On detachment

Based on the abominable fiscal track records of right-wing governments in Canada, the claim that the Cons or other similar parties should be trusted as economic managers tends to be a laughable one at best. But if we needed any more reason to doubt the Cons' competence in even evaluating the country's economic conditions (let alone acting on them), it can be found in this week's headlines.

After all, reports this week indicated that economic perception and reality are both at low points. Yet rather than even recognizing the potential for a problem, the minister charged by the Cons to handle federal finances could only brush off the possibility that there's even a problem with addressing.

Of course, it's entirely possible that Flaherty has been isolated from economic reality by a party determined to believe in its own infallibility. But the larger the gap grows between what the Cons claim to see happening in the economy and what Canadians can observe for themselves, the more reason voters will have to want to replace Harper and company with somebody more attuned to what's actually happening around them.

No surprises

I, for one, couldn't be much less surprised to find out that one of the newest star American political analysts is also one of the leading figures in baseball's sabermetric movement. But is it too much to hope that the minds behind Hockey Analytics or Behind the Net could end up similarly revolutionizing the kind of information available in analyzing Canadian politics?

Contrasting strategies

The Guardian reports that in an effort to boost his image as a leader willing to listen, Gordon Brown has started responding to critical letters from the general public by calling up random writers to address their concerns. In related news, the Harper government is considering answering critical letters from the Canadian general public by calling up random writers to denounce them as Taliban-loving Communist sympathizers who hate Canada.

Properly classified

It's noteworthy enough that the Harper government's public perceptions are in a well-deserved free-fall - with satisfaction levels dropping 13 points over the last 6 months, and two-thirds of respondents recognizing that the Cons have done a bad job when it comes to accountability. But what does it say when even Sun Media can only classify news about the Cons under its "Crime" section?

On fabrications

The Star reports that the Cons continue to have just as much disdain for facts when it comes to relatively small issues the as they do with respect to their current scandals. This time, it's expense records that look to have been altered without any reasonable explanation to avoid the Star's criticism:

The Conservative government has twice altered expense records for international trips after the Star questioned their high cost.

The records in a publicly available website were changed – thousands of dollars removed in one case and a lengthy journey shortened in another – for trips by then-foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier and Brian Jean, parliamentary secretary to the minister of transport...

In Bernier's case, the Star raised questions about a report on the Foreign Affairs website showing he spent $22,573 on airfare for a trip to Laos via Paris to attend a two-day conference last fall. The Star found he could have travelled there comfortably for $7,000.

Within a few days of the story's publication on May 16, the expense report on the website was changed. The airfare now reads $13,919. It's unclear why it was changed.

Bernier's former spokesperson, Neil Hrab, suggested a previous office manager in the minister's office had made a clerical error. Hrab would not release any documents and said the Star could make a request under the federal access-to-information legislation.

While Bernier's airfare mysteriously dropped, the $18,500 airfares of his "policy adviser" and "senior policy adviser" did not. Bernier resigned from cabinet this week.

Another series of expense reports questioned by the Star involved Jean, the Tory MP from Alberta, who is the parliamentary secretary to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon. The Star raised Jean's 15-day trip to Paris last September for a five-day conference, the 23rd World Road Association Congress. Jean's flight was listed at $7,515, his accommodation at $4,969 and his meals at $1,412. Jean's assistant travelled with him on a much cheaper flight – $1,848 – and stayed for only eight days. Her expense report was not altered.

Several weeks ago, the Star asked the transport department why Jean took 15 days to attend a five-day conference in Paris. It took a while, but spokesperson Karine White said the "finance department" had made a clerical error. She said four days had inadvertently been added – on paper – to Jean's trip. It was 11 days and one involved an overnight flight.

The records on the website were changed immediately. The airfare remains the same; the dollar value of meals went up slightly; but the main change was that with fewer days on the trip, the per-night hotel cost for Jean rose from $355 to about $500 (hotel rates for Canadian government officials are typically discounted by about 25 per cent).

The most charitable possible interpretation is that the Cons were careless in reporting the listed expenses to the point where it took the Star's attention for them to actually set matters right. Which would itself offer plenty of reason for concern that the Cons' public disclosures are less than accurate at the best of times.

