Democracy, As Rob Anders Would Write It

Rob "Sleepy" Anders must be feeling the heat from having competition running against him for the nomination in Calgary Signal Hill.

Yesterday, he threatened to sue Ron Liepert over claims that Liepert's campaign made that Anders' campaign was making misleading phone calls to constituents.

Liepert responded with a statement that says Elections Canada is investigating the incident. 

"We've filed complaints based on specific instances of calls from the Anders' campaign phone number claiming to be the Liepert campaign," he said in an email.

Today, he comes trotting out to claim that the dreaded "Red Tories" are trying to hijack his "True Blue Conservative Party", complete with a bunch of "Wanted, Dead Or Alive" style leaflets naming the people that Anders thinks are "temporary Tories".

At a news conference on Thursday Anders revealed the first three names on his list — former federal Liberal candidate and nursing professor Janice Kinch, radio personality Buzz Bishop and Greg Schmidt, former president of the Energy Council of Canada.  

Anders characterized his battle with Liepert as a struggle for the soul of the Conservative Party. He said the political process is being hijacked by people who are purchasing Conservative memberships just so that they can cast a vote in support of his challenger.

Considering that the CPC has moved heaven and earth to protect Anders in past nomination skirmishes, I imagine he's feeling more than a little heat since the Party is somewhat cornered on the matter this time around, having committed to "open" nomination contests for all MPs who haven't faced a nomination race since 2011.

Rob Anders ... Wants To Resurrect What?

Apparently, Rob Anders thinks that we need to resurrect the old "Rape" laws.

He wants anyone convicted of rape to serve a mandatory minimum of eight years in prison for a first offence and 10 years for each subsequent conviction. 

“I ideally would have liked to have seen rapists get 20-years mandatory minimum but because of what we anticipate in constitutional challenges, we decided to go with eight and 10 because it was well within inside the penalties for manslaughter.”

As usual for Rob Anders, he seems to be quite unaware of why the old Rape laws were replaced with "Sexual Assault".  First of all, Rape has a fairly narrow definition.  Second, as we have come to understand, there are entire classes of sexual assault which are just as damaging to their victims as forced sexual intercourse.  The much broader Sexual Assault laws actually encompass these laws, and because of the language of them, they encompass both male and female offenders, where a Rape law is largely solely enforceable with respect to male offenders.

Mr. Anders claims that the sentences being handed out are "too lenient", yet he fails to acknowledge that the available sentences for sexual assault can run as high as 10 to 14 years.  How often sentences that long are handed out, I cannot say.  I would imagine that the longest sentences are reserved for the worst offenders.  He is also ignoring the availability of long term and dangerous offender designations.

While we haven't seen Anders' legislation yet, I fully expect that it will be written in a manner which virtually guarantees that it will collapse the minute it is challenged under the terms of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

 

Wondering Why Conservative Candidates Are So Quiet?

The silence of the HarperCon$ has been deafening. Except for big daddy opening his mouth to pollute the air, Conservative candidates have individually been just about non-existent in Calgary. (With the possible exception of Prentice - and I suspect he's speaking only with special dispensation from his masters).

Then we get Rob Anders making comments off the record:

Rob Anders' political views are again coming under fire, as a local lawyer and humanitarian said the Calgary West Conservative told her he believes that Canadian diplomacy and humanitarian work should focus on changing outsiders' language to English and faith to Christianity.

Coming from Anders, this isn't terribly surprising - it's not like he's ever exhibited anything resembling an understanding of tact, much less diplomacy.

"If anybody in the world saw or heard that the MP in my riding was saying that he thought humanitarian agencies should go out and change religions, I am at personal risk and so are the volunteers that get on the plane and go do this work," said Kennedy-Glans, founder of Calgary-based Bridges Social Development.

Which is precisely the point that we should be thinking about - statements like Anders' will reverberate when they become public. The consequences for others could be quite serious - especially if they are in countries that are sensitive to the notion of 'Christian Crusade'.

In an interview Tuesday, Anders said her accusations misconstrue his position, noting he's regularly donated his time and money to helping Tibetan organizations, which practice a different religion and speak a foreign language.

The classic "but some of my best friends are ..." defense. It still doesn't change the underlying bigotry and arrogance of the statements.

Will They Dispose of Anders?

I've watched Calgary West with the same kind of fascination that a wreck on the Deerfoot evokes.

While the Reform/Alliance party existed, it wasn't too hard to see how Rob Anders managed to get nominated repeatedly. However, when the Alliance party merged with the former Progressive Conservatives, there were suddenly some fairly serious challenges to Anders.

