My sarcastic comment of the day

From a Hill Times piece on a coming staff shake-up in the Stephen Harper PMO, with the looming arrival of Guy Giorno as chief of staff:

PMO deputy director of communications Jacques Fauteux is expected to move on to a government position outside the PMO. There has also been word of potential movement of policy staff.

What, you mean Stephen Harper actually has policy staff?

I guess you learn something new every day.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Dion forecasts a Green Shift

During his travels to sell the Liberal Green Shift plan, Stephane Dion was in Toronto last week and made a stop at City-TV. While there, he took a shot at forecasting the weather in a fun video available here.

On the Green Shift, I don’t think it’s a perfect plan but I think it’s a pretty good one, and it’s gone reasonably well so far for the Liberals. One of my concerns at first was why carbon tax revenues would be used for anti-poverty measures. Not that I’m against anti-poverty measures, I just thought that a carbon shift wasn’t the place to deal with it. However, given that low income people don’t have much income to shift, special initiatives to focus on that demographic help to blunt the impact of the green shift on them and counter the criticism it will hurt the poor.

There has been predictable criticism from the Conservatives that the Liberals are out to get the West, or specifically Alberta and Saskatchewan. While those provinces will indeed likely be more hit, that doesn’t mean the Liberals are out to get them; it just means they produce a lot of oil, with corresponding environmental impact. The fact is, any serious environmental plan is going to have an impact on Alberta, it can’t be helped. Which is perhaps why the Conservatives are only pretending to care about the environment, without taking any serious action. The oil boom isn't going to last forever but the environment needs too, I expect/hope many Westerners will know that.

Much has been made this week of a poll showing energy has surpassed the environment as the top concern of Canadians, although only by two per cent. I don’t think this is bad for the green shift though. Indeed, the two issues, along with the other top concern, the economy, are intrinsically linked. Energy prices are only going to keep going up, as people compete for an increasingly scarce resource. We need to put more effort into developing alternative energy sources, and if the carbon shift makes oil less attractive and makes it more attractive to look at alternatives, that’s a good thing.

Anyway, overall the jury is still out on the carbon shift and its political success. Many of the columnists and political elites are against it, polls show the people are much more receptive. Much will depend on the sales job the Liberals do over the next few months.

At the least, though, Dion and the Liberals have succeeded in taking the initiative, and setting the debate for a change rather than just reacting to the Conservatives. And by staking his political future on a risky policy proposal you can say what you will about him, but you can’t say he’s a wimp or not a leader anymore.

And for once it’s the Conservatives on the defensive, and that ain’t bad. With criticism like "it's crazy" and "it'll screw everyone" along with the complete lack of a viable alternative plan to present, the Conservatives are being increasingly exposed as unsuited to govern.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Hands off my laptop

As a regular traveler to the United States on business, and therefore always with my laptop, this article certainly gives me pause. I’ll certainly be thinking twice what files I have on my system before my next trip, and leaving a back-up of my critical files at home. The security provisions for traveling to the U.S. are getting increasingly ridiculous, but perhaps none more so that the take off your shoes rule, instituted only because some guy tried to make a shoe bomb. As one wit said, thank-god there wasn’t an underwear bomber…yet.

Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan's luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? "Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop," says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.

Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. "It was fortunate that I didn't use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information," he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Back to lobbying for Sandra?

I told the PMO I wouldn’t blog again while Sandra Buckler was still Stephen Harper’s director of communications. Today, just one week later, the PMO caved and Buckler announced her resignation:

Sandra Buckler, the Prime Minister's sometimes contentious director of communications, is stepping down.

Ms. Buckler, 42, announced her resignation in an e-mail to reporters Thursday night. The e-mail popped up on reporters' BlackBerrys as they were sipping wine and eating canapés at Prime Minister Stephen Harper's annual summer garden party at 24 Sussex Dr.

OK, that’s not really how it happened. But Sandra’s departure does seem like an opportune moment to end my blogging break and lament her departure, which comes all too soon. Why, it seems like only yesterday Sandra was taking over for William Stairs, who had done a less than stellar job for a young Harper government that was still just learning how to ignore the media. He’s now Chief of Staff to the president of the Treasury Board, whomever that is.

Stairs, a fluently bilingual Nova Scotia native with a PhD in political science was a longtime presence on Parliament Hill.

He became Harper's chief spin doctor last year, and had previously held the same role for Peter MacKay under the now-defunct Progressive Conservative party.

The shake-up follows complaints that Harper has avoided the media since being sworn in as prime minister on Feb. 6.

Sandra leaves us with so many memorable moments, from Project Shoebox, to RCMP-led hotel lobby evictions, to a smackdown by DND, and so much more. Her successor will have some bog shoes to fill, to be sure. She did miss out on my favourite Conservative media relations caper though, the Benny Hill-esque top secret, hotel changing, fire escape, er, escaping press conference.

