registry, which covers rifles and shotguns.

That report, apparently, is what the Tories will use to win any vote on altering the registry:

Yesterday, Saskatchewan MP Garry Breitkreuz, the Conservatives' critic of the gun control program, said that armed with the second report, the Tories may get enough votes in Parliament to act.

"I hope it will be a wakeup call for the other parties, that this firearms issue is not going away, that it's still a black hole of a money pit," said Breitkreuz (Yorkton-Melville).

Where are these votes going to come from? I don't see any opposition party voting with the Conservatives on this. I might be wrong, but let's assume I'm right. That leaves two possibilities. Despite the phrasing of the report, that the Tories would "get enough votes" to support changes to the registry, in truth it means that the opposition parties, unwilling to risk prompting an election (though I doubt this would be a vote of confidence), would simply arrange for enough members to be absent from the House when the vote comes.

Or the report means what it says -- some Liberal, NDP, or BQ MPs will vote against their party in support of a Conservative motion to alter the gun registry. Liberals, most likely. That is a huge thing. Besides bucking party unity, which is always remarkable, it would have considerable impact on the Liberal leadership race. Any Liberal MPs who vote against the party would then be in a position to argue that a new Liberal Party needs to face up with the policy failures of the past, including the much criticized gun registry. That would throw down the gauntlet for other Liberals, in particular those vying for the leadership, to defend the financial and managerial nightmare left behind by the Liberal Party, or to join in criticizing this foundation stone of Liberal Party policy. It would also draw a line between Liberals continuing to support the Chretien-Martin legacy, and those willing to jettison that legacy.

Is this why the Conservatives are pushing on the registry? One of the five priorities is a new emphasis on law and order. Certainly the gun registry is part of this priority, but given how controversial the registry is, the Conservatives could be forgiven for pulling on other threads in the law and order tapestry until they win a majority government. But it might be that the Conservative strategists have deduced that dealing with gun registry now is likely to result in political dividends as well as policy ones.

In the struggle to oust David Emerson for the crime of representing the people who elected him, the tone has often gotten nasty. People have been arrested after pushing and shoving at sit-ins, for example.

As we all know, Emerson was elected by the people of Vancounver-Kingsway while running for the Liberals. He crossed the floor to join the new Harper cabinet, a move that has been endorsed by the premier of British Columbia and the mayor of Vancouver. Nevertheless, there are many people trying to force a new by-election.

One of those people is Manuel Pereda. He is not a political operator like anti-Emerson activist Kevin Chalmers, but works for a Vancouver renovations company.

Perhaps that explains Pereda's effort to meet Emerson half-way:

Emerson spoke briefly about the tone of his recent meeting with protester Manuel Pereda, which recently broke new ground in establishing a line of communication between the two groups.

"Mr. Pereda and I are in many respects not that far apart," Emerson said. "The issues are really more complex than most people really know about with crossing the floor... If you're going to not let people cross the floor then you are putting more power in the hands of the political party and is that truly a democracy?"

A constructive meeting? An effort to find a way to make those constituents of Vancouver-Kingsway who are angry realize they are still represented in Ottawa?

Then why this curious statement?

Both Manuel Pereda and the De-Elect Emerson Campaign have said that Manuel Pereda acted on his own in meeting with Emerson.

Pereda the traitor? The De-Elect Emerson Campaign is the operation run by Kevin Chalmers, a former Emerson campaign worker and a Liberal Party operator.

Apparently the problem was that Emerson had set a condition on the meeting with Pereda. Since Emerson has stated he is unwilling to resign, he felt any meeting on that topic would be a waste of time. But could there still be a useful discussion without getting into resignations?

Pereda thought so. Kevin Chalmers, on his website, makes it clear that any meeting with Emerson must focus on Emerson's resignation:

Recently, after being forced by the presence of national media to accept a constituent's meeting request, Emerson met with one of the many disenfranchised voters of this riding. Emerson only agreed to do so only on the condition that the voter, Manuel Pereda, vowed to not demand for his resignation.

The Campaign to De-Elect David Emerson finds this price of admission far too high.

