‘Just wrong on every level’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 0 Comments

Bruce Anderson rips the Conservative campaign against Irwin Cotler and Peter Van Loan’s attempt to justify it.

This truly isn’t complicated. If our children tell lies about schoolmates, we punish them not shrug it off. When it happens on the Internet, we call it cyber bullying and bemoan how young people seem to have grown up without decent values. Conservative Christian groups presumably recognize this as something hard to square with the “Golden Rule” … It’s insulting, it’s beneath this government, and I’m sure it is an embarrassment to many good people in the Conservative Party.

It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be plausible

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 1:32 PM - 0 Comments

A Conservative official confirms that the party has been calling Irwin Cotler’s constituents and suggesting he might quit.

A Conservative official confirmed to The Globe and Mail that the party is trying to identify the vote in Mr. Cotler’s riding, which it does on a continuing basis across the country. In this case, a company called Campaign Research that has been linked to Ontario and federal Conservatives is behind the calls … He said the “script” does not mention a by-election. However, if people ask why the party is phoning, callers say “there are rumours that Irwin Cotler may resign causing a by-election,” the Conservative official said. “It’s an honest answer to the question. There have been rumours for a long time that Cotler is going to step down,” he said.

In and out and settled?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 1:17 PM - 0 Comments

(This post last updated at 8:24pm.)

Both the Ottawa Citizen and CTV are reporting word of a settlement in the in-and-out case, possibly in relation to the charges against four Conservative party officials. Full history of the in-and-out controversy here.

Update 1:18pm. Canadian Press has details.

The party is set to agree to what a caucus source called “administrative imperfection” for the way it handled advertising spending during the 2006 federal election. As a result, sources say charges against four senior Conservative officials – including two senators – for breaking the Elections Act are being dropped.

Update 1:24pm. Glen McGregor’s FAQ is probably the easiest way to get up to speed. Last March, the House passed a motion deeming the financing scheme to be “an act of electoral fraud.” Three years ago, chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand explained his view in detail before a parliamentary committee.

Update 2:46pm. The Globe confirms.

In return, the Conservative Party of Canada and its fundraising arm are pleading guilty to lesser charges that characterize what took place as a mere error instead of intentional misconduct. At the same time, the charges against four Conservative officials – two sitting senators – are being dropped.

CTV reports the party has been fined $50,000. The Supreme Court will still apparently hear the separate dispute between the Conservative party and Elections Canada.

Update 3:24pm. A statement from Elections Canada. Continue…

Britain to the EU: I told you so

By Leah Mclaren - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 12 Comments

Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

In his speech to a joint session of Parliament in Ottawa last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron lavished praise on our economic system. After commending Canada for getting “every major decision right” in the past few years of global market turmoil, he lauded the strength of both the Canadian banking system and our economic leaders, who, he said, “got to grips with its deficit” and were “running surpluses and paying down debt before the recession, fixing the roof while the sun was shining.”

Cameron’s admiration for Canada’s relatively peachy fiscal position stands in stark contrast to his dim view of his eurozone neighbours.

The British PM used his northern stopover to trumpet the message both he and his finance minister, George Osborne, have taken up even more loudly than usual as of late: Europe, and the U.S., must get their fiscal houses in order, or face disastrous consequences. “This is not a traditional, cyclical recession, it’s a debt crisis,” Cameron said of the world’s faltering economies. “When the fundamental problem is the level of debt and the fear of those levels, then the usual economic prescriptions cannot be applied.” It’s a statement that begs the obvious question: what now?

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Stephen Harper’s majority rules

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 22 Comments

Fred Chartrand/CP

In the early morning hours of May 3, with the ballots almost all counted, he basked in a Conservative majority. The Liberal Party of Canada, his nemesis, was in shambles. The Bloc Québécois was decimated. If the world seemed then to have tilted in Stephen Harper’s direction, his political situation has become only more advantageous since.

