QP Live: On a majority government’s second birthday

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

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Happy birthday, Conservative government

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

Two years ago, the country granted the Conservatives a majority government. This morning, these are the top headlines on everyone’s chosen news aggregator, National Newswatch:

Grim report warns Canada vulnerable to an aboriginal insurrection

Disgruntled Arab states look to strip Canada of UN agency

Aaron Wherry, in his corner on this site, posed a question:

Do you know where your $3.1 billion went?

The sensationally forecast aboriginal insurrection, which came out of a paper published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, is not the top story of the week. Nor are the Qatar-led efforts to move the International Civil Aviation Organization out of Montreal. Wherry’s question is probably the biggest of the week. If you’re unfamiliar, the story so far is this: the government can’t really account for $3.1 billion of anti-terror funding earmarked between 2001 and 2009. There’s no suggestion that money was misspent, or hoarded, or anything so untoward. But plenty of questions remain about what did actually happen to that money.

The government’s no further along in providing a coherent response to all of that, and its ministers are still busy putting out all those little fires set by Auditor General Michael Ferguson when he released his spring report.

What a great week to celebrate that big majority win, amirite?

What’s above the fold this morning?

The Globe and Mail leads with a Qatar-led campaign to wrench the International Civil Aviation Organization’s headquarters from Montreal. The National Post fronts Andrew Coyne’s suggestion that government should spend less, not better. The Toronto Star goes above the fold with Premier Kathleen Wynne’s intention to campaign on an “NDP-style” budget, if the government falls. The Ottawa Citizen leads with doubts inside the RCMP about how effectively the force can investigate white-collar crime. iPolitics fronts today’s tabling of the Ontario budget at Queen’s Park. CBC.ca leads with four questions about the Ontario budget. National Newswatch showcases John Ivison’s column in the National Post that muses about the future of aboriginal relations in Canada.

Stories that will be (mostly) missed

The QP clip: Why Canada won’t bid for a seat on the UN security council

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 4:46 PM - 0 Comments

NDP MP Paul Dewar, his party’s foreign affairs critic, stood with some confidence to ask Foreign Affair Minister John Baird why the government wouldn’t bid for an open seat at the UN Security Council in 2014.

In his reply, Baird mistakenly referred to Dewar as “this minister,” when he presumably meant “member.” That’s the second such slip in recent days from the government benches. Last week, under pressure from NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen, Defence Minister Peter MacKay made reference to an “NDP government” that never was.

QP Live: The day after the auditor general’s report

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

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Why the Conservatives will have a very bad week

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 8:54 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Michael Ferguson made sure the Conservative gang in the House of Commons has a very bad week. The auditor general released his spring report yesterday, eleven chapters of government scrutiny, just in time for Question Period. The opposition had a field day. Ferguson found, in chapter eight, that $3.1 billion that was supposed to be dedicated to anti-terrorism programs was, well, who knows where it went? He expressed concern, in chapter seven, about the sustainability of Canada’s search-and-rescue capability. In chapter six, Ferguson worried that the government and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission weren’t cooperating, and that the government’s goal of creating a historical record of residential schools was in jeopardy.

The list goes on, but those three chapters alone shine a light on security, defence and aboriginal affairs. Just a week after the government touted anti-terror legislation that would give authorities more power to thwart terrorists, Ferguson rains on that parade. The government’s looking increasingly fragile on defence issues; even in Question Period, the opposition is scoring points against Defence Minister Peter MacKay. And then there’s aboriginal affairs, where the government hopes new minister Bernard Valcourt can make headway on a file that caused migraines earlier this year. This won’t help.

If all that weren’t enough, the government now stands accused—on the front page of The Globe and Mail—of meddling in collective bargaining at Canada Post, Via Rail and the CBC. Those proposals lie within the Conservatives’ budget bill.

So now we witness how many fronts the government can defend, all at the same time, as the opposition salivates.
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QP Live: When Auditor General Michael Ferguson released his spring report

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 1:26 PM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

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One man’s wing nut is another man’s trustworthy leader

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments

Paul Chiasson/CP

Tom Mulcair is simultaneously cast as a wing nut and a trusted authority figure. Mulcair was roundly condemned over the weekend, largely on Twitter, for his conspiracy-laden assertion that the Supreme Court is unfairly dismissing the concerns of those who suggest former justices of the top court acted improperly during the Patriation Reference about three decades ago. Mulcair thinks the court should dig deeper for documents that shed light on the accusations raised in historian Frederic Bastien’s new book, La bataille de Londres. Emmett Macfarlane, writing on this site, suggests both Mulcair and the court overreacted to the accusations. Writing today in the National Post, Jonathan Kay labels the NDP leader as Canada’s conspiracy-theorist-in-chief. Kay, in more than a few words, laughs off Mulcair’s case against the court, dismissing his concern as something that matters only in Quebec.

But then you pick up this morning’s Toronto Star and give Chantal Hebert’s column a read. Hebert expresses doubt that Justin Trudeau’s rocketing popularity everywhere, including in Quebec, spells the end of Mulcair’s political career. In provincial polls, Mulcair scores well on leadership numbers, Hebert writes, and he was the only politician on Readers Digest‘s poll of Quebec’s 10 most trusted public figures. Trudeau, she points out, cracked the corresponding untrustworthy list. So, as far as Quebec is concerned, Mulcair’s doing just fine.

