NDP kinda-sorta-maybe threatens the media over "possibly illegal" recording?

By kadyomalley - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 10:48 PM - 53 Comments

Or does this request only refer to the original tape of the conference call? I can’t tell. Anyway, here’s what the party sent out a few minutes ago. (I’m not sure if this applies to the transcript that PMO so helpfully provided earlier today, but I’m trying to find out.)

NOVEMBER 30, 2008

ATTENTION: MEDIA

RE: PHONE TAP OF NDP CAUCUS MEETING

Based on the advice of legal council, the New Democratic Party is sending this note out to members of the media.

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Today’s news reports that a member of the Conservative Party intercepted and electronically recorded a private communication restricted to members of the NDP caucus raises serious questions as to whether this activity contravened the Criminal Code of Canada. The caucus meeting was intended to be confidential as were the communications that took place during the meeting. The only intended recipients were the members of the NDP caucus. It appears that the call-in number was inadvertently sent to a Conservative MP.

We have been given legal advice that any reasonable person who was inadvertently given access to the call would have understood that he or she was not invited to listen to the communication or to record it. The continued possession of any such recording may also be an offence under the Criminal Code.

The New Democratic Party would request that anyone in possession of the recording to turn it over to the Office of the Commissioner of the RCMP for use in any subsequent investigation.

For your information the provisions of the Criminal Code are set out below.

Criminal Code

PART VI: INVASION OF PRIVACY

Interception of Communications

s. 183. “private communication” means any oral communication, or any telecommunication, that is made by an originator who is in Canada or is intended by the originator to be received by a person who is in Canada and that is made under circumstances in which it is reasonable for the originator to expect that it will not be intercepted by any person other than the person intended by the originator to receive it, and includes any radio-based telephone communication that is treated electronically or otherwise for the purpose of preventing intelligible reception by any person other than the person intended by the originator to receive it;

Interception

184. (1) Everyone who, by means of any electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other device, willfully intercepts a private communication is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Saving provision

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to

(a) a person who has the consent to intercept, express or implied, of the originator of the private communication or of the person intended by the originator thereof to receive it;

No columnist should have this much fun

By Paul Wells - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 10:43 PM - 0 Comments

So I’m going to leave Ottawa for a while. That’s right, folks, it’s time for another Previously-Scheduled Travel Opportunity. I’ll be back in two weeks. I may check in here while I’m away; at any rate, regular blogging will resume after Dec. 12. I feel a bit (though only a little bit) like Sergei Krikalev, whose country fell apart while he was up in a space station. Do be gentle with one another, won’t you all?

You think it's easy making rebel alliances?

By Paul Wells - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 10:19 PM - 55 Comments

A note of caution regarding reports that this evil devil’s pact among separatists, socialists and compromisers is a done deal. I am given to understand, from plural anonymous sources, that Dominic Leblanc, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae are meeting at this very instant in Toronto, at Rae’s behest. The tiny perfect ex-Premier is urging his colleagues to “get behind this deal and get behind Stéphane Dion.” You can assume the main target of this pitch is Michael Ignatieff, who — here the picture gets fuzzy — is said to be (a) leery on the idea of Dion leading this thing; or (b) leery on the whole idea of an evil devil’s pact; or (c) floating in a stew of mixed messages and conflicted helpers. Or (d) artfully seeming to be floating in a stew of mixed messages and etc., etc., the better to catch the weak off guard.

“If it falls apart, that’s where it will happen,” one of my nameless informants said about the Toronto meeting among the Liberal hopefuls.

Rae’s pitch is that the Liberals have a process for selecting a leader and that until that process reaches its conclusion at the May Vancouver convention, Stéphane Dion is the leader and should enjoy the prerogatives of leadership, such as presiding over evil devil’s pacts, should any arise.

By tomorrow you’ll know how it all ended, but I just wanted to say that some confusion remains as of this hour.

It's… alive!

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 10:04 PM - 43 Comments

NDP, Liberals reach deal to topple minority Tory government

CBC News

The NDP and Liberals have reached a deal to topple the minority Conservative government and take power themselves in a coalition, CBC News has learned.

A deal has been negotiated between NDP Leader Jack Layton and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion that would see them form a coalition government for two and a half years, the CBC’s Keith Boag reported, citing sources.

The NDP would be invited into cabinet and get 25 per cent of seats, Boag said, adding that the party wouldn’t get the position of the finance chair or the deputy prime minister’s post.

