Adam Radwanski, 08/05/08 at 5:47 PM EDT
Occasionally, Stephen Harper's acid tongue comes in handy. This would be one of those occasions.
I have no doubt that tongues have been wagging in Ottawa for months over Maxime Bernier's ex-girlfriend, even before this business about Hells Angels trying to kill her. That's what happens in small company towns (the gossip, not the mob hits), particularly when the lady in question turns up at the swearing-in of cabinet looking like this. But I can't for the life of me figure out how any of this is important enough to be raised in Question Period - much less how Gilles Duceppe could suggest with a straight face that every time a cabinet minister goes on a date, the lucky companion should be subjected to RCMP security clearance.
The Prime Minister does not always have his finger on the pulse of public sentiment. But I suspect his response today - “Mr. Dion and Mr. Duceppe are quite a group of gossipy old busy-bodies,” in particular - had more than a few Canadians nodding in agreement.
Adam Radwanski, 08/05/08 at 12:40 PM EDT
"The issue is Stephen Harper and there is a wealth of material to take him down," one of the endless supply of disgruntled anonymous Liberals tells the Globe. "Instead, we pass that up to launch a summer of Dion. No wonder Liberal morale is so low."
Not much of an argument, that. Unless the incumbent is completely toxic - much more toxic than the current one - you can't just repeat ad nauseum what a bad, bad man he is; you have to have your own identity as well. And rather than letting the Tories define him, as they've done almost since the moment he became leader, Stephane Dion needs to find a way to define himself. Since that's not exactly working out in Ottawa, spending his summer touring the country and raising his profile - something he should be doing right now, actually - makes perfect sense.
As for the message that will be delivered during the Summer of Dion, though - that's a different matter. It's little secret that there's a legitimate rift in the party, even in Dion's office, over the merits of making a carbon tax the centrepiece of the Liberal platform. And on this one, unlike the ludicrous notion that they can win the next election by keeping their leader out of the public eye, his critics have a point.
Setting aside the public policy merits, which are difficult to judge until further details are forthcoming, a carbon tax does have serious strategic suicide potential. Following the B.C. model by making it revenue-neutral, and using the additional revenues to cut income taxes, may be enough to offset anger from drivers. But with economic concerns increasingly marginalizing environmental ones, giving your opponents the opportunity to charge you with jeopardizing industry (not least manufacturing) in the name of fighting climate change doesn't immediately leap out as a way to reverse your political fortunes.
If the Liberals are looking for a consistent message, and they really should be, the aforementioned economic concerns give them plenty of opportunity.
With fears of a recession mounting, the Tories have given very little indication that they have any idea what to do about them. This is not entirely their own fault; while last fall's ill-advised GST cut tied their hands in this year's budget, their room for maneuvering is obviously limited by a minority Parliament. But virtually the only news coming out of the capital over the past few months has been negative - either the Tories defending themselves against allegations of ethical improprieties, or picking fights with officers of parliament and provincial premiers. When this government isn't distracted by its own scandals, the Liberals could argue, it's going to war with the people it should be working with to find economic solutions.
This, of course, would require the Liberals to have a semi-coherent economic plan of their own, of which there's very little evidence. (Or, less kindly, no evidence at all.) But if they had one, Dion could spend his summer accusing the Tories of fiddling while the economy burned - a more helpful message than offering to make it burn faster, which is exactly what his opponents will accuse him of.
Adam Radwanski, 08/05/08 at 12:35 PM EDT
It's being argued, in this newspaper and elsewhere, that Hillary Clinton should fold up her tent rather than continuing to hurt her party's inevitable nominee. But I'm starting to think we should back off that argument. At this point, she's really only hurting herself.
Adam Radwanski, 07/05/08 at 3:01 PM EDT
When the Auditor-General delivers an uncharacteristically mild report, some columnists lament the lack of scandal. Others opt to insert it themselves.
Yes, it's troubling that the Canada Border Services Agency has lost track of 41,000 illegal immigrants. This newspaper said so itself. But if our "insanely generous immigration and refugee system" is making us "a haven for the world's hoodlums," I'd hate to see how certain other countries - ones where, say, they've lost track of millions of illegal immigrants - would be described.
