And here’s the proof:

Boy, life in Sweden must be really bad if it’s worse than here, where Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are destroying Canada.

The exclusion of two apparent Liberal party supporters from a Conservative campaign event in London, Ontario is being blamed on a sinister plot by the PMO to screen out opposition supporters. The story has even led Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to directly accuse Stephen Harper of demanding more rigorous background checks on people showing up at his campaign events than advisers he hires to work for him.

Ignatieff went on to tell reporters during a stop in Newfoundland that “you are in a very un-Canadian place” when people get barred from public meetings for being friends with him on Facebook. One of the women who said she was barred from the event had to pre-register for the rally and that’s how the Conservatives screened her out.

First off, it’s an obvious bit of turnabout being fair play for Ignatieff, who is taking the opportunity to mock Stephen Harper for his party’s own campaign against Ignatieff’s own allegiance to Canada. And it’s clear that he’s exploiting the situation to create his own media spotlight, happily granted by the mainstream press.

Second, it seems to be taken for granted that this was deliberate, and further indicative of the sort of contempt for democratic practices that the Conservatives have displayed in this country’s most hallowed institutions. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

But does it seem logical, or even practical, to screen every person who pre-registers for a campaign event, and then exclude them if they’re seen to belong to another party? Wouldn’t it seem more likely that the party would be less interested in the decided Conservative voters who will do little more than wave banners, and more interested in the kind of people who might be pursued to abandon Ignatieff and add a vote for the Conservatives?

Lost in the narrative of this whole exclusion story is the fact the Conservatives are on a campaign to win over the soft Liberal support that will grant them the majority government they so desperately covet. The idea that Stephen Harper is ordering the PMO to draw up lists of political enemies to exclude them from campaign rallies is about as ridiculous as it gets.

And if these women were excluded because of the Quixotic decision of one or more Conservative staffers, then it seems a little overdone to continue belabouring the point long after the party has issued a statement of apology and indicated it was a mistake. Assigning motives from the highest tiers of power to exclude potential voters from rallies is pretty much the textbook definition of Harper derangement syndrome.

Of course there is another, albeit equally implausible, version of events to this story. As ridiculous as it is to suspect the prime minister of trying to exclude voters from a campaign rally designed to gain more voters, is it at all possible the Liberal party hired young students to go to these rallies in order to make the claim they were denied entry?

I mean, is it at all possible that given the political fodder that has been made over the claims of two people in the entire country of Canada, that a calculation was made somewhere in Liberal party headquarters to further the conspiratorial theories that Stephen Harper’s anti-democratic government is out to be mean and nasty to young, innocent students?

Possible? Yes. Plausible? No. But neither is the sort of claims that are being given serious consideration by people who pretend to have serious minds in organizations that pretend to be serious dispensers of news.

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.

Well, the above video is the latest attempt by the Liberals to reply to the campaign-style ads that the Conservatives have floated on YouTube. I’m not sure whether either party have aired their ads on television yet, but it certainly seems as though the rhetoric has been amplified toward a spring election.

The Liberal ad might be effective for people who believe the simplistic explanation that corporate tax cuts are a bad thing. I don’t know. I do know that I argued in favour of the 4.5 per cent tax cuts the federal government has made since 2006 being the main reason why the Canadian economy has rebounded more quickly than the rest of the G7.

I’m well aware of the Conservative deficit and the deficit spending that has little to nothing to do with the economic recovery, the burden of which will only create further problems on the balance sheet later. I’m also aware that dropping the corporate tax rate by another one and a half percentage point in 2012 will reduce the immediate revenue to the federal treasury by an estimated $6 billion. So the Liberals certainly aren’t lying on that point.

But where the Liberals, and the NDP and Bloc and Greens for that matter, seem to fall short in their reasoning is that the corporate tax cuts won’t create any economic stimulus. On the contrary, corporate tax cuts are most likely the strongest kind of economic stimulus, as it gives companies an opportunity to keep employees, make investments, hire new workers, or just simply decide not to move to a more favourable tax jurisdiction.

