Just for a change of pace

Gallup tonight is reporting the largest Republican lead ever over Democrats in a generic congressional ballot. Eh. Ver. Ten points. (Democrats have often held greater advantages over the Republicans; for decades after World War II, the House pretty much came with a built-in Democrat advantage.) And Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to say they’re “very” enthusiastic about voting in the fall.

President Obama’s Iraq speech tomorrow should be interesting.

Last week I decided to check in on the Deloitte forensic audit of Rights and Democracy, which the agency’s interim president announced in February and expected to receive three weeks later. In May the new president expected to make it public in June. In July he said it wouldn’t be available before the end of the summer. (The electronic trail of all of this can be found by clicking on the “Rights and Democracy” tag at the bottom of this blog post.)

I wrote to the communications people for Rights and Democracy:

It has now been just over a month since I last inquired about the Deloitte audit of Rights and Democracy. I am writing today with some further inquiries, which I hope you’ll pass along to Mr. Latulippe or anyone who can answer them.

1. Has Deloitte delivered the audit?

2. If so, when was it delivered?

3. If it has been delivered, when will it be released to the public and/or the Commons committee on foreign affairs?

4. In the interest of transparency and accountability, please account for any delay between Rights and Democracy’s receipt of the audit and its release to parliamentarians and the public.

5. If Deloitte has not yet delivered the audit, do you know when it will?

Thanks once again for all your help.

Sincerely,

Paul Wells

This morning I received a reply from Gérard Latulippe directly. Here it is in its entirety: Continue…

Stephen Gordon, a Quebec university professor (“What a surprise. End of comment,” writes one commenter), tries to demonstrate how the mandatory long-form census has often been a tool for demonstrating the futility of large interventionist government schemes. His commentary appears on the National Post website, where it is read by National Post readers, and hijinx ensue in the comment boards.

Begin with anecdote about how Poland’s centre-right government is preparing to decriminalize simple possession of recreational drugs. (Point out that Harper government is moving in opposite direction? Or is that too obvious?) Add that the leading non-socialist governments in Europe — France, Germany — are not socially conservative by any measure (partial exception for Sarkozy’s seasonal anti-immigrant rhetoric).

Then lengthy discussion of David Cameron’s UK government, which is cutting government spending far more than Harper has ever dreamed of doing, while conducting a foreign policy, especially in Middle East, that directly rebuts every line Harper government has taken.

Throw in Australia, where even if Tony Abbott wins power, he’ll have even weaker hand than Harper in Canada’s parliament.

Finish by pointing out that gay marriage is legal in Spain and Portugal, and California Prop 8 court ruling suggests widespread acceptance of gay marriage in U.S. may not be far behind.

Wrap up: Wherever conservatism is on the rise, it’s a fiscal conservatism that has few points in common with Harper’s social policies or foreign policy. So if Harper’s project is to dismantle the degenerate socialism of the Trudeau years, step by incrementalist step, doesn’t he have his work cut out for him? Because isn’t Harper-style conservatism increasingly isolated in the world?

Many of the comments under John Geddes’ astonishing story about the RCMP’s protracted attempts to make up new “facts” about Vancouver’s Insite safe-injection centre suggest readers are having trouble understanding what, precisely, went on here. And the reaction from other news organizations — there’s been none — suggests our colleagues prefer to believe there’s nothing new in the story.

And yet Geddes lays it out with crystal clarity. What’s at stake is not a simple matter of opinion about whether injection sites are a good idea. It is (1) an exhaustively-documented attempt by elements in Canada’s national police force to create a bogus “academic” argument against Insite. Then (2) an attempt by senior RCMP officers to reverse course and atone for that burst of academic vandalism. And finally, (3) a decision from the RCMP’s highest echelons — or from someone in government outside the RCMP — to stifle the belated atonement, instead letting the sham record stand. The first part of that story has been told before. The rest is new, and devastating. Let me try to walk you through it. Continue…

In my column on the not-at-Ground-Zero more-than-a-mosque, Andrew Coyne’s column on Tamils in a boat, and Andrew Potter’s own mosque piece (hosted offsite at the Ottawa Citizen, his home-away-from-home emeritus), one begins to see why I have been getting anxious inquiries about how soon Mark Steyn can get back from vacation.

The Globe’s John Ibbitson does the thing we’ve all had to do, attempting to insert some drama into a report because he has exclusive access to it.

“In a historic shift, Canada will make finding solutions to Arctic boundary disputes this country’s top foreign-policy priority in the Far North, according to a Foreign Affairs paper that will be released on Friday.

“The Conservative government now wants swift and permanent solutions to border issues that this and previous governments had preferred to leave unresolved.”

The point of it all? To “transform the Arctic from a hotbed of jurisdictional conflicts into a stable, rules-based region.” It’s like the opening up of the west all over again. Cartesian rigour and the common sense of the common law combining to tame a lawless frontier.

