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Saturday, November 21, 2009 05:18 PM
Dion's wife goes rogue?
Stephen Wicary
A scathing message attacking Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff appeared today on the Facebook site belonging to Janine Krieber - the wife of Mr. Ignatieff's predecessor, Stéphane Dion.
The message, a copy of which was obtained by The Globe, says the party "is falling apart, and will not recover." It also blames "the Toronto elites" for being out of tune, arrogant and unrealistic.
Mr. Ignatieff's leadership is openly questioned, as is his decision to shun the coalition deal struck by Mr. Dion, NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe.
"The time for choices is now," the message says.
The Canadian Press reports, citing unnamed sources, that Mr. Dion himself was not involved in producing the note.
It was deleted from the Facebook site this afternoon, and Liberal officials are refusing comment.
The text of the note, and The Globe's translation, follow.
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Friday, November 20, 2009 07:18 PM
Tories tar long-gun success by 'swinging too hard' on torture
Jane Taber
One week; two Tory strategies. One is a potential winner; the other could potentially backfire. What does Stephen Harper’s former top strategist think?
Tom Flanagan believes the Tory bill to abolish the long-gun registry is a “political success story.” The Liberals are all tied up in knots about it.
As for the character assassination of senior Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin by the Harper Tories: He’s not impressed, believing it is happening only because Mr. Harper, “the grand strategist,” has been away travelling in Asia and not focusing on the issue. Meanwhile, his ministers are freelancing as they try to deal with the fall-out on the Afghan mission.
Mr. Colvin is the man behind the explosive testimony about the torture of Afghan prisoners handed over by Canadian soldiers. He told all at a Commons committee this week, appearing as a credible witness who singled out senior government officials for their silence and control.
Rather than taking his allegations under advisement, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and other Tory MPs, including his parliamentary secretary, Laurie Hawn, savaged Mr. Colvin in the House of Commons and at the committee this week.
Mr. MacKay argued that the diplomat’s allegations were not credible. He said there was never a stitch of evidence that anyone was tortured, and that to believe the prisoners’ testimony is to accept evidence from “people who throw acid in the faces of schoolchildren and who blow up buses in their own country.”
Conservative ministers are being too aggressive, said Mr. Flanagan, a political science professor at the University of Calgary.
Friday, November 20, 2009 03:14 PM
More OLO departures?
Jane Taber
Michael Ignatieff’s operations director, Sachin Aggarwal, is seriously considering running in Toronto Centre to replace former provincial Liberal cabinet minister George Smitherman, who is running to be Toronto mayor, according to sources.
Mr. Aggarawal, a Toronto lawyer, is part of Mr. Ignatieff’s inner circle from the 2006 leadership campaign. Although his two roommates and senior OLO strategists, Mark Sakamoto and Alexis Levine, both stepped aside and returned to Toronto, he was expected to be one of the few original Ignatieff strategists to survive the changes at the Opposition Leader’s Office.
In fact, new chief of staff Peter Donolo outlined the OLO re-organization this week and Mr. Aggarwal was prominently mentioned as director of operations. Mr. Donolo's email did not really say what he would do, and it did appear that his position was junior to that of OLO newcomer Patricia Sorbara. She is the chief operating officer and according to Mr. Donolo, she is a “logistics expert” and “will be responsible for the entire operation of the OLO.”
Meanwhile, sources say that Mr. Aggarwal has some strong support provincially. Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office, according to one source, is staying out of this. Federally, the riding is represented by Bob Rae, Mr. Ignatieff’s chief rival in the leadership. So that could make for interesting federal/provincial relations if Mr. Aggarwal succeeds.
There was also speculation around war-room chief Warren Kinsella. He wrote on his blog today that he is taking a different direction for now, concentrating more on municipal endeavours. Since there is no war to be fought – an election isn’t expected now at least until later in the new year – there is no reason for Mr. Kinsella to be spending so much time in Ottawa. He had been spending about three days of every week here.
“There’s no war room until the election,” Mr. Kinsella said in an email to The Globe.
Friday, November 20, 2009 01:38 PM
How cartoonists see Afghan torture
Stephen Wicary
Editorial writers can be a wordy bunch.
The Globe's, for example, have this to say about yesterday's decision by the Conservative government to attack the credibilty of Richard Colvin, a diplomat and intelligence officer who told a Commons committee that all Afghan captives transferred by Canadian soldiers to local authorities wound up being tortured – even though many were likely innocent.
