It Will Be All About Integrity

Stephen Harper came to power howling about the lack of Liberal integrity. And the irony is that integrity will be Harper's undoing. Michael Harris writes:

Integrity is the great leveller — and that is bad news for Stephen Harper. It is the fatal deficit of all powermongers. The Harper government’s clothesline is sagging under the weight of dirty laundry.

The man who posed as a scourge against corruption has come to personify it. Consider the record:

Outcast former MP Bill Casey tells me that the PM changed the wording of the Atlantic Accord, cheating Maritimers out of the agreed-upon deal. The PM told him that the words said what he decided they said, case closed. Casey wouldn’t support his own government’s budget for that reason, and was cast out.

The Harper government fudged the numbers on the F-35 jet-fighter acquisition — by a minimum of $10 billion. When they were outed by the auditor general, the Parliamentary Budget Office and an independent audit, their response was more lies. Even Peter MacKay, then at Defence, admitted that cabinet had the higher number from DND but used the lower one instead.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has told whoppers about new policies designed to move science to the back of the bus, while the Harper government bulldozed its way through Parliament with omnibus legislation that leaves species at risk in Canada at the mercy of megaprojects.

And then there is the cast of characters who have, at one time or another, been the apple of the PM’s eye — and, more importantly, his appointments. Bruce Carson, who came to the PMO with a criminal record and may add to it before his latest legal problems are over. Arthur Porter, who was the overseer of our spy agency, until he ended up in a Panamanian jail fighting extradition to Canada. Election expense cheater and former Harper cabinet minister, Peter Penashue. The PM’s former parliamentary secretary Dean Del Mastro, now out of caucus and facing charges for election expense cheating. Stephen Harper may have integrity, but can he recognize it?

There comes a time when everyone's past -- good or bad -- catches up with him. Those who point out hypocrisy don't have to be saints. Mike Duffy is no saint. But he has defined what the next election will be all about.

His Luck Is Running Out

There's a scene in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World where Jonathan Winters destroys a gas station and two of its attendants. As the Senate debacle unravels, the prime minister -- consumed with rage -- looks more and more like Jonathan Winters on a rampage.

At the end of the scene, having obliterated the building and its inhabitants, Winters hops in a tow truck and drives away, unscathed.

Lawrence Martin suggests that things will not work out that way for Stephen Harper:

But the list is long and Harper’s odds are not good. There is a common thread running through his governance, a pattern of subverting or attempting to subvert the system, the public trust. It has finally caught up to him.

The prime minister has been lucky. He has made a career out of blaming others for his troubles. But his luck is running out.

Abolish The Senate? You've Got To Be Kidding.

Mike Duffy's speech yesterday should have reminded all Canadians why we have a Senate. Mitchell Anderson  writes in The Tyee:

Harper's response to Mike Duffy's disloyalty has been thermonuclear: essentially to set a precedent where the PMO can unseat the same senators recently appointed at a whim and without due process -- relying on a legal anachronism dating back to 1300.

As Duffy told his colleagues yesterday, the Senate is the last brake on an imperial prime minister:

If successful, Harper would succeed in further advancing his incremental coup d'état of the PMO on our government institutions. The motion being rammed through the upper chamber would remove about the only good thing you can say about the job-for-life jackpot enjoyed by senators: tenured job security that could in theory counterbalance the ballooning power of the PMO.

Not surprisingly, when senators actually wanted to debate this motion, the government invoked closure -- perhaps worried their upper chamber caucus members are awaking from their stupor as obedient "Harper seals." 

What appears to be an old folks home for retired bagmen and women actually performs an important function. The Senate may need reform. But it should not be abolished:

The prime minister may also have inadvertently instigated Senate reform. Imagine if senators seized the opportunity to prove to the Canadian people that they actually have a vital role to play in our democracy. The job-for-life privilege Canadians find so egregious should be the very trait of the upper chamber that would allow its members to stand up to the unbridled power of the PMO. Canadians would cheer them on.  

Everything depends on what the Conservative majority does with the motions to expel Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau. They could simply suspend the resolutions pending the result of the RCMP investigation -- which would be standard operating procedure.

Of course, by that time, all of Mike Duffy's evidence will be made public -- and Stephen Harper will be looking for the exit.

