Month: February 2008

The Harper government was sworn in precisely two years ago, on Feb. 6, 2006. This anniversary was viewed differently on either side of the aisle today in the House of Commons. Most of those on The Speaker's right probably held these views:

Mr. Brian Jean (Fort McMurray—Athabasca, CPC): Mr. Speaker, two years ago on February 6, 2006, our Conservative government was sworn in. Today, we continue to deliver positive results for Canadians. Two years ago our Prime Minister said “We will build on the shared achievements of Canadians, past and present, to keep our country strong, united, independent and free”. With his strong leadership, this Conservative government is working together with Canadians to build a better Canada. By setting focused priorities, we continue to pursue an agenda of clear goals with real results. Unlike our opponents, we choose to govern, not to rule. Our country has seen that leadership without service is self-serving, just as leadership without priorities goes nowhere. Today our government is more accountable, our economy is stronger, and our country is more united. Canada is back. Happy anniversary.

M. Steven Blaney (Lévis—Bellechasse, PCC): Monsieur le Président, aujourd'hui, après deux ans, je tiens à féliciter mes collègues conservateurs qui s'attaquent aux vrais enjeux qui préoccupent réellement les Québécois. Fini le conflit sur le bois d'oeuvre qui pourrissait sous le régime libéralo-bloquiste. Oui à un allègement fiscal de 8 milliards de dollars pour le secteur manufacturier; oui à 1,3 milliard de dollars pour la recherche en sciences et technologie; oui encore à un plan vert avec des cibles concrètes, des normes contraignantes et plus de 5 milliards de dollars pour les énergies renouvelables; oui à un allègement fiscal de 190 milliards de dollars pour les familles et les aînés; oui à la gestion de l'offre avec des gestes concrets, pas juste de belles paroles.

Pendant ce temps, les bloquistes s'épivardent, critiquent sans cesse et n'offrent aucun bilan concret aux Québécois. On le voit bien, pendant que le Bloc québécois vire à tout vent en prônant une chose et son contraire, les conservateurs pensent aux vrais intérêts de tous les Québécois et de tous les Canadiens.

While many on the Speaker's left held this view:

Mr. Roger Valley (Kenora, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, today marks two years of broken promises by the Conservative government. The government started off promising to be squeaky clean and to achieve five priorities. Instead, it opted for mismanagement and hypocrisy. Here are some examples. The government broke an election promise not to tax income trusts, resulting in a loss to Canadians of $25 billion and counting. The finance minister flip-flopped on the disastrous interest deductibility measure. The government gutted 92% of funding for climate change programs, and then repackaged them with new names, less money and less commitment. The government broke an election promise to honour the $5.1-billion Kelowna accord. The government turned back the clock on women's equality by removing the word “equality” from the mandate of the women's program. The government broke an election promise to create 125,000 new child care spaces. After two years of Harp-o-crisy and two years of broken promises, this is not a happy anniversary.

M. Pablo Rodriguez (Honoré-Mercier, Lib.): Monsieur le Président, c'est un deuxième anniversaire bien peu reluisant que célèbre le gouvernement conservateur. Pour un parti qui a basé campagne sur la responsabilité et la confiance, les exemples de promesses brisées et de rendez-vous manqués sont légion. Ce gouvernement avait promis de respecter les langues officielles, un élément qui se situe au coeur de notre identité. Toutefois, depuis leur arrivée au pouvoir, ils ont multiplié les attaques envers le bilinguisme. Ils ont annulé le Programme de contestation judiciaire et ont affaibli le bilinguisme, tant sur les bases militaires qu'au sein des Forces armées canadiennes en général.

Les conservateurs avaient promis de maintenir le budget du Conseil du Arts du Canada une fois qu'ils seraient au pouvoir. Mais, nous nous sommes rapidement aperçu que la culture comptait peu pour ce gouvernement qui s'est empressé de sabrer dans les budgets des musées et des programmes d'aide et d'initiative internationale. Lorsqu'il est question de défendre les éléments essentiels de notre culture, des éléments qui constituent notre propre identité, les conservateurs n'ont pas hésité un instant à renier leurs promesses. Les Canadiens s'en rappelleront.

