Monthly Archive: March 2008

The news that Liberal Party leader has demoted Denis Coderre raises many questions:

• Is Stephane Dion finished, or are more shifts on the way?
• Is Michael Ignatieff next?
• What is Bob Rae's role in all this?
• With Denis Coderre gone, who in Ottawa will represent the interests of Hezbollah?

OK, that last one is me being a jerk, but there are plenty legitimate questions to consider.

There has been a lot of focus on Quebec this week.  For a time, it looked like Liberals in the province were ready to rise up against Stephane Dion. 

Stephane Dion reacted with a news conference and a demand for discipline and loyalty.

Now a new poll shows Liberals facing electoral disaster in Quebec, not leading in any region, anywhere in the province.

I think it's safe to say that Stephane Dion's Quebec troubles are not behind him.

I wrote recently about Joyce Murray's nomination filings.  The (barely) successful candidate for the Vancouver Quadra by-election filed a description of her spending to secure the Liberal nomination that seemed to indicate the she ran her own copy business, pizza franchise, phone company and so on.

Every vendor charged for services, under every category, was named "Joyce Murray".

I wasn't the only one who thought this looked odd.  Kevin Libin of the National Post has carried the ball forward on this.  No one suggests that Murray has done anything wrong.  But as Libin's article shows, that such a filing is considered acceptable showcases just how campaign financing rules are an incredible burden that fail to do what they are designed to do -- provide a transparent window into how our politicians raise and spend money to secure their positions.

Elizabeth May has embarrassed herself trying to play the role of a socialist firebrand instead of her more accustomed job of environmental gadfly.

It is a small example of the trouble the Green Party is going to face as it tries to capitalize on the gains enjoyed at the expense of the NDP.

Just a timely contrast.

Liberal blogger James Curran has installed the Intense Debate commenting system.  Here's hoping it will encourage blog readers to visit blogs from "the other side" more often.

There is some excitement around today's news story that a former Liberal candidate Pierre-Luc Bellerose has announced his intention to seek Stephane Dion's ouster from the Liberal Party.

Liberal bloggers are almost universally scornful of Bellerose.  I think they have a point.  Bellerose is hardly the poster boy for a loyal Liberal Party member.  And his plan seems like a stretch.

But that doesn't mean Bellerose can be so easily dismissed.  He might be an idiot, but is he a useful idiot?  And if so, who is using him?

Stephane Dion is dismissing comments made in Quebec calling into question his leadership of the Liberal Party.

I guess we can expect to hear more of the same.  Apparently a group of Liberals will be voicing their opinions in a Montreal newspaper tomorrow.

In a particularly brutal attack on Stephane Dion's qualities as a leader, former Liberal Party cabinet minister Liza Frulla cuts deep.

And she uses the sharpest knife of all -- pity.

With the violence in Tibet grabbing the world's attention, many are calling for a boycott of the upcoming Olympics.

Let me add my voice to that.  By finally winning the Olympic bid, China has put itself into a profoundly weak position. 

Now is the time to strike and strike hard.

Pope Benedict XVI has performed the traditional Easter baptism of adults, but the tradition is not well known.  When adults enter into the Church, it is traditional to do all the baptisms on Easter Saturday (infants are baptized soon after birth).  The pope will perform a number of baptisms as any priest is called upon to do.

But this Easter, the pope has stood apart, performing a baptism that any priest could perform, but that the pope has taken onto himself to do.  It was a surprise -- a well-known Muslim has abandoned Allah for Christ.

In the eyes of many Muslims, that is a crime punishable by death, and it would not be a surprise if the priest who performed the ceremony might be targeted as well.  That is a risk any Catholic priest would be willing to take.  It is clearly a risk the pope was not going ask anyone else to take.

The Conservative government has reduce or cut off funding to a number of programs, including quasi-private special interest groups.  Though I have no problem with the government vacating these areas, there are some unintended consequences to be considered.

In particular, of course, is having government computers help out with the spread of online pornography.

But you knew that's where I was going with this.