To this point, the Conservative party apparatus has moved to protect Anders whatever way they can, including changing the rules for nominations when Anders was clearly in danger of losing the nomination. How it is that Anders continues to be protected by the party apparatus is beyond me. The man is embarrassment to Canada and Canadians ... and it isn't some magical personality trait that gets him elected in a tough riding - you could nominate a bale of hay as a conservative in Calgary and it would get elected.

However, another move happened yesterday that might signal a sea change in Calgary West. It seems that most of Anders' supporters on the local riding board were swept away in what I presume was the AGM vote to replace the riding executive.

It's a sad statement about Alberta's political scene that this looks like some kind of victory for democracy; an even sadder statement is that Anders has been elected at all.

Citizens of Calgary West: It's Up To You

The Conservative party shenanigans to protect Rob Anders' nomination keep unfolding. In the news this morning, we find the next chapter in the saga:

Walter Wakula said Tuesday that the rules for the nomination are biased against anyone challenging Anders.

Only people who were members of the party last August can vote and challengers can't get a party membership list until after Tuesday's nomination deadline passes.

Wakula said it's like running a 100-metre dash, but Anders is on the 50-metre line while challengers are at the start line with a ball and chain tied to their legs.

"I mean, that is just not a fair race."

For voters in Calgary West, this is important. We live (supposedly) in a democracy, and the CPoC is supposedly a 'grassroots' party where the members are free to speak their minds. The ongoing saga of Anders' nomination merely demonstrates that under current leadership, the CPoC is no longer either grassroots, or even particularly democratic.

When someone cannot contest the nomination for the riding because the MP is magically protected by the PM's whim, and worse, instead of being honest about it, we find the party engaging in all sorts of legal games and rules bending to achieve their goals, one has to begin wondering just what's really at play here.

At this point, it looks like Anders' will be the candidate for the CPoC in Calgary West. Come next election, voters will have to decide if the kind of dishonest, corrupt shenanigans that have gone on in this nomination saga have left Anders with any credibility in terms of his ability to represent them. (Remember, at this point, whoever is protecting his nomination basically owns his ass - if he doesn't bow to their whim, they withdraw their shield - do you know who is protecting Anders so vigorously? ... and would you want someone like that able to puppet-master your MP?

From The Democratic Reform Party...

The intellectual dishonesty of the HarperCon$ continues apace. Consider the following claim of democracy with respect to party nominations:

Plett said 94,000 ballots were mailed nationally to party members in ridings with an incumbent, asking them whether they wanted a nomination race in their constituency. The mail-out included Calgary West, where lawyer Donna Kennedy-Glans wanted to challenge longtime MP Rob Anders.

Two-thirds approval was required to trigger a battle, while an unreturned ballot was counted as a no under new rules adopted by the Conservative party's national council in March. In the past, if people wanted to challenge a nomination, they generally could after an interview, Plett said.

Now, let's think about this. First up is the obvious bar that a 2/3 of membership creates. Anyone even mildly familiar with volunteer organizations knows that for the most part, only a handful of the overall membership is ever active, and likely to return their ballots.

Then there is the ballot counting method. An unreturned ballot is assumed to be a "no"... hmmm... so, in essence, this entire system was set up not so that the incumbents had to actually earn their nomination, but rather so that apathy would guarantee their renomination.

Coming from the party whose roots are in the grassroots populism of the Reform party, this is beyond revolting. They haven't held anything close to a democratic process. Any process which assumes the value of an unreturned ballot to be anything other than "spoiled" is fundamentally wrong.

As a long term watcher of Alberta politics, it's amazing the lengths that the CPoC has gone to in protecting Rob Anders from any kind of nomination threat. Every time there is a credible threat, they go gumby the rules about in such a way as to neutralize the threat to Anders.

But then again, it just tells us something about how conservatives win in politics - by playing on apathy. In Alberta politics, we've seen it for years - where ever dwindling voter turnout has made it possible for the conservatives to gain a virtual stranglehold on the provincial government.

Reasons I Don't Trust Stephen Harper

When The Mini Shrub moves protect an MP who is less useful than a bale of hay, you have to know that a priorities are screwed up.

Rob Anders' track record in the house is a pathetic collection of pratfalls that most frat boys would be embarrassed by.

However, when Harper moves to protect an MP like Anders, and by inaction leaves an MP that tries to work hard for his constituents like Garth Turner, out twisting in the breeze, I think the message is pretty clear. Suck up to Stephen, or else.

Coming from a two-bit micromanager, that's not surprising.

Politically, protecting Rob Anders is a silly move. Few people seem to have anything good to say about the man - you could easily replace him with someone else with fewer political liabilities. (Heaven forbid that goofball ever seeing a seat in cabinet!)

Sadly, it also means that there are reasons that Harper hasn't managed to calm down the extreme elements of the CPoC - he can't. Not without losing his own personal base of support.