In all seriousness though, what is Ms. Buckler’s depature likely to mean for the media relations under Stephen Harper et al? Not a whole lot. After all, the Cons were giving the finger to the media under Stairs too. She’s not the originator of the strategy, she’s just charged with carrying it out. The boss man calls the plays, and he’s not about to change the call.

This would be an advisable time for him to reconsider his “f*** the media” strategy though, as it’s coming back to bite him in the ass. After a few years of regular abuse the media is turning on the Cons, and how, from not giving airtime to hacks like Jason Kenney to laughing at their ridiculous attempts at spin.

With a new CoS, and soon a new director of communications, there’s a chance to change course. Not that Guy Giorno had a reputation for Mr. Media Friendly while implanting the Mike Harris “Common Sense” Revolution, but still, it’s a chance to turn over a new leaf with a fresh face. Will they change course though? I doubt it. In a Web 2.0 world they’re betting the main stream media are largely irrelevant. Maybe one day it will be. But not today.

Anyway, was she forced-out as part of Ian Brodie’s departure and Giorno’s pending arrival as Chief of Staff? Maybe. There tends to be high turnover in these sorts of high-stress positions anyway. Some of the comments in the article were interesting though.

A senior government source said Thursday that Mr. Giorno has been recently meeting individually with members of the PMO and some of the meetings, says the source, “have not been pretty.”

Could there be more house-cleaning to come in the Harper PMO? If so, I just hope they have more bench strength to choose from amongst the ranks of Conservative political strategists then they do caucus strength to facilitate cabinet making. It does paint a certain picture of disarray though that, as a Liberal, I’m not displeased to see.

As for Sandra, you’ll recall she came to the Harper PMO from the world of lobbying. Has the infamous “revolving door” just swung again? Time will tell.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Missing the Canadian perspective

Over here in Deutschland much of the talk on CNN International and the BBC is about Afghan president Hamid Karzai's comments on Pakistan, and the issue of Taliban militants using safe-havens in Pakistan to attack Afghan and NATO (including Canadian) regions and forces in Pakistan:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday said his country has the right to send troops into Pakistan to fight Taliban insurgents who launch cross-border attacks.

Speaking at a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Karzai threatened to send the troops after Pakistan-based Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who vowed in May to send fighters into Afghanistan to wage war on foreign troops.

There are currently tens of thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan, including about 2,500 Canadians, as part of the International Security Assistance Force created after a U.S.-led invasion toppled the former Taliban government in 2001.

Karzai said Afghanistan has the right to self-defence when it comes to the cross-border attacks.

"When they cross the territory from Pakistan to come and kill Afghans and kill coalition troops, it exactly gives us the right to go back and do the same. Therefore, Baitullah Mehsud should know that we will go after him now and hit him in his house," he said.

The reporters on CNN and BBC say it's a near certainty Karzai was speaking with the blessing of NATO and the Bush Administration and that they would be in line with this policy, and indeed no denials have been forthcoming from either quarter. Given the complicated nature of the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, its likely Karzai is making these comments because the Americans can't.

Now my Internet access has been sporadic and limited so I'm not sure what sort of coverage this has all been getting in the Canadian media and on the blogs. I'm sure, though, that the same people who were all over Stephane Dion for making these comments awhile back are also all over Karzai and the Bush administration, because after all those folks are usually all about ideological consistency.

"If [Pakistani leaders] are incapable of doing it themselves, it is something that we could envision with NATO forces — how to help Pakistan help us bring peace to Afghanistan," he said during a news conference in Quebec City Wednesday.

I'm sure the Conservatives have a press release out slamming Karzai, right? And the Blogging Torries are all over him? Particularly given that Karzai went even further than Dion, threatening outright invasion.

Dion, you'll recall, just called attention to the problem of cross-border infiltration and said NATO should work with the Pakistan government and military to address the issue if they're unable to do so on their own. A very reasonable position that the Conservative spin machine twisted into calls for invasion.

So will Harper be all over Bush and Karazi who actually are advocating invasion? Yeah, I won't hold my breath.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Torch relay and Olympic ideals?

After three and a half days of touristing in Berlin I'm transitioning back into work mode for the conference that officially brought me here. It's been an interesting few days though, and educational too.

For example, while touring the DDR Museum, which deals with life in the former East Germany under the former communist regime, during a section about youth I learned that one of the collective activities used by the party to indoctrinate the young people into socialism was recycling. Apparently recycling is a communist plot! I'm surprised the Conservatives haven't picked up on this. Comrade Dion's tax on everything...maybe in the next round of commercials.

Another very interesting tour was of the Olympic Stadium, which was built by the Nazis for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Spent a fair bit of time there, the audio tour is very much worth the extra charge. One of the tidbits it imparted? That not only is the Olympic torch rally a modern invention, it was began by Nazi propagandists as a way to glorify the Nazi regime. And it was the target of anti-Nazi protesters, and needed police protection in some countries.

I found that ironic given the kerfuffle a little while back when protesters with various grievances against the Chinese government were disrupting the torch relay, and we heard that while they have legitimate grievances disrupting the Olympic flame and the ideals it embodies isn't the way to air those grievances.

