Making our streets safer

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments

Conservative MP Peter Goldring has resigned from the Conservative caucus after being charged for refusing a breathalyzer test this weekend.

Two years ago, on the basis of civil liberties concerns, he criticized a proposal from Mothers Against Drunk Driving that would have required drivers to comply with random screening. He also apparently opposed new drunk driving legislation being pursued by the Alberta government.

‘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.

Too disunited to govern?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Press finds increasing unease among Conservative MPs about the government’s support for asbestos.

The first public cracks in the Conservative party line came on Nov. 1, when five Tory MPs broke ranks and abstained from an NDP vote that would have banned asbestos exports. That was followed last Monday with a private Parliament Hill meeting that saw about a dozen Conservative parliamentarians ask some pointed questions of the Chrysotile Institute and industry scientists over several hours … Other Conservative MPs who were not at the meeting have told The Canadian Press they too are uneasy with the current position on asbestos. One Tory, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some of his colleagues might have voted for the recent NDP motion if had been worded more narrowly and had actually been binding on government.

The idea that more Conservative MPs would’ve voted in favour of the NDP motion if it had somehow been binding is a novel one. If the government whipped the entirely symbolic vote earlier this month, one assumes they would whip a more consequential vote, meaning any Conservatives who voted with the opposition would almost certainly be punished.

Our Julia Belluz previously handled the question of whether asbestos could be handled safely.

The Canadian Wheat Board’s long-shot lawsuit to keep its monopoly

By Colby Cosh - Monday, November 14, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

“Pierre Trudeau said there was no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” recalls Henry Vos, a grain farmer from Fairview, Alta. “So I ask, should the government be in the grain fields and the grain bins of the nation?” The private sex lives of Canadians and cultivating wheat might make for an unlikely comparison, but Vos, a former director of the Canadian Wheat Board, believes the board should start preparing to lose its grip on the export trade in Prairie wheat and barley. In late October, he quit the board in protest.

Vos is angry over a last-ditch attempt by the board to maintain its monopoly by taking the radical legal step of suing Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. The suit, announced Oct. 26, would thwart Bill C-18, the Harper government’s legislation to end the “single desk” monopoly. (C-18 is at the committee stage in the House of Commons.) But critics say the CWB is fighting an uphill battle against constitutional principles.

As a minority government, the Conservatives were blocked by the courts when they tried to change the wheat board’s mandate by order-in-council and without a parliamentary vote. Now the Conservatives have a majority and can presumably make whatever direct changes they want to the Canadian Wheat Board Act. But the board says, “Not so fast.” Section 47.1 of the act, added by the Liberals in 1998, says that the agriculture minister cannot alter single-desk arrangements without first consulting the board and holding a vote of grain producers.

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Getting inside Harper’s headspace

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 11, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

The Cabinet committee on priorities and planning meets on Tuesdays, usually with Stephen Harper as chairman. He calls a lot of decisions on the spot. But not all. Sometimes decision is reserved pending the Prime Minister’s private decision.

When it came time to decide how many seats each province would get in an enlarged House of Commons, a senior source close to the government says, the Prime Minister took the briefing books and spreadsheets and sat alone for hours, juggling options, weighing the political fallout from every scenario.

Three days before Minister of State for Democratic Reform Tim Uppal announced the new numbers—15 new seats for Ontario, six each for Alberta and British Columbia, three for Quebec—Conservative MPs were called to a rare Monday caucus meeting so the plan could be run by them. Harper has his control-freak moments, but he prefers to hear complaints from his MPs quietly, before an announcement, rather than loudly after it.

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It’s Stephen Harper’s world now

By macleans.ca - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photographs by Blair Gable

Last week in Ottawa, Maclean’s and CPAC hosted a round-table discussion on the subject: “Stephen Harper’s Canada. How do you like it so far?” Maclean’s columnists Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne were joined on stage by Jack Granatstein, senior research fellow with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, NDP finance critic Peggy Nash, Montreal Liberal MP and House Leader Marc Garneau and Jason Kenney, the Conservative government’s minister of citizenship and immigration. CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen moderated the event. The following is an edited excerpt.

Peter Van Dusen: The majority Conservative government has been in office for six months now, and it’s wasting no time. Anti-crime legislation, eliminating public subsidies to political parties, scrapping the wheat board monopoly, getting rid of the long gun registry, rebalancing the seats in the House of Commons. And they are still promising to cut government spending and government jobs, but have left the door open if there is another global recession. Harper’s Canada: how do you like it so far? Andrew?

