Photo credit: Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press

I have a feeling that Friday evening went down something like this. Michael Ignatieff got back to Liberal Party headquarters after standing in front of the media and equivocating about a coalition and was quite literally yelled at for being the smartest idiot in Canada.

Perhaps realizing the political damage of his faux pas, Ignatieff got up before the media on Saturday morning and made clear that he wouldn’t be forming a coalition should an election restore us to the same debilitating status quo of the past seven years. But it was too late.

The coalition is on the table now, and the Conservatives will use it to their utmost advantage. In the chess game of politics, Ignatieff left a pawn hanging and the Conservatives have happily gobbled it up to enjoy a material advantage.

That isn’t to say that Ignatieff doesn’t want the Liberals to win a minority government of their own, as unlikely as such a prospect might be at this moment. But I think it’s safe to say that Friday’s press conference told us everything we really needed to know about the possibility of a backup plan if the election goes anything like the polls are currently indicating.

Curiously, the talk in the media today has nothing to do with the Ignatieff coalition gaffe, but an obscure moment in the ancient history of Canadian politics, back when the Liberals were in power and Stephen Harper seemed open to overthrowing the Liberals with a power-sharing agreement.

The discussion surrounding Harper’s own “coalition of 2004″ is dominating the journalist gossip stream, as though something Harper considered seven years ago has any relevance to what he believes today. Actually, one would be hard-pressed to find some relevance between what Harper said in October 2008 and what he believes today.

Seven years is a lifetime in politics. What Stephen Harper, or anybody else for that matter, wanted to do in 2004 has nothing whatsoever to do with the present political situation. Why, seven years ago we had an entirely different political makeup in Ottawa. The Liberals were on the wane of a decade-long power-drunk majority that had sapped the enthusiasm of Canadians. The Conservatives were a new amalgamation of formerly fractured elements of rightwing movements and political parties. Michael Ignatieff was a professor at Harvard University.

The truth is that whatever Stephen Harper was considering in 2004 has little to do with the present-day reality of Ignatieff’s “Plan B” coalition with the NDP and Bloc Quebecois. And it might sound like so much Conservative war room propaganda, had it not been for Ignatieff’s press conference slip-up.

There are those who get angry at the maligning of the idea of cooperation, saying that there’s nothing inherently wrong with a coalition in a parliamentary democracy, and that is precisely what Harper was aiming at in 2004. But this is a distortion of the facts.

The only political parties that ever agreed in writing to a coalition involving a separatist party is the NDP and Liberals, and Michael Ignatieff’s signature exists on that document. And even ignoring the unpleasantness of aligning with a separatist party in a greedy bid for power, there’s the fact that such an alliance presented a de facto majority against the Conservatives, who had actually won the most votes of any other single party. In most coalition governments — but certainly not all — the party with the most votes aligns with another from the opposition.

The reason the Conservatives can’t do that is they are already a coalition government, though nobody seems to recognize that. The party is made up of broad elements of social and fiscal conservatives, former Reformers, Alliance Party and Progressive Conservatives. The big tent party was forced to come together in order to avoid the problem faced by the current crop of leftwing political parties all striving for a piece of the 65 per cent of Canada that doesn’t vote Conservative.

Since the country is always likely to be divided between the unified right and the majority of left-leaning voters, there are only two logical options. One is a similar amalgamation of the political left into one party that can bridge the numerous differences present in the NDP, Green, Liberal and even Bloc Quebecois voters. The other is simply the coalition, which seems the most likely given the fact the writ has been dropped yet again.

The intentions of the Conservatives in 2004 remains a bit historically ambiguous, and though I’m sure it’s a fun talking point today for some people, it remains irrelevant. There is only one coalition of any importance, and it’s the one that Ignatieff seems destined to form after the Liberals lose yet another election to a minority Conservative government.

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

I dare not attempt to add to Andrew Coyne’s evisceration of Canada’s most notorious equivocator, but even I have to admit that I did not see this coming. Not only did the Liberals finally locate a spine in the House of Commons today, but they made apparent their intent to win by any means necessary this time.

