Author Archives: Geoffrey Stevens

Harper Tories evoking laughter and anger

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Published May 21, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record. 

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” — Retired House of Commons law clerk Rob Walsh, on the Mike Duffy/Nigel Wright Senate expenses uproar, CBC-TV, May 17.

Politicians don’t like it when people get really mad at them. Anger creates political damage. But they like it far less when people start laughing at them. Humour can destroy politicians and their careers. Witness former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, an honourable man who never recovered after Stephen Harper (with significant help from Mike Duffy, then a broadcaster) got the country laughing at him in the 2008 election.

Today, it seems to me, the Harper government is in peril of being dragged across that line between anger and laughter. The anger is real and it is not confined to the Ottawa bubble. It is everywhere. Just read the letters to the editor, listen to the hotline shows, follow the blogs and other traffic on the internet, or simply ask folks at Tims.

People are angry, and rightly so. A Conservative party that was elected to clean up the mess in Ottawa after the Liberal sponsorship scandal has made matters worse. A party that was supposed to be good managers, if nothing else, has managed to combine bureaucratic ineptitude, partisan insensitivity, bullying tactics and what York University political scientist Ian Greene calls the “arrogance of office” to turn Ottawa into a toxic waste dump, politically speaking.

Harper’s approach to problems is not to meet them head on and to fix them promptly, which is what astute prime ministers do. Rather he denies the problems exist, attacks the opposition or the media, runs ads, or prorogues Parliament, then deflects blame from himself by throwing someone else under the bus. In Harper’s Ottawa, the prime minister takes credit for everything good, but responsibility for nothing bad. To my recollection, the words, “It was my fault,” or “I was wrong,” have never passed his lips.

Now that Senators Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau, plus the Prime Minister’s Office chief of staff Nigel Wright, have joined discarded former ministers Bev Oda, Helena Guergis, Peter Penashue and John Duncan, it must be getting crowded under the Harper bus.

There is a certain dark humour in this. A prime minister who was elected on a promise to reform the Senate turns it into a cesspool of Conservative patronage. Every single senator he has appointed in seven years has been a Tory; each one has been required to swear fealty to the Harper program.

Although there are hordes of Conservatives out there who would jump at the chance to earn $132,000 a year, Harper found ones who either don’t know where they live or don’t understand the simple words, “principal residence.” They run up expenses like an out-of-control bullion train, ostensibly not grasping the fact that if they go forth to campaign for the Conservative party, they should not be claiming to be on Senate business. That’s called double-dipping and it is frowned on by the conflict-of-interest people, the Senate ethics committee and probably by Canada Revenue.

Mike Duffy got caught claiming a senatorial housing allowance to which he was not entitled and was ordered to repay $90,000. Did he pay it? Nope. Pleading poverty, he went to Nigel Wright in the Prime Minister’s Office, who wrote him a personal cheque for the $90,000.

By all accounts, Wright is a good (rich) man. He wanted to help poor “Duff.” He may also have wanted to make the Duffy problem go away before it did more damage to the Harper brand. But being wiser in the ways of business than of politics, he may not have understood the ethical implications when a senior figure in the Prime Minister’s Office makes a large gift to a parliamentarian whose support the prime minister counts on.

Back in 1982, Allan Fotheringham wrote a satirical book about the Trudeau Liberals entitled, Malice in Blunderland. I wish he hadn’t written it. We could use the title today for the Harper Tories.

Accepting NDP ideas could create Wynne-win situation

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Published May 13, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record.

This is how it is supposed to work in a parliamentary democracy, isn’t it?

Party leaders and their confederates present competing visions (or, more prosaically, platforms) for the electorate to consider. But once the election is over, smart winners don’t simply impose their visions.

They remember that elections are not decided by partisans (Tim Hudak take note). Core supporters are important, but elections are won or lost on the votes of “loose fish” — uncommitted or lightly affiliated voters — who swim around at election time. More important, smart winners understand that they have not been elected solely to cater to their core; they understand that people who did not (and might never) vote for them are entitled to the same consideration from the government as its partisans.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is a smart leader. She understands this. (The same cannot be said of the ideologues in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, or in the Republican party in the United States, but let us not go there today.)

Because she is a smart leader, Wynne is suppressing the frustration she surely feels as NDP Leader Andrea Horwath keeps coming back for more, ratcheting up the price of her party’s support for the minority Liberal government’s budget. The latest demand: creation of a financial accountability office, patterned after the parliamentary budget office in Ottawa.
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Horwath has already snagged some notable concessions, including reduced car insurance rates, more money for home-care and a youth jobs strategy. Now she wants an independent accountability officer, who would report to the speaker of the legislature, not to the government, to provide oversight of government spending.

Although Conservatives (and undoubtedly some Liberals, too) think Horwath has moved beyond poker to a different game — to wit, blackmail — what’s so wrong with that? If there had been a system of independent oversight earlier, some of the more egregious spending scandals of the Dalton McGuinty era might never have happened or been nipped in the bud: eHealth, Ornge ambulance, gas-plant relocations, to mention just three. As long as the government itself oversees government spending, bad stuff tends to slip through. A parliamentary or legislative budget officer is not a panacea, but the position does introduce an element of transparency and, one hopes, caution and restraint.

It’s worth noting that in Ottawa the parliamentary budget office was created in the wake of the Liberals’ sponsorship scandal by the first Harper minority government, then in its pro-accountability days. The Conservatives got much more than they bargained for as the budget officer, Kevin Page, shone a searchlight on government spending — on the war in Afghanistan, prisons and fighter jets, among other things. His term expired in March. He was denied an extension and the office remains vacant while the Tories conduct a leisurely search for a less vigilant watchdog.

