How not to convert wavering left Liberal voters

If the NDP is trying to soften-up the Liberal left flank and convince some its members to lend them their votes, or lease them outright, its apparent strategy on the scandalous Cadman allegations is only going to hurt them.


Their strategy has been most curious.

It seems to many, myself included, like they’ve been trying to downplay it. Why? The answer to that is readily apparent. The Liberals have been out in front on this, it’s quite possible the NDP fears that if this thing takes off in the public consciousness the Liberals will gain support. Of course, the Conservative will lose support, but the NDP aren’t going to gain support from the Conservatives. Any gain in Liberal support is bad for the NDP. It’s just politics.

Now, the NDP and its supporters will insist that this isn’t about politics at all. Frankly, every party plays politics, the NDP included, yet only they insist they don’t. Not sure who they think they’re fooling. But anyway, they’ll also insist that they do think these allegations are very serious and should be investigated fully.

They’ll point to their support of an RCMP investigation and one by the special prosecutor to support that claim. Pat Martin’s prior professed lack of faith in the RCMP aside, and his apparently not knowing what the special prosecutor actually does, I’m willing to grant most NDPers some ground here.

They lose me though on their lack of support for an investigation by the parliamentary ethics committee. I don’t find their reasoning here as having merit, nor do I Paul Szabo’s for that matter. They say concurrent hearings could impede any RCMP investigation. That’s just not true. And even if it did, that didn’t stop the NDP from supporting committee hearings into Adscam, or Mulroney/Schreiber.

Let’s say though that the NDP truly want this issue investigated, and believe committee hearings would hamper the RCMP. That line of reasoning becomes hard to swallow when your star MP makes comments like these:

Mulclair
"At the end of the day, we have a Liberal opposition that's not there in the House of Commons"

Newman:
"What's that have to do with, with all due respect, financial considerations in a tape recording from 2005?"

Mulclair:
"Don, it's got everything to do with what there up to. They're trying to pound the table over an issue where the only person who actually knows what went on, who's unfortunately no longer with us, said there is no offer."

Was Muclair betraying the NDP’s true feelings on the Cadman scandal, minimize and keep attacking the Liberals, or was he freelancing and out of bounds? If it is the latter and not the former Jack Layton should smack him down or make him issue a clarification. Because otherwise, the impression he leaves about the NDP’s motives on the Cadman mess are clear.

The Globe’s Adam Radwanski is perplexed:

The NDP has an opportunity to pain itself as the only national party willing to stand up to the Conservatives. But they're so busy explaining that the Liberals aren't standing up to the Conservatives that they're forgetting to do so themselves. And so when he took to the airwaves today, the New Democrats' leader-in-waiting accidentally backed himself into the Tories' position on the Cadman mess - dismissing the entirely relevant questions about what the Prime Minister was talking about in '05 as irrelevant.

… But the Liberals aren't in government; the Tories are. If you forget that, you become a pretty lousy opposition party - which helps explain why, amid all of Stephane Dion's woes leading the Liberals, the NDP has managed to lose public support since the last election.

The Toronto Star’s editorial board is too:

Layton's apparent rationale – that the RCMP should be left to do the job – is unpersuasive. Yesterday Layton slammed Harper over the Cadman affair. "We get half truths, half the time," he said. Shouldn't the NDP then be pressing for full answers? Or is Layton more concerned about preventing the rival Liberals from profiting politically from the Tories' embarrassment?

…The reason offered by NDP panel member Pat Martin for objecting to a parliamentary probe is risible. "We don't need a parliamentary committee to tell us whether it is right or wrong to bribe a Member of Parliament," he said. By that skewed logic the NDP could just as easily have objected to looking into the controversial business dealings between Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber. In fact, Martin and the NDP played a big role in those hearings.

The fact is, Canadians want answers on this Cadscam. And they’re going to look pretty unfavourably, to say the least, on the NDP if it stands in the way because it won’t hurt the Liberals. If they insist on looking at is strategically, then they should consider how a lefty Liberal voter on the fence will react to their downplaying allegations the Conservatives tried to buy off an MP. Not favourably.

