Monthly Archive: November 2007

The story of the fake bomb at the Royal Ontario Museum has got me to thinking about modern or conceptual art.

Not surprisingly, my conclusion is that it is without redeeming value, but I'm going to try and go a bit deeper than that.

And in particular, I'm going to avoid simply calling Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson an idiot. Plenty of people are doing that already.

OK, I have to admit, I didn't see this one coming at all. I fully expected that Karlheinz Schreiber would not say a word to the parliamentary ethics committee, even after all the political fireworks expended in getting him to Ottawa from Toronto, where he was awaiting extradition to Germany on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

But to then turn around and harshly slap the committee? Karlheinz Schreiber gives out a little bit of pleasure, then a little bit of pain, and the opposition members of the committee don't see just how disgusting this is becoming.

Many observers predicted a circus when Karlheinz Schreiber appeared. I'm not sure a circus is the right metaphor. The metaphor I'm thinking of involved whips and straps and chains and latex body suits.

Some Islamic scholars hold to the idea that there is no need for democracy. In an Islamic state, the law is the Sharia, handed down by Allah through the Prophet Mohammed. A democratic government is a means to developing laws by gathering input from the citizenry. But there is no need to consider the opinions of the citizens, since the body of laws is divine, perfect, and complete.

Interesting theory.

And complete nonsense. Not that I don't believe that the Sharia is a good basis for law. I don't but that's not my point. My point is that in countries that have adopted Sharia law, the rule of the mob is worse than in democracies.

Case in point: Sudan versus Gillian Gibbons in the case of the Teddy Bear Insult.

You know how they say no good deed goes unpunished? Justice Minister Rob Nicholson might turn out to be living proof of that. The opposition has succeeded at getting a Speaker's Warrant to compel Karlheinz Schreiber to testify in front of a parliamentary committee on ethics. But warrant or no warrant, Schreiber is already setting conditions and issuing demands, daring the the opposition to grow a backbone and send him back to Germany.

Rob Nicholson has a backbone, and made it clear he was not willing to lift a single finger to help Karlheinz Schreiber make a mockery of the government. Parliament, on the other hand, is being mocked at every turn as the committee shows its willingness to go to any length to have Schreiber appear. When the ethics committee asked Nicholson to use his powers to get Schreiber out of jail, he told them he couldn't. That might not have been technically correct, since experts seem to think he certainly could have. But he wouldn't do it.

I think he was trying do the committee a favour.

In return, the opposition members screamed contempt.

I don't write about the weird. I should do more. The stories always make me laugh. Call it a guilty pleasure. But I figure my readers like a certain kind of story -- serious attempts at moderately deep political analysis. Well, not this time. Dammit, this story just needs to be told.

It's got transvestites and tire irons and violence -- Quentin Tarantino will be turning this into a move soon.

Stephane Dion is isolated. No one in the Liberal Party will deal with him. He doesn't care though, since he never listened to anyone anyway. People in the party are praying for an election and a loss so that they can get rid of Stephane Dion, once and for all.

Is this the state of the Liberal Party today? According to insiders, that is exactly where things are.

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, has drawn Nazis into the debate over global warming. She has lumped Prime Minister Stephen Harper with Nazis because of his skepticism over global warming and what the right response would be.

And that makes Elizabeth May's chief ally, Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, a remarkably lucky politician.

We can't leave Afghanistan to the Taliban. This is not about today or tomorrow, but about generations of children raised in terror and violence turning into suicide bombers. In Sudan, a teacher will be lashed because she allowed the children in her charge express their love for the Prophet by naming a teddy bear Muhammad.

Karlheinz Schreiber is using the promise of revealing significant new information about his dealings with former prime minister Brian Mulroney and the Canadian government about the Airbus contract during the early 1990s as a way of avoiding extradition to Germany where he faces charges of tax evasion and fraud.

The problem for Schreiber is that if he is going to be questioned by two different judicial proceedings (a parliamentary committee this week and an inquiry in the future), he has to be careful that he tell the same credible story both times, or he could be hit with perjury charges, and end up in Germany anyway.

Wajid Khan, the former Liberal MP who now sits for the Conservatives, might or might not be in trouble with Elections Canada.

It is a bit confused right now.

That's not the only potentially confusing element of this story.

