Thursday Afternoon Links

A bit of light reading as the week winds down...

- It didn't get a lot of attention at the time, but it's worth noting the postscript to Jim Prentice's supposed consultations on sustainable development:

More than one person with an interest in the environmental file has pointed out that the Federal Sustainable Development Act requires the government to develop a Federal Sustainable Development Strategy by June 26, 2010. There is a legally-required 120-day consultation period written into the Act.

So, says one of them, “all Mr. Prentice is doing is obeying the law and holding a consultation - late. His government forced him to break the law and miss the deadline when they prorogued Parliament, though, so the comment period closes more than two weeks after the final strategy is required to be completed.”

- Haven't heard enough over the past few days about the insane rantings of right-wing agents provocateur? Then you won't want to miss Barry Cooper's latest, in which he somehow pretends that the Cons' consistent strategy of pretending to be more-environmentally-friendly-than-thou and promising to do something about greenhouse gas emissions "next year" (or "as soon as the U.S. tells us what to do") somehow means that do-nothing denialists have won a major battle of ideas on behalf of conservatism generally. No, seriously.

- To cleanse your intellectual palate after you're done with Cooper, Murray Dobbin's piece on the Harper government's secrecy is worth a look.

- Finally, one piece of coverage from before the Saskatchewan budget looks particularly apt now, as Ken Rasmussen highlights the folly of obsessing about slashing government jobs rather than looking at actual expenditures:

Rasmussen said the Sask. Party government is taking a wrong-headed, although likely politically popular, approach by making its focus the job numbers in the civil service.

Government expenditures are a much better measure of the growth in government, he said. And in fact, while the civil service appears to have roughly doubled since 1960, government spending has increased nearly 70-fold, to $10.2 billion from $148.6 million. Spending has gone up by about $2 billion since the Sask. Party took office as resource revenues filled government coffers.

Targeting how dollars are spent first and then figuring out how it affects civil service positions is better for both government efficiency and civil servants, said Rasmussen.

"Everyone is worried about justifying their job rather than justifying their program and finding efficiencies. You create a bit of a panic," he said.

Expert manipulations

Call it anti-reality animus or just the result of staff cuts. But take a look at who's actually behind CTV's report which breathlessly claims that "experts" don't think a coalition government can work.

In fact, one of the two sources cited says that the coalition could well work based on the extreme circumstances:

"My gut reaction would be similar to his (Cooper's). However, sometimes, the political parties in Ottawa get themselves into a situation where they can actually create a momentum that is hard to push back," he said.

"It's possible that they (MPs) are all saying we'll defeat the government. But they don't want to force an election and so they will force themselves to make a coalition work."

And the other "expert"? That would be one of Stephen Harper's longtime confidants who, at last notice, was being evasive (in his own words!) over his funnelling of charitable donations into illegal third-party advertising supporting the Conservatives.

Suffice it to say that if CTV can't find anybody less partisan than Barry Cooper to question whether a coalition can work, then Harper truly has created the conditions for his own demise. And it couldn't happen to a more deserving individual.

On tangled webs

The Cons haven't made any secret of their intention to make use of the Conadscam scheme again in the next federal election unless a court tells them they can't (and regardless of whether Elections Canada or anybody else points out that it's against the law). But let's note that it isn't only the central party which is stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that it's in legal jeopardy, as the Cons' Calgary foundation is also showing signs of rot:

Although the University of Calgary has severed all ties with the Friends of Science and shut down the accounts which were set up in 2004 by political science professor Barry Cooper, the anti-Kyoto group is still using the same charity, the Calgary Foundation, to collect money and issue tax deductible receipts for anonymous donors.

The money is now going through an independent think tank, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg, which has received at least $50,000 since last fall, according to a document released by the Calgary Foundation. The Frontier Centre has indicated that it wants to produce a climate change video for children in schools.

Of course, it's worth pointing out one glaring flaw in the article's discussion.

In case there was any doubt, the new, "independent" recipient of Barry Cooper's largesse would be the same Frontier Centre for Public Policy which was hand-picked by the Cons for a six-figure federal contract to consult about electoral reform - despite the group's acknowledged lack of expertise in the area, and a clear bias against electoral reform in what little material it had disseminated on the topic. Naturally, it didn't take long for the group to be embarrassed when one of its subcontractors decided to put together its focus groups based on word of mouth rather than any process which could possibly lead to a diverse set of viewpoints. And the Frontier Centre was also called on to speak for the Cons' position on the farcical Canadian Wheat Board barley plebiscite.

