Category: Politics/Conservatives

This is the first of a series of posts you'll likely see related to next week's cabinet announcements. Tonight, a quick note about Gerry Ritz and why he's going to stay right where he is as Agriculture Minister.

Ritz, as everyone by now must surely know, said some pretty stupid things on a conference call in August with government bureaucrats and scientists. Someone on that call apparently had an axe to grind with either Ritz or the Harper government and, in mid-campaign, spilled the beans with a blow-by-blow account of the dumb things Ritz said on that call. We can assume that the unknown leaker probably did not vote Conservative.

Ritz quickly apologized for the remark and seemed suitably humbled.

Opposition politicians said apology wasn't good enough. They howled for his head.

And at that moment — a thoughtful Conservative source reminded me today as we ran over cabinet possibilities — Ritz's job was secured. Why, you ask?

Here's the thinking from my Conservative friend and it's thinking I tend to agree with: If you've watched Stephen Harper over the last several years, you would likely agree that that the last thing that works with him is bullying or underhanded tactics. He will conclude that someone tried to embarrass him into firing or demoting his Agriculture Minister by releasing contents of a phone call that ought to have stayed private. His Minister, Harper will conclude, did the right thing upon this revelation. Harper will also conclude that, by and large, Ritz has been a relatively competent agriculture minister. Harper will note that voters in Ritz's Saskatchewan riding handily returned him to the House. And Harper will be damned if some bureaucrat can get the idea that a minister can be felled if they reveal confidential information.

And if he sacks Ritz or demotes him, it will look like he gave in to demands from the likes of Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter, who Conservatives have a particular dislike for.

So Ritz is staying right where he is and that will be Harper's way of letting bureaucrats and anyone else know that there's no pushing him around.

Technorati Tags:
conservatives, stephen harper, cabinet shuffles

Josée Verner is the Conservative Heritage Minister. She is her party's candidate in the Quebec City riding of Louis St. Laurent. But Verner lives in the riding of Portneuf-Jacques Cartier, the only riding in the country where there is no Conservative candidate and that is where, according to the BQ, she voted this morning.
The Tories opted not to run a candidate in Portneuf preferring instead to let independent incumbent André Arthur have any votes that come from the right side of the political spectrum. (Though he is an independent, Arthur tended to support the government on most votes and the government did him a favour in giving a seat and speaking time on the Commons' Industry Committee).
So, with no Tory running in the riding she lives in, the Bloc Québécois just asked:
“Pour qui donc madame Verne a-t-elle voté?” Who did Verner vote for?

Here's a few pics I snapped in between taking notes while covering the Harper's post-debate trip to Atlantic Canada.

And here's some stuff I wrote about it:

MONCTON, N.B. – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper reminded enthusiastic supporters here of his family's New Brunswick roots and cheered the region's “confidence” and “vibrant entrepreneurial economy” hours after Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, also campaigning near here, reminded Atlantic Canada voters that Harper once characterized the region as having “a culture of defeat.”

“It is always very emotional when I come back to New Brunswick,” Harper said at the end of a 25-minute stump speech to about 450 supporters in a local high school. Though Harper was born in Toronto, his father was born in New Brunswick and he can trace his family roots back to the 1700s in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

“This area, this economy – you may not see it living here every day – but this has come so far from the times when I was a boy. This place has developed a strong economy, (and) a vibrant entrepreneurial economy,” Harper said. “There is confidence. There is energy.”

In a speech in 2002, shortly after he became leader of the official Opposition, Harper said Atlantic Canada was trapped in “a culture of defeat”, a result of federal government policies. Harper refused to apologize then even though the Legislature of Nova Scotia unanimously condemned the comment and former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord also criticized Harper for the remark.

Lord, now the co-chair of the Conservative campaign, delivered a fiery speech at the rally, in a riding held by Liberal MP Brian Murphy.

“It's not a coincidence that after the prime minister won the debates, that he has decided to come to New Brunswick two days in a row and only to visit Liberal ridings,” Lord said. “At the same time, we have Stephane Dion fighting for his job as leader of the Opposition who was also visiting Liberal ridings. I think that tells you something very important.”