Editorial cartoonists, meanwhile, say more with less.
Brian Gable's take on the grim case of national hand-washing is shown above. And with a hat tip to Parker Donham for the idea, here's how other illustrators see the situation.
Friday, November 20, 2009 01:03 PM
Ignatieff slips further behind in poll
Bill Curry
Michael Ignatieff is surely hoping this is rock bottom.
A new public opinion survey shows support for the Liberals has slipped to 23 per cent – well back of the 38 per cent support for the front-running Conservatives.
The survey was taken from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16, which is before news broke this week regarding the treatment of Afghan detainees.
It shows the Conservatives are essentially at the same level of support, 37.6 per cent, they received in the 2008 election, while the Liberals under Mr. Ignatieff are now three points lower than the 26.2 per cent the party received in 2008 under previous leader Stéphane Dion.
Support for the NDP has remained constant at 17 per cent this fall, which is one point below the party’s 2008 results.
The Angus Reid/Toronto Star survey polled 1,005 Canadian adults who are part of an Angus Reid Forum online panel. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
In contrast to the same survey company’s results for Oct. 23-24, the Tories are down two points, the Liberals are down three points, the NDP are unchanged, the Bloc Québécois is up two points and the Green Party’s support jumped from seven per cent to 11 per cent.
Friday, November 20, 2009 10:52 AM
NDP, Billy Bragg make case for free music
Steven Chase
It wasn't talking to the taxman about poetry but British alt rocker Billy Bragg came to Parliament Hill this morning to plead with regulators about free music.
Mr. Bragg, who played Ottawa Thursday night, joined NDP MP Charlie Angus Friday to press Ottawa to avoid criminalizing music downloading when it updates copyright protection law.
The British singer and the New Democrats are calling on Ottawa to let artists find a way to make music file swapping a legitimate part of promotion and sales.
Mr. Bragg and other artists want to see new ways to pay performers for music available online while protecting downloaders. He said record labels will often sell entire catalogues to websites without giving the artists a cut.
“We have a slogan that where money is made, artists must be paid. What’s implicit in that slogan is that we should go after those people who are making profit from giving our stuff away for free or selling it online,” he said.
“The other edge of that particular argument is that people who are sharing files ... really should not be within the reach of the copyright law.”
The federal government consulted Canadians and industry figures last fall about proposed changes to its sorely outdated copyright laws after facing overwhelming opposition to a bill tabled last year.
Bill C-61 would have made it illegal for any Canadian to circumvent digital copyright “locks” put on pieces of audio or video, rendering it impossible for people to share material with impunity.
One of the ideas offered by Mr. Angus would be to charge a levy on the purchase of any MP3 player, such as the government did when Canadians purchased blank CDs or cassettes. The idea then was to collect the money and then compensate artists for material that was used when people made their old “mixed tapes.”
With a report from The Canadian Press
Friday, November 20, 2009 09:06 AM
Billy Bragg's sympathy for the Iron Lady
Steven Chase
British alt-rocker Billy Bragg, no fan of the Iron Lady, played Ottawa Thursday night.
He confessed to the audience that he had been somewhat less than upset last week when he heard Margaret Thatcher had died.
Lady Thatcher of course is an icon to conservatives but hated by the left, including Mr. Bragg, for her attacks on unions when she was the British prime minister.
Mr. Bragg said his spirits immediately sagged though when it dawned on him that the deceased was in fact a cat named Thatcher belonging to Canadian Infrastructure Minister John Baird.
"I actually had to stop and feel some sympathy," he joked.
At this point an Ottawa audience member yelled out: "That asshole represents our riding," referring to the Conservative Mr. Baird.
"Well, his cat's dead, mate, if that makes you feel better," Mr. Bragg quipped.
(Photo: Hannah Johnston/Getty Images)
Friday, November 20, 2009 08:37 AM
Carrying a partisan torch
Jane Taber
The morning buzz: What's making news on Parliament Hill
1. Mike Savage isn't feeling the Olympic spirit. The Olympic torch is in Nova Scotia today and it has been in the province for the past few days. But the Liberal MP from Dartmouth hasn’t seen it. You’ve heard the stories of opposition MPs being excluded from Olympic torch events? Well, that’s what Mr. Savage believes is happening here. He was upset earlier this week when his star constituent, Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby was running with the flame. It was quite the event; Mr. Savage’s invitation, however, was lost in the mail.