“That’s the big step forward tonight,” Boag reported.

The Bloc Québécois wouldn’t be a part of the coalition, but would have to support it, he said.

“The most difficult question is who’ll be the leader,” Boag said, adding that Dion, who negotiated the deal, believes he has the right to be prime minister.

First thought: This is a huge win for the NDP. With a quarter of the seats in cabinet, they would gain instant legitimacy as potential contenders for power, of a kind they have never had before. Indeed, just negotiating the deal is a win, even if they never get to put it into effect.

The Liberals have just pulled their chief rival on the left in from the margins of irrelevancy to a serious alternative, at the same time allowing themselves to be pulled sharply to the left, in public perception if nothing else. They may live to regret this. Worse, they may not.

Second thought: What does it mean to say the Bloc “would have to support” the deal. Sez who? How would this be enforced?

Third thought: Prime Minister Dion.

UPDATE: On the other hand there’s this:

Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff is unlikely to support the coalition deal being negotiated by lame duck leader Stéphane Dion – a decision that would doom the opposition parties attempt to bring down the government next week in a vote of no-confidence in the House of Commons.

And this:

Coalition deal may unravel

Mumbai attacks: evidence from the lone surviving terrorist

By Michael Petrou - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 9:51 PM - 1 Comment

The BBC and the Telegraph have good summaries of what is known so far.

Breaking: NatNewsWatch reports deal reached for coalition government

By kadyomalley - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 9:39 PM - 60 Comments

Apparently, it’s on.

BTW, a note to the Conservative talkingpointskateers: the NDP won’t get Finance or the DPM slot, so you might want to cross that one off the list.

UPDATE: And for the Liberal talkingpointskateers – General Martha Hall Findlay has your marching orders!

The Coalition of the Credulous

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 9:31 PM - 34 Comments

I don’t know what’s more impressive about this: the cynicism or the naivete…

A budding coalition between New Democrats, the separatist Bloc Quebecois and Liberals is an exercise in nation building, NDP Leader Jack Layton told his caucus in a conference call covertly recorded by the government.

Layton’s national unity musings were secretly recorded Saturday by the Conservatives. They held the tape for a day and then had an official from the Prime Minister’s Office deliver it to various media on Sunday.

“The ‘Coalition for Canada,’ I love the idea – (but it) could be a deal-breaker for the Bloc,” Layton is heard saying to laughter.

“‘The Coalition for Canada and Quebec?”‘ he adds, to more laughter.

Layton, however, appears deadly serious when he pitches the coalition as a potentially unifying force in federal politics.

“Nothing could be better for our country than to have the 50 (BQ) members out of 75 who’ve been elected in Quebec actually helping to make Canada a better place. We just approach it on that basis and say, ‘We’re willing to make that happen. Here are the things we’re going to be investing in and transforming together.’

“If they’re willing to work with us, we’re willing to accept that offer.”

Let’s be clear. It was wrong of the Tories to listen in on the NDP conference call, wronger still to tape it, even if we believe their story that they were inadvertently given the code for the call. That crosses the line, from hardball to creepy — if not CREEPy. (I know we in the media do this sort of thing all the time, but is that the standard we want to hold elected officeholders to — the media’s?) That they then released the transcript is at best ill-advised, in a week in which they are being universally reviled as ruthless opportunists.

But lordy. Could Layton sound like a bigger maroon? (Do the deal if you must, but do it with your eyes open.) As for the Liberals, do they really want to get into bed with this bunch? Mainstream Grits should think hard — very hard — about where this is taking their party.

Her Majesty's Official Opposition teams up with separatists to topple democratically elected government …

By kadyomalley - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 9:18 PM - 22 Comments

… in 2005 – and you’ll never guess who was leading the charge!

(You don’t think there were any prior discussions between the two parties involved in this attempted coup, do you?)

The Tories made them do it

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 5:45 PM - 226 Comments

Well that didn’t take long. Barely three days after the Finance minister rose to deliver his annual fall update, it is all in the dumpster: the fiscal plan, the curbs to subsidies to political parties, the suspension of public employees’ right to strike, maybe even the government itself.

And the settled wisdom of every single pundit in the country is that it is all the Conservatives’ fault. After all, they provoked the opposition beyond endurance. They made demands of the opposition that they could not possibly accept. How could Harper have been so reckless? What a toxic gambit! What a colossal miscalculation!

