The Rot Starts At The Top

Regular readers of this space will know that I am no fan of Prime Minister Harper.  

Yesterday's revelation that a "boot camp" for new Conservative Senators explicitly told the new Senators that partisan travel was a legitimate expense makes me downright furious.

Three former Conservative senators at the heart of a spending scandal were given clear directions from their leader in the upper chamber that they could bill for certain partisan — that is, political — travel when they first arrived in the Senate. 

The directions were given during a two-day “boot camp” for new Tory senators that outlined expense-claim dos and don’ts, expectations for senators, and a warning to be careful with how they spent Senate money. 

Let me be abundantly clear here:  The Senate, and the House of Commons, exist for conducting the business of this country.  NOT the business of the Conservative Party of Canada or any other party.  That the Harperites would give explicit instructions about this tells us a lot - and none of it is acceptable.

First, that they would even state that any kind of partisan travel is an acceptable expense is plain wrong. It speaks to a degree of intent to abuse the system.  In essence, the new Senators are being told "break the rules, but don't get caught - nudge, nudge, wink, wink".  I suspect that if Duffy or Wallin had only done one suspect trip in a year, nobody would be particularly outraged.  It would fall under the "cost of doing business" kind of logic that most of us understand.  However, that isn't what happened.  Instead, these two Senators were put into a position where suddenly they were doing a lot of travel on questionable business, and apparently the CPC machinery wasn't willing to invest some of the millions it raises in donations every year into funding this travel.

Second, this is little different to me than the "How to Disrupt Parliament" manual that Harper handed out to his MPs back in 2006.  It speaks to a clear intent to abuse the privileges and rights of power for partisan gain.  Make no mistake about it, the tone in the party that makes this kind of abuse of parliament and taxpayers starts at the top - look in the direction of the PMO when assigning responsibility - the man at the top should be held accountable for this.

Like the Economic Action Plan ads which are really little more than CPC propaganda, what we have here is another example of a government which is willing to abuse taxpayer funds for partisan purposes.  Canadians are paying for Harper to publish partisan propaganda - no more, no less.  Now we find out that Harper's Senate appointees are being given specific instructions on how to abuse the funding of the Senate so that they can further their partisan work.  Makes one wonder just how much of the same kind of thing is going on in the House of Commons with his caucus.  (I know that I seldom see anything from my MP except for the occasional leaflet which is completely devoid of actual content)

More so than any Prime Minister before him, Harper has gone to enormous lengths to corrupt Parliament from the ground up.  From clear violations of Canada's election laws (remember the "In-and-Out campaign financing in 2006?), to electoral fraud in 2011(yes, I hold the CPC responsible for the Robocalls mess - their database was used for it, and I do not accept the "it was hacked" line), a manual for MPs on how to disrupt parliamentary business, a steady rebranding of Canada's government using CPC colours, and now we learn that the Senate has been instructed on how to abuse the finances provided to run that body.

I have seen a few apologists for the Harperites point to Mac Harb and a couple of other Liberal Senators and claim that "the system has been broken for years".  Yes, it has - no argument there.  The issue is the lengths to which Harper has abused the system, especially when he was elected in 2006 on a promise to provide Canadians with more open and accountable government.  He has provided anything but.  In fact, the corruption under Harper is far, far worse than what we have ever seen on any previous Prime Minister in living memory.

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"???

Irony ... As It Is Done

The NDP is demanding that Conservative Senators should step aside until "In-and-Out" Charges Resolved.

I'm not sure that there's actual parliamentary precedent for such a move, but I applaud the sentiment of the NDP's demand here.

However, it is this comment that really gets me going:

"The two gentlemen in question have an impeccable record of honesty and integrity," said MP Pierre Poilievre.

"They have conducted themselves admirably throughout all of this and we're proud to have them as part of our team."

Hmmm... Poilievre? Oh - that Poilievre. It's not like he's exactly the most well-informed MP out there in the first place.