The weekly Liberal caucus meeting normally runs from 10 am until noon. It looks to go a little longer today. Liberal sources tell CTV News that leader Stephane Dion is being criticized for drawing a line in the sand on Afghanistan. Toronto-area MP Roy Cullen (left) has just stood up, sources say, and flatly told Dion he is wrong on Afghanistan. Not only that, Cullen says he’s damn well going to vote the way he wants to vote — Dion has said the vote will be whipped — and that Cullen is leaning towards voting with the Conservatives.

Cullen was quickly joined by three more Liberal MPs in opposition to the Leader of the Opposition.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Cullen disputed this account:

“Your source has given you misinformation. Mr. Cullen has respected party loyalty and party discipline for the 12 years that he has been an MP.  As such he is not going to discuss what occurred at caucus.  It is unfortunate that your source does not have the same basic respect for their party or their colleagues.

“However, for the record, Mr. Cullen did at no point ever say that he would vote against the leader, or use the language that you are reporting.”

 

The Prime Minister’s Office is circulating this statement in the wake of Harper’s meeting last night with Liberal Leader Stephane Dion:

The PM was clear in his news conference, in accepting the broad recommendations of the bi partisan Manley Report, that this Government believes this to be a very serious matter and one of great importance to Canada

The Government will introduce a motion in the House based on the Manley Report later this week. We expect debate to begin next week.

We have time and are willing to be patient while the Liberals sort out their position.

We have asked the Opposition to reconsider their refusal to study the Manley Report before committee.

We have encouraged a fulsome public debate and urge the Opposition to take part

If we believe our NATO allies will be forthcoming with the assistance we have asked for, the vote will take place in late March.

Our sources inside this morning’s national Liberal caucus tell us that Lleader Stephane Dion has just briefed MPs on his meeting last night with Prime Minister Harper. As my colleague Robert Fife reported last night, Harper told Dion that he’s going to introduce a “notice of motion” on Afghanistan later this week and that that motion will be a confidence vote. The implication was clear: If the Liberals don’t get on board with Harper’s motion, we’re going to the electorate.

This morning, Liberal sources tell CTV that this is the motion:

“That Canada will extend their combat mission beyond February 9th 2009 if 1000 troops from other countries and military equipment in the form of heliopters are also provided.”

Unlike the Government’s first motion on Afghanistan, there will be plenty of time set aside for MPs to debate this motion — a full nine days, as opposed to the six hours of rushed debate on a surprise motion to extend the mission that happened on May 17, 2006.

The vote, the PM said, will likely take place towards the end of March and Harper wants the vote taken before NATO leaders meet in Bucharest, Romania in early April.

Dion told his MPs that, for the Liberals, the vote will be “whipped”, which means MPs risk their place in caucus if they do not vote the way Dion tells them to. Dion will be telling them to vote against this motion but — intriguingly — he told the PM he will put forward an amendment. We don’t yet know what the amendment is but, if either the Liberals or Conservatives want to avoid an election, perhaps this is the ‘out’.

And, in a separate development, the vote on the federal budget will take place in the first week in March.

So that means there will be two votes – at least — next month upon which the government could stand or fall.

Is everyone’s election bus ready to go?

Minutes after Norman Spector, a former political advisor to Brian Mulroney, finished testifying at the House of Commons Ethics Committee about what he knew about the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, some of this former colleagues released the following:

Open letter from B. Roy, D. Burney, S. Hartt & H. Segal

“We are surprised and disappointed to see that one of our former colleagues as Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, a position in which each of us were privileged to serve, has made a series of allegations during his appearance before the House of Commons Ethics Committee by promising to reveal the sources of cash payments delivered to 24 Sussex Drive while he, Norman Spector, served as the senior confidential political adviser to Mr. Mulroney. The claims he made are not new, having been the subject of at least one decades-old effort at “investigative journalism”, but it is difficult to see how they can in any way be remotely linked to the mandate the Committee has given itself.

The re-imbursement of the Mulroney household’s personal expenses, and Mr. Mulroney’s expenses in his role as party leader as well as those legitimately incurred in his governmental role and therefore reimbursable by his employer, was handled by a process of allocation on the basis of invoices or other evidence of expenditures and careful evaluation of the purpose of each outlay.

In essence, each month’s expenses were divided into three categories – government, party and personal. Claims for reimbursement by the government were forwarded to P.C.O. for processing. Receipts deemed payable by the party were forwarded to the PC Canada Fund. Personal expenses were sent to Mr. Mulroney’s private accountant in Montreal for payment.

