Oh, Mr. Munk….

By Paul Wells - Monday, May 31, 2010 at 3:39 PM - 38 Comments

“Your article is malicious, ludicrous, and possibly libelous as well. For all intents and purposes, it calls Brian Mulroney a perjurer. Is Andrew Coyne’s bias and venom so uncontrollable that he couldn’t wait to pass his judgment until Justice Oliphant’s report?… This type of persistent public witch hunt is reminiscent of the McCarthy era. It is unworthy of your standards.”

— Peter Munk, letter to the editor of Maclean’s, June 22, 09

“Having carefully considered the evidence respecting the amount of cash paid by Mr. Schreiber to Mr. Mulroney, I have decided not to accept the evidence of either of them unless there is independent evidence to support one of the two positions taken.”

— Statement by the Hon. Jeffrey J. Oliphant, today

It’s sad that Mr. Munk couldn’t wait to pass his judgment until Justice Oliphant’s report, but now that it’s out, I’m sure he’ll agree with me that Andrew’s column from a year ago stands up a lot better than does Munk’s letter in response to it.

'These dealings do not reflect the highest standards of conduct'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 31, 2010 at 1:24 PM - 64 Comments

Justice Oliphant’s public statement on his findings in the matter of Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber is here.

His full report, in four volumes, is here.

Reviews from the Globe, Star, Canwest and CTV.

Didn’t we used to be friends?

By Paul Wells - Friday, April 2, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 156 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick / CP

Nobody remembers the act that appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show after Elvis Presley. After the kid with the guitar, nothing else could leave much of an impression.

Similarly, whatever history records about Derek Burney, it will pay scant heed to the speech he gave at the big Liberal thinkers’ conference in Montreal over the weekend. Burney used to run the Prime Minister’s Office for Brian Mulroney. He was Canada’s ambassador to Washington from 1989 to 1993. He led Stephen Harper’s transition to power in 2006. But on Sunday he drew the short straw and spoke after a barnburning speech by Bob Fowler, the retired former ambassador who accused both Harper and the Liberals of selling out the country’s best diplomatic traditions. Coming after that broadside, Burney was all but ignored.

Too bad. Burney had useful things to say about Canada-U.S. relations. He devoted nearly half his remarks to the dangers of passivity and timidity, urging leaders not to “hestitate to lead,” calling for “confidence” over “reticence,” preferring a “vigorous, creative and active approach” over “risk-averse, correct stewardship” in a bilateral relationship that “should be stimulated and led by the prime minister.”

Continue…

The real trouble at Rights and Democracy

By Linda Frum - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 11:52 AM - 64 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Wallace/ Toronto Star

Let’s say I gave you $11 million of Canadian taxpayer money and told you I wanted you to use the money to repair the ills of the world as you perceived them. Let’s say I told you that you could spend the money entirely as you saw fit. No questions asked. Odds are you would have little difficulty identifying your favourite causes in the most deserving regions of the world. Lovely fantasy isn’t it? Spending other people’s money to cure the troubles of the world, as you identify them, exactly the way you deem best? Well, for the senior managers of Rights and Democracy, Canada’s publicly funded human rights organization, this was no fantasy. It was a blissful reality. That is, until a group of pesky governors, burdened by such governance concepts as accountability and responsibility, came along to spoil the party.

If you have been following the controversy surrounding Rights and Democracy, a “short-arm” organization set up by prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1988 to promote human rights in the Third World, you know that the organization is in crisis.

Some claim that the crisis pits a professional management against a partisan board controlled by the Prime Minister’s Office. (That is the view, for example, of this magazine’s otherwise brilliant analyst Paul Wells.) But every key player in this story, on both sides, is a Harper appointee. And, as a short-arm organization, R and D is constitutionally autonomous of government but not independent of it. Each fiscal year, the chair of R and D is required to table a report with both houses of Parliament. In other words, R and D is not an arm’s-length, independent NGO.

To really understand what’s truly at issue here, you must go to the heart of the trouble.

It really heated up in March 2009 when newly appointed board chair, University of Toronto political science professor Aurel Braun, discovered questionable grants made by R and D’s president Remy Beauregard. One such grant was made to a group called Al Haq, based in Ramallah, West Bank. According to the Israeli Supreme Court, Al Haq’s leader is a senior activist of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group. The $10,000 grant for Al Haq—distributed from a discretionary fund controlled by Beauregard and his management team—alarmed Braun and the majority of his current board. What other grants, they wondered, might be equally suspect? What about, for example, the $144,000 donated to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a sponsor of 2009’s scurrilous Durban II conference, which was boycotted by the government of Canada? What exactly was that $144,000 spent on? Or the several hundred thousand dollars that R and D sent to that UN office over the past few years?

Anyone who has ever served on a board knows that such inquiries on the part of a board chair and the audit and finance committee are necessary in order to fulfill the duty of “due diligence.” But to the managers of R and D—unaccustomed to any challenge to their authority and hostile to investigations into their pet projects—the board’s interest was deemed “harassment” and requests for “sensitive” information were rejected or stonewalled. To this day, management refuses to co-operate fully with an audit being conducted by the respected firm of Deloitte & Touche. Instead, they have launched a self-righteous campaign of media sniping and obfuscation—aided by the disappearance of managerial laptops and computer records.

The sudden death in January of Remy Beauregard has injected an element of sorrow to the situation, but it does not alter a public body’s duty to account for public money. By January 2010, even Beauregard finally came to the conclusion that giving money to Al Haq (and like organizations) was wrong and voted to repudiate it. But the staff he left behind remain resentful of the board’s scrutiny.

The R and D staff’s anger at the board’s curiosity suggests that something has gone very wrong at R and D. On March 29, Gerard Latulippe, an experienced administrative law and labour lawyer with professional expertise in promoting democratic accountability in the third world (most recently in Haiti), will take over as Rights and Democracy’s new president. He has the tough task of reforming an agency gone rogue long ago. Yes, some of the staff are complaining anonymously to the press. But the complaints do not prove them right. On the contrary, their complaints prove how very deep the problems go.

Linda Frum is a Conservative member of the Canadian Senate.

Read this response by Paul Wells, published Monday, March 22

Harper’s hard right turn

By Paul Wells - Friday, March 19, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 465 Comments

Photograph by Chris Wattie/ Reuters

It says in all the papers the well has run dry. The commentators keep writing that Canadian conservatism has died on the vine, that four years into his reign of tactical obsession and fiscal profligacy, Stephen Harper has forgotten why he ever went into politics.

“Where’s the big, strategic agenda for the next election?” John Ivison quoted a senior Conservative in the National Post. “I haven’t found one yet.” In the same paper, Terence Corcoran ran a string of columns identifying programs the feds should cut, because Harper seems unwilling to do the work himself. And Andrew Coyne delivered his annual post-budget verdict of despair and mourning. “Those Conservative faithfuls who have been hanging on all these years, in the hopes that, eventually, someday, with one of these budgets, this government would start to act like conservatives, must now understand that that is not going to happen. Conservatism is not just dead but, it appears, forgotten.”

But it’s a funny thing. If Canadian conservatism is dead, somebody forgot to tell Canadian conservatives.

Continue…

Private lives and the public interest

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 1:39 PM - 40 Comments

The hypocrite in our times is not, as of old, the libertine posing as moralist—Tartuffe, or Angelo in Measure for Measure—but moralists posing as libertines. Today we are most keen to advertise not our virtue but our worldly indifference to others’ faults, fearing not that we might be accused of the same so much as that we might be thought of as prigs. Judge not lest ye be judgmental.

This is particularly so when it comes to the political arena. On those not infrequent occasions when a politician is found to have behaved badly in his private life, there is always a crush of apologists racing to the nearest rooftop to shout how little they care. Cheats on his wife? Yawn. Drunk every night? Big deal. Takes hundreds of thousands in cash from fugitive international arms dealers? Doesn’t everyone?

From Adam Giambrone to Maxime Bernier, from Bill Clinton to Brian Mulroney, whenever the issue arises the same debate is replayed. Does the public have a right to know about a politician’s private affairs? How much? How far?

Continue…

Newsmakers '09: Stealing the show

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 6:43 PM - 2 Comments

Since political columnists are always right, Stephen Harper has only a few weeks left to resign from politics in disgrace before the New Year. Better hurry!