But particularly based on the Cons' refusal to provide any documentation to support either the original numbers or the altered ones, it looks equally possible that they simply revised the reports to include numbers which they figured would appear more acceptable. And if so, then a seemingly systematic policy of throwing poor explanations at the wall in hopes that something will stick would seem to offer ample reason to doubt anything the Cons have to say.

Grounds for dismissal

One of the most interesting questions surrounding Maxime Bernier's resignation is that of just what it takes to get booted out of the cabinet of a PM who seems utterly incapable of acknowledging error. Today, Jane Taber provides the answer - and not surprisingly, there doesn't appear to be any level of ministerial incompetence that the Cons won't accept if they can avoid paying too high a political price for it:

Mr. Bernier submitted his resignation Monday morning, after learning that his ex, Julie Couillard, had given a potentially damaging interview to the French-language TVA network stating that he was careless with confidential documents.

He was told to wait it out. Still, he was pulled out of meetings throughout the day and was absent from a meeting of the cabinet's priority and planning committee, the cabinet's most important and powerful committee.

The powers-that-be wanted to assess just how bad the interview by Ms. Couillard would be. The waiting game was all about media strategy.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was to leave Monday night on a trip to Europe. A Bernier friend said the government didn't want its foreign affairs minister to be forced to step down just before the Prime Minister was about to set out on the world stage. Nor, however, did it want the whole thing to blow up while the Prime Minister was in the air.

"They [senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office] had anticipated that this was coming [the Couillard interview] and Bernier had said, 'Listen, I am ready to resign,' " the friend said. "And they had said to him, 'Don't do it yet. Let's just confirm that this is what is going to happen because we don't want this to blow up before Harper gets on a plane and goes to Europe.' "

In other words, the Cons weren't prepared to view any combination of Bernier's incompetence, his carelessness with classified documents (which Taber discusses in more detail), and the scandal surrounding Julie Couillard as providing sufficient reason to remove Bernier from the cabinet. Instead, it was only the calculation that firing Bernier would serve as better political damage control than continuing to lie in his defence that finally forced Harper to pull the trigger.

If there's any good news, it's that the combination of Bernier's departure and the reemergence of the NAFTA leak scandal looks to be serious enough to make any efforts at damage control ineffective. But the Bernier timeline offers ever more evidence that Harper isn't interested in assessing his cabinet on any basis other than his party's political benefit - which raises reason for suspicion that the scandals which have already gone public may only be the tip of the iceberg.

Update: More from Paul Wells.

On private decisions

Via Rabble, CUPE comments on both the problems with P3s in general, and the National Post's refusal to allow anybody who supports public ownership of public goods to balance out its own pro-P3 stance:

The subject of P3s has garnered increasing media attention in the past few years as more and more projects are pursued and as various concerns mount from all sides. All the while, CUPE has been identified as the country’s most prominent and credible opponent of P3s, by any standard. Yet our voice – and those of countless other P3 critics – is absent from the discourse currently perpetuated by the National Post.

The new justification for P3s is that they transfer risk from the public to the private sector which is the better risk manager, they say. P3 promoters use even more financial chicanery to justify this argument, but downplay the need for public bailouts when P3s fail. The UK government's $4 billion bailout after the Metronet P3 failure should be cause for alarm, but has been all but ignored here in Canada, like so many homegrown P3 failures. Besides, the recent sub-prime financial meltdown and the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper scandal demonstrate just how little faith we should have in the superiority of the private sector’s risk management.

P3s pose a threat to public services – no wonder the private sector is all over them.

But never mind that for now. Mind that any challenge of P3s was curiously kept from the National Post’s ‘report’ – perhaps because when we come after P3s, we come with the very facts the privatization lobby prefers to ignore.

It's worth remembering that it isn't only in the media that any sense of balance is currently lacking. Indeed, the Harper Cons' 2007 budget included over a billion dollars worth of funding specifically targeted for P3s, along with a requirement that other levels of government pay homage to the P3 concept before receiving a penny of federal infrastructure money.

From that starting point, it figures to be an uphill battle to point out the obvious problems associated with P3s - particularly when major media outlets are actively shutting out one side of the debate. But with the effectiveness of public services at stake, there's still a substantial need to raise awareness of the issue. And with luck, enough public reminders as to the importance of publicly-owned services will force even the likes of CanWest to acknowledge the serious pitfalls associated with a push toward P3s.