What ideals exactly? Given that the rally was an invention of Josef Goebbels and Nazi propagandists, not any ideals worth preserving I think. Given the excesses of the Chinese government hosting these games, disrupt away, says I. Seems historically serendipitous.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Changing the channel

Think this news will get stories of Pierre Poilievre's unacceptable and shameful behaviour off the front pages? I suspect so...

Manitoba judge Jeffrey Oliphant will head the public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday.

Judge Oliphant, 64, is associate chief justice of Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench.

The announcement came seven months after Mr. Harper first promised a formal investigation into former prime minister Brian Mulroney's controversial financial dealings with arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.

“The government is acting on its commitment to establish a public inquiry into this matter,” Mr. Harper said in a statement. “A number of questions remain unanswered and it is in the public interest to investigate further and to find answers.”

If you believe the timing of this announcement is coincidental, then I've got a bridge in New York to sell you. Stephen must be really pissed at Pierre for ruining his news cycle, giving Harper a scant few hours of glow from what should have been a great day for the Conservatives, and for Canada, yesterday.

So instead of enjoying a few further days of positive media coverage, Harper is forced to announce the appointment of a judge to reside over the Mulroney-Schrieber inquiry to deflect from Pierre's embarrassment, an announcement I'm sure he would have prefered to dump and bury some sleepy Friday afternoon instead.

If there's a cabinet shuffle upcoming, expect Pierre to be relegated to the backbenches where he belongs.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Does this mean we can ditch the levy? Don't hold your breath

I'm killing time at the airport, enjoying the Maple Leaf Lounge and, having listened to my MP3 player on the way here I was thinkng about copyright issues, given the bill on the subject the Conservatives tabled in the HoC today:

The federal government tabled new legislation Thursday morning designed to make it easier to track and prosecute anyone caught downloading copyrighted files, such as music and movies, from the Internet.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice and Heritage Minister Josée Verner lifted the veil on the long-anticipated legislation at a news conference on Parliament Hill.

Under the proposed legislation, anyone caught downloading copyrighted material online could face a fine of $500. Individuals may still be liable for other types of damages or remedies. The current Copyright Act allows for a maximum fine of $20,000.

That's fine in theory, illegal downloading is, well, illegal, although I think prosecutions of the kid that downloads a few songs like we've seen in the U.S. are a waste; go after thge big fish. It's not that the record companies haven't tried in Canada though; the courts have slapped them down. Hence, I suppose, this legislation.

What caused the courts to favour downloaders in these cases in the past is the levy that is, well, levied on every piece of recordable media in Canada, from the hard drives in MP3 players to blank CDs and DVDs. The proceeds are redistributed to artists, and are intended to compensate them for lost revenue from illegal downloading of copyrighted material.

Downloaders argued, and as I recall the courts agreed, that the levy represented a tacit permission to download material freely. In essence, we were paying for it through the levy.

The levy also wrongly assumes everyone is guilty, whether they use the blank media to copy illegal material, legally-purchased material or their own vacation photos.

If you want to make it easier for the record companies to go after illegal downloaders, if you want to crack down on file sharing, that's fine. But at the same time the government should also repeal the levy, and not let the record companies have their cake and eat it too.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

A BCer in Berlin

Expect little to no blogging from this corner for the next week or so. Later today I'm off to Berlin for a combination work trip and vacation. As excited I am to take in the sights in Berlin, a city I last visited in 1994 when it was undergoing a major post-unification construction boom, I'm almost as excited about being upgraded to business class on my Air Canada Toronto to Frankfurt flight, and having the chance to check out the pod suites on the new Boeing 777s. They look pretty sweet.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Potential silver/green lining

With all the brouhaha about the Conservatives' aborted ad campaign trying to frighten the population into believing the Dion Liberals are going to "put a tax on everything" and the NDP saying we're out to hurt poor people and little old ladies, I wonder if an opportunity isn't brewing here.

The Conservatives, in particular, are doing their best to dishonestly paint this thing as the second coming of the apocalypse. On the one hand, they’re calling attention to the issue and getting people to pay attention; on the other they’re leading people to think it’s going to be the end of the world.

What happens, though, when the plan comes out and they see it’s not hatched by Lucifer and his minions, but that it’s actually (I’m hoping) a reasonable, effective environmental policy supported by both environmental leaders and respected economists that addresses an issue Canadians really do care about?

What’s more, given that they’ve been led to expect the absolute worst by our opponents, when they see it’s not so bad as they’ve been led to believe they might be even more willing to expect a little tough medicine then they would have been had the ground not been softened by oily and his fear mongering.

There is potential, therefore, to turn this situation to our advantage. To be successful will require two things though:

1. An actual policy to put out there.

2. An effective communications strategy for selling it to Canadians, and countering the opposition spin.

We’re still waiting on number one, and in the past the LPC has proven itself far, far, far from competent at number two. Fingers crossed. Any time now please.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Election madness, the dramedy continues

You know, it's almost like a lame plot from a cheesy network comedy. Our two leads have eyes for each other, but they just can't get the timing right. First the one is with someone else, and then the other one is. Will those crazy kids ever get it right?