“I think it’s a shame the Olympics are becoming partisan this way,” he said in an interview with The Globe. “But there is no way that you can have the number of events, specific events, and not invite local members of Parliament because of politics, that’s just wrong. That’s not the Olympic spirit.”
Contrast that, however, to the fact that his colleague, Scott Brison, the Liberal MP from Wolfville, N.S., is right now on his way to meet the torch in Windsor, N.S. and then on to Wolfville, New Minas and Kentville. He will also be speaking at the torch relay event today. So the non-partisan nature of the Olympic spirit is strong in the Annapolis Valley, at least.
2. Abolishing the long-gun registry: the wedge issue. If you are a Liberal you want to keep the long-gun registry - at least 47 per cent of Grit voters do, according to a new EKOS poll. This poll was inspired by Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, who earlier this month, successfully maneuvered her private member’s bill to abolish the registry through the Commons - with the help of some Liberal and NDP MPs - and into committee.
The poll shows that only 20 per cent of Conservative voters want to keep it compared to 29 per cent of NDP supporters and 32 per cent of the Greens. Not surprisingly, 47 per cent of Bloc voters would like to keep it, too. Meanwhile, 56 per cent of Conservative supporters say they would abolish the registry compared to 27 per cent of Liberals, 35 per cent of the NDP, 20 per cent of Bloc and 29 per cent of Green supporters.
As EKOS’s pollster Frank Graves notes, the “conventional wisdom” has been that the majority of Canadians support the registry. His poll shows otherwise. It found that 38 per cent of Canadians would vote to abolish the registry compared to 31 per cent who would vote to keep it. “The Conservatives may have known something we didn’t because this is no longer the case,” says the release accompanying the poll.
3. If it's Friday, the House is empty. MPs have either left or are on their way back to their ridings. Life, as we know it on Parliament Hill, is pretty much over for the week. However, there are those who remain on the Hill today, including Timmins MP and NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus. In his previous life Mr. Angus was a punk rocker, having played in a couple of bands: L’Etranger and the Grievous Angels.
The rights of musicians remain close to his heart and that is what he will be dealing with in his press conference this morning. Along with Billy Bragg, the British alternative rocker, and Wide Mouth Mason’s Safwan Javad, the trio will be advocating for the rights of musicians and artists to control the rules for the development of digital culture. Mr. Bragg, whose music often takes on political themes, is a spokesman for the British Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), which lobbies and campaigns for the rights of “featured artists” (the musicians whose names are featured on the cover of the record as opposed to session musicians).
And Wide Mouth Mason’s Mr. Javed is part of the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, which deals with similar issues as FAC. It wants to ensure that Canadian artists, and not multinational record companies, make the rules for copyright and ownership. For his part, Mr. Angus pushed for hearings, which are about to begin, into digital culture and the new media are about to begin. Will the three bring their guitars to today’s press conference? We can only hope.
(Photo: Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, from nearby Cole Harbour, N.S., carries the Olympic torch in Halifax on Wednesday, November 18, 2009. Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
Friday, November 20, 2009 07:51 AM
Jim Flaherty's yard sale
Steven Chase
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty purchased a board game for the TV cameras at an Ottawa kids toy store this week to highlight new rules that should cut retailers' transaction processing costs when people use credit or debit cards.
The name of the game Mr. Flaherty bought was Yard Sale, which sounds awfully close to what he was accused of starting one year ago when he announced that Ottawa would explore the idea of selling off government assets to raise money. Economists panned the idea, warning that a recession was the worst time to sell Crown holdings because they'd fetch poorer prices.
The Tories have since put the plan on the back burner.
But Revenue Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn, who joined Mr. Flaherty at the toy shop photo op, doesn't seem to have a cash problem.
"I collect one billion [dollars] each day. I am the most rich minister of [any] department," Mr. Blackburn joked.
He said people have more reason to fear him than Mr. Flaherty, which makes sense since Canada Revenue Agency has an army of tax collectors.
"People are more afraid of me than him," Mr. Blackburn joked of himself and Mr. Flaherty.
(Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
Thursday, November 19, 2009 06:01 PM
A lonely joke amid talk of torture and anti-Semitism
Jane Taber
In a chamber humming today with tension and anger over issues involving the torture of Afghan prisons and charges of anti-Semitism, Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, cracked a joke.
“I have not had many questions on the economy and it has been so lonely over here,” he said as he answered a lob ball from one of his own about how wonderfully the Canadian economy is performing.
He was trying to lighten the mood and do a little bragging at the same time.
