What's In a Name

When Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay agreed to their marriage of convenience nine years ago, they dropped the word "Progressive" from the party brand. It was a momentous omission and a harbinger of things to come -- particularly the roboscam scandal. It signalled that everyone outside the party's narrowly defined limits was prey -- either to be destroyed, neutralized or captured.

Linda McQuaig writes that it is hard to imagine the old Progressive Conservative Party engaging in the nasty, take no prisoners politics that the Harperites practice -- not just because the technology required was unavailable, but because of who led the old party:

Deliberate voter suppression would have seemed inconceivable in a Conservative party headed by Joe Clark or Robert Stanfield. But the gloves-off Harper partisans have shown such a taste for American-style electoral hardball — by, for example, misrepresenting Liberal Irwin Cotler in a phone-call campaign deemed “reprehensible” by the (Conservative) Speaker of the House — that voter suppression perhaps seemed to them like just one tiny step further over the foul line.

Certainly the use of call centres in political campaigns has been imported from the United States. The Conservatives have made use of such American firms as Front Porch Strategies to help them reach voters. But, the problem is, Andrew Coyne writes in today's National Post,  that call centres treat voters as prey:

The party calling knows who you are, which party you support, and what sorts of issues people like you are concerned about, and in the intimacy of that phone call, can tell you exactly what you want to hear, without concern for how the same message might resonate with other voters. What the mass media of the 20th century largely took away from the parties — the ability to say one thing to one group of voters and another, sometimes contradictory thing to another — the micro-media of the 21st century has restored.

It's standard operating procedure at all call centres. And, therefore, they should be banned from the political process:

I get why the parties think this way. What I don’t get is why the rest of us should: why we should consent to being treated in this condescending, manipulative way — still less why we should help the parties do it. Yet the reality is that this sort of campaigning could not be conducted without the collusion of the state, of the government that belongs to us. It is time it stopped.

The parties could not conduct these massive phone campaigns, for starters, if Elections Canada did not make available to them its list of registered voters. It did not always do so. It should stop.

They could not do so, likewise, had they not arranged to exempt themselves from the “do not call” lists to which private telemarketers are subject. Neither could the parties maintain quite such sophisticated voter databases had they not also exempted themselves from the relevant privacy laws. Both of these privileges should be withdrawn.

The immediate problem is to find out who is responsible and to apply Canada's election laws as written. That means someone should go to jail. After all, the government says that its new crime bill -- which passed yesterday -- is all about protecting the public. Unfortunately, despite the rhetoric, the Conservatives have no intention of protecting the public, least of all from them. It's in the name.

Grecian Formula

Almost a year ago, Stephen Harper travelled to Greece to encourage Greek prime minister George Papandreou to screw his courage to the sticking point and go further down Austerity Road. Papandreou has since departed in disgrace and -- if Michael Den Tandt's reporting is correct -- Harper is about to apply his own version of Grecian formula to the Canadian economy.

Harper is not in the habit of listening to expert opinion. But he should lend an eye to Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times. Krugman writes that Greece illustrates how profligate spending in good times can get you into trouble. However,

trying to eliminate deficits once you’re already in trouble is a recipe for depression.

These days, austerity-induced depressions are visible all around Europe’s periphery. Greece is the worst case, with unemployment soaring to 20 percent even as public services, including health care, collapse. But Ireland, which has done everything the austerity crowd wanted, is in terrible shape too, with unemployment near 15 percent and real G.D.P. down by double digits. Portugal and Spain are in similarly dire straits.

And austerity in a slump doesn’t just inflict vast suffering. There is growing evidence that it is self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms, as the combination of falling revenues due to a depressed economy and worsened long-term prospects actually reduces market confidence and makes the future debt burden harder to handle. You have to wonder how countries that are systematically denying a future to their young people — youth unemployment in Ireland, which used to be lower than in the United States, is now almost 30 percent, while it’s near 50 percent in Greece — are supposed to achieve enough growth to service their debt. 