The NDP’s delicate dance between French and English Canadian interests and audiences and values has continued unabated since May 2, 2011. Earlier this year, the party’s proposed reforms to the Clarity Act sparked polarity. Over the weekend, it was Mulcair’s judgment of the Supreme Court that had pundits chirping. Mulcair’s dance continues.

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QP Live: The day the government tables its budget bill

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Monday, April 29, 2013 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

Continue…

Principled opposition from the government backbenches?

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Monday, April 29, 2013 at 9:18 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

The revolution, or revolt, or general backbench uprising on the government side of the House of Commons may be mostly fiction. Even those among the more vocal backbenchers, including Brent Rathgeber from Edmonton-St. Albert*, refuse to use the word revolt to describe their discontent with their party masters. Rathgeber, for his part, sounds fairly clinical when he talks about holding government to account. He’s not rising up to beat down the powers that be. He’s just asking questions.

Rathgeber appeared on CBC’s The House this past weekend, as part of a segment devoted to some Conservative MPs’ desires to ask the government some tough questions. Rathgeber spoke these words: “I believe that some ministers, from time to time, have been disrespectful with respect to their expense accounts and I believe that some departments have budgets that are not justified in times of economic uncertainty where scarce resources are becoming scarcer.”

That sounds an awful lot like something that might come from the opposition benches—except, of course, the opposition would probably phrase things a little more in the extreme:

“I believe that some ministers, from time to time, This government’s ministers have been disrespectful with respect to treated their expense accounts like personal piggy banks, and I believe that some the government’s spending money in all the wrong places, including wasteful ad campaigns, departments have budgets that are not justified in times of economic uncertainty—where scarce resources are becoming scarcer.“

Compare that with Rathgeber’s wording. Assuming he follows through on his pledge to hold government ministers to account, and Speaker Andrew Scheer recognizes his interventions, the Edmonton MP could offer the House of Commons a healthy dose of something it sorely requires: principled opposition, free of partisan colour, that keeps the government on its toes.

That’s no revolution. That’s just common sense.

*I mistakenly referred to Rathgeber’s riding as Edmonton Centre. I regret the error.

What’s above the fold this morning?

The Globe and Mail leads with planned reforms to Canada’s temporary foreign workers program. The National Post fronts speculation about who may or may not be promoted to cabinet in an expected shuffle. The Toronto Star goes above the fold with tightening polling number in Ontario, where the Liberals are tied with the Progressive Conservatives. The Ottawa Citizen leads with the Canadian man who alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev met on a trip to the Caucasus region. iPolitics fronts a B.C. riding where the Greens could pick up a seat in the provincial election. CBC.ca leads with the lack of any more survivors in the rubble of the collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh. National Newswatch showcases John Ivison’s column in the Post about the coming cabinet shuffle.

Stories that will be (mostly) missed

Hitting close to home

By Charlie Gillis, Martin Patriquin, Nicholas Köhler, Michael Friscolanti, and Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Saturday, April 27, 2013 at 6:50 AM - 0 Comments

Rogers Citynews

He is heir to a legacy of anger—“forced into exile,” as his father, Mohammed, once put it, “because of our identification as Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and most importantly, as non-Jews.” Raed Jaser was listed as “stateless” back in March 1993, when he was still a teenager and his family sought refugee status in Canada. The resentment practically rises from the pages of affidavits his dad filed in support of their claim. “We lived in tents, through freezing winters and blazing hot sun,” the elder Jaser said of the family’s time in resettlement camps on the Gaza Strip. They were forced there in 1948, he said, after the Israeli army seized their home in Jaffa to make way for Jewish settlers: “We were homeless and in poor health.”

The sense of rootlessness, suspicion and upheaval that defined his parents’ lives undoubtedly left its mark on Raed. He was born much later, after the family settled in the United Arab Emirates, and he fled with them to Germany amid growing hostility toward Palestinians in the U.A.E. over the 1991 Gulf War (they were seen as sympathetic to Saddam Hussein, who had extolled their cause). Then, in Berlin, the Jasers faced anti-immigrant sentiment that, according to Mohammed, culminated in someone throwing a Molotov cocktail into their home. “Our lives were threatened and we were harassed and abused during the process of our refugee claims in West Germany,” he said in court documents uncovered this week by Maclean’s. “Ultimately, we were forced to flee in fear of our lives.”

If Canada was Mohammed’s solution to all this—a refuge of tolerance and opportunity where a boy like Raed might leave behind past hatreds—it didn’t work. On Tuesday, the 35-year-old Raed was led into a courtroom to face accusations of plotting to derail a Via Rail train somewhere between Toronto and New York—a plan police allege was supported and directed by al-Qaeda operatives based in Iran. “Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in innocent people being killed or seriously injured,” said RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia. “Each and every terrorist arrest the RCMP makes sends a message and illustrates our strong resolve to root out terrorist threats and keep Canadians and our allies safe.”