On talent pools

Shorter Jonathan Kay:
Maxime Bernier is living proof that our current elected government includes utterly unqualified and incompetent ministers. And as far as I'm concerned, the obvious solution is a wholesale transfer of responsibility to unelected appointees, rather than electing a government which actually considers intelligence and competence to be important.

Scratching the surface

For all the talk about Maxime Bernier's ignominious and long-overdue removal from cabinet, I'm surprised there doesn't seem to have been much comment on what the reason for his departure might have meant at the time:

Maxime Bernier has resigned as foreign affairs minister, after he acknowledged leaving sensitive government documents out in the open -- apparently at his former girlfriend's home.

Sources told CTV News the documents included classified information for last April's NATO summit in Romania. One sensitive document contained details about NATO's military strategy in Afghanistan.

Bernier learned that he had left behind the documents Monday night, but didn't tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper until Tuesday afternoon. He then resigned from his cabinet post...

Couillard told Quebec broadcaster TVA that the sensitive document had been left at her home in mid-April.

"Maxime came to my house and the document in question was left at my house," she said. "For now, what I can tell you is that the document made me feel very uncomfortable. I was referred to a top lawyer in that field, who told me ... what was the proper legal procedure (to return it)."

Now, it's difficult to take Bernier at face value in his claim not to have had any clue that he'd left the documents behind until this weekend. But it's still worth asking the question about what impact his leaving the documents behind would have had at the time.

After all, for Bernier to be telling the truth now, it would have to be true that in at least one major foreign summit, Stephen Harper's choice to represent Canada's interests was so clueless that he didn't manage to notice that he was lacking of what would seem to have been essential background documents. (Next up on the Wheel of Excuses - "When they said to look at the military strategy for Afghanistan, I thought they meant the lunch menu.")

And indeed, that would suggest that nobody else around him would have been observant enough to notice the problem either - since if anybody had noticed the materials were missing and raised the question of where they'd gone, there'd be no excuse for Bernier or anybody else to claim that today's news wasn't known earlier.

Of course, there's another alternative - being that the problem might have been at least suspected for some time but covered up. But even that alternative would involve at least as much incompetence as dishonesty, given that Couillard apparently had to figure out what to do with the documents for herself rather than being contacted by anybody retracing Bernier's steps.

Either way, it seems clear that the problems within the Cons' government go far beyond Bernier's carelessness alone. And Bernier's resignation should only be the beginning of what needs to be done to check on just how much damage he and his party have done.

Update: As Kady O'Malley notes, the story is in fact that the briefing notes were left at Couillard's home weeks after the actual NATO summit. Which would avoid some of the questions above, but raise an even larger one as to how that sequence of events could possibly be explained.

On alternatives

Leftdog highlights a pattern within the Cons where one MP hires a family member of another MP for constituency or ministerial work using parliamentary funds. And it's worth wondering whether the apparent nepotism is based more a desire to provide additional public funds to MPs and their families, or instead on a lack of other qualified members to fill the positions. Either way, though, the part of the story which most deserves to be pointed out is that at least one federal party doesn't allow the same type of practices within its ranks:

The hiring of family members is not a new phenomenon on Parliament Hill. In the early 1990s, two Progressive Conservative MPs were found to have employed each other's daughters, effectively skating around the prohibition of directly hiring children. An RCMP investigation cleared them of wrongdoing. More recently, then-Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien was accused of nepotism when his daughter, a lawyer, was appointed to a federal position on a 2010 Olympics organizing committee - an allegation his office rejected.

In Opposition, the Harper Conservatives railed against patronage and cronyism they claimed was endemic in the Liberal governments.

"They've been touters of public virtues and they do have that burden of having to be purer than Ceasar's wife," said Parliamentary expert Ned Franks, professor emeritus at Queen's University...

Manitoba New Democrat Pat Martin said his own son landed an eight-week summer job for another NDP MP in 1998. Two years later, then-leader Alexa McDonough intervened to stop an MP from hiring a colleague's relative and created a party policy against the practice, Martin said. He says he agrees with the approach.

"Nepotism and patronage are two of the same species," he said. "It's that who-you-know kind of politics that makes Canadians gag." While hiring other MPs' relatives may be allowed under House rules, it "doesn't pass the smell test," he said.

