Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Why the not?

by Aaron Wherry on Friday, February 18, 2011 1:07pm - 60 Comments

Keith Beardsley, a former member of Stephen Harper’s PMO, sorts through the Oda Affair.

If the minister instructed someone to insert the “not” then she was probably under pressure to do so as a last minute attempt to stop the funding from going forward. Oda has been a minister long enough to know that simply refusing to sign the letter stops the funding process.

Tags: , , , , ,
Bookmark and Share
  • TJCook

    "Oda has been a minister long enough to know that simply refusing to sign the letter stops the funding process."

    This rings true, especially considering that an explicit "no" gives a clear target to those who disagree with the decision. From the perspective a politician, there's much less harm in sitting on something than in making a decision.

    Oh, the number of times I've found myself wishing that a corporate co-worker would just come out and say no, so that I could start working on overturning that decision…

  • Mike T.

    Agreed. Barely contentious, in fact!

  • Emily

    That means she signed it….and someone 'unsigned' it for her.

    Now lets see….who's been working into the night at the office lately…..hmmm

    • AT1

      Are you suggesting that Harper is a notary?

      • Reverend_Blair

        I usually use other words to describe him….

      • tedbetts

        Don't be notty.

        • AT1

          I'm sure he has no qualms about the notoriety

  • Leo

    So you think Oda has an easy job???

    "The last Canadian aid roundtable I attended was to discuss Afghanistan with Bev Oda, the minister for the Canadian International Development Agency.

    Dozens of NGOs were there, eradicating every evil known to man, from human rights violations to malaria to a lack of playgrounds.

    But as soon as the microphones were turned on, I found out why they’d all come: Every speaker wanted to talk to the minister about money. As in why weren’t they getting more of it? Why was their latest proposal to host native American healing-circle therapy seminars for homeless and starving victims of genocide (true story) not funded? Why was CIDA not channelling more aid through their Canadian partners?

    Imagine a pack of unruly ‘tweens whining for an increase in their allowance and you’ve nailed it nicely."
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/lead…

    • Holly Stick

      Do you think Oda has it easy, wasting thousand so taxpayers' dollars on limousines and failinf to report it?
      http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/423204…

      "…The limo picked Oda up at her home at 8 a.m. about 80 kilometres west of Toronto, drove her downtown, hung around with her all day, drove her to a Conservative Party "boot camp" event in the evening, then drove her home after that and — $1,300 later — dropped her off at 11 p.m. back at her home…"
      http://davidakin.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2008…

    • craigola

      If Minister Oda doesn't feel she's up to such a difficult task, there's a simple solution.

    • DerekPearce

      You think it's easy to make priorities?!!!

  • Crit_Reasoning

    Sounds plausible to me. Oda probably signed the document, changed her mind afterward (perhaps because she was asked to), and had someone insert the "not" to reverse her decision.

    • Halo_Override

      "Plausible" and "acceptable" are two very different things in the world of people who bear actual accountability for the things for which they are ostensibly responsible.

    • Mike T.

      Likely in fact, but still deplorable.

    • http://dougsamu.wordpress.com dougrogers

      Asked?

      • http://dougsamu.wordpress.com dougrogers

        Oh, Bev, would you change this, please?

    • Thwim

      I disagree, if she ordered the change in it, then the question about who wrote the not on it was easy. She did, perhaps not directly, but it was by her hand that the not landed.

      I submit that she didn't have someone insert it, rather someone else had it inserted for her, and she got told what her new opinion was.

      • noob_goldberg

        Her mistake, of course, was to have any sort of opinion of her own to begin with.

      • Healthcare Insider

        Technically if she did not write the word "NOT" and she did not know who actually wrote it, she answered honestly. Your submission is all conjecture. Even if Ms. Oda changed her mind after discussing the issue with Mr. Kenny or Mr. Harper or a group of ministers, the responsibility for approving the funding falls to her.

        • Thwim

          Technically, he did not have sex with that woman.
          Come off of it, we're all adults here, and we know what it is to dissemble.

          If it wasn't so sad, it'd be funny. Here I am arguing that Bev Oda is an honest person with integrity, caught up in the system of control that is the CPC.

