Federal Politics – Page 205

The F-35 and what’s good for General Bullmoose.

April 9, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Everything we ever needed to know about government lobbying, we learned from the 1950’s Broadway musical L’il Abner. When driving around Ottawa on business over the years, we would often sing to passing motorists: What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the U.S.A.

The intense lobbying effort today to ensure that Canada stays on track with the American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is just part of the continuing effort to be sure Canada maintains its position in the procurement. Call it the trickle down effect or ‘crumbs from the table,’ Canada’s aerospace industry only gets work if Canada pays more. Out of a $29 billion cost of owning 65 F-35 fighters, Canadian industry can garner a maximum of maybe $12 billion worth of orders It is not exactly quid pro quo.

And every one of those orders can only be won in direct competition with American sources for the same products. And some of those sources are the American head offices of the Canadian subsidiary. The Canadian operation only gets the business if the American source does not find it convenient to fill the order. Even those who get the design jobs have to submit competitive production bids once their design has been given to competitive bidders.

What some Canadians seem to find convenient to forget is that this procurement has been going on since the mid 1990s. It started when Jean Chrétien was Prime Minister. The design initiative (with around $300 million of Canadian money included) was undertaken for the consortium of countries (that is why it is called the ‘Joint’ Strike Fighter). The objective was to have a versatile fighter aircraft to meet everybody’s need. That way, when they went to war together the logistics for their fighter aircraft needs were so much simpler.

Mind you, they have been very quiet lately about one of the objectives. It was to save money because we would have the advantage of volume production. That part of the plan does not seem to be working.

The Joint Strike Fighter was probably doomed from the beginning because there were far too many conflicts in design needs between the different countries involved. There is absolutely no way, for example that a long-range reconnaissance aircraft suitable to Canadian needs would be the same as the British need for quick turn-around defensive aircraft. And to have both a vertical take-off and landing and an aircraft carrier version makes no sense at all.

And the Americans must have been smoking some illegal substance to think that all eight of the other countries would always want to go to war with them. We like Americans but they do get into some really stupid wars.

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The tell that tells if Mr. Harper is lying.

April 7, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It seems likely that any good poker player could clean Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a poker game. The man appears to have what poker players call a ‘tell.’ It is that little thing you do when you are bluffing the other players. It is why many of the poorer players have to wear a large brimmed hat or sunglasses when they are playing cards.

We have been watching Stephen Harper long enough now that some of us might just be able to know when he is evading the truth. He has been doing it for too long and too often. The best examples of his tell appear to be in the leaders’ debates in the 2008 and 2011 elections. We watched him do it in the House of Commons the other day.

Maybe Canadians are lucky as this indicates he is not likely to be a sociopath. A sociopath lies out of habit and since this type of person believes they are always right, it is almost impossible to find a tell. It still is not good news though to find that Mr. Harper just might be a compulsive liar. Sometimes thought of as pathological liar, a compulsive liar is someone who does not see the need to tell the truth but knows the difference. This person can develop a tell. They do it gradually and most people see it as just part of their persona.

While the objective here is not to start a debate on whether Stephen Harper is a sociopath, a compulsive liar or just a plain garden variety political prevaricator, the point is that he seems to wander far from the truth sometimes and Canadians should be aware of when he is doing it. Auditor General Michael Ferguson made it very clear the other day that the Prime Minister has been less than truthful to Canadians about the cost of the F-35 fighter aircraft for at least the past year. Throughout the 2011 election campaign and since then, he has repeatedly told audiences that the F-35 program will only cost Canadians about $15 billion. The auditor general says Mr. Harper’s government knew that the costs were close to double that figure. To lie about more than $10 billion might be about an incomprehensible amount of money, it is also one hell of a big lie!

Why do we believe Mr. Harper was not telling the truth? The answer to that is easy. He micro-manages parliament. He knows what is going on. When he is not jetting around the world at taxpayers’ expense, he is in constantly managing the minutiae of his government. He understands billions of dollars better than almost anyone else in his cabinet. Even Finance Minister Jim Flaherty must have to start counting on his fingers when he gets into that kind of money.

And what do we think is Mr. Harper’s tell? Canadians should share this information. If we are misunderstanding the signs, please tell us. It seems to us that when Mr. Harper is lying, he does not look at the people he is talking to. His visage appears stony and his eyes appear unfocused. It has become more and more pronounced over the years. It is quite possible that he lies too much!