Also charged was Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born Ph.D. student from Montreal who seemed an equally improbable candidate to wage jihad in the Great White North: blessed with smarts and ambition, the 30-year-old had parlayed his work in a Université du Québec nanotechnology lab into conference appearances across North America. He had published papers proposing new methods for detecting prostate cancer, HIV and other diseases in people and animals. Both men have denied the charges against them.

The arrests came as a jolt in a country feeling thankful for its low profile as the manhunt for Boston’s bombers came to its breath-taking, bloody conclusion. For more than a decade, intelligence officials and security experts have warned about the onset of “outsourced” jihad—cadres of homegrown extremists performing the work once done by established terrorist groups, and in some cases initiating it. Yet the reality of the threat has never quite sunk in. The prosecution of the so-called Toronto 18; the conviction of an Ottawa man, Momin Khawaja, over a plot to set off fertilizer bombs in the United Kingdom; the role of young Islamic converts from London, Ont., in the Algerian gas-plant explosion; the bombings in Massachusetts: none of these cases overcame our prevailing sense of incredulity that we could matter enough, that anyone could hate us enough, to actually hit the detonator on Canadian soil.

Now, as the backstories of the accused emerge, a different strain of disbelief presides. Here by all accounts were two men favoured with the opportunities and comforts that Canada offers. Chiheb Esseghaier enjoyed a bright future as a researcher. Raed Jaser spent at least part of his young life embracing the suburban dream, driving a black sports car around Markham, Ont., swimming in his family’s backyard pool. Could either of these men grow so disaffected as to want to destroy it? What, or who, could instill that level of anger? Above all other questions posed by the dreadful scenario outlined by police, why?

In a picture posted on his thesis adviser’s website, Chiheb Esseghaier looks as happy as his fellow Ph.D. students crowded around him. Wearing a black T-shirt, brown sandals and black capri pants with blue cuffs, Esseghaier smiles from behind a pair of small, black-rimmed glasses and a great bushy, moustache-less beard. Skinny, young and seemingly unconcerned by personal appearances, he looks every bit the typical Ph.D. student cliché.

He acted like a typical Ph.D. student, too—on paper anyway. Born in Tunis, Tunisia, Esseghaier received an engineering degree in industrial biology from Tunisia’s Institut national des sciences appliquées et de technologie in 2007. He received his master’s one year later, and by the time he was 28 Esseghaier had been accepted to Université de Sherbrooke, located in Quebec’s Eastern Townships region. He lived in a one-room apartment on Galt Street—Sherbrooke’s main drag—and published his research, most of it relating to the study of analytic devices known as biosensors, in several academic journals.

It was his move to Institute national de la recherche scientifique, Quebec’s premier scientific research facility associated with Université du Québec, where Esseghaier really began to shine. In 2010, at just 28, he joined Biosensor BioMEMS Bionanotechnology Lab, an INRS laboratory run by a University of Cambridge-trained bio-engineer named Mohammed Zourob. Known colloquially as “BBBL” amongst its students, Zourob’s class was a cloistered group of hand-picked students specializing in the study of nanotechnology and biosensors. In total, there were 16 Ph.D. students studying under Zourob.

Along with a fellow Ph.D. student, Zourob and Esseghaier published two papers, on biosensors and early prostate cancer detection, in 2012. As of last year, anyway, Esseghaier apparently wasn’t deemed enough of a danger to travel by plane to America. With Zourob, Esseghaier went to a conference in California last summer. But on at least one other conference trip, to Mexico in May 2012, the CBC reported two undercover surveillance officers trailed him on the Air Canada flight to Cancun. While on that flight, according to the network, Esseghaier was involved in an altercation with a female flight attendant after going to the washroom.

In March, less than a month before his arrest, Esseghaier published a paper on HIV detection, along with Zourob and the same Ph.D. student, in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics. According to an INRS professor, Zourob left the university last fall. Zourob didn’t respond to an interview request. His BBBL website went dark in the hours following news of Esseghaier’s arrest.

Esseghaier’s analytical ways couldn’t contain a stubborn religious streak, however. He reportedly ripped down posters around the INRS campus in Varennes, northeast of Montreal, saying the images offended him. He also complained of the dearth of on-campus prayer rooms. He openly railed against paying taxes in Canada, saying that to do so meant de facto support for the country’s military presence in Afghanistan. A neighbour of his in Sherbrooke told La Presse that he could hear Esseghaier wailing in prayer through the walls, especially at night.

Then there is the matter of his LinkedIn page. Above a list of his educational feats and myriad published articles was a white-on-black image emblazoned with a white circle and Arabic lettering. It is thought to be the emblem with which the Prophet Muhammad sealed his letters. It is also the so-called “black flag” used by the Islamic State of Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq’s political arm. The emblem disappeared from the page within 24 hours of Esseghaier being taken into custody.

On Tuesday morning, the day after his arrest, Esseghaier appeared in front of a judge wearing a blue-striped black windbreaker, dark pants and white sneakers. They were the same clothes he’d been wearing the day before, when he was arrested and carted out of Montreal’s Via Rail train station—part of the very network he and an accomplice allegedly planned to bomb.