At Queen’s Park, Wynne is trying to distance herself from McGuinty’s legacy. Her government still looks and acts too much like his. She needs new faces and new ideas. The spending watchdog is one idea whose time has come. Its projected cost, $2.5 million a year, is almost nothing next to the hundreds of millions wasted in the gas-plant fiasco alone.

So why does Wynne hesitate? Why doesn’t she thank Horwath effusively and grab this shiny new idea? For one thing, she knows that watchdogs have a habit of biting the hand that appoints them. For another, she knows that the more ideas she accepts from the NDP the more she enhances the credibility of a party that is fishing in the same pool of progressive voters.

But to flip that coin over, the risk is just as real for Horwath. The more ideas she insists the Liberals steal, the greater the attraction Wynne’s Liberals will have for her own NDP voters. Why stay true to Andrea Howarth when New Democrats can enjoy the same policies, and have a government to boot, by voting for Kathleen Wynne?

Such is democracy at work.

Geoffrey Stevens on CTV’s Province Wide

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Published May 5, 2013, on CTV Province Wide

Geoffrey Stevens talks about what the future holds for Premier Kathleen Wynne and an Ontario election. Stevens believes that Wynne will be in good shape through the summer but notes that it will be interesting to see what happens in the Fall. There is a 50/50 chance that we will have an election in the Fall and a 100 percent chance that we will have an election at this time, next year.

You can watch the video by clicking here.

Tales of three political battles

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Published May. 6, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record

Who says Canadian politics is dull?

In this neck of the woods, we are witnessing three fascinating political battles. At Queen’s Park, Premier Kathleen Wynne is fighting for survival. Last week’s budget bought her Liberals some time, enough to get through the summer, I think, and probably the fall. My guess is she won’t make it – or want to make it – past next spring’s budget.

In Ottawa, the Liberal party, perceived to be moribund following three general election defeats, is struggling to return to life under Justin Trudeau, its fifth leader (including interim Bob Rae) in seven years. It’s beginning to look as though the Liberals will manage to self-resuscitate. A Harris-Decima poll for Canadian Press last week put them a surprising seven percentage points ahead of the Conservatives and 13 points ahead of the sagging New Democrats. These are early, honeymoon days, but those numbers aren’t at all shabby for a Liberal party that is running on charisma alone. Hope has returned to Liberal-land.

Meanwhile, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, master of all he surveyed for the past seven years, is struggling to reassert control. His caucus is restive. Some MPs resent the discipline he imposes on them in Parliament; others refuse to distribute the ugly anti-Liberal propaganda produced by Tory party central. Among the public, there appears to be a growing sense that the Tories are going too far with their television attack ads.

Toughness is a quality that Canadian accept, even admire, in their politicians; meanness is not. The Conservative attack ads on Justin Trudeau cross that line. The Harper people don’t seem to care that some of their “facts” are distorted while some are simply untrue. Stephen Harper is becoming seen as Stephen McNasty, who plays politics hard and dirty.
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He also needs to regain control over his legislative agenda. Whatever else they may be, the Harper Conservatives use to pride themselves on being competent managers. But no longer. Not with the F-35 debacle, the cabinet’s inability to organize the purchase of new search and rescue aircraft, and now there’s a report that the fleet of Arctic patrol ships the government plans to buy are not suitable for use in Arctic waters.

Not least, there is the “missing” $3.1 billion that Parliament approved for anti-terrorism security. The money is not technically lost; it’s just that the government’s financial wizards can’t find it. (Perhaps Treasury Board President Tony Clement hid it in one of his gazebos.)

But back to Kathleen Wynne, Andrea Horwath and the soap opera at Queen’s Park. The facts are simple. Premier Wynne and her finance minister had to bring in a budget. Being a minority government, they didn’t have enough votes to get it through the Legislature. The Conservatives had their feet planted in cement, but NDP leader Horwath was willing to deal. She presented a number of demands. Wynne accepted all the important ones.

“Thank you, Kathleen,” Horwath might have said. “Bless you. You are saint.” And she could have told her party, “Hey, we won! We won! Break out the soda water” (or whatever New Democrats uncork to toast a triumph).

But no. Hearing whispers of dissent, Horwath declared the deal was not yet a done deal. She decided she wanted to consult the people, so she opened a phone line and a website. She plans to meet the premier, probably this week, to seek assurances that the Liberals will change their spots and become more accountable in the future than they have been in the past. Good luck to her!

The NDP is playing with fire. If Howarth reneges, Wynne would not even have to wait to be defeated in the house. She would be within her rights to march down the hall to the lieutenant-governor, tell him the situation is untenable, ask for dissolution and call a snap election. She could win a Liberal majority on back of the faithless New Democrats.

Nothing dull about that, is there?

Is a June election on Ontario’s horizon?

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Published Apr. 29, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record 

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s retreaded Liberal government will bring down its budget on Thursday – her first since taking over at Queen’s Park in February – and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen. We may not know until Wednesday or even Thursday. As of today, there’s probably a 35-40 per cent chance that Wynne’s negotiations with NDP leader Andrea Horwath will fail. If they do, the minority Liberal government will fall within days, and Ontarians will be sent to the polls in June.

Only one thing seems certain: having been painted into a corner by their leader, the Progressive Conservatives will oppose the budget, regardless of its contents. That leaves Horwath as Wynne’s only dance partner.

Tory leader Tim Hudak is a product of the John Diefenbaker school of political arts. Dief was resolute in his conviction that the role of the Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is to oppose. Period. As Dief saw it, it is not the responsibility of the opposition to help a minority government to serve the citizenry. The opposition’s job is to throw the scoundrels out, come hell or high water.

Having made his intention clear at the outset, Hudak lost any opportunity to nudge Wynne and her finance minister Charles Sousa a bit to right. Hudak’s stance may play well with Tory hard-liners, but it does not help his standing among the public at large; he trails the other two leaders in popularity.
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Each of the three leaders has a problem. Wynne’s is that while Ontarians like her, they don’t like her government or her party. The stench of the Dalton McGuinty era spending scandals (hydro plants, Ornge ambulance, eHealth) still lingers. An Ipsos Reid poll last week reported that 66 per cent of Ontario voters believe it is time for another political party to take over. “Time for a change,” is a deadly warning for any government.

Horwath’s problem is the longer she props up the Liberals – she has been at it since the October 2011 election – the less she is able to present the NDP as an alternative to the government. If voters like the Liberal/NDP brand of policies, why not vote for the real thing, Wynne’s Liberals? But if Horwath turns her back on Wynne this week (as many New Democrats are urging), she will bear the blame for an election most Ontarians don’t want.

Tim Hudak’s problem is he knows he cannot trust the polls. They may show the Conservatives six to eight points ahead of the Liberals (and a couple more points ahead of the third-place New Democrats). But Hudak has been there before. He went into the 2011 election with a large lead, but he let it dribble away during the campaign. It seems the more voters see and hear of Hudak the less they like him. Perhaps the Tories should send their leader on a round-the-world cruise until the election is over.

The polls point to another minority government. A seat projection prepared by my colleague, Professor Barry Kay, for the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (LISPOP), points to a fragile minority Conservative government with 45 seats, to 38 seats for the Liberals and 24 for the NDP. The Tories would fail to breach the Liberals’ Fortress Toronto. Kay projects no Conservative seats at all in Toronto itself and only four in the rest of the GTA.

But the Tories would tighten their hold on southwest Ontario, winning 18 of the 24 seats in the region. On the basis of the projection, the Liberals would be left with just two seats in southwest Ontario – one in Guelph and one in London. John Milloy, the government house leader, would lose the Kitchener Centre seat he narrowly retained in the 2011 election. The Kitchener-Waterloo seat, won by New Democrat Catherine Fife in a by-election upset last September, appears to be a toss-up.

A June election? There’s not much for any leader or party cheer about.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

Attack ads and mixed martial arts

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Published Apr. 22, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record

Out in computerland, they talk a lot about “hitting the reset button.”

This implies getting rid of all the bad stuff that went before, correcting mistakes and starting over again. A new beginning, you might say.

The expression has crept into politics. The Harper government promised to “hit the reset button” on plans to spend — what? — $40 or $50 billion on F-35 fighter aircraft. The government has not said what, if anything, has happened in the months since it ostensibly hit the reset button. Perhaps the bright lights in the Department of National Defence are still labouring 24/7 to wrap their heads around the awkward concept that there are more suitable aircraft available at a (much) more reasonable cost.

Perhaps the government will tell us before the next election (in October 2015) what it is up to. It may be hung up on a dilemma: how to launch a new beginning without admitting past mistakes on the F-35 file. But let’s leave the Conservatives to rationalize their way out of that dilemma and move on.

This seems to be an opportune moment to hit a few other reset buttons. Continue reading →

With the election still 30 months away, there is time to plan new beginnings and present them to the electorate. With Thomas Mulcair of the NDP, Daniel Paillé of the Bloc Québécois and now Justin Trudeau of the Liberals, there are three party leaders in Ottawa who were not there in the 2011 election. Conditions exist for new approaches.

The first reset button to hit is whatever button controls the temperature in the capital. There is a meanness, even viciousness, that did not always characterize federal politics. Without wishing to wallow in nostalgia, things were different in the first Trudeau era. Pierre Trudeau was never lovable. He was tough and often aloof, but he commanded respect and loyalty. Robert Stanfield, the Tory leader, was intelligent, moderate and every inch a gentleman. NDP leader Tommy Douglas was the soul of integrity; he’s sometimes described as the “last honest politician in Canada.”

The past is gone, but the present can be changed and the future improved. Let’s start with an all-party commitment to eliminate attack ads. Just because American politicians wallow in them, it doesn’t mean we have to indulge in them in Canada. They may or may not work — and I have grave reservations about the efficacy of Conservatives’ current attacks on Justin Trudeau — but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they lower the level of politics for all participants. They squeeze out reasoned argument. They turn politics into a form of mixed martial arts.

As the level of discourse sinks, electors conclude that none of the combatants is worthy of their support, and voting turnout declines. The elimination of attack ads would help restore respect to politics as an honourable profession.

Another reset button is the transparency button. All politicians preach the gospel of openness. In opposition, Stephen Harper was an ardent advocate of open government. A Conservative government, he promised, would be an open book. Its policies and procedures would be transparent to all. Its ministers and officials would be held accountable for everything they did.

It hasn’t turned out quite that way. Today’s government is the least open since the Second World War (when there were grounds for opacity). Transparency is becoming a fiction (witness the deterioration of the Access to Information Act). And accountability is a joke (ministerial responsibility these days means ministers not doing anything that would embarrass the prime minister or his government).

Would it do any good to hit that transparency reset button? Sure. Let’s start with the F-35. The government could take the people into its confidence. After all, it’s taxpayers’ money. Why do we need new fighters? What role(s) would they be expected to fill? What planes has the government considered? Why did it choose the one it did? Not least, how much, honestly, will the darned machine really, truly cost?

How much longer until someone else takes Conservative party torch?

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Published Apr. 15, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record 

One of the most iconic scenes in American cinema comes from the 1955 Billy Wilder film, The Seven Year Itch. It shows Marilyn Monroe, the love interest in the film, standing on a Lexington Avenue subway grate, trying to hold down the billowing skirt of her sexy white dress.

What does this have to do with Stephen Harper, you may ask? Well, maybe a bit.

In the film, the male lead, played by Tom Ewell, finds his eye wandering after seven years of monogamous marriage. (Enter the tempting Ms. Monroe.) It just so happens that Prime Minister Harper recently (in February) celebrated his seventh anniversary in 24 Sussex, and it is no secret that the affections of some members of his uncommonly faithful caucus are beginning to wander. The pre-Easter flap over abortion is one indication of caucus restlessness, and we are bound to experience more of that in the coming months.

How much longer? MPs wonder. How much longer will the ambitious among them have to wait for the leader to depart and give them a chance at the brass ring?

Ottawa pundits, weary of Harper, are asking the same questions, to the point of suggesting that the prime minister has some sort of obligation to inform his party whether he intends to hang around to lead into the next election, scheduled for October 2015. If he is going to leave, or so say the pundits, he should tell his followers now so that they can plan an orderly succession.

(Don’t pay too much attention to the pundits. The last thing Ottawa journalists really desire is an orderly transition. That’s boring. A wide open scramble among inflated egos makes much better copy, especially if the scramble spills a bit of political blood.)

There is no reason to suspect Harper cares about any of this gratuitous advice. The job of his Conservative MPs is to show up and vote the way they are told before lapsing back into silence. And Harper has never paid any attention to the opinions of the media; there is no reason to think he will start now.

But the polls are interesting. As might be expected, Harper leads when respondents are asked which of the party leaders has the best experience to lead the country, but he trails Justin Trudeau when they are asked to name the most inspiring leader. A Nanos poll last week gave the Liberal party a four-point lead nationally over Harper’s Tories. Given the hype surrounding Trudeau and the Liberal convention, that’s not particularly surprising, either.

Of potentially greater significance is the decline of the NDP, the official Opposition in Parliament, into third place on most indicators. The Orange Revolution seems to be over. For the moment, it appears that Trudeau is retrieving the youth and soft Liberal votes that went to the NDP in 2011. It’s not so much that Thomas Mulcair has been an inadequate leader. He’s done and been everything the NDP could realistically have expected. In the beginning, he suffered by not being Jack Layton; now he suffers by not being Justin Trudeau. But, hey, no one ever said politics was fair.

The competition changes as of this week. Now that Trudeau is officially the Liberal leader, he will be vulnerable to attack from both the left and especially the right.

He knows the attacks are coming and claims he will be ready for them. But he says he will not indulge in the negativity that characterizes Tory politics under Harper.

“The biggest difference between a party led by me and one by Stephen Harper will be one of tone, one of respect for Canadians and their intelligence,” Trudeau says. “We don’t have to play by his rules.”

There’s a meanness, a nastiness, in federal politics these days, but no one is forcing anyone to play by Harper’s rules. After seven years, perhaps it’s time to scratch that itch.

Justin Trudeau just might be a contender

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Published Apr. 8, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record.

A week from now Justin Trudeau will slip on his father’s old shoes (sandals perhaps) as the new national leader of the Liberal party. Everything will change. Or will it?

Will it be a watershed moment in Canadian politics — a fresh beginning for the proud Liberals? Or just a last kick at the can by a tired third-place party running on the fumes of nostalgia as it struggles to stave off irrelevancy?

The Liberals themselves don’t know, which makes this transition especially intriguing. They very much hope it is a new beginning. That hope was on display in Toronto on Saturday at their “national showcase” (a fancy label for an afternoon of political speechifying). It was especially evident the faces of the young people who have been drawn to the party in large numbers by Justin’s candidacy.

One would like to believe in that hope. One would like to believe that this time it will be different, that the party has moved on and learned from the false hopes and failed leaderships of Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. One would like to believe that Justin is the real deal, that he actually can bring a younger generation of idealists and activists into the political mainstream. One would like to think the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson was missing something when he dismissed Justin’s Saturday speech, sourly, as “a barn-burner of a speech utterly devoid of substance.”

(I wonder many leadership speeches over the years, barnburners or no, could honestly be described as being chock full of substance. They tend to be safe, predictable and formulaic. Judged by that modest yardstick, Justin’s speech was better than most, I thought. But I digress.)

What can safely be said is that Justin has come some distance since he entered the leadership contest last October. He has progressed from being an attractive, articulate novice with a famous parent to a serious politician and a capable performer in his own right. His name helps, of course, but there is more to him than the Trudeau name.

His detractors find him light on policy. That judgment can be made of many opposition politicians. Why should any new leader lay out his ideas a full 30 months before the next election? That would give the Harper Conservatives far too much time to nuke them in attack ads. For the moment, Trudeau is better served by attacking Tory government policy. He does that with conviction.

Some veteran observers admit they are more impressed than they expected to be. Columnist Chantal Hébert assessed Justin’s performance during a two-hour session with the Toronto Star editorial board last Friday, comparing it to similar appearances she had witnessed by Jean Charest, Lucien Bouchard, Jean Chrétien, and Dion and Ignatieff.

“As measured on the scale of the editorial board performances of his Liberal predecessors, his [Trudeau’s] was substantively more solid,” Hébert wrote. “That suggests that by the time the 2015 election comes around some 30 months from now, Trudeau might have grown into a formidable contender.”

He possesses some of his father’s eloquence. “The truth is, Canadians want to vote for something, not just against somebody,” he said in his Toronto speech. “They want to vote for a long term vision that embodies our values, our dreams and our aspirations.”

No, he doesn’t offer much substance to that vision. But he does inspire hope — and that’s been a rare commodity in the Liberal party in recent years. Rare and precious.

Trudeau will succeed or fail on his ability to sustain that hope and to use it to inspire students and other young voters.