I don't know which is Ross and which is Rachel, but there is a touch of sitcom hijinks to the election rumours and rumblings circulating lately, at least if you believe the media's anonymous sources, which isn't always a good idea. As they tell it though, practically the entire caucus, including all the other ex-leadership candidates, want an election now, but Stephane Dion is resisting. He doesn't think a summer election is a good idea, he wants to take the summer to sell the Liberal carbon shift plan (Will we see it then before labour day? Please? I mean, come on!). This of course is a shift from the last 10-odd times election fever gripped Ottawa, when Dion wanted to go but much of the caucus and the party mucky-mucks held him back.

That’s quite a shifteroo over just a few months. What, I wonder, has happened over these past few months two cause each side to do a 180 on their positions? Also, what’s the benefit of going now with a summer election, as opposed to waiting until the fall? That wasn’t leaked to the media so I can only speculate.

I’ve long been an election hawk but frankly, I'm unconvinced of the urgency to go now versus the fall. I could still be convinced if I hear some good arguments, but right now I'm on the fence.

On the continual abstainment front, I think the damage there has been “priced-in” if you will. The damage has already been done. It's not like a lot of people are going to say, well, I stayed with them through the 36 other times they abstained but now 37 times, forget it, I’m outta here.

And yes, we've had a few more scandals since the last dose of election fever. There was the RCMP raid, Cadman and more Cadman, and of course the Bernier brouhaha. They don't seem to be resonating much though, the polls are largely unchanged. I do think they're causing an underlying weakening though that could be exploited.

One argument for going now is that the summer would give the Conservatives time to right the ship, come out gunning in the fall with an activist agenda and a cabinet shuffle. I've even heard speculation of a throne speech. Funny thing is, they tried that last year too, and it didn’t work out too well now did it? I suppose one of these years they might get it right though.

One of the reasons given for not going in the spring was that the party wasn’t ready organizationally. According to the media reports the campaign leadership is still against going now; I hope their reasoning is strategic and not organizational, because if we aren’t ready organizationally by now we need new campaign leadership.

Probably the most compelling argument I’ve heard in favour of going now is that Harper could resort to procedural shenanigans to avoid a fall election, so if we want one now's the time. Look deeper at though. Does Harper want an election or not, and when does he want it? I feel like he’s trying to goad us into a summer election, not liking his chances in the fall. That could help explain their bizarre Cadman tapes press conference to announce they’re filing an injunction…in September. The subtext being, if you want to use these tapes in an election Liberals, do it now! I don't know, anytime I feel like Harper wants us to do something I get leery. Of course, maybe he just wants us to think he wants us to go now, he's a crafty devil and a strategic genius, after all.

At this point, my preferred course of action would be to get the frickin' carbon shift policy out, fan the caucus out across the country and spend the summer selling it and building the brand, and then go in the fall.

We made our choice, which I was against, back in the spring. Put off the constant election speculation nonsense on every confidence motion and spend some time developing policy, organizing and building a case for governing. Now we want to abandon the strategy 1/3 of the way through its execution? What’s up with that?

The play has been called, for better or worse; at this point its better to see it through. Let's go in the fall.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Conservatives + Big Oil 4EVAH

Concerned about the price of oil? Maybe giving the oil companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising dollars will help, or so think the Conservatives…

The federal Conservatives are launching an aggressive attack ad campaign today targeting Liberal Leader Stephane Dion over his proposed new carbon tax…

The bilingual, multimedia, nationwide party-funded campaign that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars will roll out in four parts across the country -- catching Canadians listening to the radio, online, at the pumps and on the streets.

Because the oil companies really need the money. This follow the previous Conservative love letters to big oil such as fighting tooth and nail against Kyoto, abandoning their promise to cut taxes on gas, and doing absolutely nothing serious on the environment.

Is the feeling mutual? Maybe…

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore has accused the oil industry of financially backing the Tories and their "ultra-conservative leader" to protect its stake in Alberta's lucrative oilsands.

Canadians, Gore said, should vigilantly keep watch over prime minister-designate Stephen Harper because he has a pro-oil agenda and wants to pull out of the Kyoto accord -- an international agreement to combat climate change.

"The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta," Gore said Wednesday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

"And the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election . . . and to protect their interests."

The Conservative Party of Canada: sucking-up to Big Oil since 2003. And now cutting-out the middleman and just sending the oil companies bags of cash directly.

*More from Matt, Jason, Steve, Saskboy, Danielle and Scott.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Durham taxpayers got hosed on Jim Flaherty's watch, but not his friends

Never mind what Jim Flaherty says, Ontario can be a very good place to invest. If you’re a friend of his, that is. If you’re just his constituents in Durham though, not so much it seems.