Though seemingly a little heavier and a bit more dishevelled, the 30-year-old who appeared in front of Judge Pierre Labelle didn’t look much different from the picture of the Ph.D. student snapped some months before. Esseghaier, who was ushered into court at Montreal’s Palais de justice by two guards, stood nervously with his wrists in cuffs and his fingers knitted together over a railing in the defendants’ box. His eyes darted between Judge Labelle and the media horde assembled to watch him.

He’d had quite the 24 hours. According to federal prosecutor Richard Roy, RCMP officer Dave Ouellette approached Esseghaier at 12:20 p.m. on April 22 at the McDonald’s in Central Station in downtown Montreal. “Mr. Ouellette was familiar with the investigation, and knew Mr. [Esseghaier] by his face,” Roy told the court. “Just before making the arrest, Mr. Ouellette called out his name and the man responded with ‘yes,’ confirming his identity.”

Esseghaier was then flown from Saint-Hubert Airport on Montreal’s South Shore to Toronto for interrogation, only to be flown back less than 24 hours later for his appearance in Montreal. Roy, who called the hearing a “formality” shortly before appearing before Labelle, explained that because Esseghaier was arrested without a warrant, he had to be remanded in front of a judge in the province in which he was arrested. Just before his brief court appearance ended, however, Esseghaier addressed the judge and asked to speak. “All the conclusions were made from facts and words that are but appearances,” he said, speaking softly but quickly. “We cannot make these conclusions from against me . . . ” at which point Labelle cut him off—one day Esseghaier will have his chance to tell his side of the story.

Raed Jaser appeared in the prisoner’s dock of courtroom No. 103, at Toronto’s Old City Hall courthouse, wearing a long black beard and a black skullcap over his short curly black hair. A slim, fit-looking man, he peered into the gallery, no doubt seeking out the family members seated there.

When asked to spell his name and indicate his date of birth, a ritual part of such appearances, he did so in a clear, strong, loud voice. A routine publication ban covered the proceedings, during which the 35-year-old was remanded in custody until his next court date, in May.

In the gallery of the small courtroom, otherwise packed with media, sat the members of the Jaser clan, including Raed’s mother, Sabah, in a white hijab with glittering silver thread, and, with a clipped grey moustache, Mohammed, the patriarch, whose history and preoccupations have so defined Raed’s life. Seeing them, Raed clasped and unclasped his hands, but otherwise appeared self-possessed and cool.

Mohammed, who wore a grey suit, a grey pinstriped flat cap, and a tasteful black and grey tie, is a distinguished man with the easy grin of the newspaper advertising salesman he once was. Outside the courtroom, when the Jasers were joined by two slim women in full-body niqabs, Mohammed continued speaking, gesticulating as though discussing a football match just ended.

Within a few minutes he’d dropped that easy manner, and gave a demonstration of his grit. Confronted with a wall of media at the courthouse steps, Mohammed dove alone and hatless into the gauntlet of cameras and reporters, striding across the square diverting members of the media from the Jaser women and young men. “I have nothing to say,” he repeated, once or twice revealing that easy smile. “Of course I’m supporting my son, of course, that’s right, he’s my son!”

Nearby, two young male relatives walked unmolested from the scene. What about Raed’s arrest, a reporter asked them. “We know as much as you do,” one said.

The life that Mohammed Jaser built for his wife and children, and in particular his first son Raed, reflects his own fragmented upbringing as a Palestinian born in Jaffa on the eve of Israel’s founding. In the way Mohammed presents the family’s circumstances during testimony given as part of a failed refugee application in Canada in the 1990s, statelessness has been a chronic characteristic of Jaser history, with documents from various countries, both real and fake, the currency of their travels.

Mohammed was born in what was then Palestine a little more than a year before Israel’s founding in May 1948. “My family and I were forced to leave our country and homeland,” he testified. He went on to describe his family’s attempt to settle in the Gaza Strip, then still under Egyptian control, “where we lived under extremely harsh conditions after our exile.”

As a young man he saw the United Arab Emirates as a land of opportunity, leaving Gaza for Dubai in 1966 and working variously as a teacher and advertising man with a Kuwaiti newspaper. At some point he married Saudi-born Sabah, also a Palestinian. They’d ultimately spend 24 years in the U.A.E., and it was here that, on Dec. 7, 1977, Raed was born. Life there, which depended on U.A.E.-issued work and resident permits, agreed with Mohammed and his young family, giving him “a very good quality of life such as a well-paid job, free house, free car, etc.”

The Gulf War, which broke out in August 1990, proved a turning point. As a result of that conflict, Mohammed told the refugee board, he and other Palestinians encountered hostility from U.A.E. authorities. Mohammed said his lot was particularly hard due to his job as head of the advertising department of Al Syasa, a “political” newspaper. His children were expelled from their schools, and he himself “was ordered to work as a spy against my own people.”

Now it was the murkiness of Mohammed’s status that threw the family’s future into uncertainty. As a Palestinian citizen in Gaza, Egypt, which controlled the area, did not give him citizenship, but instead issued him a special travel document, “meant only for stateless Palestinians,” according to refugee-board filings. When Israel took control of Gaza after the Six Day War in 1967, however, Mohammed could no longer return there, according to his testimony. Therefore, in 1968, he exchanged his Egyptian ID for a Jordanian travel document that did not at the same time give him citizenship or a right to reside in Jordan.