In other words, while the Cons railed against the Libs' cronyism in opposition, they've once again lost any concern for the misuse of the spoils of power now that they stand to enjoy them. And indeed at least a couple of their supporters have tried to draw specious distinctions as to why Con nepotism is entirely appropriate, or even criticize the fact that the story was even reported.

But while anybody hoping the Cons would do better than the Libs in the ethics department may have reason to be bitterly disappointed, that doesn't mean they have to be resigned to that level of politics.

After all, the NDP hasn't only pointed out the problems with funneling money to family members when other parties have done, but has also set the bar for itself at the level which it demands from its competitors. Which means that Canadian voters rightly cynical about the Cons and Libs can take heart that one federal party both stands by its ethical principles, and does more than than the bare minimum to keep its operations clean.

Truth in labelling

I suppose it was inevitable that some Con-friendly media outlets would try to pretend that Stephen Harper's labelling announcement this week would accomplish more than it actually will. Enter the Calgary Herald, which tries to argue that consumers should use country of origin as a proxy for safety in deciding what food to buy:

Imagine a parent who goes to a grocery store, picks up baby food labelled "Made in Canada," only to later discover the bottle was made in Canada, but the contents were provided and processed in a Third World country known for egregious health and safety violations.

Parents would be aghast to find out that the product fed to their child was from a region where food safety was nowhere near the Canadian standard, especially given one main reason they purchased the product was because they thought it was safe.

The reality of vastly different food inspection and safety standards around the world then means it makes perfect sense for the Stephen Harper government to update requirements on what food can be labelled as a product of Canada...

The new standards require that any label claiming a food product is a "Product of Canada" necessarily needs to have all or virtually all of its contents be Canadian. That includes ingredients, the processing and the labour used to make the product; an exception has been made for some foreign content to be included in a Canadian product and labelled as such if minor additives or spices are not available in Canada.

Now, it's worth noting the danger that the exceptions might substantially undermine the rule even on the Herald's own terms. Surely if an additive isn't available precisely because it doesn't past muster in Canada, then the fact that a product can be labeled as a "product of Canada" anyway based on a lack of domestic availability can't lead to any great amount of consumer comfort.

But the problems with the Herald's take go far beyond that. In effect, the Herald seeks to give the Cons a pass on the lack of any meaningful effort to monitor products coming into Canada for inspection or safety standards. Instead, it wants to place the onus on consumers to look for a single designation which on its face has nothing to do with food safety as their lone signal that a product is safe for their consumption.

Yet even that system could only be effective to the extent one assumes the Canadian regulatory system is able to do its job of both inspecting Canadian production effectively, and bringing to light any problems. Which is problematic in light of the Cons' consistent attempts to exercise political control over regulatory agencies: can any Canadian consumer feel entirely assured that an agency facing a government which has eagerly declared war on civil servants who come to inconvenient conclusions, or whose communications are under the thumb of the PMO, is able to ensure that Canada's products are as safe as they should be?

In sum, this week's announcement offers at best a poor attempt by the Cons to be labelled as consumer-friendly. But no reasonable standard could justify applying that label to a government which has worked both to suppress product information, and to undermine Canada's ability to provide the level of regulatory effectiveness that the Herald considers so important.

On target audiences

Shorter BigCityLib:
If one assumes that corporations (a) don't pay taxes, (b) can't effectively be regulated and (c) don't have any greater ability than individuals to make large capital investments, then a carbon tax that hits individual consumers the hardest makes perfect sense. And in the name of winning the crucial Fraser Institute vote, I highly recommend that the NDP accept those assumptions without question.

On negatives

One follow-up note on this week's leadership polling: as much as coverage of the poll went off course in refusing to mention the two national leaders who are actually viewed positively by respondents, it also seems to have missed one of the more important points involving Stephane Dion as well.

While the decline in Dion's approval rating to a meager 10% received more attention, it's another boost in his disapproval rating which looks to cause more serious problems for the Libs. With 60% of respondents disapproving of the current face of the party, it stands to reason that the Libs will have an awfully tough time even painting themselves as an option for more than the remaining 40% of possible voters - making their margin for error virtually nonexistent in trying to put together enough votes to cut into Con support.