Jim Flaherty and his wife, Christine Elliot, go back a long ways in the Durham region. From 1995 to 2005 he was the MPP for Whitby-Ajax, serving as a minister in the Mike Harris Conservative governments. He ran federally in Whitby-Oshawa in 2006 and won; of course we now know him as Stephen Harper’s Ontario bashing minister of finance. And politics is a Flaherty family business. His wife, Christine Elliott, represents the same riding today for the Ontario Conservatives. They own Durham, it would seem.

But Jim Flaherty, you’ll recall, doesn’t think much of the business climate in his home province:

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty launched a post-budget blitz Friday by lecturing provinces on the need to lower taxes and taking a swipe at Premier Dalton McGuinty for making Ontario "the last place" in Canada to start a business.

"It discourages investment in the province of Ontario," he said. "If you're going to make a new business investment in Canada, and you're concerned about taxes, the last place you will go is the province of Ontario."

Apparently he didn’t give this advice to his friends at The Wasdell Centre for Innovative Learning. The Wasdell Centre is a specialized private school in the Town of Ajax, in Jim Flaherty’s riding. They’ve been investing in Ontario, and they’ve managed to do quite well.

In all goes back to 2003, when the Durham District School Board deemed a school and property in Ajax, known as Parkside Public School, as surplus. As you can see from the assessment role below, the property had an assessed value in both 2002 and 2003 of just over $2.5 million.

2002:

2003:
It’s procedure for publicly-owned lands such as this to be made available to other public organizations, such as regional or municipal governments, at no cost. After all, there’s only one taxpayer, and they already own the land. In this case, oddly, they all passed, and the property went up for sale.

On August 24^th, 2004, the lands were sold to 1625047 Ontario Inc. for just $1.6 million, or about $900,000 under the assessed value for 2003.

This numbered company is better known as The Wasdell Centre for Innovative learning, run by Elizabeth Moxley-Paquette, its principal.


The property The Wasdell Centre got for $1.6 million was 6.6 acres and included the school, a parking lot and an adjacent park that contains two baseball diamonds. It was apparently a little more space then they needed for their schooling purposes, because on March 29^th, 2006, 1625047 Ontario Inc. applied to the Region of Durham to sever the lands that consisted of the park.

Interestingly, in 2006 the assessed value of the property, all 6.6 acres, was $944,000. You’ll recall it was assessed at over $2.5 million in 2005, that’s a sharp drop over three years.


Anyway, with the park property severed, in December 7^th, 2006 the Town of Ajax decided to purchase the park property from 1625047 Ontario Inc. for $900,000.


A few things to keep in mind here, because the taxpayers of Durham got hosed on a number of levels, while The Wasdell Centre came out sitting very pretty:

1)The Town of Ajax could have had this entire property, park and school, at no cost to the taxpayers, when the Durham District School Board declared it surplus in 2003. The whole property. At no cost. All they had to do was ask.

2)The entire property was assessed at $944,000 for 2006, and yet that same year the Town of Ajax agreed to pay $900,000 just for the park portion.

3)Remember, 1625047 Ontario Inc. paid $1.6 million for the property in 2003. In 2006, they sold off 2.9 acres of it for $900,000 to Ajax. Which means that for just $700,000, they got the school and the property it sits on, about 3.7 acres.

That’s a pretty good deal for The Wasdell Centre. Not such a good deal, though, for the taxpayers of Durham.

The Flahertys

But what does this all have to do with Jim Flaherty and Christine Elliott, besides that it was their taxpaying constituents getting hosed? Actually, they do have closer connections than that.

A WHOIS search for WasdellCentre.org shows it is registered by MktPerspectives Inc., contact e-mail elizabeth.moxley-paquette@home.com. You’ll recall she’s also the principal of the Wasdell Centre, and the person behind 1625047 Ontario Inc.

MktPerspectives Inc. is also known as 1211102 Ontario Inc., and as late as July of 2006 change notices were being filed on behalf of the company by Christine Elliott, about four months after she was elected MPP in a March 30, 2006 by-election. A lawyer like her husband, she practices corporate, real estate and estates law.

And remember the initial sale of the surplus property to 1625047 Ontario Inc. in August of 2004? Acting for the transferee was Christine Elliott of the firm of Flaherty Dow Elliott & McCarthy. She’s still listed on their Web site.


The interests of the Flahertys in The Wasdell Centre goes beyond their law firm acting on its behalf, however. A finance department spokesperson told the media last month the couple advanced a $250,000 loan to The Wasdell Centre.

Mr. Flaherty's spokesman, Chisholm Pothier, said the minister had no ownership in the school, although he and his wife, Ontario MPP Christine Elliott, had loaned Wasdell $250,000.

He said the loan was made so that Wasdell could expand from a home schooling program for developmentally disabled children, including one of their sons, to a full-fledged school.

Documents show that a $1.4 million mortgage for prime plus 6 per cent on the property was taken out by 1625047 Ontario Inc. in February of 2006, held by TD Bank. Later that year the severed parkland was sold to Ajax, and on February 23, 2007 another mortgage was registered on the school property.