That string of national affiliations, which allowed travel but never granted the family permanent residence anywhere, left Mohammed, Sabah and the children stranded now that they found themselves persecuted in Dubai. Authorities there tapped his phones, monitored him, and ultimately expelled the Jasers, he said as part of his refugee application.

In 1991 they fled to Berlin, a city with a Muslim population that is mostly Turkish. There they applied for refugee status. “We lived as outsiders, in fear of growing and hardening anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiments,” Mohammed told the refugee board. It was the Molotov cocktail that persuaded them to abandon their refugee claim and pick up stakes again, he said: “we were forced to flee in fear of our lives.”

Mohammed arranged for his family to receive forged French passports, obtained from a Turk, which he destroyed in Frankfurt once the family had successfully cleared German customs.

The Jasers landed in Toronto on March 26, 1993. Their subsequent application for refugee status quivers with a palpable sense of loss and abandonment. As Mohammed wrote: “I have claimed to be a Convention Refugee from Israel as a result of my identification as a Palestinian. On that basis and as a non-Jewish former permanent resident and national of the area, I am unable to return because of my membership in the Palestinian group.”

In January 1994, an Immigration and Refugee Board panel denied that application, indicating in part that the family could have sought the protection of German authorities in the event they felt threatened there. The family appealed for judicial review, which ultimately triggered a new hearing. The outcome of that hearing, if it was held at all, is not available to the public.

Still, they remained in Canada. If all this upheaval had an effect on Raed, then in his early teens, it did not take long for it to simmer up to the surface.

In October 1995, less than three years after he arrived in Canada, Raed was criminally charged in Newmarket, Ont., with fraud under $5,000. The charge was eventually withdrawn. In December 2000, a week after turning 24, he was arrested again, this time accused of uttering threats. Although court records show Raed was convicted of that charge, it remains unclear what sentence he received.

Yet elsewhere life was improving for the Jasers. By then they had purchased a $315,000 house, in the Toronto suburb of Markham, Ont. The two-storey brick home boasted a double car garage and a swimming pool in the backyard. And their Canadian roots extended to other parts of the country: Raed’s first experiences of Montreal, where his co-accused Esseghaier lives, were likely due to the presence there of two paternal uncles, one of whom is a convention refugee.

From the outside, at least, it appeared the Jaser clan—Raed included—was living the Canadian dream. Max Salida, a next-door neighbour, recalls Raed as friendly and willing to make small talk, an average young Canadian with a black sports car. “If it’s the same person,” he said, “I can’t believe he could be connected to something like this.”

With their neighbours, the family did not talk religion or politics, and seemed generally adjusted to Western life. In those days, say neighbours, the women in the Jaser house did not wear head coverings, and family members took to the pool wearing garden-variety swimwear. But they were open about their Muslim faith. One neighbour, who asked that his name be withheld, recalls being in the house when a young white man walked in, greeting them with the Arabic salutation, “Salaam alaikum” (peace be upon you). “I kind of looked at [Mohammed],” said the neighbour. “He said, ‘We’ve converted this man.’ ”

According to land-registry records, the family did have money problems. Raed’s parents remortgaged the Markham property multiple times, and were eventually forced to move in 2007 after the home was foreclosed. The following summer, 2008, Raed and his brother Nabil launched a limousine company: Nexus Executive Limousine Services Inc. By 2010, Raed, by this time married, moved into a one-bedroom basement apartment in east-end Markham, living at that address for nearly a year. “He was a nice guy,” the landlady said. “He was not bothering us.”

Raed and his wife moved out of the apartment in the summer of 2011. That October, according to corporate records, his limo company dissolved. The following summer, according to police, who say they were tipped off by a member of the Muslim community, Raed Jaser came under the radar of anti-terror investigators in the RCMP.

Whatever the truth, the details will trickle out. They always do.

Canadians eventually learned the truth about the so-called “Toronto 18”—and how its core members, led by 20-year-old Zakaria Amara, plotted mass murder in the name of Allah. Amara himself pleaded guilty, apologizing in court to his “fellow Canadians” and telling the judge how “lucky” he was to be caught before his truck bombs exploded.

Canadians eventually learned the truth about Momin Khawaja, born and raised in Ottawa. Arrested in 2004—while working as a software engineer for the Department of Foreign Affairs—the closet extremist was secretly toiling away in his basement, building a remote-controlled detonator for aspiring terrorists in the United Kingdom. As revealed at trial, he dubbed his deadly creation the “Hi-fi Digimonster.”

And Canadians eventually learned the truth about the Algerian government’s stunning allegations, back in January, that two Canadians were among the dead terrorists who attacked a remote gas refinery. Indeed, the bodies were Canadian: two men from London, Ont. , both in their 20s, who had become so radicalized so rapidly that they travelled overseas to volunteer as suicide bombers. Xristos Katsiroubas, raised in a Greek Orthodox family, was a recent convert to Islam. His friend, Ali Medlej, was born a Muslim, but smoke and drank and played high school football before joining the jihad.