Or perhaps you don’t recall the spate of commentary at the beginning of the year to the effect that Harper, having survived the Great Weird Coalition Crisis of Late 2008 only by strong-arming Governor General Michaëlle Jean into proroguing Parliament, was so badly wounded he would soon be forced to skulk away onto the retired-politico rubber-chicken circuit. One presumes the authors of those predictions, who perch at certain Toronto newspapers, will not hasten to remind us as Harper heads into 2010 in uncontested control of his party, with the Liberals struggling to get off the ropes and tantalizing hints of Conservative growth in Quebec and in a few carefully selected ethnic communities.

Quit? Harper has a better shot than ever at the parliamentary majority that has eluded him until now. So how’d that happen?
Back in January the predictions of a hasty Harper retirement didn’t seem particularly outlandish. Harper was indeed disoriented. The 2008 election gave him a strengthened minority and left Liberal Stéphane Dion’s leadership mortally compromised. Somehow Harper managed to provoke an opposition united front that threatened to congeal into a coalition government. He survived that threat only to do what he has always done when he is bitter: lash out, this time against Brian Mulroney, whose Conservative party membership status became the focus of a brief, bizarre controversy sparked by Harper’s PMO spokesdrones.

What saved him, Harper tells his entourage now, was the economic recession and the climate of uncertainty it provoked. Canadians were worried, and to the amazement of Liberals still congratulating themselves for beating the budget deficit more than a decade ago, much of Canadians’ confidence on matters of economic management has transferred to the Conservatives. Michael Ignatieff, the new Liberal leader, announced he would force Harper to report periodically on the status of the multi-billion-dollar coast-to-coast cash dump known as the “fiscal stimulus”; Harper, barely able to believe his luck, cheerfully obliged. At times the Conservative “information” campaign has been lurid to the point of being ethically questionable, with Conservative MPs handing out jumbo cheques, some bearing the Conservative party logo, to municipal dignitaries.

The Conservatives are amused by any ethical debates their behaviour has sparked. They are satisfied with the results. From June to September, according to a senior Conservative source, public awareness that the Conservatives have “an action plan” for dealing with the global economic crisis vaulted from 20 to 49 per cent. One voter in two is an unusually high level of public awareness for anything any government does. And the Conservatives have only the Liberals to thank for making them launch the public awareness program.

“What’s worth remembering is that most of our progress this year has been through self-inflicted Liberal damage,” the senior Conservative said. “There haven’t been a lot of Stephen Harper evil-genius traps, except maybe the gun registry”—a parliamentary vote on a Conservative private member’s bill to eliminate the registry for rifles and shotguns, which split the Liberals and the New Democratic Party caucus—“and that was more about splitting the NDP than boxing the Liberals in.”

Perhaps the best news came in mid-autumn, when the Conservatives picked up a seat in Rivière-du-Loup, a Bloc stronghold in eastern Quebec, confounding the impression that Harper’s modest breakthrough in Quebec in 2006 might be the high-water mark of his success there.

What we have learned about Harper in the past year should be dispiriting to the Liberals. Each time an election has seemed likely, support for the Conservatives has risen. Economic uncertainty helps the incumbents, not their rivals. And there are many more corners of the country where the Liberals are uncompetitive than where the Conservatives are. By autumn, Harper was making guest appearances on Ottawa concert stages and Bollywood dance shows. He looks set to keep surprising Canadians for a while yet.

Political Yearbook

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 6 Comments

Love and hate, but mostly hate

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 2:07 PM - 17 Comments

Frank McKenna considers Michael Ignatieff’s situation.

Frank McKenna, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States, says recent criticism against Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff fits with how the Canadian public views political leaders.

Playing down the abilities of politicians is just part of our culture, he said. That’s been the case at least since the time of former prime minister Brian Mulroney. ”I think this just follows a trend that we love to hate our leaders,” McKenna said on CTV’s Canada AM. “We love to try to tear down the tall poppies in our country.”

Remembering the Chrétien PMO: will that be Donolo's way?

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:18 PM - 23 Comments

Peter Donolo returns to Ottawa enjoying high standing among the media and political insiders. That’s justified. Donolo was undeniably an effective communications director under Jean Chrétien, and he also happens to be a likeable guy.

Yet I can’t help but think that something central is being missed in the way his return is being cast. One of the main things I remember from having covered the Chrétien Prime Minister’s Office—especially in, say, its first five years—was having to get used to its obsessively tight control over both the government and the Liberal caucus.

Continue…

The Olympic bump

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 2, 2009 at 4:03 PM - 17 Comments

It has been speculated by various sources at various points that there is some benefit to the Conservative side in putting off an election until after the Olympics in Vancouver. That the resulting surge of patriotism will result in a similar surge of optimism about the country and support for the government that happens to be in charge at that time.

This perhaps sounds very plausible. Or perhaps it doesn’t. Either way, it would be nice, just this once, to sort out whether there’s any data to support this particular adventure in amateur strategizing. Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on why Caroline Mulroney gave the speech

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 1 Comment

What’s Elsie Wayne doing up there?
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s big bash in the ballroom of Montreal’s Sheraton Hotel marked the 25th anniversary of his 1984 victory, the first of his back-to-back majorities. Caroline Mulroney introduced her father. When a guest asked how it was decided which child would do the introduction, Ben Mulroney said that his mother, Mila Mulroney, chose and that was that. Brian Mulroney spoke in front of a huge Canadian flag; his image was projected on giant screens that made the red behind him look like NDP orange. The former PM took the time to thank Laureen Harper for attending. She stood and blew him a kiss with both hands. (Stephen Harper sent video greetings.) Mrs. Harper was seated in the VIP section next to Transport Minister John Baird, who was beside the former PM’s brother Gary Mulroney. In 1984, Baird was a volunteer messenger at the national Progressive Conservative headquarters and helped deliver mail. “My cubicle was across from [now Senate leader] Marjory LeBreton’s,” he said. The event was packed with Conservatives, including Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who did some advance grunt work for Mulroney back in 1984. Pierre Poilievre was only five years old in 1984. “I remember my father sat me down in front of the television to watch the debate,” says the Tory Ottawa MP. “I told that story to Ed Broadbent [who was in the debate] and Ed said, ‘I must have done a pretty poor job if you turned out to be a Conservative.’ ” Tory Senator Hugh Segal recalled how important that debate was for the Mulroney landslide. According to him, the days of interesting leader debates on TV are over. Now they are “tedious, boring,” he says. “Anyone with a life would turn it off.” Segal still talks to Mulroney, who calls Segal “Hugh.” The senator calls Mulroney “Prime Minister.” Mulroney cabinet minister Barbara McDougall, who was also at the bash, noted, “I called him prime minister for a long, long time [after].” Now she calls him “Brian.” “We were having lunch one day and it just kinda slipped out.” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty brought his son Galen Flaherty, who just started at McGill University and made it onto the football team. Maxime Bernier was with his father, Gilles Bernier, who served as an MP under Mulroney. MPs who received some of Mulroney’s famous phone calls were also there. Rona Ambrose said that when she was environment minister and just about to go into the House to introduce the Clean Air Act, she got a call from Mulroney, who was in London at the time. During their conversation, he recounted his struggles with the acid rain treaty. When he became the leader of the Canadian Alliance, Stockwell Day said Mulroney called and they shared a meal at which the former PM said if he ever needed help to call him. Former Progressive Conservative MP Elsie Wayne (she and Jean Charest, now the Quebec premier, were the only PCs elected after the Tories hit near-extinction in 1993) got tired of standing early in the evening. The 77-year-old boldly went for a seat in the VIP section. This left no room for Mila Mulroney. Another chair was quickly added. When Mulroney’s speech ended and his entire family joined him on stage, Wayne just sauntered up along with them.

Did the PM really just say that?
An NDP MP notes that when Stephen Harper says the word “election” in French it sounds almost as if he’s saying “erection.” With all the recent talk of an election, the word gets used a lot in the House. The first week back the PM came “as close as he has ever gotten to saying érection,” says the NDPer. This time even the translators in the House were chuckling. When the slip happened in reference to why a fall “election” was a bad thing, one Bloc MP was overheard quipping: “Hey, there’s no such thing as a bad erection.”

Harper, Ahmadinejad and the United Nations

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 83 Comments

Using, oddly enough, the same term he employed to question Michael Ignatieff’s decision to wish Brian Mulroney a happy birthday, the Prime Minister explains why no Canadian officials will be in the room when the Iranian president addresses the UN General Assembly.

“It is important that countries that have a moral compass stand up and make their views known. And our absence there will speak volumes about how Canada feels about the declarations of President Ahmadinejad,” Mr. Harper said…

“President Ahmadinejad has said things particularly about the state of Israel, the Jewish people and the Holocaust that are absolutely repugnant. It is unfitting that somebody like that would be giving those kinds of remarks before the United Nations General Assembly,” the Prime Minister said.

