Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Geoffrey Stevens notes that much of the Cons' justification for utterly senseless choices is to point to an imaginary majority:

We don’t have a “silent majority” in Canada. It appears we have instead an “invisible majority.” This mass of unseen Canadians is like Harvey, the invisible rabbit from the 1950 film starring James Stewart. It can only be seen by those who truly believe in its existence — that is to say, by Stephen Harper and his apostles.

This invisible majority persuades the government to embrace policies that make absolutely no sense, decisions that cannot be justified in a rational way, initiatives that can be understood only by those who are able to commune with Harper’s Harvey.

Who knew the long-form census was as an intolerable intrusion resented by millions of Canadians? Who knew a falling crime rate would make a massive prison-building binge essential? Who knew that resurrecting the trappings of our colonial past would be smart politics in the Canada of the 21st century?

The invisible majority knew. The pollsters didn’t hear them, but Harper did, and he acted.
...
What secret intelligence prompted Defence Minister Peter MacKay to talk last week about how Canadian servicemen will be able to stand taller and prouder when the royal designations are restored?

“This is, of course, claptrap, utter nonsense,” commented military historian Jack Granatstein. “The British connection and the monarchy are even grander abstractions with little or no meaning for today’s servicemen and women. … The reality is that Canadians in and outside the Canadian Forces have turned their backs on the monarchy.”

Granatstein is right. He’s a smart man — smarter, I venture, than those members of Harper’s inner circle who follow the dictates of an invisible (if imaginary) majority.

- Alison catches the Globe and Mail editing the NDP out of Canada's political scene.

- Laura Ryckewaert points out how last week's Federal Court ruling on records documenting the RCMP's surveillance of Tommy Douglas fits into the general attitude of the federal government toward access to information:

The Federal Court's decision that the government should release the information it has on former NDP leader Tommy Douglas is an important ruling that shows federal institutions have a lack of respect for access laws, say experts.

"If we treated many of the laws the way we treat access we'd have some significant problems, and in this case it's not ordinary citizens that are not respecting the letter of the law of access, it's government institutions," said Michel Drapeau, a lawyer who specializes in access to information.
...
Mr. Bronskill said he thinks one thing that could be built into the act is with regard to the lack of penalties for the handling of ATI requests.

"Departments miss deadlines all the time, they don't give you records by the deadline that they set for themselves, even when it's a lengthy extension sometimes," he said. "When you don't pay your bank on time, or your cable bill on time it gets cut off. Well when a federal agency misses an access to information deadline what's the penalty? Absolutely nothing."

However, not everyone thinks changes need to be made to the act.

"The only thing that is wrong with the act is the inability or unwillingness of many government institutions to basically apply it as it is," Mr. Drapeau said.

- Finally, for more on Jack Layton, see the latest from Brian Topp on how Layton made decisions, while Peter Kelly has a suggestion as to what comes next.