Which means that as far as the Liberal attack ad goes, it’s not much of an attack at all. Hammering on the Conservatives for cutting taxes is like being mad at a dog for barking. It’s what sound fiscally conservative policy should be.

If the Liberals wanted to mount a less self-defeating attack, removing “$6 billion tax cut” in big letters from their ads would be a good place to start. The second thing would be to question the spending practices of the Conservative government, and it would be no more difficult than quoting the Fraser Institute’s Niels Veldhuis.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, the so-called stimulus that was spent during the recession will have a compounded debt of $110 billion by the time the Conservatives expect to balance the ledgers in 2015. The federal debt at this juncture will be $626 billion, or fully $63 billion more than the Liberal government drove it to in 1997 when Canada’s debt hit a record high.

The problem is that although the Conservative government has taken a fiscally sound plan in cutting corporate taxes to 15 per cent, it continues to outspend all previous governments in growth and overall expenditures. In fact, in the five years that Stephen Harper has been Prime Minister, spending has increased from $209 billion under the Martin government to $278 billion for fiscal 2010-11, an increase of 25 per cent.

According to the Conservatives’ own estimates, when the budget will finally be balanced 2015-16 spending will be 25 per cent greater than it is now. It isn’t sustainable, even if revenues do recover to the point where we can begin to run modest surpluses again.

The problem is that the Liberals can’t exactly attack this plan, since they’re busy making large spending promises of their own. While they would cancel the 1.5 per cent corporate tax cut in 2012, they would implement a program aimed at expanding Employment Insurance, at a minimum cost of $1 billion every year. That’s not an alternative. That’s a worse scenario.

There are numerous methods and ways to balance the budget more quickly than the Conservative plan and without causing any panic. Among those are eliminating liberal spending programs like regional economic development agencies, corporate subsidies and handouts, so-called environmental subsidies and “loans” like the one handed to aerospace giant Pratt & Whitney Canada.

Privatize inefficient public companies, including the CBC, and end taxpayer support for the ones in competition with the private sector. Freeze hiring for the public sector and wages for two years. Reduce the Equalization program, which sees $8.5 billion sent to Quebec annually. Force them to develop their own revenue stream by tendering drilling rights in shale oil like British Columbia. Eliminate the vote subsidy. Claw back the departmental increases in spending to immigration and scrap the appeals process for denied refugees.

None of these choices should be considered too difficult when carrying a half-trillion-dollar public debt. When the government returns to surpluses sufficient to pay down the debt, then personal incomes tax cuts should follow. There’s a clear way forward. Now we just require the courage to walk in that direction.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks at a Conservative rally at Royal Roads University in Victoria. (Geoff Howe/Canadian Press)

I’m not a regular reader of Maclean’s Aaron Wherry, but thanks to the advent of Twitter I often come across his blog entries. Today’s was quite interesting, actually, as it pertains to Stephen Harper’s Prime Ministerial tenure approaching the top 10 longest-serving PMs.

On Sunday, Jan. 9, Harper will surpass Alexander Mackenzie for 12th spot on the list at four years, 337 days in power. On Feb. 6, he’ll slip into 11th spot, surpassing the esteemed Lester B. Pearson at precisely five years in power.

Whether you like him or not, Stephen Harper is rapidly approaching a list of very distinguished members found in Canada’s political history books. Those who have made significant impacts in the direction of our country, its policies and its reputation.

Again, my math is little better than Aaron Wherry’s, but Harper can reach the top 10 by surviving to late April (surpassing R. B. Bennett), which is a strong possibility, should no election be forced. He would have to also survive a possible fall election to pass John Diefenbaker for 9th spot.