This second mortgage is in the amount of $14,000 and is interest free for nearly two years until January 23, 2009. That’s also the day the first payment is due, and the last payment is due one month later, February 23^rd. And who holds this second mortgage on the Wasdell Centre property? You guessed it, Jim Flaherty and Christine Elliott.


Why were Flaherty’s connections to a private school news anyway? Well, in the 2007 federal budget, Flaherty awarded some attractive tax breaks that will benefit private schools.

The Harper government is giving a tax break to families who send their kids to elite private schools, raising the ire of public education advocates.

Under a little-noticed measure in last month's budget, scholarships and bursaries to attend elementary and secondary school will now be fully tax exempt.

Finance officials estimate the new exemption will mean ``significant tax savings" for about 1,000 students – or, by extension, their parents.

Officials insisted that the exemption applies to scholarships for either public or private schools. But they couldn't supply any examples of public schools – which are funded from the public purse and don't charge tuition fees – awarding scholarships or bursaries.

This, of course, wasn’t anything new for Flaherty. He also introduced rich tax breaks to the benefit of private schools when he was Ontario finance minister under Mike Harris.

As Ontario's finance minister in 1991, Flaherty introduced private school tax credits that were to be worth up to $3,500 per student by the time they were fully phased in.

The tax credits were abolished when Dalton McGuinty's Liberals took office in 2003.

What do we know?

We know that The Wasdell Centre, a private school in Jim Flaherty and Christine Elliott’s riding, got a sweetheart deal on some surplus property in Ajax, and the taxpayers of the riding got reamed.

We know Christine Elliott did legal work for The Wasdell Centre, including filings to facilitate the purchase of that surplus property.

We know Christine Elliott and Jim Flaherty gave The Wasdell Centre a $250,000 loan, but we don’t know the details of when the loan was advanced or what the security, interest or terms were.

We know that The Wasdell Centre bought the property in August 2004 for $1.6 million, and we know the first mortgage listed on the property was from TD Bank in February 2006 for $1.4 million. We don’t how the property was financed for that first year-and-a-half, or by whom.

We know that Christine Elliott and Jim Flaherty hold a $14,000 second mortgage on The Wasdell Centre property, from February 2007.

We know that in March 2007, one month later, Jim Flaherty used the 2007 federal budget to extend tax breaks that benefit the students of such elite private schools and, by extension, these private schools themselves, by making them more affordable to attend.

And we know that, clearly, if you live in Durham, it’s a good idea to be a friend of Jim Flaherty.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

More carbon shifting validation

More third-party validation around the emerging Liberal proposal around carbon shifting. In addition to such folks as David Suzuki, Elizabeth May and Sierra Club Canada’s Stephen Hazell, among many others, you can now add Christopher Ragan to the list. Ragan is an economics professor at McGill, and offers a very reasoned explanation of how it’s not quite fair to say a carbon shift would disproportionally impact low income Canadians. It's an interesting read.

More is probably needed, but the carbon tax would be an excellent start. It creates the right incentives to reduce fossil-fuel use while not increasing the government's tax take. Few economists doubt that such an idea has real merit; indeed, a carbon tax recently appeared at the top of a long list of policies in a fascinating priority-setting project published recently by the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

(snip)

First, they (the NDP –ed.) dislike the carbon tax because it would raise prices for gasoline, heating oil, and many other things bought by ordinary Canadians. They favour instead a cap-and-trade system imposed on large industrial polluters. They appear not to understand that a cap-and-trade system, even if it applied only to large industrial firms, would nonetheless increase the prices of most products because firms would be required to purchase costly "emissions permits," thus increasing their costs. Some of these higher costs would clearly be passed on to consumers.

The NDP also argue that the Liberal carbon tax would be especially bad for low-income households because they spend a relatively large fraction of their monthly income on gasoline and heating oil. But they miss the crucial point that higher-income households spend more - in absolute terms - on carbon-based energy than do lower-income households.

(snip)

Here is the neat part, at least for the low-income households. The easiest way to reduce personal income taxes across the board would be to increase the basic personal exemption by the same amount for all taxpayers. If this approach were taken, the tax reduction for low-income households would be larger than the amount they paid in higher carbon taxes.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

The Conservatives’ independent tape expert was a Republican donor and organizer

One of the independent experts the Conservatives put forward in their dog and pony show today, according to the documents posted by Conservative Blogger-in-Chief Stephen Taylor, is Thomas Owen of Owl Communications.

According to the Owl Investigations Web site:

Owl Investigations, Inc. offers one of the most sophisticated digital audio and video processing laboratories presently available. Thomas J. Owen, a nationally known expert, served for many years on the Board of The International Association for Voice Identification. He currently serves as Chairman of the Audio Engineering Society's Standards Group WG-12 on Forensic Audio, and is the Chairman of the American Board of Recorded Evidence. Tom Owen is also the Head Instructor for the New York Institute of Forensic Audio from 1992 to the present.