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The Auditor General questions the F-35.

April 6, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Auditor General Michael Ferguson has told parliament that the F-35 program promoted by the Harper Conservatives will cost $10 billion more than the amount claimed by Harper and his ministers. As usual, the auditor is the last to learn the truth. The only problem is that the auditor general has no way of knowing that the F-35 is the wrong type of aircraft for Canada’s armed forces.

Mr. Ferguson was well aware of the fact that the government was lying about the F-35 costs and questionable delivery dates. He was quite scathing of the unnamed officials of the Department of National Defence who supposedly provided the miss-information that the government used to defend the program. The auditor also said that Harper and some of his cabinet had to know about the real costs before the 2011 election.

For the opposition in parliament, this is one of those opportunities to demand—and get—the resignation of the cabinet minister involved. This could even be a “Twofer,” an opportunity to get two ministers at once. Peter MacKay and Julian Fantino shared the glory of the program. They can share the blame.

But we are being had in the process. We should realize that Mr. Harper has had an advance copy of the auditor general’s report. The Prime Minister and his minions have had plenty of time to devise a strategy to sweep everything under the rug. He was almost smirking when he rose in the House of Commons to tell us that he takes the report very seriously and he is taking the acquisition of the F-35s out of the hands of the national defence people, freezing the budget (we wonder which one?) and handing the procurement over to a new secretariat from Public Works and Government Services.

If you thought the defence people were screwed up, wait until this new secretariat gets going! How the hell would a secretariat from those departments of the federal government—the people being fired because there are too many—know a damn thing about fighter aircraft worth more than $100 million each. This is not only sad but a travesty. What are they going to do to fix things? The problems are between the American Pentagon and American manufacturer Lockheed Martin. No Canadian is going to get a look-see at what the design faults are in that aircraft. And what Public Works or Government Services know about aircraft is not worth discussing anyway.

Mr. Harper is having us on! And he is making Thomas Mulcair and Bob Rae look like idiots. They are screaming for the head of Peter MacKay. What are they going to do with it? Are they going to hang it over a mantel somewhere?

The key words were in the Auditor General’s report. The auditor said the entire process was flawed. He said there was no consideration given to alternative aircraft. That means we have to start over!

The Tories were buying the Joint Strike F-35 to fly with the Americans in their wars. The aircraft is useless for Canada’s defence and patrol needs. Mr. Harper and his friends do not care about Canadian needs!

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It is not who leads. It is where we are going.

April 2, 2012 by Peter Lowry

In the next year, the Liberal Party of Canada will choose a new leader. Who the leader will be is not the question at this stage. First we need a direction. The Liberal Party has had no direction for the past quarter century and look at the mess the country is in.

Not since the mercurial days of Pierre Trudeau has Canada had a clear direction. From then we have foundered. The Mulroney Conservatives tossed the dice on our future until frustrated voters threw them out in 1993. The Chrétien years were conflicted with the schizophrenic agendas of Chrétien’s left-wing cabinet members and the right wing around his Finance Minister Paul Martin. On his own, the voters soon rejected Martin’s brand of conservatism. It still took six years for the combined Western Reform and Eastern Conservatives to finally wrest a majority government from a less than determined Canadian electorate.

But now we know where the right wing will take us, it is time for a liberal-social democratic union of the left. This is the politics that Canada needs.

Canada needs a political stance that maintains the rights of the individual in society. It is a right to earn and to learn. It is a society of full employment—each individual able to fulfill to their capabilities. In this society, unions must become the trainers and provide services for their guilds. It needs to be a society where invention, innovation and ideas are continually addressing the human condition and opportunities.

It is a Canada that welcomes its role in the world as an honest broker, a conciliator, a peace keeper, a caring nation. To be less than that ideal is a betrayal of our armed forces, our heritage, our sacrifices and our history.

For most of us, our ancestors came to this land for freedom and opportunity. Canadians worked this land, they shared its bounty. They harvested the furs of the wild, they dug for minerals, they farmed the forests, they fished the waters and they tilled the soil. The land has given much. We are indebted to it.

As liberal-social democrats, we must firmly reject the cold heartlessness of the right. Government must be as large as required to do the tasks we set for it. Taxes must be as high as to pay for the tasks we set. We need to ignore the mantras of the right. Individual rights must always be put ahead of property rights. People’s rights come before those of business. And when the people of this and other lands have banished poverty and ignorance, hunger and squalor, fear and danger, war and pestilence; then we will have earned our rest.