Abandonment

Stephen Harper has abandoned three of his senatorial appointees -- including the man he once called  "my most valuable senator."  Abandonment defines the man. And in foreign affairs, Joe Clark writes, Stephen Harper has "all but abandoned the global arena."

Foreign affairs has never been the prime minister's strong suite, even though he has spent  a lot of time in international forums. Clark writes:

In the seven years between his first election and the time I am writing this, Stephen Harper would have been exposed directly to informed and passionate leaders describing similar challenges and opportunities in the developing countries they lead. Conversations of that kind may well have influenced his willingness to serve as co-chair, with President Kikwete of Tanzania, of the UN Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health. They could have informed his government’s more recent interest in international trade, including with some countries in Africa and the Americas. However, there is little evidence of much impact on the government’s understanding of the human and political dynamics of countries outside the West.

Under Harper, Canada has lost its international credibility:

During the decades when Canada was earning a respected reputation in the world, part of our strength was that we felt no need to sit always at the head of the decision table. Our competence meant we often served there — on issues respecting arms control, the environment, human rights and international development. But Canada operated as effectively from a seat at the side, becoming trusted as a reliable, respected and responsible partner, and building concentric circles of influence on issues from defence, to development, to conciliation, to trade. Perhaps to a fault, we were known for our quiet and constructive work. By contrast, the Harper government’s performance in international affairs has shown more interest in the podium than in the playing field.

Most problematic is Mr. Harper's "megaphone diplomacy." He doesn't engage in the world -- he lectures it. That kind of behaviour is dangerous:

During the Cold War, the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Peter Carrington, urged the superpowers to avoid what he called “megaphone diplomacy.” That was defined as “diplomacy based on assertion through the media rather than on discussion,” and Lord Carrington considered it a dangerous practice between nuclear-armed superpowers. It is as counterproductive today, especially for a country like Canada, which has real skills and assets in diplomacy, when we apply them.

Clark suggests that Canada's foreign policy is deeply rooted in the prime minister's psyche. He doesn't like to talk to people -- either at home or abroad:

The government has indicated its preference for bilateral discussion where, by definition, the number of factors and actors is limited and easier to predict, if not control. That seems to be a strong personal instinct, and extends well beyond international policy. It may be why he avoids the federal-provincial conferences and co-operation at home which have been key to critical Canadian accomplishments — from health care to the free trade agreement, the environmental round table to the Kelowna Accord.

If Stephen Harper abandons his "most valuable" people, it's no wonder he chooses to abandon the world.

The Reverse Midas Touch

In 2008, when Stephen Harper cut public funding for political parties, the opposition rose and threatened to take down his nascent government. He prorogued Parliament and bellowed that the other parties were engaged in a conspiracy to deny Canadians the minority government of their choice.

In 2011, after being found in contempt of Parliament, he declared that "contempt" merely meant being outvoted, then raged rabidly about "separatist coalitions." Now, when the political threat comes from within his own ranks, he rages at those he appointed.

The pattern is pretty clear: Stephen Harper assigns blame, but he accepts none. And that, Andrew Coyne writes, is the problem:

As diverting as these tales of petty vendettas and double-crosses and he saids-she saids may be, it is important not to lose the thread. We can marvel at how much this or that senator claimed on his or her expense account, we can debate whether it was smart tactics to threaten so and so with such and such. But what’s essential is to ensure that the integrity of public office is upheld. That’s what makes this such a big story. That’s why it matters.

Harper is working very hard to make sure that Canadians lose the real thread -- because it winds its way back to him:

This is what makes the prime minister’s interventions in the House this week so problematic, in hindsight. Granted, he has been suspected from the start of having directed the secret payment to Duffy, and the subsequent whitewashing of his misdeeds. And indeed Duffy’s peculiarly blinkered sense of outrage, that the prime minister should have demanded he repay expenses he had falsely claimed, gave him the opportunity, as I wrote last time, to turn the situation to his advantage. No, he had no knowledge of Wright’s activities. But had he ordered Duffy to repay? “Darn right I did!” Was he in support of the Senate motion to suspend all three senators without pay? “Unequivocally.”

But in so doing the prime minister, more than anyone has to date, made himself the issue. By boasting of how he had been the one to bring Duffy to account, he was in effect saying: I am the standard. I am the enforcer. The rules are what I say they are, and I will decide in any given case what punishment should be given out.