          Meanwhile, what her "supporters" are arguing is that she's a weasel, attempting to use technical word definitions to avoid giving any answers to a committee of the House, for no purpose other than to.. well.. deny them the answers.

  • noob_goldberg

    I've never seen that blog before. I read through a number of his posts and was pleasantly surprised by the tone, clarity, and rationality he espoused. I'd be back voting Conservative in a heartbeat if I felt the party as a whole was as pragmatic as Keith.

    Thanks for the find, Wherry, that one's getting added to the bookmarks.

    • TimesArrow

      He gets a prominent mention in L.Martin's Harperland. Indeed the book is somwhat surprisinly made up of insider quotes, which is what gives it it's authenticity

  • Leo

    ??? They are setting up new policy but it doesn't just happen overnight. Every NGO that get defunded will, of course, be crying foul.

    • http://dougsamu.wordpress.com dougrogers

      Migod, they've had five years.

      • Thwim

        Technically, they've had nearly a generation to plan things out.

        After all It took Harper 13 years out of power to come up with 5 priorities, only one of which can be truly said to be accomplished.

        • Mike T.

          Five and a half – remember they bait and switched a military one in briefly!

      • McC_

        What was that well-mocked quote from Stéphane Dion, again?

        • DerekPearce

          Oh, see below, I couldn't help myself ;^)

    • McC_

      The vast majority of Canadian foreign aid still gets delivered through two vehicles, grants to multilateral agencies (e.g. HCRC and UN bodies) and contributions to NGOs and the odd private company to deliver specific projects. This government has made NO moves to change this. KAIROS was applying for a contribution, they were denied. Certain NGOs and certain projects are being cancelled, or amended to meet modified criteria established by the government, some new ones have received funding, and the vast majority are renewed. This government has made changes to the priorities, and the evaluation and audit criteria, but please show me how they have moved to set up a new policy, I'll wait here.

      • Leo

        A couple:

        "Governments do make political decisions about aid. Mr. Harper did when he announced Canada’s money for a G8 initiative on maternal health would not fund abortions. He took some heat but set a policy."

        Aid groups don’t like it, but the government does have a right to cut off government funding for advocacy and public relations, and can argue it’s not what matters most. It eventually did – groups that receive grants under the “Partnerships with Canadians Branch” now no longer get 10 per cent set aside for “public engagement.”
        http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/in-w…

        • McC_

          That is a change in an aid program, not a change in the way we do aid programming. Ask yourself, how is that money for a G8 initiative on maternal health being spent? through grants to multilateral agencies and contributions to NGOs; there's no difference. The Government is not "cutting off" NGOs or anything of the sort.

          • Leo

            The cutting of of funds for advocasy and public relations is a policy change. The also cut off the Canadian Coucil for International Cooperation as it did not provide aid just represented NGOs to ask for money.

            Can't be bothered getting a link, but those 14(?) Women Groups NGOs sure screamed blue murder in May(?), 2009 when they were not funded again. Morphed into all kinds of nasty accusations.

        • TimesArrow

          Actually Leo i wouldn't hold your breath over that abortion health thingy. Wells says it's already under the bus. An interesting retrospective of Oda and just how commited this govt is to its "core"principles.
          http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/02/inconsistency-…

          • Leo

            And that is how I thought things would pan out. Kill the political hot potato and get the program rolling. Then deal with the abortion issues as they come up within the parameters of the host country.

          • TimesArrow

            That's not at all how they sold it. Are you not, as Selly says, upset that they scewed socons yet again?

  • Leo

    The best part of his blog is:

    "Unfortunately all sorts of groups get used to receiving their government grant each year and build it into their yearly budget. Living off the government becomes a way of life for them. When government priorities change or a new minister with a different agenda arrives on the scene the groups are outraged when they don’t get their expected funding. Backed by media and opposition MP hype they try to get their funding back. "

    Which is exactly what is happening.

    • Douglass

      People are disagreeing with the implementation of her 'not' and the deceptions that followed. The content, her decision is not being questioned. But I know you know that already.

    • Thwim

      This red herring is old and stale already. Please keep it to yourself.

