Harper Tries To Foment A Crisis

Harper has taken a surprising number of losing cases to the Supreme Court of Canada.  Most, if not all, were obviously places where the government's position is one that is in direct contradiction with the Constitution of Canada.  Even a relative neophyte in Constitutional law in Canada can spot that, whether it is Harper's desire to "reform" the Senate or the government's daft position on prostitution.  

Now we have the CPC caucus starting to trot out the "undemocratic" talking points.

Dan Albas, the MP for Okanagan-Coquihalla, says that while he respects the courts he also believes an increasing number of groups are using litigation to advance policies the government will not put forward. 

"Often the Plan B is to do an end-run around our democratic process and turn to the courts where it seems some judges are quite happy to engage. This can result in decisions contrary to what have been decided in our democratic process," Albas told CBC Radio's The House.

Let's see ... the government is unwilling to engage with the issues that various groups are raising (presumably on ideological grounds, given the pattern of the Harper Government), so they take it to the courts.

First of all, that means that these groups are raising issues which are not just minor problems, but in fact have a legal basis where the current policy or laws are in fact inconsistent with the fundamental principles of Canada's legal system and laws.

Second, if the government is unwilling to engage on these issues, they leave the public with little other option but to force the matter by pursuing justice in the courts.

"Basically what you're having is a judge can overturn and then cost the taxpayer a lot of money without any accountability or representation on their behalf," Albas said. 

... 

The British Columbia MP said it's important to ask whether there is the right balance between the executive branch and the judicial branch to make sure every Canadian is well-represented. 

"If citizens through the democratic process are unable to make policy decisions because of unelected judges and well-financed interest groups, I submit we collectively lose," Albas said.

Well, we already know that Harper views the Constitution of this country as an impediment to his goals.  It stands to reason that he is also going to see the judiciary and any other branch of government that would dare challenge his wisdom as a bad thing too.

The Conservatives are basically taking the stance that as the governing party, they have a right to decide what issues they are going to address and when.  This is true ... to a point.  However, the courts can declare a given law or policy as illegal / unconstitutional on a variety of grounds when a case is put before them.

This is not "undemocratic" in the least.  In fact it is one of the cornerstones of a healthy democracy.  There are checks and balances in place which curb the power of the "democratic majority" (which I will point out in the last election was effectively just over 20% of the eligible voters) to run amok.

The point of an independent judiciary whose sole job it is to study and interpret the law of Canada is to ensure that the legislative and executive branches of our government cannot arbitrarily abuse the rights of citizens.  Make no mistake about it, what Harper proposed doing with the Senate abused your rights every bit as much as some of his laws.  By attempting to undermine the amending formula, he was effectively trying to set a precedent that the executive branch could propose and enact radical changes to the foundation of this country's laws without engaging with the provinces - thereby negating your democratic voice at not one level of government but two levels of government.

The judiciary in Canada isn't being "undemocratic" at all.  It is the Harper Government which is being undemocratic, and attempting to impose the tyranny of their followers on all Canadians without being held accountable.

How Harper Wastes Your Tax Dollars

Harper likes to style his government as a "firm, steady hand on the tiller", especially on matters of the economy.

But the man is so blinded by his hatred for our country's laws and the foundational principles of the Canadian Constitution and The Charter of Rights And Freedoms that he simply writes legislation that is based solely on his ideology.

The net result:  unjust laws that are in fact illegal under Canada's Constitution, and millions of dollars spent trying to sustain those laws before the courts of the land.

June 2014: Supreme Court upholds privacy rights
April 2014: Feds can't go it alone on Senate reform
April 2014: Judges have discretion on sentencing
March 2014: Medical marijuana users win injunction
March 2014: Early parole abolition repealed
March 2014: Marc Nadon rejected by Supreme Court
December 2013: Court strikes down prostitution laws
November 2013: No mandatory minimums for guns
September 2011: Supervised injection clinic remains open

... and those are just the cases the court has ruled on.  There is more before the court, and more challenges yet to come based on legislation that this government has rammed through.  Including the "Fair Elections Act", "The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act", and the "Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act" for starters.  

There's more, including a "cyberbullying bill" that is really just a trojan horse for widespread surveillance without warrant, and a litany of evilness that has been rammed through as part of "budget omnibus bills" which should never have been given the time of day.

Fiscal prudence?  Hah!  

This is government by ideology.  Harper views the Constitution of this country as an impediment, not as a framework.  

Harper's War On The Middle Class

Continues apace.

A shortage of skilled workers is the biggest challenge many Canadian businesses face today, Employment Minister Jason Kenney told a skills summit Wednesday, warning it could also jeopardize Canada's economic development in the future. 

The problem would continue to grow as the population ages, Kenney told the one-day conference, which brought together stakeholders to discuss the labour market, employee training and those under-represented in the labour force. 

Currently 30 per cent of the skilled trade workers in Canada are baby boomers, Kenney said, adding that they will soon retire. 

"They are going to take with them a lifetime of knowledge and skill," he said. 

It's necessary that an "informed national discussion" take place about the condition of Canada's labour market, in order to address future skills gaps, Kenney said. 

"We can acknowledge that we have inadequate labour market information and we need to do a fundamentally better job of getting granular information by region and industry," he said.

Coming from a minister of the government that has dismantled the ability of Statistics Canada to even perform an accurate, useful census of Canadians, that's almost funny - if it wasn't so tragic.

Of course, the Harper Conservatives don't like university educated people as a whole.  There's a reason for this:  people with a liberal arts based education don't typically vote conservative.  So, they've been quietly rejigging the funding for federal research grants (which are an important part of university funding) for several years.

Adjusted for inflation, granting council funding has been in serious decline since 2007-08. Funding for SSHRC has fallen by over 10 per cent in real dollars, while core support for NSERC and CIHR are down 6.4 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively. Support for the indirect costs of research has declined by 7.9 per cent. Overall federal support for the granting councils is down 7.5 per cent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 2007-08. 