The prime minister has always insisted that he makes the rules -- parliamentary conventions and the law be damned. The result is that he has thoroughly corrupted the Canadian political system. The late Gore Vidal claimed that modern Republicans possessed a Reverse Midas Touch. "Everything they touch," he said, "turns to poo."

The same can be said of Stephen Harper.

It Takes One To Know One

Jim Flaherty brought forward his third omnibus budget bill this week. And, as in the past, it is full of all kinds of things which have nothing to do with the budget -- like labour relations between the public service and the government. Tom Walkom writes in The Toronto Star that the bill is a full frontal attack on public service unions:

The government’s latest omnibus budget bill would give the government the unilateral power to determine which civil servants are essential workers and thus disqualified from striking.

This in itself is a break from standard Canadian practice, aping a Saskatchewan measure whose constitutionality is currently being appealed to the Supreme Court.

But the real bite in the government’s proposed changes to Canada’s Public Service Labour Relations Act has to do with arbitration. Most federal public service labour disputes are settled by neutral arbitrators without the need for strike or lockout action. The new law would permit arbitration only when the government agreed.

Even in areas deemed essential, the government could veto arbitration unless it had designated at least 80 per cent of the workers as ineligible to strike.

And in those instances where arbitration was permitted, arbitrators would be required to give a “preponderance” of weight to the government’s claims as to what it could afford.

In the end, says Toronto labour lawyer Steve Barrett, the government will have “stacked the deck” against its employees.

It is, indeed, interesting that while Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau are arguing in the Senate that the deck has been stacked against them, public service workers are getting the same treatment. The Harperite mantra is that they are all "fat cats." Mr. Harper can go to his base next week and claim  that he and Toronto mayor Rob Ford have declared war on the fat cats.

As always, it takes one to know one.

'Til Death

Yesterday, in the Postmedia papers, Andrew Coyne wondered why Stephen Harper would risk so much over Mike Duffy's expenses. He ended his column by paraphrasing Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons: "it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . but for Duffy?"

On the same day, in The National Post, Tasha Kheiriddin answered Coyne's question:

The only real option for Prime Minister Stephen Harper is to fight to the death — to shred Mr. Duffy’s credibility, and with it, his story. The Tories are masters of the attack ad and the research that goes with it, which makes it all the more likely they will do what they do best: throw their opponent under a shiny blue bus.

And when the issue of integrity is at stake, they won’t hesitate to sacrifice one of their own. Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, now Minister of Tourism, Maxime Bernier resigned from cabinet in disgrace in 2008 after leaving NATO documents at the home of his ex-girlfriend, who had been linked to organized-crime figures. Former Minister of State for the Status of Women Helena Guergis was turfed in 2010 on unspecified allegations regarding her conduct, fueled by news reports that her husband, former MP Rahim Jaffer, had consorted with con men and “busty hookers.” Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was hauled before a commission of inquiry in 2008 over his relationship with fraudster Karl-Heinz Schreiber.

When Duffy met with Wright and Harper, he was reminded that, like More, he served at the King's convenience. That meant that, if necessary, he had to take a bullet for the boss. Mr. Harper should have known when he appointed him that  Mr. Duffy would accept accolades, but he would not bow out, as Mr. Wright did.

Mike Duffy is no Thomas More. But his predicament is the same. After having remained silent all this time -- and with nothing left to lose -- he has spoken. In the end, this is all about the power of the King. And, in the end, either Mr. Duffy's or Mr. Harper's head will be put on public display.

Neither Our Best Nor Our Brightest

Two days ago, Mike Duffy took aim at Stephen Harper. Yesterday, Pam Wallin framed the issue:

The Government, through Senator Carignan, has truly put the cart before the horse – the sentencing before the trial – and that is why it would be both unfair and troubling if his motion proceeds.

If it does, each and every one of you will seriously have to consider whether this is a place of sober second thought, or a place where anyone who enters must blindly follow a political master’s dictates.

And yesterday Stephen Harper -- that paragon of accountability -- insisted that he was demanding accountability from an old reprobate. He did not mention that it was he who appointed Duffy, and that, as The Disaffected Lib reports, in Duffy's office there is an autographed picture of Harper and Duffy with the inscription, "To Mike, my most valuable senator."