I have no problem with the opposition defeating the government, as I think it sorely needs another consultation of the Canadian electorate. Nor do believe any of the rhetoric from the Conservatives that this is a reckless or irresponsible or costly thing to do. $300 million is certainly not chump change, but it’s only three times the amount the government was willing to spend on commemorating the 200th anniversary of a war the British fought.

But only days after accusing the Conservative war room of grossly misrepresenting the opposition as a coalition of democratic usurpers, Michael Ignatieff hands that same war room a gift so generous that the man may as well have planned it for the Conservatives himself.

I can already hear the narrator: “Michael Ignatieff won’t rule out a coalition with the NDP and Bloc Quebecois…” It fits the “just visiting” theme perfectly, and confirms just about every wild allegation and accusation hurled at the Liberal leader over the past two years.

The problem with Ignatieff isn’t that he refused to rule out a coalition government with the other political parties. It’s that he seems to have a problem that might be described as unique to politics. The man cannot seem to tell a lie to save his own life.

This isn’t a problem shared by Ignatieff’s ally in Toronto, Premier Dalton McGuinty. After losing an election to the Progressive Conservatives in 1999, the Liberal leader decided he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He proceeded to make every promise, every guarantee, every wishful thought that emanated from the mushy middle in order to coalesce support around an unaffordable platform.

Then, as soon as the man was elected, he broke dozens of promises, including the big one, by raising taxes. McGuinty has become a master of damage control, able to tell people what they want to hear now, and then do whatever he wants later on. And when the political damage becomes too great, McGuinty merely grants a few more unaffordable items on the taxpayer wish list, and all the lying and deceit is forgotten.

Similarly, Ignatieff should have denied any possibility of a coalition with the other opposition parties. He should have stood there and made grand statements about the Liberals and their intent to rule the next government alone. Not equivocate about red and blue doors and then flee when cross-examined by the media.

If he wins the election, he doesn’t have to worry about the support of a coalition except in passing legislation. If he loses the election he can spring the coalition into action, citing the imperative of being flexible to the shifting political dynamics of the country. Or something. I don’t know, I’m sure they have writers for this sort of thing.

The fact is that just because you say something now doesn’t mean you have to follow through with it later on. Stephen Harper has been equal to McGuinty in this regard, such as promising not to run deficits in October of 2008 and then changing his mind three weeks later. Nobody holds that against him anymore, despite the fact he broke his word, and it was a word he stated adamantly again and again, without any apparent room for flexibility.

History is written by the winners, and Ignatieff should understand that by now. He doesn’t need to tell the Canadian public that he won’t rule out a coalition government just because it might be true. If people elected truth-tellers there wouldn’t be very many people who are currently in Ottawa that would be employed right now.

As Coyne writes, Ignatieff must have known the question was coming. That he answered the question with such ambiguity is certain to seal the fate of the Liberal Party before the election campaign has even begun. All the Conservatives have to do is put that press conference on replay for the next three months and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Liberals lose even more seats this time around.

Perhaps even worse than anything else is that it reinforces the perception of Ignatieff as a “waffler”. A man who can’t make up his mind even when the brass ring of opportunity practically hits him on his formidably sized cranium. Truly this is a party that was cursed by Chretien on the way out.

The above advertisement is perhaps the most compelling reason to defeat the Conservative government that I can think of among a slew of other good reasons. It’s more of the same watered down, uninspiring, fear-mongering propaganda that one has come to expect from the Conservative war room.

The word isn’t too harsh. Propaganda is defined by communication disguised as information, but is aimed at influencing people toward a cause by providing selective facts, out-of-context quotes, baseless assertions and flat-out lies. The above video manages to hit pretty much every note on that scale.

It isn’t just lies of commission that form the basis of propaganda, but in this case it is lies of omission as well. By grossly misrepresenting the political situation by creating a false impression of the demands of the opposition, the advertisement is a grotesque lie of what’s really at stake.

This is just more of what we’ve come to expect from the Conservative mantra of lowered expectations. We can no longer expect them to advocate for what they believe in, articulate what their principles are, or identify what positive benefits they offer Canadians. All they can do is malign the enemy, create stereotypes and caricatures and build baseless strawman arguments.

