Category: Politics/Liberals

The Liberals have now joined the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois in demanding that Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor resign after admitting to misleading the House of Commons on the issue of Canada’s treatment of Afghanistan prisoners. In this exchange, from the just-concluded Question Period , Harper eventually rises to  defend his minister and does so with what the Liberals say is an outrageous smear on their honour. Here’s the play-by-play:

Hon. Stéphane Dion (Leader of the Opposition, Lib.) :
Mr. Speaker, there are few things that are more important for the honour of a country than to protect human lives under its duty, including war detainees.

It is clear that this Minister of Defence failed in his duty, even though he has often been briefed on this.
I have no other choice than to ask the Prime Minister to ask his Minister of Defence to do the honourable thing and resign.

Hon. Gordon O'Connor (Minister of National Defence, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, as I said in previous statements that my statements here in the House were made in good faith, based on the understanding that I had.

I have taken action to ensure that our detainees are treated properly.

L'hon. Stéphane Dion (chef de l'opposition, Lib.) :
Monsieur le Président, le premier ministre doit comprendre que son ministre s'est montré négligent et incompétent sur un enjeu très grave pour un pays comme le Canada, soit la protection des vies humaines qui sont sous notre responsabilité.

Le premier ministre ne peut pas garder son ministre de la Défense nationale, à moins que le premier ministre dise qu'il n'est pas important pour le Canada de protéger les vies humaines sous notre responsabilité.

*   *   *

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has provided a clear explanation to the House of Commons. This government was, as he knows, at the time operating under an agreement signed by the previous government. We have since entered into a new arrangement with the Independent Afghan Human Rights Commission.

I can understand the passion that the Leader of the Opposition and members of his party feel for Taliban prisoners. I just wish occasionally they would show the same passion for Canadian soldiers.

Then, a few minutes later:

Hon. Stéphane Dion (Leader of the Opposition, Lib.) :
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister made two shocking statements. First, he said that the government does not care about human rights, and second, that the official opposition does not care about Canadian soldiers.

The Prime Minister must understand that he has insulted the entire Parliament with his statement and he should apologize.

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, I said absolutely no such thing. What I said clearly was that the government does care about this issue. That is precisely why the Minister of National Defence upon learning the information he learned has acted to correct the situation. We will continue to monitor the situation to make sure we make progress.

The only other point I am making is that I would like to see more support in the House of Commons from all sides for Canadian men and women in uniform. I think Canadians expect that from parliamentarians in every party. They have not been getting it, and they deserve it.

The Liberals believe that Immigration Minister Diane Finley’s limo expenses are out of line. Here’s the Question Period exchange between Liberal Todd Russell and Finley (left). (Finley was the Human Resources Minister when these expenses were incurred.)

Mr. Todd Russell (Labrador, Lib.) :
Mr. Speaker, here is another example of how Conservatives waste the taxpayers' dollar.
This past July the former human resources minister went to Winnipeg to present a fake $100 child benefit cheque.
Her flight alone cost 20 times the monthly child care benefit, but now we learn that she exceeds the Juno joy-riding heritage minister for her love of limousine travel.

While on a junket, she spent $750 on limousine rides, almost eight times the worth of her so-called child care benefit.
The cheque was fake; her expenses were not. How can she justify them to the Canadian parents that she has shortchanged?

*   *   *

Hon. Diane Finley (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, going to Winnipeg to make the announcement was part of our campaign to ensure that all parents who were eligible for the universal child care benefit were aware of it, were aware that it had been launched and how they could apply for it.

All my expenses were perfectly within the guidelines.

*   *   *

Mr. Todd Russell (Labrador, Lib.) :
Mr. Speaker, back home we would say that the bottom is gone right out of her.
The same minister blew another $800 on limousine service to a Confederation Club luncheon on April 20.
Last March she wasted $1,300 on airfare and yes, another limo ride to promote the student summer job program. Some promo. This is the same program her government slashed by $55 million, eliminating 25,000 student jobs.

Why do Conservatives value limo rides more than they value Canadian students and Canadian parents?

*   *   *

Hon. Diane Finley (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, once again, all of my expenses were completely within the guidelines for ministerial expenses.
However, there is a question I would like to ask. Why are my colleagues so concerned about expenses, which they are comparing to the universal child care benefit, when it is their leader who said he would take away the universal child care benefit?

 A few minutes after this exchange, in the foyer of the House of Commons, Finley answer reporters questions on this matter.