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In this corner, in the red trunks, Premier McGuinty.

April 1, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It seemed to be the week for political pugilism. Many of us were appalled at MP Justin Trudeau and a Conservative Senator actually putting on boxing gloves. They claimed they were doing it for charity and few of us were sorry to see the Conservative with a bloody nose. The better fight was between old adversaries, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Frankly, few could see the difference between the federal budget and the Ontario budget. Neither budget was a people pleaser. It was not until Jim Flaherty was back in Toronto on Friday and slammed the Ontario budget effort that we knew there was a difference of opinion between the two levels of government.

Despite the fact there was little real action in the coming year in the federal budget, Jim Flaherty took a roundhouse punch at Ontario’s budget ‘mismanagement’ at the staid Canadian Club in Toronto on Friday. Maybe he was just supporting Tiny Tim Hudak’s position against the budget. Even if it was as simple as that, his comments seemed to be somewhat extreme.

Instead of getting angry about the slurs, McGuinty chose to damn the federal budget with faint praise. It actually was funny to hear the Ontario Premier compliment the federal budget as a ‘measured effort.’ Just think of all those rabid Conservatives out there across Canada who now believe that Flaherty’s federal budget is a failure because a supposedly Liberal Premier praised it.

Neither the federal nor Ontario budgets get any praise from us. They both attacked civil servants unnecessarily. They failed to rebalance both our corporate and personal tax systems. The feds did more for job creation and that was not much. They both complained about the deficits and then did almost nothing about them. They were posturing and they looked stupid doing it.

The continued attacks on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio Canada by the Harper Conservatives are beneath contempt. And after looking at some of the sunshine list published by the Ontario Government the other week, you feel embarrassed to live in Ontario. Just take a look at the poverty you see on the streets in Ontario and wonder about all these people paid over $100,000 per year by our provincial Government. And they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe young Trudeau was fighting mad, in his way, but pugilism is not the answer. In the upcoming fight for the federal Liberal Leadership, he is probably outclassed. He should get behind a real contender now.

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MP Brown is but a player on the stage.

March 31, 2012 by Peter Lowry

In the rollicking discourse of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the bard points out that our lives are but a brief part on the human stage. It would likely be the preference of many that their words be penned by the popular writers of our day. We are not all as fortunate as Babel MP Patrick Brown to have sage words prepared for us while enjoying a foreign holiday, courtesy of Canada’s taxpayers.

In case we wondered where our Member of Parliament might be, we have been told he has returned from traveling abroad with Prime Minister Harper. This was a special treat for the boy because he has been such a staunch supporter of anything Stephen Harper tells him to do. What use he could be in South-East Asia or Japan during the Prime Ministerial travels is cause for wonder.

But, as soon as he had rested up from the travels, he has been put to work. He was told to get out with the other members of the Conservative caucus and tell the populace of the wonders of the budget of Finance Minister Flaherty. Not being a quick study, Mr. Brown was given his Coles Notes on the 2012 Budget and sent out to spread the word.

Mr. Brown must have been reading from those notes to the reporter from the Babel Disabler (otherwise known as the Barrie Examiner). All the reader has to do is try to imagine Mr. Brown actually saying the quoted words in a conversation. They might read like the hyperbole a writer might use to extol Mr. Flaherty’s budget. They are not words that any of us would use conversationally.

In fact the quotes all read like a Conservative advertisement. Not that it would bother a slavishly Conservative puff organ, owned by Sun Media.

It is not until you get to the last third of the article that you are treated to some less Conservative comments from the Liberal and NDP candidates in the last election in Babel. These more balanced observations about the budget do not get much prominence.

But what enquiring minds in Babel really want to know is what Mr. Brown was doing while the Prime Minister was conducting the affairs of state on this recent trip? Did these countries have some sort of spouses’ program arranged for the retinue of MPs accompanying Mr. Harper? Maybe the reporter should have asked Mr. Brown about the free trade deal being discussed in Japan? Does Mr. Brown know anything about that?

Maybe Mr. Brown needs broader, more interesting scripts during his minutes of fame.

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The political centre cannot hold us all.

March 29, 2012 by Peter Lowry

There are political scientists who will claim there is no such place as the political centre. To them, the centre is just an imaginary dividing line between politicians of the left and the right. Conversely, there are politicians who see themselves as being in the centre and looking at fences on the right and left over which they dare not climb. The three current federal party leaders in Ottawa see themselves that way. They think they are in the centre.