There's more.  Not only has the government been quietly reducing the amount of funding it makes available for basic research, they have been changing NSERC's focus to "applied research":

"Collaboration between government, applied researchers and the private sector is vital to building an innovative economy," said Minister Goodyear. "The College and Community Innovation Program supports research collaborations between companies and colleges. It illustrates the importance our government places on creating the conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive in this country."

What does this have to do with Harper's war on Canada's middle class?  A lot.

First of all, it has fundamentally undermined the core of the concept of University.  If you are taking a degree in disciplines like Engineering, Business or Law, it's great.  You're seeing money poured into your department hand over fist.  If you're interests are in other areas - the social sciences, the liberal arts, not so much.  In fact, the government has been actively discouraging research in these areas and enrolment in those fields of study.  Want to study something that is "politically sensitive" (like gender and sexuality issues for example)? Good luck getting funding.  It isn't going to happen.

The consequence?  First of all, when you hollow out the liberal arts programs, you effectively turn the university into a technical college.  It might be one with the right to confer degrees, but I can guarantee you that the people coming out of those programs are not the well rounded thinkers that should be coming out of universities.  

This suits Harper quite nicely.  He and his "base" have long been critical of "intellectual elites" (you know conservaspeak for people who think about things rather than simply accepting the sound bite du jour).  So turning universities into institutions which turn out highly focused specialists in various domains suits them just fine.  If you don't think too much about any one part of his government, he doesn't seem too bad.  Start to analyze his government in more detail, and the picture rapidly becomes quite horrifying.

Further, by limiting funding to universities, Harper has made the cost of attending so excessive that only the wealthy can really afford it.  So much the better, it reduces the number of people who are likely to be critical of his government (or his ideological successors' governments).

But this is only one facet of Harper's war on Canada's middle class.  Through a series of other actions - mostly by policy fiat - Harper has gone after Canadians even more blatantly.

Front and centre in this has been the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP).  This has been used as a tool to undermine the balance of the Canadian labour economy.  Especially since the government started allowing all and sundry to come in under this program.  Historically, the TFWP existed quite explicitly for importing people with skillsets that are unique, rare and virtually impossible to find locally.  Generally, that meant only a relative handful of specialists came into Canada in any given year, certainly not enough to impact the local labour market.  Then the government started to open it up to general labour.  

Run a restaurant?  Having difficulty "finding qualified help"?  Oh, well now you can solve this problem by bringing in a bunch of labour from another country.  The effect?  Employers could suddenly refuse to pay reasonable wages in areas where there is a labour shortage.  (after all, if you lived in the Phillipines for example, how are you going to know that Calgary's cost of living is high and labour market is tight?)  Further, a foreign worker won't know their rights as a worker in Canada, much less are they going to be willing to "rock the boat" when their employer effectively holds the keys to their continued residence in Canada (especially important if they are considering moving to Canada permanently).  

Although the government has recently announced changes to the program, the damage to Canada's labour market has been done.  Many traditional entry level jobs are no longer available to Canadian youth.  There are many stories out there of youth applying at the local Tim Horton's or other fast food restaurant and being told that they are "overqualified".  Another friend of mine who is a plumber's apprentice has been finding job postings for "entry level" positions demanding 3+ years of experience.  This is a posting which is obviously aimed at a TFW coming into Canada who is looking to get into the same trade in Canada that they were doing previously.  

Businesses are running about wringing their hands about the changes to the TFWP.  Oh goodness, how will they keep their doors open?  Well, the short answer is by offering reasonable wages and working conditions that are somewhat better than slavery.  

Regardless, Harper is working his ass off to create an economic environment where the oligarchy has all the marbles.  (a $600bn "dead money" fund lying around - now tell me why these businesses cannot pay a reasonable wage?)  Make no mistake, there is an active war on Canada's middle class and Harper's government is spearheading it.

An All Out Assault

The last couple of weeks of legislative activity in Ottawa have been distressing to say the least.  To call it an all out assault on Canada and Canadians is an understatement.

The Harper Government has been ramming through a series of legislation that comprise the single most overt attack on all that is good and reasoned in Canada.

I've already discussed my thoughts regarding Bill C-36, the Conservative response to the Bedford ruling on prostitution.  Unfortunately, what the Harper Government is ramming through is a more overt piece of legislation that makes a mess out of far more than prostitution.  It stands to make just about anything to do with sex illegal - from therapists to sex toys.

Then there is Bill C-24, which gives the Minister of Immigration rather broad powers to strip Canadians of their citizenship.  Quite rightly, a lot of Canadians are very concerned about this legislation.  This gives the politicians rather broad powers to strip people of their citizenship without any kind of real recourse in the courts.  Yes, they are talking about people who hold dual citizenship, but why on earth would we want to create an environment where there are two "grades" of citizenship?

It's been centuries since any civilized country engaged in banishing citizens who broke the local laws.

Bill C-13 is another piece of nasty legislation.  Framed in the rubric of addressing online bullying, this legislation gives the government unprecedented powers to engage in broad, invasive surveillance of Canadian citizens and their online activities.  In committee, Randall Garrison put forward an amendment which would have added gender identity to the hate crimes statutes (which are being amended by C-13).  To defeat that singular amendment, the Conservatives swapped out two CPC members on the committee who they thought might vote for it.

All of these are pieces in a larger mosaic of legislation that the Harper Government has put forth, sometimes as single issue bills, sometimes buried in the depths of omnibus "budget bills".  This government has been gradually attacking Canadian rights and freedoms at every turn.  Sometimes using subtle means, other legislation is much more blatant.

My guess is that Harper is doing all of this with an eye to wrapping up his legislative agenda (the one that he doesn't admit to) well in advance of the next election.  He's no doubt going to try and get Canadians to forget all of the legislative evilness that he has foisted upon Canadians in 2014.