He certainly sounds qualified, I don’t doubt his qualifications and I don't want to suggest or imply that I in any way doubt his qualifications. There’s just a few things missing from his bio though. For example, he used to be head of the Woodbridge Township Republican Organization, an important regional organization role with the party (from 2004):

Four months after the Republicans failed in their bid to oust incumbent Mayor Frank Pelzman or four Democrats from any of the at-large council seats, Thomas Owen, a forensic scientist who was at the helm of the Woodbridge GOP since 2002, resigned citing business obligations. Owen runs Owl Investigations Inc. out of his Colonia home. He specializes in voice identification and audio and videotape analysis. His clients include major federal and state agencies.

"I got involved in several major cases," he said. "Being a chairman takes time. The business had to be put on the back burner."

Owen said he supports Paone’s chairmanship.

"There’s no bad will or anything," Owen said. "Nobody wanted me to resign. In fact, I put [Paone] in there. I mean, I suggested he be the one. He’s always been a hard worker and I think he wanted it. That’s half the battle — someone who wants it and wants to be active."

And according to Campaign Money, he donated $1000 to Republican candidates in 2000.


I like, though, that Owl Communications has a MySpace page. Yes, a MySpace page. That plays the CSI theme song when you open it.


Just seven friends though? If you actually still have a MySpace account, do him a favour and add the Conservatives’ independent audio expert to your friends list.

Oh, and wondering how much the Conservatives might have paid to hire their audio investigator? Here’s his rates. Not cheap. Wonder if the Cons used PayPal?

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Cadman tape: What's the motive, means and opportunity?

With the Bernier scandal not quite beginning to die down the Conservatives are doing their best to revive another one of the many scandals they’ve been implicated in, the Cadman affair.

You can read some analysis of today’s events from Scott and Steve and Impolitical and Red Tory and Calgary Grit, and some live blogging of the surreal presser by Kady here. I just have a few, I think rather obvious, questions about all this.

Let’s grant the Conservative premise that the tapes were “doctored” or otherwise manipulated for a few minutes. WHO do the Conservatives contend did the doctoring?

Given the chain of evidence on the tapes as laid-out by the Conservatives at their presser, the tape went straight from the publisher to the CPC lawyers to their unnamed experts for testing. Assuming nothing was done to the tape while in CPC custody, that would seem to mean they are alleging any doctoring was done before or while the tape was in the publisher’s custody. The possible conspirators would then, I suppose, likely have to either be the publisher and/or the journalist/author that made the original recording. Or, perhaps, the Liberals have a mole in the publishing house, or sent a secret agent to break-in during the night and replace the originals with a phony edited version.

Here's the thing though. If a third-party doctored the tapes, wouldn't the journalist and/or the publisher stand-up and say "hey, that's not what I recorded, I call shenanigans! Shenanigans, I say!"? And yet, they both stand by the tape. Which would mean according to tortured Conservative logic they either did it or they're part of some sort of cover-up.

Again, if the Cons allege doctoring, just who do they finger as the culprit?

Once you answer the who you need to answer the why. Motive. Why would the alleged conspirator in the pantry with the candlestick have edited the tapes? Was it the Liberals to make the Conservatives look bad? Ample motive, but where’s the opportunity? The author and the publishing house had better opportunity, and a decent motive, selling more books. It still doesn’t pass the smell test though. Would a journalist and/or a publisher really risk their careers/business and invite multi-million dollar lawsuits by doctoring a tape of the Prime Minister? I don’t buy it. Just doesn’t pass the smell test.

If this alleged editing or doctoring or what have you is so bad, why are the Cons just trying to exclude the tape from being used by the Liberal Party? Why aren't they going after the author/publisher for using it in the book, and for selling copies to the national media? Why didn't they do that MONTHS ago, when it was being shopped around and written about? If their expert evidence is so compelling, why aren’t they taking legal action against whomever they believe did the doctoring?

So, you say the tape is doctored. OK then. What did Stephen Harper say that was edited out? And how does that change the meaning of the clip of what he said that we do have:

Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?"

Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?"

Zytaruk: "This (inaudible) for the book. Not for the newspaper. This is for the book."

Harper: "Um, I don't know the details. I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time. I said Chuck had made up his mind, he was going to vote with the Liberals and I knew why and I respected the decision. But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues. There may or may not have been, but I said that's not, you know, I mean, I, that's not going to change."

Zytaruk: "You said (inaudible) beforehand and stuff? It wasn't even a party guy, or maybe some friends, if it was people actually in the party?"

Harper: "No, no, they were legitimately representing the party. I said don't press him. I mean, you have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity and, you know, just, you know, if that's what you're saying, make that case but don't press it. I don't think, my view was, my view had been for two or three weeks preceding it, was that Chuck was not going to force an election. I just, we had all kinds of our guys were calling him, and trying to persuade him, I mean, but I just had concluded that's where he stood and respected that."

Zytaruk: "Thank you for that. And when (inaudible)."

Harper: "But the, uh, the offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election."

Zytaruk: "Oh, OK."

Harper: "OK? That's my understanding of what they were talking about."

Zytaruk: "But, the thing is, though, you made it clear you weren't big on the idea in the first place?"