Bottom lining it

I think we need an ethics committee investigation because, frankly, it’s the best way we have of potentially getting to the truth here, and getting the facts to the Canadian people.

The RCMP should investigate. As I said, committee hearings won’t hamper that work at all. I think it’s pretty likely no criminal charges will ever result though. There is insufficient admissible evidence to meet a legal burden of proof. Chuck Cadman isn’t with us, the Cadman family’s accounts are pretty much hearsay, and if there ever was a paper trail it’s long gone. The RCMP may get lucky, and it should do its work. But I’m not holding my breath. It also does its work in private, and on its own schedule., as it should frankly.

But Canadians deserve to have the facts on this scandal, as much as is possible, before the next election. The only way to do that is with immediate ethics committee hearings. These aren’t legal proceedings. All the facts will be presented, testimony will be given under oath, and then the jury will be the Canadian people, at the ballot box. The NDP shouldn’t deny them the right to have all the information possible before they make their decision.

MORE READING: Steve for the Liberals, Cam for the NDP.

PS: Just to balance things out, this motion from the Liberals is really very stupid, and embarrassing.

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Oh Pat Martin, you so crazy

Another day, loads more interesting revelations in the Cadman affair. It’s not looking good for the Harper Conservatives, to say the least.

Will this be a scandal that breaks outside of political geekdom into real Canada? The jury is still out, I think, but the potential is there. Today at work two colleagues with no interest in politics brought it up with me unprompted, and both were disgusted. And as Scott mentions a high-profile, U.S. blogger has picked-up on the story as well.

So, interesting times. I’ll try to put together a detailed recap of the day’s events tonight, as there is work to be done. In the mean time though, you can get the latest from Kady here and here, plus Steve.

Also, while the Conservatives are falsely chastising the Liberals for smearing a deceased Chuck Cadman (while they smear his widow), The Wingnuterer has a selection of comments from the folks at Small Dead Animals about Chuck Cadman right after he passed away from his battle with cancer. It’s a must-read post, and it’s disturbing. This comment is pretty representative:

Good riddance. Too bad you couldn't collect on the graft the Libs promised you in exchange for your vote, eh Chucky? Hahhhhhh.
Posted by: Sean at July 9, 2005 10:25 PM

Disgusting. As I said, more tonight. But before I go, as pissed-off as I am with the Liberal Party these days, I wanted to share reason #234 why I’ll probably never join the NDP: the wonder that is Pat Martin.

UPDATE: For the actual audio of Harper's interview with the reporter, where he confirms an offer was made to Chuck with his knowledge on behalf of the party, click to this story and scroll down for the audio.

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What's the deal with Pat Martin?

I blogged the other day on the changing positions of the NDP’s Pat Martin on the accountability act, but reading an account of his behaviour in the HoC ethics committee yesterday one has to wonder if he’s taken to hanging-out with Pierre Poilievre or something. This is just bizzare:

However, Mr. Szabo's effort to ensure the committee acts within its mandate dissolved into a confrontation with New Democratic Party MP Pat Martin, who pitched his pencil over a committee table and stormed over to Mr. Szabo to accuse him of stalling his efforts to get an ethics committee inquiry off the ground.

"You're a disgrace," Mr. Martin told Mr. Szabo, who remained seated in his chair. "That's it. You're done."

Sticks (and pencils) and stones, Pat. At least he didn’t ask him if he had the gonads to chair this meeting, or challenge him to a duel or something. Yeah, he's a disgrace Pat, and you're a credit to your party. Really classy.

P.S. CBC compiled this entertaining list of parliamentary insults awhile back, enjoy.

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Is bullshit a renewable fuel?

I think it's entirely possibly that, at this point, Conservative hypocrisy has ceased being news. It has become so common that, at this point, the very frequent examples of the wide gap between haughty Conservative principles and actual Conservative action should perhaps just be treated like a sports section box score, summarized in small font.

Nevertheless, until Stephen Harper et al decide to finally climb down off their moral high horse, it would seem to be a worthwhile exercise to continue highlighting examples of Conservative flip-foppery, if only as a public service.