Mike Duffy reported today that senior Liberals are actively working on a plan to ease (or force) Stephane Dion out as leader of the Liberal Party.

But who?  I think I know the answer.

Listen to the Liberals crowing about the Afghanistan motion.

Of course, we supported it, they say.  It is the Liberal plan that we forced the Conservatives to adopt.

Right.  So why did so many Liberals not vote for it?

Apparently, there is Liberal "private" and then there is Garth Turner "private".

Which is to say that what Liberals are saying privately are published on Garth Turner's blog.

Only Stephane Dion can leader the Liberals into four by-elections, win three, and be seen as the loser.

Last Friday, it was reported that a rather ugly meeting was held in Quebec by federal Liberals.  At issue was the fact that nothing seemed to be done to get the Liberals in Quebec ready for an election.

Just what the heck have they been doing?  The Liberals have paid a high price for constantly rolling over in parliament, a price they paid in order to buy the time needed to get ready for an election.  That time seems to have squandered.

It's like a case of embezzlement. 

I know it's hard to believe, but I wonder if Farhan Chak is planning to run for office again.

Remember Farhan Chak?  He was the Liberal nominee for Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont who was forced to resign when it was revealed that he had told a bunch of whoppers on his application.

Well, like the cat in the Harry Miller song, he comes back when you expect that his story is over and done.

Arguably, no vote is wasted, at least not by the voter.  The vote cast contributes to the collective decision to select a representative for the constituency.

But with the Liberals racking 10 abstentions or so, you have to wonder if Stephane Dion is wasting all the votes cast in ridings represented by Liberals.

No matter who the vote was originally cast for.

And then you have to worry about what might come of that in the long term.

Bob Rae got into some heat for concluding that Sikh separatists were behind the Air India bombing.  Many Sikhs refused to support Bob Rae, and their leadership moved this bloc's support to Gerard Kennedy and ultimately to Stephane Dion during the Liberal leadership campaign.

What is interesting is that Bob Rae was scheduled to speak to the World Sikh Organization this week, but that his appearance was canceled, allegedly by Bob Rae himself.

Curious.

Joyce Murray is amazing.  The Liberal candidate for Vancouver-Quadra ran her nomination as a one-woman show.  I mean literally.  I looked at her nomination returns and compared them against Conservative Deborah Meredith's, and while Meredith raised thousands from two dozen donors, and spent thousands on local printers and communication consultants and so on, Murray raised a mere $1300 and spent nearly ten times as much...and all the expenses claimed are listed as owed to Joyce Murray, who supplied all the services.

Like I said.  Amazing.

Actually, the entire expenditure is listed as unpaid claims, which seems a bit odd.

The most underrated character from the Star Wars movies was Gold Five.  We all remember Gold Five.  Stay on target!  Stay on target!  BOOM!

Well, except for the unfortunate and tragic BOOM, Gold Five is the epitome of the person who can ignore all the hurly-burly and keep his eye on the ball -- in this case, the exhaust port the spelled the destruction of the Death Star.

The Liberal Party Death Star is a lot less impressive than Emperor Palpatine's, what with Grand Moff Stephane Dion ordering that they hide at the sight of Conservatives tabling confidence motions.  But with the filing of the libel suit in court, Stephen Harper has shown that he knows how to stay on target.

And unlike Gold Five, I doubt Stephen Harper is going to get splashed.

You know, I'm not sure how this works.  Someone writes a biography about me.  It is published on a page with a copyright held by a third party.   I then create a new piece of copyrighted material, and I lift almost the entire biography, about me, word for word, to be used on that new page.

Am I breaking a copyright by doing that?  It is about me, after all.  On the other hand, how hard could be it to rewrite the biography to use different wording?

Ask Joan Beatty.  She might have the answer.

Stephane Dion has threatened to bring down the government.

No, really.

He means it this time.

Oh, stop laughing.

I have two words for you: Bob Rae.

Why aren't we in the middle of an election right now?  I know it's because the Liberals under Stephane Dion refuse to bring down the government, but what is motivating that?

