Fun with maps (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 30, 2009 at 11:56 AM - 3 Comments

Another interactive map to explore, this one with pretty colours.

Fun with maps

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 30, 2009 at 12:43 AM - 38 Comments

While John Baird’s office offers the Parliamentary Budget Office a 4,476-page spreadsheet, the folks at Spatial Databox have put together a customizable map. Enjoy.

The Commons: Bring it on

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 6:21 PM - 63 Comments

The Scene. Worried perhaps that his point had been lost amid yesterday’s unpleasantness, David McGuinty stood at the start of Question Period this afternoon and picked up approximately where he had left off the day before.

“Remember the facts,” he said. “One hundred million dollars of partisan propaganda without accountability, infrastructure funds distributed as if they were reward points and more than 60 investigations by the office of the Ethics Commissioner, a minister under investigation for his ties to lobbyists and federal agencies, a Conservative senator linked to key players in a scandal.”

Then, a simple-enough question. “When,” Mr. McGuinty wondered, “are the Conservatives going to clean up this ethical mess?”

The Prime Minister stood, buttoned his jacket, adjusted his left cuff and addressed the Speaker on another matter entirely.

“Mr. Speaker, this is a time of global economic recession,” he said, “but Canada’s performance exceeds that of many other countries and the measures of government are well-supported by Canadians and even the vast majority of provincial governments.”

This much had been said in French, the language employed for Mr. McGuinty’s first question. But, before sitting, the Prime Minister switched momentarily to his first language. “This question,” he said, “reminds me of the old saying: ‘When you throw mud, you lose ground.’”

So there. The Prime Minister returned to his seat then, entirely done dealing with the Liberals for the day. Continue…

The cheques aren't the real scandal

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 37 Comments

It was as predictable as the tides. Could anyone have imagined otherwise—that billions of dollars could be pushed out the door in such fantastic haste, to no plan or purpose, without being turned into a politicized slush fund? Can anyone really claim to be surprised? When did any government, given control of a honey pot of this size, not abuse it?

We should be precise about just what is the scandal here. The scandal is not that Conservative MPs attached the party logo to the giant novelty cheques that have become the standard prop in government spending announcements. Though it is surely scandalous to pretend the public’s money is the party’s (the reverse is more nearly true), the logo only serves to make explicit what is implicit in all such exercises: that the flow of public funds to a given riding, province, industry or cause is owing entirely to the personal munificence of local MPs, who salute themselves for their generosity and compassion in the hope that their beneficiaries will be moved to do the same. That would have been the message even had there been no Conservative logos on the cheques, or no such cheques to bear them. Continue…

Is it possible to get a fair hearing?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 12:56 AM - 62 Comments

Last week our Andrew Coyne argued that now is the time for Michael Ignatieff to deal honestly and directly with the deficit and the state of government finances going forward. In response, Glen Pearson wonders if the press gallery is ready to do likewise.

Let’s be honest: No political leader in their right mind dares to be as truthful as Coyne challenges because it would be the media itself that couldn’t withhold its skepticism long enough to truly investigate the merits of that leader’s case. Opposition parties would immediately pounce and all manner of bloggers, pundits and columnists would discuss the scary ramifications of such a daredevil proposition. I recall when Ignatieff came to London following a visit to Cambridge, in which he stated no leader would be worthy of the name if he or she didn’t place the possibility of raising taxes on a long list of future considerations if a deficit couldn’t be brought under control. Political staffers mulled around, worried that it would be taken out of context, which it inevitably was … The very next day in the House, Conservative members used every possible occasion to ridicule Ignatieff, calling him just another “tax and spend” Liberal. The media ate it up.

The Commons: 'Tell the truth!'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 6:55 PM - 45 Comments

The Scene. Ralph Goodale stood, broad and booming, with a particularly provocative turn of phrase.

“The Conservatives,” he said, “are engaged in an orgy of partisan abuse.”

And you needn’t apparently take Mr. Goodale’s word for it.

