Month: October 2007

As my colleague Robert Fife reported last night, General Rick Hillier, the Chief of Canada's Defence Staff will finish his three-year appointment on schedule in February, 2008.

Hillier, it is widely believed, would have preferred to have his tenure extended at least through February 2009 when the mission in Afghanistan is scheduled to end but senior officials in the government believe that, at this point, Hillier is more of a liability than an asset.

Chiefs of Defence Staff normally serve for a three-year term so look for the governnment to spin this as a routine change of command. But it is not uncommon for governments to extend a CDS' term and certainly, the case could be made the Hillier has been an extraordinary CDS.

There are three potential replacements for Hillier: The Vice Chief of Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk (you pronounce that Na -tin-shuk, by the way and that's him in the beret in the picture on this page, a picture I took, by the way, outside the House of Commons on the day last fall when Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai visited); Chief of the Land Staff Lt. Gen Andrew Leslie, and the Chief of the Maritime Staff Drew Robertson. (The Air Force is out of this lottery as the top air force general, Angus Watt, just started his tenure in that spot in August. He may very well be CDS one day but that day is not in March, 2008.)

I've blogged before on this succession thing and, tonight, knowing what we know about the PMO's views about DND, I'd be putting my money on 'Smiling Walt'.

The PMO sees Leslie — a very capable officer — as being too much like Hillier, i.e., an empire builder who would be too popular with the troops because he would speak his mind. My defence sources say Robertson simply isn't of the same caliber a commander as the current crop of army guys. And, if there's a knock on Natynczyk, it's that he's too much the “company man”, which is exactly what the PMO and the new deputy minister of DND, Robert Fonber, is looking for right now.

Pollster Nik Nanos says, for the first time in the provincial election race in Ontario, that Premier Dalton McGuinty has edged into majority territory.
Nanos' firm SES Research has McGuinty's Liberals at at 44 per cent, 10 points up on John Tory's Conservatives. Howard Hampton's NDP are at 15 per cent and the Greens are at 7 per cent. The pollster was in the field Sept. 28-30 and says the results are accurate to within 4.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
In the meantime, John Tory, um, modifies his position on the issue of public funding of faith-based schools. Tory's fellow Tories are blaming his earlier position on this this issue for what now appears to the party's failure to break through against McGuinty.
The vote is on October 10.

My friend J.D. Bellavance tells readers of La Presse this morning that Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe is getting ready to depart the federal stage.

Bellavance wryly notes that, after spending 17 years in the House of Commons working for the breakup of Canada, Duceppe will be eligible to collect a pension from Canada's taxpayers of about $150,000   $115,000 a year:

Le chef du Bloc québécois, Gilles Duceppe, prépare son retrait de la politique. M. Duceppe a confié à certains proches collaborateurs qu’il dirigera les troupes bloquistes pour la dernière fois aux prochaines élections fédérales.

Élu pour la première fois à la Chambre des communes en 1990 à la faveur d’une élection partielle dans Laurier–Sainte-Marie, M. Duceppe a aussi confirmé son intention de quitter la barre du Bloc québécois après les prochaines élections fédérales à la chef du PQ, Pauline Marois, son alliée souverainiste à Québec, a appris La Presse. [Read the rest of the story]

Hmm. This ought to stir things up.

Radiohead, the internationally renowned band, has taken the unusual step of telling fans that they can pay as much or as little as they like for the band's new album, In Rainbows.
In a break from industry tradition the UK band… has told fans “it's up to you” what they pay to digitally download the album.
This isn't the first time that an artist has opted to charge nothing for an album, but the move is significant because Radiohead remains one of the biggest bands in the world.

Radiohead is free to sell its album directly from its official website because it is no longer tied to a record label. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood tells fans on the website that the album is only available to pre-order from the website, where it can be downloaded on release on October 10. [Read the whole story]

Gordon O'Connor may be gone but a key document he worked on for most of his tenure as Canada's Defence Minister comes before cabinet tomorrow, my defence industry sources tell me.
O'Connor, while he as an opposition MP, pretty much wrote up his party's first principles for a “Canada First” defence strategy and then went out and made sure the grassroots of his party adopted them at the party's first-ever policy convention in Montreal in 2005.