The advertisement suggests the enemy in this case supports high taxes, is opposed to economic recovery and jobs creations, and is opposed to helping seniors by trying to force the Liberals to defend positions they’ve never taken. This isn’t a political climate of ideas and debate, but one founded upon untruths.

There’s something about Michael Ignatieff that doesn’t appeal to the majority of Canadians, and the Conservatives have certainly sensed this uneasiness and exploited it to the maximum benefit. I don’t really trust the man either, and his motives don’t appear to be genuinely influenced by public service. But he’s certainly not the individual portrayed in the advertisement.

Can anyone explain the melodramatic hand-wringing presently being employed by the government over the possibility of an election? Should anyone be surprised that the opposition parties are taking an opposition role to policies set forth by this government? And if anybody can explain why they’re surprised about it, I certainly hope they can include the reason why defeating a budget is politically opportunistic.

Politics are inherently based on political opportunism and opposition. If it’s opportunistic to demand concessions from a budget presented by a minority government then it’s equally opportunistic to play that for sympathy in the media by claiming the parties want an election.

I don’t blame the Conservatives for refusing to make further concessions to appease the NDP either. The last time the Conservatives chose power over principle the country adopted $87 billion in new public debt. Ironically, the same party who opposed that stimulus budget in November 2008 is now running attack ads against Ignatieff claiming he doesn’t want to spend stimulus money.

As for the election not being necessary, that, too, is debatable. Since the 2008 general election the Conservatives have broken a campaign promise not to run deficits, has prorogued parliament twice and been found in contempt of that same institution, an unprecedented black mark for the government. It seems prudent to me that the electorate of Canada be properly consulted as to their confidence in this political arrangement in Ottawa.

In response to the criticisms of this government, partisan supporters have taken to calling anybody who opposes flagrant abuse of democracy as “liberal”, House Speaker Peter Milliken being no exception to this rule.

A general election should “recalibrate” the situation in Ottawa, give voters a chance to pass judgment on the past two and a half years of minority rule, and even offer the possibility of a majority government. If the assumption is correct, that most Canadians do not care about the actions of a government that suggests a contempt for the very principles they were elected on in 2006, then the Conservatives have nothing to worry about.

People get upset at a strangest things. Nobody seems to be concerned about the fact that ethnic block-vote pandering is now engineered down a statistical science. But they’re worried about some Conservative staffer using parliamentary letterhead to contact another Conservative (except in seemingly typical Conservative staffer incompetence, they actually sent it to the wrong team, ala Jasmine MacDonnell).

I suppose it’s no big surprise the Conservatives see various cultural solitudes in Canada as a potential breakthrough in the hunt for a majority government. But to see it all laid out like this in a technical blueprint really shows that this party is literally willing to do anything to accomplish that goal.

As you can see from the above document, the target audience are South Asians and Chinese based on demographic growth, controlled in part by the immigration minister himself. It even identifies the target ridings and lists the ethnic objectives: mining the vote-rich depths of South Vancouver’s East Indian population (referred to in more general terms as South Asian), a riding currently controlled by Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh that he won by a narrow 20 votes in the 2008 election. Brampton-Gore Malton and Brampton-Springdale are also largely populated with immigrants from the Punjab region of India.

The take-away message from the document: there are lots of ethnics voters, more are coming and they should be voting Conservative.

You know, I look at the compartmentalized nation of Canada and worry about ongoing ethnic ghettoization leading to a dilution of Canadian cohesion. I worry about a segregation and separation of understanding and participation of foreign cultures in what is supposed to be the Canadian “mosaic.” I am concerned about the deliberate resistance to integration and assimilation, except where convenient, such as medicare and social services.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, look at it as a growth opportunity for membership.

Photo credit: Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS

I think the Globe and Mail headline writers got it right when they said the Conservatives are “rebranding” the government with the name of Stephen Harper. But according to the PMO, it’s no big deal because it is “a long-standing practice that accurately reflects the government’s leadership.”