Andrew Coyne: Well, it’s been more or less as advertised. They seem to be quite determined to make it clear they’re now advancing on the agenda that they were elected on. But there are questions that I truthfully can’t answer with anything definitive. Is Stephen Harper going to relax his grip a little bit on Parliament? You would say on the early track record, no. They’ve been invoking closure or time allocation pretty regularly. On the other hand, they’ve been bringing forward Supreme Court appointments and having people interview them, they’ve had the consultation on Libya. Are we are going to see the great return to fiscal conservatism after so many years of rapid spending growth? Well, we’ve had the strategic operating review to start off, but you’re not entirely sure how serious they are about fiscal responsibility when they start talking about putting off the deficit targets further. On Quebec they’ve run this very carefully calibrated thing where they’ll take away a shipbuilding contract on the one hand, and on the other they’ll give them extra seats in Parliament. Again, not exactly clear whether they are stiff-arming Quebec or the full pander is still on.

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Harper versus the unions

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 55 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

In the midst of June’s 47-hour filibuster over back-to-work legislation for Canada Post, New Democrat MP Wayne Marston was moved to recall the events of 1946, when “workers and veterans fought side by side in the streets” of Hamilton for better working conditions, thus launching the modern labour movement and paving the way for what would become the NDP. When it was her turn to speak, Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner apparently felt compelled to respond. “Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to many nostalgic comments across the way about the old labour movement and the unions back in 1946. I am wondering if the members opposite recognize that we are in 2011 and that we have just come through a great recession that has damaged so many countries and from which we are just recovering,” she said. “When will they realize that we are not in the old socialist days of the good old union? We are in 2011.”

Here the differences between the new Opposition and the new majority government seemed in stark relief. But that filibuster may have only been the beginning. Months later, the issue of organized labour is a source of conflict—or the potential thereof—on numerous fronts.

Last month, for instance, after party strategist Brian Topp—an official with ACTRA, the union that represents 22,000 members of the performing arts—confirmed his bid for the NDP leadership, Conservatives deemed him a “union boss” with “deep union ties.” “How,” they asked, “could Brian Topp speak on behalf of all Canadians when he is so tied to big union special interests?” Conservative MPs have compelled committee hearings into union sponsorships of events at the NDP convention in Vancouver this past spring, while Conservative backbencher Russ Hiebert, who won the draw to table the first private member’s bill, is proposing legislation that would require unions to release public financial statements. And last week, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt both moved to refer a dispute between Air Canada and the company’s flight attendants to the Canada Industrial Relations Board—thus blocking a potential strike—and mused vaguely of perhaps amending the Canadian Labour Code.

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Harper’s facial hair and new gig writing books

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:05 AM - 4 Comments

Photography by Mitchel Raphael

Harper’s final chapter

For several years Stephen Harper has been working on a book about hockey. The PM can finally use one of the Conservatives’ favourite catchphrases: “Getting the job done.” Word is the book is written. A publication date has yet to be announced.

A cake for Clement

During question period, NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus has been counting the days that Treasury Board President Tony Clement has refused to answer questions about what Angus calls the G8 “slush fund.” The MP says that on the 150th day, in the first week of November, he will present the cabinet minister with a cake and, he jokes, “maybe it will have a file in it.” Senior Tory cabinet ministers have expressed embarrassment to Capital Diary that Clement has not risen to explain himself (or apologize, if necessary). Foreign Minister John Baird gets up to answer questions on his behalf, although Clement is sitting right next to him. Perhaps there’s a double standard regarding which ministers can answer questions in the House: Defence Minister Peter MacKay recently rose to answer queries about his use of aircrafts. Liberal MP Judy Sgro says that under Jean Chrétien, ministers had to answer their own questions. There was only one exception: if the opposition called for a minister to resign, Chrétien took the question.

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You’re about to become a copyright criminal

By Jesse Brown - Friday, September 30, 2011 at 1:19 PM - 45 Comments

The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

If you’re a student, or if you consume a lot of music, movies and TV, or if you do fun stuff on the Internet, there’s a rather good chance the Conservatives’ Copyright Reform Bill will make you a criminal.