“Three independent investigations confirm the research of the member for Parkdale-High Park,” he continued. “A shocking part of the stimulus plan is earmarked for partisan Conservative purposes. Will the Conservatives admit this is a threat for those who didn’t vote for them?”

The Prime Minister stood, apparently quite confused by the Liberal house leader’s tone.

“Mr. Speaker, the program for the reconstruction of leisure facilities is a very important measure for the Canadian economy and for communities. I do not understand at all why the Liberal Party of Canada opposes such projects and, even in their own counties. The allegations of the honourable member are quite untrue and, indeed, the Liberal deputy premier of Ontario said so.”

So there. Continue…

At the lonely end of the rink (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 1:55 AM - 82 Comments

The Stars gets Gerard Kennedy’s numbers on hockey rink stimulus in Toronto ridings.

Toronto 23 ridings — all but two held by Liberal MPs — got about 38 per cent less than the average Conservative riding in Ontario, prompting accusations that the government was again playing favourites as it doled out its massive stimulus fund.

The Toronto ridings got an average of $1.3 million, compared with an average of $2.1 million that was approved for Conservative ridings in Ontario — a difference of $777,787, according to Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy (Parkdale—High Park).

Kennedy’s office provides various figures and tables here.

The Commons: 'It depends'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 8:40 PM - 88 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff stood looking serious, perhaps a bit unimpressed.

The Prime Minister, he reported en français, had admitted it was wrong for the government to put Conservative party logos on giant novelty cheques announcing the arrival of taxpayer dollars. But what of the public funding itself? What, for instance, of the fact that 75% of a fund for unemployed youth had been allocated in Conservative ridings?

On the government side, there was much yapping and whining.

“Having admitted it was wrong to put logos on cheques,” the Liberal leader wondered aloud, “will the Prime Minister admit now that partisanship in spending must stop immediately?”

The Prime Minister would not, if only because he was elsewhere. Absent too was John Baird, the government’s usual choice to enunciate a response on this file. So here, instead, came Industry Minister Tony Clement, waving his arms and pleading for your respect.

“We are on the side of Canadians,” he declared. “We are producing these projects because they mean jobs and opportunity. They mean getting behind and beyond the recession to a better and more prosperous economy through economic recovery. That is our message to Canadians and that is what Canadians want of us.”

Oddly enough, Mr. Ignatieff did not find satisfaction in this explanation.

Continue…

At the lonely end of the rink (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 4:09 PM - 33 Comments

The Globe does its own analysis of stimulus spending on ice rinks, playgrounds and such.

A high-profile Harper government stimulus program created to build hockey rinks and other recreation projects has funnelled about 33 per cent per cent more money to Conservative seats than to opposition ridings in the battleground province of Ontario.

An analysis by The Globe and Mail shows Tory ridings received an average of $2.1-million, compared to $1.5-million on average for opposition ridings.

The vast left-wing conspiracy

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:39 AM - 79 Comments

Conservative MP Larry Miller tells us what’s really going on here with all these stories about giant novelty cheques.

“This is about the national media trying to help the Liberals deflect the attention off their problems right now,” said Miller. “Anybody that has seen Mr. Ignatieff and his crew in the House of Commons in the previous two or three weeks, it has looked as bad as when (Stephane) Dion was there and the media knows it, the Liberals know it and they are just trying to make an issue out of something.”

If only we had a commissioner who was responsible for ethics

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 7:05 PM - 33 Comments

CBC explores the irony of news that the ethics commissioner will be investigating the ethics of giant novelty cheques.

Canada’s ethics commissioner will investigate dozens of allegations that Conservative MPs are using taxpayers’ money for partisan purposes. But Mary Dawson says she’s not sure how far her mandate allows her to go into ethical issues, despite her job title.