Finley hired a limousine service to take her on Sept. 8 from her home in Simcoe, Ont. to the Western Fair in London and back home. The cost of this service was $862.50. It’s about 100 kilometres one way between Simcoe and London.

Reporter:  Why would you get a limo to go to the Western Fair from where you live?

Finley: Well there aren’t any other alternatives except to drive and…

Reporter: Yes, a lot of people do.

Finley: That’s what a lot of people do. At this point in time my doctors have advised against it.

Reporter: Against driving all together, you can’t drive?

Finley: It’s still legal but it isn’t the safest thing around. You know I take advantage of the services available to get me there. When you live in a place where I do we can’t fly the Challenger in so I take a car. I don’t take the car because we can’t get one but I do take the car even if the Challenger could come unlike my Liberal predecessors.

Reporter: Could you get a friend to give you a lift?

Finley: No, most of my friends work and aren’t available to do those sorts of things.

Reporter: But did you need a limo?

Finley: It wasn’t a limo, it was a car. It’s I believe the model is a Crown Victoria but it’s not a limousine, no.

Reporter: It’s a limousine service I guess, that’s what it is?

Finley: It’s a limousine service, the car seats four. So this is greatly overblown.

Reporter: Can you refresh my memory why you can’t drive again?

Finley: I have a genetic thyroid condition called Graves Disease. I’m one of the 5% who has had it affect the eyes. And it will be corrected by surgery hopefully over the next period of time. We don’t know how long.

So we have the The Lester B. Pearson International Airport, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the John G. Diefenbaker Airport, the Macdonald-Cartier International Airport — all named after Prime Ministers or a Father of Confederation. Now we have the The Robert L. Stanfield Intertional Airport in Halifax named after someone who often ends up in polls as the best prime minister Canada never had. Stanfield, of course, was the Opposition Leader when Pearson and Trudeau commanded the government.

So was it Stephen Harper’s plan to name a federal building after an important Conservative politician? You bet your bottom dollar it was.

As Ottawa Citizen reporter Tim Naumetz dug up earlier this year, the Conservatives are keen to name as many federal buildings they can after Conservatives if only to even up the score with the Liberals. Rob Nicholson, the MP from Niagara Falls who is now the country’s justice minister gave an impassioned speech on this subject at a (closed-door) caucus meeting earlier this year. From Tim’s story:

A record provided to the Ottawa Citizen by the Public Works Department of all federal buildings the government owns outright or has leased to purchase confirms names of prominent Liberals from the past outnumber Conservatives 27 to nine.

… Only two past leaders of other parties have federal buildings dedicated in their names, while 43 other buildings have been named after prominent explorers, settlers and distinguished Canadians whose accomplishments did not involve politics.

Of the total of 369 buildings the government owns or is leasing to purchase and two others under construction or planned, 81 have been dedicated to honour political figures and other Canadians.

Mr. [Rob] Nicholson also objected to the Liberal predominance in federal statues — monuments to Liberals on Parliament Hill outnumber Conservatives eight to four — insiders say. Mr. Nicholson reportedly complained the legacy of the old Progressive Conservative party is being lost.

The handful of Conservative political names on federal buildings includes Diefenbaker — with the Saskatoon airport named in his honour — John A. Macdonald, John Thompson, a justice minister under Macdonald, George Etienne Cartier, Macdonald's co-leader of the Great Coalition at Confederation, former prime minister Arthur Meighen, and Harry Stevens, a Conservative MP who opposed Asian immigration at the turn of the 20th century.

In contrast, former Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson, Diefenbaker's arch-foe, has been honoured by a building on Sussex Drive, which acts as headquarters for the Foreign Affairs Department, as well as the international airport in Toronto, Canada's busiest airport.

Louis St. Laurent, the Liberal prime minister who succeeded Liberal wartime prime minister Mackenzie King, has been honoured with his name on two buildings as well, one in the National Capital Region and one in Quebec City, as has Pierre Trudeau. Montreal's Dorval Airport was recently re-named the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport while a proposed new Federal Court building in Ottawa that will not be constructed for years has already been named after Trudeau.

Paul Martin Sr., the late father of recent former prime minister Paul Martin, has been honoured with his name on a building in Windsor, and a new federal building under construction on Prince Edward Island has also been already dedicated to a prominent Liberal historical figure in the province.

Margaret Trudeau's father, James Sinclair, was honoured by dedication of Vancouver's Sinclair Centre in his name.