Update: Anders Nomination

Just to give us further insight into how anti-democracy Harper's Tories are, we have the latest update on the squabbles over Rob Anders' nomination in Calgary West.

The Cons are trying to rig the court-ordered nomination by imposing arbitrary rules on who is allowed to vote in the nomination meeting:

An unprecedented move by the party's national council to deny voting rights to new members in Calgary West is curtailing any potential challenges to Anders in a court-ordered second nomination battle.

"The secret, as everyone knows, to winning a nomination is to be able to sell your supporters memberships and get them out to vote," said John Knox, one of 11 disgruntled Tories who have fought the party's unwavering loyalty to Anders from courtroom to courtroom since last August.

The rule - which gives ballots only to those who were party members in the middle of August last year - contrasts with every other Tory riding in Canada, where anyone who has held a membership for more than three weeks can vote at a party nomination.

I can't say that I'm surprised. The HarperCons have done everything they can to subvert and damage the very notion of democracy. Considering the grassroots populist nature of the Reform/Alliance incarnations of this party, it is both disappointing and ironic.

That the Calgary West CPOC constituency association feels it necessary to manipulate and twist the nominations process (with the collaboration of "head office") in a city where a Conservative candidate is practically a shoo-in tells us a great deal about just how dishonest and internally corrupt the Cons really are. (I'm beginning to wonder just what kind of "material" Anders has sitting in a desk drawer somewhere for Harper's crowd to protect his nomination so fiercely...)

H/T: Canadian Cynic

More Conservative Bigotry

It's hardly surprising that Rob Anders would publish something like this. The fact that he felt it appropriate to do so merely shows us the ugliness that lies beneath the surface veneer of the current Conservative Party of Canada. (which is largely dominated by the Reform party hacks, obviously)

In an Anders communique, one of 10 different versions mailed out, he claims: "It is now illegal to hold opinions that offend radical Muslim activists," and "under section 13 of the so-called 'Human Rights' code, Canadians have been prosecuted for holding personal beliefs which offend radical Muslim Imams and liberal activists."

"He's basically spread misinformation among his constituents about a large proportion of his constituency because there are many Muslims living in his area," Liepert said Tuesday. "Any time you have a politician who, for political gain, targets a minority group with disinformation, it's something that I think needs to be addressed."

The best way to address this is to punt Anders from office next election. This leaflet is yet another example of Conservative dishonesty and mendacity.

The Calgary West Conservative MP is attempting to drum up support to scrap section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which deals with complaints about hate messages disseminated over telephone or the Internet.

"It's fair-minded of us to question Section 13 and its restrictions on the freedom of speech, particularly in light of the decisions that have come down as of late," he said, citing human rights complaints against Macleans magazine and Ezra Levant, former publisher of the Western Standard magazine.

"Fair-minded"?? Have you looked at the decisions regarding those cases, Anders? You know - the ones that have been set aside as lacking merit? Frankly, what you twits are looking for is the unfettered right to lie, slander and besmirch entire populations of people. You know that if you go after individuals it's libel, and it's a lot harder for entire populations to sue for libel.

In short, in Stephen Harper's Canada, if you are part of a minority - especially one that his Neo/Theo-Cons don't like - you're screwed. I don't know about anybody else, but that isn't the Canada I grew up in, nor is it the Canada I believe in.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb Strike Again

Last week, Jason Kenney made a complete ass of himself, this week, his ideological twin, Rob Anders has followed suit.

In an effort to "help" the Conservative campaign in Richmond B.C., Mr. Anders sent out a classic CPC "have you quit beating your wife yet?" survey. Considering that Mr. Anders is a candidate in Calgary West, I can only imagine his campaign teams reasoning for sending something out to the residents of Richmond might be (at taxpayer's expense, no less!)

Even more embarrassing, the survey was clearly written by someone with only the most tenuous grasp on the english language:

One question appears: "Do you support homosexual sex marriage?".

I can't even parse that one sensibly.

Second, what the heck is a question about marriage doing on a questionnaire about crime? Canada decriminalized sodomy in the late 1960s (and to the best of my knowledge, stereotypical lesbian sexual practices have never been criminalized), so I can only imagine what the authors of this "survey" were thinking.

It's pretty pathetic when an MP's incompetence becomes the key issue for your opponents - I can only hope that Kenney's Liberal opponent, James Ludwar seizes the same opportunity to jump all over Kenney the same way that Pollock is going after the incompetence of Anders.

The mind boggles, doesn't it?

No, You Can't Change The Rules

It would seem that Rob Anders is no longer the valid nominee for Calgary West. An appeals court judge has ordered that a new nomination be held by June 30:

Justice Connie Hunt said she realizes Anders will be inconvenienced by having to fight another nomination battle in Calgary West, but party members should not be denied their democratic right to choose a candidate.