The Anglican Church in Canada is on the verge of formal split over same-sex marriage and other liberal changes in Church teaching and practise. The charges flying back and forth on questions of theological correctness are sharp and emotionally charged. But like any divorce, the argument over whose fault this was will seem like children playing happily in a playground compared to what happens once the two sides start fighting over money.

And that's when I expect organizations will jump in to use this fight to promote their own agendas.

People can hold very strong views on the death penalty. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has set government policy that Canadians abroad who are convicted in a fair trial and sentenced to death can't depend on the Canadian government to plead for mercy.

That has the Liberals enraged, and this is more about genuine philosophical differences rather than cheap political points. And despite that, Stephane Dion has managed to keep to a promise he made a year ago to not embarrass the Canadian government abroad.

Good for him. He could have scored points with his constituency. They would not have cared about his promise. But apparently Stephane Dion does. That deserves to be recognized.

In what I see as a curious turn of events, Karlheinz Schreiber has issued a press release today. The contents are not remarkable -- the release concerns the question of his pending extradition to Germany -- but the name of the lawyer is.

Given that the release is about the extradition fight, you would expect to see the names of the lawyers fighting that case, Edward and Brian Greenspan, to be listed as the contacts for questions.

Instead, the lawyer is Alexander Sennecke, a partner in the firm handling an entirely different case, that being the lawsuit Schreiber filed against Brian Mulroney to recover the $300,000 payment Schreiber made to Mulroney in 1993 and 1994.

Of course, the two cases are linked politically. The government is under pressure to put off the extradition in order to allow Schreiber to testify in an inquiry into these payments. But legally, these two matters have always been treated as separate and unrelated, to the point of having two different legal teams.

But now this curious crossover.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion's numbers continue to hemorrhage. An Angus-Reid Poll just released that compares the opposition leaders against each other has awful news for Stephane Dion, and by association, Elizabeth May of the Green Party. Jack Layton of the NDP, on the other hand, must be very pleased.

Bob Rae must be enjoying his role as foreign affairs critic. Not elected to the House of Commons, Bob Rae can issue insults and undermine Canadian sovereignty with near impunity, not being subjected to the give and take that his elected colleagues have to put up with when considering what to say during Question Period.

How else would you explain his willingness to agree with a European busybody who likens Canadian politicians to murderers?

If you abuse your children, the State will take them away. Forcibly breaking up a family is probably the most violent act the State can commit, and it is only done to prevent a more violent act from being committed on a child.

So when the Nova Scotia town of Wolfville bans smoking in vehicles when a child is present, I get very nervous. It is the first step to fulfilling the wish of many anti-smoking zealots of making smoking a form of child abuse. Once you've gotten to that point, all bets are off. If smokers think they have it tough now, they are wrong.

Some people are seeing signs that not only is the Karlheinz Schreiber controversy not connecting with Canadians, who by and large aren't buying into the Liberal argument that this is a scandal that involves the current government, but they are also seeing signs that Stephane Dion's Liberals might find themselves embroiled in scandal instead.

I'm not sure that it can go that far, but I'm pretty sure that if there is any blowback at all, Stephane Dion is finished. The Liberal Party can put up with only so much incompetence.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. By lowering the level of lethality, tasers have the effect of increasing the number of violent confrontations with police. If police won't use tasers the way they were meant to be used, tasers should be taken away.

The bottom line is this. You use a taser when you are willing to kill a suspect.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion has outlined his opinion about what an investigation into Karlheinz Schreiber's dealing with Brian Mulroney ought to cover.

Karl Schreiber? Check.

Brian Mulroney? Check.

Stephen Harper and everything ever done anywhere by his government on any subject? Check.

I bet you noticed the same thing I did. Stephane Dion, while trying to apply some constraint to the powers of an inquiry, has potentially crippled it.

Brian Mulroney has refused to explain the details behind the $300,000 payment he received from Karlheinz Schreiber that is now the centre of a growing political firestorm in Ottawa.

Brian Mulroney is not being evasive for the sake of being evasive. Remember that this $300,000 payment is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Schreiber against Mulroney. Brian Mulroney can't really talk much about it right now.

It might be nice to remember that once in a while, instead of making it seem like a reason to be immediately suspicious of Brian Mulroney.