Absolutely no one pins even a sliver of blame on the Liberals, the NDP or the Bloc. Of course not. Faced with the unreasonable and extreme proposal that they raise funds in the same way as the Conservatives have been doing for years — by asking people for their money, rather than taking it from them — they really had no alternative but to seize power. What on earth were they supposed to do? Revamp their moribund fund-raising organizations? Find a message and a leader capable of motivating large numbers of Canadians to click the “donate” button on their websites? Get off their collective duffs? What were the Tories thinking?

Continue…

Selective hearing

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 4:43 PM - 16 Comments

During Jim Flaherty’s noon teleconference he was asked if his government had shown itself to be tone deaf to the present political situation and the profound economic turmoil would seem to supersede all else. I do not recall a subsequent admission of haplessness from the Finance Minister.

A short while later though, he was asked about opposition criticism for another part of his fiscal update: the proposed changes to the rules governing pay equity for women. Mr. Flaherty said he had not heard of such complaints, nor had he been informed by his staff of any such complaints. 

That admission is altogether remarkable. Not least because the Prime Minister’s Office has just sent out a press release trumpeting its ability to eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of other parties. Continue…

None dare call it a desperate scramble to the lowest possible moral ground to stay in power!

By kadyomalley - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 4:08 PM - 202 Comments

Oh wait – I guess ITQ just did, huh?

From the virtual desk of the Prime Minister, courtesy of the press gallery listserv, comes the following missive – which, under normal circumstances, would seem to the kind of potentially incendiary info dump that a party wouldn’t want to put out directly, but would instead farm out to a friendly media outlet, a sympathetic blogger or some other officially unaffiliated conduit:

from Gallery-Tribune <pressres2@parl.gc.ca>
date Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 3:32 PM
subject NDP Caucus transcript – secret deal
mailed-by parl.gc.ca
NDP Conference Call: Part 1 – and

NDP Conference Call – Part 2

Karine Leroux

Office of the Prime Minister / Cabinet du Premier ministre
Deputy Press Secretary / Attachée de presse adjointe

I’ll have more to say about this later this afternoon, most likely, once the NDP has had the chance to respond to the allegations, and I’ve gotten my head around the idea of PMO being okay with the notion of recording another party’s caucus conference call.  In the meantime, here’s the full text of the Secret NDP Caucus Call That May Indeed Change Everything, But Possibly Not How PMO Might Have Hoped after the jump:

Continue…

Well, let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

By Paul Wells - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 3:37 PM - 36 Comments

Where is the evidence that Guy Giorno is a competent prime ministerial chief of staff?

He arrived in July. Minister’s offices since then have been in a constant state of Langevin-directed chaos. Constant staffing changes are being driven by unseen gnomes at the centre countermanding the preferences of ministers who know their own employees and staffers who know their own competences. I know more than one case where staffers have been given to understand their continued employment with the government depended on accepting a change of assignment they found entirely unpalatable. What kind of Kafkaesque desk general thinks those people will do their best work at the new gig?

Immediately in mid-summer the prime minister started heaving from pillar to post about the timing and circumstance of the next election. His explanation for abandoning fixed election dates was risible. His stated goal was to reach a calmer post-election phase where a serious government could get serious work done. How’s that going?

The Harper Conservatives did make real gains in the election. They did this thanks to outreach work that began in 2006; and to Stéphane Dion’s tireless campaign to split the Liberal vote by legitimizing the Greens and demoralize Liberal campaign workers through confusion and mismanagement. What part of all this triumph was Giorno in charge of? Politicizing cuts to arts funding. Merci, Guy!

Long-term work paid off in the campaign; short-term work — let’s expand the economic portion of the leaders’ debate and show up with nothing to say about the economy! — not so much. And since the election, it’s the short-term work by profoundly short-term thinkers that has prevailed. Pillar-to-post messaging: That’s Harper in Peru with odes to Keynesianism, followed by Flaherty in the Commons with pointless, asinine provocation of parties who have the government outnumbered. A preference for picking fights over winning them — or even avoiding fights so you can govern instead — well, that’s been the theme of every week since July.

Kory Teneycke, it should be said, has been an excellent choice for communications director. On some days he looks a little harried. It is not an easy government to communicate for.

Fun fact: Giorno became Mike Harris’s chief of staff in August, 2000. Who believes the Ontario Conservatives’ fortunes improved after that date?