The Liberals say they aren't ready for an election.

But then the Liberals has said they were ready only three weeks earlier.

So which is it?

The answer?  Both answers are right.

Stephane Dion sported a green scarf at the Liberal Party convention.  He was the green choice, the former environment minister who was going to lead the Liberal Party into taking ownership of the Green agenda in Canada.  Stephane Dion would lead the Liberals back to power on a wave of environmental sensibility.

Well, push came to shove, and Stephane Dion is showing his true colours.  It isn't green, but a very obvious yellow streak.

An interesting report recommends that Canada develop its own launch capability for satellites.  I haven't seen the report myself, but the newspaper report does not mention if the question of a launch facility and where it would be located.  There's the rub.  Picking a launch site is tricky, and it affects things like the size of the payload.  The report apparently pushes for Canada to develop a micro-satellite capability.  That might be a good idea, or it might just the best we can manage being a northern country.

Are the Liberals digging themselves deeper?  Stephen Harper identified two specific webpages on the Liberal Party website that contained allegedly libelous statements in connection to the Chuck Cadman controversy.  Stephane Dion, Ralph Goodale, Michael Ignatieff, and the Liberal Party have each received a notice of intent to sue.

The webpages are still up.

But what's interesting is that the Liberals have opened a new online presence called Forum Liberalis.  And guess what?  It includes a blog with links to those two posts, and distributed via a new RSS feed.

Does that mean that the Liberals are compounding their problems?  Are they guilty of further distributing the content even as a libel suit has entered its preliminary stages?

And does it mean that everyone involved in the Forum Liberalis website, including Joan Bourassa (National Policy and Platform Committee Chair) and Dominic Leblanc (MP and Vice-Chair of that committee) are now subject to the electronic discovery outlined in the notice of intent?

Stephane Dion and the Liberals continue to chart new territory when it comes to absurdity.  I thought they had reached a pinnacle when Stephane Dion declared that he would find a way to make sure the Conservative government did not fall.

But that was just a warm up.  Now the Liberals are putting forth a motion of non-confidence...in the other opposition parties.

Huh?

In particular, the motion condemns the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois for bringing down the Paul Martin government in November 2005.  As a result of giving Canadians the chance to vote, the Conservatives won. 

The democratic result was a huge mistake, or so suggests the Liberal motion.

Condemning democracy?  Or just condemning other opposition parties for having acted like opposition parties?

Is the Liberal Party going to buy this line, or will the caucus tell Stephane Dion publicly condemning opposition parties for opposing is going too far?

What is the role of the Loyal Opposition?  To act as critics, to be a government in waiting, to protect the interests of the minority.

But as two giants of Canadian politics agree, a common thread is courage.

If the Liberals are looking for a silver lining in the rapiding collapsing Chuck Cadman debacle, it is that no one noticed yet another mass abstention of Liberals today.

What makes it amusing is that Liberals made a point of not appearing to support their own amendment to the budget.

The Conservatives have gone on the offensive.  The libel suit over the Chuck Cadman controversy is not a defensive move designed to chill Liberal attacks.  It is an attack designed to rip the heart out of the Liberal Party's electronic operations.

Charles Adler asks a series of important questions regarding the Chuck Cadman controversy.  They aren't comfortable questions, but I know at least one other person who has been thinking along these lines.

Me.

Not widely reported is the decision of Liberal Party candidate Rani Bellwood to abandon her effort to win the British Columbia riding of Pitt Meadows--Maple Ridge--Mission.  Not a crushing blow, but it does represent a loss of a female candidate, and another riding without a candidate even as the Liberals ponder whether to trigger an election.

Ironically, the Toronto Star is engaging in an online advertising campaign to draw in readers looking for new information on the Tory Bribe Scandal.

Ironically, though that phrase is the headline for the advertising campaign, the material to which the excited reader is directed warns against prematurely labeling the Chuck Cadman story a scandal, and carefully puts the word "bribe" in quotes.