Gosh, Rob, you would be "inconvenienced" by having to fight another nomination campaign? Too bad. You and your bunch of corrupt cronies broke your own party's rules. Isn't the Conservative Party supposed to be all about grass-roots democracy and all that rot? Or is it just rotten?

In a move akin to lighting a scented candle in a bathroom after a particularly odorific event, we find Stephen Harper appointing Bert Brown to the Senate. Like other moves HarperCreep has made, this is nothing more than making a facade of reforming the senate, and does little in any real sense. (Unsurprising really - like his "Senate Elections" bill last fall, it's long on process and short on recognizing that the Senate is defined and described in the Constitution - and not as malleable as PMSH and crew might imagine. (It's also quite limited in its powers)

Yes, Steve and Rob, you shit and it doesn't smell roses - no matter what your delusional little bubbles may tell you.

From The Idiot File

I see Ottawa's most protected MP, Rob Anders, is being an ass again:

Late last week, Mr. Anders again raised eyebrows among his colleagues.

There was a big card in the House of Commons lobby for MPs to sign to “Support Our Troops,” according to one MP.

Most MPs signed “best wishes” and expressed other sentiments. But not Mr. Anders, who wrote: “When in doubt pull the trigger.”

Before you go dismissing this as another antic from a buffoon of an MP, remember that this is the same MP that Con$ervative HQ has repeatedly changed its candidate selection process to protect.

We might better ask ourselves why it is that this man who has called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, and now is calling on our troops to use force unthinkingly, continues to be a protected member of Harper's inner circle? When you consider what's happened to Dianne Ablonczy, for example, how is it that an MP most citizens consider to be a complete waste is so highly protected?

If You Ever Thought The CPoC Was Democratic

... you might want to rethink that a bit.

Every time someone has put forth a credible challenge to Rob Anders, the party headquarters has changed the rules quite specifically to protect him.

Now, the party brass has moved in and punted the riding's board:

In a letter to the Calgary West riding association on Thursday, the national council said it would take control of this year's annual general meeting and will have the final word on any riding association spending.

Uh huh. There hasn't been a nomination contest in that riding since 2004, and Anders is notorious as one of the worst MPs ever to hold a seat in Ottawa. (Why Calgary West voters keep electing a nitwit like Anders is beyond me - it's either stupidity, apathy or both allowing him to win)

However, square the actions of CPoC's actions this week with Harper's approach to Parliament in recent weeks. When the outcome Harper wants isn't assured, he tries to change the rules to ensure that it is.

How delightfully democratic.

Bye Bye, Bourque

It's been fairly well known for some time that the news aggregator site Bourque sells headline wording rights to his advertisers.

Recently, he's been "taken over" by the CPoC to the point that his headlines have become more or less a farce. I haven't used Bourque much for a long time mostly because I find his site cumbersome and annoying to navigate (not to mention riddled with dead links ... oh wait - that's annoying!).

According to some, Bourque's "headline twisting service" is a legitimate promotional tool, and perhaps from a marketing standpoint it is. However, it crosses the line for me when I see entire party agendas being played out on screen in a manner that only Ted Byfield could love:



Let's take a look through and map today's snapshot against CPoC agenda and "classical positions":

Headline: CMHC Going to Pot

Agenda: As usual, this would fall under the neo-Rethuglican "smaller government" heading. Anything that would give the government an excuse to meddle in an agency that is otherwise working. (and without which, a lot fewer Canadians would be able to own their own homes - especially in areas like Toronto, Vancouver and now Calgary)

Headline: Flaherty Tax Cuts Coming

Agenda: More from the smaller government file. In this case, because the Conservatives have such a woody for having our troops strut their stuff in a war zone, they will pay for the army first, and starve everything else. (Remember a certain billion or so in "spending cuts" that just mysteriously came out of programs that benefit women and minorities?)

Headline: Tories Shake Up Justice Department

Agenda: Get tough on crime. Sounds good, doesn't it? Sadly, the CPoC's notion of "getting tough" tends to mean breaking fundamental tenets of our legal system to start with (such as the presumption of innocence) - not something I particularly think makes for good law.

Headline: Why Top Libs Are Hitting The French Books

Agenda: Slime the opposition at every turn - implying that the Liberals aren't literate in French while the CPoC is (personally I find Harper's french accent godawful to listen to). This is one of the Rob Anders school of stupidity tactics. Imported from the United States, this is a semi-classic marketing play that is really quite annoying - like the "attack ads" just recently released, it's a blatant smear attempt and really not even worth the public's time.

