Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

BlackBerry Roundtable: By the clicking of our thumbs …

by kadyomalley on Sunday, October 19, 2008 8:44am - 70 Comments

… yet another election postmortem this way comes.

Tags: Andrew Potter, blackberry roundtabling, ottawa citizen, Scott Reid, what flavour ice cream?

More by kadyomalley

And the ITQ Awesome Department of the Week Award goes to …

PCO — yes, that PCO — for fulfilling one of ITQ’s most oft-muttered wishes…
Harris Decima/CP: … Then again, maybe not.

Slightly less blue-rose-coloured numbers from Harris Decima, which polled from October 1 to 12…
EKOS Weekly: Tories just an armful of oversized novelty cheques away from the big M?(!)

Happy EKOSDay, everyone!
Conservatives: 40.7 (+1.0)
Liberals: 25.5 (-0.2)
NDP: 14.3 (-0.9)
Green: 10.5…

stephen

Jenn,

Thats a fair point. The outsider mentality exists within the Conservative party.

Now apparently Harper and Kevin Lynch, the head of the PCO, have a strong relationship. Appparently Lynch shares some of the distaste for leaks etc, since he wants to get rid of the perceptions, and to some degree reality, of the civil service acting in a partisan manner.

Elections Canada issue, I have no special insight, its one of those issue boiling beneath the surface that I jsut dont really have time to look at. I think it is overblown on both sides.

these things should be lessened since the Cons continue to govern and until there is a legitimate callenge then the civil service knows “who their Daddy is” for the moment.

Mulroney took a broader view, but then again he had a smashing majority to play with and could afford to be magnaminous, the civil service was running scared quite frankly at that time.

Didnt do the Cons a lot of good in their first term , treating the civil service decently, paid off more going into the second term. The fact that the civil service was working on some pretty serious policy stuff I think shut them up…1) intersting work and 2) Idle makes the devils work so to speak, so keep em busy.
Jim

I worked for the feds at one time. I saw all the political BS by Lib appointees up close. I also saw favouritism to the east rather than west.

Don’t tell me that I have no evidence. I’m an eye witness.
Mike T.

If you have evidence by all means provide it.
Jack Mitchell

When was that, Jim? 1983?
Ti-Guy

Don’t tell me that I have no evidence. I’m an eye witness.

You have no evidence.
Jim

I saw what I saw, heard what I heard.

The Liberals have had a lot of time to stack the deck.

Some Liberals are really worried they can’t shuffle the cards awhile.

Too bad.
Jack Mitchell

Problem is, Jim, we have no idea what you saw, so we can’t verify that you saw what you saw, or even that your name is Jim, or pretty much anything about your absurd BS.
Jim

Jack, you get to have your opinions based on your experiences, and so do I.
Mike T.

Opinions, now? A few minutes ago it was incontestable fact…
Jim

Nice try Mike.

I worked for the federal govt at one time and know how the Liberals operated.

The people I know that continued to work in the federal govt told me frequently that it was the same old BS.

Some of you don’t like hearing it, but too bad.

You had your run, maybe you’ll have another.
Sisyphus

Kevin Lynch is a right wing con who threw sharp elbows around the Finance Dept. for years.
I don’t doubt that he and Our Leader see eye to eye on any number of things.
He didn’t appear at PCO out of thin air.
He was appointed to the post by Harper.
The news would be that Our Leader appointed some one who didn’t agree with him. But then, we know what happens to those who dare disagree.
Mike T.

comment by Jim on Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 11:25 pm:

Nice try Mike.

Some of you don’t like hearing it, but too bad.

***

Hearing what? You haven’t said a single thing.
Jim

“Hearing what? You haven’t said a single thing.”

Basically I’m saying that the Libs have stacked things for a very long time, and anyone who says different has blinders on.
Jack Mitchell

“Basically I’m saying that the Libs have stacked things for a very long time, and anyone who says different has blinders on.”

Basically you’re saying that you don’t have a shred of non-anecdotal evidence and presuming that anybody who says different doesn’t have a shred of evidence either.

May I just say, Thank God you are no longer working for the Public Service.
Mike T.

comment by Jim on Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 11:47 pm:

“Hearing what? You haven’t said a single thing.”

Basically I’m saying that the Libs have stacked things for a very long time, and anyone who says different has blinders on.

***

Which, without any verifiable documentation of the practices you describe, isn’t a single thing.
Jim

It’s a public blog. You post what you want, I post what I want.

Unlike others, I don’t resort to personal attacks.
Jack Mitchell

What else is there to attack?
Ti-Guy

It’s so effortless for right wingers/”Conservatives”…absence of contrary evidence means the evidence for what you support has got to be there…somewhere.

This isn’t joke. This is really how they think.
stephen

Sisyphus,

Ok so who is engaging in character assisnation and choice by ideology now?

All reports I have read about Lynch are that he is an excelllent Chief Bureaucrat. I hav enever heard it uttered one way or another what his political leanings are, other than they arent obviously Liberal. All shoudl cheer this.

All other reports I have read indicate he is hardly a sycophant to Harper and that Lynch is one of the people whose dissent Harper strongly respects. In other words the guy probably is able to muster an facts to make an argument.

Once agian, the tradition of the Civil Service was that it was nuetral and independent. This is ultimately the source of its power, since it stays while masters change. Compromising its neutrality weakens it and its power in the medium and long term, since people stop believing it and set up alternatives, like Earnscliffe.

I have been disappointed that Lynch hasnt come down harder on some of the clearer affronts on nuetrality, but like any bureacrat I suspect that the price is paid over time by the offenders, lack of promotion, assignments to Inuvik, loss of junkets, demotion to an office without a window…yada yada.

So once again….the fact that Lynch is might be conservative/Conservative disqualifies him from being Chief of the PCO? Thats just as partisan, maybe more so than what we have been discussing in Kady’s original post.
Dennis Prouse

Kady, a hardened political hack like Scott Reid had to admonish you to have a heart regarding Rahim Jaffer. That has to hurt. :-)

Sometimes, though, it takes a person who has worked inside “the system”, as Scott has, to understand what elected officials go through, and just how difficult it is to suffer a defeat. Although my political leanings are right, I feel badly on a personal level for the incumbent Liberal MPs who lost their seats last week. I worked for an MP who lost an election, and I can tell you that it plainly sucks. These defeated MPs are good people who sacrificed a great deal to serve the people in Canada’s Parliament. While a seat in Parliament is certainly not anyone’s God given right, the adjustment period for people coming out of public life is difficult.