I'll be back...just not quite yet...first, to Israel

Apologies for this corner having gone dark recently.

It's been a busy stretch at work, including spending most of the last week in Las Vegas for HP's Americas Partner conference. It's an event that always generates lots to cover for us, but then throw in HP deciding to drop $1.2 billion to buy Palm while I was there, and it got even busier. Was a fun trip though. Stayed at one of the newer Vegas properties, Aria, and I quite liked it. Unlike most cavernous Vegas properties where they don't want you to be reminded of the world outside, Aria has lots of glass and natural light. And there's also a route from your room to the conference centre that doesn't involve going through the casino , a first in my Vegas experience and surely a design flaw... And speaking of the casino, I'm not a big gambler but did finish in the green, including a win in the sports book from taking the Habs in game six. Didn't bet on game seven; they surprised me there.

After less than three days back home though, on Sunday afternoon I'm on the road again, but this time for pleasure. I've been invited on a week-long trip to Israel, organized by the CIC and funded by a private donor. Steve at Far and Wide will also be coming, along with some NDP/left-wing bloggers I look forward to meeting. Steve has a good run-down in the itinerary so I won't re-hash it, suffice to say it's busy, diverse and interesting. A good mix of sight-seeing and meetings with an interesting group of local politicians, journalists and bloggers, and even our ambassador to Israel. I shall try to approach it all with an open, but slightly skeptical mind. (If you're interested, here is the current Coles Notes of my opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.)

I'm not sure the schedule will allow for much time for blogging during the trip, but I shall try, and certainly I'll have lots to say and share upon my return. All I ask are for two things while I'm gone: my Canucks to still be playing hockey, and my country not to have bumbled its way into an election.

Since my hiatus is to continue a little longer, a few brief thoughts on recent developments in Canadian political land:

* While we've all been distracted with either Jaffer/Guergis nonsense or the detainee docudrama, the Liberals have actually been talking and releasing policy. And much of it is aimed at rural Canada. First was some very sensible ideas around getting more doctors and nurses into rural areas by, among other things, forgiving part of their student loans if they make that commitment. This was followed by a "Canada First Good Policy" to support and promote local farmers and access to safe, healthy food, and a commitment to rural postal service.

Of course, policy isn't sexy enough for media coverage these days so you may not have heard about any of this, and the punditry that scolded the Liberals for not talking policy are, when they talk about it at all, scolding them for talking policy. Outside the Ottawa bubble, however, Canadians are much more concerned about finding a family doctor than they are about who Rahim Jaffer e-mailed. So I hope we keep pushing the policy.

* That's not to say the Jaffer/Guergis stuff isn't important. The investigations should proceed, and if serving ministers acting inappropriately or in contravention of the rules, that should be exposed and they should face the consequences. The e-mails and other documents that came out this week certainly seem to show that the Conservatives have been far from honest about Jaffer's access and influence in his seemingly not overly successful non-lobbying career. And it's often more the lack of honesty than the actual deeds that seems to hurt more in these stories, in my experience.

* On the docu-drama, the speaker's ruling this week was certainly very significant, as was the reaction of Conservative partisans. I think what some of them fail to recognize is that this isn't really about detainee torture anymore. It's about democracy, and it's about the right and responsibility of the legislative branch to be a check on the activities of the executive branch. Harper was elected by a little over 38,000 people in Calgary Southwest; he has no right to thumb his nose at the Parliament of Canada.

One has to think saner heads will prevail here. Ignore the testosterone-fueled rantings of the likes of Kory Teneycke. The Conservatives don't want an election over this. They won't be able to make it about coddling the Taliban, it's an asinine argument. It would be about a dictatorial leader refusing to respect the will of the people's elected democratic representatives. And the Cons didn't exactly fare well during the prorogation drama, now did they?

There will be a compromise reached that allows the opposition access to the uncensored documents, likely in a secret or confidential manner that respects national security concerns. We've seen signals along those lines already from Conservaland. Ironically, always concerned about political posturing and positioning, they're already trying to paint such a compromise as an opposition back-down. Truth is though, the opposition has been proposing such a scenario for months; the government has continually rebuffed it. So, as much as it matters, it would be them backing down. Let's just hope saner heads prevail all around though.

* Speaking of saner heads, the head of our military, General Walter Natynczyk, is cool with giving all of the un-redacted documents to parliament, saying the military has nothing to hide. Which raises two questions for me. One: must it be the Harper government with something to hide then? And two, if we employ standard Conservative logic here and respond as the government would in question period, I have to ask, why does our Chief of Defence Staff not support our troops, and why is he a Taliban sympathizer?

* Speaking of interlopers in our midst, turns out that pollster Frank Graves, who the Conservatives are portraying as some kind of undercover Liberal mole polluting the public airwaves of the CBC pretending to be unbiased, has actually been getting millions of dollars of polling contracts from the Conservative government. Including $131,440 from Harper's own Privy Council Office.