How? In plenty of ways. Here are a few:

• Your professor assigns you a digital course pack. It contains excerpts of copyrighted material, but because you’re using it for education, you get a pass. At least, that is, as long as you delete those files within 30 days of the end of class. If you keep them around to use for reference in your honours thesis, or if a stray copy makes its way onto your phone and you forget to erase it, then you’ve broken the law.
• You transfer your CD collection to your iPod. Two years later, you get a new iPod, and give the old one to your little sister. If you neglect to destroy your CD collection first, you’ve become a criminal.
• Just for giggles, you mash up some Thomas the Tank engine video clips with a Biggie Smalls song. You post the mashup to your blog, it goes mini-viral, and you make ten bucks and a few cents from Google AdWords hits. You’re now a commercial copyright infringer.

And that’s just for starters. There are many other harmless things millions of Canadians do in the privacy of their homes that will soon constitute copyright infringement. I’ll be back soon with a few more.

For now, here’s the bill. Have a read, and see if you can add one or two potential criminal scenarios of your own in the comments.

Jesse Brown is the host of TVO.org’s Search Engine podcast. He is on Twitter @jessebrown

Bob Rae has 646 days to fix the Liberal party

By John Geddes - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 4 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

There’s no how-to guide for the renovation job Bob Rae has taken on. As interim Liberal leader, Rae has nearly two years to try to rebuild the once-dominant federal party before his permanent replacement is chosen in a spring 2013 convention, and Rae is being called on to do much more than merely serve as a placeholder. Skeptics doubt even this skilled and battle-scarred veteran can turn around a party that sank steadily through four national campaigns to post its worst-ever third-place finish in the May 2 election. But Rae sees brute necessity as his ally. “It takes a crisis to make change happen,” he told Maclean’s. “Everything I’ve seen in the public and private sector tells me that people make changes when they have to, and right now we have to.”

With the House returning for its fall session this week, Rae is bound to be rated to a great degree on how much question period attention he draws. Widely acknowledged as one of the best orators in Parliament, he’s expected to more than hold his own. Yet he vows not to be “eaten up by the 24-7 news cycle.” Instead, he’s concentrating more on hauling the creaky Liberal machine into the current era. Among other challenges, that means emulating the organizational efficiency Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists on for the Tories and that the late Jack Layton ushered in for the New Democrats. Unlike its more centralized rivals, the Liberal party is still largely run as an unwieldy federation of provincial and territorial party associations. “We do need a more unified approach,” Rae says.

The chance to make that key reform will come next January at a party convention in Ottawa. Among those urging Liberals to change their ways, few know the problems better than Steven MacKinnon, a failed candidate from the spring election, who lost a Quebec riding to the NDP’s “Orange Crush.” As national director of the party from 2003 to 2006, MacKinnon helped usher in reforms that gave the national Liberal machine control over membership and fundraising. However, provincial and territorial wings kept their hold over field organization and policy development. “No other party is hobbled by that,” MacKinnon says. “A radical streamlining is required.” Perhaps surprisingly, key Liberal insiders don’t see any pressing need for an overhaul of their fundraising apparatus. Even though they lag far behind the Tories when it comes to pulling in donations, Liberal officials say the U.S.-designed computer system they introduced in 2009 is up to the job. Improving its performance requires patiently collecting the data on Liberal members and donors that the system is designed to manage. “We’re just scratching the surface of how effective it can be,” says one senior party official. In fact, they need a lot of scratch: to replace the public subsidy to parties, which the Harper government is phasing out over the next four years, the Liberals must more than double the $6.6 million they raised in contributions last year. Rae stresses that no matter how up-to-date the party’s technology for reaching out to its supporters, fundraising will only ramp up when backers are inspired by ideas. “Money follows passion,” he says.

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The coming fall

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 4:15 PM - 2 Comments

The Canadian Press, CBC and CTV preview the fall sitting. I’ll have my own scene-setter in the next print edition. In short, it promises to be a busy few months.

In addition to an ambiguous vow to focus on “jobs and the economy” and a promise to be “flexible” if necessary, the government has set out four legislative goals: the elimination of the long-gun registry, Canadian Wheat Board reform, passage of an omnibus crime bill and the rebalancing of representation in the House of Commons. When the House returns to business tomorrow it is set to resume second-reading debate on human smuggling and Senate reform legislation.

Beyond that there will be some or all of: a security perimeter deal with Obama administration, legislation to extend the parliamentary mandate for the military mission in Libya, the continuation of trade talks with the European Union, committee proceedings to fill two Supreme Court vacancies, an economic update from the Finance Minister, legislation to reinstate of two anti-terrorism provisions, legislation to institute copyright reform and decisions on shipbuilding procurement.