For Hill gamblers

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 3:09 PM - 6 Comments

What’s the over/under on number of cigarettes smoked by John McCallum this weekend? Five-hundred? A thousand?

And what are the odds that when the snow around West Block melts in the spring, a Hazmat team is going to be required to clean up the butts?

The case for change

By selley - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 2:23 PM - 29 Comments

Aaron Wherry proposes Rob Oliphant’s speech, in which the Liberal MP excoriated the government for misrepresenting the economy on the campaign trail, as a potential eulogy for Stephen Harper’s Tories. Said Oliphant:

I was impressed that the government seemed to indicate [in the fiscal update] that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it might actually believe that government can and should be a force for good in people’s lives, and that it is appropriate for government to intervene, act and ensure that our future, particularly our economic future, is protected.

What surprises me about this recognition is that it is simply not even close to what the honourable members on the other side of the House were telling voters during the election, week after week in the recent campaign. In fact, during the campaign, the Conservatives ran against incurring deficits and un-budgeted spending while continually denying that Canada was heading toward a recession.

The problem with that eulogy, I’d say, is that it overlooks the sheer madness of what Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty have done to themselves. The prime minister had already abandoned the campaign “against incurring deficits and un-budgeted spending,” and he’d already admitted we might be heading towards recession. He did it loudly and proudly and—as Thomas Walkom bemusedly observed on Friday—even “eloquently.” Wrote Walkom:

In Peru last week, the Prime Minister talked of the need to take “unprecedented fiscal actions if necessary” to fight the global recession.

A day later, he eloquently and deliberately compared the current crisis to the 10-year-long Depression of the ’30s, vowing that he would not make the same mistakes that governments made then by trying to balance the books at all costs at a time “when fiscal stimulus (raising spending or cutting taxes) was absolutely essential.”

A day after that, he chided those who insist that deficits must be avoided at all costs and called for a “somewhat less simplistic view” of government finances.

And then he came home just in time to watch Simple Jim deliver the same old nostrums yesterday.

In other words, the fiscal update was in many ways a return to what the government had campaigned on a few weeks ago, not a repudiation of it.

Continue…

Welcome to his nightmare: Jim Flaherty holds nooner conference call to chat with reporters about .. oh, you know. Stuff.

By kadyomalley - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 12:22 PM - 64 Comments

Since the government has now backed down over public financing for political parties and – as of earlier today – its plan to suspend the right of civil servants to strike, the proposed changes to pay equity could be the third shoe to drop. I guess we’ll find out when this uncharacteristically lively hold music is replaced by the dulcet tone of the Finance Minister.  

November 30, 2008

       
NOTICE TO THE MEDIA

               
Minister of Finance to Hold Conference Call    

Immediate release      

Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty will hold a conference call, today, Sunday, November 30, 2008, at 12:15 p.m.

       
Media representatives wishing to participate in the conference call must dial xxx-xxx-xxxx or toll-free in Canada only xxxxxxxxxx and refer to reservation #xxxxxxx at least 10 minutes before the call is scheduled to begin.

       
This conference call is for journalists only.

       
___________________
For further information:       

Chisholm Pothier

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Finance

State of play

By Paul Wells - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 12:10 PM - 33 Comments

The band — covers from the 60s, 70s, 80s and whatever — was really quite good in front of the big Bill Reid sculpture at the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau as the usual Parliament Hill suspects convened for the annual Press Gallery Dinner last night. The speeches — none from any political leader; the prime minister’s boycott of the event has proved contagious, and the shorter event is a blessing — were funny and brief. The attempts at comedy were really bad. The real fun came before dinner, between courses and long after, as journalists, politicians, and former journalists and politicians (i.e. lobbyists) gossipped about the week’s news. Here’s an attempt to tease consensus and narrative out of the jumble:

Continue…

The economy excuse

By Anne Kingston - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

If there’s a silver lining in encroaching recessionary storm clouds, it’s the Economic Excuse—a convenient pretext being nimbly proffered by enterprising prevaricators. After all, why should corporations and governments be the only ones able to blame economic malaise for cutbacks, layoffs and cancelled holiday parties? One Toronto woman, who requests anonymity, recently channelled beleaguered U.S. brokerage Morgan Stanley (which is cutting 10 per cent of its workforce while simultaneously recruiting high-end “financial advisers”) when she told her cleaning lady she had to let her go because of the sour economy. She didn’t mention she’d rehired her former cleaning lady, who’d left to deal with a family emergency. She defends her deception as easiest for everyone. “Some of my friends use her so I’ll bump into her,” she says. “I also didn’t want to burn any bridges; you never know, I might want to hire her again.”