Harper: A Decade In And He Still Doesn't Get It

Stephen Harper has been in power for the high side of a decade.  That's a long time.

Most Prime Ministers by this point in their careers have figured out that the foreign affairs portfolio is a tricky one.  When you are a smallish nation like Canada, you get much better results by influencing rather than playing the puffed up pugilist.

Harper hasn't figured this out.  Does he really think that Putin notices his pronouncements in the wake of sanctions?  Is he really daft enough to believe that his military posturing is going to convince Putin to back out of Crimea?

It seems to me that Harper is following his usual hyper-partisan instincts.  He isn't actually trying to influence Putin.  He's not interested in that.  He is much more interested in playing the foreign policy cards in his hand as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at getting re-elected next election.

No doubt, Harper's base loves the idea of a foreign policy that they don't have to think about.  A world which is cast in stark tones of good and bad.  Israel is good, Russia is bad.  The US is good, Iran is bad and so on.  It seems easy to grasp.

Yet, it is also not so simple.  In reality the world is a subtle place, shaded mostly in degrees of grey.  No country is essentially good or bad.  The days of looking upon Russia as "the other", shrouded in secrecy behind the old "Iron Curtain" are long past.  Globalization has dissolved those mythologies.  Russia is a nation led by a man who wishes to revive the old Cold War tensions, and Harper is fool enough to believe that this is to his own benefit.

Harper has been tone deaf on foreign affairs from day one.  Just as Putin is in fact a fool to try and resurrect the old "Soviet Empire", Harper is an even greater fool for playing to Putin's tune.  

Harper Describes Himself

One of the more ludicrous things the Harper Government has been pursuing is creating a "monument to the victims of communism".  A more cold-war propaganda-esque move is almost unimaginable.  

But, in Harper's speech at a fundraiser yesterday, he opened his mouth and promptly engaged in self-description.

In language reminiscent of the height of the Cold War, Harper lambasted communism and oppressive or even murderous ideologies. 

"Evil comes in many forms and seems to reinvent itself time and again," he said. 

"But whatever it calls itself — Nazism, Marxist-Leninism, today, terrorism — they all have one thing in common: the destruction, the end of human liberty."

Wow.  Coming from a man whose government has done more to create a nouveau fascism in Canada than any could imagine, this is straight up irony.

He's talking about human liberty.  This coming from a government which has imposed hefty mandatory minimum sentences wherever it can, from a government that has turned CSEC into an agency which is spying on its own citizens, and in general has been trying to turn the RCMP into its own little version of East Germany's Stasi.

Going after "communism" as some kind of evil threat is such a straw-man argument it's straight up there with some of Nazi Germany's propaganda campaigns.  Create a false threat and then go after it at every opportunity.

If communism is such a dire threat, then why has Harper been engaged in the highly secretive TPP negotiations, which mysteriously involve China?  Or perhaps he'd like to explain why he has permitted CNOOC to buy up major Canadian oil and gas assets?  After all, wouldn't China be the most despicable evil on the planet?

This is a man who has tried repeatedly to violate the terms of this country's constitution.  He has tried to appoint judges to the supreme court using partisan criteria, he is passing laws which are designed to increase the scope of government surveillance and laws which attack the fundamental principles of fair democracy.

For Harper to attack a straw man like "communism" when he himself is acting in a manner consistent with the worst dictators that he would criticize.

 

Health Insurance Is Becoming A Scam

I have long been suspicious of health insurance plans of any sort.  Even short term health insurance for travel seems to be written in such a way that it is weighted quite firmly in favour of the insurer than the insured.

Recently, three cases in Canada came to light that underscore the point.

“They hold all the cards in their hand. It’s a poker game, and I don’t think we are the winners,” said Jean Tetiuk, of Toronto, whose $12,000 claim was rejected by CIBC. 

In each case, the medical emergencies abroad had nothing to do with any pre-existing conditions they were asked about. 

So, if you had some obscure "pre-existing condition" that you had forgotten about or didn't answer the booby trap questions on the questionnaire correctly for them, your insurance is null and void?

CIBC later refused to pay, because Peixoto filled out a CIBC questionnaire — sent to her after she returned from her trip — answering that she had not been treated for a heart condition. Before buying the policy, she had only answered health questions over the phone. 

Records show she was tested for heart problems in 2011, after she had pain in her arm, but doctors found nothing significant. Because of those tests, CIBC said Peixoto should have answered yes to the heart condition question.  

“I was never treated for a heart condition. I never had a heart condition. I’ve been tested and different things but I never had a problem before. And I still don’t have a heart problem,” said Peixoto. 

This is nothing more than the insurers playing semantics.  They are hiring teams of lawyers and very carefully constructing questions using language that has specific meanings in the legal world and most ordinary people would understand it to mean something quite different.

This kind of semantic game is up there with the "pre-existing condition" escape clause that every health insurer out there likes to play.  If you have a long term need for medication of some sort, hope like hell you aren't going to have to change insurers along the way - because there goes your coverage.

And Harper has begun the process of dismantling our national health care system, which will subject more and more Canadians to this kind of chicanery at times when they need help the most.

Corporate greed knows few bounds, and is usually only bounded by laws.  When it comes to health, there are more ways to weasel out of providing coverage that they have committed to, and it will always be at the expense of the individual.

If insurance companies are playing games like this with travel insurance coverage, can you imagine what will happen when Harper hands over the keys to medicare to them?

Bill C-23 Passed, Stinkers Included

Whatever amendments were made to Bill C-23, they didn't address much of anything that I raised as problematic in my earlier analysis of the first draft tabled in the House of Commons.

Full text here.

Never before have I seen a piece of legislation so clearly designed to "stack the deck" in Canada's elections.

At this point, the only politician to say something clear about what they would do with C-23 is Justin Trudeau.