Of course, the Libs' answer will presumably be to try to direct attention toward anything but the party leaders. But that figures to be an uphill battle given the tendency of campaign coverage to focus on the leaders' every move. And based on the obstacles facing the Libs in their attempt to overcome the leadership deficit, Canadians looking for the best chance of toppling the Harper regime may be best served rallying behind a leader who doesn't start on the wrong side of a majority of voters.

Loose lips, sinking ship

I've spent plenty of time commenting and and criticizing the muzzle on the Cons' cabinet (and party as a whole). But let's note that Stephen Harper may have good reason to refuse to let anybody speak for themselves if Maxime Bernier's latest stunt is any indication of the cost of loosening the leash.

Shifting sands

Susan Riley discusses the parties' respective positions on the Libs' planned carbon tax:

The NDP leader has been at pains, lately, to emphasize his plan for tackling climate change - notably, tough caps on greenhouse gas emissions and a carbon trading system. Not that he is changing course. In a speech yesterday on poverty, he added a last-minute swipe at Dion: "Advocates of a carbon tax suggest that by making the costs for certain things more expensive, people will make different choices. ... But Canada is a cold place. Heating your home is not a choice."

That is a time-honoured message...It is also the strongest argument against a carbon tax: It hurts those on fixed incomes, those dependent on fossil fuels to heat their homes, farmers and small town dwellers with no access to public transit. Before you force people to change their behaviour (one of the goals of a carbon tax) you should ensure they have a choice.

Now, the NDP's position shouldn't come as much surprise. But Riley's take on why the Libs have decided to push the carbon tax approach offers an interesting point of comparison:

In fact, the strongest selling point for a carbon tax - one that apparently changed Dion's mind - is that it can be implemented fairly quickly. It could start the tax-shift toward rewarding sustainable, instead of wasteful, behaviour on an individual level, while government works out a regime for big industry. As it is, a cap-and-trade system (which Liberals also support) has been debated for more than a decade. There are already carbon markets in Europe and some experimental projects in North America, but Dion argues it will take years to implement a functioning market here, and that global warming requires urgent attention.

Even leaving aside the obvious point that much of the foot-dragging took place under the Libs and Dion, it's worth remembering that a cap and trade market was also part of the amended C-30 agreed to by the opposition parties, and that Layton's own C-377 also includes the groundwork for a cap and trade system. Which means that it's entirely possible to set up such a market through opposition cooperation even with the Cons trying to stall any progress.

But even accepting the point that urgent action is needed, a plan to influence consumer-level behaviour through massive increases in the price of needed goods looks to have plenty of downsides worth criticizing. And while the NDP's point about the unfairness of putting the onus on those with the least means to make radical changes offers one reason why any benefits are outweighed by the costs of a carbon tax, there's also reason to doubt that a carbon tax would serve its intended purpose in any event.

After all, as Dion pointed out himself during the Libs' leadership race, there's little reason to think that theoretical future price increases caused by a carbon tax would be expected to result in wholesale changes in behaviour where actual increases based on oil prices haven't. And with real fuel costs having gone through the roof in the time since the leadership race, the evidence is only stronger now for the view that price signals alone won't get the job done.

In contrast, a concerted effort toward a more efficient Canada along the lines of the NDP's Green Agenda hasn't yet been tried. And if the focus indeed stays on the parties' respective environmental plans, the NDP will presumably be glad to point out and explain how its solutions would lead to positive results in the short term.

Which isn't to say the Libs can't make some argument for their own carbon tax as a potentially quick fix. But there's every reason for the NDP to both doubt its environmental effectiveness, and point out the social costs of imposing deliberate price shocks on those least able to deal with them.

On disapproval

While the headlines have focused on Stephane Dion's woeful 10% approval number, the latest Angus Reid poll also shows that a minimum of 58% of all respondents don't approve of the leadership of either Dion or Stephen Harper. So isn't it long past time for pollsters to start offering a few more choices beyond the ones who obviously aren't winning public support?

Update: MCG notes in the comments that the full breakdown (note: PDF) includes basic approve/disapprove numbers for the other federal leaders. Layton leads the pack at 34% approval nationally, and is tied with May at a net +3% approval - compared to -10% for Harper and a stunning -50% for Dion.