And that's why Kevin Chalmers doesn't get a meeting, while Manuel Pereda has actually seen some progress, as reported on Pereda's website:

After the meeting, Mr. Pereda stated that he planned to abandon his demands for Mr. Emerson’s resignation, as the minister’s mind is set and Mr. Pereda prefers to use his energy to begin a broader, non-partisan debate on the electoral system. Mr. Pereda’s stance aims at opening the dialogue with all political parties and citizens groups to encourage the start of electoral reform debates. Mr. Pereda made it clear that his stance represents the view of only some of the Message in the Air supporters and that he will continue to applaud the efforts of other groups demanding a new by-election.

Amusingly, Pereda was also forced to highlight the schism in the anti-Emerson crusade (while at the same time trying to downplay it):

Members of the media have been asked to correct reports that were published stating that Mr.Pereda is still a leader of the Campaign to De-elect David Emerson. Mr. Pereda was one of the initiators of the CDDE but he is no longer directly involved in that campaign. Mr. Pereda still has De-elect Emerson signs outside his home because he supports the idea of keeping the issue alive until electoral reform debates get started. Mr. Pereda now chairs the Message in the Air Society.

One wonders if there were any fireworks at the meeting between Chalmers and Pereda. Did Pereda try to convince the true believers at the CDDE that his way was likely to pay dividends? Did Pereda leave, or was he given the bum's rush out the door?

Why is Kevin Chalmers being so dogmatic? Why won't he participate with Pereda in an effort to reform the electoral system in an organized and measured manner instead of relying on sit-ins and airplane stunts?

As Manuel Pereda said, he is interested in the "broader" debate. Chalmers is only interested in Emerson. For Chalmers, this is personal. When something is personal like that, it is either because that specific person has been seriously hurt (so this is about vengeance) or that specific person stands to gain tremendously by winning (so this is about fame and fortune). My gut tells me Chalmers thinks he has something to gain from taking Emerson down -- the fame and fortune motive. That's why he's not interested in the broader implications of electoral reform, and that's why he has no time for people like Pereda who aren't willing to stay focused on Emerson to the exclusion of all else.

The real question is, though, whether there are other people like Pereda in the CDDE who just want to have the same discussion Pereda had, and so can be pealed away from Chalmers.

The Conservative government in Ottawa has the long-gun registry in its sights. What was supposed to cost a few million has cost over a billion, and for all that, it is not clear what contribution the registry has made in fighting crime (I'm being diplomatic in my wording here). If the registry had cost half the originally predicted amount, defenders would say Canadians were getting a well-managed bargain. Strangely, though, defenders of the registry say the vast cost overruns are also a reason to keep the registry:

[Coalition for Gun Control] president Wendy Cukier said the shotgun and rifle registry currently costs about $10 million a year, while the high costs in the past were incurred to initially screen and license gun owners.

"The ongoing costs are modest. Dismantling the system now, after all the money has been spent, makes no sense," she said in a release. [emphasis added]

Dismantling the system after having spent, and overspent, the money, makes perfect sense. The reason is that money spent is irrelevant, except as an predictor of how poorly the registry is likely to be managed.

Cukier is pushing what is known as the sunk cost fallacy:

Many people have strong misgivings about "wasting" resources. This is called "loss aversion". Many people, for example, would feel obligated to go to the movie despite not really wanting to, because doing otherwise would be wasting the ticket price; they feel they passed the point of no return. This is sometimes called the sunk cost fallacy. Economists would label this behavior "irrational": It is inefficient because it misallocates resources by depending on information that is irrelevant to the decision being made.

In other words, going to the movie you've decided is not worth seeing is a waste of time. You've already wasted the money on the advance ticket. You can't recover that cost, so it should have no bearing on your decisions going forward. Willingly wasting time after you have already wasted the money is foolish -- hence the "irrational" label.

The same goes here. Does the long-gun registry work? Is the money to run it better spent on more policing or hiring more judges? Are the resources being expended wisely?

The notion that the answer to these questions should be somehow weighed aginst the money already spent is, well, irrational. If the registry doesn't work, or is horribly inefficient given the investment, or is fatally hobbled by widespread resistance, then kill it. Its uselessness is not somehow ameliorated because the previous Liberal governments spent a billion dollars or more on it.

Cukier needs to refine her argument. I know that if I was on the fence on the issue of the registry, and someone like Cukier tried to convince me to support the registry using the sunk cost fallacy, that would almost certainly clinch the decision for me against the registry. The sunk cost fallacy, besides being incredibly poor reasoning, is almost a form of blackmail ("You'll be responsible for throwing all that money and effort away. You don't want that, do you?"), and I hate blackmail.