I'm sure Dean Del Mastro will join me in demanding that a Parliamentary Committee immediately investigate how this government could give millions of dollars in polling work to a know Liberal stooge. Or maybe they could just, you know, admit this whole manufactured drama is stupid and move on to serious issues. Either one would be fine.

* And on Graves and this culture war nonesense the Cons are hyper-ventilating about, I could go on at length but let me just say this: the Cons have been fighting a culture-war for years in this country. Urban vs. rural, Tim Horton's vs. academic elites and fancy gala goers, support the troops vs you're all taliban lovers, tough on crime vs hug-a-thug. They've been fighting a culture war, we just haven't been fighting back. All Graves "advised" was for the Liberals to start employing some wedges of their own, to fight back, to basically use some of the same tactics Harper et. al. have to some success. And this is news, somehow? For the Cons to be all bitchy about someone suggesting their own tactics be used against them, tactics which have been part of politics, by the way, forever, is just stupid.

* Lastly, I have a great deal of respect for Ujjal Dosanjh, for what he has consistently and resolutely stood for throughout his career, the principled approach he takes to public life, and the energy and commitment with which he approaches it. And I join those who have condemned the threats and attacks against him and others who have dared to stand up to extremism in any of its guises. I'm no sure I agree completely with his take on the impact multiculturalism is having on Canadian society. But it's an important issue we should be debating, and it should be a debate free of threat and intimidation, in the best of Canadian traditions.

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Taking a few bullets from the Conservative rifle on the registry

As a Liberal who grew up in a rural riding I’ve never been a big fan of the long gun registry, and not just for political reasons. It was an issue that spoke to the ongoing urban/rural divide in the Liberal Party, a well-intentioned piece of legislation that didn’t consider the legitimate concerns of rural Canadians – most likely because their perspective just wasn’t present at the table when it was drafted.

If anything, for rural Liberals, it exposed a chicken and egg paradox – are Liberal policies not considerate of rural Canadians because we don’t have many rural Liberal MPs to offer input, or do we not have many Liberal rural MPs to offer input because our policies aren’t considerate of rural Canadians?

So I wasn’t optimistic when I read that Michael Ignatieff was offering some proposals on the gun registry he hoped would appeal to rural Canadians, or at least to those eight Liberals that voted to scrap the registry on second reading of Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner’s (not really) private members bill. But after hearing that all the caucus is apparently on board with the changes and will now vote against the Hoeppner bill, I took a look.

Essentially, the proposed Liberal reforms are as follows:

*First-time failures to register firearms would be treated as a simple, non-criminal, ticketing offence, instead of a criminal offence as they are currently;

*Fees for new licenses, renewals and upgrades would be permanently eliminated; and

*The registration process – especially the forms – would be streamlined to make registration as easy as possible.

I wasn’t optimistic at first, but I actually like these changes. When you talk to anti-registry folks they have a lot of arguments against it, some legitimate and some not. I think these reforms address nearly all of the legitimate concerns I’ve heard against the registry, or at least those I’m inclined to agree with.

Their big argument was criminality: why should I be a criminal if I forget to register Great-Grandpa’s old rifle from the Boer War? OK, it’s now a non-criminal, ticket offence. Another argument was I have a large rifle collection, you’re going to gouge me with fees? OK, no more fees. And all that paperwork? There’ll still be some, but we’ll streamline it.

The arguments that are left tend to lose steam:

Why should I have to register my gun? Well, why not? You register your car and your dog.

Criminals won’t obey the law and register! Criminals by definition don’t obey laws. Does that mean we shouldn’t have any?

It's too expensive? Yes, building it went over budget but that money is spent, the operating costs are actually low. If a house went over budget during construction, do you tear it down once built?

The police don’t use it! Tell that to the deputy commissioner of the RCMP and scores of police chiefs and officers across the country who say otherwise. Not all police support it, true, but many do. So if even half find it to be a useful tool, should we take it away for ideological reasons?

From there we descend into the conspiracy theories, about gun registration being the first step toward the government rounding up all the gun and marching us off to socialist work camps or something. I actually think that’s only if Obama gets a second mandate, actually.

The politics in Parliament

So with these proposed reforms, I understand that the entire Liberal caucus is now supposedly onside against Hoeppner’s bill. Reportedly Ignatieff will whip the vote, and I’m sure OLO wouldn’t whip it if they didn’t have them all onside. Well, one would like to think so, at least. It would be a pretty dumb move otherwise.