A string of Cabinet ministers who served under Pearson have been honoured with building dedications, as have two prominent Liberals who became governors general — Vincent Massey and Jeanne Sauve.

The only political figures outside Liberal and Conservative circles who were honoured with building dedications were Stanley Knowles of the CCF and the NDP and Real Caouette, who led the Quebec Social Credit party that helped defeat the Diefenbaker minority government in 1963.

Early in their current term, the  Tories decided to name a new federal government building in Vancouver after a Diefenbaker-era Progressive Conservative. only to have that backfire after Japanese Canadians there said the minister, Howard Green, had racist views and had tried to exclude Japanese Canadians from Canada before and after World War II.

Hard to see anyone objecting to Stanfield getting his airport.

Every Wednesday morning when the House of Commons is sitting, the MPs from each political party huddle up in their own room on Parliament Hill. This is called a meeting of the national caucus. As they have the two biggest caucus memberships, the Conservatives and the Liberals meet in the two biggest rooms,  in the Centre Block, on either side of the Hall of Honour. (The Hall of Honour is the hall that runs right through the middle of the building from the front door of the place to the Library of Parliament at the back.)

They’ve always started these meetings at 10 am on Wednesday morning but the Conservatives, upon taking office last year, decided to get going at 9:30 am, presumably because being in government means more deliberation. Everybody breaks at noon or shortly thereabouts.

Reporters hang about the Hall of Honour, then, starting at about 9 a.m. as MPs from both parties begin drifting into their national caucus. (Regional caucus meetings — groups of MPs from one particular province or region are held beginning around 8 am or so, before the national caucus.) It’s a good time to pidgeonhole an MP or to get a quote or opinion from a Minister on a particular issue. MPs can avoid the press throng – there are enough back doors in and out of caucus rooms that, for example, one never gets a chance to say hi to Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor (a notorious user of the back doors out of any room in Parliament) or the Prime Minister. When they leave the room at noon, there are even more reporters thronged about, looking for comment and advice on an important issue of the day.

At noon, from time to time, the leader of the Official Opposition will emerge to a microphone that has been set up where he may make a short statement and then spend a few minutes answering questions. A microphone is also set up outside the government caucus room every week, ever hopeful that the Prime Minister of the day will come out for a few questions. But Stephen Harper, like Paul Martin before him, rarely avails himself of the opportunity to say hi to us.

So what’s it like inside the caucus rooms? Well, this is a closely guarded secret — or at least it’s supposed to be. Most newsrooms, CTV’s included, have eyes and ears with BlackBerrys inside the Liberal caucus and there always seems to be a few MPs there who are often happy to give us a blow-by-blow of what’s going on inside. You won’t be surprised that this has often been very frustrating to the party leadership from time to time, who emerge to that microphone outside only to be questioned by reporters about the supposedly confidential remarks they gave just minutes before.

There were Conservatives, while in Opposition, who did the same thing, though, it must be said, they seemed less enthusiastic. But once in government, the Whip came down and Conservatives, upon entering the caucus meeting room, are required to deposit their BlackBerrys at the door. They are the submarine caucus, running silent and running deep every Wednesday morning for two hours and a bit.

I have tried many times to convince a Conservative MP to violating caucus confidentiality but I must report that all the charm I can muster has been relatively ineffective.

Now, Garth Turner, on the other hand, needed little charming from any reporter to  reflect upon discussions in caucus meetings and, for that, the Ontario caucus, with the approval of the national caucus, booted him from the Conservative side of the House.

You must know by now, of course, that Garth recently decided to join the Liberal caucus and, yesterday, attended his first Liberal national caucus.

And so he tells us that a closed-door meeting with the Liberal caucus is much like a graduate seminar with really cool people …

“…Two hours of drinking ideas left me sated. It was renewing, refreshing, just what I’d been hoping for … this room of engaged people … Inside the national Liberal caucus I was struck at how collegial it was, a tone set by Stephane Dion. I was heartened by the ideas I heard flying around and the obvious willingness of people writing legislative changes and policies for the next election, to embrace mine. This bodes well, I thought. This is what caucus should be. This is where concepts and visions gain political life.”

whereas the Conservative caucus, in Garth’s estimation, seems more like your grade nine math class with a disciplinarian at the front of the room …

“..the dour group meeting at the same time, in the same building, fifty feet away across a corridor. For the better part of a year I came to know caucus every Wednesday morning as a time when Conservative MPs gathered to listen to PMSH give an opening speech and a closing speech, with ministerial statements, threats from the whip and orders from the house leader in between.