From the National Post:

Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday he didn't know Ontario's Health Minister had a past that included addiction to illegal drugs, but insisted he is proud of George Smitherman's ability to beat the problem and to publicly admit to it.

"I've always been proud of George Smitherman, whether in his capacity as a public representative or in his capacity as a minister of health and I'm even more proud of him today," Mr. McGuinty told reporters after participating in the announcement of a major investment by an auto-parts company.

Don't get me wrong. It's great that George Smitherman was able to beat his addiction. But the Minister of Health has to make some tough choices about how health dollars are spent. How much for cancer? How much for nursing? How much for air ambulances?

How much to deal with drug addiction, and how?

Just three weeks ago, there was this announcement:

The McGuinty government is establishing an external task force to provide advice to the government on how to improve methadone treatment in Ontario, Health and Long-Term Care Minister George Smitherman announced today.

"The positive value of methadone treatment for people with opiate addictions and for society as a whole is enormous. Our government wants to make sure those Ontarians who need this service have access to high quality methadone treatment and that this treatment is provided in a safe and effective way," Smitherman said. "The guidance received from this task force will enable us to move forward with effective strategies for improving methadone treatment."

Isn't it reasonable to demand to know what in a potential minister's recent past could influence his decision-making? A major bout of cancer or an addiction to drugs both seem important to how a particular person will serve as health minister. Smitherman says his addiction spanned five years in the early 1990s, meaning this happened in the last 10 years or so. This is not about smoking a few joints back in university twenty or more years ago. This is about illicit drug use as an adult within the last few years.

Let me be clear. I'm not saying Smitherman is automatically ill-suited for the position of minister because of his former addiction. What I am saying is that the question was never considered by Dalton McGuinty when he offered Smitherman the job because Smitherman did not tell him about the problem.

Did McGuinty ask? I doubt it.

My problem is that McGuinty is proud of Smitherman. Of course, on a personal level, he can be proud of Smitherman. But McGuinty is the premier. He has a huge responsibility to all Ontarians. And he has just been blindsided by his health minister.

What McGuinty should have said is this:

As a close personal friend of George Smitherman, I am proud of the way he has overcome his past addiction. But as premier, I have a special responsibility to the people of this province. The Ministry of Health has the responsibility in dealing with drug addiction as a public health issue. How he discharges tha responsibility has serious repercussions in health and crime. As such, I feel that a full disclosure to me about George's past with drugs was necessary when I offered him the position of Minister of Health. As a result, I have asked the minister to step aside from his duties for the next four weeks while a full accounting of the details is made. Those details will remain private. I am fully confident that I will conclude that George is by far the best Minister of Health this province has ever had and that he will return to cabinet.

I'm not saying I agree with all that, but it's the sort of thing a premier would say in an attempt to stave off scandal. The point is, the premier was lied to by one of his cabinet ministers, a lie that potentially could have prevented him from becoming the minister in the first place. Whether it would have ultimately mattered is not relevant -- it was the lie that matters.

George Smitherman should not have made the decision that a recent serious and long-term drug addiction was not relevant to his ability to discharge his duties as Minister of Health. That was Dalton McGuinty's call.

On the other hand, I am not shocked that Smitherman did not tell McGuinty the truth when McGuinty was building his cabinet. It's only human to avoid mentioning bad things, especially if not directly asked. I'm assuming McGuinty did not ask his potential ministers, "Have you ever been addicted to drugs?" Still, he could have asked Smitherman whether there was ever a major health condition requiring treatment in Ontario in his past that would colour his perception on health issues.

What is disturbing, therefore, is not Smitherman's past addiction, or Smitherman's lack of disclosure, but rather McGuinty's vapid response. McGuinty is sending out a dangerous message: When you work for me, a lie is not a firing offence.

You can't help but pity Canada's far left. They seem to have a real problem with traction.

Consider the opening post to this thread:

Hello, all: this is my first post, good to be here with you all.

Here is my quandry: Something that I have been wondering since Stephen Harper first appeared: is he wealthy? Comfortable? Middle-class? One has to assume that, as a defender of private privelege and power, he must be well-off and have investments (proabably in energy and security?) in order to justify his Machiavellian devotion to The Rich. Or is it just pure power?