Karlheinz Schreiber does not take "No!" for an answer. And yet that is the only answer he seems to ever get from Canadian courts when it comes to considering his extradition to Germany.

A man of conviction? Or is he just obstinate? Perhaps Karlheinz Schreiber is as deaf as a post.

Interestingly, all the accepted reasons to deny a valid extradition request that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson can call upon to keep Karlheinz Schreiber in the country focus on what a wickedly unjust place Germany is, and how it is manifestly unjust in some way to send Schreiber there to face charges.

Of course, that is manifestly absurd.

Which means Canada doesn't have any good reason to insult German authorities by keeping Karlheinz Schreiber in Canada.

Maybe law is too subtle for this simple engineer, but in life, when someone has your fate in his hands, you ought to be nice to that person.

Or at least not insulting.

But for Karlheinz Schreiber's lawyers to call Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, a lawyer himself, untrustworthy, well, it is not the sort of thing that would make me want to cut Schreiber any slack, not if I was the justice minister.

Did the Conservatives coerce candidates into questionable ad spends designed to violate campaign spending limits? That is what the Liberals would have us believe, based in large part on media interviews with former Conservative candidate Jean Landry. Dig deeper though, and you discover a far more complex story that calls into question the basis upon which Elections Canada initiated an investigation.

Did this all start because of one frustrated ex-candidate?

Karlheinz Schreiber is facing extradition to Germany, but is trying to avoid that by leveling allegations of making shady business deals with former prime minister Brian Mulroney while Mulroney was in office. At least that's what it looks like to a lot of people.

Indeed, Schreiber seemed to confirm that when he declared that his testimony was contigent on not being sent to Germany. The truth be damned, he didn't want to face trial in Germany.

But the Liberals have also argued that it is important for Schreiber to stay in the country. Why? Not for Schreiber's benefit, of course, but so that justice can be served.

Now curiously, Schreiber's language has moderated. Now he seems to be interested in justice too.

What a coincidence.

Karlheinz Schreiber is the German businessman facing serious charges in Germany. He is in Canada fighting extradition. He is famous in Canada, of course, for his involvement with former prime minister Brian Mulroney. That relationship led to allegations of influence peddling that was investigated by the RCMP over 15 years ago. The investigation cleared Brian Mulroney. Mulroney then sued the government and was awarded $2 million. Fast forward to 2007, and Karl Schreiber is literally weeks away from a flight to Germany, and quite possibly prison. Suddenly Schreiber drops a bombshell -- an agreement to pay Mulroney $300,000 was made when Mulroney was still in office (during the last 48 hours, as it turns out).

I've made it clear that I think Karlheinz Schreiber is interested only in avoiding extradition. At 73, he only needs to delay extradition for a year or so, and he'll probably never return to German soil. By manipulating events to cause a public inquiry to be called, he has made that likely, especially since his patsies in the Liberal Party are obliging him by demanding that he not be extradited.

Robert Fife of CTV has made a similar observation.

And now Schreiber dispells any lingering doubt. He promises not to testify in any Canadian proceedings if he is sent to Germany.

The other shoe drops.

[Sorry about the title, but I couldn't resist working Das Boot into a Schreiber post.]

[Yes, I know "Das Boot" means "The Boat" and has nothing to do with footwear. It just sounds funny.]

The former Liberal Party treasurer who is facing charges after over $13,000 was stolen from a riding association failed to make a court appearance last week. Last night Suzan Pawlak was arrested in Toronto.

Stephane Dion is taking a stand on requiring the visual identification of voters. Well, I should qualify that. He had a stand last September. But now he is taking a stand this his stand is now more of a walk. Liberals are hoping that his walk will evolve into another stand soon. I expect it will a stand from a new position.

Stephane Dion is suffering from an affliction known as Harper Derangement Syndrome. It is a sorry sight, and it is only through your generous support that can bring us closer to a cure.

CTV's Robert Fife is echoing my point that Karlheinz Schreiber is clearly using his allegations about money payments to Brian Mulroney as a way to evade deportation to Germany. But Schreiber can't do it alone. He needs allies.

Or puppets.

The National Director of the Liberal Party, Greg Fergus, has sent his first email since taking over the job from Jamie Carroll. The letter is interesting for more about what it doesn't say. Not a word about Stephane Dion anywhere in an email whose purpose seems to be to inspire Liberals.