This was Question Period Thursday – a wild and wooly 45 minutes in which at least half of the time was dominated by questions concerning the explosive testimony of senior Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, who said yesterday that the torture of Afghan prisoners was routine and senior Canadian officials did not want to hear about it.
Opposition parties were alleging a cover-up by the government, accusing it of failing to act quickly on the revelations.
A smaller portion of the daily session was given over to issues around the conflict in the Middle East, a battle that has erupted on Parliament Hill because of a controversial Tory pamphlet. More on that later.
But first, Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae demanded a public inquiry into the issues around the transfer of Afghan detainees. Mr. Rae led off the questions in Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s absence.
He was echoing the NDP, who had asked for a similar inquiry earlier in the day.
“The revelations of mistreatment, harsh treatment and even torture, and the revelation with respect to a cover-up, would the minister not agree with me and with others that there should indeed be a full public inquiry,” Mr. Rae demanded.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay, however, was unrelenting in his defence of the Canadian soldiers’ handling of the detainees. He also called into question the credibility of Mr. Colvin and his testimony.
“It has been stated here a number of times that there has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian Forces,” he said. “Second, with respect to the evidence yesterday, what we know is that when the evidence is put to the test, it simply does not stand up.”
Mr. MacKay said that to suggest “every single Taliban prisoner was tortured is not credible.” He also questioned why anyone would believe anything a member of the Taliban has to say, accusing NDP Leader Jack Layton of “taking at face value evidence that comes in most circumstances in this particular context from the Taliban himself.”
But under questioning from Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale as to why the government finally did make changes to the transfer procedures if Mr. Colvin’s allegations were not credible, Mr. MacKay admitted that the government acted to make changes because of concerns expressed by “Colvin and others.”
Ottawa Notebook Contributors
Jane Taber
Jane Taber has been on Parliament Hill since the Mulroney days, first writing for the Ottawa Citizen in 1986. Since then, she's reported for a small television network, WTN, and for the National Post before joining The Globe’s parliamentary bureau in 2002. She is the senior political writer and also co-host of Question Period, which airs Sundays on CTV.
John Ibbitson
John Ibbitson started at The Globe in 1999 and has been Queen's Park columnist and Ottawa political affairs correspondent. Most recently, he was a correspondent and columnist in Washington, where he wrote Open and Shut: Why America has Barack Obama and Canada has Stephen Harper. He returned to Ottawa as bureau chief in 2009. Before joining The Globe, he worked as a reporter, columnist and Queen’s Park correspondent for Southam papers.
Steven Chase
Steven Chase has covered federal politics in Ottawa for The Globe since mid-2001. He's previously worked in the paper's Vancouver and Calgary bureaus. Prior to that, he reported on Alberta politics for the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun, and on national issues for Alberta Report. He's had ink-stained hands for far longer though, having worked as a paperboy for the (now defunct) Montreal Star, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Vancouver Sun and the North Shore News.
Campbell Clark
Campbell Clark has been a political writer in The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau since 2000. Before that he worked for The Montreal Gazette and the National Post. He writes about Canadian politics and foreign policy. He stopped being fascinated by ShamWow commercials after that guy’s nasty incident in Florida, but still wonders if one can really pull a truck with that Mighty Putty stuff.
Bill Curry
A member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1999, Bill Curry worked for The Hill Times and the National Post prior to joining The Globe in Feb. 2005. Originally from North Bay, Ont., Bill reports on a wide range of topics on Parliament Hill. He is very protective of the office copy of Marleau & Montpetit.
Gloria Galloway
Gloria Galloway has been a journalist for almost 30 years. She worked at the Windsor Star, the Hamilton Spectator, the National Post, the Canadian Press and a number of small newspapers before being hired by The Globe and Mail as deputy national editor in 2001. Gloria returned to reporting two years later and joined the Ottawa bureau in 2004. She has covered every federal election since 1997 and has done several tours in Afghanistan.
Daniel Leblanc
Daniel Leblanc studied political science at the University of Ottawa and journalism at Carleton University. He became a full-time reporter in 1998, first at the Ottawa Citizen and then in the Ottawa bureau of The Globe and Mail. While he likes the occasional brown envelope, he is also open to anonymous emails.
Stephen Wicary
Stephen Wicary has been with The Globe since 2001, working on the news desk as a copy editor, page designer, production editor and front page editor. During the U.S invasion of Iraq, he pulled a three-month stint as overnight editor of the website. He moved to the parliamentary bureau at the end of 2008 to bolster online political coverage.