Month: September 2006

NDP Leader Jack Layton (left), whose party has called for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan, spoke with journalists in the House of Commons foyer shortly after he had a brief meeting with Afghan President Hamid Kharzai. Here is some of what he had to say:

LAYTON: He’s a very thoughtful individual and certainly someone of great courage and I think some considerable wisdom.  I asked him about his remark in his speech which was that the root causes of the terrorism and the sources lie outside of his country.  I asked if he was speaking about the provinces in Pakistan adjacent to Afghanistan and that’s exactly what he meant and I said are you proposing a military approach to that problem and he said no, it’s got to be political. We need to have negotiations.  Well, of course this is one of the points that the NDP has been making. There has to be a comprehensive peace process that involves negotiations and other players including Pakistan.  I have frequently repeated this. 

 

For some reason, our government refuses to take that challenge up.  In fact, our defence minister was over there trying to encourage them to buy — the Pakistanis — to buy our nuclear power.  That’s rather far from suggesting to them that they start to do their share on their side of the border with regard to the Taliban who are coming across and attacking the Afghanis and of course the Canadian soldiers who are there. 

 

We also talked about the poppy situation and he indicated this was a grave problem and that it was equally important to the terrorist issue and of course he said that also in his public speech.  I asked him how that could be approached and, frankly, it was somewhat of a sigh and he realized — he pointed out how complex it is.  I didn’t get into a discussion with him — it was too brief — about that issue and I hope to pursue it further with him tomorrow because economic development for the people of Afghanistan is fundamental. He pointed out the farmers are living in poverty and they need income.  

 

And, you know, unlike the Conservatives who probably would assume that Mr. Karzai wouldn’t talk to someone with a different point of view, his point of view was that democratic discussion and assessing things from different points of view was fundamental in a democracy and he was most forthcoming in his discussion with me which, frankly, didn’t surprise me although it might surprise some of the Conservatives who holler and jeer while you’re trying to ask a reasonable question in the House.

 

Question: Did [Karzai] swaty you in any way in your call for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan?

 

Layton: Well, of course what we have suggested is that a new strategy forward needs to be constructed, that we need to notify our partners that we would be withdrawing from the south of Afghanistan and then work strongly in a leadership role, hopefully, to construct a new and more balanced approach to Afghanistan and we’ve always said it should involve a comprehensive diplomatic process as well as the balance between defence and reconstruction and aid, that it had to be more complex than this rather single-minded focus that our government seems to have had on the military operations in the south, mirroring the George Bush approach.  And I come away from my brief conversation with President Karzai convinced that a much more complex approach is needed, that the issue of the poppy farms is as important, as he said, as terrorism, that addressing the situation involving Pakistan is absolutely critical to finding a solution here.  These are things our prime minister doesn’t speak about.  He prefers to slip into the rhetoric of suggesting that anybody who wants to have a more complex approach is simply being somehow unpatriotic or siding with the enemy.  That’s not the case.  None of us want to see the Taliban back in power and we believe that the current course in the south of Afghanistan is not going to take us to the results that Canadians are seeking.

 

Question: Did he express any concerns about the NDP position?

 

Layton:No, he didn’t.

 

Question:   Can I ask you briefly about how the conversations with Mr. Karzai came about considering you had no idea whether you were scheduled to actually speak with him?

 

Layton:  Well, fortunately, there was a brief reception for the party leaders that the Speaker had put on. So over a glass of juice and pleasantries we were actually able to get into a discussion about the issues.  The prime minister was present.  All the party leaders were present and it was very productive. I found Mr. Karzai is not nervous or doesn't get his back up when you talk about controversial issues.  Maybe there's a lesson that could be learned by some of the backbenchers here in our Parliament.

 

Question:   Can I ask you briefly about how the conversations with Mr. Karzai came about considering you had no idea whether you were scheduled to actually speak with him?

 

Layton:  Well, fortunately, there was a brief reception for the party leaders that the Speaker had put on. So over a glass of juice and pleasantries we were actually able to get into a discussion about the issues.  The prime minister was present.  All the party leaders
were present and it was very productive. I found Mr. Karzai is not nervous or doesn't get his back up when you talk about controversial issues.  Maybe there's a lesson that could be learned by some of the backbenchers here in our Parliament.

I was in the House of Commons this morning for the historic address to a joint session of the Commons and the Senate by the first-ever democratically elected leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. [CTV has archived video of Karzai’s speech here — look for the video links on the right hand side of the page]

Among those present for Karzai’s speech were some of the family members of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. I spotted, for example, the parents of Capt. Nichola Goddard.

There were many notables in the Commons for his speech and some notable no-shows. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin, for example, was not in the House — even though both he and former Prime Minister Chretien were praised by Karzai for their commitment to Afghanistan. In fact, there were more than a dozen Liberal MPs — and perhaps as many two dozen — who were absent for the speech. This is all the more odd because it was the Liberals, of course, who first sent Canadian troops into Afghanistan. By comparison, I did not see an empty seat among the Conservative, BQ, or NDP benches.

Among the notables spotted in the Commons galleries and tucked into seats in all corners of the House:

• Mrs. Harper and Mrs. Karzai
• Liberal leadership hopeful and former NDP MP Bob Rae.
• Maj.-Gen. (ret’d) Lewis Mackenzie
• Auditor General Sheila Fraser
• Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart
• Senior officials, including the deputy minister, from the Department of Foreign Affairs. (That’s rare: Departmental bureaucrats rarely attend events in the Commons)
• Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley

One other notable no-show: RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli. With several Mounties serving now in Afghanistan, many would have expected Zaccardelli to attend but, of course, had he shown up, he would have been besieged by us jackals in the press about his future as Commissioner.