It’s true, as others have pointed out, that the colloquial use of “Harper government” has been generously employed by the media in the past five years. But over time it’s certainly become an accurate designation.

No government, with exception to the previous one, has worked this hard to brand a government around a single man. As you no doubt recall, there’s even a shrine of the prime minister, which one might call a cult of personality, hanging in the House of Commons.

The Conservative website has actually changed quite a bit since I wrote about that in 2008. Now it actually has more than Stephen Harper pictures adorning the front page, although it still has a picture of the hapless opposition leader, transposing Dion with Ignatieff.

I’m not sure what’s behind the directive that federal communications should refer the government of Canada to the “Harper Government.” I suppose it makes little difference anyway, given the fact that it’s only formalizing what is already the unspoken status quo. I am, however, quite sure of what others are likely to make of it.

The idea of the government being controlled by a powerful centralized authority figure isn’t going to appeal to people, which is certainly what Harper has become in the past five years. What’s surprising is how painfully transparent that centralization of power has become, and equally opaque the governance of a leader who once philosophized about openness and accountability.

The branding of the Canadian government with Conservative Party colours and logos has been an altogether unsubtle and unsettling part of government services since their so-called “Economic Action Plan” came into being. You know the one I’m talking about, right? There’s a sign standing next to every shoeshine stand and soda pop machine from here to Antigonish.

The stimulus plan that almost never was, that is until the “coalition of socialists and separatists” almost tore Canada asunder, necessitating the inauspicious allocation of public money for dubious make-work projects. There were a few mental lapses at that time as well, when party logos began appearing on novelty cheques announcing the lottery winners of stimulus projects.

Count me among the people who don’t like the idea of a government being named after an individual. It’s certainly accurate to call it the Gaddafi government in Libya, but I should hope the decisions made for this country are being discussed in a somewhat more democratic manner than Libya.

The timing of this story isn’t exactly fortuitous, considering the current allegations of the in-and-out election spending facing the party. But I would certainly hesitate to join the editorializing of the CBC’s Greg Weston and call it a “scandal.” Not only are Canadians sick to death of the constant scandal-roulette played by the media, the polls show that they have stopped being an effective swayer in the political climate any longer. Presumably because nobody believes it after five years of sensationalizing.

Take the Bev Oda affair as an example. There is arguably far more to worry about, and more related to the above story, with regards to the Oda “not” memo than the accounting practices of a party that out-fundraises every other political party combined anyway.

I’m quite convinced at this point, and John Baird’s odd behaviour only reinforced it, that Bev Oda’s decision to fund Kairos was overruled by the PMO, and the act covered for by the international minister. It’s the only explicable reason for the fact she hasn’t been fired for incompetence.

In this vein, the Harper government designation makes perfect sense. Though I can’t quite understand why the party would want to give the impression that we’re being governed by the decisions of one man.

If you listen to the NDP, hiking minimum wage and burdening businesses with greater operating costs is a good thing because companies can afford it. But increasing the cost of applying for criminal pardons is “a commercial transaction” of the justice system, even if keeping the costs at $150 for 17 years is straining that system.

Well, what’s wrong with increasing the fees for a pardon request? These people committed a crime against society, and now they’re asking to have that transgression permanently removed from their record:

NDP public safety critic Don Davies is now calling for a committee hearing into the issue, arguing there was no warning and no good reason given for the increase. He is also warning that it’s dangerous to bring in the concept of user pay to the justice system and that new pardon cost will be prohibitive to some Canadians.

That’s right. To criminal Canadians.

Here’s the thing. Even if you only apply the 2011 rate of inflation of 2.3 per cent, $150 in 1994 is now worth $221. But the rate of inflation is historically low. The rate has actually averaged 3.26 per cent over the past 90 years, which would set the value of $150 in 1994 dollars as being $259.

The Conservatives are setting the new fee at $631, which is really only an 8.82 per cent annual increase compounded to the value of $150 in 1994 dollars. It doesn’t sound like a giant leap or much of a financial risk, considering as many as 75 per cent of pardon requests are granted.