More seriously, the fundamental issue in the "In-and-Out" Scam is that the Conservatives were engaging in nothing less than a money laundering scheme - and a poorly thought out one at that. It leaves one thinking that these amateurs were tossed out from organized crime for good reason ... and went into politics as a second career choice.

Like That's A Surprise

No Kidding

Of course Harper wants to go to the polls before the ethics committee hearings on his party's campaign financing scam wrap up this fall.

First of all, the scam itself demonstrates the utter disrespect that Harper and his merry band of thieves have for Canadians and the electoral process in the first place. The longer the hearings are in the public eye, the more damage they do to Harper's credibility.

The fact that the Con$ are outright not participating is further evidence of not only a fundamental dishonesty in the party's dealings with Canadians, but also of how much they must feel they have to hide.

While this writer has some idea of the significance of declaring someone 'in contempt', I don't think that the majority of Canadians really do. Symbolically, it's a way to shame the person, but in terms of the electoral process I think such declarations would be seen as little more than an attempt to score political points and would not be persuasive to voters.

The opposition needs to be careful about how long they let things draw out here. There is a fine line between how much damage the story itself can do to the Conservative's electoral prospects and achieving utter boredom among the voters.

Why Is Parliament Dysfunctional?

It seems to me that the current Ethics Committee hearings into the Conservative In-and-Out financing scam are a pretty good place to look for a few clues as to why Parliament is so thoroughly dysfunctional.

Fortunately for us, Maclean's writer Kady O'Malley has been liveblogging some of the goings on in session.

We already know that the party instructed its people not to show up when summoned (after all, why would a Conservative in government want to actually have government do its job?).

And then we have some of the Conservative attempts to disrupt the committee proceedings - straight out of their little handbook, no doubt:

3:53:05 PM
David Tilson is reading the names of MPs whose expense reports have not been finalized - all NDP and Liberal, that is - so I think I’ll take a moment to do a staff check.

Conservative side: three staffers and A. Hamilton
Opposition side: six staffers, apparently no legal counsel

3:54:33 PM
“We have made allegations,” says Tilson. I think it’s safe to say we all agree with him on that. He’s making rather a leap here, though - just because a report hasn’t been finalized, it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the numbers; it could be administrative, or it could be something entirely unrelated to expenses.

It’s also a bit of a stretch to claim that all these files are “under investigation”.

3:57:23 PM
This is the dullest timewaster ever - Tilson is just reading names and ridings into the record, and he goes crazy when the chair mildly suggests that he move it along. “This is my question and I’ll ask it however I want, and you’ll just sit there!”

At which point he runs out of time without ever actually getting to the question.

Gee...I wonder who in the PMO gave instructions for that little performance?

And then there's the opposition MPs who actually seem to understand how to use the wheels of procedure to move things forward constructively:

4:56:15 PM
Carole Lavallee gets the floor finally - finally - and she has a motion to introduce, but only as a warning, that would authorize the chair to go to the Speaker for a warrant, it would apply to all the no-show witnesses from the last week. She doesn’t propose debating it *now*, but wants to table it, so it can be passed if necessary. She wants these potential Speaker’s warrantees to “take the time to think about it,” and, eventually, she hopes, choose to come back. Talk to lawyers - not, she suggests Conservative Party lawyers - and make that decision.

“We are asking the Conservatives to respect this institution,” says the member whose party is, in theory, dedicated to breaking up the country. She begs the governing party to “think about the consequences” - if they care about law and order; these witnesses should be here.

Man, she really is sane, isn’t she?

Amusingly, here's a typical Conservative whine in response:

5:36:25 PM
Pierre Lemieux believes that totalitarianism is when six MPs consistently outvote five MPs, and that’s just about all there is to say about his views on parliamentary democracy.

I'm the first to admit that committee hearings are probably among the most deadly dull things one can imagine - creatures of process and quasi-legal procedures. But when the utterly pathetic behaviour of the governing party's parliamentarians is so clear, it's worth looking at as a case study of the current parliament.