Headline: McGuinty Goes Green

Agenda: Try to discredit anyone who is "fool enough" to believe those uppity climate scientists who have spent their careers studying this stuff, and declare that humans have something to do with the changes we've been witnessing (and measuring) since the mid-20th century)

Headline: Ont. Libs To Run More Females

Agenda: More Anders-style taunting. This particular headline is button pushing at its finest. First, it implies that the Liberal party is gender biased (and the CPoC isn't?), second it is subtly demeaning to women as well.

Headline: FEDS EYE TANKS FROM GERMANY

Agenda: More "look how great our army is" from the party who thinks that foreign policy involves a six shooter and a swagger out of a bad Clint Eastwood western.

However, if that's how Bourque wants to run his site - that's his business. As far as I'm concerned, he's just relegated himself to the dumpster of Canadian news gathering - the same place that ultimately "The Alberta Report" (and later "Report") magazine landed up.

The nature and tone of the headlines demonstrates to me once again why the CPoC really is an immature bunch of clods. (and probably explains why Harper keeps protecting Anders)

Following Up... Womb Control redux

Sometimes, I wonder if the nutbar crowd is following my blog just to decide what to do next. (and no, I'm not so full of myself to believe that in any serious way)

However, via The Galloping Beaver, we learn of a slightly less than rational pharmacist refusing to dispense a woman's birth control prescription:

When she went to the pharmacy counter, she received a slip of paper signed by the pharmacy owners (Stuart Anderson, Kurt Depner and Kori Depner) stating that the pharmacy would no longer fill birth control prescriptions.

Adding insult to injury, the note goes onto say that they pharmacy will "continue to serve your prescription needs with utmost care and trust." The customer, who happens to be a 49-year-old woman who is unable to conceive and uses birth control for a medical condition, called the pharmacy and asked one of the owners why the pills were being discontinued. The owner told her that birth control pills are dangerous for women.

Waitasecond here - we've heard plenty about fundamentalists in the States doing this kind of crap before. This is more of the Forced-Birth crowd punishing women for being sexual beings - no more, no less.

The real question that needs to be asked here is this - just what gives a pharmacist the right to intervene between a patient and their doctor so arbitrarily? Generally speaking, when we are talking about treatment involving prescriptions, the pharmacist would only intervene if there was a second medication the patient was taking that would interact negatively with the prescribed treatments. I expect that such intervention would be a call back to the doctor, and possibly a follow up between doctor and patient - it's not the pharmacist's call to judge the moral implications of a given treatment.

You might almost thing this to be an American phenomenon - until you scrape a bit. As Dave at The Galloping Beaver points out, similar cases have occurred in Canada.

Linking things back to Canada's politics, I need to bring a few things forward. It's no secret that much of the Con caucus in Ottawa is linked to the religious right wing, and prominent characters like Jason Kenney have served on the boards of organizations such as "National Foundation for Family Research and Education", or the Catholic Civil Rights League. The CCRL is nothing new to most of us, and they are notoriously slavish to whatever edicts come out of Rome. The "National Foundation for Family Research and Education" I had to dig for a while to find much. A few of their publications are referenced by such august bodies as Focus on the Family - which is a red flag, but not overly significant. It wasn't until I found this article tying it back to the so-called "Calgary School" of right-wing neo-con politics that I fit it back into what I already know about Jason Kenney. (This group is significantly "underground", which suggests that they don't especially want to be noticed)

It doesn't take a lot of digging to link Jason Kenney back to the hard-line "family values" crowd that is so intent on punishing women for having sex. The Wikipedia entry for Rob Anders suggests ties between Anders and Focus on the Family and other evangelical lobby groups. It's not too hard to imagine just where the Harper Cons would try to go if they had a majority - and it's not a pretty place.

(If you want a good idea of what their ideal little world is, I strongly suggest reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.)

As the Election Winds Down to Voting Day...

After 35 days of frenetic campaigning, and innumerable billions of dollars won and lost in the high stakes gamble of political promises, it all boils down to where Canada's voters will put their 'X' tomorrow.

On the news, we see the leaders winding up their campaigns - Stephen Harper is quietly idling his way from Edmonton to Calgary on a bus; Paul Martin is flying across the country, stopping in a few critical ridings, and Jack Layton is doing a similar last-ditch blitz.

In the last few weeks, I have gone from disgust with the Liberal government's track record in Ottawa to developing a deep suspicion towards Stephen Harper's Conservatives. The more I read and learn about Harper and his crew, the more disturbed I become about letting these people anywhere near the corridors of power. Why do they worry me so? Not for what they say, but what they don't say, or where they evade issues.

Harper starts ducking out the "back door" when protesters show up to challenge his unstated, but clear belief in a radical form of social conservatism. The fact that the party is trying to "distance" itself from these statements doesn't mean much - trust me - I live in "Ralph's World" (Alberta), and the social conservative out here is alive and well - and as two-faced and vicious as Harper's minions keep hinting they are.