His ability to connect with young people is special. Pierre Trudeau had it. Jack Layton had it. Stephen Harper certainly doesn’t have it. That alone will make the Trudeau-Harper confrontation in the next election fascinating to observe. If Chantal Hébert is right and Justin develops into a “formidable contender,” it will be an election to remember.

Speaking out against the party line

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Published Apr. 1, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record 

The mini-revolt that Stephen Harper suppressed in the Conservative caucus may not have amounted to much last week, but it did raise a couple of important principles. They are conflicting principles.

The first is the principle that elected members in our system have the right to speak their minds and vote their consciences. They are sent to Parliament (or a legislature) to serve and to represent the interests of their constituents. But they are not mere delegates; they have opinions of their own; they are not witless mouthpieces for their voters.

The second principle is that when politicians make promises, they should keep them. If a party leader endorses a particular policy and the party wins election, the electorate is entitled to expect that the government will honour its election commitment.
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The two principles came into conflict last week when the social conservative wing of the government caucus, led on this occasion by British Columbia MP Mark Warawa, tried by the back door to reopen a parliamentary debate on abortion. The device was a motion calling on MPs to condemn the practice of using abortion to determine the gender of newborns — presumably choosing males over females.

Sex-selective abortion is not a burning national issue in Canada. Most MPs, I suspect, don’t even know if it goes on here. But they knew enough to be aware that Warawa and his pro-life allies, including, prominently, Stephen Woodworth, the Conservative MP for Kitchener Centre, were using sex-selective abortion as a device, as the thin edge of a wedge to force a full parliamentary debate on the recriminalization of abortion.

The prime minister saw through the transparent tactic. He refused to allow Warawa to introduce his motion — an all-party Commons subcommittee had already decided it was “non-votable,” meaning it was ineligible for further debate. He reminded the Tory caucus of his election commitment not to reopen the abortion issue. He said allowing the motion would be tantamount to breaking that promise.

For the Conservatives, the abortion issue is like having a crazy old aunt who is kept hidden in the attic lest she escape and embarrass the family in front of visitors. Harper doesn’t have to be reminded how the leadership of Stockwell Day, then head of the Canadian Alliance, was destroyed by the Flintstone fringe of the old Reform party when it got its teeth into party policy on abortion and gay rights.

There are still Flintstones in the Tory caucus and occasionally they get out and grab attention. Although Harper was able to muzzle them last week, they will appeal to the speaker of the Commons, and he may let them out again.

But isn’t that what parliamentary democracy is all about? Shouldn’t MPs be free to speak their minds, no matter how controversial or unpopular the issue? Should leaders be able to silence their followers, even the Flintstones among them?

Elizabeth May, the Green party leader, made a valid point. “It cuts to the core of what is wrong with parliamentary democracy,” she said. “We are not here as teams. The principle of Westminster parliamentary democracy is that we are here as representatives of our constituencies and our constituents. Incidentally, we are merely members of political parties.”

The principle is splendid. But how could a country like Canada be governed if MPs were only incidentally members of parties? How would government function? For that matter, how could the Green party survive if its members were free to vote in favour of more oilsands development, more clear-cutting of virgin forests, more pipelines across First Nations lands, or less regulation of air and water pollution?

In the case of abortion, Canada has not had an abortion law for 25 years — not since the Morgentaler decision of 1988. Most Canadians seem content with the situation. There is nothing to be gained from reopening the subject.

Prime Minister Harper says the door is closed — even the back door. Good for him.

Liberals still haven’t faced their big dilemma

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Published Mar. 25, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record.

The federal Liberals are prisoners of past glories. Only now, as their leadership “race” ambles into its final weeks, are they turning some of their thoughts to their central dilemma, an issue that should have been front and centre since the 2011 election, if not earlier.

Their dilemma: as long as the Harper Conservatives control the right and centre-right — which they will as long as the economy remains the dominant issue among Canadians — there will not be enough room for both the Liberals and New Democrats in the rest of the electoral spectrum, the left and centre-left. Not enough room for two competing alternatives to the Conservatives. Not enough room for the opposition parties to differentiate themselves. Not enough electoral support, when split between two progressive parties, to bring down the powerful Tories, who are richer and better organized. Not to mention meaner and tougher.

Something needs to happen — if not a marriage of the parties of the left, perhaps some sort of common-law union. An informal coalition, perhaps. Or a voting-day “arrangement.” Or an “understanding.” You would think living in sin would be more attractive to opposition politicians than living indefinitely in Harperland.
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Logic, however, doesn’t always work in politics. The New Democrats aren’t about to leap into bed with their nemesis, the Liberals, who for decades stole their best ideas and many of their supporters. The NDP believes it is still in the ascendancy. It scored its huge breakthrough in 2011 when it elected 103 members, including more MPs in Quebec (59) than the Liberals elected in all of Canada (34).

The NDP believes it doesn’t need any help. It thinks it can make Thomas Mulcair prime minister without the aid of the Liberal party or its core supporters. It would love nothing better than to rub the noses of both the Grits and Tories in an NDP victory.

Most Liberals are thinking along similar lines. The only one in the shrinking field of leadership candidates who advocates relations with the New Democrats is Joyce Murray, the candidate from British Columbia. And she is not talking about marriage or even a common-law relationship. She proposes a quick one-night stand; the two parties would combine efforts on election day in 2015, defeat Harper, then go their separate ways.

The other candidates weren’t buying Murray’s message when they met in Montreal on Saturday for their final debate. “It’s dangerous for the Liberal party,” said candidate Martha Hall Findlay. Justin Trudeau, who will be crowned leader on April 14, agreed. Liberal co-operation with the NDP would simply elect Mulcair, he said, adding, incomprehensibly, “I’m very worried that if we assemble a hodgepodge coalition or coming together or co-operation that actually removes choices from Canadians by forcing them to make an either-or choice, they will not believe we’re ready to govern.”