Isn't Stephane Dion inspiring?

Worse yet, Greg Fergus makes pains to remind the reader that the Liberal Party is about more than any one man. Curious.

In a rather long post (made longer with all the evidence I'm presenting), I'm reviewing how the Liberals and the NDP organized, funded, and ultimately declared local advertising. The Liberals are claiming that the Conservatives engaged in some sort of money laundering scheme, magically converting national funds into local funds for advertising that was clearly not local, in an effort to break the law with regards to spending limits in the last election campaign.

The Conservatives have shot back that it wasn't illegal, which is why all parties do it. And you know what? It looks like they all do.

Liberal MP Robert Thibault admits that Karlheinz Schreiber is using the Liberals to avoid deportation to Germany. Stephane Dion is taking a big risk.

The more I look at the circumstances around Karlheinz Schreiber's allegations involving Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, the more I wonder whether Karlheinz Schreiber is borrowing a page from John Mark Karr's playbook.

The first time the Liberals went after Brian Mulroney for his relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber, Canadians ended up paying $2 million when Brian Mulroney successfully sued the Canadian government.

Now the Liberals are at it again. And I wonder if that means if Brian Mulroney will be cashing another big cheque again in the future. I say that because Brian Mulroney seems eager to go for Round Two.

Stephane Dion polls in third place among Canadians when asked who they would want as prime minister.

Third place!

How much more of this will the Liberal Party tolerate?

Canada is a country filled with people who like to drive fast. How do we discourage them? I have an idea that takes a different approach to punishment, and so might have some success while the traditional approaches are running out of gas.

And that's where I'm focused -- on the gas.

The Liberals are howling for a full judicial inquiry into Brian Mulroney's dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a hypocrite, the Liberals charge, if he proceeds with his plan for a preliminary third-party invetigation.

Remember Gomery?! This issue deserves the same treatment!

Maybe it does -- but only in the fullness of time. But despite what the Liberals are saying, we don't really know enough to decide yet. Perhaps Stephen Harper can wait to proceed until he has enough information to make the right decision.

Paul Martin certainly waited at least that long.

Who said you can't teach an old empire new tricks?

In a matter of days, China has confirmed the contamination of the Aqua Dots product. Sold also as Bindeez, the toy includes beads that are covered with a substance that, when swallowed, metabolizes into the date rape drug GHB.

Children in the United States and Australia have already been showing up in hospital suffering from seizures or slipping into comas. No fatalities though. Thanks goodness for that.

And it looks like the Chinese are in no mood to squander that one bit of good news. In case this gets worse before it gets better, the Chinese are moving fast to fix the problem at their end.

Even as the news spreads about the danger posed by Aqua Dots, a children's toy that is coated with a chemical that metabolizes into the date rape drug GHB when ingested, news comes of more children becoming ill.

When the story broke of the recall in Australia, three Australian children had fallen ill (but thankfully recovered).

Were Canadian and American children at risk, or was the North American product free of the problem discovered in Austalia?

It turns our we weren't so lucky. Multiple cases in the US are being reported. I have no doubt that there may already be Canadian cases.

With the latest toy scare involving the date rape drug GHB contaminating Aqua Dots (aka Bindeez), parents are wondering what toys kids ought to be playing with. The advice from the professionals? Be conservative. Keep it simple. Look at the sorts of toys our parents and grandparents played with.

I'm trying out a new banner, but try as a I might, I couldn't find room for Joe the Beaver.

Update: People said put him in the maple leaf. So I tried again, and I think I have something that works.

Canadian intelligence officials warn of an aggressive new lobbying campaign being undertaken by Tamil groups in Canada. Now the report might be focused on a new effort compared to the ongoing lobbying. But that's the weird thing.

There is no ongoing effort as far as I can tell. I can't find a single registered lobbyist in the database associated with any keywords related to Tamil organizations.

Have Tamil contacts with the Canadian politicians (specifically Liberal Party politicians) always been this opaque?

The Toronto Star engages in some...creative...headlining.

Actually, attributing words to someone that we never actually said could be grounds for legal action if those words cast that person in a poor light.