After that, his chances fall off precipitously without a real shift in Canadian politics that brings stable, majority Conservative governments:

1. William Lyon Mackenzie King: 21 years, 154 days
2. Sir John A. Macdonald: 18 years, 359 days
3. Pierre Trudeau: 15 years, 164 days
4. Sir Wilfrid Laurier: 15 years, 86 days
5. Jean Chrétien: 10 years, 38 days
6. Brian Mulroney: 8 years, 281 days
7. Sir Robert Borden: 8 years, 274 days
8. Louis St. Laurent: 8 years, 218 days
…
13. Stephen Harper (incumbent): 4 years, 335 days

A third mandate would also put him into an exclusive list of just six other men who won that many elections.

Eric Morse and Eugene Lang take a rather more, er, realistic view than the great majority of our politicians and punditry (as did former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in a certain case in which however he certainly showed no courage):

UN hot seat can be uncomfortable

“Thank God we’re not on the UN Security Council; our diplomats work all their careers to get us on the Security Council but there are times like this when you don’t want to be on it,” prime minister Jean Chrétien once said to foreign minister Bill Graham.

The “time like this” was the run-up to the second Iraq war in the winter of 2003. It was an agonizing period in UN and Canadian relations, as the United States was pushing hard for the Security Council to endorse an imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. This was arguably the most significant issue to come before the council in decades. And Canada’s prime minister of the day wanted no part of that deliberation on this extraordinarily difficult question for Canada.

Next week, after years of lobbying in New York by Canadian diplomats, and more recent high profile interventions by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the UN General Assembly will decide whether Canada edges out Portugal for a coveted two-year seat on the council…

It has been suggested we don’t “deserve” a seat this time around. But — if “deserving” is a criterion of international politics at all — Canada’s contributions to UN missions in the Balkans, where we served for 15 years and had 1,400 troops deployed as late as 2003, and our leadership of the UN-mandated ISAF mission in Afghanistan in 2003-04, not to mention Canada’s more recent sacrifices in Kandahar [which continues to be authorized by the Security Council and hence is a UN mission], more than qualify this country for Security Council membership…

A seat on the council might mean Canada finds itself having to pronounce on — or contribute blood and treasure to — issues that it would rather avoid entirely. Imagine, for example, the political anguish in this country if we were on the council during another Arab-Israeli war. It is hard to imagine Canada would have any influence over the Security Council on a modern-day Arab-Israeli war, yet a heavy price would be paid in domestic discord.

As a Security Council member, and given that Canada was one of the architects of the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine, we would have difficulty in not supporting a council bent on invoking R2P as a justification for intervention, even if we were not prepared to commit the blood and treasure necessary to support such an intervention. This would be awkward for Canada, to say the least [see also: "There’s a responsibility to protect us from Pink Lloyd and Soft Rock"]…

Former ambassador to the UN Paul Heinbecker recently proposed a 10-point agenda that Canada should bring to the Security Council. It summarizes everything that the advocates of soft power in Canada would wish our role in the world to be. As such, it likely won’t mesh with the foreign policy agenda of the current government. But it is at least a framework [the authors are being kind; Mr Heinbecker's article is a piece of typically Canadian mush advocating a bunch of nice ideas that won't happen whatever this country might try to do]. And if you are going to go into that room with the big boys, you’d better have something to guide your thinking and voting.

Eugene Lang, former chief of staff to two Liberal ministers of national defence, is co-author of The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. Eric Morse is a former Canadian diplomat who is now vice-chair of security studies at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.

Related:

Does Canada deserve Mickey I.?/Bobbety’s smooth move

John Robson of the Ottawa Citizen wonders where the Mickster’s brains are at, and why we should even bother to care about winning a (temporary) seat on the UN Security Council…

Update: E.R. Campbell at Milnet.ca does a vivid vivisection of Mr Heinbecker’s mush mentioned above (if such an action is possible).