Has anyone ever heard of what he is worth? I know he was a lobbyist for the NCC, but I cannot find anywhere a report of how much he's worth. It would be a lot easier for me to criticize Harper if I knew whether he is simply rich or not. [emphasis added]

Thanks!

Now what difference would it make if Stephen Harper was successful in private life? Arguably, wouldn't you rather be led by a man who knows how to save a penny and make smart choices?

But for some people, success, especially financial success, is a red flag. It shows you're not of the people. It suggests this "bduffy" is planning some personal attacks on Harper the person, in addition to Harper the policies.

Now it doesn't require me to point that out. Rabbler "lucas" takes bduffy to task:

Maybe we can dig up some dirt on his kids while we are at it.

Attack his policies, despise his politics, criticize his approach... lord knows there's enough material there to stay busy for years... but looking for dirt by diggin through his personal finances?

Let's try to keep the political discussions above ground.

Good point. But lucas fighting a losing battle. People like bduffy will thrive. Not because their type of personal attack is easy (he justifies his muckraking by saying Harper's wealth, if he has any, puts Harper in the ranks of the poor-oppressing wealthy elite), but because the left has had a real problem with traction. You can see it in Question Period, where many of the attacks are aimed at the Liberals instead of the Conservatives. You can see it in the polls, where support continues to grow despite some of the tough decisions this young government has made (canceling the Liberal daycare program, backing out of Kyoto, etc).

That must be frsutrating. You can understand why the attacks on the person are going to be more popular.

Still, the more level-headed on the left continue to try:

Stephen Harper lives in a modest neighborhood in a modest home in Calgary...as does Ralph Klein. Their 'official' governmnet-provided residences are not of their choosing.

Harper is a decent fellow. One can disagree with his politics but he shovels his sidewalk like everyone else.

Well, this calls for a Nazi parallel from our friend bduffy!

Harper is a decent fellow. One can disagree with his politics but he shovels his sidewalk like everyone else.

Sure. The guy who pulled the lever at the gas chambers also went home and played with his kids. Could've been a perfectly nice guy.

I think you're missing my point. I know what he makes as a Prime Minister. I suspect he's tied into a larger network of investing and corporate welfare that is or will make him wealthy. Hence the policies about "cracking down on crime" (private security industry), "War on Terror" (Military Industry). I would think these grateful companies will thank the PM one day, as N.Beltov suggested.

I don't get it: I thought Rabble.ca was a leftist/progressive sort of place?

[emphasis added]

Well, bduffy, rabble is a progressive sort of place. I can always tell I'm in the company of progressives when they allude to the Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about people who have a different point of view.

bduffy takes a few more hits. Others explain that Stephen Harper is not in it for the money, so he responds with this:

Thanks, BlawBlaw - helpful stuff. I was just trying to figure out if money was a motivation, and, frightenly enough, it's not. He actually is a fascist.

Yep -- we're deep in progressive country now.

Well, some people continue to give bduffy a hard time over his analogies and the way he throws around terms like "fascist" without considering the true meaning of those terms. Does bduffy reconsider his approach?

I'm beginning to think this is a CSIS hangout or something...

That's right, bduffy. The fact that some people on the left are still into debating ideas and considering facts instead of slinging insults and spreading lies is proof that the forum has become compromised by government agents. Thank goodness there are people like you who can still fight dirty.

From rabble.ca:

One of my Ottawa Operatives tells me there is a joke going around Ottawa about Stephen Harper's new nickname.

“They are calling him 'shrub',” says my contact. “A small Bush.”

Okay, okay....not exactly a screamer, but neat just the same, for the man who is busily trying to adapt the theory of the Imperial Presidency to the Presidential Prime Ministership.

Idiot.

"Shrub" has always refered to George W Bush, in reference to being the offspring of George H W Bush.

I always thought the issue with these people was that, under Stephen Harper, we were going to become too much like the United States. Well, they might be right, since clearly our left wing is recycling American political insults instead of coming up with their own.

I'm going to do something that seems to get me into hot water every time I do it, but it's my blog, so there.

I'm going to congratulate Warren Kinsella.

From his blog for May 12:

Blogs don’t work if you aren’t as honest as you can be; they don’t work if you aren’t candid about your mistakes.