For now, the truth about Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier is buried in thousands of pages of disclosure handed over to their defence lawyers. The files almost certainly contain surveillance footage, wiretapped conversations, and more damning details about one of the RCMP’s few revelations: that the suspects allegedly received “direction and guidance” from an unspecified al-Qaeda element in Iran.

Where did the two suspects meet? How did they communicate? How did they make contact with their supposed al-Qaeda associate in Iran?

One thing, though, is certain: for agencies tasked with protecting public safety, homegrown Islamist terrorism remains its biggest, ever-evolving challenge. Osama bin Laden may be dead, his network decimated. But a new generation of self-starting, Internet-inspired wannabes remain committed to the movement, willing—like the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston—to act alone. Many in Canada’s Muslim community are keenly aware of that reality, and have worked diligently with authorities to weed out potential threats; according to reports, it was a Toronto imam who first warned the Mounties about Jaser. But it is an endless struggle, a constant balancing act.

“There are just too many targets for the numbers of resources we have, so you keep on going toward the highest threat level,” says Ray Boisvert, former director-general of counterterrorism at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. “Who poses the highest potential threat? You may have a couple of young guys, perhaps looking at things the wrong way, and you go and have a conversation with them. If they deny and everything is good, unless they’re showing me a significant threat profile, investigative agencies will move on. They won’t ignore them completely, but they’ve got to keep moving.”

Complicating the challenge even further is the misconception that all homegrown terrorists are wired the same. Experts who study the trend found one overriding motivation: a desire to strike back at the West, in glorious fashion, for its supposed atrocities in Muslim countries. “The message that the world is fundamentally ‘at war’ with Islam is key to the Islamist ‘single narrative’—or ‘one-size-fits-all explanation’—that drives terrorism the world over,” says a 2009 report from the RCMP, entitled “Radicalization: A Guide for the Perplexed.” “The romance of this unequal struggle may be especially appealing to young Muslims, who feel both justified and compelled to come to the aid of their brothers and sisters against the powerful forces arrayed against them.”

But the few Muslims who actually answer that extremist call do not fit one mould. They are rich and poor, educated and illiterate, devout and impious. “It’s difficult to pinpoint any particular background,” says Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, a senior associate at the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has studied homegrown terrorism. “They’ve spanned the socio-economic horizon. They’ve been doctors. They’ve been unemployed. They’ve been students. We think they have two factors in common: they are disenfranchised for some reason, and they are influenced in some way by someone, usually via the Internet.”

Brian Michael Jenkins, one of America’s leading terrorism experts, says religion isn’t even the biggest factor that motivates homegrown terrorists. In fact, he says, it’s not even near the top of the list. “In my own research, the attributes that emerge again and again are anger, desire for collective revenge, feelings of humiliation, desire to demonstrate manhood, to join a warrior elite, participate in an epic struggle,” he says. “And the one that recurs again and again is personal crisis. For a lot of these young men who have gone down this path, the ideology has become a conveyor of individual discontent. To put it crudely, their life sucks—and terrorism becomes something meaningful.”

For Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier, locked in solitary jail cells, life could not be much worse than it is right now.

QP Live: The end of a long fortnight of getting to know each other

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, April 26, 2013 at 10:56 AM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 11:00 a.m. until just past 12 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

Continue…

Some ministers don’t have time for QP

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, April 26, 2013 at 9:04 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Joe Oliver, Peter Kent, Diane Finley, Rob Nicholson, and James Moore are faces you see quite regularly if you watch Question Period. When he’s in town, Oliver defends his increasingly controversial remarks about climate change. When Oliver’s not in town, Kent stands on his behalf. Finley speaks to the opposition’s insistence that employment insurance is broken—and, this week, that unemployed youth are going ignored. Nicholson mostly fields backbench lobs about Conservative law-and-order legislation. And Moore is Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s point-man when the boss doesn’t want to answer questions, or is absent from the House. A smattering of parliamentary secretaries—Ted Menzies (ed. note: Menzies is minister of state for finance, not a parliamentary secretary), Gerald Keddy, Andrew Saxton, Deepak Obhrai—address opposition questions about finance, trade, budgetary secrecy and foreign affairs.

Indeed, that’s quite a few people on the government side who do a lot of talking during Question Period. But during that daily theatre, we don’t often hear from the likes of Jason Kenney, John Baird, Jim Flaherty, and Ed Fast. Kenney and Baird have, in the past, been some of the most prolific voices during QP. Not these days. It’s not always clear what they’re doing outside of the Commons, but sometimes it is. And, as it turns out, they’re doing lots of things. Kenney spoke to the House committee on citizenship and immigration yesterday. Baird’s in Europe at a series of NATO and Commonwealth meetings. Fast just returned from a two-week trade mission to China and Japan. They don’t always fill the front benches during QP, these Conservatives, but that’s no accident. They’re just more interested in people who don’t sit on the opposition benches.

Continue…

The QP clip: Bob Rae and James Moore muse about sociology

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 5:22 PM - 0 Comments

Liberal Leader Bob Rae led off the Liberal side during Question Period, and had some fun at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s expense.

