Dear Leader ...

As if I should be overly surprised, but the overweaning ego of Stephen Harper has come to the forefront with Harper rebranding The Government of Canada as The Harper Government.

What an egotistical ass. Mr. Harper isn't exactly someone to create a cult of personality around - for the most part you'd have to scrape pretty hard to find something likeable enough to build a cult around ... and it would be pretty tiny.

Even as our Prime Minister, it is NOT his government - it is OUR government, and it is time for Canadians to take it back.

Even worse, we should be deeply concerned about the fact that they don't seem to understand that money laundering is something criminals engage in, that lying to Canadians is wrong or that Parliamentary resources aren't for political fundraising.

... all this from a party that promised us "greater transparency and accountability"???

The Knuckle Dragging Judge

Normally, I find most judges are fairly well reasoned in their rulings, even if I disagree with them. Then there's Justice Dewar's comments in a recent sexual assault case where he blamed the victim:

Queen's Bench Justice Robert Dewar called Rhodes a "clumsy Don Juan" who may have misunderstood what the victim wanted when he forced intercourse along a darkened highway outside Thompson, Man., in 2006.

Rhodes and a friend met the 26-year-old woman and her girlfriend earlier that night outside of a bar under what the judge called "inviting circumstances." Dewar specifically noted the women were wearing tube tops with no bra, high heels and plenty of makeup.

I can't believe the judge was daft enough to make this ruling. Once again, we find ourselves being dragged back to the stone ages by people who seem to think that men can't possibly manage their sexual responses if the woman is "dressed provocatively" (whatever the hell that means, given the plethora of sexual turn-ons out there).

However, others have already pointed out the outrageous nature of the judge's comments, and the remarks (and presumably the ruling itself) are under review.

However, there's another dimension to this whole smelly mess that I'd like to bring to your attention.

Justice Dewar is one of Harper's patronage appointees: for donating to CPoC in 2008.

Hmmm...so, let's see if I've got this straight:

A judge who was appointed to the bench by Stephen Harper's government just made a ruling that revived the "blame the victim" defense for rapists (a defense which has been thrown out of court more times than I can count in the last thirty years).

I'd say this is pretty good evidence that the HarperCon$ would dearly love to drag Canada further back into the stone age. After their blatant attack on women and minority issues in 2006, one might just imagine that there's more going on than we are seeing (and the Bev Oda affair is just one more example of this government's inherent dishonesty with the public)

What The Bev Oda / KAIROS Mess Tells Us

Go ... READ

It's good to see some of the media picking up on the undercurrents of the HarperCon$ activities of late - and what the Bev Oda/KAIROS business really tells us about the current state of things in Ottawa.

Think it’s a stretch to compare Canada to Nigeria? A government that forges documents, that makes things up, that smothers dissenting opinions, that accuses the media of lying.

That Oda is the minister overseeing international development makes the whole scene all the more surreal. Our government is funding groups in Afghanistan and Haiti now, teaching them about good governance.

“This is what happens in the countries we work in,” a friend of mine working for a development agency told me confidentially. We have become precisely what we contend with overseas.

Brrr...as if the winter outside wasn't bad enough, reading that article has just given me a case of the chills!

Prime Ministerially Sanctioned Lies

With Prime Minister Harper doggedly defending Bev Oda's lying to Canadians by trying to deflect the KAIROS issue as a matter of ministerial privilege, we might want to take a look at what it says about this government.

First of all, let me be abundantly clear - the issue is not the minister's decision with respect to KAIROS. That may be one of the more thick-headed decisions from the HarperCon$, but it's far from a the root of this issue. I might want the government to be more transparent about why it axed the funding beyond simply refusing it considering that CEDA's recommendation was so clear, but the minister absolutely has the right to make that final call.

The issue is that Bev Oda has repeatedly changed her story about the penned in "Not" in the document we've all seen. One day she knows nothing about it, another day she admits that it was added on her instructions. In any world I'm familiar with that makes one of the two statements an outright lie. In a parliamentary democracy, lying to parliament, whether in the House of Commons or one of its committees, is lying to the Canadian public.