It's hard to feel sympathy for any of the principals here. This is, after all, a war among the privileged.

The next salvo will be Duffy's release of those emails -- which the PMO claimed didn't exist. But, in the end, it should be obvious that this crisis is entirely of Stephen Harper's own making. He chose Duffy and Wallin with the expectation that they would use their considerable communication skills to vanquish his enemies. Now they have declared him the enemy.

It should also be obvious that Mr. Harper is neither our best nor our brightest prime minister.

From Contempt To Contemptible

In 2011, Stephen Harper was found in contempt of Parliament.  At the time, he defined contempt as "being outvoted." And, having won the subsequent election, he proceeded on the assumption that "contempt" was a meaningless concept. What mattered was winning.

After Mike Duffy's speech in the Senate yesterday, Mr. Harper will be forced to re-examine his definition of contempt. For, as Michael den Tandt writes, his house of cards is falling apart:

Here’s where this leads: If Duffy’s story is true, and he can indeed prove it, then the entire senior Conservative power structure in Ottawa is on trial. And if, as [Duffy's lawyer, Donald] Bayne has hinted, there’s evidence the prime minister knew of the Wright-Duffy deal before May 15 — when he has said repeatedly he did not know — then Harper himself will be irreparably damaged.

Den Tandt believes that the only way out is a public inquiry, where all the principals -- including Mr. Harper -- must testify under oath:

There’s just one way to get to the bottom of it. The principals — including Wright, Duffy, former PMO director of issues management Chris Woodcock, LeBreton, former PMO lawyer Benjamin Perrin and indeed Harper himself, as well as Brazeau and Wallin — must tell their stories under oath, in a public forum. Emails and documents must be made public. If there’s been lying or other wrongdoing, those responsible must take their lumps — up to and including the PM himself.

But that's the last thing Stephen Harper wants. He knows what the Gomery Inquiry did to the Liberals. Without it, Stephen Harper would not be prime minister. And Mr. Harper is not one for testifying under oath. He will do anything and everything to make sure that doesn't happen.

One thing is certain. The prime minister is going to be schooled in the difference between "contempt" and "contemptible."  And, this time, he's going to be on the receiving end.

That Big Mouth

On the day Stephen Harper returned to Question Period, planning to crow about his new trade deal, Donald Bayne crashed the party. Mike Duffy's lawyer took direct aim at the Prime Minister's Office and at Stephen Harper himself. Andrew Coyne writes:

Donald Bayne may not have succeeded, in the course of Monday’s press conference, in lifting his client clear of the muck. But he has certainly dragged the rest of the Tory hierarchy down into it.

And the muck keeps getting deeper. This story is no longer about Mike Duffy:

Duffy has long since ceased to be the issue. Certainly if the excerpted emails and memos his lawyer read out are indicative, he was indeed counseled on several occasions by senior Tories, including Sen. Marjory LeBreton (the former government leader in the Senate), Sen. David Tkachuk (the former chairman of the Senate internal economy committee) and Nigel Wright (the former chief of staff to the Prime Minister) that he was entitled to his entitlements.

But it’s what they did after that is of more particular interest. Duffy is aggrieved that, having first encouraged him, party grandees then abandoned him, and have now moved to suspend him (along with senators Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau) from the Senate without pay. But the story he has begun to tell — and threatens to tell further — promises to do them far greater harm.

Contrary to the picture the PMO has put about, of a lone Wright, acting on his own and without consultation, suddenly deciding to pay Duffy’s expenses out of his own personal fortune, Duffy offers further evidence that it was part of a sustained exercise in damage control of which a good many top Conservatives either knew or took part, among them — according to Wright’s lawyers — three officials in the PMO, including Benjamin Perrin, then the prime minister’s legal counsel. 

The story is now about the prime minister's inner sanctum -- and about the prime minister himself. He and they tried to make unpleasant facts disappear. Mr. Harper is learning -- as his mentor Richard Nixon learned -- that the cover up is what does you in.

 And that "the biggest mouth in Ottawa" would not stay shut for long.

Will Wallin And Duffy Sink The Ship?