… in her annual report, Dawson highlighted that while the word “ethics” appears in her job title, it does not appear in the Conflict of Interest Act or the Code of Conduct for MPs. ”It’s quite unclear as to the extent to which my mandate extends into ethical issues that are not expressly referred to in either the code or the act and, in fact, one would wonder whether it extends there at all,” Dawson said at parliamentary ethics committee meeting.

At the lonely end of the rink

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 4:29 PM - 29 Comments

The Chronicle-Herald’s Stephen Maher and the Citizen’s Glen McGregor continue to investigate the distribution of federal stimulus.

Funds from a federal stimulus program designed to put hockey rinks and other recreation projects in communities across the country appear to be have been awarded disproportionately to Conservative ridings, an investigation shows.

Tory ridings have landed 66 per cent of all projects so far announced under the Harper government’s Recreation Infrastructure Canada program, also known as RinC.

The Commons: And so we come full circle

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 6:36 PM - 112 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister was not in his seat this afternoon when Question Period began. Which seems a shame. Not least because of the profound moment in the history of his government that he was not there to witness firsthand. The rest of us will at least be able to say we were there, that we saw it with our own eyes and heard it with our own ears. The Prime Minister will have to suffice with seeing it on TV. Or perhaps hearing about it from a member of his staff.

Although, maybe it was best he wasn’t there after all. Indeed, in a way, it’s better he was spared the awful sight.

The session began simply enough with the obvious, the Liberal leader wondering aloud about a potential conflict of interest involving a Conservative senator and a sizable government contract. “Mr. Speaker, a pattern is becoming all too clear,” Michael Ignatieff posited. “The Conservative government is using stimulus spending to buy votes and reward its friends. This morning, we learned that one of the Prime Minister’s newest senators works for a company that has just won $1.4 million in infrastructure spending. At a time when the middle class is struggling, would the Prime Minister explain why infrastructure spending that is needed by all Canadians ends up in the hands of a member of his own—”

His time expired, the Transport Minister stood smirking to dismiss Mr. Ignatieff’s concerns. The Liberal tried again, this time en francais. John Baird once more swatted the question away. “Mr. Speaker, there is no reason to jump to the conclusions that the Leader of the Opposition does,” Mr. Baird declared. “If he has any evidence of any wrongdoing, rather than pontificating in this place, he should put his facts on the table and be accountable for those. We have been completely open, completely transparent with the infrastructure spending that we have made.”

The Liberals howled with mocking laughter.

“The grant in question was made by a crown corporation,” the Minister finished, “with no lobbying and no involvement whatsoever of my office or the office of the Minister of Public Works.”

Here, then, is where it happened. Where everything that once was up turned down. Where left became right, day became night and blue became red.  Continue…

Rhetorical question of the day

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 3:33 PM - 23 Comments

Liberal Todd Russell, yelling in the direction of Rob Nicholson this afternoon as the Justice Minister took a friendly question about crime legislation.

“What’s the mandatory minimum for cheque fraud?”

Royal Galipeau Maverick Watch

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 15 Comments

The Conservative backbencher admits the giant novelty cheques he handed out upset his stomach.

The design of the cheques provided to one area MP to highlight infrastructure spending left him feeling “a bit queasy,” he said. Royal Galipeau, MP for Ottawa-Orléans, said he insisted that the cheques provided to him didn’t have the Conservative party logo but said he still wasn’t happy with the design. ”That didn’t look like a government cheque to me. I would preferred it looked like a government cheque.”

… Galipeau was photographed in March handing over a $21,339 cheque for a francophone seniors program in Ottawa with his name printed at the top and his signature below. He says he still thinks the large cheques are a good way to highlight government work and plans to continue handing them out, but using a design based on a real government cheque.

'Canadians' tax dollars are precious'

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 4:29 PM - 100 Comments

Jim Flaherty, Nov. 27. We cannot ask Canadians to tighten their belts during tougher times without looking in the mirror. Canadians have a right to look to government as an example. We have a responsibility to show restraint and respect for their money. Canadians’ tax dollars are precious. They must not be spent frivolously or without regard to where they came from.