There is no "nuanced" or "reasonable" position that supports Bill C-23.  It is a blatant attack on Canada's democracy and the institutions responsible for implementing and safeguarding it.  Bill C-23 is designed by the Harper Government to allow them to stack the deck by cheating in ways that I think will shock most Canadians next election.  

CPC Lied To Elections Canada On RoboCalls?

The corruption that is the CPC's actions in the 2011 election continues to fester.

The most recent instalment comes to us via Stephen Maher's latest column.

In an email May 1, party lawyer Arthur Hamilton told Elections Canada that Conservative call centre workers were not advising voters that Elections Canada had changed the location of polling stations, and that the party had not advised voters to go to a polling station an hour and a half from their home. 

But a report released by Elections Canada last month includes a script that shows the party’s callers were telling voters that Elections Canada had changed the location of polling stations, and investigators found one voter who was directed to a polling station 740 kilometres away. 

The report from Elections Canada found that there was no evidence of a conspiracy to prevent Canadians from voting, but comparing the script included in the report to emails obtained under access-to-information legislation raises questions about whether the Conservatives have been honest about their use of political calls. 

Hamilton sent his email to Elections Canada as the agency was fielding complaints from voters who had been given bad information about their polling station by Conservative campaigns. 

Elections Canada lawyer Ageliki Apostolakos emailed Hamilton on the evening of April 29.“In the course of the last half-hour, Elections Canada has heard that two representatives of the Conservative campaign office are communicating with electors in two electoral districts to inform them that their polling station has changed to another location,” she wrote. 

Hamilton replied 27 hours later, just after midnight on May 1. He wrote that because Elections Canada changed some polling station locations “a number of our candidates have had to confirm the proper location of polling stations to a number of supporters during their respective get-out-the-vote efforts.” 

“The calls being made by our candidates request the voter to confirm his or her polling location. There is no indication by the caller that the location may have changed, or words to that effect. And no voter is being directed to a polling location one and a half hours away from the correct polling location.” 

But a script included in Elections Canada’s report shows that workers at Conservative call centres were told to deliver the following line: “Elections Canada has changed some voting locations at the last moment. To be sure could you tell me the address of where you’re voting?” 

Elections Canada had asked the Conservatives not to communicate with voters about the location of their polling stations.

So, just how much did the CPC withhold from Elections Canada investigators?  A lot.  Enough to call into question the conclusions in the recent Elections Canada report which concluded that there isn't enough evidence to lay charges.

Down in the comments is a bit more interesting information from Nadine Lumley:

Pierre Poilievre owned a robocall company called 3D Contact Inc and was dating Jenni Bryne who controlled CIMS database during last election. 

"When Poilievre was running for election in 2004, he stated that he was co-owner of a political research company called 3D Contact Inc. According to the company profile, these 'contacts' were Stephen Harper, Ted Morton and Stockwell Day. His partner was Jonathan Denis, who later became Minister of Housing in the Alberta government." 

Micheal Sona, Director of Communications, was roomates with Chris Crawford, the person responsible for managing CIMS Database/List at the time. 

"Rougier was key member of the target seat team, working directly under campaign manager Jenni Byrne" His phone used to call Rack9  

The Rob Ford Campaign, aka part 2 of Steve's Ford BBQ trifecta hat trick wishlist, also used 3D Contact. 

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2013/07/18/poilievre-brings-robocalls-expertise-to-new-job/
http://www.anonpaste.me/anonpaste2/index.php?5316b0ceba304db3#YH2hGWBgyB8ylA9eZfYSfM7U1mnnvELkutPzE6LkxcQ=
https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/cc/CorporationsCanada/fdrlCrpDtls.html?corpId=6072305

Proof absolute?  Not quite, but enough to continue to call into question the CPC's claims of being "clean", and more than enough for voters to seriously question the motives behind much of what is lurking in the bowels of the "Fair Elections Act".

What The Senate Ruling Says About Harper

The Supreme Court of Canada's ruling on the Senate Reform questions that Harper put to them last year came out today.  The ruling itself is not terribly surprising, but what is more interesting is Harper's reaction.

Harper said he had no option left after the high court concluded that no major change can be made to the much-maligned Senate without a constitutional amendment supported by most or all the provinces. 

That's a politically risky and potentially divisive route that Harper has no intention of taking. 

"We know that there is no consensus among the provinces on reform, no consensus on abolition and no desire of anyone to reopen the Constitution and have a bunch of constitutional negotiations," a defeated-sounding Harper told a business audience at an event in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.

So, Harper isn't a big enough leader to even attempt to bring the provinces together and try to guide them to a consensus on this matter?

There is only one kind of person who will not attempt to foster consensus among their peers at a moment like this:  an authoritarian bully who is afraid to face any kind of dissent.

Harper has never brought all of the premiers together for a conference since coming to power in 2006.  He doesn't think he has to ... and more to the point, he obviously doesn't have it in him to even consider the prospect of having to negotiate with the provinces to move things forward.

I don't think the provinces are going to agree with Harper on Senate Reform anyhow for one simple reason - what Harper wants to do to the Senate would create a situation that is even worse for Canada than the current mess.

Even more horrifying to Harper's authoritarian sensibilities is the idea that he might have to negotiate with Quebec - a province which he has snubbed at every turn since 2006 and whose voters have shown exactly zero inclination to even grant him the time of day.

Speculation: Harper's Pugilistic Stance On Russia/Ukraine

Harper's stance on Ukraine does not make a lot of sense in terms of the general back and forth of diplomacy and foreign affairs.

Canada is in no position to dictate to Russia on matters military - a country of 143,000,000 can raise a much more substantial military than one of 35,000,000.  The tit-for-tat of expelling diplomats is unproductive to say the least.

Granted, Harper has been playing the "little boy in short pants" when it comes to foreign affairs for quite some time, so his childish approach to Russia is not terribly surprising.