Earlier in the day, speaking in Yarmouth, N.S., Harper said his party was optimistic about its electoral chances in the four eastern provinces.

“There's probably no part of the country where people are more sensitive about the costs of energy,” Harper said. In most parts of Atlantic Canada, the primary source of energy for home heating is fuel, whereas it is electricity in Quebec and natural gas and electricity in the rest of the country. “When the opposition party's major plank is they're going to deal with economic uncertainty by imposing a carbon tax, I think that shakes up a lot of people, even a lot of people who have been pretty traditional Liberal voters.”

While in the region, the Conservatives announced that if re-elected, they would increase the budgets of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the Department of Western Economic Diversification, and the Economic Development Agency of Canada for Quebec Regions by $300 million over four years. Harper said he would also divert $10 million of that funding to rural and low-employment communities in southern Ontario.

“The regions of Canada are unique, unique in their needs, their potential and their aspirations,” Harper said at a news conference in a maritime museum here. “Therefore we have made investments accordingly.”

Earlier in his career, Harper and others in the Reform Party movement sometimes criticized regional development agencies – which spend nearly a $1 billion a year – because they appeared to be sources of funds politicians could dip into for projects that might win them political support.

The Conservatives themselves have made questionable investments with regional development money, say Liberals say.

A few days before the election, for example, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who is the minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, announced ACOA would provide $50,000 for a three-day curling tournament to be held next month in his riding in New Glasgow, N.S., where he is now facing Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. Mackay said at the time, the funding is “a marketing effort (that) will also promote this area as a tourism destination and a good place to do business.”

Technorati Tags: conservatives, elections, protestors, bernard lord, Stephen Harper

Unable to sleep after Thursday's English-language debates, Prime Minister Stephen Harper got up at 3 a.m. and tried to unwind by watching the U.S. vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.
He would not say if it helped him sleep.
In an informal chat with reporters Saturday at the back of his campaign plane, Harper touched on that and several topics.
It was the fourth time in this campaign that he's wandered down the aisle from his seat in the front of the Air Canada Airbus 360 to the back rows of the plane where the media sit.
Tonight, he said he liked the debate format, particularly the in-the-round seating. He said he has no plans to become a political pundit once he leaves politics. And, as he and his staff shut their campaign down Sunday, he spoke about the value of rest and pacing in a long campaign.
At the end of his fourth week, a week which included two two-hour debates, Harper seemed to enjoy getting back on the campaign trail.
“It's been more enjoyable having you than having those four guys yelling at me for four hours,” Harper told the gaggle of reporters who had just finished eating a seafood medley or grilled chicken that had been served for dinner on the Conservative campaign plane.
Harper flew east right after the debates, spending time campaigning in Liberal ridings in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Harper said he enjoyed the format of the debates, particularly compared to previous years when the leaders would stand in a semi-circle behind podiums.
“It wasn't as close as it looked,” Harper said. “I preferred the seating. I think it was our [campaign's] suggestion. It wasn't quite the discussion we hoped but it still pulls it back a bit to a discussion which I think is impossible in the other format.
“I know on TV it sometimes seemed very heated. In fact, compared to the previous leaders' debates, the voices were not raised much at all,” Harper said.
He also said his campaign is unfolding, by and large, according to the broad outline he and his strategists mapped out ahead of time.
“We're doing what we wanted to do more or less,” Harper said. “What I've learned in both elections is that all wisdom about the election will emerge after it's over. And I've tried to avoid that. You can slip into a pattern that, if you lose, everything you did was wrong. And likewise, if you won, everything you did was right. And it gets interpreted in that way and sometimes factually inaccurately.”
When asked to cite an example of inaccurate reporting of those earlier campaigns, Harper cited a line, common among pundits, that in 2004, he wasted the last two days campaigning in Alberta, an area of the country where he already had support. Some suggested he ought to have spent those last few hours in the campaign pushing harder for votes in, for example, Ontario.
“Factual inaccuracies become an entrenched myth so you have to be careful. The 'two days' I spent in Alberta at the end of the campaign was half-a-day.”
What about 2006?
“The biggest myth about '06 was that we did everything right. We did some things wrong but if you guys haven't figured them out, I'm not going to share them with you.”
He was also asked how he was holding up after four weeks of campaigning.
“I'm feeling good. We've got better at pacing ourselves, I've got better and better at pacing myself, better and better at managing stress personally” he said.
Harper said he learned a valuable lesson about campaign pacing by looking at the 1980 federal election. In that campaign, Harper said, Joe Clark made a point of trying to do more campaign events than anyone else. His opponent, Pierre Trudeau did one message event a day, which is exactly what Harper does.
“And Trudeau won day in and day out. It's still instructive. It's not quantity [that wins a campaign]. Quantity helps but it's not about quantity.”
Personally, he says he's kept up his energy by finding time to rest. Unlike the other leaders, Harper has taken every Sunday on this campaign off in Ottawa with his family.
“There have been only two nights on this campaign I haven't had a good nights sleep — the two nights after the debate,” Harper said. “This was how I was in school. I always slept before exams. I could never sleep after exams because I always got so keyed up. I can't get back down again.”
And that's what led to his late-night viewing of the vice-presidential debate.
“I actually got of bed and watched it at 3 a.m.”
But he wouldn't name any winners or losers of that debate.
“I didn't watch it all. I don't want to express too many opinions. It was interesting, that's all.”
After spending a day with his family at 24 Sussex Drive, Harper will get back on his campaign plane Monday afternoon and will criss-cross the country, ending up in Calgary for election night on Oct. 14.
And he said that, unlike some politicians, such as former Liberal cabinet ministers Jean Lapierre, Sheila Copps, or Brian Tobin who have shown up on political talk shows as pundits, he has no such desire once he leaves politics.
“I've always said privately, I'm going to enjoy all this time, make the best of it, but when it's over, it's over.”