This is, it must be said, the way everyone is required to talk about the Arctic ever since Harper signed that secret Order-in-Council, “Let’s All Huff and Puff About the Arctic,” in 2006. The problem, as I wrote a year ago, is that across the vast majority of its territory the Arctic is already a stable, rules-based region; that its jurisdictional conflicts are so few in nature and trivial in stakes as to produce only a lukewarm hotbed at best; and that on the only really hard issue, navigation rights through the Northwest Passage (which is the only point of dispute in that waterway; Canada’s control of lands and resources is uncontested) we’d probably lose any legal dispute. Continue…

The Prime Minister yesterday in Ajax, Ont. (as noted by Colleague Wherry):

“The next election will be a choice between a coalition government of the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois, or a stable Conservative majority government for this country.”

Compare that with my boss Ken Whyte’s interview with Harper just before New Year’s Day, 2009:

Obviously, if we had an election today somebody will have a majority because it will be either Canada’s Conservative government or the coalition. Continue…

Rick Scott is running for governor of Florida, which I used to think was tucked between Georgia and a large body of water. But apparently Florida’s in Lower Manhattan, and Rick Scott is tired of outsiders telling Florida how to run its business.

From the Inkless emailbox:

Dear Paul,

In recent weeks, the Fraser Institute has been pilloried and criticized in both the mainstream media and among the country’s political and academic elites for our support for making the 2011 long-form census voluntary, rather than mandatory.

Our rationale for opposing the mandatory long-form census comes down to a core belief that Canadians should not be forced to disclose private and non-essential personal information to the government.

In its current format, the long-form census requires Canadians to complete 40 burdensome pages of intrusive personal questions. Canadians are forced to disclose this information without good cause. The census has simply become a cheap way for academics, economists, and social scientists to get information that should be acquired using market surveys of the kind that are routinely conducted on a voluntary basis.

Having census data collected by a central government agency does not serve Canada’s interests, and it does not serve your interests.

If, like us, you believe that a less intrusive government will help make Canada a stronger and more prosperous nation, then help us continue our efforts to independently measure the success or failure of government policies.

Please donate to the Fraser Institute.

Sincerely,

Dr. Brett J. Skinner
President

From the print edition, my column considers the historian Tony Judt, much noted for his brave stoicism in facing the disease that killed him. I read his big book a few years ago and simply wanted to share two of the stories from it that stuck with me.

Caroline Phillips/Ottawa Citizen

Mario Laguë, Michael Ignatieff’s communications director, died this morning in a motorcycle crash in Ottawa. The news has come as a horrible shock to many who follow politics.

Between 2005 and 2009 I received perhaps a dozen long emails from Laguë, from wherever he was living at the time: Costa Rica, Switzerland, Montreal. I did not know him well when the correspondence began. He was a public servant in Quebec City when Robert Bourassa was premier; his close work with Bourassa gave him, as it gave many who learned from that life-long student of electoral realism, a lasting reputation as an authority on Quebec politics and political strategy in general.

Bourassa made him Quebec’s delegate-general to Mexico City. He left that job rather than pledge allegiance to the sovereignist cause after Jacques Parizeau’s election in 1994. Mario really didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the sovereignist cause: He moved to Ottawa, joined the Privy Council Office and became a key player in the group of civil servants who joined elected officials from Quebec City and Ottawa who, haphazardly to be sure, helped win the 1995 referendum. Continue…

Compare and contrast:

I’ve been mystified by Stephen Harper’s willingness to squander so much political capital on an issue as trivial as the long-form census. Only slightly less so by the media’s piling on, treating this as a matter of great national importance, and by the level of emotional investment so many apparently attach to census-gathering.

The opposition? They’re just reveling in the unexpected bounty of low-hanging political fruit, and Tory self-inflicted injury.

I don’t get it. It’s just not that big a deal – either way.

— Charles W. Moore, New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, today

Stephen Harper seeks to diminish or destroy the Liberal Party to replace them with the Conservatives as Canada’s default choice for government. His greatest challenge is to dismantle the modern welfare state. If it can’t be measured, future governments can’t pander.

— Blogger Stephen Taylor, July 22.

That’s the choice, I suppose. Either what the Harper government is doing with the long-form census doesn’t matter, or it does. Obviously Moore has a lot more company than Taylor does. Indeed, lately Moore’s company includes Taylor: since July 22 this whole business has gotten too hot for Stephen’s liking and in his blog and on Twitter he’s joined the nobody-cares crowd, arguing that this whole business is an invention of the “push media,” by which he means news organizations that cover a story he doesn’t like for longer than he likes.

But clearly Stephen Harper thinks it matters, because he has burned two useful ministers, Tony Clement and Stock Day, rather badly in advancing this little project. Continue…

Jacques Parizeau turned 80 years old on Monday. He is still such a polarizing figure that there may be no point trying to say anything about him.

The speech he gave on referendum night in 1995 (“Never forget that three-fifths of who we are voted Yes,” a line I always liked even less than the bit about money and ethnics) has made it easy ever since to dismiss him without further consideration.

But lately when I think of him it’s with a measure of fondness, and I didn’t even want him to succeed. It’s no wonder sovereignists, especially young ones who want politics to be about action and not just attitude, often adore him. The first magazine article I wrote in 1994, for Saturday Night‘s young new editor Ken Whyte, argued that Parizeau, not Lucien Bouchard, was the sovereignty movement’s most formidable leader. I’ve never seen reason to doubt that thesis. Continue…