Pam Wallin says she will challenge her suspension from the Senate. Mike Duffy has a doctor's note to cover his absence. But several sources have reported that he is very unhappy.

Over the years, Stephen Harper has cut lots of people loose -- Garth Turner, Bill Casey, Bruce Carson and Tom Flanagan. He dumped Helena Geurgis and sent the RCMP after for her, looking for malfeasance. They found none.

But they seem to have a lot on Senator Duffy and the PMO. And that raises an interesting question: Could the prime minister, who demands loyalty but shows none, have come up against an immovable object -- one that a grudge will not remove?

Paul Wells writes that Harper can carry a grudge for eternity:

He can carry a grudge. “He will refer to things that were said in Conservative caucus when he was first an MP, when he was first elected as a backbencher, and will use that as a basis for judging that person forever. If he forms a negative impression of someone, he retains it more than a decade after the fact, even if it’s based on a trivial encounter.”

And the intensity of those grudges is perhaps best illustrated by his banishment of his old mentor, Tom Flanagan:

Since Tom Flanagan wrote his book spilling many of the secrets of the early Harper years, Harper has continued his grudge against him. He probably won’t change his mind on that. More than two years later, Flanagan turned up at a Calgary Stampede event at which Harper was to address the crowd. While he was speaking, the Prime Minister caught a glimpse of his former chief of staff. Later, in the “green room” set aside for Harper’s use a short distance from the main event, he was livid. “Who the f–k let him in?”

But it's one of life's well worn axioms that what goes around comes around. It could well be that the media stars the prime minister chose to drum his message across the country have had a belly full of Mr. Harper. Both Wallin and Duffy may want to challenge his veracity under oath.

If they did that, the results could sail the ship of state into the perfect storm.

Consider The Record

Last week's throne speech made mention of "polluter pays" legislation. It appears that the Harperites will offer Barack Obama a carrot, if he approves the Keystone XL Pipeline. Unfortunately, the pending legislation is a little late and, simply put, only a little.

Two weeks ago Michael Harris wrote a column questioning the competence of Mr. Harper's new Minister of State for Science, Greg Rickford. Rickford responded to the column, claiming that he wanted to "set the record straight."

Harris sets out that record, and it illustrates just how fraudulent the Harper government is when it makes promises.  Harper once declared that "the fundamental challenge of our time is to make real progress on environmental protection while preserving jobs and standards of living." It's interesting to compare that statement to Harper's record on science and environmental protection. Harris directed Mr. Rickford to very recent history:

Consider that atmospheric and climate research in Canada is now funded at 70 per cent of the level it was when you came to power in 2006.

• Your government walked away from Kyoto and still hasn’t bothered to come up with a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector.
• Your boss dumped the Office of National Science Advisor in 2008 — but we did get an Office of Religious Freedom.
• Your government cut the foundation that funded Canada’s Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) in 2011. Peter Kent came up with a great defence: The Harper government hadn’t shut down PEARL, just the funding programs that paid for it.
• Point by point, Kent’s public statements about PEARL were called “factually incorrect” by one of the co-founders of the research facility. Or when a minister says it, does it become a fact?
• Your government made the decision to close the Mersey Biodiversity Centre in Nova Scotia as of 2014.
• Your government axed the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences.
• Your government closed seven of nine marine science libraries in Canada.
• Your government closed the Ocean Contaminants Program, lock, stock, and barrel and fired Dr. Peter Ross, a leading world expert on the effect of pollution on marine mammals.
• Your government close the Habitat Management Program at Fisheries and Oceans Canada — but why not, since under the new gutted Fisheries Act there was no habitat to protect anyway?
• Your government fired 136 scientists from Environment Canada and cut its budget by $200 million in 2011 and $53 million more in 2012.
• Your government fired 436 scientists and professional staff at Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
• Your government would rather appoint David Suzuki to the Senate than bring in a carbon tax.

The record shows that the Harperites are masters of misrepresentation. But you already knew that, didn't you?

Not As Advertised

Stephen Harper skipped out on Parliament the day after the throne speech. He'd spent the last one hundred and eighteen days avoiding the legislature -- and he needed an excuse to keep avoiding it. His signing of the Canada Europe Trade Agreement provided that excuse. At the moment, there is only an agreement in principle. But Canadians should think twice before they -- and their representatives -- make the deal binding.