How many people are covertly exploiting the financial downturn to sever relationships, professional or personal, is unknowable. But a glimpse is offered in a survey released in November by Prince & Assoc., a Connecticut-based polling company that specializes in the habits of the rich. It asked people with a net worth of more than $20 million how the economy was affecting their extramarital relationships. Twelve per cent said they planned to dump their lovers while 80 per cent claimed they would be cutting back on their gifts and allowances.

It’s anybody’s guess how many of these adulterers are telling the truth about potential romantic downsizing. But anecdotal evidence suggests many alleged “belt-tightening” measures are in fact “relief-providing.” And nowhere is this more evident than in the deployment of the Economic Excuse to escape the death grip of holiday obligations. One woman who works in PR, for instance, told her family she’s unable to come home for Christmas, intimating limited finances were the reason. They were sympathetic; she’d lost her job last summer and only recently had been hired back on a contract. But money wasn’t why she deep-sixed her visit. “It’s a hassle,” she confides, chiming off the routine—shopping for and wrapping of presents (if she doesn’t go, she’s expected to send only one or two), packing, arranging the cat-sitter, hauling bags to work, making a mad dash to the train station. Then there’s a five-hour train trip crammed in with noisy, excited children and people hacking and coughing. She loves her family, she says, and enjoys their company, most of the time. “But there’s pressure to fit in visits with everyone, which leads to guilt, as well as the high risk of a family member uttering something outrageous that will rankle for days,” she says. “Then I have to haul an assortment of gift baskets—a lot of soap—back on the train.”

She’s not alone in breaking with rituals that, over time, have become oppressive. One Toronto couple who has thrown a Christmas party for neighbours for over a decade has decided this year is the perfect time to end the tradition, even though their financial situation has not changed. “Every year we say, ‘This is the last year,’ ” says the wife. “Then we get sucked into it again. And it’s so much work—three days of preparation.” When they told people they wouldn’t be hosting the party, people just assumed the economy was the reason, she says, noting none expressed disappointment. “Maybe they’re relieved too,” she says with a laugh.

Not only does the Economic Excuse allow people to opt out, but to opt out with a tinge of moral superiority. In this new era of “frugality chic,” slashing an unwieldy gift list is fiscally responsible. Re-gifting is no longer tacky; it’s savvy! And parents can finally refuse to buy the latest soul-destroying video game—smug knowing such deprivation also provides Depression preparation.

Just like actual economic distress, the Economic Excuse does run the risk of having a domino effect. One woman who lives in British Columbia says she made plans to join her brother and his family, who live out of the country, in Toronto this Christmas to visit family in a nursing home. It was a trip she dreaded. “It’s depressing as hell,” she says. “I cry almost every time I see them.” Now her brother has just cancelled for vague “financial reasons.”

She’s suspicious. “They’ve got money,” she says. “Then that got me thinking: if the son who works for a big corporation can blame the economy, why can’t the self-employed daughter?” So his rationale, whether true or not, has become her excuse as well. “I guess I just want to be selfish and enjoy Christmas the way I see other people enjoying it; it’s a celebration, a happy day.” She’ll go after Christmas instead: “Better to see them on a random day in January or February when the atmosphere is blah and the miserableness of it won’t be so pronounced.” It may not be a heartwarming Christmas tale out of Dickens—or even Dr. Seuss—but the Economic Excuse saved her Christmas. And it’s a reminder to all that there’s at least one way left to make the economy work for you.

Eulogy for a government?

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 3:03 AM - 56 Comments

Rob Oliphant is a slight, unimposing man, one of the rookie Liberals who fill the back row of the opposition side. His is a united church minister with a degree in commerce. He was an advisor to David Peterson’s government in Ontario and Michael Ignatieff’s campaign for the Liberal leadership in 2006. He currently represents the riding vacated by John Godfrey, another slight, unimposing man. 

In the moments before Jim Flaherty delivered the government’s economic and fiscal statement, the House was going through the motions of debating the speech from the throne. Oliphant was the last member of parliament to speak in full before the Speaker called on the finance minister. The government benches had been filling as he spoke and were full by the time he finished, but save for a few Liberals in Oliphant’s immediate vicinity, almost no one seemed to notice his remarks. Everything that has transpired since has, of course, reduced him to the stuff of footnote.