Then, John Ibbitson did the following write-up on Harper's "mentors", which, when I combine it with the following article by Stephen Harper, published in "Report Magazine", makes all the hair on my neck stand on end.

Further, in today's Globe and Mail, I found this article by Linda Silver Dranoff which reviews the social changes and accomplishments of various parties. The "old" Progressive Conservative party didn't exactly rank very high on this list - and they claimed to be "progressive"! What's currently calling itself "Conservative" is a much uglier form of the animal, one that appears to desire a return to a social structure that died in the early decades of the 20th Century.

The Conservatives have long complained about "Judicial Activism". I find it mildly amusing that this only comes up when they dislike the findings of the judiciary. "They should interpret law, not make it" is the frequent declaration. I hate to point out the obvious, but the courts are interpreting law - starting at that foundational document called the Constitution. If the laws were written intelligently, and justly, those rulings wouldn't happen in the first place. The Conservatives have hinted that they would take steps to redefine what's in the Charter of Rights. To me, this speaks to how little they actually understand about the Constitution. The amending formula for the Constitution makes it virtually impossible for the kinds of changes the Conservatives want to institute to be embedded in the constitution. The only way they could do it would be by legislation backed by the "Not Withstanding Clause". The blind desire to invoke that clause to repress legitimate rights of people scares the heck out of me - when do I become one of their targets? There's a social nastiness about these people that speaks to a combination of ignorance and maliciousness.

While the Liberals don't make me "happy" as a voter, I actually think that Martin is basically honest - what he says is what he means. Odd, but for a politician to give me the impression of basic honesty is not only rare, it's disturbingly so. Martin's Liberals do have in their favour a rack record of balanced budgets, and at least "holding the line" on social issues. They could do better than they have, but at least I don't think that Martin's people will legislate us backwards in time 50+ years.

I'm hoping to see both the Green Party and NDP gain seats in the House of Commons. Both parties have a great deal that they can contribute to this country, and I look forward to their continued growth as contributors in Canada. The NDP has always been the "social conscience" of our governments, and with Jack Layton as their leader, I see them taking that banner back to Parliament. The Green Party surprises me - given time, I think that they could replace what used to be the "Progressive Conservative" space in our political spectrum. They seem to occupy that middle ground quite nicely, and with a bit of evolution as a party, I really think there is a great deal of potential.

On a more local level, I see a lot of "Candidate-Induced-Angst". The local Conservative candidates in several local ridings I am aware of are less than desirable. The players are either oblivious to their constituents concerns, like Jason Kenney who ignores his constituents when they express opinions that disagree with his view of things; Stephen Harper who couldn't even be bothered to campaign in his riding during a by-election, and so far seems to hold the press and those who oppose him with contempt. Rob Anders, who has repeatedly demonstrated that he is both a complete nitwit in the House of Commons, and refuses to discuss issues that his electorate want to discuss (e.g. Education...). Sadly, with only a few exceptions, the alternatives aren't exactly inspiring. The Liberal Candidate in Anders' riding seems to be quite a decent individual, but he's a rare bright light in an otherwise disappointing group of contenders.

The Conservative Party slogan has been "Demand Better". As a voter, I do demand better. I demand that my MP have the brains and courtesy to acknowledge communications. I demand that my government govern wisely, and protect the rights of all of this country's peoples, not just the so-called majority. I demand a government that looks forward for inspiration, not backwards into the past. I demand a government that has a vision of what Canada will be in 10, 20 years. Right now, I don't see that coming forward in any meaningful way - from either of the front-runner parties. I want something better than the narrow-minded, blind representation that I have suffered under since Jason Kenney was first elected.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow's vote, I fully expect Canadians to be back at the polls within a year or two, depending on who forms the next government. If the Liberals form the next government, they stand a chance of holding it together for a couple of years. I can't imagine the Conservatives being able to work with any of the other parties in a minority situation. Harper has already said as much, in refusing to ally with either the NDP or the Bloc, and I can't imagine those parties standing for a lot of what various members of the Conservative party have said they'd like to legislate.

Reasons I am not likely to vote Conservative

As this election campaign progresses in Canada, I find myself more and more irritated by the Conservative party and its candidates.

A 'counter-campaign' has emerged in Calgary Northwest to remove candidate Rob Anders from his seat. They have a plethora of complaints, but they boil down to a couple of very basic things:

1. Making a complete ass of himself in the House of Commons by voting - very loudly - against granting Nelson Mandela an honorary citizenship. His reasons at the time were, and continue to be, childish and immature.

2. Claiming that he has had no complaints about his actions, when CBC has interviewed people who went to voice their concerns _IN_PERSON_ to his constituency office. He hasn't heard any concerns because he doesn't want to. Oddly, this is precisely what I know happens with my own MP, Jason Kenney, when you contest his assertions (as I have done numerous times).