Adam Radwanski, 07/05/08 at 12:12 AM EDT
The most unfortunate aspect of the much-maligned Lake County keeping Indiana interesting past midnight is that a completely befuddled Larry King has been forced to take the air while the results are still in question. But until that hair-raising spectacle, CNN's panels - normally a pointless exercise in partisan spin - offered some useful insight into the state of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
As pretty much every pundit in North America has already explained, it's wildly in the Republicans' interests for Clinton to stay in the race until the bitter end. The more she beats up the almost inevitable nominee, the better. And yet, even the Republican panelists can't quite bring themselves to claim that the results tonight mean that it's time to fight on. To a person, from what I've seen, they've assessed that Hillary had a bad enough night that for all intents and purposes she's finished.
No such qualms for the Clinton panelists, naturally, who remain firmly of the opinion that Democrats still owe her the nomination. Hopefully they're willing to personally fund the rest of her campaign, because it's hard to imagine who else will be looking to pour money into this sinkhole.
***
Update: After about eight minutes of airtime, Larry King appears to have been sent home in favour of more Anderson Cooper. Although it's entirely possible Larry is still talking, and they just haven't told him he's off the air.
Adam Radwanski, 06/05/08 at 1:18 PM EDT
Margaret Wente uses her column in today's Globe to take aim at Insite's supporters, or at least to play devil's advocate. The salient points, for those who don't manage to sneak past the dreaded subscriber wall: "neutral research is hard to find," because most scientific studies "have been conducted by the same small band of true believers." And the most "fair-minded" report available, from Tony Clement's advisory committee, came up with more "mixed" findings than the safe injection site's backers have claimed - neither a "ringing endorsement" not a "condemnation."
I'm not sure it's entirely fair to allege that scores of reputable researchers writing for major international scientific journals are doctoring their findings to support their pre-existing bias. And I'd point out, again, that when the RCMP apparently tried to advance its pre-exisitng bias, it wound up inadvertently getting research that instead sang Insite's praises.
But even if you were to decide Insite's fate based solely on the advisory committee's report, I still don't see how you could decide against an extension.
No question - it's more equivocal than most of the other available studies. But read the report and you'll discover that's because, in almost every regard, it says that more research is needed.
Take what's probably the most discouraging section. Elsewhere, the report tells us that overdose deaths (albeit possibly just one per year) are prevented, and that the site has led to increased use of rehab programs. But on needle-sharing and the spread of disease, it's more skeptical - noting "very wide ranging estimates for the number of HIV cases that might have been prevented" and questioning the "assumptions" on which mathematical modelling has been based.
Then we get to the "limitations of research" into the needle-sharing, which reads pretty much like it does in every section: "More objective evidence of sustained changes in risk behaviours and a comparison or control group study would be needed to confidently state that SISs have a significant impact on these behaviours."
Just to be clear, then: The pilot project has produced generally positive results to date. According to even this "fair-minded" report, it has no ill effects on anyone - including the surrounding community, which generally supports it. And more extensive research needs to be conducted on how much good these sorts of facilities can achieve.
Remind me again why there's any debate as to whether Insite's licence should be extended?
Adam Radwanski, 05/05/08 at 3:28 PM EDT
You'd be hard-pressed to look at the current Liberal caucus and find anyone with a legitimate claim to being its conscience. But until 2004, a very reasonable case could have been made for Charles Caccia on that front.
In his latter years as an MP, Caccia was regarded by many Liberals as an anachronism - an old-school bleeding-heart type who'd been left behind by his pragmatic party. But he was also a rarity in that party - someone with a strong, clearly defined set of values who worked diligently and without much personal ambition to advance them.
As it turns out, the old guy wasn't quite so out of touch as everyone thought. While Jean Chretien took went back-and-forth on whether to support the Iraq War, and Paul Martin hinted that he might have sent troops, Caccia was one of its most vocal opponents. He was on the environment before it became so fashionable that the Tories are now more firmly on the bandwagon than the Liberals were five years ago. And he repeatedly chastised his colleagues - to no avail, obviously - for the leadership-related infighting that would eventually tear apart his party.
For his trouble, Caccia lost the Liberal nomination in the riding he'd held since the dawn of the Trudeau era. Mario Silva, the youthful former municipal politician who replaced him, is perfectly inoffensive; he's also yet to bring anything to the Liberal caucus that dozens of other backbenchers don't provide. You have to think that a party desperately trying to figure out what it is and what it stand for would have been better served by having Caccia in its ranks for the final four years of his life.