Harper claims that he is reforming OAS to save the young from an impossible financial burden. But youth unemployment is at record highs -- and the Canadian economy has lost jobs for the last six months. Harper proposes to do what Greece did -- at his urging.

Repeating the same policy and expecting a different result, Einstein said, is insanity. Stephen Harper is no Einstein.

There Are None So Blind

The Manning Centre came to Ottawa this weekend to celebrate Conservatism Triumphant. And it demonstrated, yet again, the party's fatal flaw -- its garrison mentality. Richard Ciano, head of Campaign Research, told his audience that the barbarians were at the gate:

Any deliberate attempt to frustrate a voter’s desire to cast a ballot with fraud or misdirection is completely deplorable,” he said. “But I also observe that the Liberal and NDP’s systematic undermining of confidence in Canada’s electoral process, and fear mongering about virtually all forms of live or automated telephone calls to voters, is equally cynical and self-serving.”

Ciano says opposition parties are manipulating Canadians into believing they received phoney calls because they’ve realized they are not as good as the Conservatives at reaching the electorate. “Rather than pull up their sleeves and get to work to eliminate our advantage they want to take the typical socialist/big government approach to their problem,” he said. “Create a public crisis of confidence in telephone contact so that they can ban it at the next possible opportunity.”

It was classic Conservative boiler plate. You can't trust "the others."

Andrew Coyne had the temerity to suggest that the party had internal problems and had lost its way:

That party was for a robust Parliament, with more powerful MPs, free of the party whip. Needless to say you are not that party. That party was for a balanced federation of equal provinces. But you are now the party of asymmetric federalism and nations within nations.

That party was against breaking election promises. That party was against patronage and pork-barreling. And that party was against corruption and political dirty tricks. I don’t know whether you are still that party.

And Preston Manning opined that party campaign workers needed "ethical training."


But no one dared suggest that the party's big guns were ethically challenged. Therefore, no one should be surprised if Vic Toews continues to harrumph that his opponents lack moral rectitude. Nor should they be surprised when Tony Clement insists that the question all civil servants should ask themselves is, "How can I do my job in an excellent way at less cost to taxpayers?" And, of course, no one will bat an eye when Stephen Harper complains that he and his party are victims of a "smear campaign."

Analysis -- particularly self-analysis -- was never the Conservatives' strong suit. Swift and Rabelais would milk this cast of characters for all they are worth. They knew that there was no better subject for comedy than the wilfully blind.

By Whatever Means Necessary

Consider what has happened in the last three elections: In 2006, the Harper Conservatives -- in their quest for a majority -- broke Canada's campaign finance laws. In 2008, they broke their own fixed date election law. In 2012, by suppressing key voters in key ridings, they flipped an election.

Why? Was it simply a pathological drive for power? Naomi Klein suggested in The Shock Doctrine that advocates of disaster capitalism around the world have recognized that democracy is an obstacle to the implementation of their program. It's hard to get the public to vote against its self interest. The solution is to rig the vote.

Michael Den Tandt reports that the budget Jim Flaherty will present at the end of the month will be built on the principles of disaster capitalism:

What's interesting about the government's intentions now, heading into the budget, is how determined the Conservatives are to press ahead with a full suite of significant reform, controversies be damned — and how far the plan extends beyond the OAS system. The change envisioned is huge.

For starters, the age of eligibility for OAS will indeed rise from the current 65 to 67 (though in grandfathered fashion, so that only those younger than 50 or so now will be affected), sources confirm. Beyond that, immigration, resource development, research and innovation and trade are also being overhauled, all while the government moves more aggressively than previously signalled to balance the books. (The Finance department has said budget cuts will be in a range between $4 billion and $8 billion. As I reported here last week, the overwhelming majority of Tory ministers and MPs are pushing hard for cuts at the very upper end of that range, because they want to campaign in 2015 on a balanced budget.)

Their majority gives the Conservatives a chance to set a radically different course for Canada. Den Tendt writes that they hope the debate on the budget will blow the robocall scandal off the radar screen.