Peter MacKay is now defence minister so it'll be up to him to make the case for the “Canada First” defence strategy — an important 'master plan' of sorts that sets out the kinds of threats and dangers Canada's civilian leaders expect their military leaders to guard us against over the next 20 years or so. O'Connor, the former general is who is now our Minister of National Revenue, will get a chance to have his say just like everyone else around the cabinet table.
This document becomes the guide for recruitment, procurement, and training for Canada's Armed Forces.
The Conservatives call this document “Canada First”. The Liberals called their last such document, approved by cabinet in 2005 when Bill Graham was defence minister, the “Defence Policy Statement“. This document has made it to some committees of cabinet a few times but has been sent back for review and revision each time. Tomorrow, it looks like it might make it through full cabinet.
What's in it? Don't know but would love to.
The Ruxted Group — a kind of ad hoc group of current and former CF members with an interest in defence policy — believes that the Canada First strategy should come with a steep price tag — and that it should not be simply an exercise in shuffling the deck chairs:

We need to worry less and less about how headquarters are structured, and even whether or not we have too many underemployed admirals and generals, and focus on building, staffing and sustaining enough (many more than we have now) ships, and army and air force units – combat units and support units alike. Ruxted has posited that we will need much more than $20 billion by 2010 for the defence budget. It will have to grow by tens of billions and we will have to find that money year after year for decades to come if we are to pay a lead role in the long, arduous war which we face.
This needs to be presented to Canadians in a Throne Speech. A responsible Canadian government needs to be elected on a promise to make Canada a leader in the world and to give Canada the armed forces which will make that possible. Then it needs to keep that promise. Canada is a modern, sophisticated and, above all, a rich country. We can help the less fortunate in the world; we can lead the other middle powers in the quest to “do the right thing.” It takes will and it takes money.

Environmentalists I spoke to today were “pleasantly surprised” that Corporate Canada, including titans of the oil patch like Suncor's Rick George, endorsed a call for an “aggressive” plan to reduce the greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, that cause global warming.
What really seemed to raise some eyebrows was the assertion by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) that Canada must commit itself to an absolute reduction of greenhouse gases. In other words, the total amount of greenhouse gases produced in Canada must, at some point in the future, be smaller in one year than in the previous year — even if economic output were to jump, say, 50 per cent from one year to the next.
That's quite a change from the Conservative government's widely criticized “intensity” targets in which the amount of greenhouse gases per unit of economic output must decrease. With intensity targets it is possible that greenhouse gases could rise if economic output continues to rise from year to year.
Now, mind you, Environment Minister John Baird asserts that his government's intensity targets are so severe that they essentially amount to an absolute target. You won't be surprised to hear, though, that climate change scientists, including some of who have, at times been seen as sympathetic to the government's view, generally disagree with him.
So here's the CCCE today:
“While intensity targets make sense as a means of encouraging Canadian firms to become more efficient without being penalized for growing, the ultimate goal must be to achieve a substantial absolute reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases, in Canada and globally.”
This statement is part of a document, one should add, that is not produced by a policy wonk in some industry association — this is a document signed by the chief executive officers of 33 of Canada's largest companies, including Rick George, the chief executive of the Suncor, the biggest producer in Alberta's oil sands.
Environmentalists were also encouraged by the chief executives reference to the fact that carbon needs to have a fair and appropriate price attached to it. The thinking there is that if carbon has a price on it, it will show up on a firm's balance sheet as an asset or a liability — just like a factory or a loan to be paid — and that means firms will make rational decisions that should tend, over time, to reduce their liabilities, i.e. reduce their creation of carbon. Here's what the CEOs said:
“The price signal is an important means to ensure that energy use reflects its environmental costs, and these signals can be strengthened through market-based mechanisms such as emissions trading and environmental taxation. However, any such tools must be designed so that industries and consumers are not merely penalized, but have positive reasons to act. Policies aimed at changing behaviour through price signals must deliver positive environmental outcomes in ways that foster an innovative economy and strengthen Canada's competitive advantage.”