Along comes the Prime Minister trying to bludgeon the opposition by claiming ministerial privilege to make a decision. Hmmm...a convenient attempt at deflection which I think deserves some additional consideration here. The political head of government is now essentially endorsing lying to the Canadian people - and not even a lie that they haven't been caught out in, but a blatant lie that has been exposed for what it is.

Cynically, one might look and say that all politicians lie, what's the big deal? True enough, except that I think there's more here than just the lie itself. We have a minister who would have been compelled to resign long ago by other Prime Ministers - generally speaking getting caught in a blatant lie is pretty fatal to one's cabinet post.

But, let's think back a bit to another member of Harper's Cabinet whose career has hit a brick wall. Remember Diane Ablonczy? Yeah - she was the Minister of State who had the gumption to provide funding to Toronto's Gay Pride celebrations and was promptly muzzled and demoted for offending "The Base". (Anyone else noticed that her profile since has been positively subterranean when it comes to announcements and the like?)

What's the difference here? Ablonczy did something that damaged the HarperCon$ credentials with the wingnut base that has been supporting them in hopes of getting some or all of their Theocracy dreams realized. Bev Oda didn't. In fact, what she did no doubt enhanced Harper's credibility with "The Base" since KAIROS is mostly run by the moderate church organizations - you know the same ones who aren't up arms over GLBT rights.

What we have here is a Prime Minister defending a minister who LIED to Canada's people because her actions support the unstated goals of Harper and his backers who desperately want a majority in Parliament. The fact that Harper is so clearly NOT bothered by his ministers lying to Canadians should terrify all of us, because it calls into question the veracity of every statement or promise that he's ever made.

The Odious One Speaks

... and apparently has been lying to Canadians and Parliament on funding for KAIROS:

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda has admitted that she ordered a document to be altered to deny funding to the church-backed aid group Kairos.

“The 'not' was inserted at my direction,” Ms. Oda said in the House of Commons Monday. “Given the way the document was formatted allowing only for concurrence this was the only way to reflect my decision.”

Wait a second, a few short days ago, Ms. Oda was telling us she didn't know where the not came from, and now she's telling us that she ordered the extra word to be added.

Well, one of these statements is clearly a lie. Let's be abundantly clear about this - a Minister of the Crown is lying to Canadians. Whether she lied at one end of the story or the other doesn't matter - she lied.

The next question that should be asked is just precisely why Ms. Oda denied KAIROS funding when they met all of the published requirements for the funding being requested. My guess is that it boils down to our lovely government exacting "consequences" for KAIROS leadership daring to be openly critical about Israel on various matters.

So...who's next to be punished by this government for daring to speak their minds and happening to end up at odds with whatever the unpublished dogma of the Conservatives is?

KAIROS, Bev Oda and Conservative Dogma

The recent revelations of government finagling over funding KAIROS shows us some of the great problems that are manifesting in the Conservative Party's execution of their legislative and policy dogma.

On the CBC website is a copy of the signed document with a "NOT" penned into a key sentence, with no date, initials or other information that would validate its existence and traceability.

The first question that I have to ask is why did a document in such a questionable state of authenticity was ever used to implement anything? If I write a cheque, and substantially change the amount of that cheque, I am obliged to initial each change I make. Surely no less a requirement should apply to the documents used to define and guide the implementation of government policy.

If, as Ms. Oda claims, the "NOT" was absent from the version of the document that she signed, then we must ask ourselves who added that word and when. Several issues arise in my mind. First, who had access to the signed documents after signatures had been acquired? Second, does the Minister's office not keep digital records of documents signed by the minister? ... and if not, why not? If there are such records, let's see them immediately.

Then we come to the next issue that deserves our attentions. The HarperCon$ ran on a platform of increasing government accountability and transparency. Does it not strike anyone else as odd that such a simple control as requiring copies of signed documents to be maintained (even electronically) at the various levels of authorization are not being executed? Further, how is it that nobody in either the government or the bureaucracy noticed this unusual alteration of a document? Or was this change done by one of the minister's political staff after the minister signed it purely for unofficial political reasons?

This business stinks - and, paraphrasing Shakespeare, Something is rotten in Ottawa.