The Assembly of First Nations used its time in front of the House of Commons Finance Committee yesterday to ask for help for aboriginal children in Canada. The finance committee is taking pre-budget submissions. Why do they need help? Here’s some of the bullet points provided by AFN researchers.

• Better than one of every ten First Nations children living on reserve in Canada is living in foster care on welfare. By comparison, only about one of every 100 non-native, off-reserver children is in such care.
• On a per-child basis, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada provides about 33 per cent less funding, the AFN says, compared to the average amount provincial governments set aside for care of non-native, off-reserve children.
• 22,000 First Nation children are in the care of child welfare agencies across Canada. The key factor for taking children into care is physical neglect due to poverty. 38 per cent of cases have been exposed to family violence as the substantiated form of maltreatment leading to placement.

A few months ago, the House of Commons International Trade Committee talked to International Trade Minister David Emerson about a free trade agreement with Korea. During his testimony at that time, Emerson referred to some studies his department had commissioned to assess the economic impact in Canada of a free trade agreement with Korea. NDP MP and committee member Peter Julian successfully moved a motion at Committee asking for those reports. I immediately filed an Access to Information Request to receive those reports and asked Emerson if he would not just release them. That was a few months ago.

In the meantime, the Canadian Auto Workers went about its own economic impact study of a Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA). On Monday night, CAW president Buzz Hargrove told Emerson’s office it was going to release those studies today.

And then — in the sort of coincidence that makes reporters suspicious — the governnment’s economic impact studies that Julian and I had asked for were posted online at a government Web site some time around 8 pm Ottawa time with zero fanfare or announcement. We learned they were posted online when Hargrove told us at a morning press conference today.

Hargrove said that the government’s economic impact studies show that, even in the “best-case” scenario, a Korean FTA would have little positive impact on the Canadian economy. Indeed, one of the conclusions — written by Industry Canada researchers — says:

“An elimination of the Korean automotive tariff alone would have a negligible impact on Canadian automotive exports. Even a large increase in exports of parts or vehicles would be insignificant when compared to our overall exports.”

Back in June, Emerson told the international trade committee:

“The Canada-Korea potential free trade agreement does have the potential to offer substantial benefits to Canada, we've quantified them and modeled them, they're well in excess of a half a bill dollars, perhaps upwards into the $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year range. It's not that we're trying to get into a free trade agreement that is going to be harmful to Canada: quite the contrary.”

The CAW’s studies, you won’t be surprised to learn, show that a Korean FTA would cause massive job losses in the Canadian automotive sector.

In any event —  I asked Emerson about the status of the Korean FTA negotations in a post-Question Period scrum on Monday and he said, “To be honest, we are nowhere near a free-trade agreement with Korea. “

Hargrove met with Emerson today and said their meeting was a good one and that Emerson seemed sympathetic to the points he was making.

Still not sure what all the secrecy was about when it comes to those economic impact studies and why they had to be quietly posted online at 8 pm. The only people who do that sort of thing are people who are usually trying to hide something …

The House of Commons Finance Committee began accepting pre-budget submissions today from various interest groups. John McCallum (left), the former chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada and the current finance critic in the Liberal caucus, opened up the Liberal discussions on the next budget with the following ‘framing statement’ (I have lightly edited it):

“It is bordering on fraudulent or insulting to invite Canadians to submit budget proposals on competitiveness when the last budget emptied the fiscal cupboard while doing essentially nothing for productivity or competitiveness. [The] latest numbers from [governnment and private sector experts] indicate less than $2 billion per year until the end of the decade, and that's before paying anything for fiscal imbalance, environment, Afghanistan extension, etc.

So one of our focuses will be to ask people whether last year's budget did anything for their competitiveness or productivity.”

The last time gunboats sailed the Great Lakes with angry sailors intent on shooting something was the War of 1812. Since then, the Great Lakes have remained largely free of gunboats from either the U.S. or Canada. But now, in this new age of terror, the U.S. is prepared to anchor machine guns to the decks of U.S. Coast Guard ships patrolling the Great Lakes.

The Coast Guard plans to train its personnel to shoot these weapons and is asking for comment on the idea of cordoning off certain areas of the Great Lakes to conduct live fire training exercises. Though these Great Lakes are a shared bi-national resource, the U.S. Coast Guard, at this point, plans to hold meetings only in Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio.

The first Question Period in the House of Commons got underway today with a moment of silence to remember the victims of Dawson College.

Shortly after, Opposition Leader Bill Graham led off with a related question: Why would the Conservatives want to eliminate the gun registry? “How will weakening the registry benefit all Canadians?” Graham asked.

Prime Minister Harper said the registry was not effective. “Today's laws did not affect us.”

Harper told the House that he has asked the RCMP to present his government with some suggestions on how best to prevent “an unstable individual as [Gill] from getting hold of firearms.”

Some other notes:

Number of cabinet ministers absent from Question Period; 2 (MacKay and Flaherty)

Number of Liberal leadership candidates in the House: 2 of a possible 6 (Brison and Ignatieff present)

Number of former prime ministers present for QP: 0

Note: The Liberals have slightly rearranged their seating plan. Michael Ignatieff is no longer on the back bench. He's moved up one row and is now in the fourth row with Liberal Ken Dryden to his right and Bloc MP Gaudet to his left.

In fact, all leadership candidates are down by the Bloc.

Volpe is in the front row. Behind him is Dion, behind him is Brison, behind him is Ignatieff. Fry sits next to Dion and Dryden is next to Iggy.