Canadian Press, today. The Harper government spent well over $100,000 staging a one-hour event in June to deliver an update on its efforts to help the recession-ravaged economy. Invoices obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act show a nominal bill to taxpayers of $108,000 for the carefully scripted “town hall” meeting in Cambridge, Ont … Some $30,000 was spent on audio visual equipment and staging, another $10,000 was spent buying the rights to use photos and web images and almost $50,000 went toward printing glossy copies of a 234-page Economic Action Plan “report card.” Another $5,700 went to an outside editing service and more than $3,300 was spent on a communications firm. Almost $10,000 was spent on airfare, ground transport and hotels for some 20 individuals who flew in from Ottawa, not including their meal expenses … The invoices don’t cover the cost of the use by Harper and his staff of the government’s Challenger jet to get to Cambridge, about an hour’s flight from Ottawa. In opposition, Harper and other Conservatives repeatedly said the jets cost about $11,000 an hour to operate.

Time for Ignatieff to take a chance

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, October 16, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 83 Comments

It is true in politics, no less than in physics, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Michael Ignatieff, as is well known, has seen his popularity nosedive in recent weeks, when it seemed he could not put a foot right. Very well: if he is smart, he can turn that to his advantage, using the very speed of his decline to propel his rebound. Reculer pour mieux sauter and all that.

There is a script for this. If listening to his advisers, playing it safe, taking no stands, guarding every word has brought him to this humiliating low, then the way is open for one of those Hollywood moments, where the candidate rips up the speech that has been prepared for him and speaks from the heart—when he sheds the ingratiating poses of “politics as usual” in favour of his authentic self. Of course, it helps if that is, in fact, what the candidate is up to. Continue…

Woodward & Bernstein & Alghabra

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 4:27 PM - 47 Comments

Former Liberal MPs are the new investigative reporters. Apparently.

Ontario was allocated about $1.1 billion in Infrastructure Stimulus Fund money, translating to about $90 for each Ontarian (according to the 2006 census). Mississauga was assigned $46 million (to be matched by the province of Ontario and the city of Mississauga). According to the 2006 census, it means that Mississauga only received $69 per person. The city of Mississauga received 23% less than the provincial average.

It gets worse.  Looking at some cities that are represented by Conservative MPs, the numbers are even more disturbing.  For example, Barrie received $129 per person, Niagara Falls received $200 per person, Cambridge received $170 per person, and Oakville received $279 per person.

Our cynicism runneth over

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 12:53 PM - 31 Comments

The experts react to the Chronicle-Herald’s analysis of stimulus spending in Tory ridings.

A pattern of heavy spending in Conservative ridings uncovered in a Chronicle Herald analysis of federal stimulus spending is just business as usual, part of a long bipartisan pattern of using tax dollars for political gain, say political observers…

“Old style politics is all about bringing home the bacon,” said Kevin Gaudet of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. ”All they’ve done is paint the pig a different colour.”

Nothing new here, said Charles Cirtwill, of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. ”The Liberals did this for years and the Conservatives sat outside and pointed fingers and raged and pulled their hair,” he said. “And now the Liberals are doing the same thing. The only folks who are really consistent are the NDP, and that’s primarily because at the federal level they’ve never had a chance to pass out the dough.”

Don Drummond on testing times ahead

By John Geddes - Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 9:06 AM - 7 Comments

This week’s issue of Maclean’s features a story about how the aftermath of the recession is likely to play out in a federal election—whenever the campaign comes. A key figure in the story is Don Drummond, the former federal Finance official whose insider knowledge of Ottawa has made him an indispensable commentator since he joined TD Bank Financial Group as chief economist in 2000.

In the story, Drummond talks recession and recovery. He explains why stimulus spending had little to do with making the downturn hurt less than the worst projections; low interest rates and other monetary policy measures, he says, did the heavy lifting. And he predicts that beating back the federal deficit, which both Tories and Liberals vow to do without raising taxes, will be enormously difficult because so much government spending is viewed as uncuttable.