Then, Rob Merrifield pops up with a daft statement about abortion. It wasn't the statement itself that set me off - I thought it was stupid and irrelevant at best. It was what Harper _DIDN'T_ say that got me irritated. Harper didn't take Merrifield to task. Instead, we get some mealy-mouthed comment about "allowing a free vote, should a private member's bill be presented". This reeks of the rotting corpse of the old Reform/Alliance party trying to resurrect its moral conservative roots. (This is rather like raising the dead from the grave - you get something that's smelly and rotten, not what you remember burying)

This week, the Conservatives put out this little gem about the changes made to the hate crimes legislation. Oh yes, the reasons? Well, the law might impinge on religious groups right to preach against homosexuality. Last I checked, the amendment made specific provisions for religious discussion of the subject. What it doesn't do is allow a church - or anyone else - to incite hatred - the kind of hatred that routinely gets GLBT people around the world seriously hurt or killed. (It has happened in Canada, don't fool yourself) It wasn't so very long ago that being black could get someone hung, mostly on a white person's word that they had done _something_. It took legislation to make that a crime before society began to turn that corner and actually treat blacks as equals (some would argue that we aren't there yet - but that's another conversation). Protecting LGBT people from hate crimes is in the same vein.

One of Harper's candidates also worried that the law might "protect pedophiles". My understanding of the psychiatric definition of pedophilia holds the condition as secondary to sexual orientation. That is to say that there are homosexual and heterosexual pedophiles. It would seem to me then, that pedophilia could not be held to be a sexual orientation per se - thus rendering the discussion moot vis a vis the hate crimes law.

Harper comes along and says that he'd like to "adjust" the legislation - but he can't tell us how he would "adjust" it. Yet again, the Conservative leader demonstrates that he is either monumentally clueless about what he might want to legislate and the form that legislation might take, or there is a deliberate attempt to hide the real direction that the party would go, should they be elected.

Then we just get into the whole non-sequitur of the Conservative platform. Reduced taxes, but increased spending on the military. Oh yes, with a side order of privatized health care and education. Wow! Sounds great - but so does a McDonald's hamburger - until you read the ingredients and realize that it will cause weight gain and coronary disease, especially if you make a regular diet of them. (Take a look at this movie if you want a more graphic idea of what I'm saying...)

At the beginning of the Election Campaign, Paul Martin asked the question "What kind of Canada do you want?" I'm beginning to suspect that the Conservatives view of Canada is a particularly nasty image. One which idolizes an era half a century or more in the past. An era which the world has grown beyond. One in which physical power (the military) is the first priority; one where the rule of law is replaced by the tyranny of the majority; one where the government ignores the Supreme Court's interpretation of our laws when it is inconvenient to their policies.

I don't want to live in a country where Women's rights are abrogated at the whim of some moralistic twit in Ottawa; I don't want a Canada where bigotry is condoned in any form, whether its roots are religious, racial or otherwise. I want a Canada that respects all of its citizens for who and what they are. I want a Canada that cares for its people, one where education is valued and sickness won't bankrupt a family. I want a Canada that the world looks to and says "That's the country I want to emulate!"

Conservatives: Choosing Ideology over Law

It would be something of an understatement to say that George Bush's Supreme Court appointments have been controversial. The argument has been made repeatedly that Bush is trying to stack the SCotUS with right-wing ideologues sympathetic to the neoCon view that courts should be extremely limited in what they do.

Someone took some time to review recent SCotUS rulings, and it's not a pretty picture - especially for a country that supposedly has a "rule of law":

In a weeklong flurry of eye-popping judicial activism and ideological triumphalism, the court shredded some basic legal doctrines and moral principles that have guided this nation’s conscience for more than a century. Nothing could have done more than last week’s rulings to focus our collective attention on the meaning of democracy and justice.

That's from the opening paragraph. It gets worse, much worse:

Of all these decisions, the most appalling was the last major ruling of the session, Parents v. Seattle, outlawing public-school integration plans in Seattle and in Louisville, Ky. By a narrow 5-4 majority, the court all but overturned Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation ruling that was arguably one of the moral high points of American public life in the 20th century. In his decision, Roberts blithely claimed he was actually upholding Brown, whose purpose, he wrote, was to achieve a “colorblind” society rather than to advance racial justice, as most of us supposed.

By his logic, government is barred from doing anything that acknowledges race — even if it is intended, as in the current case, to advance racial justice. Kennedy, in his separate concurrence, allowed that there might be a legitimate program somewhere to advance racial justice, but he left Americans guessing about just how to find it and, in effect, strongly discouraged from trying.