In many ways, Putin's aggressive approach to foreign affairs is complementary to Harper's desire to hold on to power at any cost.  Harper thinks that when he plays the "military leader" that his polling numbers improve, and lately they have been in the toilet (deservedly so).

However, I don't think it is merely a matter of polling numbers in Harper's mind.  He will not call an election unless he is pretty much confident that he will win.

We have three basic scenarios for the next election in front of us:

1.  The next election will be in October of 2015 based on the 2006 "Fixed Election Dates" Law (You know, the one Harper ignored in 2008).

The polling numbers at the moment suggest to me very strongly that this will not happen.  Elections Canada will, as required by the law in Bill C-16, establish polling stations and suchlike for the third Monday in October.  That doesn't mean that the Governor General will have dropped the writ sometime in September.  The dissolution of parliament for a general election still remains an act of the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister.  Harper is not going to give that advice if he thinks he is going to lose.

2.  Failing actual compliance with his 2006 law, the Constitution allows for a Parliament to last no longer than five years, which would place the next election at the end of 2016.

• 4. (1) No House of Commons and no legislative assembly shall continue for longer than five years from the date fixed for the return of the writs at a general election of its members. (81)

  The dissolution of parliament happens more or less automatically at this point.  Traditionally, governments have called the next election sometime near the end of the fourth year of their mandate but the option exists quite legally to stretch that into 2016.
  
  3.  Section 4 of the Charter contains a very interesting clause that we should pay attention to, though. Section 4(2) provides for an extension of the existing parliament in times of war.

Marginal note:

Continuation in special circumstances 

(2) In time of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection, a House of Commons may be continued by Parliament and a legislative assembly may be continued by the legislature beyond five years if such continuation is not opposed by the votes of more than one-third of the members of the House of Commons or the legislative assembly, as the case may be. (82)

If this doesn't have you feeling a little uneasy, consider the the apparent desire of Putin to rekindle the old Cold War flames, and Harper's willingness to play to that same tune.  While other world leaders are carefully playing their cards where Russia is concerned, we find Harper doubling down and being quite aggressively pugilistic.

If Harper and Putin can provoke open conflict between Russia and NATO both parties have much to gain politically.  Putin gets to keep playing his uber-macho "returning Russia to its former glory" routine, and open conflict would give Harper the excuse he would need to defer an election past 2016 even if his polling numbers remain where they have been for most of the last year.

It's a chilling thought that a Canadian Prime Minister could be considering this kind of approach.  But that said, given the obvious attempts in Bill C-23 to rejig our elections apparatus to give the ruling party an advantage, it is one that Canadians should be aware of.

If You Love Canada ... Read This

I don't usually use this space to promote posts at other blogs, but at iPolitics Michael Harris has an excellent column that summarizes what Harper is doing to Canada.

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/04/20/harper-sees-role-as-protector-of-the-richest-few/

Read.  Take it to heart, pass it along.

Stealing Our Democracy: Linda Frum, Talking Points and the Dumbf

*Dumbf = dumbfuckery - a condition that appears to be unique to the creation of Harper Government talking points regarding Bill C-23.

On Huffington Post this morning, I read Michael Bolen's commentary on Bill C-23 which led me to Linda Frum's more verbose op-ed defending her TWITter position from earlier this week.

Ms. Frum is a shadow of her brother when it comes to writing political polemics, and the Op-Ed which the Globe and Mail had the poor judgement to publish demonstrates that in spades.

According to Ms. Frum, there's a conflict of interest in the mandated missions of Elections Canada.

Here’s the institutional conflict of interest to which I pointed: 

Elections Canada is a bureaucracy with two missions: to ensure the integrity of the voting process and also to promote voter turnout. Those two missions are contradictory. You want the biggest vote total? Accept every ballot. You want to eliminate voter fraud? Eliminating improper ballots may reduce vote totals. 

In attempting to achieve a balance between these two different missions, the evidence suggests that Elections Canada has favoured its turnout goals over preserving the integrity of the process.

Seriously?  Ms. Frum's "evidence" for this claim?

Elections expert Harry Neufeld – no supporter of the Harper government’s proposed reforms – nevertheless reported that “some 11.8 per cent of all registration activity on Election Day in May, 2011, showed serious errors, according to the national audit undertaken for this review. That … equals 114,693 voters potentially having the validity of their votes put in question.” How serious are those irregularities? We don’t know, because Elections Canada does not investigate. 

Oh ... right.  So, along come the Conservatives with a piece of legislation that responds to this issue by making it harder for so many more Canadians to vote.  Okay, the Neufeld report identifies a significant percent of election day voter registrations had errors in them.  Rather than order an in-depth investigation of the errors and addressing the causes, the Conservatives have written a law which is clearly designed to benefit their electoral goals over addressing the actual problem. 

If these "serious errors" are the result of clerical errors (incorrect transcriptions of addresses into the voter registry, misspelling names etc.), that doesn't speak to any kind of widespread voter fraud, but rather a series of issues with procedures and training.  

Consider the most problematic of all forms of voting: where the voter has no identification. In those cases, current law allows an acquaintance, friend or relative of the voter to “vouch for” that person’s right to vote. The voter in question may be a legitimate voter who genuinely lacks ID. The voter may be a visiting relative who isn’t entitled to vote in that district – or even to vote in Canada at all. Or the voter may be valid – but have already used their ID to vote once that day and is now lining up without ID to do it a second time.

This is classic Harper Government tactics - assert that something is happening, and then claim that it is an enormous problem.  Vouching has been part of our voting system for decades.  To the best of my knowledge, there is not a shred of evidence that there is any significant amount of voter fraud taking place using this mechanism, much less on a scale which has a chance of materially affecting the outcome of an election.