That's because, Tom Walkom writes, the deal is not about trade:

First, as with all modern trade agreements, this one is not really about trade. Yes, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement does remove tariffs on most goods traded between Canada and the European Union. But, with key exceptions — particularly in agriculture — most of those tariffs were low to begin with.

Rather, CETA — like the North American Free Trade Agreement before it — is really concerned with investment, regulation and standards.

The deal is really about making the world safe for investors:

With some exceptions, it would give investors on either side the right to demand compensation from any government action that interferes with private profit.

How this would work in practice remains unclear. But it should be noted that a similar provision in NAFTA has been used successfully by U.S. companies to strike down Canadian laws.

Oddly enough, similar attempts by Canadian companies operating in the U.S. have never been successful.

As for Harper's claim that the deal will create 80,000 jobs, that promise is as believable as his promise to deliver open and accountable government:

Incidentally, Ottawa’s prediction that the pact will create 80,000 new net jobs throughout the entire economy is entirely bogus, since it is based on the absurd assumption that no one can ever be unemployed.

The truth is that the net job effects of this deal won’t be known for years. But, in the short run, it’s a near certainty that some Canadians will lose their jobs.

It would be wise to remember recent Canadian history:

The Canada-U.S. free trade arrangement wiped out entire industries in this country, ranging from furniture-making to light manufacturing — all in the midst of a gruelling recession.

The negative effects of CETA promise to be far less sweeping, since there is not much of Canadian manufacturing industry left to destroy.

There will be winners. Canadian beef farmers, for instance. But Harper's pitch that the deal is in the national interest is dubious. As with all things Harper, the Canada Europe Trade Agreement is not as advertised.

 But it did give him a chance to get out of Ottawa.

She Refuses To Be Quiet

Brigette DePape -- who held up that Stop Harper sign during the last throne speech -- has greeted this week's throne speech with the scorn it deserves:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is spending over a billion dollars on a Spy Castle made of shiny glass windows, the most expensive Canadian government building ever constructed. Meanwhile, he continues to cut services that the middle class values. Simply look at federal health cuts, which will total $36 billion over a decade. 

She understands what is behind Harper's attempt to rebrand himself as Captain Consumer:

The government boasts of its consumer-first agenda, hoping to appeal to everyday folks. The effort to re-brand the public as consumers fits well with the neoliberal agenda Harper is aggressively pursuing. As my friend TJ Dawe pointed out, we are increasingly consumers when our social services are cut, because we have to buy them ourselves. It's convenient for the Harper agenda if we are just consumers -- if what we care about is how we spend the money in our own purse, not how the government spends our money. 

But DePape is not merely grinding an axe. Where some might see gloom and despair, she sees healthy rebellion:

What I found most inspiring since Harper's last throne speech are people stepping into their power as not just consumers, but active decision-makers and influencers on the issues that matter most: young doctors standing up to Minister Joe Oliver after he tried to cut funding to refugee health care; families rising up with the Occupy movement, drawing attention to much-needed system change; and residents demanding a National Housing Strategy to end homelessness, Canada being one of the few countries without one.

I have to admit that there are times that I have despaired over public acceptance of the Harper agenda. But, if Depape is right -- and Frank Graves' latest poll seems to indicate that she's on to something -- then there may, indeed, be hope that the ancien regime is on its last legs.

Bread And Circuses

Yesterday's throne speech offered little tidbits to various types of voters -- cheaper cell phone and cable rates and the right to carry beer across provincial borders. It's a time honoured political strategy: when the news isn't good, invite the plebeians to a circus. The truth is, Tom Walkom writes, that -- when it comes to sound economic management -- the news for Conservatives isn't good:

The truth is that Canada’s economy is not doing well. Official unemployment may be hovering around the 7 per cent mark (last month it was 6.9 per cent). But official unemployment figures do not take into account those who are underemployed or who have simply given up looking for work.

The Harperite take on employment is the same as Mark Twain's take on the weather: They talk about it. But they don't do anything about it:

Instead, [they] focus on ill-advised measures that range from unhelpful to counterproductive.

First, after a brief flirtation with stimulus spending in 2009 (and I give Harper credit for that) the government has assumed that Canada’s job woes are entirely structural.