The NDP, though now the official Opposition, has lost its uniquely popular leader, removing Harper’s primary challenger from the House of Commons. What’s more, with Progressive Conservatives mounting serious challenges in Ontario and Manitoba, Harper might awake one day next month to find that every single province west of Quebec is led by a right-of-centre government—a resounding endorsement of the Prime Minister’s twin assertions that “Conservative values are Canadian values” and that “the Conservative party is Canada’s party.”

But if it is to be Stephen Harper’s world, what will Stephen Harper do with it? Perhaps only as much as he said he would do. “The challenge will be getting the balance right and not overreaching,” says Jim Armour, who once served as Harper’s director of communications. “If the Prime Minister goes too big or tries to go too fast, then he risks unifying the opposition and attracting the media’s attention. If, on the other hand, he continues with the ‘stick-to-the script,’ ‘no-surprises’ approach to governing that he’s taken for the past five years, then he’ll be fine. As with all things—even once-in-a-lifetime political opportunities—the key is moderation.”

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Tories stifle widow through IP laws, twirl moustaches, cackle

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 5:19 PM - 29 Comments

Robert Keyserlingk was a lifelong Tory who died horribly in 2009 from mesothelioma, a cancer typically caused by asbestos exposure. Keyserlingk had regular contact with asbestos in his youth while working summer jobs on Canadian naval ships.

Before his death, he crusaded against Canada’s government-supported asbestos industry, and his wife Michaela has carried on the cause since. Every month, she pays $300 to run this banner ad on websites, which links to her own anti-asbestos website:

The Conservative Party is now threatening to sue her for trademark infringement. Continue…

Towards lasting power

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 4:33 PM - 53 Comments

The Prime Minister talks to our editor-in-chief.

What I want to do, of course, is really entrench, over time, a Conservative-majority coalition in the country. I probably—the more I’ve thought about it—I should probably stay away from the natural governing party terminology, because I think as soon as a party believes it’s the natural governing party it’s in a great deal of trouble. Since coming to office, we’ve grown steadily. We’ve grown from our base out. We haven’t tried to re-engineer the Conservative movement, we’ve built on it by bringing more people into it. We still have more work to do to be as representative of people as we’d like to be, but all the elements are there in terms of the coalition. I think, obviously, it has to be backed up with an agenda, and the agenda has to be successfully implemented, and the country has to buy into it and be happy with the results. So that’s the big thing we have to do, but I think in the end—given the outcomes of the election—we’re greatly helped not just by our own result but by the relative incoherence of the opposition as an alternative for government.

In conversation: Stephen Harper

By Kenneth Whyte - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photographs by Blair Gable

Q: Let’s start with election night. Was it fun?

A: It’s always fun when you win.

Q: Did you take a moment to enjoy it?

A: Yeah. Look, as I think you know, we were pretty confident we were going to win, frankly, from the outset—the question was the margin—and we were feeling pretty good in the days leading up to it. I suppose, yeah, it was exciting that night. But you’re also coming off the end of a long, gruelling campaign, so there’s also a sense of relief and a sense of exhaustion all wrapped up together.

Q: If you’re not going to stop and enjoy that one, what are you going to stop for?

A: I did enjoy it. We have to enjoy things. These guys—my staff—probably enjoyed it more than I did. I’m always thinking. The next task is almost immediately on my mind.

Q: I saw you give an interview after the election in which you alluded to the next task: you want to establish the Conservatives as the natural governing party of Canada. What does that entail? Continue…

Socialist or merely social

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 2:22 PM - 10 Comments

Joanna Smith previews this weekend’s existential crisis.

New Democrats are preparing to cast off the shackles of the socialist label by eliminating the word from the federal party constitution at a policy convention this weekend. “The New Democratic Party is dedicated to the application of social democratic principles to government,” reads part of a proposed new preamble to the party constitution, which will be voted on at the 50th anniversary convention in downtown Vancouver. “These principles include an unwavering commitment to economic and social equality, individual freedom and responsibility, and democratic rights of citizens to shape the future of their communities.”

That language is much different from what exists in the current version of the constitution, where the principles of “democratic socialism” are described as being against making profits and for social ownership.