In that vain, remember this much ballyhooed promise from the Conservative platform:

"Under the Liberals, lobbying government - often by friends and associates of Paul Martin and other Liberal ministers - has become a multi-million dollar industry. Senior Liberals move freely back and forth between elected and non-elected government posts and the world of lobbying."

And then there’s this Harper speech on “accountability” that’s still on the Conservative Web site:

We are determined to end the revolving door syndrome so often seen in the past involving ministers’ offices, the senior public service, and the lobbying industry.

Lofty rhetoric. Too bad the implementation has fallen laughably short, from day one. Although heck, as former Conservative campaign co-chair John Reynolds, now a lobbyist himself (oh delicious irony) infamously observed: campaigns are campaigns.

The latest development on this front though is amusing on a number of levels. You know those annoying I Love You Stephen commercials and billboards from the totally non-partisan Canadian Renewable Fuels Association? They caused some very contrived and manufactured copyright-related controversy over in Blogging Tory land, you may recall.

Well, anyway, it seems the executive director of that totally independent third-party lobby group that ran (is running) pro-Harper commercials is now going to work for (in name as well as practice) the Conservative Party:

Kory Teneycke, the former executive director of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, was hired this fall to lead the Conservative research bureau, which prepares talking points for Tory MPs and digs up dirt on the opposition.

You see, they didn’t want to stop the revolving door. They just wanted to bar Liberals form going through it. That must have been in the fine print of the Accountability Act.

Always able to be counted-on for righteous indignation, the NDP’s Pat Martin is, well, righteously indignant:

"The Federal Accountability Act set out to tie a bell around the neck of lobbyists, and virtually nothing has happened," said NDP MP Pat Martin, who considers Harper's showpiece legislation to be "stalled and dead in the water."

"It's business as usual," said Martin, "and the revolving door is still swinging freely between Conservative (political) staff and lobby houses, and then back again."

I hate to be the predictable guy that always attacks the NDP the way dippers always attack the Libs, but I find Pat’s indignation a touch amusing. After all, when the Libs were raising serious issues about the (lacking) Accountability Act, the NDP and Cons were teaming-up to block the Liberals and push the bull through committee. Pat Martin was the act’s biggest cheerleader:

PRESS RELEASE: NDP hails passing of Accountability Act
Fri 08 Dec 2006.
More ethical government for average Canadians

OTTAWA - NDP MPs Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre) and Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre) are celebrating today the passage of Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act.

"This is an accomplishment we can be quite proud of," said Martin, NDP Ethics Critic.

Proud indeed, bravo Pat. My (metaphorical fictional) grandma always said when you lay with dogs you’re gonna get fleas. Lesson learned, I hope.

Back, however, to the Conservatives. As the Star article goes on to outline, while some Con apologists will say the Act was only intended to prevent people leaving government to lobby, not lobbyists joining government, the reality is the revolving door is swinging both ways:

The latest in a long list of examples includes a senior member of Environment Minister John Baird's staff and a member of Public Works Minister Michael Fortier's staff, who both recently left to work as lobbyists in Ottawa.

Mike Van Soelen, Baird's communications director when the former Treasury Board minister was shepherding the accountability act through Parliament, quit this August to set up Playbook Communications. The Ottawa public relations company promotes itself by stating that its "government expertise can help clients achieve their objectives, from raising an organization's profile to securing specific regulatory changes."

Darcy Walsh, who served as Fortier's director of parliamentary affairs at Public Works, quit last month to join Hill and Knowlton Canada. A news release from the lobbying giant said Walsh will ``implement the marketing and sales plans for the Public Relations and Public Affairs divisions of the Ottawa office."

I will, however, give the Conservatives credit for having the balls to post this statement on their Web site today:

This is the choice that Canadians face in the next election. They can choose the strong leadership of Prime Minister Harper who backs up his principles with real accountability and real action, or they can choose the weak leadership of Stéphane Dion and the Liberals who are prepared to sacrifice principles and accountability in the pursuit of short term political gain.

Have you no shame, sir? At long last...Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Hmm, is bullshit a renewable fuel? If it is, then Harper really does deserve thanks, because he’s excreting it by the gallon.

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