I doubt Prime Minister Stephen Harper will take any action -- the Toronto Star pulled their terrible headline. But a major Canadian news site is taking the heat for the Toronto Star's unprofessional behaviour, and that's not right.

What's worse, the headline was change but without any apology or acknowledgment, which forces National Newswatch to rely on the Google cache to defend himself against complaints that ought to be going to the Toronto Star.

The results of the 2007 Weblog Awards are in, and the the people have made it clear. In Canada, conservative blogging is tops!

Suzan Pawlak, the former Liberal Elgin-Middlesex-London riding association treasurer who has been charged with fraud, has failed to appear in court. This is a strange story that refuses to die.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave quite the speech on tax cuts that Canadians will see in the years to come. And yet there are people who are worried. They worry about who will take care of their parents in their old age.

Some people just don't see the obvious. Or they do, and they just don't want to face it.

The results of last night's provincial election in Saskatchewan showed the province shift to the right, ejecting Lorne Calvert's NDP in favour of Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party. One riding in particular interests me. The provincial riding that overlaps the federal riding of Wascana shift hard to the Saskatchewan Party.

Federally, that riding is held by Ralph Goodale. Is this a cause for concern for Ralph Goodale? And if so, should Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion be nervous about what a senior Liberal who is worried about his political future might do?

Michael Ignatieff is looking for new friends. Just pay some cash.

Actually, the only friends he really cares about are the ones who pay the absolute maximum cash allowed. They get what really matters -- access and therefore influence. Everyone else gets a T-shirt and a boot out the door.

Thanks to public financing of political parties, the Liberals are not all that concerned about fighting an election. They are worried about picking the right time for an election because in Canada, votes equate to dollars.

Which is amusing, because the intention of the system is to reduce the importance of financial considerations in politics. Of course, it has done the opposite.

Normally it wouldn't matter much which way you spell it. But in Canada, beside the picture of a dog, in an article refering to the NDP, the use of the word "Chow" instead of "Ciao" makes one squirm.

Don't we all remember the Mike Klander incident? Garth Turner seems to have forgotten.

Edy Haddad wants to be Liberal Party candidate for Windsor-Tecumseh.

His platform is...well...the Love Revolution. How that defines things like taxation policy or international trade issues is difficult to fathom. Apparently it involves art, music, and dance.

I wish him luck.

A toy manufactured in China is being recalled in Australia because it contains a chemical that metabolizes into a potentially fatal date rape drug. Bindeez has been linked to three children being hospitalized suffering from seizures.

When I say the toy, I recognized it immediately. In Canada, it is still being sold as Aqua Dots, being introduced only a month ago or so. At least that's when I remember the commercials starting to air on children's TV specialty channels.

Are Canadian kids at risk? Has anyone checked to make sure that the Canadian product is safe in light of the Australian recall?

Update: No doubt about it -- this is the same product.

Update: No official recall, but Toys 'R Us in Canada is pulling the product off the shelves at this very moment.

A Chinese delegation has come to Canada to patiently explain to citizens of this young and childish country that the Tibet issue is like separatism in Quebec. When uppity Canadians started exploring that parallel, the Chinese had no response other than to insult Canada.

How could these guys have been so unprepared? Maybe they were lulled into a false sense of security based on years of Canadian deference to China. This Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn't like that. I guess the Chinese hadn't really figured that out yet.

Garth Turner has some harsh words for the negative tactics used by the Conserva...no wait...that's harsh words for the Liberal Party.

Oh yes, this will be fun.

The word is that Stephen Harper can work with Jack Layton on Senate reform. Jack Layton has portrayed the NDP as the Effective Opposition. Can Stephane Dion and the Liberals find an opportunity to gain some traction on the issue of Senate reform?

Unfortunately for Stephane Dion, even this issue is strewn with landmines for the Liberals.

Response to the new commenting system has been generally positive. The people at Intense Debate have been quick to resolve problems, but I ought to point out a problem I had that I've now noticed that at least one reader has had. My Google Mail account dumped by Intense Debate verification email into the spam folder. It took me a while to notice the problem. If you've registered but for some reason haven't spotted the email, check your spam folder. It might be lying in there. If it's not there, or you've emptied your spam folder, and you've registered but are hung up because you never saw a verification email, let me know, and I'll pass the information on to Intense Debate. With any luck we can get you registered in short order.

