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Posted by Scott Tribe on May 13, 2010, at 10:55 am |
I read this last night from Aaron Wherry over at Macleans:
The private investigator says the Prime Minister’s Office did not accurately report to the ethics commissioner the information he passed on to them. He says he has no evidence as to the conduct of Ms. Guergis in his “possession or knowledge.” The concern, he says, was “optics”.
But, the PMO’s chief parrot defends the decision, citing the evidence that Jaffer was using Guergis’ office and email accounts for his personal business dealings. So, since Harper hasn’t said a word yet about the reasons why Guergis was deposed, would that be his official reason why, since Soudas, his director of [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on May 11, 2010, at 12:32 pm |
Well, you see what happens when you cross Stephen Harper – he has no hesitation in throwing you under the bus. That’s not to say Helena Guergis might not deserve it – but I find it rather unseemly that Harper still refuses to exactly say why he sacked her the way he did, and decides that the best way to refute Guergis’s interview is to “leak” more “internal Conservative talking points” to Jane Taber at the Globe.
EDIT: I agree with some observers that this is the Conservatives closing ranks and trying to protect themselves from the Jaffer-Guergis fallout.
Posted by Scott Tribe on March 17, 2010, at 1:17 pm |
That’s apparently Stephen Harper’s view from his Google Youtube “interview”.
Normally, I’d be outraged, and post a long-winded rant about what a misleading and idiotic a statement that is, except Harper and his government (see Peter MacKay) have been saying that schtick for awhile (and a large portion of the Canadian electorate/public aren’t buying it) so it doesn’t surprise me he’d repeat it in a scripted tightly controlled “interview”.
Good response here though from a commentator at Susan Delacourt’s blog, that bears repeating:
Our troops didn’t commit torture, they reported it. Ottawa ignored, neglected and denied that those reports did exist, and, tried to destroy the reputation of the [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on January 10, 2010, at 12:38 pm |
I posted this yesterday as one of the contributors at the No Prorogue website in its blog section as an opinion piece; I reproduce it for everyone who reads my blog here .
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The best rebuttal I’ve seen to that attempted argument comes from Michael Den Tandt, in his op-ed in the Owen Sound Sun Times decrying Harper’s 2nd prorogue in 2 years:
…there’s another issue, overriding all the others: That is, very simply, cowardice. Prime Minister Harper prorogued Parliament last winter to get himself out of a serious political jam of his own making. Now he’s done the same thing again, and for the same reason. It’s [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on January 8, 2010, at 3:37 pm |
I almost hate to use this comparison, but Harper seems to be borrowing in so many words Stephane Dion’s line of “You think it’s easy to make priorities?” in using this excuse/justification for proroguing Parliament. As Aaron Wherry states, combine the Christmas/New Years break and the prorogue, and Parliament will be off for 83 days, and Harper is claiming he needs every single one of those days without Parliament sitting to plan something.
Apparently Harper and his Conservative government can’t chew gum and walk at the same time, or more accurately, can’t plan any economic priorities while being grilled in Question Period, or having pesky committees hold hearings that [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on January 5, 2010, at 8:09 pm |
Harper came out on his CBC interview with Peter Mansbridge tonight claiming that the Canadian public “don’t care” about the issue.
Well, Mr Harper, if people don’t care, then there should be no reason for you to not hand over the documents to Parliament and by proxy the Afghanistan Committee – as voted on and ordered by Parliament (as you’re eventually going to have to anyhow, I predict).
Concurrently, there should also be no reason if people don’t care why you can’t and haven’t been handing those same documents over to the Military Police Commission, which is authorized to read potential secret documents and refrain from releasing them [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on January 5, 2010, at 3:54 pm |
Very nicely done:
I’ve added that to my sidebar. The original article of hers on the badge’s creation is here. If you need instructions on how to add this to your blog/website, I’m sure she’d be willing to help you out. If she can’t, I can tell you the necessary code.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 31, 2009, at 11:28 am |
I have just a minor quibble with an otherwise excellent Andrew Coyne column at Macleans where he condemns Harper’s contempt of Parliament. I noted this part of his column, which seems a tad resigned or cynical at the reaction of “some folks”:
Each time Parliament allows one of these abuses to pass, its power is reduced a little more. Indeed, so diminished has it become that it is hard for some observers to muster much indignation at this latest assault: it’s only Parliament, after all. It’s exactly this sort of whittling away by degrees that has allowed closure, for example, to be invoked more or less routinely to cut [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 30, 2009, at 11:01 pm |
Stephen Harper’s decision to do a 2nd prorogue in just over a year even got Connie Fournier of the ultra-rightwing site Free Dominion upset enough to say this:
I don’t care what anyone says, repeated prorogation of Parliament, as a political strategy, is an affront to democracy.
This guy is mad with power!
That’s more objective and critical of Harper then I’d bet 99.9% of the Blogging Tory aggregate, which Free Dominion isn’t even a member of. I don’t know if Connie just pulled a radical conversion (as Little Green Footballs in the US recently did) or if this is just a 1 day thing, but credit where it’s [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 29, 2009, at 12:50 pm |
This is a very curious story over at Macleans on the sequence of events so far. Twenty eight countries have appointed officials to work with Richard Holbrooke on Afghanstan - the U.S. Special Represetative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who was personally picked by President Obama, and who reports directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Six months ago, Holbrooke personally requested the Canadian government for a representative from our country, and we still haven’t done anything, and apparently aren’t anywhere close to picking someone:
When Barack Obama appointed him at the beginning of 2009.. several countries immediately named Afghanistan-Pakistan envoys who would serve as direct interlocutors for Holbrooke. The Brits, the Germans, the [...]
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