If the opposition parties are wise, they will link the budget to the robocalls. After all, one wouldn't be possible without the other. The Harper government is dedicated to Milton Friedman's revolution. And they are prepared to implement it by whatever means are necessary.

What Did He Know, And When Did He Know It?

That was the question Senator Howard Baker asked as the United States Congress moved toward its decision to impeach Richard Nixon. And that is the question Lawrence Martin asks this morning. At present, we have no definitive answer:

Thus far, the evidence as to the incidence of the dirty work in the last election is mixed. No one should start jumping to any conclusions. It’s very unlikely that Stephen Harper was an architect of any widespread vote suppression campaign. Even if he were, it’s unlikely we’d ever know about it. Failproof deniability scenarios would surely have been put in place.

The real question, Martin writes, is whether Harper turned a blind eye. A review of the record would leave any unbiased observer suspicious:

It need be recalled that respect for democratic practises has never been high on the list of this prime minister and his coterie. If getting their way required running roughshod over the system, they were prepared to do it. There are dozens of examples, not the least which were Harper’s being found in contempt of parliament, his proroguing of parliament for crassly political ends, his use of closure and time limits to cut off debate, his putting in place a vetting and censorship second to none. Given all this, it would hardly be shocking to imagine voter suppression tactics being employed.

Against that record, Harper and Guy Giorno have offered categorical denials that their party was involved in any voter suppression scheme:

Harper and Guy Giorno, his former chief of staff, have both strongly denied any involvement by the Conservatives in the robocall scam. Those denials were so categorical that they should be accorded a good deal of weight. At the same time, a lot of denials on a lot of charges have been made by this government over the years and the record shows that many of them have not withstood the test of scrutiny. In matters relating to the Afghan detainees affair or the “in and out” scam, or the G-8 spending boondoggle to name just a few, the track record for truth telling is hardly impressive.

Canadians should not be prepared to take either man at his word. But they need an answer to Senator Baker's question.

Hepburn On Harper

Yesterday, Bob Hepburn publicly apologized to Brian Mulroney. He explained that Mulroney used to have no equal:

Several years ago, I wrote that Mulroney, more than any politician in modern history, is responsible for the current level of disdain and lack of interest that Canadians have for politicians and politics in general.

I based that claim on the fact that during his winning 1984 election Mulroney pledged to wipe out corruption and political patronage and bring new openness to government, but he ultimately failed voters badly.

Under his leadership, corruption, patronage, secrecy and government arrogance actually grew. The result was that, unlike any time before, Canadians in droves gave up on politicians of all parties, writing them off as simply “more of the same.”

But now, writes Hepburn, Mulroney has met his match -- and Stephen Harper has left him in the dust.  As proof, he offers the anecdotal evidence of a minister and formal NDP candidate:

I came to that realization while attending a funeral earlier this week in Leamington, a town as far away from Parliament Hill as you can get in southern Ontario.

After the service, I talked with a United Church minister who once ran, unsuccessfully, in Saskatchewan for the NDP. We started to talk about the NDP leadership race, but he quickly admitted he no longer follows politics closely. Politics today, he said, is more about sleaze, personal attacks, dirty tricks, cheating, and rarely about issues that affect the lives of people like those in Leamington.

And he pointed a finger specifically at the robocall affair, which he said reinforces the view that politics as practised today is dirty and corrupt.

The disillusioned minister gets to the core of the problem. When the investigation is over -- either from Elections Canada or a full public inquiry -- Canadians will be presented with a manual on how to steal an election in the 21st century.

Then the question becomes, "What are we prepared to do about it?"

The Drums Are Getting Louder

The beat goes on. And it gets louder. Mitt Romney claims that President Obama is a weakling:

“If Barack Obama is re-elected,” Romney robotically swaggered in Georgia, “Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change if that’s the case.”

