Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Chantal Hebert highlights how the Harper Cons are making a show of ignoring the needs of Quebec - and indeed making matters worse by the day:

Persichilli’s recruitment also compounds what amounts to the party’s greatest election failure in the shape of its abysmal absence in Quebec.

At a time when the province is opening up to the federalist parties for the first time in decades, the first post-election addition to the senior ranks of the PMO cannot speak French and has a track record of lamenting Quebec’s influence on national affairs.

Harper is hardly the first prime minister to ask a non-French speaker to oversee his political communications. In his day, Paul Martin relied on an English-only communications director. But Harper is the first to deal with a Quebec vacuum within his government by making it worse.
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Queried by The Globe and Mail about this and other unflattering Quebec-related comments, Persichilli responded that in his new role he planned to treat Quebecers with the “utmost respect.”

But he is already off to a double standard for when Montreal’s La Presse came calling with the same questions, he declined to answer them.

- Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob point out that the conditional sentences being eliminated by the Harper Cons make for both a less expensive and more effective means of dealing with offenders:

The government has promised to further restrict the use of conditional sentences, claiming that its goal is to “protect the safety and security of our communities.” Yet it ignores substantial evidence demonstrating the opposite. The government indicated it would eliminate the use of the sanction for “serious and violent offenders,” but its bill also would have eliminated it for an offender whose offence involved breaking into a shed and stealing a bicycle.

Further restrictions will mean that offenders who otherwise would have received house arrest will go to a provincial, not federal, prison, thus ensuring that provincial/territorial costs will increase. Rather than benefiting the larger community through the use of punitive but simultaneously rehabilitative conditional sentences, the bill guarantees an increase in costs to the community. The government’s view that imprisonment pays for itself in crime reduction is a big lie.
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It’s ironic that, while the Harper government wants to seriously increase the use of imprisonment on the false justification that it’s the most effective way to increase public safety, other countries are trying to seriously decrease its use. The United States, for instance, is considering moves toward sanctions such as house arrest. Canada and the U.S. are like ships passing in the night, but Canadians are the unfortunate passengers on the ship of fools.

- Hassan Arif argues against an NDP/Lib merger:

(A) merger would reduce our political choices, taking Canada from a multi-party system to a U.S.-style system of two monolithic parties - something even more limiting in the Canadian context, given the tradition of tight party discipline.

The benefits of a multi-party system can be seen, for example, in Ontario. In that province, while the Liberal government has provided progressive policies in areas such as environmental conservation, many northern Ontarians have felt neglected by the McGuinty government and by previous Tory governments. The NDP has been able to step into this void and provide a strong voice for northern Ontario, a particular legacy of Howard Hampton's tenure as Ontario NDP leader.

Coalition and cooperation (including, if acceptable to party members, non-compete agreements like the one Stéphane Dion's Liberals had with Elizabeth May in 2008) are desirable options in dealing with a united right. Merger, though, is far more drastic. It would reduce our political choices and may not be beneficial to either party. It should be approached with a large degree of scepticism.

- But as Ed Broadbent notes, there's no reason why anybody looking for the strongest possible progressive voice should see any problem with the existing party options:

Mr. Broadbent said that after the NDP breakthrough in Quebec on May 2, which propelled the party into Official Opposition for the first time in its 50-year history, the NDP now occupies the driver's seat at the federal level.

"The Liberals are in historic decline, election after election. People forget often, because of our wonderful breakthrough in Quebec, that we now have more seats in Toronto than the Liberals have," he said.

"Now is the time for progressive Liberals, as indeed progressive people from other parties, to come and join the NDP, and they don't have to agree with everything, just as all New Democrats don't agree with everything in the party, right? They could get in and help shape what the party becomes."

- Finally, Anne Kingston writes about the political coupling of Jack Layton and Olivia Chow:

It is a uniquely Canadian, multicultural, inclusive love story. Layton and Chow weren’t the first married couple to sit in the House of Commons (that was Nina and Gurmant Grewal), but they blazed a unique trail exemplifying social equality, says Segato, who still sometimes slips into the present tense when she’s referring to them: “What you see is a couple engaged in each other’s best good. The level of respect is so profound. They didn’t agree on every issue, but they had the discussion. They were the embodiment of the equal, feminist relationship. It’s not some political ideal. They’re living it.”
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They did check in with one another by phone multiple times a day, a pattern that continued in Ottawa, “much to my annoyance,” Gallagher jokes, because it slowed down the schedule: “Working with Olivia, any number of times we’d be interrupted by Jack calling. Then when I moved to Ottawa I can’t tell you how many times Olivia would be brought in on speakerphone to be part of the decision. And it wasn’t just rubber-stamping, it was truly input.”

Another insider notes Chow’s patience rubbed off on Layton politically. “Olivia would say, ‘That’s a good idea but it’s not the right time,’ which isn’t a common discipline in political life. By the time Layton was federal leader [in 2003], he was a transformed political figure who thought strategically.”
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Chow rejected the traditional ceremonial “wife” role, says Gallagher: “Olivia wanted no part of that; but both were there for the other publicly when required.” In public, they expressed unabashed affection, reflected in Layton’s 2005 proclamation: “Olivia is fundamental to my life. She is woven into every minute, every second, of my existence.”