But if we are in the final days of Stephen Harper’s government, here was a crushing, if inadvertent, eulogy. Continue…

"That's precisely the thing not to do"

By Paul Wells - Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 2:38 PM - 91 Comments

Probably not tippy-top on the Langevin Block worry list this weekend, but the PM appears to have flunked economics:

“That’s precisely the thing not to do,” said Carlos Leitao, chief economist at Laurentian Bank Securities. Rather than a balanced budget, he believes, what we need right now is new spending of $15 billion or more to do things like bail out provincial budgets and boost benefits to the unemployed. This would translate into a deficit of about the same size, but it would prevent economic damage worth far more.

“I think a lot of us were a bit flabbergasted by the government’s priorities,” said Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. “Who exactly are they trying to impress” with the deficit-fighting rhetoric? he asked, since Canadians know very well that temporary deficits are far preferable to a deepening recession.

“This policy will not do anything to moderate the recession and it may worsen it,” said McGill University economist Jagdish Handa. The principle that government should sustain economic activity and employment by running deficits during a slump, far from being controversial, is “at the core of current economic thinking,” he noted.

Gazette columnist Jay Bryan concludes: “This economic statement has done little but inject venom into Canada’s politics and uncertainty into the minds of already worried consumers and businesses. And of course, it has badly undermined the credibility of a government whose nasty partisanship used to be balanced by an image of competence. Now it looks both partisan and inept.”

Trouble in Eden

By Nicholas Köhler - Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 12:00 PM - 8 Comments

For years the Alberta government downplayed its surplus forecasts by lowballing the price of oil, permitting an end-of-year bunny-from-the-hat routine—surprise, oodles of cash!—that finance ministers relished. But last August, as oil enjoyed its precipitous summertime climb—it peaked in July at US$148 a barrel, with some anticipating a near future of $200 oil—Finance Minister Iris Evans decided she should play a little fairer. She revised an earlier reckoning (a tidy surplus of $1.5 billion, calculated on $78 oil) to $8.5 billion, based on a less conservative estimate of US$119.25 per barrel. Now, with oil hovering around US$50, Evans likely wishes she’d left the bunny deep inside her hat.

Last week, she had to revise her forecast again, pegging the surplus at just $2 billion, a $6.5-billion tumble in three months. Analysts don’t see oil rebounding soon. Few in Alberta’s government have ever experienced a two-year slump. “The last time that happened was in the early 1980s,” says analyst Martin King, of FirstEnergy Capital Corp.

The province has meanwhile committed to an orgy of spending—$37 billion in last April’s budget, up almost 10 per cent from the previous year. So spooked are Albertans that many want the province to delay the $2 billion it committed to carbon sequestration technology, the backbone of Premier Ed Stelmach’s campaign to clean up Alberta’s “dirty oil” image. The commodities slump also means Alberta won’t this year contribute to the Heritage Fund, a savings plan designed for when its dwindling conventional oil and gas reservoirs run dry. Worth just $15.8 billion today despite having been created in 1976, it’s already lost $1.2 billion in six months due to the global financial meltdown.

Alberta’s current spending habits, combined with waning energy revenues, will put the province into deficit in as little as five years, says a report prepared by a government-appointed commission led by University of Calgary economist Jack Mintz. Released last Wednesday, the report says the province must boost the Heritage Fund to $100 billion by 2030—otherwise it risks having to raise the average tax rate a crippling 40 per cent over the next 15 years to make up the difference in shrinking oil patch kitty. That Mintz submitted his findings back in January suggests how anxious the government has been to make them public.

Still, last week was as odd a time as any. Also on Wednesday, Stelmach boldly lowered the royalties Alberta was to charge oil and gas companies, a move aimed at stimulating economic growth now that drilling has declined. The premier had unveiled new, higher royalties just over a year ago when commodity prices were soaring. Now the framework has been tweaked again, reducing Alberta’s take from some new conventional wells for five years (oil sands and existing wells aren’t affected by the changes). Then, early this week, he fiddled again, moving up the date for the weakened levies from Jan. 1 to Nov. 19 because companies had been madly cancelling rig contracts to wait for the more attractive royalties.