That said, I note here that I did a hit last night on Calgary’s CHQR with Rob Breakenridge, who is one of the better talk jocks in Canada. Rob asked me about my column in the Post (which decried the use of Nazi analogies to make a point). Then he asked me why I was photographed with DOA’s Joey Shithead, wearing a T-shirt calling George W. Bush an "international terrorist."

My answer, I admit, was not very lucid or compelling (cf. that truth is a defence, and that Bush’s war in Iraq is illegal). At all, at all. Time to critically assess my own conduct, and not just Bob Rae’s, eh?

That Rob Breakenridge is one smart journalist.

Now how many times have you heard anyone, on the left or the right, admit that they might have been hypocritical? Admit publicly that they need to consider their own behaviour, that they might not have been living up to the standards that they are suggesting others live up to?

How many blogs are used by people as a soapbox to lash out at those who have crossed them in some way?

Warren Kinsella could have used his blog to dump on Ron Breakenridge and tell us all how unfair the comment was about the T-shirt. And most of his readers would have accepted it and felt Kinsella was treated poorly. But that would not have been honest.

It's easy to play to your adoring fans. It's hard to tell them that maybe you were wrong, especially if it is in some way related to an issue you all feel so strongly about. To remind them that however justified your moral outrage, it does not place you above the rules you insist others live by.

Warren Kinsella did the hard thing. Good for him. That's why I like him.

As a wise man (or woman) once said, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.

Fact: The sky is blue:

Canadian voters who bought into that whole "hidden agenda" fairy tale about the federal Tories seem to be awakening to the fact that they were fed a load of nonsense during two election campaigns.

For the third time in less than a week a major public opinion poll has shown Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives riding a wave of support and opening a wide gap in popularity over the Liberals.

SES is the latest agency to weigh in on the question of party standings. In a poll prepared for Sun Media, SES says 38% of us would choose the Conservatives if a vote were held today, compared with 28% who would vote Liberal and 19% NDP.

There has been a huge swing in Atlantic Canada, where 37% say they'd now vote Tory -- a 9-point jump from three months earlier.

Whatever the colour of the sky is in Cindy Sheehan's world, it certainly isn't Tory blue:

By many accounts, Stephen Harper was put in place as leader of Canada by the collapse of weak coalitions and scandals that led to this man now leading a minority government there. He is wildly unpopular from coast to coast up north and there is a growing sense of unease about his emulation of a very unpopular person in the USA but even more in Canada: George Bush.

Now Canadians need to wake up to the fact that their new minority, disliked government is leading them down this same slippery slope to the fascistic militarism of their immediate neighbors to the south.

Worse yet for Cindy Sheehan, Canadians are still supportive of the Canadian effort in Afghanistan, even though everyone knows it is not a peacekeeping mission.

Here again is the sky as it is:

Support among Canadians for the country's military mission in Afghanistan has slipped but is still relatively solid despite a rash of recent military casualties, according to a new poll on Friday.

The Ekos survey -- provided to Reuters -- shows 62 percent of Canadians support the mission in Afghanistan, down from 70 percent in early February. The number opposed grew to 37 percent from 28 percent.

"In some ways, what is most remarkable here is how robust support for the mission has proven to be," said Ekos President Frank Graves.

"After all, for the first time in many years, Canadians are seeing significant casualties among their armed forces," he said in a statement.

And the sky some weird shade of...who knows?

The recent polls in Canada show that the people there are starting to wake up by the truckloads with support for their administration's support of BushCo's war slipping 14 percentage points in two months! Canadians are seeing that the war in Afghanistan is not righteous and that when Canada sends troops there, it frees American troops to be illegally and immorally deployed to Iraq. Canada needs a Cindy Sheehan to go to the PM's residence and demand to know what noble cause her child died for, or is still fighting for.

See, when you insert what are clearly fabrications into a piece that otherwise has some points to make that are worthy of debate, well, the whole thing is tainted. Did Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor sign the NORAD extension with sufficient debate in Parliament, for example, as she suggests? You might make an argument that the implications weren't discussed thoroughly enough (I'm not saying that is the case, but it is a plausible argument).