There are, of course, those who will think it is a crock to suggest that Prime Minister Stephen Harper stands anywhere near the political centre. The problem is you have to deal with his view of things. Harper thinks he is standing in the middle when he rejects the social conservatism of the lunatic fringe of his party. And we are damn lucky he does.

You might want to argue that Thomas Mulcair is hardly going to lead the New Democratic Party down the middle of the road. Yet, he knows and has said publicly that he wants to move the NDP out of the socialist international into the guise of social democracy. He has the same weight of extremists on the socialist left in his party as Stephen Harper has on the lunatic fringe of the right of his. And yet the two leaders are arm wrestling in the centre.

That leaves Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae looking like a referee between the two protagonists. And Rae thinks the centre belongs to the Liberals. His problem is that he is in the weakest position to keep the peace between the right and left wings of the Liberal Party. He is a glib and industrious interim leader but the degree of trust in him by either right or left of the Liberal Party is not very high.

While these three leaders are scuffling in this supposed middle ground, few, if any, are paying attention to Canadian voters. Anyone who has done political surveys can tell you that the voters are not as easy to label as are politicians. Sure, you get the occasional ranting right or left winger but you often catch them contradicting themselves on issues. It is like you expect Danielle Smith, leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance, to be a raving fanatic for the right until you discover she is not Pro-Life. People can differ on issues.

Maybe all the parties need to spend a few thoughts on where they stand. The NDP just went through the exercise of choosing a leader and it became very clear in that process that there was a division between the strong union supporters and the members who put social issues first. Mulcair won for social democracy but the unionists who coalesced around Brian Topp on the final ballot were no small rump.

The Conservatives are likely to wait about five more years before they will need to find a replacement for Stephen Harper. A strong candidate from the extreme right might tear that party apart to drive out the red Tories once and for all. We might be able to return to having two parties clearly on the right.

The Liberal Party will start to determine its direction in the next year, culminating in a leadership convention in 2014. There will be a growing chorus by then supporting a cooperative arrangement, if not outright union, with the NDP. Liberal leadership contenders will not be able to use the ‘big red tent’ approach but we can expect that some will try to maintain that liberalism is based on the rights of the individual in society and can exist with both right and left wings.

Judging by how the voters reacted to Paul Martin’s right-wing Liberal Party during 27 months from 2003 until 2006, the Liberal Party should finally make a decision about what it wants to be.

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Canada’s Conservatives face war on two fronts.

March 26, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The news media will be paying an inordinate amount of attention to the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair for the next while. He won that party’s terribly dull leadership race and earned the attention. It would be a mistake though to think this means a breather for the Liberal’s Interim Leader Bob Rae.

The Conservatives ensured there would be no break for Rae with those ridiculous attack ads that are inundating the Harper-friendly television networks. We have listened to many theories about this attack from Conservatives, as well as seasoned political observers, and it is still not clear. It is like a bunch of young ruffians poking sticks into a wild animal’s den. You hope the creature is not rabid when they get bitten but they will certainly deserve a few scars. All that the Conservatives have proved so far is that they have more money to spend than they need. And they are not very imaginative.

We can only hope that Liberals do not respond to Bob Rae’s plea for additional funds from the party to pay for Liberal attack ads. If Bob Rae has a shred of dignity left, he will make all his attacks on the Conservatives in the House of Commons.

And that is where the most telling assaults will be made for the next year. The Conservatives are vulnerable on many issues. They lack depth (and brains) in their front bench and will have a difficult time fending off two aggressive opponents in the House.

The worst result of the stupid attack ad is that Rae might decide to enter the race to be leader of the party. That would be a mistake. What Rae did in the 1990s in Ontario was not what the attack ad says. What he failed to do at that time as Premier was to lead his party. He is a very experienced and articulate politician. He is just not a leader.

By having Bob Rae working in parliament during the Liberal leadership contest, the party will be in far better position than the NDP during their contest. The Interim Leader of NDP was virtually ignored while the NDP front-bench was out chasing the leadership. This will not be the case for the Liberals.

The one-two punch of Mulcair and Rae spell trouble for Mr. Harper. If Harper was weak in Quebec before this, he is now guaranteed that his way is blocked in that province. And Mulcair and the NDP are not the only beneficiaries of knee-capping Harper there. The Liberals can only grow in Quebec and we have hardly heard the last of the separatists.