Harper: "Well, I just thought Chuck had made up his mind, in my own view ..."

Zytaruk: "Oh, okay. So, it's not like, he's like, (inaudible)."

Harper: "I talked to Chuck myself. I talked to (inaudible). You know, I talked to him, oh, two or three weeks before that, and then several weeks before that. I mean, you know, I kind of had a sense of where he was going."

Zytaruk: "Well, thank you very much."

It seems from my reading of the press conference coverage that they don’t allege the portion we have has been doctored in a, shall we saw, Grewalian fashion (words added or deleted mid-sentance), but rather, they allege the rest of the interview that we don’t have someone puts these comments, such as “replace financial considerations” and “they were legitimately representing the party” in a different context , that somehow the meaning was changed. Pray tell, how? Did he say at the end “just kidding” or something? What did he say in the rest of the tape?

This is all a load of horse hooey, and I feel bad for James Moore being forced by Harper to go up there and shovel it when he had to know better. Ah James, you once had such promise. What happened? Steve isn’t going to put you into cabinet unless you move to Quebec, no matter how much manure you shovel for him. Better to join Michael Chong in principled isolation then keep selling your soul.

If this is somehow designed to pressure the Liberals to cave on the libel suit, I say fight on. If they're this desperate they must be concerned. Or maybe that's just what Stephen Harper wants us to think, that crazy chess playing son of a gun...

Oh, and no, the tapes weren't doctored. Either way though, Steve Harper still has some explaining to do...

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Speaking of Hillary and assinations...

...what is with CNN's sound effects?

I've got The Most Trusted Name in News on in the background as I putter on the computer, waiting to hear speeches from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I'm not paying much attention to the talking heads, but I hear Anderson Cooper saying they're going to take a break and Hillary's speech is up next, and they cut to a live shot of the hall or whatever she'll be speaking from as they go to commercial.


I presume so anyway, my back is turned from the TV. I hear the usual crowd noise, and then what sounds like a short burst of gunfire over the crowd noise before the commercial comes up. "What the fizizzle?" I think to myself. Did someone just open-up with an M-16 in the hall where Hillary is going to speak?

I turn around and grab my remote and rewind (bless the PVR) and replay. Turns out the gunfire is a CNN "going to commercial" sound effect, accompanied by shooting stars across the screen. The stars are very patriotic, but the simulated gunfire?

Weirdness. But they're back from commercial now, and it appears everyone is uninjured.

Anyway, congrats Barack!

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Conservatives in glass houses

I know ethical and ideological consistency is a foreign concept to most Conservatives, but you’d think before attacking Liberal leadership candidates over issues around leadership debt repayment under a restrictive system designed to make it more difficult they might want to ensure there are no pots in the closet that might rudely call their kettles black.

For example, this was the eight-year-olds in the Con war room in a release last week(And again today) :

Since his last filing deadline Mr. Dion has refused to let Canadians know exactly how much of this debt he has yet to pay off. Now, Elections Canada’s June 2nd deadline to pay off that leadership debt is drawing near.

(Emphasis mine.) That’s misleading; all the candidates have met their proscribed disclosure requirements and have regularly revealed all the details of their debts, and the names of all donors. And speaking of refusing to let Canadians know things, Stephen Harper has refused:

*to fully reveal who bank-rolled his 2002 campaign to become leader of the Canadian Alliance.
*to reveal exactly how much was paid to Ezra Levant in 2002 to get him to step aside from the Calgary Southwest nomination so he could run in a by-election.
* to make Peter Mackay reveal the identity of the single donor who paid off his $500,000 leadership debt.

Perhaps the Conservatives should answer some of those questions for Canadians before they get all high and mighty about Liberal leadership debt.

They won’t though. In addition to deliberately misleading Canadians about election law and the meaning of the June 2^nd deadline, which is really unsurprising as they seem to run afoul of elections law so regularly themselves they clearly don't understand it, they appear to be set to raise the stakes a notch higher:

But Poilievre signalled that the Tories will use any extensions to accuse Elections Canada of giving Liberals "preferential treatment'' and helping them break the law.

(Emphasis mine again.) Don’t wait Pierre, please don’t wait. Accuse Elections Canada of helping us “break the law” now. Accuse the Liberal Party of breaking the law. Do it today. Then we can sue your asses off, and use the proceeds to pay off all the leadership debts. Problem solved!

Anyway, Conservative histrionics aside, on the leadership debts issue I pretty much agree with Steve in terms of where Dion's priorities should be though. Now would be a food time for the party to come together and knock this thing off though. And with some of the heavy hitters that supported other candidates now onboard to help fundraise, I’m sure the Dion debt will be retired in due course, as required and allowed by law. And even sooner if Pierre Poilievre runs his mouth off.

UPDATE: This CP story mercilessly exposes the absolute hypocrisy of the Conservatives and Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievere on this issue and is a must read. It seems the Conservatives are just as "guilty" of the alleged offense they seem to have convicted the Liberals of. And then some.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers