Five politicians who survived their own foolishness

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, May 24, 2013 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s alleged dalliance with crack cocaine isn’t his first flirtation with political disaster. He’s proven to be a survivor despite a rocky career at City Hall. If he survives his latest public shaming, however, Ford wouldn’t be the first politician to laugh his way to a longer career in politics. Here are five politicians who beat the odds.

1. Gordon Campbell. In January 2003, after serving as British Columbia’s premier for two years, Campbell was caught drunk driving on Maui. He’d consumed three martinis, jacked up his blood-alcohol level to twice the legal limit, and drove erratically—as well as over the speed limit. For his sins, Campbell pleaded no contest and was fined $50. He was also haunted by infamous mug shots that were released to the public. Despite calls from Mothers Against Drunk Driving for the then-premier’s resignation, Campbell went on to win successive majority governments in 2005 and 2009.

2. Maxime Bernier. Julie Couillard made headlines when she appeared with her then-boyfriend, Bernier, as he was sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs at Rideau Hall in August 2007. Less than a year later, Bernier resigned his post after leaving sensitive documents at Couillard’s home. It didn’t help the Quebec MP’s case that Couillard had been connected to members of the Hells Angels, a salacious detail that might have buried anyone’s political career. Bernier, however, was back in cabinet in May 2011 as Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism.

3. Richard Hatfield. New Brunswick’s longtime premier survived his share of scandals throughout his 17-year reign. He’s said to have spent over five months outside of his province in 1979, and “Disco Dick” partied at New York’s famous Studio 54 club. The controversy that sent Hatfield packing—his party lost every seat in the 1987 election—came during 1984, when police found 35 grams of marijuana in his baggage. He was acquitted on the charges. Hatfield’s career was briefly resurrected when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed him to the Senate in 1990.

4. Francis Fox. Fox’s resignation from federal cabinet in 1978 involved a tangled web of intrigue. When his girlfriend sought an abortion, Fox–who was then Solicitor General of Canada—forged her then-husband’s signature on a document granting permission for the procedure. Two years later, Fox was back in cabinet, where he served in a number of roles until the Liberal government was defeated in the 1984 election. Nineteen years later, Fox was appointed to the Senate, where he served until 2011.

5. John Powell. A former mayor of Toronto, Powell killed a man in cold blood. The fatal shot to the head, however, served only to make Powell more popular. The man he shot, Anthony Anderson, was a rebel captain in 1838. The shooting was only a month out from the election that vaulted Powell to mayor.

Don’t bet against political survivors

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, May 24, 2013 at 8:58 AM - 0 Comments

When you’re right smack dab in the middle of a relentless series of furious news cycles, and powerful politicians you don’t like are being accused of indiscretions that you think should cost them their jobs, there’s a point at which you start to believe it might happen. Kind of like when the Toronto Maple Leafs are ahead 4-1 with 10 minutes to go, and you start to think they might be able to win.

Until they don’t.

Anyone who’s calling for blood in Ottawa or Toronto might get their wish, but we’re reminded by a pair of National Post columnists this morning that both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his team, and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford—the former more than the latter, by a wide margin—have a good shot at emerging intact from their current conundrums.

John Ivison is inclined to believe that Harper’s telling the truth when he says he had no knowledge of his former chief of staff’s decision to cover Senator Mike Duffy’s improperly claimed expenses with a personal cheque worth $90,000. “If no new information emerges that connects the Prime Minister to the $90,000 cheque,” writes Ivison, “it may be that the scandal has crested.” And with two years before the next election, the moribund Conservatives have plenty of time to rebound.

Jonathan Kay thinks Ford will never (ever) resign from office, if only because he’s locked into an “existential struggle against left-wing Toronto snobs who always have hated everything about him.” That kind of battle doesn’t discourage a guy like Ford, says Kay. “Like all true warriors, he will keep on fighting till the very day—if it ever comes—that he is led out of City Hall in handcuffs. And even then, I’m not so sure.”

Survivors are survivors. They often outlast those furious news cycles. Then again, the news doesn’t seem to be showing any sign of letting up.

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How to abolish the Senate of Canada

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 5:25 PM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Improper expenses. Senate resignations. Unaccountable senators. Such are the words enveloping Ottawa this week, this month, this year. The current crisis of legitimacy in the Senate, which has seen three of its own resign from their caucuses and either pay back or dispute improperly claimed expenses, has people talking about scrapping the whole thing. The NDP is at the front of the line. Tom Mulcair, the Leader of the Official Opposition, says it’s time to “roll up the red carpet” and empty the Red Chamber. He’ll campaign on abolition during the next election campaign. Amid all the bluster, there’s an important question: If Canada wanted to abolish its Senate, how would it do that? Continue…

QP Live: Mike Duffy Week continues in the Commons

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 11:17 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 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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Who is the government’s least favourite reporter?

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 8:18 AM - 0 Comments

Devaan Ingraham/CP

This morning, let’s play a fun game. I’m still workshopping its title, but the working moniker is What’s Bob Fife Working on Today? We can’t know, obviously, since we’re not inside the brain of CTV’s Ottawa bureau chief. But the man has been a machine for the past week—well, longer than that, but for this morning’s purposes, let’s stick to the Mike Duffy Affair.

Fife’s broken every major story in the past week that has made headaches, and occasionally migraines, for Prime Minister Stephen Harper; Nigel Wright, the PM’s former chief of staff; and Senator Mike Duffy. Fife’s the guy who told us about the $90,000 personal cheque Wright passed along to Duffy, to cover the repayment of  improperly claimed expenses. Fife told us a few other things, too, and then last night reported that two Senators—David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen—ordered edits to a report of the Senate’s internal economy committee.

That report reviewed an audit of Duffy’s expenses. The unedited version, which found its way to reporters’ hands, was much more critical of Duffy than the final copy that Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen reportedly had “whitewashed,” or “sanitized,” or whatever else you want to call selective editing. Worth noting is that Stewart Olsen is a former PMO operative. None of this makes things easier for the government.

So, what comes next in this saga? Your best bet is to go ask Bob Fife. Thanks for playing.

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QP Live: Few answers emerge on the Senate crisis

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 9:54 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 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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Ottawa hurries up and waits for Senate crisis answers

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 7:57 AM - 0 Comments

The prime minister is in South America, on a trade mission. The foreign minister is in the House of Commons, engaging in damage control. The Senate’s internal economy committee is down the hall, investigating Senator Mike Duffy‘s improperly claimed expenses. The federal ethics commissioner is in her office, investigating the conduct of Nigel Wright, who was Harper’s chief of staff until last Sunday.

So, while Harper shakes hands and Baird deflects and Senators re-open books and the ethics commissioner pores over the rules, everyone else waits. The slow-moving train that is the ongoing Senate expenses scandal, where only the reporting of CTV’s Robert Fife shovels coal into the engine, lumbers on.

John Ibbitson, writing in The Globe and Mail, explains this hurry-up-and-wait approach to crisis management. The government, as it has done before, can “punt the issue to a neutral third party and then refuse to answer any further questions, claiming officials must be allowed to do their jobs.” The thing that the government must remember, and it’s something Toronto Mayor Rob Ford knows all too well, is that when a scandal is too big to just disappear, the harshest of critics are willing to wait. And wait. And wait for answers.

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QP Live: Amidst a crisis in the Senate

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 12:44 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 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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Will the Duffy scandal stick?

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Amid the wreckage, the Conservatives in Ottawa still must govern. How they do that when two of their own Senators quit caucus late last week, and then their boss’s top aide resigned in the middle of a long weekend, is no easy task. Their headaches, mostly fuelled by the relentless reporting of CTV’s Robert Fife, will pound all week. Aaron Wherry and Paul Wells and John Geddes explain why this will be a long week.

• Related coverage: 12 thoughts on the Duffy scandal 

The Toronto Star calls the current conniption enveloping Ottawa—the Mike Duffy Affair, let’s call it—the “worst scandal” that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s gang has faced since they took power on the promise of unprecedented transparency and accountability in 2006. In Ottawa, what anyone usually means by scandal is a thing the government has done to piss off its critics. Harper’s scandals have gone mostly unpunished by voters, despite its critics being so routinely pissed off by so many things. Even when Conservatives were found guilty during the “in-and-out” affair  that saw them improperly shuffle money around during the election campaign that brought them to power, John Geddes recalls, the party claimed victory. They were also found in contempt of Parliament, and we all know what real victory they claimed not long after, in May 2011. They’ve always found a way.

But the last week in federal politics would actually have made good television—depending on your tastes, obviously. Maybe that’s the barometer of what counts as real controversy. The Liberals’ demise a few years back, the Sponsorship Scandal, would have kind-of-sort-of made good TV. There was lots of corruption, anyway. So, when Harper stands up to address his caucus this morning, with cameras rolling, we’ll see how he looks on stage.

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Rob Ford stole the show on a frenzied news night

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, May 17, 2013 at 7:48 AM - 0 Comments

Jon Blacker/Reuters

Shocking news is hard to believe. Last night, there was lots of news, plenty of it shocking. The sun was setting on another day, literally, when newsrooms tore up their front pages and started from scratch.

Mike Duffy, the Conservative Senator who’s fighting for his political life after questions arose about how he repaid improperly claimed expenses, resigned from his party’s caucus. Paul Godfrey, the chair of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission who had pushed aggressively for new casinos in the province, walked into a meeting only to get fired—a move that saw the agency’s entire board resign in protest. And then, the pièce de résistance of an evening built to shock: a video that few saw, but everybody talked about all night, allegedly starring Toronto’s mayor. Rob Ford will never be remembered as a boring man, nor will he ever escape questions about his conduct as a public figure.

But now they claim he smoked crack cocaine, and there’s allegedly a video to prove it.

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Mike Duffy can’t control the story

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 9:01 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Here’s one version of the story about Senator Mike Duffy: When he claimed a primary residence in P.E.I., and not the suburban Ottawa home where he’d lived for decades, he was legitimately confused about the rules. He ticked the wrong box, inadvertently—oops—and, as a result, accidentally claimed $90,172.24 in expenses.
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Did Christy Clark really beat the odds?

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 8:54 AM - 0 Comments

Jonathan Hayward/CP

Christy Clark beat the odds yesterday, you know. The B.C. premier, who’d been written off for dead, scored an upset, a come-from-behind victory for the ages that enshrined her as a provincial political legend.

There’s an alternate theory here: Maybe Clark, whose Liberals secured 50 seats in the legislature after the votes were counted—a fourth consecutive majority government for the party—simply won an election by getting out the vote and doing it more efficiently than her opponents. Maybe.

The common storyline, the one about stunning upsets and comebacks, is based on the notion that the Liberals were 20 points behind the NDP when the campaign began, and still several points down on the eve of the election. The Liberals never led a poll. They always trailed. They were supposed to lose. Except they didn’t. Continue…

How the Maple Leafs transformed fairy tale into tragedy

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 8:32 AM - 0 Comments

Charles Krupa/AP

Last night was, only a few weeks ago, the stuff of pure fiction. The Toronto Maple Leafs held a 4-1 lead with 15 minutes left in the seventh and deciding game of a playoff series against a team full of guys who know how to win the Stanley Cup. And they were on the road, against all odds, somehow winning.

To that point, Maple Leafs fans were incapable of feeling disappointed. Their team had returned to the playoffs for the first time since [insert nostalgic reference], a gift all its own. They’d fallen behind three games to one, and every game after that was, again, a gift. Forcing a seventh game was unconscionable, but they accomplished that. Even if they lost that final game, everyone would have to at least take the Leafs seriously again, right? And then, in that game, they held a 4-1 lead.

The Leafs had somehow shown, if only for a matter of minutes, that they could not only test the Bruins, but maybe even beat them. Their fans, even if they wouldn’t admit it, got their hopes up. They tasted it. And what followed was the only sequence of events that could ruin all of that: an epic collapse, and a 5-4 overtime loss. Suddenly, and starkly, it didn’t matter that the Leafs were never supposed to get as far as they did. All those gifts, those new leases on life, evaporated. There remained only loss.

All of it was pure fiction, only months ago. Now it’s just a hangover and, as usual, all about next year.

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Hadfield returns home as Attawapiskat evacuates

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Monday, May 13, 2013 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

AP/Dmitry Lovetsky

Chris Hadfield blasted off into space on Dec. 19. When he was settling into his new digs on the International Space Station, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence was a little over a week into her protest on Victoria Island, and the Idle No More movement that loudly demanded respect for aboriginal rights was in its mainstream infancy. At the time, I wrote that Hadfield and Spence, united by their respective citizenship and maybe not much else, “represent the breadth of the Canadian experience.”

Six months later, Hadfield boasts 800,000 followers on Twitter, a medium he transformed into a photo album from on high, a window into his space-borne laboratory, and a way for the masses to chat with an astronaut. To call him a boon for the Canadian Space Agency, which could use a good-news story as it faces an uncertain future, would be understating the situation somewhat. Hadfield took his country’s space program on his shoulders, made space cool, and returns a bona fide hero. In other words, he nailed it.

Meanwhile, Spence’s community faces evacuation. Attawapiskat is among 10 northern Ontario communities that are in the midst of seasonal flooding, a not unfamiliar fate that sees hundreds of residents moved to places like Thunder Bay, Fort Frances and Cornwall. Spence has faded from the public eye, for better or worse, and her people are back in the news not for their activism—but for the same misery they seem to face, year after year, just for living where they live.

Once again, the breadth of the Canadian experience.
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Why Ottawa hockey fans want to stop traffic for their team

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, May 10, 2013 at 6:04 PM - 0 Comments

Graham Hughes/CP

Ask a cynic about the people who cheer for the Ottawa Senators, and you’ll hear about how you can hear a pin drop at Scotiabank Place when the Senators play, how the fans can’t even pack their own building when the Maple Leafs pay a visit, and then various other laments about how the team plays in the suburbs and what a waste of time it is to make the commute. Mostly, you’ll hear all of that from people who prefer blue and white to red and black, and just like to complain.

Those cynics, for the most part, can’t be entirely dismissed. The Senators’ arena is loud when it matters, but rarely when it doesn’t. Daniel Alfredsson, the team’s beloved captain and a man basically beyond reproach inside city limits, is booed on his own ice by hostile Toronto fans when the Leafs are in town. And, of course, everyone wishes for a downtown arena. No matter its success, the team will always be the Kanata Senators to any and all of its detractors, a team indelibly linked to the suburb it calls home.

None of that mattered when the Senators embarrassed the Montreal Canadiens in the fifth game of their Eastern Conference quarter-final series. They’d already skated circles around the Canadiens in the third game, a 6-1 rout at Scotiabank Place. And they’d won twice more, including once in overtime, conceding just a single loss to the Habs heading into the fifth game. The Sens took Montreal to task in the clincher, surrounded by the more than 20,000 rabid fanatics who fuel the Bell Centre, one of the continent’s loudest arenas. Six goals and sixty minutes after it all started, the Sens were through to the second round.

Fans congregate at Elgin Street and Maclaren Street whenever the Sens win big. That intersection lies in the middle of Sens Mile, the stretch of Elgin Street devoted to hockey madness during playoff runs. Bars occupy three corners. One of them has a lot of very big screens, the other a top-notch beer selection, and the other a popular outdoor patio on the second level. Maybe those selling points have nothing to do with it, but the army of Senators fans—they’re loud, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise—probably doesn’t care why they choose that corner. They just do, and the rest is a party.

Celebrations at Elgin and Maclaren always follow the same formula: congregate until there’s critical mass, parade into the intersection when Elgin’s traffic hits a red light, and linger as long as possible when that light turns green. Eventually, police intervene and help traffic along, and everyone keeps screaming and chanting, and there’s usually a mock Stanley Cup bobbing along with the crowd. Such was the scene last night.

It was only the first round of 2013′s playoff marathon; an initial test, passed. Already, Sens fans are hungry for more. They came so close in 2007, when they fought their way to the Stanley Cup Final only to lose decisively to the Anaheim Ducks. They’re itching to get back there, to burst into the street after the final buzzer, and to not have to worry about traffic getting in the way. They want to own Elgin and Maclaren, just for a night. The cynics who openly detest the Sens would be forced into their homes, isolated from the rest of the city’s glee, brooding and talking about next year. Maybe some of them—not many, and only quietly—will even cheer for the Sens, if they end up Canada’s best chance at a Stanley Cup. Sweet justice for the home crowd.

QP Live: The last day before a Constituency Week

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, May 10, 2013 at 11:06 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 11:15 p.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.

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What comes next for restless Conservative backbenchers?

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Friday, May 10, 2013 at 8:42 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Mark Warawa did rise in the House of Commons yesterday, and he did talk about sex-selective abortion and, just as Aaron Wherry predicted, he did win his simmering showdown with his party whip. In doing so, he took the hard road to succeeding as a backbencher; indeed, the easier route would involve introducing, say, a private member’s bill to strengthen the criminal code that earns the support of the government. The National Post‘s John Ivison called Warawa’s stand a “giant leap for backbench democracy.”

But what happens next? Warawa has now spoken against sex-selective abortion, and Hansard has recorded his remarks for posterity. The spring season seems to have come and gone, as Ottawa’s winter transformed neatly into summer without much in between. What of the Wherry-coined Spring that caught the House’s attention? What do its practitioners do for an encore?

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The QP clip: Joyce Murray shouts out Google alerts

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 4:16 PM - 0 Comments

Murray asked Human Resources Minister Diane Finley why the government’s happy to spend millions of dollars on media monitoring of its own MPs when it could, she thinks, better spend the money on student summer jobs.

Catch the gimmicky part towards the end of the question.

QP Live: Everyone’s already tired of the Arrested Development references

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 1:14 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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How to succeed as a Conservative backbencher

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 9:12 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

The Backbench Spring, as Aaron Wherry coined it, continues. Mark Warawa, the Conservative MP who occasionally carries the banner for caucus colleagues who hope to exercise more independence in the House of Commons, hopes to rise today to speak about sex-selective abortion. Wherry suggests Langley, B.C.’s man in Parliament cannot lose, and so the Spring continues.

But there’s more to this energy in the backbenches than any ongoing opposition to the crack of the party’s whip. At the same time as some Conservatives are standing up for themselves, a select few of their caucus mates are making headlines with their very own legislation. Week after week, the government proclaims its support for various Conservative private member’s bills intended to strengthen the criminal code. Most recently, David Sweet’s Bill C-479—which would give victims greater access to parole hearings—has earned the government’s support. Last month, Manitoba MP James Bezan introduced Bill C-478, legislation that would make parole eligibility much more difficult for some violent offenders—and the government supports that, too.

(The opposition has all kids of problems with this approach: namely, that private member’s legislation undergoes a much less thorough review, and arguably is more susceptible to court challenges down the road.)

None of this is being done in secret. In fact, the government is showing off its support for the backbench’s law-and-order agenda. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told reporters all about the government’s empowerment of its caucus. “We’re giving our upper benchers, our backbenchers a real say in parliament,” he said. “They’re accomplishing what their constituents have sent them here to do.”

So the government’s all about empowering the backbenches, except when it’s not about empowering the backbenches. Protip to Conservative MPs who want to stand up for your constituents: find a way to amend the criminal code.
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The QP clip: Tom Mulcair wonders if the Bluths can account for billions in anti-terror funding

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at 3:48 PM - 0 Comments

QP Live: The argument about anti-terror funding continues

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at 11:48 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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The Conservative love affair with targeted research

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at 9:11 AM - 0 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

Gary Goodyear’s quest for commercialization continues. The minister of state for science and technology joined John McDougall, the president of the National Research Council of Canada, to tell the country that its premier research institution would, from now on, focus on “commercial value”—not basic research. The idea is that Canadian companies could use more help with research and development, and the NRC is best placed to provide that support.

Each time the government announces such a shift, opposition critics and their allies lash out. They argue basic research produces innovation no one ever saw coming. Indeed, The Globe and Mail points to several such inventions produced by NRC researchers: the most accurate and stable atomic clock of its era, built in 1975; a “portable bomb sniffer,” built in the 1980s; and sophisticated computer animation, first developed in the 1960s. Yesterday, Kennedy Stewart took his turn pointing these things out to the government. The NDP’s science and technology critic wondered aloud during Question Period why Conservatives would “turn their back on important research.”

Question Period volleys back and forth begin anew. We’ve seen this before.

For the better part of the Conservatives’ time in power, they’ve whittled away basic research funding in favour of specific fields. The NRC will now focus its energy on health costs, the manufacturing supply chain, community infrastructure, security, natural resources and the environment.

In each of the government’s past six budgets, new funding dedicated to three granting councils—the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council—has routinely bypassed basic research.

In 2008, granting councils were to fund “industrial innovation, health priorities, and social and economic development in the North.” In 2009, SSHRC grants were to be “focussed on business-related degrees.” In 2010, NSERC’s additional $5 million in funding was meant “to foster closer research collaborations between academic institutions and the private sector” by way of the council’s Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation. In 2011 and 2012, NSERC’s funding was again focused on the Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation. Also in 2011 and 2012, CIHR found itself with $15 million dedicated to a Strategy on Patient-Oriented Research. In 2011, SSHRC’s funding was directed at studying the digital economy. In 2012, social sciences researchers were to focus on “industry-academic partnership initiatives.”

And, in Budget 2013, the story’s the same. NSERC will receive $12 million “to enhance the College and Community Innovation Program.” CIHR continues to focus on its Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research, and SSHRC funding will investigate “the labour market participation of persons with disabilities.”

This targeted research is a long, winding road. The government’s been at it for years, through minority and majority mandates. The opposition can criticize the government’s direction. But on this file, it can’t accuse them of being inconsistent.