But it's hard to take anything Cindy Sheehan says seriously while she suffers from a serious disconnect from reality. The Conservative government is doing remarkably well, as poll after poll shows. Support for Canadian troops and their mission is solid, though people are justifiably concerned. If Cindy Sheehan wants to recapture her position as an influential representative of the anti-war left, she has to stop hanging out with the anti-war leftists. It's paradoxical, but true. The more time she spends outside of the echo chamber into which she has locked herself, the better the chance she will see the world as it really is. Then when she speaks, people are more likely to taker her seriously.

Of course, the danger is that once she sees the sky is really blue, she might not mind it so much.

Min Chen, the 21-year-old man who has plead guilty in the kidnapping and murder of Cecilia Zhang, has been handed down a sentence of 15 years without parole.

Fifteen years for a foreign national who murdered a 9 year old girl. According to his confession, Chen kidnapped Cecilia in a bizarre plot to extort $25,000 from Cecilia's parents in order to pay for a fake marriage in order to cheat the system and avoid deportation in Canada. He was in Canada on a student visa, and was failing academically. Cecilia was smothered to death moments after she was taken when Chen tried to silence her. He dumped her body in a ravine, where the skeletal remains were found 6 months later.

So the questions to you are these:

• Was the sentence fair?
• Is there a fair sentence possible in Canada for his crime?
• Is this an isolated incident, or an extreme example of the social disorder that comes from our immigration policies as implemented?
• What would you do to change things?

Here's something to get you started. Police lifted prints at the scene. Chen did no wear gloves and left clear prints on a window. Unfortunately, since people in this country on visas are not routinely fingerprinted, there was no way to match the prints to Chen until much laterin the investigation when he became a person of interest. So should we fingerprint all people entering this country on work or student visas?

A gutsy move on the part of the Conservatives:

The Conservative government is mounting a legal challenge against the Liberal Party of Canada to reclaim some of the money funnelled to the party through the federal sponsorship program, according to a Montreal newspaper.

La Presse reported Thursday that the Tories are preparing to take the Liberals to court to recoup "all the dirty money," according to an unnamed source quoted in the story.

Gutsy because it is a decision that represents some risk for the Conservative Party.

From the Toronto Star:

Liberal MP Blair Wilson called Canada's aging demographics a "ticking time bomb" and faulted [Immigration Minister Monte] Solberg for not having a plan to deal with it.

"We need more people to come into Canada to balance that out, to support those people who will soon be into retirement," said Wilson (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country).

"The solution is sitting here right in front of you ... what's your game plan to get these 800,000 people into Canada?"

Idiot. Those 800,000 people have been stuck in limbo because of the Liberal government's cynical approach to immigration. Generate large numbers of applicants to brag about immigration policy, without doing anything to get these people into the country.

The solution is not to deal with the backlog. Introducing new families into Canada does not solve the problem if you bring grandma and granddad along with the the kids and grandkids. Unemployment in Canada was pegged at 6.4% in April. In the same month, the United States reported unemployment at 4.7% -- clearly the United States has a greater capacity to absorb new immigrants than Canada does.

To be fair, the backlog must be dealt with -- these people applied in good faith. New applications, however, should be rejected out of hand untilt he backlog is cleared.

But what of the ticking time bomb? That is not a problem to be dealt with immigration. Immigrants to Canada simply find out what Canadians already know -- Canada is not a family friendly place. They aren't going to have any more children than other Canadians, not as long as they have to pay the same taxes. You want to support an older generation? Then you need a younger generation. To do that, you need to make children an attractive option for potential parents, not a burden. The choice in childcare program is a great start, since it is directly tied to the number of children. Another idea is to allow wage earners to split taxable income over all members of a family, rewarding having large families.

The point is that importing more people into an environment that penalizes children (thanks to years of Liberal rule) makes the problem worse, not better. There is a short improvement in the labour force, but then those people join the ranks of those waiting to cash in on government pension, and because of the inherent cost of children, they will not have had many of their own, ensuring that the problem reaches further into the future.

An interesting story posted at Free Dominion:

I'm watching the budget discussion on CTV. The NDP Director of Operations speaking with Mike Duffy - she is Anne McGrath. Shocked

In 1984, when I was elected to the University of Alberta Student's Union, Anne McGrath was selected by the SU Nominating Committee to be our Academic Affairs Commissioner. Although Anne McGrath was a new student at the University of Alberta and had done NOTHING at the U of A, she had been chosen because of her "friendship" with the left-wingers on the Nominating Committee.