We can look forward to the renewed challenge to Mr. Harper in the House. Just remember guys, the enemy of my enemy is my friend!

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John Fraser defends the monarchy. Why?

March 25, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The last thing we need today was another book extolling Canada’s relationship with the monarchy. Can people find nothing more irrelevant to write about?

But John Fraser wants to entice people to read—wait for it—The Secret of the Crown.

The secret is out: John Fraser is a monarchist. The Master of Massey College, entrusted with the coddling of the impressionable minds of the elite among graduate students at the University of Toronto is a staunch defender of the royals. He was so thrilled with the visit of the newlyweds, Billie and Katie, to Canada last year, he had to write about it.

Fraser sees the monarchy as having a stabilizing affect on Canada. He is concerned about the dire consequences of dumping the monarchy for he knows not what. He claims the monarchy protects our traditions, customs, laws and rights. He fails to explain how the monarchy achieves this feat. The royals do not even understand a tradition such as Hockey Night in Canada. And even John Fraser might not understand a custom such as ending our sentences with an interrogatory ‘Eh!’ And we can only hope that the Supreme Court will keep our laws and rights safe from Harper’s Conservatives.

But Mr. Fraser’s admiration of the monarchy is his right. And it is our right to feel the same as many Canadians. There are those of us who do not care about the monarchy. We figure the monarchy’s best before date expired about a century ago.

What we object to is that the monarchists among us are very much afraid of an open discussion on the subject of the monarchy. They do not want us to question the role of the monarchy. Even the royals themselves have finally decided that the law of primogenitor was so obsolete as to be embarrassing. They now agree that the rights of women are equal to men in our modern society. And it certainly was not the Monarchist League that advised them to make the change.

Mr. Fraser has his right to be a conservative (in the proper sense of the word). That means, he has the right to resist change. He can help preserve old customs and quaint traditions. He can join in re-enacting the Battle of the Boyne for all we care.

But we will fight his resistance to change in how this country serves its citizens. A constitutional conference is something that has to happen. We can no longer live with a 19^th century constitution. We must have thorough discussion of how we want our country to be run. And then the voters will decide.

If Canadians want the monarchy in preference to some possibly updated system, so be it. At least we will have decided. We will then work with whatever we decide.

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The NDP cannot get their vote out?

March 24, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The one thing you always assumed in working against the New Democratic Party in an electoral district during an election was that the NDP would get their vote out. If that was one of their targeted ridings, you knew that they would do the job. That was why today’s leadership convention was full of surprises.

With a claimed membership of over 120,000 across Canada, to have an average of only 50 per cent vote for leader was not expected. It made no sense. If you sell a membership to someone, do you not take them by the hand to make sure they vote for your candidate? If they are a long-time NDPer and voting is sacrosanct with them, you still leave nothing to chance. Even the Conservatives know better than that!

The NDP embarrassment could be creating concerns for the Liberals. The Liberal Party is planning to have a vote by every member at their upcoming leadership convention. If the Liberal executive gets cold feet, they could try to pull it back into a delegated convention. That would be a smack in the face for democracy in the Liberal Party.

Mind you there was one aspect of the NDP voting that caught us off guard. The party officials promised the news media that the first ballot results would be announced at 10 am EST. And, to everyone’s surprise, they were.

Liberals almost pride themselves on never doing anything on time. That never was a problem at Liberal conventions because we always had spies in communication to keep us fully apprised on how the vote count was going. If you did not have the figures in advance, you did not feel involved.

Even with the very long voting times needed to handle the vote, it was an impressive, well run convention. You might criticize the organizers for not having enough bandwidth and servers to handle the traffic but you have to realize their first concern was security. With only about half the potential votes to handle, it makes you wonder about the simulations that they surely must have run.

The convention hall in Toronto presented some awkward logistics with which the organizers did the best they could. The candidate bleachers, where they could present a wall of signs, were a rather dated approach but the NDP is also dated. And as for the drummers for Thomas Mulcair’s entrance to speak on Friday, that was the same stunt we used 44 years ago to shorten Liberal leadership contender Robert Winters’ speech to the essentials. Mulcair’s only mistake was to try to talk fast.

The NDP have chosen. M. Mulcair is their new leader. It is certainly going to be a new beginning to some interesting times.

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