Mark
Ottawa

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks at a Conservative rally at Royal Roads University in Victoria on Wednesday. (Geoff Howe/Canadian Press)

There’s an article in the Vancouver Island Oceanside Star, written by Brad Bird, that alleges the media was barred from questioning the Prime Minister in a recent visit. In truth, the media were apprised of the rules before the Prime Minister even arrived, in a memo delivered by the PMO. Although a visit to the Nanaimo Port Authority at 3pm, and Hatley Castle at Royal Roads University in Victoria at 6pm, were open invites to the media, the memo clearly states that the Shellfish Research station at 1pm was a “photo opportunity only.”

Mr.Bird’s commentary regarding Stephen Harper’s inaccessibility, which he compares unfavourably with former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, isn’t exactly telling the whole story. After all, reporters were invited for the photo-op at Vancouver Island University knowing full well they wouldn’t be allowed to ask any questions. So there isn’t much to get upset about, unless those reporters didn’t know that there were opportunities to question Stephen Harper in Nanaimo or Victoria later that day.

Why the media go to photo-ops are beyond me anyway. The whole name, “photo opportunity”, is an insider marketing term that has somehow become an acceptable mainstream description of photojournalists accepting the terms and conditions of a carefully orchestrated event meant to favour the politician or celebrity at hand. So in a sense, Mr.Bird’s acceptance of the assignment, though it may have been handed down by his superiors, is lazy journalism to begin with.

I do not, however, think one can discount the underlying frustration expressed in his article. After all, it’s no secret that the PMO controls dissemination of information from government to media like none that has gone before. It’s true that the Conservative Prime Minister likes to carefully control the message, and that’s partly because of the rampant yellow journalism stemming from incidents like “Wafergate” and speculation about how much he really loves his kids.

But at the same time, the anti-conservative media bias angle doesn’t entirely wash. Brian Mulroney was a very affable conservative Prime Minister, who enjoyed speaking to the press very much, filling the corridors of the House of Commons with his rich baritone, as he used the media to measure his own relative popularity.

It isn’t surprising that the media tends to be unfriendly with Stephen Harper. Reporters are used to the idea of accessibility to people beyond the reach of the common folk. The very idea of a journalist is to have a representative of society who is able to go out and ask questions from leaders who would otherwise never communicate with the people, and bring back a message of some sort. To relegate journalists to the scheduling whims of the PMO is certain to frustrate the spirit of the occupation.

The conundrum for the press is that it has never faced such a level of control from the senior corridors of power. They are invited to prearranged events designed by the public relations architects of the Conservative Party. It’s obvious that you are not likely to be able to perform the tasks of journalism by attending something of this nature. Nobody ever won a journalism award by attending a Richard Nixon ship dedication.

So what are journalists to do when they are restricted by the amount of accessibility they have to Stephen Harper and the ability to ask him questions? Well, the answer is that they either dig deeper with more investigative research, or focus on interviewing the people close to the Prime Minister.

Or, and I suspect this is the case for many reporters who also serve as columnists, they turn to their pens and craft a negative article that demonstrates the frustrated underpinnings of a job made more difficult than they would like it to be.

One detects some real, ironic anger in this piece by Matthew Fisher of Postmedia News:

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — The Taliban have provided Canada with a foretaste of the rapturous welcome that it can expect from insurgents when its troops quit Kandahar next summer, congratulating the Dutch government for its decision to have the last of its combat troops out of neighbouring Uruzgan by this Sunday…

…Ottawa intends to do exactly what the Taliban spokesman said his organization wants other NATO countries to do. The Canadian Parliament decided in 2008 that the combat mission in Kandahar, which began in 2006, would end by July 1, 2011, and that all 2,800 Canadian troops would be out of the country by the end of next year.