Maureen Dowd doubts that Romney understands international affairs -- and Israel in particular. But he blusters on:

I will station multiple aircraft carriers and warships at Iran’s door,” he said as if he were playing Risk. Not afraid to employ “military might” (or alarming alliteration), Romney wrote a blank check to Bibi Netanyahu, who governs a nation roiling with reactionary strains, ultra-Orthodox attacks on women and girls and attempts at gender segregation, and increasing global intolerance of the 45-year Palestinian occupation.

Then there is Liz Cheney. She carries her father's torch --and assumes that the old man knew what he was talking about:

At Aipac, Liz Cheney urged that we put ourselves in Israeli hands because “America’s track record on predicting when nations reach nuclear capability is abysmal.” She’s right about that, given her father’s wildly erroneous assertions about W.M.D.s in Iraq.

“There is no president,” she outrageously averred, “who has done more to delegitimize and undermine the state of Israel in recent history than President Obama.” 

My father -- a veteran who spent the Second World War behind anti-aircraft guns in the Pacific-- was of the opinion that those most willing to fight wars are those who never will.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Jackasses Out Of Control?

"The jackasses at Elections Canada are out of control," Stephen Harper wrote when he was president of the National Citizens Coalition. Harper has hated Elections Canada for a long time. In 2001, he took the electoral watchdog to court over what had been law in this country since 1938:  Real time election results from Eastern Canada could only be released in western Canada after polls had closed in the west.

Harper waxed poetic about freedom of information:

“Iron-fisted bully tactics have no place in a free and democratic society,” Mr. Harper wrote   .  . .  . “Information is power. The less control the government has over the flow of information, the less control it can exert over its citizens. We cannot allow the government to dictate what information we can and cannot publish.”

As is so evident ten years later, there is no connection between what Mr. Harper says and what he does. That was obvious again yesterday when the Conservatives insisted that the Liberals open their phone bank database, while refusing to do the same. Dean Del Maestro claimed there was no need for reciprocity because, "obviously our party is not behind the calls."

And, after having seen Vic Toews' internet security bill, Canadians have the right to ask, "Are these guys for real?" Unfortunately, they are all too real -- and all too unaccountable.

The Rise Of The Uninterested

Susan Delacourt puts the robocall scandal into wider perspective. It has everything to do with "undecided" voters. The trouble is, Delacourt writes, "undecided" has become a synonym --an inaccurate synonym -- for "uninterested:"

In a 1971 interview with the Canadian Press, pollster Martin Goldfarb said that his art -- still new to this country then -- was useful only for appealing to the 10 per cent of the electorate who had the power to move the fortunes of the parties either way.

“I think our research could be enough in a close election to win or lose. If it’s tight, we make that much difference,” said Goldfarb, who went on to become the Liberals’ official party pollster for the next two decades.

Nowadays,  the political dynamics are far more volatile. The people who describe themselves as undecided, all the way up to voting day,  has hovered as high as  30 or even 40 per cent  during many of our recent elections. If [Harper adviser Patrick] Muttart is correct, these people may be not so much undecided as simply uninterested -- making it all the more difficult to motivate them toward the ballot box.

And of course, the corollary is that it’s all the easier to keep them away from the voting booths, too. The slightest inconvenience -- a changed polling location -- may be enough to  suppress the vote.

It does not take a great deal of effort to convince these folks not to vote -- and modern technology leverages even that small effort. But there is more to it than that. Delacourt writes that choosing one's leaders has become like shopping. And modern marketers know that self-induced simpletons prefer simple messages:

Voting has become more like shopping in modern Canada with each decade since the Second World War.  And robo-calls are the hard sell  in a political marketplace where it’s difficult to get people buying anything -- or even to enter the store, to continue the metaphor. 

The Conservatives, writes Delacourt, are the people who best understand -- and who best appeal to -- the uninterested. Other parties aren't far behind. That does not bode well for the future. If choosing a prime minister hinges on using the same techniques one uses to choose a breakfast cereal, the choice will be between Captain Crunch and Tony the Tiger.

