Say Nothing. Do Nothing.

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It's interesting to compare Stephen Harper to the much reviled Brian Mulroney. Michael Den Tandt writes:

Back to Mulroney who, at the time he stepped aside in 1993, was considered the most popularly disliked Canadian leader ever. “He bugs us still,” wrote Peter C. Newman years later. Controversy followed Mulroney everywhere. His cabinet was a revolving door of ministers moving in and out due to various infractions and peccadillos. There was Meech, the rise of the Bloc, Charlottetown. Later there was, of course, the Schreiber affair.

But Mulroney got some very important, difficult things done; free trade with the United States and Mexico; an acid-rain treaty and Arctic sovereignty agreement with the United States.; the GST, which made it possible for Paul Martin in the mid-1990s to balance the books; and leadership among the Western democracies in the fight against South African apartheid.

Mulroney managed all this, and the headwaters of his constitutional failures, too, by focusing on the very big files; and by making it his business to forge personal bonds with every member of his caucus, including the backbenchers dismissed by his predecessor, Pierre Trudeau, as “nobodies.” Mulroney was, like him or loathe him, a terrifically skilled politician, and ambitious for the country to boot.

Mulroney has put forward his suggestions for Senate reform:

Appoint two eminent persons, a former auditor general and a former Supreme Court judge, and have them craft a new plan for Senate spending and residency, the former Tory prime minister told the Canadian Bar Association in Montreal last week. Then have the PM of the day appoint candidates from lists provided by the provinces.

From Harper we have heard nothing; and he has done nothing. That appears to be Standard Operating Procedure these days:

On aboriginal affairs, in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, there is the sound of crickets. On assisted suicide, despite a Supreme Court ruling months ago requiring a new law, crickets. On pipeline development, supposedly the very core of the nation’s economic future, there is a witless Twitter campaign by Conservative MPs against Tim Hortons, sparked by the donut chain’s spurning of ads for pipeline builder Enbridge­ — itself an idiotic cave-in to the now fashionable distaste for “Big Oil.”

Lost on the Tory Timbit warriors, seemingly, is that neither they nor their leader have extended the least energy, consumed the least political capital, in oh, two years, trying to persuade Canadians pipelines are environmentally safe and economically necessary.

Apparently, Mr. Harper believes that, if he keeps his mouth shut, he will be re-elected.

Something Doesn't Add Up

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After Michael Sona was convicted of election fraud, Stephen Harper had nothing to say, even though the judge in the case concluded that Sona did not act alone. Michael Harris writes:

After all, the fraudsters who broke the law almost certainly used information from the Conservatives’ Constitutent Information Management System, CIMS, to come up with the lists used in making the illegal calls. Isn’t the PM worried about the alleged theft and abuse of this proprietary information, if it was a theft? Might it not happen again? If we take him at his word that the whole thing wasn’t done by the Conservative Party of Canada with a little help from its friends, why wouldn’t he want the culprits brought to justice?

The Conservatives' electoral record is far from clean:

With multiple convictions for cheating at elections, including former cabinet minister Peter Penashue and the PM’s former parliamentary secretary Dean del Mastro, there is a new stench in the air.

Robert Fife of CTV News is reporting that 10 top managers at disgraced engineering firm SNC-Lavalin and their wives wrote personal cheques to two federal riding associations that were not in electoral contention. The cheques to the non-contender ridings totalled $25,000.

Thirty thousand dollars was then transferred from these loser ridings to the riding of Christian Paradis, then Harper’s Minister of Public Works and Government Services. Paradis is now Harper’s Minister of International Development. SNC Lavalin would not say if the managers were reimbursed by the company.

On these subjects, Harper has had nothing to say. And then there is the question of the auto bailout:

Between Ottawa and Queen’s Park, just under $14 billion of public money was forked over to the automakers to stave off bankruptcy. The Auditor General’s report issued last week shows it was not a well-planned rescue mission: it was more like dropping money out of airplanes, or throwing candy canes to kids off Santa’s float.

Despite the laughable claim of strong financial management skills, the Harper government did not require the companies to issue detailed reports on how they used the government’s $2.8 billion loan for capital expenditures and warranty claims.

That’s bad enough. But AG Michael Ferguson also found that there was absolutely no documentation on another $528 million given to General Motors. Parliament was, if not left in the dark, then certainly in the candlelight when it came to getting information on this debacle. The public reporting was beyond poor.

This is a prime minister who claims he possesses superb financial management skills and who gives lawbreakers no quarter.

Something doesn't add up.