In full, the new preamble would read as follows. Continue…

Kill the subsidy, but kill them all

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, June 3, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 247 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

With the impending heat death of the Liberal party—er, rather, with the approaching end of the $2-per-vote party subsidy—the commentariat is consumed with what this will mean for the various political parties, and what Stephen Harper’s motives might be for introducing it.

Well, that last bit’s obvious, isn’t it? He wants to destroy the Liberal party. Everybody knows that. But wait: maybe by obliging the opposition parties to rely more heavily on their own supporters for funds, rather than the taxpayer, he will only create a more motivated cadre of foes, while his own troops grow fat and complacent in office. Or maybe by starving the opposition of funds, he will force them to realize there is only room for one left-wing party, hastening the very unite-the-left movement that could one day be his undoing. But how could such a master strategist not see that? Maybe he wants a united left, the better to…

People. Isn’t it possible, just possible, that he’s doing this because…it’s the right thing to do?

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From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 10:28 AM - 15 Comments

From the pages of last week’s issue, a short profile of Jenni Byrne, the Conservative campaign director.

Jenni Byrne, one of Ottawa’s highest-ranking tacticians, does not speak to reporters. But 14 years ago, she was both less powerful and less reticent. And so when an Ottawa Citizen reporter sought out young people to comment on the growing number of conservatives under the age of 30 in Canada, Byrne was willing to explain herself. Described as “a believer in debt reduction and tax cuts” who joined the Reform party at 16, she was then the 21-year-old president of the campus Reform club at the University of Ottawa. “It’s great for them to say don’t cut here or there, but they won’t be the ones affected by [the debt],” she said then of her parents. “They’re in their late 40s and they will probably still benefit from government programs. But Canada looks like a bleak place for me by the time I’m their age.”

Jenni Byrne: the (other) woman behind Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 9:36 AM - 14 Comments

Jill Propp/PMO

Jenni Byrne, one of Ottawa’s highest-ranking tacticians, does not speak to reporters. But 14 years ago, she was both less powerful and less reticent. And so when an Ottawa Citizen reporter sought out young people to comment on the growing number of conservatives under the age of 30 in Canada, Byrne was willing to explain herself. Described as “a believer in debt reduction and tax cuts” who joined the Reform party at 16, she was then the 21-year-old president of the campus Reform club at the University of Ottawa. “It’s great for them to say don’t cut here or there, but they won’t be the ones affected by [the debt],” she said then of her parents. “They’re in their late 40s and they will probably still benefit from government programs. But Canada looks like a bleak place for me by the time I’m their age.”

That sentiment sounds similar to the doom Stephen Harper presently foretells if he is defeated by one or all of his political opponents. A doom that Byrne, as director of the Conservative campaign, is now charged with ensuring never comes to pass.

“I think she’s long since established herself as Harper’s single best political organizer,” says Ian Brodie, Harper’s former chief of staff. That is no small compliment given the vaunted nature of both Harper as a political operator and the Conservative party as a partisan machine. And it is part of a reputation for both political skill and strident partisanship that precedes the low-profile Byrne.

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What's so scary about Planet Tory?

By the editors - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 9:17 AM - 15 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside

Stephen Harper is still being a bit careful about using the M-word in public. His preferred phrase is “stable government.” But as the election campaign got rolling, the Prime Minister finally became comfortable enough to explicitly ask voters for a majority in the House of Commons. “Friends, don’t be under any illusion,” he said in Winnipeg this week. “There won’t be a Conservative minority government after this election. There’s either going to be Mr. Ignatieff put in power by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, or there will be what Canada needs to keep this economy moving forward: a strong and stable national, majority Conservative government.”

That challenge is having the desired effect: the other leaders are all saying, hey, I’m the only one who can stand in Harper’s way. The Liberals’ Michael Ignatieff: “There’s the red door and there’s the blue door; these are the only two choices.” The NDP’s Jack Layton: “The way to stop Stephen Harper from getting a majority is to take Conservative seats one by one… the only way to do that is to vote for your New Democrat candidate.” Even the BQ’s Gilles Duceppe: “A Conservative majority is a danger for Quebec. The risk of Stephen Harper obtaining a majority is very real.”