One of the key issues in Bill C-23 is that it is attempting to address "voter fraud", when there is precious little evidence of Voter fraud in Canada.  On the other hand, we have very clear evidence of electoral campaign fraud starting in 2006 (In-and-Out Scandal), and 2011 (Robocalls) perpetrated by the campaign machinery of the Conservatives Party.  These misdeeds are not addressed at all by C-23, and arguably clauses in C-23 are designed to further enable political parties to engage in this kind of electoral cheating.

Notable is that nobody in the CPC seems to be standing up and saying that C-23 is wrong.  Nary a peep from backbench MPs, or the party apparatus at the riding level.  Remember this next election - the Harper Government has not chosen to represent the interests of Canadians, but rather to entrench its own cynical political interests in law.

Stealing Our Democracy: The Senate Takes A Swing

Okay, now the Senate is talking about wanting to see some amendments to the Harper Government's bill to undermine Canada's democracy.

The interim report recommends: 

— Removing a provision which would allow political parties to exempt from their election expenses any money spent to raise donations from anyone who has donated at least $20 over the previous five years. Experts have called this an unenforceable loophole that would allow rich, established parties with big donors' lists to spend untold millions more during campaigns. 

— Requiring automated call service providers to retain records of campaign robocalls for three years, rather than the one year retention proposed in the bill. 

— Clarifying that Elections Canada's reduced role in promoting democracy and voter participation will not affect the independent agency's involvement in Student Vote or other educational programs aimed at elementary and high school students. 

— Specifying that both the chief electoral officer, who administers election laws, and the commissioner of elections, who enforces the law and investigates breaches, be able to inform the public of any problems they uncover in the electoral system. 

— Specifically authorizing continued communications between the chief electoral officer and the commissioner, whom the bill proposes to hive off Elections Canada and move under the auspices of the director of public prosecutions. 

— Encouraging Elections Canada to post photos of candidates on ballots, to help voters who can't read. 

— Encouraging Elections Canada to provide information about braille ballots to blind voters and to conduct a pilot project using specialized voting kiosks for the blind.

The first change on the list actually addresses one of the problematic aspects of the bill, but it is one that I consider comparatively minor.  It's a loophole that allows parties to spend stupid amounts of money contacting "previous donors" - those are people who are to a large extent already engaged in the political system.

However, it does not address the key problems with C-23 that have been identified on this blog and by others.  They have not addressed at all the issues with removing vouching, voter id requirements, the appointment of polling station officials, investigation of fraud in the electoral system and so on.

Harper's Senators are apparently acting as the trained seals that Harper likes.  They are proposing a bunch of amendments to address the "shortcomings" of the bill which do nothing to address the key problems which turn Canada's electoral system into a partisan farce on the scale of elections in Ghadaffi's Libya.  These aren't meaningful amendments, this is chaff thrown up to distract Canadians from the vileness of C-23.

TFW Program: Shut It Down NOW!

A few weeks ago, we learned of a few McDonald's restaurants abusing the Temporary Foreign Worker program by giving preferential treatment to candidates coming in under the TFW program over Canadian citizens and permanent residents.  

Today, we find out that it has been much broader in scope than just a franchise owner in Vancouver.

“I feel it’s definitely discrimination against Canadians,” said Chris Eldridge, from Lethbridge, Alta. 

Eldridge just quit his managerial job for six McDonald’s locations in Alberta, because he said he could no longer stomach denying local employees much-needed shifts to accommodate temporary foreign workers. 

“Honestly, some days I wonder, is this still Canada? Everyone is supposed to have equal rights.”Eldridge was a manager who did the worker scheduling for McDonald’s franchisee Dan Brown. He's also upset about differences in pay. Many foreign workers started at $10.80 an hour, he said, while local employees doing the same job made less.

Think about this.  We're talking about a McDonald's here.  Not exactly the kind of jobs that require a degree or specialized training to do.  We're bringing in people from overseas to fill these jobs?  What happened to the local teenagers who used to regularly fill those roles?

The TFW program was intended to fill specific gaps in the workforce where allegedly employers were "unable" to find workers with certain skills.  Then the Harper Government opened the floodgates up to allow just about any company to bring in TFWs for any reason.

The Globe and Mail published an extensive list of the companies authorized under this program.  A quick glance at the list of authorized companies shows us restaurants, fast food outlets and car washes all authorized under this program.  I find it incredible that there are shortages of workers in these areas...especially not with Canada's youth unemployment rate running between 13% and 15%.

This entire program has outlived its purpose.  It has become a tool for businesses to evade paying fair wages to Canadians.  You run a Tim Horton's franchise, and you can't find workers?  Maybe you aren't paying enough.  Oh gosh ... you might have to cut back on a couple of cruise vacations next year ... tsk.

Time to shut it down.  You want to live in Canada? - there's an immigration system for that.

Jobs for Canadians FIRST.  

The Implications of Flaherty's Death

Flaherty passed away suddenly this week.  I did not like Jim Flaherty's politics - a follower of Mike Harris in the 1990s, and a minister to Harper since 2006, Flaherty has consistently subscribed to following political leaders that I fundamentally disagree with.

However, I'm not writing to speak ill of the dead - that's for another time and place when I can speak more clearly and fully on the subject.  Others have already done a far more succinct job of critiquing his time as Minister of Finance than I have time for.

Even his resignation from Cabinet and the House of Commons would not have erased his voice on parliament hill.  Flaherty had been part of the political landscape in Harper's Canada for too long to not remain influential even in private life.  However, with his death, a key voice in the Harper Government has been silenced forever, and that has significant implications for the trajectory of Harper's regime.

Philosophically, Flaherty and I wouldn't see eye to eye on much of anything.

However, that said, Flaherty may have been one of the few voices in Cabinet that Harper actually listened to.  While the budget legislation that the government has tabled repeatedly has grossly abused the notion of a budget implementation bill, Flaherty's budget speeches have told a story somewhat different than I would expect from someone of Harper's ideological stripe, and recent musings of disagreement over "income splitting" tax credits suggest that Flaherty may have had a somewhat different view on the matter than Harper.