Earlier in the day, Harper had mused with reporters that, in the wake of the Boston bombings and arrests in connection with a plot to derail a Via train, it’s “not a time to commit sociology“—in other words, to talk about the root causes of terrorism that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau spoke about with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge.

Anyway, Rae stood up and referenced Harper’s sociology remark. Heritage Minister James Moore mumbled a response. And the actual substance of the question and answer related to what the government is or isn’t doing for unemployed youth.

Kevin Page takes his show on the road

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 1:11 PM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Free of his government masters, former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page is taking his show on the road. The long-time policy wonk is in the midst of an international tour where, at the invitation of his peers, he’s spreading the good word about what the PBO accomplished with him at the helm.

Page visited Santo Domingo earlier this month for meetings with Latin American budget directors. “I was asked to share lessons learned on budget practices related to measuring performance,” he told Maclean’s. Later this month, Page will be in South Africa to “share experiences and lessons learned” as that country gears up to open its own parliamentary budget office.

The irony of exporting all of that institutional knowledge, instead of using it at home, isn’t lost on Page. “While international organizations are using Canada’s PBO to promote good practices abroad, our Canadian government appears determined to undermine the office it created,” he said.

One of Page’s former colleagues, assistant parliamentary budget officer Sahir Khan, said the PBO has “benefited greatly” from partnerships with budget offices around the world—though its ability to return the favour is often limited. “The focus of the PBO has been on its own legislative mandate and service to parliamentarians and Canadians,” he said. “International outreach work has tended to be undertaken ‘off the sides of our desks.’”

Page’s retirement should help fill that gap. “He will likely be able to direct more of his efforts on institution building,” said Khan. “Perhaps as interesting as sharing practices and experiences with the most prosperous nations will be [Page’s] potential to help developing nations build new parliamentary institutions.”

After five years of fighting a government bent on stonewalling his office, it seems Page has finally found governments willing to listen.

QP Live: The beginning of the post-backbench rebellion era

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

Continue…

The meandering days of April

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

You get the sense, watching the Conservative government these days, that they don’t have much to be excited about. There’s the annual Economic Action Plan, of course, that untouchable set of measures to save Canada from a perilous global economy. There’s also Keystone XL, the pipeline the government praises effusively at every opportunity. This week, there’s also the anti-terror legislation that renews a series of measures that expired in 2007.

The economic action plan—seems more natural without the capital letters, no?—is the centrepiece of most government talking points, and has been for some time. That wasn’t always the case. The government used to hang its hat on a number of issues, including the law-and-order file (which it still does, occasionally, with respect to victims’ rights); and pet projects that, for example, eliminated the long-gun registry. Mostly, that’s been stripped away in favour of the economic action plan.

That might be why there’s so much chatter every time a political party releases a new ad; or why a dozen reporters packed the Press Gallery yesterday for any hint of rebellion on the Conservative backbenches; or why the future of a $2-million research station in northern Ontario, the Experimental Lakes Area, is hotly debated. Of course, these are valuable conversations and debates, worthy of this country’s attention. As are continued opposition questions about tariff increases and youth unemployment.

But you get the sense it’s all the calm before the storm. One day, the enabling legislation that accompanies this year’s economic action plan will be introduced to the House. And that’s when everyone will get excited all over again.

Continue…

The QP clip: Nathan Cullen and Peter MacKay taunt each other on supporting the troops

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 5:32 PM - 0 Comments

Early on in Question Period, NDP MP Jack Harris questioned Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s voting record on various defence spending—namely, that he voted against millions of dollars for various military initiatives. MacKay dismissed the question.

Later on, NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen stood and listed the various programs MacKay didn’t support in the 2004 budget. MacKay shot back that the military’s never been better funded than during the Conservatives’ reign.

Cullen stood again and listed yet more things MacKay voted against. In his response, the defence minister mistakenly referred to the NDP “government,” a slip the NDP was happy to applaud on their feet.

QP Live: Will backbenchers rise up?

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 1:37 PM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

Continue…

Justin Trudeau releases an ad

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 9:04 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Adam Scotti

Justin Trudeau, a man who hopes not to be defined by his enemies’ political advertising, has released an ad all his own. It’s a positive ad where Trudeau, the brand new Liberal leader, is sitting in a classroom and talking about talking. He has pledged to not resort to gutter politics. His chief political foes in the advertising world, the Conservatives, are well known to thrive in the gutter. That’s the line in the sand, at least for now. Cue the online bickering, the sniping, the analysis, the speculation.

Where are these ads, you ask? You’ll have to go elsewhere to find them. Those savvy folks on both sides, masterminds who know how easily their ads will proliferate online at virtually no cost to their pocketbooks, won’t find any free advertising on this particular post.

Continue…

QP Live: After a terrorist plot was thwarted

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 10:54 AM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

Continue…

The government is fighting terror, don’t you know

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 7:53 AM - 0 Comments

Chief Superintendent Jennifer Strachan addresses the media Monday, April 22 during a press conference announcing the arrest of two individuals charged with conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack against a VIA passenger train. (Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim)

Cynicism abounds in Ottawa. Yesterday, as RCMP officials detailed their case against two suspected terrorists—and detailed is a generous term, to be sure—an Ottawa Citizen reporter, Gary Dimmock, thought something smelled funny about the timing of the press conference, the arrests, and the government’s preferred topic of debate in the House of Commons. “If there was a risk, the RCMP would have ‘foiled’ it back in August 2012, when they knew,” Dimmock tweeted. “They told u today on combat terror debate day.”