“Canada does not want to be equivocal at all in terms of our view on that. We find it disgraceful, unacceptable and we’re going to be absolutely clear on that.”

If, then, Britain and the United States, for instance, fail to walk out this afternoon, do their leaders lack a moral compass? Are they giving Mr. Ahmadinejad legitimacy?

There is, as well, the argument that the Iranian president’s remarks about the Holocaust are an elaborate dodge.

A master friend

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 21, 2009 at 11:28 AM - 17 Comments

Bruce Anderson makes a case for Brian Mulroney.

Mr. Mulroney built friendships like Tiger Woods plays golf: with incredible discipline, study and practice – but also with evident joy and occasionally crushing pain.

The city of Ottawa is full of people who feel lousy about the Karlheinz Schreiber relationship but can’t help but remember a Mulroney gesture that touched them – a call expressing friendship, a note of consolation, a thoughtful invitation, a kindness offered without condition. And lest anyone think these gestures were limited to Tories, lots of people in all corners of our political spectrum know better.

The Mulroney lovefest

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, September 18, 2009 at 10:11 AM - 20 Comments

Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of his sweep to power that resulted in two back-to-back majority governments. The Ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel was packed with past and present Tories. Click each image to enlarge.

'It doesn't seem important. It is.'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 44 Comments

The prepared text of Michael Ignatieff’s speech to the Canadian Club this afternoon.

I’m here today to talk to you about Canada’s place in the world—how we’ve lost it and how we can get it back.

The world is changing, and Canada has to change with it.  Our identity as a people will be defined by the place we find in the world that is taking shape on the other side of this global recession.

Canada was born inside two Empires, the French, the British, and we have matured beside the most powerful nation in history, the United States.

What happens to our identity, our place in the world, when the centre of gravity shifts to Asia? When India and China become the powerhouses of the global economy?

We should have nothing to fear from the rise of these new powers. A new world creates new opportunities for Canada. Opportunities to trade, to learn, and to create the global architecture of security for this emerging new world. But only if we have leadership that seizes these opportunities.

Ce que nous faisons à l’étranger contribue à nous définir. C’est le reflet de notre personnalité. C’est le reflet de ce que nous pouvons apporter au monde pour qu’il soit meilleur. C’est le prolongement de ce que nous sommes comme peuple.

By and large, Canadian politicians scarcely utter a word about Canada in the world on the hustings.  It doesn’t seem important. It is.

Continue…

Brian Mulroney is surprised by your gall

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 4, 2009 at 12:48 PM - 9 Comments

The former prime minister talks to the CBC on the anniversary of his first majority government.

The former PM also said he was surprised by the earlier insistence from Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty that the country wasn’t headed for a recession. ”Yeah, I was surprised by that … but it was in an election campaign. And, you know, sometimes people take a little licence during campaigns,” Mulroney said.

Governing with consent

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 28, 2009 at 5:01 PM - 31 Comments

Last week, Mark Donald heralded a “tide of ennui.” This week, Andrew Coyne writes, somewhat less satirically, of our “deeply, deeply cynical political culture.”

On those notes, some math. Namely, the mandates of each government in our history, expressed not as a percentage of seats won or votes cast, but as the percentage of possible votes. In other words, what percentage of eligible voters actually chose to support the government that governs them. Continue…

The Queen's YouTube channel, John Hughes' pen pal, and a religious conversion reality TV show

By Lianne George - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Whisky business
On Sunday, Queen Elizabeth II, 83, launched her new YouTube channel, where she will broadcast her 50th annual televised Christmas message this December. According to Buckingham Palace, “the Queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people.” Also available on the Royal Channel will be video clips of garden parties, state visits, and footage of a day in the life of Prince Charles. Some things about the royal family, however, are not for public consumption. According to the Daily Mail, the Norfolk Police has declined a request made under the Freedom of Information Act for details on how many officers receive a bottle of whisky from Her Majesty each year at Christmas time. The police department issued a five-page response defending its secrecy, claiming that in the wrong hands, this information could allow “domestic or foreign terrorists to establish the level of police protection afforded to royal residences.” It would reveal, however, that two of its officers, Chief Insp. Dick Curtis and Sgt. P. Newby, had each receieved Christmas puddings from the Queen, valued at £13.