The person she beat was Kerri Kamra - Kerri had a proven track record of volunteering with Student Help, and with the Student Orientation Services. When the Committee motion went to Student's Council for ratification, we amended their motion to replace "Anne Mcgrath" with "Kerri Kamra" - the amended motion passed... Razz

So, Anne McGrath filed a complaint with the Student's Union Ombudsman and with the Alberta Human Right's Commission claiming that we discriminated against her because she had been the Communist candidate in the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona. Nutz

The NDP has obviously scraped the bottom of the barrel... Laughing

Now it is important to note that I haven't been able to verify the facts of this account of the events in 1984 independently, so what follows is based on the assumption that the facts of the case are as described.

The choice of the nominating committee was rejected in favour of a choice supported by the majority of the full Student Council. Though disappointing to McGrath, it would seem to be in order.

The fact that she filed a complaint on the basis of discrimination instead of a procedural issue suggests that procedure was followed correctly.

Was McGrath the subject of discrimination because she was the candidate for the Communist Party of Canada in 1984, the same year she was seeking the commissioner post on the Student's Council?

Maybe, but if so, there's nothing wrong with that.

Membership in a political party is not an accident of birth, like gender or skin colour. Anne McGrath was a member of the Communist Party of Canada in 1984 (that much is true). To draw inferences about what sort of decisions she was likely to make as a Commissioner was reasonable on the basis of her political affiliations. In particular, the fundamentally violent nature of communism as a philosophy (the proletariat versus the bourgeousie, the collapse of capitalism, etc) and the undeniable historical fact that wherever communism has been used as a guiding principle of organizing human social order, death, misery, and poverty (both material and spiritual) has been the outcome, means that reconsidering whether to allow an avowed communist to hold a position of responsibility was in itself a responsible act.

McGrath tried to turn that around. Instead of allowing the Student Council to consider her political choices in deciding whether she was suited to a position of responsibility within a quasi-political body, she tried to make her political choices into a shield against review. One wonders if Kamra had been a man, whether McGrath would have filed the complaint on the basis of gender discrimination. Of if McGrath was not white (which she is), race would have been the reason. But Kamra was a woman, and McGrath was white, so McGrath was forced to try to make her politics an excuse for being rejected.

That's an extremely poor argument, because even if the Student Council had used her communist membership as part of judging her suitability compared to Kamra, so what? If you can't consider a person's political views when determining whether he or she is suited for a role of responsibility in a quasi-political body, then what can you consider? You can't be held responsible for your gender or skin colour, so you can't be judged on the basis of gender or skin colour. But you are solely responsible for your political views. How can another group that deals with political questions not be allowed to consider whether that choice makes you a good fit or a poor fit within that organization?

In any case, it would seem that the real basis of the Council's choice of Kamra was on the value of her work, while McGrath originally won the nomination based on the value of her connections through the Communist Party. When her political connections helped her, McGrath voiced no objection or concern. But if they hindered her (and it is not clear that this was the case), well, that could not be tolerated. Seems a bit inconsistent.

The posting does not mention the outcome of McGrath's complaint, though I suspect it was rejected. Her complaint, though, suggests a skewed view of personal responsibility, that individuals, at least those on the left, should be immune to any negative repercussions that might flow from their political decisions. That is a strange point of view. On the other hand, that someone responsibility-handicapped like McGrath would have since found a home in the NDP does not strike me as strange at all.

Update: According to someone who was present at the events (see comments), McGrath was not even known to be a communist when the recommendation to reject her nomination was passed. The move was made because she was perceived to have been given the nomination purely on the basis of connections, while a clearly more qualified person was rejected. For many people, though, qualifications are irrelevant, and if that person loses out on a position, it has to be discrimination.

One of the problems with our federal system (or any fedral system in which the two levels of government have taxation powers) is that when one level of government lowers taxes, the other can use the opportunity to raise taxes, figuring that if the electorate sees no difference in the bottom line, they are less likely to gripe about it.

Sometimes it works.

But the Progressive Conservative Party in Ontario have launched a website, Pay-More-Get-Less. to drum up support to keep this from happening again:

The recent budget delivered by the Federal government had a surplus, like the 2006 Ontario budget.

However, the two governments had very different approaches to how they handled our tax dollars.