Oh!

He did not explain how offering voters a choice between two clear alternatives (left or right) would be tantamount to limiting or removing choices.

The hard fact is too many Liberals cannot forget their glory years. They were Canada’s “natural governing party” for decades. Their Big Red Machine ruled the hustings. Now the glory may be gone but reality has not yet registered.

They are in third place in Parliament and in most of the polls. They can’t get from third to first, where the Harper Conservatives rule, without going through the second-place NDP. There are only two ways to get past the New Democrats. One way is to campaign against the NDP in the 2015 election, win most of the left/centre-left vote, and prepare to take on the Tories in 2019. The other way is to work with the NDP now, take down the Conservatives in 2015, and sort it out after the ballots have been counted — a coalition government of the left, perhaps?

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper watches while his rivals are unable to get their acts together. He should be the happiest fellow in Canada.

Budget officer only as powerful as Harper wants him or her to be

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Published Mar. 18, 2013, in the Waterloo Region Record.

Back in 2006, when Stephen Harper was still in opposition and was campaigning for the keys to 24 Sussex Dr., he was all for open government. He was wedded to the principles of transparency and accountability.

Yes, sirree. A Conservative government would be different. The Conservatives would open all the windows; they would expose the entrails of government so that Canadians could see what they were getting for their votes and taxes.

The Access to Information Act would be made to work the way it was meant to. A Public Appointments Commission would be created to monitor patronage. And a Parliamentary Budget Officer would be appointed to serve Parliament as its watchdog over government spending.
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Well, the Access to Information Act did not get fixed; it’s weaker now than ever. The Public Appointments Commission did not happen. But a Parliamentary Budget Officer — one Kevin Page — was appointed in 2008 for a five-year term.

A career bureaucrat who proved to be unafraid to speak truth to power, Page has done stellar work with limited resources. He informed Parliament that the cost of the Afghanistan war would be more than double the defence department’s estimate. He discovered that the government was low-balling the investment needed for First Nations education. And he revealed that the true cost those F-35 fighter jets will be double or triple the $16 billion claimed by the defence department.

You might think the people who created the post — the Harper Tories — would be delighted with a job well done. Or, if not delighted, at least supportive. You’d be wrong. In his five years, Page has been shunned by the Conservative establishment. He has been publicly abused by at least three cabinet ministers. He has been denied information he needs to do his job. Effectively, he has been sent to Coventry by finance department bureaucrats who resent an outsider, especially a non-partisan servant of Parliament, poaching on their turf.

Kevin Page’s five years expire next week. He was not offered an extension. The government is running newspaper ads inviting applications for a successor. The ads are misleading — not for what they say, but for what they fail to say.

They say the government is looking for a “strategic and innovative leader,” an “effective communicator” with managerial experience, integrity and the “ability to develop and maintain constructive relationships among senior decision-makers in a highly stressful environment.”

All this is undoubtedly true. The ad makes the Parliamentary Budget Officer sound like a very important person, which is true, and a powerful person, which is not so true. The new budget officer will only be as powerful as the Harper cabinet is prepared to let him or her be.

The government has classified the job as a GCQ-5, which is a mid-level position, the equivalent of a director-general in a department. Remuneration is not mentioned in the ad. It’s between $139,000 and $164,500, which is peanuts in the private sector for anyone with the professional qualifications the government is looking for; and it’s not much money in the public sector these days. In fact, it is less than government has been paying Kevin Page. He was an assistant deputy minister when he was appointed and the government let him retain his salary grade. It promised to reclassify the position upward, but never did.

Sonia L’Heureux, the parliamentary librarian, becomes the interim budget officer when Page leaves next week. Meanwhile, the search continues for someone who is prepared to sign on for five years of controversy, stress, occasional abuse and frequent non-support by the people who hire him or her.

Harper must regret ever promising a parliamentary budget officer. His people rue the day they chose Kevin Page. Now they are looking for someone, probably a civil servant, who will be cheap, compliant and not make any waves — until they can quietly phase out the watchdog.

As Page himself says: “I would not put any money on this office existing after five years.”

‘Reset’ button on F-35s won’t work

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Published Mar. 11, 2013, in the Waterloo Region Record.

That horrible grinding, smashing noise you may have heard from Ottawa a couple of weeks ago was the sound of the Stephen Harper government’s grand F-35 dream self-destructing.

The controversial plan to equip the Royal Canadian Air Force with 65 of the absurdly costly F-35 fighter jets had been in trouble for nearly three years. The coup de grace came, I believe, in a CBC Television report on Feb. 27. CBC senior political correspondent Terry Milewski reported new information: that Ottawa could save $23 billion over the lifetime of the aircraft if it purchased the F-18 Super Hornet, built by Boeing, rather than the F-35 Lightning from Lockheed Martin.

A saving of $23 billion? That’s a lot, even in Ottawa.

All aircraft are expensive these days. But the F-18 Super Hornet, Milewski reported, would cost half as much to buy (still a staggering $55 million per plane) as the F-35 and half as much to operate.

The Super Hornet has other attractions, aside from price. As the updated version of the old CF-18, which has served the Canadian Forces reliably for three decades, the Super Hornet would be familiar to Canadian pilots. Unlike the F-35, the Super Hornet is a proven performer. The U.S. navy has 500 of them. Australia already has 24 and, tired of waiting for the F-35, wants an additional 24 Super Hornets.
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Like its CF-18 ancestor, the Super Hornet is a twin-engine plane — a significant consideration for an aircraft that would be expected to patrol thousands of kilometres over coastal waters or Arctic expanses — while the F-35 has just one.