It worked for Bill
Hyun Jeong-eun, the head of Hyundai Group, one of South Korea’s most powerful conglomerates, ventured to North Korea this week to discuss “current issues” with officials and attempt to secure the release of one of her employees. The man, known only by his family name, Yoo, who was taken prisoner in March in the Northern border town of Kaesong, according to the BBC, allegedly for “undermining the North’s political system.” Hyun’s visit is said to have been prompted by the recent success of former U.S. president Bill Clinton in negotiating the release of two American journalists. Clinton is reported to have raised Yoo’s case during his visit with Kim Jong Il, but so far there is no reason to believe the North Korean dictator has any intention of releasing him. Continue…

"Mulroney's from Baie-Comeau?"

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, August 10, 2009 at 6:21 PM - 5 Comments

The night before I left for vacation, I had a few drinks with a friend here in Toronto who followed the Brian Mulroney saga more closely than pretty much anyone I know. So when I told him I was on my way to Baie-Comeau, he asked me to take a picture of whatever shrine to Brian Mulroney I could find as some sort of joke. (My friend is apparently no fan of people who take cash payments from shady businessmen over “coffee.”) I promised him I would do what I could.

The truth is I expected it to be easy to find such a thing. After all, if Richmond Hill can boast of being the “Home of Elvis Stojko”, one would imagine that an otherwise unremarkable town would want to do the same for a native son who went on to become a two-term prime minister. But alas, I was wrong.

There’s no “Home of Brian Mulroney” sign when you get there. I couldn’t find a statue or tribute or even a plaque in the (admittedly tiny) downtown strip. As far as I could tell, there aren’t any bars or restaurants that brag of having hosted the former PM. And the region’s official tour guide doesn’t contain even a single mention of his name. (It does, however, mention Gilles Vigneault, who was born much, much further up the coast in Natashquan, in an entirely other region.) Asking my hosts, who’ve been there a few years, yielded nothing, either. “Mulroney’s from Baie-Comeau?” they replied.

Someone finally pointed me to what to appears to be the only local reminder of Brian Mulroney’s tenure in Ottawa: a maximum security penitentiary in Port-Cartier that’s still viewed as nothing more than a shameless pork job-creation project and is now home to some of the worst sex offenders in the country. I guess that’s something.

Newsmakers: Feuds

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Tori Spelling vs. Candy Spelling
Candy Spelling thinks her daughter, Tori, should call more. Lots of mothers think that, but Mrs. Spelling said it in her book, Stories from Candyland. Tori had already bashed her in two books, so Candy struck back, declaring that Tori hasn’t allowed her to see her new granddaughter. She said later that Tori’s ingratitude and refusal to return calls was responsible for “killing” her dad. That’s a story even Aaron Spelling, who died in 2006 at age 83, might have thought too far-fetched to put on the air.

Whitney Houston vs. Barbara Houston
When Whitney lost her father in 2003, she got his US$1-million life insurance policy to console her. But her stepmother, Barbara, sued her, claiming some of that money was to pay off the mortgage on her dad’s condo. Whitney filed a countersuit, saying the condo was bought with money she lent her father, and Barbara owes her money. It seems Whitney’s TV turn as the fairy godmother in Cinderella taught her not to be afraid of stepmothers. Continue…

Judging Beverley

By Philip Slayton - Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 9 Comments

The 10th anniversary of Beverley McLachlin’s appointment as chief justice of Canada will come early next year, on Jan. 7, but commentators are already taking stock. They increasingly speak of the “McLachlin court,” and try to pin down ways she’s changed or influenced the court’s direction. Her formal powers are limited—the most significant is determining the size of a panel (five, seven or nine judges) hearing a case, and, if it’s less than the full complement of nine, deciding the panel’s composition. But as the court’s titular head and public face, her informal ability to influence the other judges and set the tone is considerable. To the country, and to the world, she is the Supreme Court of Canada. She is often described as the most powerful person in the land. But what do we know about Beverley McLachlin, and how has she measured up in high public office?