In general, I have suspected for quite some time that on economic matters at least, Flaherty has been a moderating influence on a government with little to keep its worst instincts in check.  This government has now lost that moderator entirely.

Flaherty's replacement, Joe Oliver, seems to have been Harper's axeman in his war on environmental science - which suggests strongly that he is more of a puppet to Harper's predatory desires rather than a minister who advocates for his department(s) at the cabinet table.

At the moment, looking around the cabinet table, I see few who would dare challenge Harper even if they disagreed with him.  Jason Kenney certainly isn't likely to openly challenge Harper - he's spent far too much time and energy quietly building his position as future kingmaker when Harper steps down, and frankly if Harper is a vindictive authoritarian, Kenney is cut from the same cloth, with an added stripe of religious fundamentalism for good measure.  Nor do I expect much different from the other members of Harper's Cabinet.  A few are there "for show", and are seldom allowed to speak openly; and the rest repeat talking point scripts issued by the PMO on the rare occasions they are allowed near a microphone.  Not exactly a government front bench that seems likely to challenge Harper's most destructive instincts.

I don't expect the current budget bill to be pulled and amended, but I do expect that sometime in the future, perhaps around September, new legislation will be introduced which implements policies that Flaherty might have resisted more vigorously than others in cabinet.  The new legislation will be in response to a conveniently placed "economic update" which will show that the nation's finances aren't as "good as they thought", no doubt.  What will be in it is hard to say, but I imagine it will be destructive - with a "candy coating" wrapped around it to make it seem more palatable going into the expected 2015 election cycle.

Bill C-23: Accountability for Thee Not For Me

It's not exactly news that Harper has never liked Elections Canada.  In fact, it's less than news.  His outraged utterances about Elections Canada when he was head of the National Citizens Coalition (NCC) in the 1990s set the tone for the content of Bill C-23.

“The jackasses at Elections Canada are out of control.” 

In 2001, Stephen Harper was president of the National Citizens Coalition. That was his opening line in a fundraising letter. 

His loathing for the election overseers was almost pathological, recalls Gerry Nicholls, the conservative commentator who worked with Mr. Harper at the NCC. It was a “blood feud,” he says, one that appears to be “never ending.”

One would have to be blind not to see the blatant and partisan attack on Elections Canada that Bill C-23 so clearly embodies.  It is designed to render it all but impossible for Elections Canada to investigate electoral fraud - in particular of the kind that has been perpetrated by the Harper Conservatives; it constrains the ability of Elections Canada to communicate with the people of Canada at all; it makes the appointment of polling station overseers the domain of incumbent MPs.

There is no coherent response to these criticisms from the Harper Government.  In fact, when so many knowledgeable and experienced people have criticized this bill for the obvious problems in it, it comes as no big surprise that the Conservatives have turned to attacking the message bearers:

“His recommendations really boil down to three broad requirements for him,” Poilievre told the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee as it launched a “pre-study” of the bill before the House of Commons considers amendments or passes it. 

“He wants more power, a bigger budget and less accountability.”

Considering the damage that this bill does to holding our politicians and their parties accountable for their antics during an election, it seems more and more clear that the party who promised Canadians greater accountability and transparency in government is in fact delivering quite the opposite.

Bill C-32: Is This Even Necessary?

As I start to review the content of Bill C-32, the so-called "Victim's Bill of Rights" legislation, I find myself wondering if this piece of legislation is even meaningful.  

The first thing that made me wonder about this was the following:  

11. Sections 380.3 and 380.4 of the Act are repealed.

I went on a fishing expedition and dug up the to be repealed sections of the Criminal Code, and what do I find but the following:

• 380.3 (1) When an offender is convicted, or is discharged under section 730, of an offence referred to in subsection 380(1), the court that sentences or discharges the offender, in addition to any other measure imposed on the offender, shall consider making a restitution order under section 738 or 739.Marginal note:

  Inquiry by court(2) As soon as practicable after a finding of guilt and in any event before imposing the sentence, the court shall inquire of the prosecutor if reasonable steps have been taken to provide the victims with an opportunity to indicate whether they are seeking restitution for their losses, the amount of which must be readily ascertainable.Marginal note:

  Adjournment(3) On application of the prosecutor or on its own motion, the court may adjourn the proceedings to permit the victims to indicate whether they are seeking restitution or to establish their losses, if the court is satisfied that the adjournment would not interfere with the proper administration of justice.Marginal note:

  Form for victims(4) Victims may indicate whether they are seeking restitution by completing Form 34.1 in Part XXVIII or a form approved for that purpose by the Lieutenant Governor in Council of the province where the court has jurisdiction or by using any other method approved by the court, and, if they are seeking restitution, shall establish their losses, the amount of which must be readily ascertainable, in the same manner.Marginal note:

  Reasons(5) If a victim seeks restitution and the court decides not to make a restitution order, it shall give reasons for its decision and shall cause those reasons to be stated in the record. 

  380.4 (1) For greater certainty, for the purpose of determining the sentence to be imposed on an offender, or whether the offender should be discharged under section 730, in respect of an offence referred to in subsection 380(1), the court may consider a statement made by a person on a community’s behalf describing the harm done to, or losses suffered by, the community arising from the commission of the offence.Marginal note:

  Procedure(2) The statement must(a) be prepared in writing and filed with the court;(b) identify the community on whose behalf the statement is made; and(c) explain how the statement reflects the community’s views.Marginal note:Copy of statement 

  (3) The clerk of the court shall provide a copy of the statement, as soon as practicable after a finding of guilt, to the offender or counsel for the offender, and to the prosecutor.

Wait a second ... isn't restitution one of the "big things" in bill C-32?