The Man Behind The Curtain

It didn't have to come to this. Riding out what is becoming known as the "Robocon Scandal" was not the only option open to Stephen Harper. He could have vowed to get to the bottom of it. He could have decided that discretion was the better part of valor. But, when you wave a red flag in front of Stephen Harper -- particularly a Liberal red flag -- he becomes a bull in a china shop and goes on a rampage.

Harper chose the path of sound and fury. And all the hot air simply fanned the flames. But it did more than that. When Charlie Angus rose in the House yesterday to announce that the Conservatives were confused about the names of two North Dakota call centres -- Prime Contact Group and Prime Contact Inc.-- he was simply continuing the process of pulling back the curtain on the prime minister and his party. Getting their facts straight has never been the Conservatives' strength, even though Harper insists that the opposition get theirs right.

Harper's challenge to the opposition parties to "Prove It!" has encouraged them to do just that. And, as time goes on, they keep pulling back the curtain. Canadians are beginning to see that The Wizard  -- so good at generating smoke and thunder -- is really a small, mean spirited man who lacks both discretion and valor.

Just a quick note. My wife and I will be away for the weekend. But I'll be back at our keyboard on Monday.

Listen For The Rhymes

"History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain wrote, "but it does rhyme." Stephen Harper's complaint that opposition charges of voter suppression are merely a "smear campaign" by sore losers, sounds remarkably like Spiro Agnew's claim that critics of the Nixon administration were "nattering nabobs of negativism." People forget that Agnew resigned his vice presidency after being charged with  -- and eventually convicted of -- corruption.

People also forget that Nixon's crime was not ordering a "third rate burglary." It was his attempt to cover it up. And they forget that, before he left office, several of his enablers resigned in disgrace and spent time in prison. The refrain from a popular song of the day listed the main culprits -- "Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean."

Everyone remembers Nixon's steadfast assertion the he was "not a crook." But they forget his much more significant -- and chilling -- assertion: "When the president does it, it's legal."  Peter Van Loan's assertion that his party's "reprehensible" phone behaviour in Irwin Cotler's riding was really just an exercise in free speech sounds eerily like Nixon.

And, yesterday, Andrew Coyne echoed Deep Throat's advice to Woodward and Bernstein:

So the question then becomes: who paid his expenses? And, broadening out, who footed the bill for similar operations, live or automated, in other ridings? As in any such investigation, “follow the money” and you cannot go far wrong.

Richard Nixon insisted that the Watergate break in was merely a rogue operation. He was eventually driven from office because the courts and the press did not let him off the hook.

Listen carefully and you can hear the rhymes.

Time To Get Angry

Both Tim Harper and Dan Gardiner have called for a public inquiry into the robocall scandal. Yesterday Gardiner wrote:

The Conservatives insist they want the truth to be exposed. If that's true, they must appoint a fully independent, fully empowered judicial inquiry.

And why shouldn't they? To paraphrase what many Conservatives said about warrantless Internet surveillance, they have nothing to fear if they have nothing to hide.

A public inquiry is the last thing Stephen Harper wants. He knows how the Gomery inquiry doomed Paul Martin's government and how it enabled his own. Despite his suggestions that opposition parties bring their evidence to Elections Canada, he will do everything he can do deny the agency access to any and all the information he possesses. Every effort will be made to run out the clock on this scandal.

Tim Harper reviews other successful attempts by this government to subvert its opposition:

When the Conservatives twice shut down this place there were sporadic protests and rallies packed with opposition operatives, but most Canadians couldn’t spell prorogue, let alone care about the ramifications.

When they were found to have violated Elections Canada spending rules in the so-called “in-and-out” case, Canadians not only yawned, they couldn’t understand the accounting skullduggery.

When they were found in contempt of Parliament, Conservative strategists boldly stated that a breach of an arcane rule would make no difference to voters, and they were right.

When they booted unfriendlies from their campaign rallies, limited journalists to a set number of questions and used supporters to boo the questions they didn’t like, the nation shrugged.

The Harper government will do everything in its power to put this fire out. It will be up to the opposition parties, Elections Canada, the Canadian press and -- ultimately -- Canadian voters to keep it burning.  As Tim Harper suggests, it's time for Canadians to get angry.