Duceppe went on to add: “If that happened, the Conservatives would have nothing holding them back. They would be free to impose without end their ideological policies, contrary to our interests and values.” It’s an old familiar tune, and not just

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They're coming after your family

By John Geddes - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 9:17 AM - 23 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside

In the final days leading up to the campaign of 2011, Stephen Harper largely dropped out of sight. The Prime Minister stopped showing up for question period when his government’s fall became inevitable. After the opposition voted down his Conservative minority, he read a muted response from a podium in the ornate foyer of the House, and took no questions. There was reason to suspect he might be setting the tone for the race to come. After all, polls showed him well ahead, and a classic, minimalist front-runner’s strategy would be to do nothing to risk shaking things up. But Harper had other ideas.

From the steps of Rideau Hall after visiting the Governor General to set the campaign in motion, and at every stop after, he lashed out at his main rival, Michael Ignatieff—accusing the Liberal leader of intending to break his word and join forces with the NDP and Bloc Québécois. In return, Ignatieff indicted Harper for “a systematic pattern of falsehoods.” “He wouldn’t recognize the truth if it walked up and shook his hand,” he said.

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The Bruce Carson show

By Martin Patriquin with Aaron Wherry and Colby Cosh - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:13 PM - 23 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

On the chilly autumn evening of Sept. 27, 2010, a gaggle of current and former Conservatives gathered at Ottawa’s Hy’s Steakhouse, the clubby respite of choice for many politicians and their hangers-on. Chief among them: Jim Prentice, then the federal environment minister, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, former Conservative cabinet minister Monte Solberg and party strategist Geoff Norquay. The next day would be all business: Stelmach was set to share the stage with Quebec Premier Jean Charest at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to deliver a steadfast defence of the Alberta oil sands development.

This night was social, and tongues loosened—a little too literally in one case, as far as some attendees were concerned. At one of the tables pulled together for the occasion sat Bruce Carson, long-time Parliament Hill fixture and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s one-time “indispensable right-hand man,” as Conservative insider Tom Flanagan recently described him. The 65-year-old was there with Michele McPherson, a 22-year-old former escort whom he had introduced as his girlfriend. It was jarring enough for several guests present that McPherson wasn’t dressed for the occasion—”the skirt a little too short and a little too tight,” said one person in attendance—or that Carson was dating a woman roughly the same age as Carson’s own daughter; worse still, the pair couldn’t keep their hands off each other throughout the meal. “People were taken aback” at the display, says the attendee.

Carson’s involvement with McPherson—as we know now—went beyond late-night snogfests in front of well-connected Conservatives. Throughout the last two weeks, APTN News has methodically uncovered the business relationship between the pair, and how Carson allegedly used his prime contacts within the government to try to lure government contracts to H20 Global Group, the Ottawa firm where both McPherson and her mother worked.

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'At a time of economic uncertainty'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 1:53 PM - 98 Comments

The Conservative side deviated momentarily from its unwavering focus on the economy last night to put together another attack ad.

'We expect all participants in public life to adhere to a similar code'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 21, 2011 at 3:56 PM - 41 Comments

In response to criticism of its attack on Michael Ignatieff’s familial heritage, the Conservative side asserts that it has not and will not do any such thing.

“We have not and will not comment critically on the personal or family life of anyone in public life or their families,” the Tories said Monday. “We expect all participants in public life to adhere to a similar code.”

'The Ignatieffs were not typical immigrants'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 9:15 PM - 149 Comments

In a missive this evening, apparently in response to this video, the Conservative party takes issue with Mr. Ignatieff’s family heritage and apparently seeks to debate who can rightfully claim to be an immigrant.

While the Ignatieffs have made the most of their coming to Canada in their respective fields, they have never ceased to enjoy great privilege, as a function of the financial and educational resources and social status they brought with them, and which are theirs to this day.  The Ignatieff immigrant experience is one of significant wealth, first-rate educations and privilege. Very few Canadian families can claim this “immigrant experience.”