No debate then. No discussion.

Yesterday on the West Coast, Prime Minister Harper announced a 10–year, $1.48–billion plan to support projects using renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, biomass, and tidal.

The Prime Minister was asked by my colleague in Vancouver Todd Battis and other reporters if his announcement was a lot like the programs the Liberals had to support renewable energies but which were suspended as soon as the Conservatives took office.

To Battis, Harper said: “I see Mr. Dion keeps talking about an election. If he chooses to force one, I'll be very comfortable comparing our record of action on the environment with his record of inaction on the environment.”

Harper also said: “We obviously know the previous government was not reducing emissions. A lot of the programs they had in place didn't have that effect. Or quite frankly had never got put in place.”

Well, it’s certainly true that, overall, Canada was producing a heckuva lot more greenhouse gas emissions when the Liberals left office last January than when Jean Chretien became prime minister in 1993. But it’s just as correct to say that, when it came to support for renewable energy, particularly wind power, the Liberals had “made progress”, according to Canada’s Environment Commissioner.

The Liberals had a plan called the Wind Power Production Initiative (WPPI and known in eco circles was ‘whippy’). They had another program in place since 1997 called Renewable Energy Development Initiative (REDI) for non-wind renewable energy projects.  A policy advisor at the Minister of Natural Resources indicates that for those who prepared business plans to apply for subsidies under the Liberal WPPI or REDI will likely not have to change a word to qualify for the same size subsidy — a penny a kilowatt hour — through the Conservative plan announced yesterday. In other words, all the Conservatives did was to roll WPPI and REDI together into a single program.

In Budget 2005, WPPI was allocated $200–million over 5 years (budget years 2005–06 to 2009–10) and a total of $920–million over 15 years and a program called Renewable Power Production Initiative was allocated $97–million over five years for a total of $297 million over five years.

The Conservatives did not provide details on how much they expected to spend each year over the same five year period because they have budgeted $1.48–billion to be paid out over 10 years for projects constructed over the next four years. The goal of the Conservative plan is to generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity from renewable energy projects. The Liberal WPPI plan had as its goal the generation of 4,000 MW of electricity from wind power alone. Yesterday, NRCAN officials confirmed that they expect their plan to generate about 3,000 MW from wind — 1,000 MW less than the Liberals. The Conservatives aim to fund projects that will create about 400 MW from biomass and the the balance, another 500 MW, from a combination of small-hydro, tidal, solar and others.

So to the very last point the Prime Minister makes — that some programs “never got put in place” — is not completely correct and even less correct if the PM is referring only to renewable energy programs.

In fact, WPPI was so much “in place” that many had been calling on Harper to reinstate the WPPI program because it was so effective. And it wasn’t just the usual crowd of ‘greenies’ calling for WPPI to come back. Here’s Chuck Szmurlo, a vice-president for energy giant Enbridge Inc., testifying in front of MPs last October said: “The Wind Power Production Incentive was a well-designed and well understood fiscal measure which was successful in stimulating investment in wind power. Enbridge alone has investment commitments for 271 megawatts of wind power together with our joint venture partners. I believe that the government should restore the Wind Power Production Incentive program to maintain a positive investment climate for wind power.”

Now the Prime Minister also said “the previous governnment was not reducing emissions”. I suppose that depends on how you look at it. While it is certainly true that, overall, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions had grown significantly during the period when Prime Ministers Chretien and Martin were in charge, there were some programs — and WPPI is one of them — that were reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Canada’s environment commissioner Johane Gelinas — she works with the Auditor-General  and reports straight to Parliament — looked at the WPPI program in her most recent audit and found that, as of March 31, 2006,  a total of  $21.3-million had been spent on WPPI projects.  She notes that WPPI had, as its goal, the reduction of 900,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and appeared to be well on its way to that goal – having helped cut greenhouse gas emissions by 360,000 tonnes. The Conservatives, incidentally, did not specific a target, measured in tonnes, for greenhouse gas reductions with their renewables plan, though I asked for that number several times on Friday.

“We found broad-based support for the [WPPI] program and clear statements from provincial governments,  companies and utilities about WPPI's influence on their decisions to invest in or support wind power projects,” Gelinas wrote in her report to Parliament.

We can now, apparently, add the Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party to that list of “broad-based support” for the wind power program designed and instituted by the previous Liberal government.