Photo: Chris Wattie/Reuters

Sometimes I think that Jack Layton exists just to delight in teasing the Liberal Party. At any moment when the Liberals seem like they might be in danger of finding a section of vertebrae, the NDP sidle up to Stephen Harper and play “let’s make a deal.”

Not that I really think the Liberals will ever defeat this government on a confidence vote. Their near-perfect record of supporting the Conservatives has been untarnished for half a decade now, and there doesn’t seem to be any danger of that changing with Ignatieff’s suitcase at the helm.

Even as the socialists were having a frank talk with the Conservatives, I suspect Michael Ignatieff was still busy mulling over the possibility of doing something. With political reflexes like that, you’d imagine this man would have got around to declaring war on Germany in 1946.

What I find even more surprising is that the NDP made the deal in the maelstrom of the Bev Oda affair, which I suppose in the world of the 24-hour scandal cycle in Ottawa may as well have happened in ancient Babylon. Still, I expected a half-hearted squeak from the NDP, and the rattling of a few paper sabres. Sheesh, they don’t even go through the formality of impotent threats anymore.

The reason for the NDP’s eager announcement that they have wrung hard-fought socialist concessions from the Conservative government — like cutting taxes — is pretty clear. They’ve taken a beating in the polls of late, and would lose as many as 16 seats if an election were held today.

This is interesting, because even though the Liberals would gain 15 seats, it wouldn’t come at the expense of the Conservative Party, projected to gain a single seat. They would come all from the boys in orange, which makes their unwillingness to oblige even the unrealistic prospect of defeating the March budget nothing more than a spectacularly irrelevant work of fiction from Gloria Galloway.

It’s amazing that some pundits even entertained the idea that the opposition would play parliamentary roulette with the current poll results showing a resurgent lead over the Liberal Party. We’ve established the gutlessness of the Liberals, and the NDP have no interest in trading away their tiny presence in the House of Commons on the basis of principle.

And some might even ask what principle has to do with anything? The actual policies of the Conservative government are difficult to assail from a socialist perspective, their “sullen, haughty, can’t-be-bothered-tone” notwithstanding, of course.

It’s also rather difficult to criticize the Conservatives for their apparent flexibility of ethics, when the other contenders for the government seem to so willingly let these transgressions gather the dust of irrelevance in time for the weekend. Like so many other grievances that have disappeared in arrogant, contemptuous refusal to address them, the opposition has dutifully returned to their rightful place at the dog’s water bowl of power.

So, when do I expect the Conservatives to be answerable to the past two and a half years of malleable principle and rubbery promises? Well, I don’t know the date, but I do know that it will come at a time and in a manner of the choosing of the ruling party. To expect any differently would be to ignore the “not” in Oda’s memo.

Uh, yeah, the above would be the G20 peepee scandal…

What amazes me about the mini-scandals that beset the Conservatives every so often is that they don’t seem to have very much impact, if at all, on their polling fortunes. As Aaron Wherry wrote in Macleans today, “if making a spectacle of oneself were a fireable offence, Mr. Harper would be without much of his cabinet.” I’m far from a Wherry fan, but sometimes something is funny because it’s true.

Think about it. Of all the members of cabinet who have, at one time or another, made quite the parliamentary debacle, the Conservatives seem unaffected. Look at the latest polling numbers. Today’s Harris Decima survey suggests the party has a 10-point lead on the floundering Liberals. Yesterday, Ipsos Reid gave them a 14-point lead.

Time after time, despite the little setbacks on Team Harper, the big blue machine powers on. Let’s look back over the past five years at the “spectacles”:

Peter MacKay

The whopper of all mini-scandals, Peter MacKay was at the center of the so-called contrived “Afghan detainee abuse scandal.” At the heart of this issue was the question of whether the defence minister knowingly sent Afghan detainees into custody where there was a possibility of there not being high-speed internet service. [Actually, the allegations were that these detainees were being roughed up with shoes and other blunt instruments. MacKay later admitted "there were deficiencies in the arrangement of how we transfer detainees" and overhauled the previous agreement in 2007]

Bonus points for surviving the Belinda Stronach breakup. Woof!

