Category: Politics

I know, I know — everyone in Canada is ga-ga for Obama. Still it's kinda cool that when Obama decided to make his first calls to world leaders, he told his staff: Get me the leaders of Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Great Britain on the phone. After those, then I'll do the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Am I being a homer for noting that Obama called Harper first? I dunno. But the British were pretty chuffed that Brown was the first Euro-leader to hear “Prime Minister, I have the President of the United States on line 1.”

Shame about the minor typo in the White House press release but, as someone who's made oodles in his career, who's gonna complain?

Further to this, I am told on the deepest of backgrounds by top sources in Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's office, that, on Monday, Kenney and other Parliamentarians plan to dine in the very Chinese restaurant that Warren Kinsella highlighted in the now-removed blog posting that sparked Conservative calls for Kinsella's head.

And not only will they be dining there, Kenney will be presenting the restaurant's owner with the first ever “Minister's Award for Culinary Excellence in Multicultural Cuisine”. I kid you not.

I have not identified the restaurant — as I don't think I should be in the business of causing it collateral damage and/or collateral benefit but it's in Ottawa and it surely shouldn't be too hard, by now, to find via a Google search.

Ok. Ok. We've had 15 cm of snow in Ottawa and at least that if not more is on the way.

So that may be the excuse for the enthusiasm I hold, as do many Canadians I'm certain, for the Standing Committees of the House of Commons. You can imagine how excited I was to learn that committees will soon hold their inaugural meetings for the 2nd session of the 40th Parliament. The grandly titled Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Foreign Affairs and International Development kicks things off with a meeting on Feb. 2 (why, that's just next week! – ed.) at 3:30 pm.

Indeed, the NDP, at least, is chomping at the bit to get the Natural Resources Committee going so it can grill witnesses from AECL, CNSC and NRCAN Minister Lisa Raitt about Chalk River. It looks, though, like the CNSC, at least, is stepping up to play some public relations in the wake of what Brother Greg has been reporting.

Personally, given what I cover for Canwest and Global National, I'm looking forward to seeing how the Finance Committee shapes up with James Rajotte as chair (should he be elected, of course!) and Garth Turner absent. This committee meets on Tuesday next week. The Libs on that committee I suspect will be the same gang: John McCallum, Massimo Pacetti, and John MacKay with Martha Hall Findlay pitching in as an associate member. I would be bet that the lone NDP member on that committee is Thomas Mulcair. The BQ will send in Jean-Yves Laforest and someone else.

Technorati Tags: economy

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty speaks to the Chamber of Commerce in his hometown of Whitby, Ont. at lunch today, officially kicking off the budget “sell”. Flaherty, John Baird, Lisa Raitt, Jim Prentice and other cabinet ministers will be dispatched across the country to tell you how great the budget it is. You may very well agree with them; you may have some points to ponder.

In any event, you are likely to hear politicians from each side advance a series of numbers from the budget that best supports their individual position.

As you hear the spin war begin about the size of the deficit and the size of the stimulus package, the following might be helpful. Much of the following is based on the analysis of the budget by the economists at BMO Capital Markets [PDF]. That bank's chief economist, Sherry Cooper, and its deputy chief economist, Doug Porter, were among the 40 or so reporters, editors and experts that Canwest News Service had in the budget lockup yesterday and we very much appreciated their advice and counsel.

The Deficit:

• For the fiscal year beginning on April 1 2009 and ending March 31 2010 (This is known as Fiscal 2010 or FY2010), the deficit is $34 billion.
• For the following fiscal year, it is $30 billion.
• *** Buried news of the day*** The government will finish the current fiscal year (April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009) in a deficit. If you've got a copy of the Budget Plan [PDF]it's all right there in the chart on page 217. That's the first time any official government document has concluded that this year, not next year, is the first deficit year since 1998. Finance officials estimate Ottawa will finish in the red by about $1.1 billion this year.
• If the government had done nothing yesterday, the so-called “status quo” deficit before the Flaherty cut a single tax or spent a dime, is about $15 billion for fiscal 2010, higher than expected.

How big is the stimulus package?

•   The economists at BMO Nesbitt Burns estimate that the size of the stimulus package is just $33.5 billion over two years. That's $18 billion this year and $15.5 billion.
• All G20 countries were to introduce a stimulus package worth 2 per cent of GDP. Two per cent of Canada's GDP is about $32 billion.
• The government estimates that, because of the $33.5 billion stimulus package, the GDP will grow this year by an extra 1.2 per cent.
• The government believes their plan will create 142,000 new jobs by the end of the year.
• Porter estimates that the tax cuts in the stimulus plan are worth $6 billion this year and the new spending in the stimulus plan accounts for $17 billion this year.

Stephen Harper and Omar Khadr were born in the same place — Toronto — 27 years apart.