Technorati Tags:
conservatives, sarah palin, stephen harper, elections, joe biden

Julie Couillard's book My Story will be published and in bookstores on Oct. 6, just before Canadians go to the polls on Oct. 14.

Having written about the Couillard-Bernier affair several times for the Canwest chain of papers and then watched with interest how each paper played the whole affair, I can tell you that there is substantial, often maniacal, interest in this sordid saga in various regions of Québec. There is moderate interest in Ontario. But I found that our papers in the West, after publishing one or two items when the revelations about her past first broke, got pretty bored with the whole thing. And their readers didn't seem to mind that it was time to move away from M. Couillard.

So I suspect that some of the things she has to say about Bernier, Harper, et al. in her book will be of great interest to the chattering classes in Ottawa and Quebec but not of much interest everywhere else.

So, if you are, in fact, a member of that very same chattering class, you will definitely want to check out today's edition of La Presse for Denis Lessard's summary of the first chapters that have been leaked.

I am told that other papers, including some of our ours, have been given advance copies of the book and are ready to flood the weekend editions with more juicy details.

Technorati Tags:
conservatives, julie couillard, maxime bernier, scandals

Just in from the Tory press office:

OTTAWA – Statement by Owen Lippert:

“Since the beginning of the election campaign, I have been employed by the Conservative Party of Canada at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.

“In 2003, I worked in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. I was tasked with – and wrote – a speech for the then Leader of the Opposition. Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech. Neither my superiors in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition nor the Leader of the Opposition was aware that I had done so.

“I apologize to all involved and have resigned my position from the Conservative campaign.”

In GEDS, the government employee directory, Lippert is listed as a senior policy advisor in the office of Bev Oda, the minister for the Canadian International Development Agency.

Irony of ironies: Lippert is the author of a book, which I've not yet read, on “Competitive Strategies for the protection of intellectual property.” Perhaps the Liberals read it?