Jason Kenney

The immigration minister’s claim to fame was the alleged ministerial interference in the 2009 decision of the Canada Border Services Agency to bar British MP George Galloway from coming to Ontario, British Columbia and Québec, where he planned to give a series of speeches promoting Palestinian causes. The CBSA denied Galloway’s entry on the grounds of national security for his open financial support of Hamas, a banned terrorist organization. Despite the heated rhetoric, Galloway was able to visit Canada in 2010 without much ado, ironically following a heinous incident in which rightwing commentator Ann Coulter was blocked from speaking at the University of Ottawa by loudmouthed and angry leftwing activists.

Bonus points for ignoring the smear that he had personally excised information about same-sex marriage legalization and the decriminalization of homosexuality in the new Citizenship and Immigration study guide for immigrants.

Tony Clement

Fake lake! Fake lake! Nobody could forget that one last summer, when the press got wind of Clement’s reflecting pool, the media practically made it trend on Twitter overnight. As it turns out the fake lake cost a mere $57,000, or slightly less than the costs from the G8/20.

Bonus points for refusing to fund heroin addiction with taxpayer dollars, despite the avarice from the left.

Gerald Keddy

There’s not much say beyond this:

Colin Mayes, too.

Lawrence Cannon

This one I’m actually not too happy about, though it didn’t seem to really resonate with Canadians that much. Cannon refused to provide an emergency passport to Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik, who had been stranded in Sudan for six years, despite it being clearly unconstitutional. Abdelrazik sued Cannon for $3-million upon his return to Canada, alleging misfeaseance in public office, intentional infliction of mental suffering and violation of his Charter rights. He has a good chance to win the money if a previous ruling by Justice Zinn of the Federal Court is any indication:

“Had it been necessary to determine whether the breach was done in bad faith, I would have had no hesitation making that finding on the basis of the record before me.”

Jim Flaherty

Scandals? Maybe not. But promising not to run a deficit in the 2008 election and then adding $169 billion worth of debt by 2015 is, I think you will agree, huge chutzpah.

Oh, and the income trust reversal is a bonus mark.

Pierre Poilievre

In May 2009 Poilievre was accused of having used the term “tar baby” in the House of Commons knowing the slang reference of the word to mean an epithet for black people. In fact, Poilievre was referring to a policy of carbon taxation that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was proposing.

Jean-Pierre Blackburn

The Jonquière MP was thoroughly interrogated in the House of Commons by Liberal MP Wayne Easter over an alleged incident that took place on Feb. 23, 2010 in an Ottawa airport. Blackburn, apparently, had wanted to bring a bottled of Tequila onto an aircraft, but it contravened Transport Canada security regulations. While Conservative-haters ran with the allegation that he had caused a scene, most Canadians who have actually been through airport “security” fully sympathized.

Rona Ambrose

The former environment minister was the first cabinet minister to walk through the Kyoto ring of fire, and though she survived the burning heat from tar-sands screaming lunatics for a full year, Harper shuffled her out of the portfolio in 2007.

Bonus points for quietly reemerging as one of the most influential and dependable members of cabinet, taking on Helena Guergis’s role after she was booted from the caucus for reasons yet unexplained.

Bev Oda

Moving right along…

Lisa Raitt

The former minister of natural resources can thank the incompetence of former aide Jasmine MacDonnell, who accidentally taped Raitt calling isotopes “sexy” and then left the tape in a CTV News Ottawa office for a week before the media finally felt obligated to run the story.

Though moved to the lower profile Labour Ministry, bonus points to Raitt for surviving the incident, and I think everybody can be grateful she unseated the bloviating Garth Turner in Milton.

Gerry Ritz

Briefly ran into trouble when he said on August 30, 2008, in response to the listeriosis outbreak “this is like a death by a thousand cuts. Or should I say cold cuts.” And when told of a death in Prince Edward Island, Ritz said, “Please tell me it’s (Liberal MP) Wayne Easter.” Though he apologized for the insensitive remarks, some of us secretly guffawed for the Easter crack.