Indeed there are problems with the structure of the economy. Jobs in manufacturing — and even in information technology — are moving offshore; automation is replacing human labour.

But the world is also going through a long cyclical slump, one in which consumers don’t have money to spend and businesses are afraid to invest. In this kind of world, Ottawa’s focus on fiscal austerity — on pulling government money out of the economy — only makes matters worse.

Second, the government is systematically taking aim at anything, from employment insurance to unionization, that keeps wages up. The Dickensian notion here is that full employment can be achieved only if most of us are willing to work for peanuts.

Third, the government is focusing its efforts on the alleged mismatch between jobs and skills. It argues that there is plenty of work around but that Canadians don’t have the right skills to get those jobs.

If there is anything consistent about Harperite employment strategy, it is the concerted effort to drive down wages -- which is what the temporary foreign workers program was all about. That program hasn't worked out so well. In fact, for workers, Mr. Harper's entire economic program hasn't worked out very well.

"When bread is lacking," Walkom writes, "circuses always come in handy."

He's Desperate

Michael Den Tandt writes that today's throne speech is aimed directly at Justin Trudeau:

It also betrays more than a whiff of desperation. For of all the issues the Conservatives could have made their own, few contain more sheer political peril than this. It is a gusher that, once tapped, will be difficult to cap.

Why the desperation? Put simply, despite all the hype and the message discipline, the Conservative record is a record of failure:

On procurement — the Byzantine process by which Ottawa buys hardware for the military — nothing short of a stand-alone procurement agency, managing a system shorn of political interference, will impress the government’s critics. That’s because of the disaster of the Royal Canadian Air Force fighter-replacement project. In 2010, you will recall, the Conservatives hitched their star to a sole-source plan to buy 65 F-35 fighter-bombers, for $9 billion. In late 2012, driven by life-cycle costs that had skyrocketed past $46 billion, that plan was shelved and replaced with a new “options analysis.” The damage to the government’s credibility was enormous.

Justice-wise, the Conservatives discovered in August that Canadians weren’t much bothered by the fact that the Liberal leader had admitted to smoking pot while an MP. For years, the Conservatives have been hammered for their ideological, punitive and not-very-effective approach to marijuana prohibition. Their tough-on-crime agenda works best, at a popular level, when it focuses on protecting the rights of victims of violent and sexual crimes. Therefore, we should expect new measures to crack down on sex criminals, and scant or no mention of pot.

And when it comes to the Keystone XL Pipeline, the government's complete lack of commitment to the environment is coming home to roost:

Ottawa has routinely missed its own targets for establishing greenhouse-gas-emissions-reduction regulations for the oilpatch. It can no longer do so, because U.S. President Barack Obama is hammering on the front door, requiring the Harper government give him something — anything at all — that he can use as cover to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

So what have they got left? Cell phone rates and cable television charges.  It's targeted policy, which is intended to lock up votes.

It's survival time. And Mr. Harper is desperate.

Much Is At Stake

After tomorrow's throne speech, the opposition parties have vowed to hammer the Harper Conservatives. But will they keep the Harperites in their sights, or battle each other? Tim Harper writes that, if the present regime is to fall, either Tom Mulcair or Justin Trudeau has to begin to look prime ministerial :

The NDP leader is hampered on three fronts.

Chosen to build on an NDP quest for power and an end to moral victories and years as the “conscience of Parliament,” he must now mightily push back against a Canadian political tide which seems determined to return to its traditional alignment.

He must also deal with the reality that skill and proficiency in the Commons no longer translates into national attention as it did a generation ago.

And he has not yet provided a defining brand for his party, an easily recognizable voter association that allows Canadians to think of an issue, or a raison d’être for Mulcair and his New Democrats. 

And, so far, Justin Trudeau has been allowed to tour the country and be content free:

He was shrewd to react quickly and passionately to the Quebec Charter of Values while Mulcair, a former Quebec cabinet minister who commands a large caucus from that province, held his fire until the Parti Quebecois proposal was tabled.

Trudeau won the battle for attention with his late summer pot-smoking revelation and he showed an uncanny penchant for grabbing attention, and often adulation, as he toured the country.

Opposing a truly stupid piece of legislation and advocating the legalization of pot do not make a prime minister. And Stephen Harper knows that, if he can get Trudeau and Mulcair to take up arms against each other, he'll be able to escape scrutiny.