There was nothing remarkable about McLachlin’s life until she began her dizzying climb to judicial power. She was born in 1943, in Pincher Creek, Alta. It’s a town of about 3,600, two hours south of Calgary—a place with few Aboriginals or visible minorities, where almost everyone owns the house they live in. McLachlin was the first of Ernest and Eleanora Gietz’s five children. The family worked a ranch southwest of town and a sawmill, and her parents were fundamentalist Christians; she has described them as “fervent believers” and of “high moral value.” As a child, she attended a Pentecostal church. Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on who Don Newman will miss

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

Somebody at Stornoway is out of sorts

Michael Ignatieff held a media garden party at Stornoway, his first since becoming Liberal leader. The Etobicoke Youth Jazz Orchestra from his Toronto riding provided the music. The party was supposed to go from 6 to 8 p.m., but when it started getting chilly, Ignatieff’s wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, invited the remaining guests into the house, where media folks stayed chatting with Iggy in the living room until 10:30. Zsohar’s and Iggy’s feisty feline Mimi was jumping all over the place. (She even jumps in Ignatieff’s cereal when he has breakfast.) The couple had got their second cat, Eric, the day before the bash so Mimi was in a bit of a huff. Stornoway’s chef, Josh Drache, calls Mimi “an evil cat.” Zsohar served biscotti in the living room, and, despite her jumping, even Mimi got a nibble.

Who knew our Senators were that fit?

Vancouver Conservative MP John Weston had several politicians, sports coaches, and Laureen Harper gather in front of the Peace Tower as part of his initiative to get MPs to invest at least “20 minutes 10 seconds” twice weekly in fitness activities. The amount of time is connected to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. When Conservative Senator Nancy Greene Raine told the crowd that 80 per cent of senators already had some sort of fitness regime, a few gasps were heard. Labour Minister Rona Ambrose brought her dog Luna to the event. When Peter Stoffer tried to pet the pooch, Ambrose warned the NDP MP that Luna hates men. But Luna liked Stoffer for some reason. As the group did a walking lap around the Hill, they passed AIDS activists dressed in black-and-white-striped prison uniforms protesting the criminalization of HIV transmission, saying it is the only potentially fatal pathogen being treated this way. The AIDS activists were supported by NDP MPs Libby Davies and Bill Siksay as well as Liberal MP Hedy Fry. Before the AIDS protest had wrapped up, another group of demonstrators arrived with effigies of Stephen Harper and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as the two leaders were meeting on the Hill for trade talks. The Uribe protesters’ music was so loud it drowned out the AIDS activists.

Luckily Don Newman ignored his CBC bosses

CBC Newsworld Politics host Don Newman will soon retire. He arrived on the Hill as a Globe and Mail reporter during Pierre Trudeau’s first government. He was the first print reporter to have a tape recorder. “I was laughed at and ridiculed both by broadcasters and by colleagues in the print press.” He has no plans to be a politician, although he notes his former fellow broadcaster Mike Duffy, who is now a senator, always had an interest in the upper chamber. Notes Newman, “I am very happy for him that he finally got where he wanted to go.” Newman hasn’t voted in a federal or provincial election since 1972 because he covers them. “I do vote municipally. I kinda know who is running for council. I vote for the school board although I have no idea who they are.” When CBC got the Newsworld channel, Newman was told by his bosses not to waste his time on it. They later admitted they were wrong. “I knew Newsworld was going to be a big success because Brian Mulroney would phone me personally on the commercial breaks.” Will he miss wearing makeup every day? “No,” says Newman. “But I’ve had a wonderful person [Joan Hodgins] who has done my makeup since 1993. I will miss her company every day.”

What’s Martha Hall Findlay wearing?

Toronto Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay was spotted wearing a sealskin ribbon she got from the government of Nunavut. Her Liberal colleague Anthony Rota, who has the fur industry promotion organization Fur Harvesters Auction in his northern Ontario riding, says he plans to get similar ribbons for all the Liberal MPs.

The things he could teach our kids

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 7 Comments

We are in the last days of the season for commencement speeches, the annual rite in which famous and successful people urge graduating students to follow their hearts, live their dreams, change the world, hug everyone, floss daily, be nice to kitty-cats and, oops, sorry we went and broke the global economy just as you were preparing to look for work. Enjoy destitution!

The truth is that graduates don’t need to be bombarded with well-meaning but dubious expressions of optimism: that’s what wedding vows are for. What they need is practical advice they can actually use in their lives—real wisdom based on real experience, preferably stated by those who know the taste of disappointment. (Note: the “taste of disappointment” can be acquired through one’s own personal failures or by licking the poster for the movie Wolverine.)

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