Dona Cadman

She’s mainly in this list because of Cadmangate, or whatever the hell they were calling it, the controversy surrounded allegations she made about her late husband Chuck Cadman. He had reportedly told her prior to a crucial vote in the House of Commons that two Conservative Party officials offered a bribe in exchange for his vote to bring down the Liberal government in May 2005.

Though the story had legs for a while, it was finished in March 2008 when Dona Cadman herself stated publicly she believed Harper when he denied any bribe was proffered.

Maxime Bernier

What list would be complete without Mad Max’s wild crash and burn with former girlfriend Julie Couillard? Although it was initially revealed that Couillard had previous ties to the Hells Angels bike gang without too much incident, the guano really hit the rotisserie when Bernier admitted he had left sensitive briefing notes for an upcoming NATO meeting at Couillard’s house after breaking up with her. Foreign Affairs was completely unaware of the missing papers for a full five weeks.

Despite this setback, Bernier has reemerged as one of the most influentially vocal advocates for fiscal conservatism in the Conservative Party.

If I’ve forgotten any “scandals”, and of course I’ve omitted Stephen Harper in the interests of keeping this below 10,000 words, I’m sure you can add them in the comments.

I noted the Conservative government must done something wrong today when I saw the needle throttling deeply into the red of the internet outrage meter. Every web story pointing to International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda and her now famous insertion of the word “not” in a departmental memo is hemorrhaging unpleasant comments about the autocratic tendencies of the Conservatives. To wit, hyperbolic leftwing polemicist Murray Dobbin wasted little time in comparing Canada’s government to Egypt’s Mubarak and “political thuggery worthy of a dictatorship.”

Yes, well, while I’m sure it tickles some people to no end to compare Canada to the third world, the truth is that in most countries like Egypt the people would never have heard about this at all.

“Any reasonable person confronted with what appears to have transpired would necessarily be extremely concerned, if not shocked, and might well begin to doubt the integrity of certain decision-making processes,” said House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken.

Well, it’s true that I’m shocked and concerned, but not immediately about the insertion of the word “not” on a document that revoked the funding for the anti-Israeli organization Kairos. No, I’m shocked and concerned that it actually requires the unilateral oversight of the minister herself to stop the government from needlessly and wastefully funding organizations with federal tax dollars that have little to no benefit for Canadians.

What surprises me is that a government can spend $1 billion for security on a wasteful and unnecessary economic summit with G22 countries, but what really riles people up is the idea of cutting off $7 million in federal aid to an insignificant and obscure church with clear and unequivocal political biases.

I can only really shake my head that it’s come to this. Did Bev Oda really feel that the only way to remove funding from Kairos was to overrule her department? And if so, what does this tell us about the difficulty of dismantling the welfare state? When cutting just one organization from the taxpayer trough requires this kind of ministerial interference and registers this level of public outrage, it is demonstrative of our entrenched culture of entitlement.

Shocked and concerned? Yes, that CIDA had signed off on continuing to fund this blatantly partisan organization despite the clear evidence that it had become vocal in “Israeli apartheid” rhetoric and “buycott” activism. It goes to show that the governmental Leviathan is so riddled with tiny suckerfish like Kairos that they don’t even know how to begin to identify the waste. It’s the reason that Tamil aid fronts in Canada were able to fund the Tigers in Sri Lanka for so many years.

I’m sure I don’t know why the minister even needs to provide a reason for cutting off the organizations sponsored by CIDA. But certainly one can argue with her methods. The problem isn’t the perfectly reasonable discontinuance of funding, but that she did so by misrepresenting her department.

“In particular, the senior CIDA officials concerned must be deeply disturbed by the doctored document they have been made to appear to have signed,” Milliken said in the House of Commons.

Though it has come to light today that the inclusion of the word “not” in the memo was only a departmental shortcoming whereby there was no space for the minister to reject the recommendations of her department, she made it sound as though the decision for the cuts had been departmental. I can understand the bureaucrats being upset at being pointed at for a decision they never made. In this respect the criticisms of Oda are justified. Added to this is the appearance she deliberately lied to Parliament and might now be found in contempt for her earlier answers to MPs.