Much is at stake in the upcoming parliamentary session.

The Radical Christian Right

Chris Hedges writes that, if you want to understand what is presently playing out in Washington, you have to understand the Radical Christian Right. They know what they want -- and what they want is frightening:

There is a desire felt by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment, radically diminish the role of government to create a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and force a recalcitrant world to bend to the will of an imperial and “Christian” America. Its public face is on display in the House of Representatives. This ideology, which is the driving force behind the shutdown of the government, calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The “deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant” schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled. “Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.

Senator Ted Cruz's father is a radical right preacher and a director of Purifying International. He obviously has gone places since he left Calgary. He and his son espouse the notion of Dominionism, or Christian Reconstructionism:

This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.

They are, indeed, dangerous. And, in Canada, they are Stephen Harper's most rabid supporters:

Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their destruction. They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center of the ideology.

They are 21st century Crusaders, who wish to re-establish The Holy Land. If that can't be done, they are convinced that we are in the End Times.

And we like to think that our prime ministers are rational men.

Making The Swamp Bigger

When Canada went to war in Afghanistan twelve years ago, self congratulation was in the air -- and journalism did not serve the country well. Jeffrey Simpson wrote in yesterday's Globe and Mail:

The early coverage was largely ahistorical, gung-ho, a big group hug for the Canadians – a travesty of journalism, really. What Canadians needed then was a clear-eyed analysis of the country and its history, an understanding of its regional antagonisms, an appreciation of the daunting, even impossible task Canada and its government – to say nothing of the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization – had signed up for in that forbidding, post-medieval place.

The Chretien government began the mission. But it was the Harper government which used it to rebrand Canada as a warrior nation. Moreover, the mission allowed the asthmatic Stephen Harper to play Douglas MacArthur. And, when the truth contradicted MacArthur, it was the truth which surrendered.

The Globe's Graeme Smith revealed the Afghan prisoner whitewash:

Canada’s government lied about many aspects of the detainee affair, insisting that Ottawa didn’t know what was happening or that Afghan authorities were examining all allegations of misconduct – despite memos from Canadian officials on the ground saying that wasn’t so.

In his book, The Dog's Are Eating Them Now, Smith recounts the story of the Canadian mission to Afghanistan. Simpson writes:

How the West, including Canadians, unintentionally made things worse is a textbook case of cross-cultural misunderstanding and hubris. The West will tell itself heroic stories, then forget about Afghanistan.

Our soldiers did what they were asked to do. They made the swamp bigger. But the people who put them there have not been held to account.

The Middle Class Is Front And Centre

Michael Den Tandt writes that the next election will be about the Canadian middle class. Justin Trudeau has made it his mantra. And now the Conservatives -- as they try to take the focus off Mike Duffy and friends and talk instead about "consumers first" -- will  try to make it theirs. Den Tandt writes that rhetoric about the long suffering middle class is not just political hot air:

This problem is already giving Canadian politicians night sweats, driving their future planning and shouldering other issues — climate change, to name one — into the ditch. And it dictates that Federal Election 2015, to the extent it revolves around policy at all, will be about the one remedy to income inequality/stagnation that is both politically feasible and economically sound: education. Education, skills training and “strategic” learning are about to become the dominant buzzwords in Canadian politics.

Stagnating middle class incomes is a world wide problem. Mr. Harper likes to trumpet his claim that Canada is a world economic leader. But, when Canada is compared to other countries, the data give us no reason to cheer:

In Divided We Stand, the OECD’s 2011 examination of income inequality across the developed world from the mid-1980s through 2008, Canada posted average annual household disposable income growth of just 1.1%, versus the OECD average of 1.7%. Australia, by contrast, racked up an impressive 3.6%. Other countries outperforming Canada included the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, Israel, the Czech Republic, Finland, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal and Chile.

One obvious solution is to raise taxes on the wealthy. Den Tandt predicts that none of the major parties will go there. That's curious because, as income inequality has risen, taxes have fallen. And there is the simple demand for social justice. Linda McQuaig has made it an issue in her campaign; but Tom Mulcair moved quickly to take that idea off the table.

The middle class may be front and centre. But social justice isn't.