Never ask a question unless you know the answer. That is one of those basic lawyer rules**. So unless Jason Cherniak has called over 300 Liberal Party riding presidents to get their individual assurances, the idea of holding a confidence vote on Stephane Dion's leadership seems rather pointless, and probably very risky.

** Engineers ask questions to elicit information.

Michael Bryant is no longer the Attorney General of Ontario. Not suprisingly, he is no longer interested in the No Gun No Funeral crusade. It really doesn't fit his career plans, I guess.

Voting is still open for Best Canadian Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. As the voting continues, the race is turning ugly.

I've been thinking about how the polls don't seem to be moving for any of the major parties. Despite all the upheaval and turmoil in Ottawa, Canadians don't seem to be responding.

Why is that?

Then it struck me. The polls aren't stuck despite the upheaval and turmoil. The polls are stuck because of the upheaval and turmoil.

Like the false calm in the eye of the hurricane.

Over the last nine posts, I've presented the entire package of evidence presented to Elections Canada that purports to prove that Blair Wilson engaged in a pattern of deception in order to evade campaign spending limits. The former Liberal MP, now sitting as an independent, is under investigation by both Elections Canada and the Liberal Party.

The only conclusion that matters is the one that Elections Canada comes to, but we can look at the material and make some observations of our own.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson did not account properly for third-party advertising.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson ads in the Whistler Question but failed to report any advertising in this paper.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson ran a full pages ad in the Coast Reporter but reported it as a quarter-page ad.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson did not correctly account for a donation of custom imprinted umbrellas worth a significant amount in dollar value.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson spent a significant sum of money, not reported to Elections Canada, on a last minute mass mailing.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson did not correctly account for the printing of campaign material. But in the supporting documentation, we get a sense of the tensions within the campaign between those who would be careful to account for things correctly, and those who seem to think the Elections Canada rules are an afterthought.

We also learn of someone in the Liberal Party headquarters called "the big guy".

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson did not correctly account for the deeply discounted rent for the Marine Drive election campaign office.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the supporting documentation that alleges to show that Blair Wilson did not correctly account for the Cowrie Street election campaign office.

We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.

As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.

In this post, we will look at the charges.

Garth Turner looks distinctly uncomfortable as his Liberal Party colleagues attack his former boss, Brian Mulroney.

Moving on and up for Canada's premier political columnist!

When Mauril Belanger did not show up for the confidence vote on Jum Flaherty's mini-budget, it was the sort of defiance that could get a member thrown out of caucus. But no one expects even a mild slap on the wrist for Mauril Belanger. In Stephane Dion's Liberal Party, chaos and open defiance has become the norm.

And it's been that way for a while, it seems.

Stephane Dion has got this abstaining thing down to a fine art. Now he has managed to abstain from Halloween.

Blair Wilson is the Liberal MP who has resigned from the Liberal Party caucus over allegations of personal and electoral financial misdealings. However at least one element of the story has been called into question. Given that it is part of the political side of the story, it might be significant.

It really is an honour just to be nominated. Of course, I had no idea until someone who hated the new commenting system emailed me to let me know how bad it was, and then congratulated me on the nomination.

Huh what?

When the Toronto Star states in an editorial that Stephane Dion has lost nearly all his credibility, and in doing so implicity warns Liberals that the Toronto Star would withhold an endorsement in an election, I wonder if the message is being aimed at the Liberal caucus. If so, the timing couldn't be worse for Stephane Dion, as the caucus is starting to come apart, and publicly signs of defiance are being seen.

I don't think the Toronto Star would be all that upset if Stephane Dion is ousted should the editorials help forment an open rebellion against the embattled Liberal Party leader.

Yesterday, the Toronto Star advised Stephane Dion and the Liberals to reverse course. The Liberals were planning to run and hide from the confidence vote on the mini-budget that they denounced, fearful of facing the voters. The Toronto Star said that this was unacceptable.

Stephane Dion held his ground and bravely retreated.

So today the Toronto Star issued the warning. Stephane Dion's credibility was hanging by a thread.

Though the editorial warned that it was Stephane Dion's crediblity with voters that was in grave danger, in truth, it is whatever credibility Stephane Dion has with the Toronto Star that will evaporate.