A Telling Difference

Bob Rae stood up in the House yesterday to announce that one of the members of the Liberal research staff -- Adam Carroll -- was responsible for the Twitter account which savaged Public Safety Minister Vic Toews:

"I want to offer to the minister my personal apology to him," Rae said. "Matters of personal and private conduct are not to be the subject of political attack or political rhetoric."

Rae's apology should be set against the Conservative response to Speaker Andrew Scheer's ruling that  robocalls which spread misleading information about Irwin Cotler -- the callers claimed that Cotler's retirement was imminent -- was "reprehensible"  behaviour.  Peter Van Loan stood up in the House and claimed that the callers were merely practicing their right to "free speech."

The differences couldn't be more stark. And, therefore, the prime minister's strategy to simply deny any party involvement in the widening scandal is not at all surprising. He and his party live in an alternate moral universe. They  -- as Mr. Toews tirade about opposition to his surveillance bill attests -- see themselves on the side of righteousness. It's "the others" who are on the side of Satan.

It is up to the opposition parties to hold the government to account. The Harper Party never admits a mistake.

No Need To Investigate?

Peter MacKay argues that there is no need for further investigation of the Robocall affair. These were isolated incidents, he says. And, anyway, "It's certainly not something our party condones, it's inappropriate behaviour to say the least."

But Lawrence Martin provides a catalogue of Tory subversion, starting with their first victory and the In and Out Affair. He then provides a list of twenty-one other transgressions -- including Tony Clement's "border security" spending in his riding, smearing Richard Colvin over Afghan prisoner documents, and smearing Irwin Cotler by using the same telephone techniques employed in the last election.

Martin's point is that this kind of behaviour is not isolated. It's standard operating procedure -- and it has been standard operating procedure from the beginning.

After awhile, things become painfully obvious. MacKay's claim that there is no need to  further investigate the Robocall affair is akin to saying the coming of Spring is an isolated incident.

Things Are Beginning To Stick

 
For five years, political pundits marvelled at how Stephen Harper managed to avoid being held accountable for actions and policies which most Canadians find abhorrent. He was the Teflon prime minister. Two weeks ago, the government's Internet surveillance bill blew up in its face. Last week, the Robocall scandal hit the headlines. And, finally, things are beginning to stick:

Andrew Coyne does not buy the spin that rogue campaign workers conceived of and carried out this scheme:

It beggars belief that local campaign workers in 18 different ridings could have separately hit upon the same scam, or carried it out without the knowledge of anyone outside the riding. The notion that the whole thing could be put down to one over-zealous young campaign worker, as some are putting about, is even less credible. Whoever did this would not only have to have the capacity to organize and fund a national robocalling operation. They would also have to have the lists of names and phone numbers to call. Such information would be closely held with respect to the party’s own supporters. But how many people in the party would have access to lists of Liberal supporters? And how did they get them?

More than that, he writes, this breech speaks volumes about the culture of the Conservative Party:

It is a party that believes it has had to fight twice as hard to get where it is, a belief that has only hardened through each of the many compromises it has made on the way. The progression is sadly familiar. Having first compromised its beliefs, a party finds it is easier to compromise its principles; having compromised its principles, it learns to compromise its ethics; and compromises of ethics, as we have seen in other parties, lead sooner or later to compromises with the law.

It is a culture which Stephen Harper carries in his bone marrow. He was probably not told specifically of the operation -- on purpose. But Bob Rae is right:

“The prime minister has created a Nixonian culture,” Rae said. “This stuff doesn’t happen unless the boss lets it happen.”

“He has allowed to seep into his party and into his organization a culture of attack and, frankly, a culture of deception and dirty tricks, where almost anything goes.”

This one will stick -- if the opposition parties refuse to let the prime minister off the hook.

What Does Romney Believe?

Things have not been going well for Mitt Romney. His speech in Detroit fell flat. And, this week, he made yet another gaffe. On the subject of the economy, he diverged radically from Republican doctrine. Cutting spending, he said, was a simplistic solution to America's problems:

If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.” 