Critics say all this makes Stelmach look erratic. Worse, because the higher royalty rates had never actually taken effect, the province never reaped the rewards of run-up oil. Has Alberta missed the oil tanker entirely, then, with prices off $100 from July? “It was $50 a year ago—come on, man, we were growing like crazy then!” says Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo Coun. Mike Allen, of Fort McMurray. Allen, who runs a musical instrument shop catering to oil sands workers, had one of his best months ever last month, slump or not. Confused? So, very likely, is Stelmach. But steering Alberta through swelling, falling oil is like performing sleight of hand on the high seas. Sooner or later, the rabbit gets sick.

UPDATED: Who needs the Little Shop of Tories – The whole world is their War Room!

By kadyomalley - Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 11:47 AM - 113 Comments

Hey, this is kind of fun.

I don’t have time to go through all the other regions, but commenters are encouraged to type in their postal code to find out exactly what Doug Finley wants outraged Conservatives to say when calling up talk radio shows in their respective regions. Feel free to paste the results in the comments, too — let’s see whether they’ve had time to give a lovingly targeted Muttartian massage to the message in different parts of the country, or are relying on quick and dirty boilerplate shock and horror.  

UPDATE: Aw, poor Tory MPs. They’re stuck with the same talking points, according to the super-urgent-top-priority-all-hands-on-deck Giornogram dispatched to caucus on Friday, which was – gosh, this isn’t a good sign, guys – promptly leaked to the Globe and Mail.  Oh, unless this is one of those Doug Finley double-reverse mind tricks, where he actually wants his party’s footsoldiers to look like they’re incapable of coming up with their own words to express their fury. 

 As noted in an earlier post, Montreal Gazette reporter Elizabeth Thompson has the Montreal hotlist, and here’s what I got when I plugged in my downtown Ottawa coordinates: 

Opposition lacks mandate to take power

• Is anyone else outraged by what the Opposition Parties are doing in Ottawa?
• We’re not even two months removed from the last election, and a group of backroom politicians are going to pick who the Prime Minister is. Canadians didn’t vote for this person. We don’t even know who this person will be.
• Not a single voter voted for a Liberal-NDP coalition. Certainly not a single voter voted for the Liberals to form a coalition with the separatists in the Bloc.

Continue…

UPDATED: Behind the scenes at PMO: Wait, so this wasn't Ryan Sparrow's fault?

By kadyomalley - Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 9:49 AM - 142 Comments

According to Don Martin, the fateful – and possibly fatal, at least for the government – decision to take advantage of the fiscal update to declare war on the public financing system may have been the result of an error in judgement by an overzealous, overtired …. Prime Minister? Hang on, that can’t be right, can it? And yet: 

[...]Stephen Harper has to wear this political mess himself. He personally ordered the incendiary paragraph inserted into Thursday’s fiscal update, ignored warnings from his own MPs who felt it was a lousy idea and clearly under-estimated his opponents’ resolve to defend their cash at any political price. 

Which puts a whole new slant on the rumours of rancour and recrimination around the caucus room, doesn’t it?

Continue…

And now a word from Bill Cosby

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 28, 2008 at 11:41 PM - 6 Comments

Mr. Cosby performed at the National Arts Centre this evening.

Just before coming to his traditional closer, he said he wanted to talk about one more thing. The economy in the United States, he said, was horrendous. Stock market in chaos, jobs lost, people worrying about their pensions. He figured we were better off in Canada, but then he came to Ottawa and he needed to buy some eye drops. He went to the store, got some eye drops, handed the cashier a hundred dollar bill… and got back $117 in change.

“Who,” he wondered, “is your George W. Bush?”

The crowd did not seem to dislike this line.

Anyway. His climactic bit is called The Dentist. And since everyone could probably use some levity about now, here it is. Continue…

Too much is never enough

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 28, 2008 at 10:50 PM - 61 Comments

Four years ago I wrote about Tom Flanagan’s first book, Game Theory in Canadian Politics. This passage seems germane to the challenge facing Liberals, New Democrats and separatists over the next nine days:

One tenet of game theory is the notion of the “minimum winning coalition” – that it’s better if fewer actors share a prize than if more do, because the payoff for each player is bigger and because it’s easier to hold a small coalition intact. Say either three players can share a one-dollar prize, or two can. Well, you’d really rather be in a two-player coalition: you can win 50 cents instead of 33, and you don’t have to listen to the third guy whining all the time.

Flanagan showed that this is true in Canadian electoral politics, too. Continue…