“Twin engines, dual redundant hydraulics … those are the things I don’t want to give up in flying to remote places or even in combat, because those are the things that’ll bring you home,” says Boeing test pilot Ricardo Traven, who served 15 years in the RCAF.

The Harper government made three big mistakes back in 2006 when it first tied Canada to the F-35 project. (It didn’t actually order any planes at that time, although it said in effect that if jobs and contracts came to this country’s aeronautical sector, Canada would be in.)

The first mistake was in not conducting an open competition to choose the new fighter. Instead, the government looked at Washington, saw the Pentagon loved the F-35, and looked no further. The fact that the F-35 was still just a concept, and not yet an operational warplane, made no difference.

Second, the government made no effort to determine whether any of the several other fighter aircraft on the market — the French Rafale, the Typhoon (built by a European consortium), the Swedish Gripen or the American Super Hornet — could meet Canadian requirements.

Third, I think officials in Ottawa were so dazzled by the F-35’s “stealth” technology, or so anxious to please Washington (or both), that they ignored the price tag. The government did its best to hide the cost as it soared — from $16 billion to $25 billion to $29.3 billion and on up.

Now it is nudging $50 billion and still rising. This is for a new aircraft that has had so many design and production problems that the planes spend more time grounded than airborne.

It was only after both the parliamentary budget officer and the auditor general sounded the alarm that Harper decided he would have to order a review of the F-35 decision. Last spring, the government declared it would “hit the reset button.”

What does “reset” mean?

We don’t know what is happening with the review. It is being conducted in secret, naturally — openness being a difficult concept for Harper people to grasp.

But now that Canadian taxpayers have learned, courtesy of the CBC, that they could save $23 billion by buying a perfectly acceptable, sophisticated, proven and less expensive aircraft, there is no way politically that the Conservatives can go back to the F-35.

A “reset” button won’t do it. How about a “destruct” button?

The three problems with the Canadian senate

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Published Mar. 4, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record

The headline fairly leapt off the front page of the Toronto Star last week:

“Senate in crisis.”

A subhead, printed in black and red, declared: “PM backing off support of Wallin as swirling controversies over spending, shocking sexual assault allegations have upper chamber on the defensive.” A separate box invited Star readers to look inside for “in-depth coverage” in four additional stories.

Wow! Swirling controversies and shocking allegations! Senators on the defensive! One can picture the scene: wizened senators deployed strategically in the nave of the red chamber, muskets loaded as they prepare to defend their perks and constitutional prerogatives against an invading horde of accountants, auditors and mean-spirited abolitionists from the lower house. The upper house hasn’t seen such excitement since 1986 when Pierre Trudeau’s pal, Senator Jacques Hébert, staged a 21-day hunger strike in the Senate foyer to protest the elimination of federal funding for Katimavik, a youth program he had created.

By the end of the week, the government had moved into damage control. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that all senators had met their residency requirements — this assurance being given before the facts were in — before the Senate had completed its review of members’ residency declarations. Next we will be told that the expense accounts of all 104 sitting senators are in perfect order, even if the accountants haven’t gotten around to checking all of them. The honour system prevails.
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There are three problems, of which the third is the most serious. The first is expense accounting fiddling. That happens in all organizations, and it strains credulity to be told the Senate, with its bloated spending and notoriously weak oversight, is immune.

The second is residency. The Constitution needs to be fixed, but until it is, senators are required to have their principal residences in the province they represent. If they can’t produce a health card, driver’s licence or income tax return from that province, they can theoretically be forced to forfeit their seat. Does such strict construction of the Constitution make sense these days? Not much, but it’s still the law.

It appears that 40 to 50 senators may be on thin ice on the residency issue. Harper’s assurance that they are all good to go is based on the declaration senators must make that they own at least $4,000 worth of property — a house or condo or conceivably just a garage — in the province they represent. Whether they actually live there is anyone’s guess, and that’s an issue the Senate is still trying to figure out. Until it does, the honour system will prevail.

The third and larger problem is the shabby way successive prime ministers have used the Senate. They do not scour the land in search of candidates who have ability, legislative experience or eagerness to serve. They limit their search to supporters, people who have money to donate or who have served the party loyally in the past and can be trusted to continue to serve it from the comfort of the upper house.

Harper is not the first PM to abuse the Senate this way, but he has become the most blatant offender. He appoints only Conservatives, and his insistence that they support the government in everything makes a mockery of senatorial review of government legislation and spending. His Tories control the lower house; now he has shackled the upper one.

But is the Senate in crisis, as the newspaper would have it? Not really — not any more than it has been over the years. It’s just getting a lot more attention.

The spotlight, however, makes this a very good time to get serious about a proposal that Conservative Senator Hugh Segal has been promoting for eight years. Segal, who would rank near the top of any list of most valuable senators, wants a national referendum on the future of the place: to reform it; keep it as it is; or abolish it. Yes, it’s time to ask the people.

Scandal shows rules for irrelevant senate outdated

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Published Feb. 25, 2013 in The Waterloo Region Record.

The Senate of Canada, that venerable and mostly irrelevant appendage, is much in the news of late.

Teapot tempests over residency rules and senators’ travel and living expenses are impeding a more important debate: do we need a senate and, if so, what do we want it to do?

I frankly don’t care where Senator Mike Duffy, a broadcast journalist before he went over to the dark side, calls home. He may be a resident of Prince Edward Island where he was born and where he keeps a summer cottage (at Cavendish). Or it may be Ontario where he has lived for 40-odd years, where he has a home (on the outskirts of Ottawa), where he pay taxes and has his driver’s licence, health card and his cardiologist (he has had serious heart problems).