Republicans were aghast. Almost immediately, he issued a clarification. A Romney spokesman said,“The governor’s point was that simply slashing the budget, with no affirmative pro-growth policies, is insufficient to get the economy turned around.”

Paul Krugman claims that the gaffe proves Romney is a "closet Keynesian." In fact, he writes, Romney's real problem is that he isn't a Republican -- at least as Republicans define themselves in 2012. He keeps trying to please the Republican base. And that, writes Krugman, is why Romney is running a campaign "of almost pathological dishonesty:"

Every one of the Romney campaign’s major themes, from the attacks on President Obama for going around the world apologizing for America (he didn’t), to the insistence that Romneycare and Obamacare are very different (they’re virtually identical), to the claim that Mr. Obama has lost millions of jobs (which is only true if you count the first few months of his administration, before any of his policies had taken effect), is either an outright falsehood or deeply deceptive.

If Romney does become the Republican nominee, he will have done so at a terrible price. He will have convinced voters that he believes in convenience. No one questions his devotion to his family or his religion. But, more and more, they are concluding that his political principles depend on which way the wind is blowing.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

This Is "Freedom"

Modern conservatives like to say that they stand for individual liberty. But, Lawrence Martin writes,

in both Canada and the United States, the conservative parties are now controlled by virulent wings that are prepared to go to aggressive lengths to achieve their ambitions. The danger is that, in the name of freedom, they bring forth the contrary.

Martin then goes on to catalogue the Harper government's attempts to move in exactly the opposite direction from the one it professes:

Last week, the Conservatives were planning to go ahead with a system of national online surveillance. But a national outcry against the plan (originally advocated by the Liberals) will likely force amendments.

Earlier in the month, from a government that took no umbrage at Guantanamo-style justice, came the decision to accept information derived from torture from foreign governments, in some cases. The Conservatives, we recall, have also vowed to bring back long-expired post-9/11 antiterrorism powers that allow Canadians to be locked up without charges.

Freedom of expression has also been in the news. Last week, disgusted representatives from the Canadian science community sent an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for him to stop muzzling federal researchers. Under the government’s extensive vetting system, civil servants and diplomats are less free to voice their views than they have ever been. Also recently, opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline were pilloried as foreign-financed radicals and, according to one sworn affidavit, as enemies of the state. And during last fall’s Durban summit on climate change, the Conservatives denied opposition members their usual right to accreditation.

Yesterday came the report from Elections Canada that, during the last election, a firm  made telephone calls telling voters that the location of their polls had changed. It was a crude attempt to suppress opposition votes. The firm, Racknine, was under contract to the Conservative Party.

The pattern is pretty obvious. The Conservatives do not practice what they preach.  There is no limit to the liberties they will take to suppress the liberties of individual Canadians. In fact, Martin writes:

The accumulation of dirty tricks is beginning to sound like something out of Nixonland. The last election, we recall, was the one where citizens were hauled out of Conservative campaign rallies for the sin of having marginal ties to other parties.

 Behold the Conservative cabal. "Such men," said Caesar, "are dangerous."

Grace Under Pressure

Paul Martin may have earned his reputation as Mr. Dithers. But, as Geoffrey Stevens points out, he possesses something that Stephen Harper and Vic Toews lack -- grace under pressure. Toews' wild diatribe about "standing with child pornographers" was not the first such Conservative outburst on that subject. Back in 2004, in what Stevens calls the "frenzied finale" to that election campaign,

the Conservatives, then in opposition, issued a pair of press releases attacking their opponents — then prime minister Paul Martin and the Liberals and Jack Layton and the NDP — for being in favour of child pornography

There was a kiddie porn/murder trial in Toronto in the news at the time, and the Conservative war room saw an opportunity to exploit the public's revulsion. They issued a gratuitous press release headed: "The NDP Caucus Supports Child Pornography?" and a second: "Paul Martin Supports Child Pornography?" That release stated: "Today, Martin says he's against child pornography. But his voting record proves otherwise."