And here's [an old] bio at The Fraser Institute:
“Owen Lippert holds a Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Following his graduation in 1983, he worked as managing editor for the Asia and World Institute in Taipei, Taiwan. Returning to Canada in 1984, he worked first as a caucus researcher for the Social Credit government and, then as a policy analyst for the Office of the Premier until 1991. He joined the staff of Kim Campbell as press secretary during Campbell's tenure as attorney general of Canada and minister of Justice. In 1993, while an advisor during Campbell's leadership campaign, he taught at Carleton University and the University of British Columbia and he was a senior policy advisor in Industry and Science Canada during Campbell's tenure as Prime Minister. In 1994, Dr. Lippert worked on contract for the Canadian department of Justice before going to work as a senior policy analyst at The Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1996, he joined the Editorial Board of The Globe & Mail in Toronto. His specialties are public policy and legal reform.”

“…there are [those] who cut their political teeth with Harper who say he's abandoned “principled conservatism”, that his government has let spending run out of control and broke his word on fixed election dates – just like the Liberal governments before him.

“There's a real sense of disappointment among the small-c grassroots conservative Reformers that are out there,” said Gerry Nicholls, who worked with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition and is now a columnist and frequent critic of his old boss. “Harper's betrayed the principles that he once stood for.”

These aren't the so-called social conservatives, though they too are disappointed Harper, as prime minister, has not done more to roll back abortion access rights or repeal same-sex marriage laws. These are the philosophical small-c conservatives who wanted a government in Ottawa that would address judicial activism, turn the Senate upside down, introduce free-market principles for health care delivery, but most of all, lower income taxes by slashing government spending. “… [Read the rest]

Technorati Tags: conservatives, national citizens coalition, reform party

My colleague, Andrew Mayeda, is on the road this week with the Prime Minister and sends along the following from Halifax:

Is it the sweater vests, the carefully coiffed dome of hair? Or is it just the power that comes with being prime minister?

Apparently single women voters can’t contain themselves around Stephen Harper.

At a press conference in Halifax on Friday morning, a fetching young woman in a low-cut blouse and black skirt sat in the second row. Her presence did not go unnoticed by some male reporters covering Harper’s campaign.

Suddenly, while the prime minister was fielding a question on gas prices, the woman stood up and approached him.

“I’m so sorry, I’ll be so brief. I represent the single females out there,” she said, as RCMP officers jumped in. “Girls love a guy with a sense of humour. We could have a little fun.”

The prime minister’s security detail whisked her out the door, but not before she shared her true feelings: “Stephen Harper, I love you.”

It was later revealed that the woman was Geri Hall, a cast member on CBC’s spoof news show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Party officials say they knew who she was beforehand, but had no idea what she had planned. In fact, RCMP officers slapped handcuffs on Hall before they realized it was all a joke.

Harper took it in stride. When Presse Canadienne reporter Fannie Olivier prepared to ask the next question, he said, “And you, too?” To which Olivier replied, “No, I have no declarations of love to make today.”

Later, Hall interviewed Harper for the show—a fact that only some reporters on the tour found amusing, given that media organizations are paying a princely sum to be on the plane, and only a handful of media outlets on tour have been granted one-on-ones.

“She’s meeting the prime minister in his hotel room right now for a proper interview, and I’m sure his wife is there,” senior party source said slyly.

Technorati Tags: geri hall, stephen harper

CBC North is reporting that Leona Aglukkaq, Nunavut's health minister, will quit that post to become the Conservative candidate in Nunavut, a riding currently held by retiring Liberal MP Nancy Karetak-Lindell.

From the CBC report:

A longtime Nunavut civil servant from Gjoa Haven, Aglukkaq was elected as MLA for Nattilik in the 2004 territorial election, making her one of two women elected to the 19-person assembly that year.

She was named health and social services minister shortly thereafter, a position she held until Wednesday's announcement, which ended days of speculation in Nunavut over her political future.

The Conservatives have not officially revealed their candidate in the Nunavut riding, but the party's website shows a biography of Aglukkaq as of Wednesday afternoon.

“The eyes of Canada and the world are fixed on the North, and it is essential that we are properly represented during this important time,” the biography reads in part.

“As your Conservative candidate, I am ready to bring my experience and understanding of our region’s unique culture and needs to Ottawa and to work as part of the Conservative team during this important time in our region’s history.”

Technorati Tags: arctic