1. The coalition conundrum. Bob Rae is dismissing the latest salvo from Stephen Harper’s Conservatives – that he is laying new groundwork for a Liberal-Bloc-NDP coalition – as “predictable hysteria from the dark side.”
“The Harperites have one way of practising politics: it’s called ‘demonize and smear.’ It’s all a little silly,” the senior Toronto Liberal MP told The Globe in reaction to a series of Tory talking points that will be circulated Friday.
Harper strategists produced the memo as a result of a recent post on Mr. Rae’s website in which he reminisced about the 25th anniversary of the 1985 Liberal-NDP accord in Ontario. He was leading the NDP at the time and in the post he hinted that such a deal could happen federally.
“Rae is just the latest Ignatieff Liberal this week to re-start discussions about forming a new Liberal-Bloc Quebecois-NDP Coalition,” the Conservative memo says, noting that such a coalition would be “a recipe for uncertainty and instability.”
The Tories also suggest what would happen if a coalition was to be formed. “Canada’s economic recovery would be in the hands of Bob Rae, a failed former NDP premier and Jack Layton, an untested tax and spend NDP leader; and Canada’s government would be held hostage by the Bloc Quebecois, a party committed to the break-up of Canada.”
Mr. Rae is rolling eyes, although he likes the fact the memo links to his website. “Appreciate the reference to the website, where people can read an interesting account of what actually happened from 1985 to 1987,” he told The Globe. “Good things were done and it’s important to remember them. Also important to remember how our constitution actually works.”
He dismisses the rest of the talking points as “Harperite ‘boiler plate’ … hyperactive spin, personal attacks, and completely inaccurate tangents.”
“I was fighting separatism when Stephen Harper was flirting with Alberta firewalls,” Mr. Rae said. “When he isn’t reading plagiarized speeches from John Howard, he’s waiting for the U.S. to tell him what to do on climate change.”
(Photo: Mr. Rae and Ontario Liberal leader David Peterson prepare for an election debate in August, 1990. Hans Deryk/The Canadian Press)
2. All staffers are not created equal. The YouTube video is called “Jason Kenney’s selective memory” and Liberals are ensuring it is making the rounds on Parliament Hill. That’s because it shows the Immigration Minister telling two stories – and among politicos there is a certain deliciousness in catching a senior minister saying one thing in opposition and another when he assumes power.
In the clip, Mr. Kenney is first seen explaining to CTV’s Tom Clark his government’s recent decree that ministerial aides cannot testify at committees. The Conservatives that staffers who have recently appeared before Commons committees have been abused, insulted and intimidated by opposition MPs.
No more, the Tories say. Instead, their ministers will speak on their behalf in the spirit of ministerial accountability.
But Mr. Kenney goes further in his defence of the Harper government’s new edict: “I was a pretty aggressive opposition member,” he says. “I don’t ever recall in that decade current political staff members of the government being called before committees to testify.”
But the video tells another story. It then shows a much more youthful Mr. Kenney standing on the opposition bench in the House of Commons, his voice full of outrage and his hands waving, as he charges that only 40 of 130 prospective witnesses have testified before a Commons committee looking into polling contracts.
He rails on about the fact that there “are dozens of political staffers” – and he names them – who the opposition wants to hear from at the committee.
Indeed, in 2004 in opposition, Stephen Harper and his team were critical of the then-governing Liberals for shutting down hearings on the sponsorship scandal before political staffers could be called as witnesses as part of hearings by the public accounts committee.
When the Liberals were later reduced to a minority, the Conservatives worked with the other parties in 2005 to successfully call former staffers, including Warren Kinsella, who had been chief of staff to the Public Works minister, David Dingwall, and others as witnesses before the same committee in connection with polling contracts flagged by the Auditor-General.
“I appeared,” Mr. Kinsella said in an interview Thursday. “I don’t think any of us wanted to be there, but the Conservatives had issue subpoenas. You can’t ignore a subpoena.”
He remembers that the MPs were “civil,”, however “it wasn’t an experience I’d recommend to everyone.”
“But I think voters see [the Harper government’s current] stance for what it is: one rule for them and different rules for everyone else. … Their excuse seems to be that backroom folks should be protected – now. They didn’t feel that way before.”
With a report from Bill Curry