Adam Radwanski, 02/05/08 at 7:06 PM EDT
Tony Clement is taking heat again for his increasingly indefensible antipathy toward Insite, this time for apparently discouraging research into the safe-injection facility even as he purported to want more of it.
This being a bit of a pet issue, I'm inclined to go off on Clement. But since others already have that covered, I'll move things along a bit with a curious side-story from the same International Journal of Drug Policy article that goes after Clement (not yet available online, as far as I can tell):
"It is also interesting that the national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has funded several reviews of SIF [safe injection site] research. Interestingly, when the first two reviews ... suggested that SIF are likely a useful tool to reduce drug-related harm," the RCMP issues a press release in an effort to distance itself from the conclusions of those reviews. They subsequently funded a known anti-harm-reduction activist to prepare a third review. This review was recently placed on a website funded by the Drug Free America Foundation and operated by the Institute on Global Drug Policy. Neither of these organizations is a scientific body..."
I'm never entirely comfortable with police forces or their leaders wading uninvited into social policy debates. But attempting to manipulate those debates toward their preferred outcome in the manner the Journal alleges takes it to a whole other level, doesn't it?
Adam Radwanski, 02/05/08 at 2:23 PM EDT
As a general rule, activists who are disruptive enough to bash their leader in public but not brave enough to put their names to it are the sorts of people political parties are better off without. This is doubly true when their anonymity allows them to have a very casual relationship with the truth, which appears to be the case for at least one "long-time Liberal organizer" quoted in this story.
“Why would anyone send money in when they know the party will just use it to keep propping up a lousy Conservative government?" he gripes. "It's nuts."
Fair enough. But then this: "We had a solid financial footing when Dion took over and it has been completely frittered away on a Harper majority.”
Um, no. No you didn't. You'd managed to climb out of the debt incurred leading up to the 2006 election. Leadership campaigns, which sell a lot of memberships and collect a lot of delegate fees, have a way of helping with that. But by the time Dion took over, your party was already having a lot of trouble soliciting donations.
That was partly because most of the available dollars were going toward the leadership candidates, some of whom are still cutting into them to pay off their debts. Mostly, it's because life after Bill C-24 - the campaign finance legislation with which Jean Chretien dramatically changed the rules of the game - has been much crueller to the Liberals than to the other parties.
This is pretty basic stuff, which one imagines any senior Liberal is well aware of. For most of its time in power, the party relied on a relatively small number of people with deep pockets, most of whom hailed from the business community. That allowed it to get by without much effort to attract grassroots financial support, and with little idea how to use modern methods to do so. Now that it's no longer possible to collect large corporate donations, the Liberals are pretty much up the creek - all the more so because to they extent that they can still find ways to inject some money into the coffers, their old business friends are much less inclined to do so for an opposition party than one in government.
Dion's leadership is obviously not helping matters. But as evidenced by their fundraising woes in 2006 and early '07, before he'd had the chance to put his stamp on the party, this is one of the many areas in which the Liberals' problems go well beyond him. To suggest otherwise is so simple-minded that you'd be hard-pressed to find any Liberal willing to put his name to it.
Adam Radwanski, 01/05/08 at 6:23 PM EDT
On the same day that Lawrence Martin takes a leap of faith in Paul Martin, suggesting he's "splendidly suited" to a Jimmy Carter-like role in public policy development, the former prime minister repays him with this.
Nobody remotely in the mainstream will dispute that natives have a right to non-violent protest, even if it sometimes proves inconvenient for the rest of us. Nor would anyone - federal officials included - argue that land claims have been resolved in suitably expedient fashion. But there's a long way between stating the obvious and effectively endorsing blockades and occupations, which is what Martin - when he's not rather amusingly likening such activities to his own rebellious youth - appears to be doing.
This isn't the first time Martin has flirted with actively encouraging disruptive protests in response to his successor's policies. Last month, you'll recall, he warned a committee that failure to adopt his Kelowna Accord might invite confrontation. It's unclear from CP's report whether his latest comments were in reference to Kelowna as well as land claims, but the message is starting to get consistent: Do aboriginal policy his way, or suffer the consequences.
I maintain that his way didn't work, or at least wouldn't have if allowed to run its full course. But even if you think he had it right, there appears to be an unhealthy petulence to Martin's approach to this issue. I don't question the sincerity of his concern for the plight of aboriginals, and I don't think many would. But I do wonder if this is someone capable of "offering a spirit of conciliation and compromise" in the way that my colleague imagines.