And beyond Ottawa, between October 1 and November 7, there will be seven provincial or territorial elections (Newfoundland and Labrador, PEI, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and Yukon) and the selection of a new premier in Alberta.

Welcome to the club

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:58 AM - 30 Comments

The Conservatives formally initiate Brian Topp with a leaked memo of partisan attacks.

“Topp is a union boss and has deep union ties,” they say in a memo to MPs and party faithful. “How could Brian Topp speak on behalf of all Canadians, when he is so tied to big union special interests…

“Topp is not just the candidate of union bosses but also NDP insiders,” the Tories say, noting that he worked for former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow, former left-wing Toronto mayor David Miller and former NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin.

And if that does make Tories shake in their boots, the party back-roomers add that “Brian Topp is most notable for being NDP Leader’s hand-picked negotiator in the coalition talks with the separatist Bloc Québécois … Brian Topp will do anything – including forming a wreckless [sic] coalition with separatists – in order to gain power.”

Via Twitter, Brian Topp pronounces himself honoured.

Harper’s single white males

By Paul Wells - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 126 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

For a loner, Stephen Harper works surprisingly well with others. The Prime Minister won his job by earning the loyalty of the old Reform party even though he used to be Preston Manning’s most persistent internal critic. He ended a decade’s rivalry with the Progressive Conservatives after doing more than almost anyone to fuel the rivalry.

He has wooed former Liberals into his caucus, sent New Democrat Gary Doer to Washington as Canada’s ambassador, and even put the occasional former Bloc Québécois member on the government payroll. No premier except Newfoundland’s now-retired Danny Williams has seen any political profit in antagonizing him. Harper drives his political opponents so crazy that it’s less frequently noticed how often he makes allies.

But the flip side of that coin is that his alliances rarely last. He hardly talks to former advisers like Tom Flanagan. He is on his fourth chief of staff, sixth communications director, and fifth foreign minister since he became Prime Minister. Jean Chrétien kept Eddie Goldenberg at his side for nearly 40 years. Paul Martin kept his 1990 Liberal leadership team around him until the day he retired. Harper’s team is like George Washington’s axe in the old joke, its blade replaced three times and its handle 26. All that remains is the ability to chop down opponents.

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‘Flexible when necessary’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 12:44 PM - 5 Comments

The text of the Prime Minister’s remarks to the Conservative caucus this morning.

Colleagues, it’s good to see all of you. I know you’ve all been busy over the summer as have I.  Nous parlons avec les électeurs, les électrices au sujet de leurs priorités et de leurs préoccupations et avec tous les Canadiens au sujet de notre plan pour l’emploi et la croissance sans augmenter les taxes et les impôts.

Well, I hope you got some downtime with your families. I know we’ve all stayed focused on the economy. Canada continues to do well relative to most other advanced economies.

Depuis juillet 2009, l’économie canadienne a créé près de 600 000 nouveaux emplois. I have to say that again. Since July 2009, the Canadian economy has created nearly 600,000 net new jobs.

But, unfortunately, as we have been reminded this summer, the global economy remains very fragile. This is a fact to which I have made repeated reference and which has informed our decisions all along. And so as Parliament resumes this fall, our government will continue taking action to protect the financial security of hardworking Canadians and to help create jobs now and for the years to come.

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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…

Hey look: Harper’s new Ford

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 12, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

From the print edition, my new column ponders the meaning of that big picnic in Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s mom’s back yard, at which the surprise guest was Stephen Harper.

A point I, uh, forgot to mention in the column is that Harper has begun referring in speeches to “that Conservative fortress of Toronto.”  I suspect that’s still a bit tongue in cheek. But if the 2011 results solidified or if the Conservatives were able to extend their gains in the GTA, Toronto would start to play a big part in Conservative election hopes. And as I say in the column, this comes after everyone’s already seen so much of Harper that he might reasonably have been expected to be waving goodbye to parts of his voter base, not adding to it.

Inside Harper’s big blue tent

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 12, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 56 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

They are incorrigible, these Harper Conservatives. Sooner or later, they’ll wind up right in your own backyard.

Mr. Robert Ford, of the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, Ont., made that startling discovery on Aug. 2, when 700 federal Conservatives showed up for a garden party on his mother’s property. To Ford’s apparent surprise, one of his guests was Stephen Harper.