The reading of the decision left the court’s so-called liberal wing — John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — literally slack-jawed in rage and shame. The normally unflappable Breyer, who authored the liberal dissent, spent 20 minutes at the bench passionately denouncing the court’s ruling and, by implication, its overall direction. “It is not often in the law,” Breyer declared, “that so few have so quickly changed so much.”

If you step back from this a moment, you quickly realize that in the minds of neoCons, anybody who asks for their rights to be protected and recognized in law is asking for "special privilege". Of course, most of the neoCon crowd is wealthy, privileged and often white (usually at least 2 of the three), and would never have experienced significant discrimination aimed at them in their lives.

It's bad enough in the States after ~7 years of BushCo damage, but let's not be smug and naive about Canada. This country's CONS have long complained about "activist courts", and more recently Harper has all but admitted to trying to stack Canada's judiciary with ideologues sympathetic to his perspective.

Remember, this is the same PM who has directed the bureaucracy to implement an arguably illegal no-fly list, and has spent huge amounts of money protecting Rob Anders - by bending and breaking his own party's rules. Just how much respect does this man have for law, rights and your freedoms? (not much)

From the "Open and Honest" Government

We find still more outright dishonesty from the Harper Government coming to light this week:

First, let me introduce you how the Conservatives are implementing socially conservative policy behind closed doors. Instead of being open and honest about things, the CPoC government is simply starving programs for funding. This is unsurprising - it's a tactic straight out of Ralph Klein's book - he doesn't like being held accountable for his policies either. Using the "starvation" tactic, the minister(s) involved can claim that the problem happened in the bureaucracy.

Then, consider the veil of secrecy that has descended upon Ottawa. Not only is HarperCrit micromanaging the message from his ministers, but suddenly a great deal of information that used to be publicly available is suddenly secret. (Including crime statistics in some regions - what's with that?)

In an effort to deflect criticism, we find the Conservatives accusing the former Liberal government of similar breaches. This is a classic right-wingnut tactic, and one that thoroughly irritates me. The issue is not the previous government anymore - the issue is the current government's secrecy and evasiveness.

For a party that ran on a platform of "Open, Honest and Accountable" government, it's amazing the litany of outright lies and deception that we have been subjected to since this government was sworn in last February:

Harper's unelected cabinet members
Not working with the Ethics Commissioner because he was "a liberal appointee".
Loaded survey "questions".
Secret "flag waving" trips to Afghanistan - to convince us that being involved in a civil war is a good thing.
Muzzling his cabinet - because he can't trust them not to shoot the party in the foot.
Paranoid fantasies about the "biased" media
Musing about changing the constitution - oblique, but when you have a government as secretive as this lot, everything has to be considered.
Mandatory "minimum sentences" - a disastrous experiment from the United States that has done nothing to curb crime and increased the costs of the criminal justice system enormously.
Muzzling their own employees - even when they write a piece of science fiction.
Appointing committee chairs, because now that he's in power, he wants to stay there.
$0.60/hr for childcare - a brain dead policy that fritters money away like there's no tomorrow, and does few any real good.

Trying to conceal dead soldier's coffins from public view. (And he LIED when he claimed that it was done at family request.

A softwood lumber deal that is looking more and more like fresh cow pattie than anything else. This being the same bunch of morons that have to make the softwood deal a confidence vote in order to get it rammed through parliament. Why? So they can ensure a $450 million donation to BushCo will arrive in White House coffers in time.

A budget that spoke quite loudly to Harper's hidden agenda - one which will direct more and more resources into the military, and away from social issues which desperately need to be dealt with.
Repeating BushCo talking points about the "War on Terror".
An arbitrary extension of the Afghanistan mission - spawned without giving Parliament the time to debate the issues clearly and coherently.
Shutting out the media - because they won't guarantee softball questions and flattering commentary.
Denying that prisoners taken in Afghanistan deserve to be (at least) handled under the rules of the Geneva Conventions on Prisoners of War.
Playing the fear card in the wake of the "Toronto 17" arrests - wherein Canada arrested 17 of the most bungling would-be terrorists that could possibly exist - and then using that to lead into more legislation that will erode your rights and privacy.
Claiming that Canadians are too stupid to understand government policy.
Non tax cuts
Hiding things - and lying about the handling of the Lebanon disaster.
Hiding Defense procurement behind a veil of "national security".
Refusing to acknowledge the World AIDS Conference - because some of what is discussed is contrary to standard conservathink.
Protecting Rob Anders, when the CPoC is supposedly a "grass roots" party.


... oh yes, and where's that health care wait times guarantee got to, Mr. Harper?

There Goes The Credibility

One of the challenges for the Wildrose Alliance in Alberta is to avoid looking like they are the new home of political extremism in Alberta.

The cautious first steps in that direction happened when they selected Danielle Smith as the party's new leader. Today, Rob Anders just undid that step by taking out a WRA membership.