Although the Liberals and some Conservatives have evinced an interest in Canada continuing with a much smaller training mission for Afghan troops elsewhere in the country [more here], which would be allowed according to the wording of the parliamentary resolution, the Harper government has until now been adamant ["Afstan: Hell yes, we’re gonna go"] that it would follow its own, much stricter interpretation of the resolution and totally end the mission [comment on the government's, er, economy with the truth and key excerpt from the Commons' motion here]…

My own post yesterday:

I guess we’re next on the Talibs best wishes list

Mark
Ottawa

Mickey I. and Mr Harper take note (and the Globe and Mail’s China worshippers):

U.S. takes a tougher tone with China

Curiously, a major beef rather reminds one of another maritime passage (the Americans sure are consistent, eh?):

…
Faced with a Chinese government increasingly intent on testing U.S. strength and capabilities, the United States unveiled a new policy that rejected China’s claims to sovereignty over the whole South China Sea…

The decision to confront China on the South China Sea dates back several months, after administration officials noticed that the sea — an international waterway through which more than 50 percent of the world’s merchant fleet tonnage passes each year — had crept into the standard diplomatic pitter-patter about China’s “core interests.”..

Somewhat related:

So now the British own the Arctic? [more here]

Earlier:

Mickey I. upsucking to the deadly Dragon

The end of the world as we know it, China section (plus Mickey I.)

Dragon update, or, die gelbe Gefahr

Update: This growling has nothing to do with any sovereignty claims to the Northwest Passage, however much some may spin it.

Mark
Ottawa

Spiegel Online sends a, er, message:

The Dragon’s Embrace
China’s Soft Power Is a Threat to the West

China may have no intentions of using its growing military might, but that is of little comfort for Western countries. From the World Trade Organization to the United Nations, Beijing is happy to use its soft power to get what it wants — and it is wrong-footing the West at every turn…

…the Chinese are in the process of conquering the world. They are doing this very successfully by pursuing an aggressive trade policy toward the West, granting low-interest loans to African and Latin American countries, applying diplomatic pressure to their partners, pursuing a campaign bordering on cultural imperialism to oppose the human rights we perceive to be universal, and providing the largest contingent of soldiers for United Nations peacekeeping missions of all Security Council members. In other words, they are doing it with soft power instead of hard power [Canadians are obsessed with UN peacekeeping, guess we can't stand the hard kind--but what do we get out of Pink Lloyd-style soft power?].

Beijing is indeed waging a war on all continents, but not in the classical sense. Whether the methods it uses consistently qualify as “peaceful” is another matter. For example, the Chinese apply international agreements as they see fit, and when the rules get in their way, they “creatively” circumvent them or rewrite them with the help of compliant allies.

But why are politicians in Washington, Paris and London taking all of this lying down, kowtowing to the Chinese instead of criticizing them? Does capturing — admittedly lucrative — markets in East Asia and trying to impress the Chinese really help their cause?..

The Chinese have paid particular attention to nations with large oil and natural gas reserves, such as Venezuela, Kazakhstan and Nigeria [hey, don't ignore our oil sands!], but they also cultivate relations with third-tier countries — countries that the West tends to ignore but that have voting rights in international bodies like anyone else. Beijing has forgiven billions in loans to African nations and pampered them with infrastructure projects. It has generally tied its assistance merely to two conditions that are relatively painless for the countries in question, namely that they have no official relations with Taiwan and that they support the People’s Republic in international organizations.

What Beijing is not demanding of these countries is even more telling. Unlike Washington, London or Berlin, the Chinese do not tie their development aid to any conditions relating to good governance. While the West punishes authoritarian behavior by withholding funds (and, in some cases, indirectly threatens “regime change”), Beijing has no scruples about pampering the world’s dictators by building them palaces and highways to their weekend villas — and assuring them territorial integrity, no matter what human rights violations they are found guilty of…

Don’t forget that Canadian politicians are doing their bit, note the prime minister’s pic:

Mickey I. upsucking to the deadly Dragon

The peril!  The peril!  On the other hand Kaiser Willy was all for die grüne Gefahr, go figure (via Arts & Letters Daily).

Update: This post, and the Mickster one, combined by the National Post’s “Full Comment”–though they bowdlerized the title and omitted the last line.

Mark
Ottawa