The Federal government recognized the need to return to fiscal accountability through cutting taxes, focussing federal spending on priority areas and paying down the debt.

Dalton McGuinty decided to launch a wild, spending spree.

For the third year in a row, Dalton McGuinty broke his promise to balance the budget - despite having a $3 billion windfall for the 2005-06 year.

Ontarians continue to pay more to the McGuinty government and receive fewer services in return than ever before.

John Tory and the Ontario PC Party think that enough is enough!

Check out the site. If you agree that Ontario's Liberal government under Dalton McGuinty should be showing some fiscal restraint, and better yet, some consistency when it comes to keeping his promises, then consider helping John Tory make it happen.

From the Edmonton Journal:

Conservative policy planners are examining the possibility of American-style Senate elections, where voters cast ballots for certain Senators on one six-year cycle, and other senators on a second six-year cycle.

The model, also used in Australia's Senate, would ensure a regular influx of fresh blood into the upper chamber since all elected senators would be required to step down after six years in office.

This is interesting, if only because of the focus on the election cycle. An upper house is generally less representative than a lower house, and in that lies the really interesting issue for Senate reform.

A couple of days ago I had an interesting talk with a senior member of a computer security firm on the topic of the GO Transit vandalism. I'd like to share some of the interesting details of that conversation.

Joshua has responded to the suspicion that he is the hacker responsible for putting the "Stephen Harper Eats Babies" message on LED displays on GO Trains last week.

It's a minor quote, but this blogger earned a mention in this article about the GO Train hacker in this online issue of Computerworld.

Some reaction on the story of the GO Transit hacker.

This incident in which someone took control of an LED display unit on a GO Transit train and used it to display the message "Stephen Harper Eats Babies" continues to intrigue me.

Now I think I have an idea of who might have done it. Or at least, I can report on another person's suspicions.

The GO Transit hacker probably used a wireless remote to modify the text of the display to read "Stephen Harper eats babies".

Gerry Nicholls gives use some more on the GO Transit "Stephen Harper eats babies" incident.

The Toronto Star seems to be working hard to transmit some sort of negative message:

Taxpayers may be in for a pleasant surprise in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's first budget tomorrow.

But environmentalists and aboriginal people are expected to be disappointed.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will introduce a promised reduction in the goods and services tax (GST) and the budget is likely to contain personal income tax measures that will be welcome news for middle-class earners, who could save several hundred dollars a year in income taxes as a result of his policies.

But there are strong indications the government will refuse to fund the 10-year, $5.1 billion federal-provincial deal to help aboriginal people worked out by the former Liberal government in Kelowna, B.C., last year.

And the budget is expected to abandon the Liberals' $10 billion commitment to implement the Kyoto accord meant to spur concerted international action to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

One of the reasons Kelowna and Kyoto are not to be funded, says the Star, is that the money had not been set aside by the Liberals in their last budget. Essentially, there wasn't enough to keep the Conservative promises and the Liberal promises. So the Liberal promises are tossed.

Fine, but the negative message? It's it that weird picture of Stephen Harper wearing a crown:

The picture was taken when Stephen Harper was speaking to the Empire Club. Note that in the story, there is no mention of the Empire Club, so any stock shot of Stephen Harper would have done. Indeed, the story mentions Stephen Harper's statement in the House of Commons, so a picture of Stephen Harper speaking to the House might have been more appropriate. Or how about the one where the small child tweaks his nose, given that the childcare benefit is figuring so highly? Or the election picture of Stephen Harper holding the "6%" sign indicating the GST cut, another major budget issue?

The more I look at it, the more I wonder if someone has been goofing with the picture. There is that weird white zone immediately to the right of Stephen Harper's face, just beside his eye. Like a bit of the white background got left behind as Stephen Harper's head was moved up and under the crown. [Update: It turns out that this splash of white is part of the logo in the centre of the maple leaf. Just a coincidence. Thanks to several readers who pointed that out.]

But even if it's a legitimate photo, it's still an example of the media playing mind games. An attempt to cast Stephen Harper as an imperious prime minister. How to fix this perception problem? Well, assuming you think it's a problem in the first place, I suppose the easiest way is to be nice to the Toronto Star. Provide an exclusive interview, perhaps. On the other hand, maybe the message is too subtle to worry about.