      • Leo

        And Soudas or Kenney sneeking into Oda's files in the middle of the night and inserting NOT on signed paperwork is getting "stale" as well.

        • DerekPearce

          The truth hurts.

        • LdKitchenersOwn

          At least that has something to do with how the "not" got there.

          Your point is a red herring because you're pretending that the issue is the decision, whereas the issue is the process by which the decision was made/implemented. The Soudas/Kenney speculation is indeed speculation, but at least it's speculation about the issue at hand (how the decision got made) and not a distraction (pretending the issue is about the content of the decision and not the process of implementing it).

          • Leo

            Needed a bit of context LKO, as in the amount of applications being dealt with at any given time and that NGOs complain to her directly about CIDA.

    • noob_goldberg

      Or, the government could simply view them as being outside contractors who perform a specific service for them. The government loves to position them as some sort of special interest group who has sneakily suckling at the taxpayer's teat, when–in fact–many of these organizations perform a service for the government at a much cheaper and more efficient manner than if it was performed in-house by a department.

      For myself, I know that the government used to pay my organization to run a program worth a few million a year, which we did with one staff who worked part-time. The Conservatives, when they came into power, took over the program and rolled it into a department, which then hired three staff to do the same task, at an inflated rate and with much poorer service to constituents. Now, if the government decides to exit the program, they're stuck with those staff and have to find more work for them, where we could and did lay them off when we lost funding.

      • Leo

        From my expience of working in the silly-service, your staffing ratio is pretty accurate.

        • Jan

          CIDA has 1800 employees – only 250 are working out of country. CIDA doesn't do the development work, it contracts it out to NGO's.

          • McC_

            yes, and multilateral agencies.

        • noob_goldberg

          I exaggerated, now that I think about it. We had one part-time staff to run the program, and we used our own internal accountant to handle finance. The government replaced that with three of their own employees for both the provision and administration component of the project.

          The silly thing is, the program is run almost exactly the same and they still hold the meetings in our offices; the only thing that's changed is that the $60 or $70K a year we used to receive in administration fees is now being spent on just one dedicated government staffer.

          • TimesArrow

            Thanks for the intersting and not politically correct [ all ngos are blood sucking leeches all the time] insight.

            Now for the killer Q my friend…did you have your own limo? :)

          • noob_goldberg

            No, but some of the Blueline taxis are almost limo-like. :)

            In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not in the International Aid area, and I've had only very tangential dealings with CIDA in the past. I know nothing about how that department operates.

  • Healthcare Insider

    This is exactly what Colby Cosh said except he didn't extrapolate that someone asked her to change her mind. That of course would be further conjecture. Instead he suggested she called her office and asked one of the staff to insert the NOT. Hence, she is not sure who did the actual insertion. Hence, she did not initial the change.

    • ZestyMordant

      Well, something changed her mind. If she didn't want to fund them, I think it's pretty safe to assume that she wouldn't have signed it in the first place.

  • wsam

    This is getting hot for the Conservatives. How long until Harper prorogues Parliament?

  • Healthcare Insider

    Where is Keith Beardsley working now and why did he leave the PMO?

    • Healthcare Insider

      Oh I see, he works for the National Post.

      • noob_goldberg

        It doesn't appear he's done anything for NP for almost a year. I doubt they've been floating his salary that entire time.

        • Holly Stick

          He works for a company. Google his name to find out which one.

    • noob_goldberg

      Perhaps he left the PMO because he got sick of working 14 hours/day 7 days/week for meagre pay and virtually zero job-security? There's a reason the PMO is generally staffed by the unmarried under-30 crowd.

      • burlivespipe

        Was he the one in charge of making sure Harper's candles were lit and the cup of Ti-Ho's was filled up (with starbucks) during the wee hours of the diligent PM's hours of adding words to documents, OKing offers for MPs votes and stencilling and copying famous speeches?

  • Thwim

    Just more proof that Wherry is in the pocket of the Liberal Media Conspiracy Against All that is Good and Holy in this world. (That being Stephen Harper, of course)

    • Holly Stick

      NOT!

Previous

Next

From Macleans