This process for reimbursement never resulted in any dispute or disagreement with any of the three distinct sources as to the appropriateness of the allocation amongst them. It is no different from the reimbursement procedures followed by any employee who travels or has out-of-pocket expenses in the course of his or her business. The sums were not large having regard to the scope of the responsibilities of the Mulroney’s and the operation of their household.

Claims and payments were received and reimbursements made by administrative staff. We were responsible for the system’s oversight. Reimbursement of claims were made directly by the PC Canada Fund or by a cheque delivered for deposit by a PMO staff member. When cash was necessary for purchases of the household it was delivered to the residence.

In our experience, there was nothing untoward or sensational about the practice followed.  The process was straightforward.  If any aspect had troubled Mr. Spector during his time in the PMO, he would have had the full authority to make whatever changes he deemed necessary. “

 Bernard Roy   Derek Burney   Stanley Hartt   Hugh Segal

On January 10, at a lumber mill in New Brunswick, Prime Minister Harper announced his government would create a $1–billion “community development trust” which one-industry towns hurt by plant shutdown could tap into for funds to re-train workers, invest in research and development, or attract new industry.

But Harper tied the billion-dollar aid package to support in the House of Commons for his government’s budget. The message being: If you don’t vote for the budget — and to keep the Conservative government afloat — you’ll be voting against support for laid-off workers and struggling rural communities.

In fact, as recently as Jan. 21, speaking to reporters in Prince Albert, Sask. — that city’s largest private sector employer, Weyerhaeuser, shut its pulp-and-paper plant there last spring — Harper insisted that the aid package would be part of the budget: “About this money being conditional on adoption of a budget — of course it's conditional on adoption of a budget! All new spending is conditional on adoption of a budget; always, in every single jurisdiction in this country.”

His opponents howled that Harper was engaging in politicial blackmail. The provinces, too — notably Ontario Premier McGuinty and Quebec Premier Charest — criticized Harper, saying that if he was serious about helping towns decimated by shutdowns, he would disconnect the aid package from the budget.

Today the government did that and Government House Leader Peter Van Loan stood in front of reporters trying hard to spin the government line: It wasn’t criticism of the government that changed their mind, it was enthusiasm for the government’s good idea!

“We thought there was such a positive response, from the provinces, from people across Canada to what we had proposed,” Van Loan said.

Incidentally, here are some numbers, provided by Natural Resources Canada, about the downturn in the forestry sector in 2007:

Across the country, a total of 112 paper or lumber mills shut down in 2007. NRCAN calls this an “instance of capacity closure”. Here’s the regional breakdown for such “capacity closure”:

• BC:  32 instances of capacity closure, 2807 layoffs
• Prairies:  13 instances of capacity closure, 738 layoffs
• Ontario:  19 instances of capacity closure, 2560 layoffs
• Quebec:  38 instances of capacity closure, 3683 layoffs
• Atlantic:  10 instances of capacity closure, 2328 layoffs

Prime Minister Stephen Harper telephoned French President Nicolas Sarkozy this morning to talk about NATO and Afghanistan. The prime minister’s communications director Sandra Buckler just e-mailed reporters an account of that conversation:

This morning, Prime Minister Harper spoke to President Sarkozy. The conversation began with the Prime Minister thanking President Sarkozy for the assistance France has provided to Canadians seeking to leave Chad in the wake of the violence there. Then, the Prime Minister reviewed with the President the creation of the Manley Panel and the contents of its report, including the recommendation that Canada remain in Afghanistan, in Kandahar, but only if we can secure additional troops from NATO allies and additional equipment for the Canadian Forces. The Prime Minister and President noted that their respective Defence Ministers will be meeting this week in Vilnius at the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting and agreed to stay in touch themselves during the coming weeks.

 

ATo manage my digital photos, I'm a big fan of Apple's iPhoto. iPhoto hasn't yet made it to a Windows platform just yet but Google is already there with Picasa — a great piece of freeware for managing your digital photo library and doing basic tweaks to your photos. I've recently been fiddling with PicasaWeb — Google's online photo management and display tool (Flickr — which is a Yahoo! product — is probably the dominant platform in this space.)  PicasaWeb lets you upload some photos and then  insert a slideshow of a Web album like this: