Alarm Bells Should Be Going Off

The Harperites didn't consult Marc Mayrand when they drew up their election "reforms." And there was a reason they did everything they could to prevent him from testifying before the parliamentary committee looking into those reforms.

But testify he did.  And, Andrew Coyne writes, he shredded the bill:

The chief electoral officer, in his quiet, workmanlike way, simply shredded it, almost line for line, proposing more than two dozen amendments that would effectively rewrite the bill.

The provision banning “vouching” came in for particularly heavy fire: while the government insists the practice, by which voters who lack proper identification can have another voter vouch for them, has given rise to widespread voter fraud, Mr. Mayrand observed there was no evidence for this. It did not help the government’s position that the authority it cited in response, Harry Neufeld, author of a report on electoral irregularities in the 2011 election, later backed up Mr. Mayrand’s stance. (“I never said there was voter fraud,” he told Canadian Press.)

As is the case with almost all Tory legislation, there is no evidence to support the changes they advocate. But putting Pierre Polievre in charge of the bill's passage is a clear signal:

Entrusting the matter to Pierre Poilievre, among the most ruthlessly partisan ministers in a government filled with ruthless partisans, was an early warning sign. Sure enough, not content with blindsiding the chief electoral officer, the minister — for Democratic Reform! — gave media and opposition members the merest sniff of the mammoth bill before thrusting it upon Parliament, where, after the usual curtailing of debate, it was packed off to committee, whose hearings will be likewise restricted (hence Mr. Christopherson’s filibuster). This is not how a government interested in fairness conducts itself.

And the changes to campaign contributions sends another clear signal:

The bill would raise the limits on both contributions and spending. All parties would benefit from this — needlessly: there’s never been so much money in our politics — but the Conservatives, as the most successful fundraisers, would plainly benefit most.

Coyne is right:

Perhaps each measure would not seem so troubling on its own; nor even would the whole if the government did not seem so intent on smuggling it into law. But as it is I think some alarm bells should really be going off.

What Leaders Read

Earlier this week, Angela Merkel worried that Vladimir Putin was living "in another world." Leonoid Bershidsky writes that Putin does indeed inhabit another world -- not because he's crazy, but because he has read different books than those we have read:

Maria Snegovaya, a graduate student at Columbia University, provides a useful analysis of the sources of Putin’s ideology, rooted in the writings of early 20th century messianic, nationalist philosophers Nikolai Berdyayev, Vladimir Solovyov and Ivan Ilyin. To them, Russia had a mission to spread and maintain the Orthodox Christian faith on territories it controlled, and the West was the eternal enemy of that mission, perpetually trying to break up the Russian world. Snegovaya also recalls the 2006 book Third Empire: The Russia That Should Be, by Mikhail Yuriev, an entrepreneur and ideologue popular with Kremlin bureaucrats. In Yuryev’s utopia, Russia gathers up the lands of the old Russian empire, grabbing, among other areas, eastern Ukraine after a standoff with NATO. Two years before Russia’s small victorious war against Georgia, Third Empire described a Russian conquest of the disputed Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

His education has given him a world view which has little in common with our Western -- Renaissance inspired -- world view:

Putin’s world view is so different from that of Western politicians seeking to prevent a war that they are speaking different languages — not just in the linguistic sense. The only language they have in common is that of money, but it has little effect on Putin now.

In Putin’s world, the Russian civilization is clashing with the Western one. Money and the formalities of international law mean little in this existential struggle. Paradoxically, if the West is not willing to live by the harsh rules of this imagined world, it is going to watch Putin settle for less after threatening to take more. Specifically, Russia will keep formal or informal control of the Crimea, while the rest of Ukraine limps ahead on its nation-building path.

The disconnect with Russia mirrors our disconnect with the Islamic world. And -- for Canadians -- it raises the question, "What does Stephen Harper read?"

The Circular Course Of Things

Yesterday, Pauline Marois announced that Quebecers will be going to the polls on April 7th. She is prepared to defend her Charter of Values. But she has said nothing about holding a third referendum.

In 1980, my wife and I voted in the first referendum. But by 1995, like many of our generation, we had left Quebec -- not so much by choice but from necessity. I began my teaching career at a new high school in the Eastern Townships. The school's population was 1,100 students. By the time we left twelve years later -- because of Quebec's language law and a weak economy -- the school's enrolment was 300. We thought we better leave before they turned out the lights.

There are some who say that separatism is no longer an issue in Quebec. But, in the Toronto Star, Tom Walkom refers to Fredrick Nietzsche's definition of history. It was, said Nietzsche, “the unconditional and infinitely repeated circular course of all things.”

Walkom  then turns his attention to the subject of separation:

Certainly, separatism has been dismissed before. The PQ’s failure to win a referendum on sovereignty in 1980 was thought then to have put paid to the issue.

In 1989, with support for separatism hovering near 40 per cent, sovereignty was said to be dead and buried, The PQ’s then leader, Jacques Parizeau, was routinely dismissed as a fossil from another time.

Young people, we were told then, had abandoned sovereignty and become internationally minded.

But anyone who dismisses Quebec nationalism as a spent force doesn't understand Quebec. Certainly, Stephen Harper doesn't understand Quebec. In fact, his contempt for all the provinces gives sovereignists the best argument they have ever had for separation.

I make no predictions this morning about this election. But I do feel uncomfortable -- because we are again going to experience the circular course of things.

Manning Knows His Man

The report from Elections Canada on irregularities in the 2011 election is due at the end of the month. Lawrence Martin foresees three possible scenarios unfolding:

One is that Elections Canada finds that the dirty work was limited to just the riding of Guelph. In that case, no worries for Mr. Harper. We move on.

A second is that Elections Canada finds evidence of robocalls and other acts of subterfuge in many ridings, but leaves hanging the question of whether the Conservatives were the perpetrators. In this case, the party would likely assail Elections Canada as biased (“team jersey” wearers, as Mr. Poilievre recently hinted) and try to ride out the storm.

A third possibility is that Elections Canada comes forward with strong evidence that the party hierarchy was behind a concerted and widespread effort to subvert the voting system. This would be far bigger than the Senate expenses scandal – all hell would break loose. The Harper team’s fate would be sealed. Big-time Conservatives who spoke at the Manning conference could start revving up their leadership campaigns.

It's the third scenario that is causing the Harper Party to lose sleep. And that is the reason behind their insistence that the bill be passed quickly. Martin writes:

Some see the bill, with its downgrading of powers and many rule changes, as a bid to give the Conservatives an escape hatch from any culpatory findings by the agency’s investigation. James Sprague, a former Elections Canada lawyer, says the new act can be interpreted as forbidding the Elections Canada commissioner from disclosing any information that comes to the agency’s knowledge as a result of an investigation. Instead, it would be up to the director of public prosecutions to include the information in an annual report to the justice minister.

When Preston Manning suggested over the weekend that the bill was a barrier to democracy, he was not speaking theoretically. He knows his man.

The Coming Implosion

Michael Harris writes that the Harper Party keeps moving closer to its own self destruction. Last weekend, the Manning Conference stripped Mr. Harper naked. He is no longer the leader of Canadian conservatives. Preston Manning himself -- in polite language -- called Harper a dictator:

The man who laid the foundations for Stephen Harper’s political career in 1987 has urged the prime minister to restore democracy. Yikes! The only place you need to restore democracy is somewhere that it doesn’t exist. Was it possibly the gentlest way of telling someone they were a dictator?

Harper's objective is not to establish a conservative hegemony. It's power -- pure and simple. And the so called "Fair Elections Act" is a plan to retain power. Manning saw through the facade:

The elder statesman of Reform/Conservative politics in Canada said out loud what a lot of Canadians have been thinking for some time: Time to restore democracy, Mr. Prime Minister, not subvert it.

Give Elections Canada the power it asked for, rather than diminishing the power the CPC wished EC didn’t have in the Robocalls investigation. How do you improve elections by reducing the powers of EC? How does it help an investigation to inform the target of the scrutiny — unless you’re in favour of evidence disappearing?

Mr. Harper has no clothes. And he has nowhere to hide. And -- just as he failed to foresee the Great Recession -- he doesn't foresee the coming implosion.

No Solutions

Jeffrey Simpson writes that, in what used to be called "The White Commonwealth," Margaret Thatcher's children are in charge:

Mrs. Thatcher’s children, intellectually speaking, are prime ministers in four countries: Tony Abbott in Australia, Stephen Harper in Canada, David Cameron in Britain and John Key in New Zealand.

They are obviously not carbon copies of the Iron Lady, as their respective countries’ different political and economic circumstances require different approaches. But these conservative prime ministers are Thatcherites at heart. They see the state more as an impediment to growth and social progress than an asset, they think tax rates are too high and they believe the private sector can run most things most efficiently.

None of these leaders are what we used to call "moderate conservatives:"

In Australia, if one goes back a few conservative leaders, one recalls Malcolm Fraser and Robert Menzies. Canada had Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney. In the United States, there were the northeastern “Rockefeller” Republicans. And in Britain, there were Mrs. Thatcher’s “wets,” who she replaced, banished or marginalized – men such as Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine and Francis Pym.

Like the Iron Lady, they believe that "there is no such thing as society." And so, they don't look  to government to solve problems; nor do they have the vision to solve them.

With the future of the planet in the balance -- as Britain floods and Australia burns -- they have no solutions.

Under The Bus

Andrew Coyne writes that there is a distinct difference between conservatives and Conservatives. That difference was on display at this weekend's Manning Conference:

The Conservative party is supposed to be conservative. If the Manning conference has gotten more overtly partisan over the years, it may be because the party has gotten less overtly anything, other than unpleasant. Or rather, the leadership has. But looking at the contrast between this ostensibly non-partisan convention and its partisan predecessor, the thought occurs: this is the real Conservative convention. It is a gathering, if you like, of the Conservative party in exile.

The party that met in Calgary was not so much the Conservative party as the Harper party. It was run by and for Harper loyalists — think Pierre Poilievre — people who are happy to do whatever the leader wants done, say whatever the leader wants said, even if that means abandoning every core conviction the party has ever held. In its place is Harperism, less an ideology than a set of behaviours: the nastiness, the ruthlessness, the almost universal gracelessness, of which the decision to exclude the opposition parties from the mission to Ukraine was only the latest example.

The two types of conservatives -- small c and big C -- have decided to part company:

Nothing was said out loud, no knives were unsheathed, but this had the feel of a group of people preparing for a post-Harper party. From the title (“Next Steps”) to the speakers, a banquet of potential leadership contenders, the tone is of serious people who want to talk about serious ideas, stripped (mostly) of the hyper-partisan rhetoric and name-calling: the grown-ups, the good faith Conservatives.

The Manning attendees were told that their numbers are headed south. And Manning himself criticized Harperian election reforms, saying that the challenge was to increase election turnout. On the environment, he said that the Harper Party was "exasperating."

All of that was as it should be. Harper threw Manning under the bus. Manning was simply returning the favour.