Duffy regards himself as an Islander. Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepted him as such when he appointed him to represent P.E.I. (The Constitution requires senators to own $4,000 in “real property” in the province they represent. Duffy had that in P.E.I. as well as is in Ontario.)
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He came a cropper when it was revealed it had claimed his P.E.I. cottage as his principal residence and had collected $42,000-odd in an allowance for a secondary residence in Ottawa. It is clear Ottawa was, and is, his principal residence. Although it is also clear he should not have claimed the allowance — he says he will repay the money — I do have some sympathy.

What would have happened if he had declared his principal residence to be in Ontario? He could have avoided the living-allowance controversy — but he would have had to resign from the Senate because the Constitution, adopted 146 years ago, requires senators to “be resident in the province” for which they are appointed.

The residency rules make no sense the days. They are vestiges of an era when senators came to Ottawa once or twice a year by train, stayed in the capital until the session ended, then got on the train to go home again. Principal residence wasn’t an issue.

These days, a senator like Duffy can get on a plane in Charlottetown or Ottawa in morning, fly to the other place (working his smartphone as he goes), spend the day tending to public business, then fly back at the end of the day. It doesn’t matter where he calls his principal residence.

The Constitution is an impediment to modernization of many procedures, in the Senate and elsewhere. Senate reform is not going to happen any time soon, though. In the interval, a more flexible approach by the government and the Senate would let senators like Duffy and others choose the place they want to call home.

The case of Saskatchewan Senator Pamela Wallin is different. I have known Pam for years, and I have no idea where she lives. I don’t even know how to figure that out. She owns a condo in Toronto, which is rented out. She owns another condo in New York, which may or may not be rented. Her hometown is Wadena, Sask., where she is co-owner (with her sister) of a house in town; she also has a cottage at Fishing Lake outside town.

Among her several residential options, Wallin chooses the house in Wadena as her principal residence. That seems fair enough. Instead of maintaining a second home in Ottawa, she stays in a hotel there. Her hotel expenses are covered by the Senate.

Her travel costs between Ottawa and Wadena are not excessive. But she claimed a whopping $321,027 for “other” travel in Canada and beyond in a two-year period. Some of that would be travel on behalf of the Conservative party because Wallin is in demand as a speaker at fundraisers.

The issue to my mind is not how much Wallin spends on party-related travel. It is why the Tory party is not picking up those bills instead of sticking the taxpayer with them.

Restrained Liberal leadership race reflects party’s hopes

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Published Feb. 19, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record.

What to make of the federal Liberal leadership race?

To start with, it is not so much a race as a promenade, a restrained afternoon stroll in the park. There are nine – count them, nine – candidates (or strollers), six of whom have yet to acknowledge they are doomed to be embarrassed when the vote is announced in Ottawa on April 14. Common sense suggests the doomed six get out of the way to permit Liberal supporters to concentrate on the three who actually matter: Justin Trudeau, Martha Hall Findlay and Marc Garneau.

That’s not likely to happen. The nine will carry on, being polite to one another (and boring everyone else) for the next eight weeks.

It was mildly interesting, I thought, when the nine met in a genteel encounter (not a genuine debate) in Mississauga last Saturday – interesting because both Garneau and Hall Findlay tried to get into Trudeau’s face just a little bit. But civility was quickly restored. Minutes after attacking Trudeau, Garneau defended him, and the crowd applauded. The next day, Hall Findlay posted a public apology to Trudeau for suggesting he might be a wealthy elitist who is out of touch with the middle class – which, even if true, is scarcely the most devastating critique ever offered of a candidate for national leadership (remember last fall’s U.S. presidential election?)

There are reasons for all this politeness. There’s a desire among Liberals to protect the Liberal brand or what is left of it. The party is in third place, struggling to redeem itself and revive its electoral prospects. A divisive leadership campaign would not assist the cause.

Another reason. The other eight candidates are well aware that, barring the inconceivable, Justin Trudeau is going to be their leader on April 14. He’s already their best fund-raiser. Attacking him now will not advance their leadership campaigns; it will simply supply ammunition to the viciously efficient Conservative propaganda machine. Watch for the first Tory attack ads on April 15, if not sooner.
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A third thought. The Liberals think they see a glimmer of hope in recent polling numbers. Three national polls this month all put the Conservatives in the lead, but two made the Liberals a close second or in a virtual tie for second with the NDP. The Liberals are in flux, with numbers in the three polls ranging from a low of 21 per cent to a high of 30 per cent.

One thing seems clear. The Liberals’ numbers improve and their prospects brighten when Trudeau is factored in. In one poll, Liberal support jumped 11 points, to 41 per cent (and first place) when respondents were asked how they would vote if Trudeau became leader.

Among Liberal supporters, the issue is not whether Trudeau is the best candidate for leader (which he may or may not be) but whether he is the only candidate in this large but thin field who Grits think has a realistic chance of leading the party back to power. The answer to that appears to be Yes.

“Whether or not a Trudeau-led party would actually get 41 per cent is a little beside the point,” writes poll analyst Eric Grenier. “That such a large proportion of Canadians are willing to ditch their current party of choice easily is more significant.”

Canadians are looking for change in 2013. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. It was desire for change that filled Jack Layton’s sails and produced the “Orange Surge” that made the New Democrats the official opposition. It was desire for change that brought on the Ontario Liberal government’s near-death experience in October 2011. And federal Liberals with long memories have not forgotten another Ottawa April 45 years ago when desire for change propelled an earlier Trudeau into the Liberal leadership (and into 24 Sussex Drive with a majority government).

Like father like son? Hope springs eternal, even in the battered, besieged Liberal Party of Canada.