Even if all Liberal MPs are whipped, present and accounted for, and the BQ again votes no, it’s not enough to defeat the legislation though. Some 12 NDP MPs broke ranks and voted to kill the registry on second reading, mainly from rural ridings. The NDP says while it supports the registry, but it allows its MPs to vote their conscience on private members bills. Joe Comartin told Power and Politics Monday that while they’re trying to convince the 12, leader Jack Layton isn’t likely to whip the vote. Unless he changes his mind or convinces his 12 MPs to change theirs, the NDP will let the registry be killed. Indeed, they’ll help kill it.

It is a tricky situation, trying to bridge those cleavages within a caucus. We’ve been there. But hiding behind the “it’s a private members bill so it’s a free vote” line is a cop-out. The Conservatives are pushing this legislation; they did it as a pseudo private members bill PRECISESLY BECAUSE they wanted to peel off enough Liberal and NDP votes to pass it, because they knew they couldn’t pass it as a government bill. This is what the Conservatives want.

And if you believe the Conservatives aren’t whipping this vote on the down low, you’re hopelessly naïve. Not one Conservative MP from an urban riding (there are a few) or Quebec supports the registry? Well, all-righty then.

If the NDP really supports the registry, they need to either work with the Liberals and BQ on reforms that can get their caucus onside, or bite the bullet (to use a metaphor) and whip the vote. But it’s hard to have it both ways.

And the politics in Canada

Interesting to consider how this will play outside the Queensway. Let’s start with rural Canada. Will the Liberal reforms be enough to appease registry opponents? Not all of them. But some of them. There are those who will accept nothing less than abolition. They’re not likely to vote for Liberal for a boatload of reasons no matter what. But I think for many rural voters, the reforms address enough of their concerns to take this issue off the table for them. Getting them to vote Liberal will take a lot more, but it removes a roadblock and is a step in the right direction.

In urban Canada there’s probably no change as they support the registry and don’t think it should go anywhere, and I don’t think they’ll see the reforms as diminishing the effectiveness of the registry.

Now, what if the registry is killed by the Conservatives, with NDP support? Well, in rural Canada I’d see it as status quo. Could our rural MPs that voted to save it in vain be punished for trying to save the registry? Maybe. I’m sure the rabid registry haters would try to whip up some anger just out of spite. But given that they’d have won – the registry is dead – it’s likely most people who wanted it killed would be glad it’s gone and would cast their ballots on other issues.

In the cities, though, where support for the registry is strong, it’s another story. If the Liberal caucus unites in favour of the registry and the NDP splits to let it die, I wouldn’t want to be campaigning for the NDP in many urban ridings next election. What will they say in Surrey and Burnaby, in Vancouver-East, in Trinity-Spadina, and even Toronto-Danforth. Heck, how about Outremont?

And what about the Conservatives? We hear a lot of spin about how the Liberals are out of touch with rural voters on the registry. Well, aren’t the Conservatives then out of touch with urban voters on the registry? Hasn’t hurt them to date as they’ve taken no high-profile steps to kill it. Pass Hoeppner’s bill though and it’s another story, and I don’t think the “it’s a private members bill” line will fly with many urban voters. The Conservatives need to gain urban seats to move forward. This would make that dammed hard.

Were I a conspiracy theorist, I'd posit that the Conservatives want the NDP to defeat this bill. That lets them say to their base "we tried our best" while not pissing off the urban voters they need for growth purposes. And it lets them keep the registry alive as a red-meat issue, which has been their modus-operandi on justice issues from day one -- favouring politics and the appearance of progress over actual action.

So we’ll see how this all plays out. Right now, the ball is in the court of Layton and the NDP. Were I a betting man, I’d wager they find a way to get their caucus onside with some amendments. With the Liberals no longer to give them cover, being seen killing the registry would be unthinkable.

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The long gun registry should be scrapped

I don't know if he'll take flack in his own party, but given that the NDP certainly has other MPs that represent rural constituencies, I'm pretty sure he's not the only one in his party or his caucus to hold this view. And it's a view I share, as do many Liberal from rural ridings, including, I'm sure, inside caucus. Hand-gun registry absolutely, but the long-gun registry makes no sense and should be scrapped:

A New Democrat member of Parliament is taking aim at Canada's long-gun registration program.

Northwestern Ontario MP John Rafferty wants the program scrapped.

He says he intends to introduce a private member's bill to that end when the House of Commons resumes sitting.

Rafferty says the money that goes to the program now would be better spent on police enforcement initiatives.

He admits many in his own party have different views, but says he is following the wishes of his constituents in his predominantly rural riding of Thunder Bay-River River.

Other MPs have introduced similar bills in the past, only to see them go nowhere.

I strongly support gun control. But long guns, aka rifles, are another kettle of fish. This really is an urban/rural thing. And for the Liberal Party, it's kind of a chicken or the egg thing. We have trouble electing rural MPs because of our policies on issues like this. And we get our policies on issues like this wrong because we don't have the perspective of rural MPs at the caucus table. A tough circle to square.

I went into greater depth on the issue a few years ago.

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