Ford recovered quickly, for he is the mayor of Toronto and these folks were, in fact, his invited guests. “My new fishing buddy,” Ford called Harper. They swapped tales about Ford’s prowess in landing a 39-cm smallmouth bass. Harper took the microphone and spoke briefly. He said Ford didn’t live up to his reputation because he refused to kill and eat the fish, although, to be honest, Ford never really struck me as a seafood lover. Harper said Ford did “something very important” by “cleaning up the NDP mess here in Toronto.” Since Harper is, by his account, cleaning up “the left-wing mess federally,” it was up to Ontarians to “complete the hat trick” by electing Conservative Tim Hudak as the province’s new premier this fall.

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What about the whole Communist thing?

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 22, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 36 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

So John Baird went to China and everybody wrung their hands. What about human rights, minister? What about the Chinese people under the Communist jackboot?

“No more Stephen Harper vowing not to sell out human rights for ‘the almighty dollar,’ ” Rod Mickleburgh wrote in the Globe and Mail. “No more Jason Kenney lavishing praise on the Dalai Lama and private meetings between His Holiness and Mr. Harper.”

No indeed. Baird, Harper’s new foreign minister, tipped his hand in a Toronto speech before his three-day trip to China. “China is incredibly important to our future prosperity,” he said. “My government gets it and as Canada’s new minister of foreign affairs, I get it.”

Ah. And what about the whole Communist thing? “Even the best of friends can have legitimate differences of opinion,” the minister said.

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Playing footsie with Beijing

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, July 22, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 31 Comments

Andy Wong/AP

Birthday greetings are nice, but when you’re the governing party of a Western country that has styled itself as a defender of human rights, you might think twice about firing off happy returns to the authoritarian rulers of 1.3 billion people. The message is liable to get used in ways you never intended.

That’s what happened a couple of weeks back with a congratulatory letter the federal Conservatives sent the Communist Party of China, marking the organization’s 90th anniversary. State news agencies in China seized on the note, which was signed by Tory party president John Walsh and looked ahead optimistically to “future relations between the two parties,” as proof that political movements around the world are celebrating the birth of Chinese Communism.

Conservative party officials did not return calls for comment, but if they thought the gesture might slide by unnoticed, they were wrong. Dermod Travis, executive director of the Canada Tibet Committee (CTC), demanded that the party retract “the flattering, backslapping words,” and wondered aloud why the idea failed to set off alarms at Conservative headquarters. “Someone should be wise enough to appreciate that the [Communist] regime only maintains power through military oppression,” he said in a statement. “It doesn’t deserve congratulations, but rebuke.”

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The Conservative in charge of fixing the Senate

By John Geddes - Monday, July 18, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 24 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

There’s no shortage of veteran politicians around Ottawa—not to mention party strategists, academic experts and even journalists—who can tell war stories about doomed efforts to reform the Senate. But Tim Uppal, a second-term Conservative MP from Edmonton, isn’t one of them. Before politics, he was a residential mortgage manager, community radio host, and coach of the traditional Punjabi sport kabaddi, which has been described as a combination of rugby, tag and wrestling. Maybe the last credential is what suggested to Stephen Harper that Uppal might have what it takes to be his secretary of state for democratic reform, the junior minister whose top priority would be to fight through inevitable resistance and finally make good on the promise to overhaul the Senate.

Uppal is spending his summer trying to build support for the Senate Reform Act, which was tabled in the House last month. The bill would limit senators, who can now serve until age 75, to nine-year terms. It would also encourage, but not compel, provinces and territories to hold elections that would produce lists of winners from which prime ministers would be expected to appoint senators. In an interview, Uppal took an upbeat, optimistic tone, and resisted being drawn into a detailed discussion of exactly how the revamped Senate would function. Pushed on just about any issue, he repeated his mantra: “The status quo is not acceptable.”

And Harper’s position does, in fact, boil down to saying something’s got to change—an unelected Senate, in which partisan appointees currently collect $132,300 a year, plus benefits, just can’t be allowed to stand. But the limited fix Uppal is assigned to promote is prompting predictable questions, the sort that have derailed many past bids at reform. If senators are to be elected, how will that change their relationship with the House? It stands to reason that they will feel emboldened to more often block legislation sent to them by MPs. And if democratic legitimacy makes the Senate more powerful, won’t that also make its regional imbalance a bigger problem? For instance, British Columbia and Alberta now have six senators each, while New Brunswick and Nova Scotia get 10 senators apiece.

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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.

We’re totally cool, really

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 3:14 PM - 23 Comments

The Conservative Party of Canada would like to assure you that they’re the total opposite of everything the media has tried to make them out to be.

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…