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Toronto remembers how to cheer for playoff hockey

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 7:23 PM - 0 Comments

Nathan Denette/CP

When playoff hockey returned to Toronto, the rust showed, here and there, somewhere between the fans and the game.

The fans were ready. What used to be normal, and was for nine years starkly absent, all of a sudden returned. That feeling of palpable excitement, formerly a spring rite of passage in a city that loves its hockey team, consumed the outdoor plaza at Maple Leaf Square before the game. Even the traditionally staid crowd inside the arena found its cheering legs, now and again. The fans weren’t the problem. They never forgot what a playoff goal looks like, how it sounds, and all the revelry that briefly follows.

The team was, more or less, ready. A few nights ago, they’d shown that they belong—or can belong—on the same ice as a Boston Bruins squad that’s chock full of Stanley Cup champions. Last night, with the first round series of the 2013 NHL playoffs knotted at a game apiece, they never managed enough momentum to discourage the powerful Bruins. They were rarely awful, and mostly just mediocre. Phil Kessel, the man everyone will watch for however long this series lasts, had sad moments—he coughed up the puck in his own zone and watched as winger Daniel Paille deposited it in the net—and happier moments, including a goal to call his own less than a minute into the third period. But, all told, despite demonstrating a rare ability to outshoot their opponents, the blue and white fell 5-2.

None of that, however, accounted for that lingering rusty feeling in the building.

Do you remember Jeff Douglas? Joe, of “I am Canadian” fame? He who was a small celebrity in Canada when, by coincidence, the Leafs used to make the playoffs on a regular basis? The Leafs brought him back last night, in between plays, to proclaim his love for the home team. “I wear blue and white, not black and yellow,” he proclaimed. “I cheer for Sundin, not Alfredsson.” There was only one problem with the scene: Joe wasn’t wearing blue and white. He was wearing the same black and red—in a checkered pattern—that Daniel Alfredsson’s Senators don on a nightly basis. Oops.

During an earlier stoppage, Leafs announcer Andy Frost alluded to one man in the crowd who was celebrating his 105th playoff series as a Leaf fan. The camera panned to a private box where an 88-year-old Johnny Bower, a legend if ever one graced the arena’s halls, stood and blew kisses to the crowd. In so doing, Bower continued that fine modern tradition in Toronto: celebrate a glorious, fading past while you still can. Johnny Bower, Joe Carter, you fill in the blanks. It’s something to cheer in between whistles.

With fewer than 10 minutes left in the game, that other great tradition took hold of the ACC’s speakers: The Hockey Song. The Leafs had narrowed the score to 4-2, and were pushing in fits and starts to further close the gap, and Stompin’ Tom’s classic tune whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Only the song was cut off by the resumption of play—by a few seconds, but nevertheless.

Before last night, I’d never really listened to Carry On My Wayward Son, the hockey-rink staple that Kansas pumped out in 1976. But when it took over the arena at some point in the third period, the second verse—meant to energize the crowd, remember—struck me.

Masquerading as a man with a reason 
My charade is the event of the season 
And if I claim to be a wise man, well 
It surely means that I don’t know

A cynic would say those four lines define what it means to be a fan of the Maple Leafs or Blue Jays or Raptors, or—credit where it’s due—any team that doesn’t play lacrosse (the Rock) or football (the Argonauts), since those teams occasionally win when it counts.

Leafs fans harbour a perennial obsession with their team unlike any other in Toronto’s sports universe. When the Jays are in last place, the Rogers Centre’s sea of empty blue seats serves as punishment. When the Raptors are determined to lose, their fan base remains intact—but who talks about them, anyway? Everyone’s stopped noticing Toronto FC altogether. Few non-diehards ever noticed the Argonauts, even if they were Canadian football’s best team last year.

Somehow, Leaf Nation forges ahead. Forget the Cup drought, they say. Forget the playoff drought. Our guys are back, aren’t they? It’s all worth it, even in an ultimately losing cause, if the Senators or Bruins or Canadiens suffer just a little bit. Does it even matter that most of the team’s fans weren’t born when the Stanley Cup paraded around town? Does winning matter anymore? Leaf fans are masquerading as people with a reason. Period.

Before the puck dropped at the ACC, the CN Tower lit up in blue. As fans filed out of the arena, the tower’s lights had gone purple. The game was over. The page already turned.

Now, the city does it all over again on Wednesday, when the series moves to its fourth game. And, once again, the fans hope everything clicks: their peers yelling, their players excelling, the Johnny Bower and Joe Canadian moments finely tuned. If that doesn’t work, there’s always Game 5.