Dimmock rightly points out that the two suspects—Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35—apparently posed no imminent threat to the public, and their plot to derail a VIA train was in the planning stages. Dimmock also correctly points out that the government made a big deal of its anti-terror legislation, Bill S-7. Candice Bergen, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of public safety, led the government side during yesterday’s debate (the government’s heart wasn’t really in the debate—as Aaron Wherry points out, the discussion mostly comprised interventions from New Democrats and Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux).

Whether or not the timing of the arrests was a cheap ploy to remind the country of the necessity of increased powers for law enforcement is an open question. If that was the government’s goal, The Globe and Mail took the bait. Seeing things that way requires a bigger-than-usual dose of cynicism—and deep mistrust of government, or at least the current gang in power. Even if it’s all bunk, that a reputable reporter even mused about such things speaks to a constant undercurrent of suspicion that plagues so many government critics in this town.

UPDATE: Somehow, I missed Colleague John Geddes’ own writing last night about the curious timing of the arrests and the parliamentary debate on terrorism. The government officially denied any link. Continue…

QP Live: In the wake of an anti-terror debate

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Monday, April 22, 2013 at 1:24 PM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s is your home for the daily political theatre that is Question Period, when opposition and government MPs trade barbs and take names for 45 minutes every day. Today, QP runs from 2:15 p.m. until just past 3 p.m. We tell you who to watch, we stream it live, and we liveblog all the action. Once a week, we’ll feature a guest blogger to sort through the madness. The whole thing only matters if you participate. Read our morning tease to catch up on the issues of the day, and then chime in on Twitter with #QP.

Continue…

Canada can’t escape American insecurity

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Monday, April 22, 2013 at 8:39 AM - 0 Comments

Jason Kryk/CP

When you live next door to the United States, you can’t escape that country’s fiscal and national insecurity. Americans are grappling with a couple of threats to their collective way of life: tight budgets at home and unpredictable enemies abroad. For better or worse, Canadians could get pulled into both whirlpools of insecurity.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s draft budget for 2014 includes the implementation of a border-crossing fee. First, the department want to study the issue. Not surprisingly, Canadian officials are universally opposed to the idea, calling it a step backwards after years of work to streamline the border.

Yesterday, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews didn’t rule out Canadian participation in a renewed continental missile shield, a partnership resoundingly rejected by former prime minister Paul Martin in 2005. “I think we need to have a broader discussion about that and I’m not prepared to venture an opinion at this time,” he told CTV’s Question Period.

There’s a third American insecurity, of course: energy. On that front, The Globe and Mail‘s John Ibbitson reports that U.S. President Barack Obama’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline is all but assured, in the wake of opinion polling that suggests three-quarters of the American public support the pipeline.

On budgets, foreign enemies, and energy, today’s newspapers demonstrate once again that Canada can’t escape the reach of its insecure neighbour to the south.

What’s above the fold this morning?

The Globe and Mail leads with the probable approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. The National Post fronts the severe condition in which suspected Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev finds himself. The Toronto Star goes above the fold with $500,000 is unused, and now expired, hand sanitizer. The Ottawa Citizen leads with Tsarnaev’s severe injuries. iPolitics fronts a provincial private member’s bill in Ontario that would allow greater custody rights for grandparents. CBC.ca leads with an apparent weapons stockpile formerly in the possession of the suspected Boston bombers. National Newswatch showcases John Ivison’s column in the National Post about what a ruling this week by Speaker Andrew Scheer on Conservative MP Mark Warawa’s point of privilege could mean for the functioning of the House of Commons.

Stories that will be (mostly) missed

Tsarnaev brothers didn’t rob a 7-Eleven: spokeswoman

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, April 19, 2013 at 4:23 PM - 0 Comments

A clarification of detail that has come up as I work on an interactive map of the week in Boston: 

The brothers suspected to have carried out the Boston Marathon bombings earlier this week were caught on camera at a convenience store on the night of April 18—but they didn’t rob a 7-Eleven in Cambridge as has widely been reported, says company spokeswoman Margaret Chabris.

Chabris told Maclean’s that a 7-Eleven location at 750 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge did experience a robbery last night, but the Tsarnaev brothers are not the suspects. She said widely released surveillance photos that feature Dzhokhar Tsarnaev do not resemble the interior of any 7-Eleven location in the area.

“I’ve seen the picture of the guy who did rob a Cambridge 7-Eleven store last night at 10:30, and let me tell you, he looks totally different than the [Tsarnaev brothers],” she said. “Not only that, the picture of the suspect that is on the news websites is taken from a store that is not ours.”

Chabris added that some media outlets insist the Tsarnaev brothers did rob a 7-Eleven—a charge she repeatedly denies.

“Some of them say they got the information from a credible source,” she said. “And I say, yeah, they may be a credible source, but they’re incorrect.”