Challenged by reporters later that day, Harper did not give an inch. "I'm not going to, in any way, give the Liberal Party any break in its record on child pornography," he said at a campaign stop. "It is disgraceful, they have had multiple opportunities to do something about it, and they have refused. ...I will attack them on it, and if (the Liberals) want to fight the rest of the election on it, good luck to them."

Martin's response was simple and direct:

 "Look," he told reporters, "this is personal. I am a father and I am a husband, and he has crossed the line. He should apologize.

"Martin didn't get an apology. However, the Tory war room did retract the release attacking Martin, although not the one attacking Layton and the NDP.

That response says a lot about Paul Martin. It says even more about Steven Harper. Martin possessed grace under pressure. Harper doesn't know what grace -- under pressure or otherwise -- is.

Incidentally, "grace under pressure" was Hemingway's definition of courage.

Fool's Game

On the subject of Ontario's finances, Tom Walkom -- who holds a PhD in economics --  echoes the argument Paul Krugman has been making for three years: This is no time to imitate Europe. Now is not the time to make draconian spending cuts:

Government workers are laid off to save money, which leads to higher unemployment. Higher unemployment reduces tax revenues, thereby widening fiscal deficits. Governments are forced to borrow more to cover these shortfalls, thus increasing debt.

We should have learned that lesson during the Great Depression. Our leaders, who lack long term memories, have forgotten it. There is one similarity, though, between Ontario and the Euro nations. Ontario is hobbled by a currency it can't control:

Spain for instance, is unable to make its exports more competitive through currency devaluation because it no longer has a national currency to devalue. Instead it uses the euro over which it has virtually no control.

In the same way, Ontario manufacturers are losing export markets because the currency they use — the Canadian dollar — is priced too high.

One reason why Caterpillar Inc. was encouraged to move its locomotive operations from Ontario to Indiana this year is that Canada no longer has a currency advantage in American markets.

Don't expect that to change anytime soon. The Harper government, which is fixated on selling tar sands oil, is presently engaged in what Jeffrey Simpson calls a "fool's game."  It's a fool's game because putting all of our eggs in the resources basket masks the problem of national productivity:

Canadians are so damn lucky. We just dig and pump and cut and ship, and we never seem to run out. We just hope commodities prices remain high.

All those resources can be a fool’s game. Pumping and digging and cutting can keep the country comfortable, but they do little to address the country’s biggest challenge – a sagging competitive position. All those natural resources soak up capital; they usually don’t require much innovation or processing.

After World War II, we invested heavily in industry, throwing off our traditional roles as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Harper government -- as is true in so many ways -- wants to return us to the past. It exploits Canada's resources while it lets the country's industrial base atrophy.

Ontario's challenge is to reinvigorate its industrial heartland -- without help from Ottawa. It cannot do that if it makes draconian cuts now.

Rule By The Limited

Today is High Noon for Gary Webster. Christopher Hume writes in the Toronto Star that:

Already, [Mayor Rob] Ford has inflicted serious damage on the city, painful, but none of it fatal. However, if a group of his designated cronies actually does fire Toronto Transit Commission chief general manager Gary Webster Tuesday afternoon as expected, it will be time to start worrying about the future of things.

Ford and his brother -- who claims that the TTC needs "an enema" -- have never had a sense of how things work in a democracy. Hume writes:

Ford’s actions demonstrate a degree of disrespect that raises the question of his ability to lead. Governance itself doesn’t care about outcomes; only how they are reached. That’s why process matters, especially in a democracy, which by its nature, is divided and fractious.

An apostle of the New Philistinism, Ford represents the revenge of those who are guided by their guts, instead of their heads. They are apostles of Ignorance.Their politics stretch well beyond city hall. Vic Toews treated us to more of the same last week in Ottawa. Claiming to believe in limited government, they insist that power be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

Ford and Toews offer stark proof that today's apostles of limited government are people of limited talent and limited vision.