Why, yes, it is:

16. Every victim has the right to have the court consider making a restitution order against the offender.17. Every victim in whose favour a restitution order is made has the right, if they are not paid, to have the order entered as a civil court judgment that is enforceable against the offend- er.

The change the ReformaTories are making here is to remove the very specific and focused clauses already present in the Criminal Code and generalizing it.  This is a very foolish thing to do.  What is "restitution", but a form of economic punishment.  For economic crimes, that isn't necessarily unreasonable.  For other forms of crime, how do they propose that a judge make an assessment?  In cases of bodily injury, is the government going to come up with a table of values of some kind?  A broken finger is so much, a broken leg is more money and so on?

To this point, the notion of restitution has been focused quite clearly in specific areas of law where the concept of restitution is relatively clear.  In making this change, the Harper Government has turned it into something which is effectively an arbitrary additional punishment to be levied on top of whatever other punishment the court metes out.

Then there is this little gem, which rewords the sentencing guidelines in the Criminal Code:

718. The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to protect society and to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives:(a) to denounce unlawful conduct and the harm done to victims or to the community that is caused byunlawful conduct;

(2) Paragraph 718(f) of the Act is replaced by the following:(f) to promote a sense of responsibility in offenders, and acknowledgment of the harm done to victims or to the community.

This is changed from the following:

718. The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives:(a) to denounce unlawful conduct;(b) to deter the offender and other persons from committing offences;(c) to separate offenders from society, where necessary;(d) to assist in rehabilitating offenders;(e) to provide reparations for harm done to victims or to the community; and(f) to promote a sense of responsibility in offenders, and acknowledgment of the harm done to victims and to the community.

R.S., 1985, c. C-46, s. 718;

 R.S., 1985, c. 27 (1st Supp.), s. 155;

 1995, c. 22, s. 6.

This is a completely unnecessary change to the sentencing guidelines part of the Criminal Code.  What it fundamentally attempts to do is write into the laws of this country a philosophy that the Harper Government has been trying to ram down Canadians' throats for years - the idea that criminal justice is about punish, Punish, PUNISH.  We already know, from the example of the United States, that when you make the punishments all the more harsh, that you will simply create a situation where you have more and more people in prison, and those caught in that system have nothing to lose.

Then, as if to drive home my point for me, the Harper Government inserts the following into the sentencing guidelines:

739.1 The offender’s financial means or ability to pay does not prevent the court from making an order under section 738 or 739.

This underscores the fundamental unreasonableness of this legislation in my view.  A restitution order is utterly meaningless if the offender has no means to meet it.  All that this will do is create another obstacle to meaningfully rehabilitating and reintegrating an offender into the broader fabric of society once their term of incarceration is completed.

On top of it all, several provinces have already implemented significant "Victims Rights" legislation already.  It seems gratuitous for the Federal government to add this sloppy bill to the mix.  So, do we need this legislation at all?

In Harper's Canada ... A Budget Bill Isn't Just A Budget

Pay close attention to Harper's "omnibus" bills.  Those contain the bulk of his agenda.  They're so big that he's hoping you don't even look.  These bills are so multi-dimensional that calling them "budget implementation bills" is a bad joke.  Bill C-31, the budget implementation bill for 2014, is no exception.

In single column, english only form, this bill is over 150 pages long ... and it's small print.  Make no mistake about it, this legislation is much more than just a budget implementation bill.  Yes, it contains the usual array of legislative changes to taxation and spending as one would expect.

But it contains even more that people should be concerned about.

First, it contains the legislation to implement FATCA - the most egregious violation of Canadians' rights under our Constitution ever done in the name of a foreign country's laws.  FATCA, and the agreement that the Harper Government has signed with the US, basically hand over your banking information to the US government.  Worse, the US can demand those records up to six years in the past.

Further Analysis On Marc Nadon's Appointment

Marc Nadon is, for now at least, out of the picture as far as Canada's Supreme Court is concerned.

Frankly, I know very little about Justice Nadon's beliefs and history as a judge.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if he happened to lean towards Mr. Harper's "hang-em-high" approach to justice - generally speaking Harper is far more prone to basing his appointment decisions on ideology and politics than other Prime Ministers in our history.

However, the Supreme Court's ruling on Nadon's appointment is not about Mr. Nadon or Mr. Harper's views on justice.

The Supreme Court's ruling is very interesting as it went after many of the same issues that I suspect strongly affect Harper's desires to unilaterally amend the Senate.  In effect, in appointing Mr. Nadon, Harper was ignoring a set of rules that had been clearly established for over a century.

The government does not have the authority to amend the Act, wrote six of seven judges, saying "the unanimous consent of Parliament and all provincial legislatures is required for amendments to the Constitution relating to the 'composition of the Supreme Court.'"

Frankly, it comes to me as no great surprise that Mr. Harper and his gang are once again attempting to modify the structure of government without regard for the laws of Canada and the Constitution of this nation.  First, Harper is not a lawyer.  He never has been, nor has he shown any particular interest in coming to understand the finer points of law.

Second, and more concerning, is that Harper is an ideologue.  His government has repeatedly pushed through laws only to have them struck down by the Supreme Court time and again - often on Constitutional grounds.  He doesn't guide his ministers to legislate effectively and within the framework of Canada's legal systems, but rather is attempting to forge an entirely new system by writing tons of laws and hoping that they stick.

Fundamentally, he's using the same tactics that we see the far right in the United States using - throw tons of obviously ridiculous legislation into the system, and hope that enough manages to survive to fundamentally change the underlying structures beyond recognition.

At this point, I'm beginning to suspect that the first step in undoing the appalling damage that this government is doing to Canada and its legal systems is going to have to be an omnibus bill that rescinds 95% of the legislation pushed through since 2006.  Most of it is unconstitutional, and of the remainder, much of it is just plain cruel and punitive.