It casts into question the competency of the minister when she considers it a reasonable thing to misrepresent other people. Surely she could have found the support of the government and the public at large to simply overrule the bureaucracy. Following this decision by lying about not knowing who put in the “not” speaks to her character.

[This blog entry has been significantly edited from its original form to reflect ongoing developments]

MORE TO THE STORY

It would appear that some people have done some deeper investigation and came up with an interesting, if not entirely satisfactory, reason for the insertion of the word “not”. From the minutes of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development that grilled Bev Oda on Dec. 9:

Mr. Jean Dorion:

Ms. Biggs, was the word “not” handwritten on the form that you signed on September 28, two months before the minister signed it?

Ms. Margaret Biggs:

No, it wasn’t, sir.

Mr. Jean Dorion:

So then, when you signed the form, you were in fact giving your approval. You were recommending approval, since the form states:
“Recommendation: That you sign below to indicate you approve a contribution of $7,098,756 over four years for the above program.”
So then, on September 28, you were recommending that the minister approve the project.

Ms. Margaret Biggs:

Yes, I think as the minister said, the agency did recommend the project to the minister. She has indicated that. But it was her decision, after due consideration, to not accept the department’s advice.
This is quite normal, and I certainly was aware of her decision. The inclusion of the word “not” is just a simple reflection of what her decision was, and she has been clear. So that’s quite normal.
I think we have changed the format for these memos so the minister has a much clearer place to put where she doesn’t want to accept the advice, which is her prerogative.

What’s interesting is that if you continue to read the transcript, it does indicate that Oda previous assertion that Kairos didn’t meet CIDA’s funding criteria was false. Oda defended by arguing that it was her decision that the best value for taxpayers’ dollars was not being achieved by continuing to fund Kairos as recommended by her department, and she overruled them. She did, however, appear to lie about being the author of the word “not” on the document that she has admitted today was her word. The question now is why did she not simply explain this on Dec. 9?

That appears to be the argument put forth by pollster Nik Nanos, who raised fears of a two-party state in Canada just as it is in the United States.

The current $2-per-vote subsidy is given to qualifying federal parties who win at least two per cent of the national vote. Currently all parties but the Conservatives are heavily dependent on this form of democratic welfare, with the former raising $4 million more than all other political parties combined last year.

Nanos said the smaller parties would have too much difficulty raising financial support without the $2 per vote, which would eliminate $5 million from the revenue stream of the NDP.

“If we took the proposal to its logical conclusion, this would probably lead to a two-party state, that would be the logical long-term conclusion,” he told The Hill Times. “The current regime, whether you love it or hate it, sustains minority views with funding. The green party is probably a good example.”

I suppose you could use the same argument to subsidize newspapers, television stations and magazines. Since people are too cheap to spend a couple of bucks on their favourite source of news and information, perhaps the government should subsidize that involuntary participation?

It seems to me that if 2.5 million people in Canada can bother to get out and vote for the NDP, then they can bother to scrape a toonie from the bottom of their Bolivian fair trade coffee fund and ante up for democracy. Otherwise, quite honestly, I couldn’t care less if the NDP went the way of the flying donkey.

And let’s face facts. Although the Conservatives have an incredible fundraising team that goes to the well to squeeze every last drop it can get, at least the party is hustling and rustling up enough money to sustain itself. The other parties, in particular the Bloc Quebecois, are coasting through the effort, proving that age-old axiom that welfare only creates complacency.

Former Conservative strategist Tom Flanagan suggested Canada allow political contributions on their tax forms as in the United States. This might work, I suppose, in a kind of passive participatory way. It’s sort of like a democratic afterthought.

Truthfully, at $27 million annually, politically subsidies are but a pebble in the pothole of the federal deficit. But I don’t see the point in financially rewarding either party or people for partaking in what is supposed to be voluntary democracy. Incentivizing voting with bribery is hardly an inspiring message for our anemic politics. Remove the political welfare and let’s see whether Canadians can put up or shut up.