In other words, after being caught wrongly interfering with the 2006 election, the Friends of Science have simply pivoted from direct political intervention to taking on a role funding a different part of the Cons' right-wing noise machine. Which can only make it clear just how little claim any of the groups involved can have to anything approaching independence - and how little plausibility the Cons themselves having in trying to deny links to or among the groups involved.

On obstruction

Once again the Cons and their allies are demonstrating their belief that accountability applies to everybody but themselves - this time through two stories about potentially illicit activities which may have helped them to take power in the first place.

First, the Hill Times reports on the Cons' efforts to hold the Procedure and House Affairs Committee hostage over for the past six months to prevent it from investigating Conadscam. And it looks like the Cons' latest excuse is to try to pretend that the mandate of a House of Commons committee is limited to whatever the government wants to see discussed:

Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski (Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre, Sask.), Parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, told The Hill Times last week that the government brought a motion forward at the committee to move on to a study of Bill C-6, the Visual Identification of Voters Bill, after weeks of filibustering the opposition´s motion to study the Conservative Party´s election advertising finances. Bill C-6 has been at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee since November 2007. Mr. Lukiwski said the committee is "still at a bit of an impasse," however, because the opposition is not agreeing to study legislation.

"We would like to start studying C-6. We would like to start studying legislation. That´s the mandate of our committee. Until the opposition agrees to that, I guess we won´t."...

(Lib MP Karen) Redman said the opposition has tried to come to a compromise on many occasions and the government has simply filibustered any attempt to move on. She said the opposition has proposed focusing on the "in and out" scheme one day a week, while focusing on legislation the other day, or increasing the meeting days to study both. "We have dealt with legislation and we have shown willingness to accommodate the legislative agenda," she said. "There´s been no compromise, no middle ground. The government is trying to prevent this at all costs, not just for embarrassment because they may intend to use this in a future election. Timing is of the utmost importance given we have a government that´s determined to defeat itself."...

(NDP MP Yvon) Godin disputed Mr. Lukiwski´s claim, however, saying if the government stopped filibustering the motion to study the "in and out" scheme, it would´ve been over with since last fall and they would have moved onto legislation months ago...

Mr. Godin said the fight is on (sic) one of principle now because the Conservatives have been filibustering for too long and the opposition believes they´re simply doing so because they want to use the same election advertising financing practices in the next election, potentially a few weeks from now. "They´re not going to dictate to us that we´re not going to deal with a big issue that they´ve created with this in and out...(W)hat they want to do is dictate to us because they don´t have a majority, they are a minority government, how we will do the work and we´re not just going to let them do it. They´re not going to get away with this, and I hope Canadians see what they´re trying to do. As I said last week, what do they have to hide?"

Meanwhile, one of Deceivin' Stephen's closest allies is also in trouble with Elections Canada over a scheme which looks to have combined questionable funnelling of charitable donations with illegal third-party election advertising. And unlike Harper's minions when it came to Conadscam, Barry Cooper isn't even willing to try to defend his side of the story for fear that he'll let some of the truth slip out:

Cooper, who also writes a political column for the Calgary Herald, refused to say whether he knew the university account was used to buy the radio ads.

"I'm not answering those kinds of questions because there's a lot of ambiguity (on what the radio ads were) and I'm not going to clarify them for you," Cooper said in an interview. "These are facts that may be at issue in some kind of legal case, and that's why I'm being evasive."

It remains to be seen whether any of the investigations will result in any firm outcome before Canada's next trip to the polls. For now, all evidence suggests that Harper and company will continue to put as many roadblocks in the way of the truth as they possibly can - and even if the Libs continue their pattern of delaying any election in hopes of a Con implosion, there's no particular reason to think the Cons will suddenly develop a conscience about suppressing information before 2009.

But whether or not the Cons succeed in avoiding having to answer directly for their wrongs, their consistent pattern of concealing the facts about their own actions should offer plenty of reason not to trust either their claims to believe in accountability, or their protestations of innocence. And the more dishonest the Cons show themselves to be, the less likely Canadians are to believe a word they have to say when the next election rolls around.