But let's not let the poll structure off the hook, as Layton and May weren't included in polling in qualities and characteristics, or on the "best PM" measure where "neither" ties the combined score for Harper and Dion.

On poor information

In just the past couple of months, the Cons' government has voted down mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods, and fought to prevent international labelling standards to include more complete information about a given food's health content. Which makes it glaringly clear that the Cons couldn't care less about putting information in the hands of consumers concerned about what's actually in the food they buy.

But have no fear - as long as you're in the class of consumers more concerned about the standard at which a product can be labelled as "made in Canada" than with the actual contents of their food, the Cons are prepared to require the labelling you want.

Update: Canwest's report adds another twist, as Harper's announcement today is timed so as to undercut what the Commons agriculture committee has already been doing on the same topic:

Mr. Harper's announcement circumvents a process currently underway in the Commons agriculture committee, which launched a study into Product of Canada labelling months ago.

Next week the agriculture committee is scheduled to debate and review its draft report on the Product of Canada label.

Which raises a few serious questions. First, was the committee about to reach a decision which the Cons saw a need to preempt? Or alternatively, did Harper simply want to take all the credit for something along the lines of what the committee would have reached through multi-party work? And either way, will opposition members now have yet another reason to avoid working with Con committee members lest any effort at honest discussion be used against the other parties by the Cons' central command?

On predictable performances

In a stunning plot twist, the federal Cons have announced their support for the Saskatchewan Party's Senate election plan which happens to mirror their own.

Stay tuned for more dramatic episodes of Political Pantomime Theatre, including the federal Liberals' shocking response to Elizabeth May's endorsement of their carbon tax.

A golden opportunity

Others have rightly expressed concerns about Pierre Poilievre's attack on sex reassignment surgery. But let's look on the bright side of Poilievre's asinine suggestion that the federal government should withhold health funding which might be used for a medically necessary procedure based solely on his personal prejudice, as the issue looks to be a perfect one to galvanize all kinds of opposition messages about the Cons.

The article points out two possibilities which are surely worth plenty of discussion: not only does the demand offer another example of bigotry-based social conservatism rearing its ugly head, it can also be cast as the blatant attempt to micromanage provincial spending.

But one can go further based on the health-care context of Poilievre's demand. Remember the ridicule that then-U.S. Senator Bill Frist rightly faced for his attempt to diagnose Terri Schiavo from the floor of the Senate - offering a hint at just what the public thinks about having politicians try to play doctor.

From this angle, Poilievre's demand can only be seen as several times worse. Not only does he (unlike Frist) lack medical training to be able to give any informed opinion about the procedure in question, but he's trying to overrule the medical profession as to the use of a particular procedure for all types of patients without even pretending to consider individual circumstances.

Finally, as an added bonus, Poilievre's bizarre choice of hobby horses can only serve to highlight the Cons' general disinterest in the health system. Remember that the Cons have outright refused to enforce the Canada Health Act as it stands; a demand that they suddenly start finding such ridiculous bases to withhold funding now only offers an ideal opportunity to point out their usual neglect.

And while the Cons' likely response is that Poilievre is merely a single MP mouthing off for himself, that defence doesn't figure to gain much traction. Not only has the Cons' micromanagement of their MPs' every move been well documented, but the message is coming from an MP whose own party insiders have painted him as a useful parrot and nothing more. As a result, the Cons can't plausibly hope to disavow the request (or at least not without giving the demand even more press than it would receive otherwise).

In sum, there's every reason to point out the problems with Poilievre's remarks. But heinous as they are on their face, they may ultimately have a positive effect in reminding Canadians what the Cons really stand for.

Update: As pogge notes, we can also add pointless attacks on Ontario to the list.

On regression

So much for the Sask Party pretending to have evolved past its Elwin Hermanson phase, as it's now planning to take up the cause of electing senators. Needless to say, that plan was conspicuously absent from any of the party's stated policies or intentions until they had a majority to impose it on the province - leaving plenty of reason for concern just where else Wall and company plan to operate out of old Reform/Alliance platforms rather than their own.

Though I suppose one can look on the bright side: if the Sask Party keeps up that trend, it'll surely be an interesting experience to see a provincial referendum on whether to change Wall's first name to "Brick".