Harper, partly by the happy accident of the kind of family he was born into, went on to become prime minister of his country. Khadr, partly by the unhappy accident of the kind of family he was born into, has been in captivity in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for more than one-third of his life.

Many believe that both Harper and Khadr — and anyone else born in Canada for that matter — should always be able to count on the kind of justice system we have in this country. Indeed, Harper is availing himself of Canada's justice system. He has sued some Liberals for saying nasty things about him. Khadr, on the other hand, is accused of murder and war crimes allegedly committed when he was 15-years-old but Canada's justice system has never had a chance to adjudicate the merits of these charges. (Ironically, Khadr is suing Harper for the right to have his charges adjudicated here.)

Khadr, you'll remember, was arrested by U.S. troops when he was 15 on a battlefield in Afghanistan. Canada's government — the government Harper now leads — was the first country in the world to agree that 15-year-olds, no matter what they were doing on a battlefield and no matter whether they were part of a national army or not, are, by definition, victims of war crimes and not perpetrators of war crimes. This is the other great irony here: The first child – Khadr — to be charged with a war crime is a citizen of the first country in the world to sign the UN “Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict”, which, some legal beagles say, defines anyone under the age of 18 involve or recruited to particpiated in an armed conflict as a victim of a war crime.

This, I should note, is not a Conservative or Liberal thing. Neither prime ministers Harper, Chretien nor Martin ever asked Khadr's jailers and accusers — the Americans — if Canada could have him back so that Canada's justice system can examine the actions of one of their own citizens under the laws that govern all Canadian citizens.

The Khadr debate, it seems to me, is not a debate about the rightness or wrongness of an individual. The crimes he is accused of and may very well be guilty of are heinous and repugnant. To me, this is an issue about Canada's sovereignty. Is Canada willing to allow someone born in the same city as its prime minister to be tried and punished by a court in another country when Canada, through the United Nations and elsewhere, has signed international treaties claiming jurisdiction?

This is no longer an academic question of course. With President Barack Obama's decision to close the jail Khadr has spent one third of his life in, Harper and Canada must soon decide what to with Omar Khadr. The editorial writers at The Calgary Herald have something to say on this issue today.

Technorati Tags: child soldiers, omar khadr, stephen Harper

Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd argues that it might be time to consider ditching the name British Columbia in favour of some a little more au courant:

I side with readers who are concerned that the “British” in British Columbia conveys the anachronistic impression we are an afterthought of a former European empire; like British Guiana or British East Africa, or French Polynesia or the Belgian Congo — before they all dropped their colonial prefixes.

I am well aware residents of the West Coast of Canada enjoy practical independence from Britain. I even have a soft spot for “our” Queen, Elizabeth. But I also appreciate the power of symbols.

Residents of this province have the courage and strength to build on our emerging identity to come up with a more fitting name. All societies are in flux. A decent discussion over our name could reflect our evolution.

Can we find a name that better fits the rugged Pacific Northwest of the continent? What can we call the Canadian arm of a distinct bio-region that includes Oregon and Washington State, which geographers have for decades been calling Cascadia?

What are we afraid of? …. [Read the rest of the column]

He's inviting those with ideas about this to chime in on his blog.

I'm not sure if we knew this already — I didn't so I guess it was news to me — but a very tired-sounding International Trade Minister Stockwell Day said on a conference call today that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will not be able to visit Canada. (Day, in Mumbai where it was 10:30 pm was wrapping up a busy four day visit to India and he sounded like he was looking forward to getting back home.) Prime Minister Singh accepted Prime Minister Harper's invitation to visit Canada when the two met at the Commonwealth Summit in Kampala, Uganda last fall.

If memory serves, the news that Singh had accepted Harper's invitation was greeted with considerable excitement in Canada at the time.

Day did not elaborate on the reasons for Singh's change of heart and Day noted that Singh had, instead, invited Harper to visit India. If Harper accepts — and why wouldn't he? – my bet is that Harper squeezes in a day or two in India when he travels to Singapore next November for the annual leaders summit of APEC leaders.

This picture of Day meeting Singh was provided to me by the Government of Canada.

The folks who wrote up The Onion report on George W. Bush's inauguration in 2001 thought they were being funny. With hindsight, it looks more sad than funny …

WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”

President-elect Bush vows that “together, we can put the triumphs of the recent past behind us.”

“My fellow Americans,” Bush said, “at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.” … [Read the rest]

Tip o' the toque to the good lookin' guy with the Accordion …

Technorati Tags: George W. Bush

Commenter JAD alerts me to the ad campaign of the Canadian Labour Congress. You can listen to the ad here. The ad encourages listeners to tell their MPs to put “working people” first as they draw up the budget.

The ad is part of the CLC's “Get Real” campaign (that's its logo on the left). “Government must find solutions that help everybody, not just the banks and corporations that got us into this mess. Working people and their unions are going to be part of the solution as Canadians rebuild their lives and communities.,” the CLC says.