Mr. Ignatieff’s father, George, served for nearly 50 years in the Canadian civil service. The website for Citizenship and Immigration Canada describes his life story here. For whatever it is worth—assuming one wishes to engage in a debate over the exact socioeconomic status of a politician’s late father and the worthiness of such—that biography includes the observation that, upon arriving in Canada, his family had “barely enough money for basic necessities.”

The YouTube vote

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 11, 2011 at 2:55 PM - 28 Comments

Green party attack on attack ads, released five days ago: 44,175 views.
Conservative party attack on Michael Ignatieff, released two months ago: 19,768 views.

U of O professors accuse Tories of witchhunt

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:23 PM - 20 Comments

Two professors at the University of Ottawa, Errol Mendes and Amir Attaran, are wondering if federal Conservatives are behind access to information requests for their employment, expense, and teaching records. Both Mendes and Attaran have in the past been vocal critics of the Conservative government and have both been accused of being Liberal sympathizers. “I started thinking, my God, this is a McCarthy-like attempt to politically intimidate both of us,” Mendes said of the request for his professional records. Attaran echoed Mendes’ concern, saying “I have a feeling it’s political.” Ontario law means the identity of the party who made the request remains anonymous. Fred DeLorey, a spokesman for the Conservative Party denied any involvement from the government.

Toronto Star

Reports of Laurie Hawn's support for attack ads were greatly exaggerated

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 31, 2011 at 9:03 AM - 12 Comments

Over the weekend, CTV reported that Laurie Hawn was defending the Conservative side’s one! day! only! attack ads. On Sunday, Mr. Hawn took to Twitter to clarify his feelings.

CTV cherry picks my remarks. Didn’t support attack ads. Said they’re not my style and don’t pay attention to them.

Attack ad aficionados needn’t fret about the disappearance of the two clips in question as a quick check of the Conservative Party of Canada’s official YouTube page shows plenty of similar adverts are still available. Indeed, of the 30 videos posted there, 22 concern the opposition parties. Nineteen of those are specific to Mr. Ignatieff.

Ted Menzies talks (about wanting your money)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 12:55 PM - 60 Comments

The Conservatives have launched a feature on their website called “Canada Talks.” So far the conversation one might expect from a title like that mostly involves newly minted minister of state Ted Menzies looking off camera and reading a series of exhortations to donate money to the Conservative party, while tinkly music plays in the background.

Politics big-city elites, you say. Sound familiar at all?

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Michael Caronna/Reuters

When government House leader John Baird claimed last week that Toronto-based “elites” were behind the push to save the long-gun registry, it had the desired result: Baird was loudly mocked all the way from Front Street to Eglinton Avenue, which pretty much proved his point. But it also marked the final transition of the federal Conservatives into an intellectual branch plant of the Republican party of the United States.

The storyline of the summer was the emergence of the federal Conservatives as a party committed to principled ignorance. Whatever the issue—crime, climate change, the census—the government has made it a point of pride to actively ignore facts, research, and expert opinion. Baird’s crack about “elites” is part of a strategy that believes there is little to be gained in politics by having good ideas and implementing evidence-based policies. Instead, the key to success is being able to control the meanings of words used in political discourse.

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Guy Giorno: national man of mystery

By John Geddes - Monday, May 31, 2010 at 8:59 AM - 11 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN MAJOR

If you couldn’t immediately place the man in this photograph as one of the most powerful in federal politics, don’t beat yourself up. When Guy Giorno, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, made a rare public appearance recently to testify before a House committee looking into government secrecy, even some veteran Parliament Hill news photographers needed to have him pointed out so they would know which way to aim their lenses.

Giorno’s spotlight-shy style makes him an unfamiliar figure, but the issues he’s intimately caught up in couldn’t be more conspicuous. In the past, critics inside the Conservative party have grumbled that his bad advice led to missteps by Stephen Harper—sparking a public backlash when the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament in January, and bringing the Tories to the brink of defeat in late 2008 when the opposition formed a coalition over the threat of losing their federal subsidies.

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