But he had even more interesting analysis to offer than could fit in the magazine piece. In this additional edited portion of our conversation, Drummond discusses why, even if the recession didn’t hit as hard as many feared, the climb back is likely to be an unusually long, tough slog.

Continue…

No ideas please, we're Canadian

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 8:28 PM - 8 Comments

Chris Selley sees hope—or at least something completely different—in David Cameron’s Britain.

“Reticent” isn’t a word that comes to mind. What comes to my mind instead is that if either Michael Ignatieff or Stephen Harper had given that interview, Canadian politics-watchers would still be picking themselves up off the floor, and the appropriate war room would be tearing into the other guy like a pack of half-starved wolverines…

Anyone who reads a newspaper knows lean times are coming to Canada too, one way or the other—tax hikes, spending cuts, or some combination of the two. The difference between Ottawa and London is that in London, they’re actually talking about it. Indeed, to hear Cameron talk, he actually thinks he’s telling the British people what they want to hear.

Megapundit: The free market is dead. Long live whatever comes next.

By selley - Monday, October 6, 2008 at 2:00 PM - 28 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Rex Murphy on our crummy debates; Chantal Hébert on the economy as non-issue; George Jonas on plagiarism; Dan Leger on Stéphane Dion.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister
A long-awaited biography of the Prime Miniser, and various other insults, plaudits and nuggets of advice.

“He has not introduced himself to Canadians,” an unidentified Tory comments of our Prime Minister, so please, allow The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson and Brian Laghi to do so at truly monumental length. (“Page 1 of 11?!” you might exclaim, having clicked on the link. Yes indeed, page 1 of 11.) It’s a very readable and interesting examination of the cipher that is our 22nd Prime Minister, and pretty much impossible to summarize, but if you ever wanted to know everything you didn’t know about him, this would be a damn good place to start.

The Globe‘s Christie Blatchford projects her own views on arts funding—that it’s important, just like art itself, but perhaps philanthropy and self-sufficiency should play bigger roles—onto Stephen Harper, suggesting his comments about galas and the whinging artists who attend them were really meant as an argument against the idea “that Big Brother must be the only funder of the arts.” We think Harper’s smart enough to have said what he meant or to have clarified it afterwards, and while we welcome any discussion about arts funding, we’re sick of people espousing intelligent anti-subsidy arguments as if they were defending the Conservatives. It’s quite obvious to us that the Tories simply wanted us to be outraged that tax dollars helped out Holy Fuck.

Continue…

Megapundit: Tell another one, Uncle Gerry!

By selley - Monday, September 22, 2008 at 3:20 PM - 14 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Christie Blatchford on Gerry Ritz; Doug Saunders on the Eurabia hypothesis; David Olive on uniting the left; John Ivison in northern Ontario; Rosie DiManno and Peter Worthington on Afghanistan; Scott Taylor on Canada and the Caucasus; Konrad Yakabuski on Justin Trudeau; L. Ian MacDonald on what Jean Charest’s up to.

On the issues
Behold: all the things we’re not talking about!

The Toronto Sun‘s Peter Worthington is not impressed by the “tomb of silence” in which the Harperites have sealed all matters military: notably, committing to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 and replacing the outspoken Rick Hillier with Walter Natynczyk, who seems more shy about vocally “standing up for soldiers and reviving our combat character”—both of which, in Worthington’s view, seem to make the Prime Minister “nervous.” The army needs at least “an additional brigade,” he argues, and ideally to double in size, but recent events lead him to fear that “lethargy is again taking over before the military rebuilding job is done.”

“The yearning for peace in Afghanistan hasn’t dwindled,” the Toronto Star‘s Rosie DiManno assures us, but “there is growing disenchantment with NATO, which clearly can’t contend with a resurgent Taliban.” American troops redeployed from Iraq might be able to do the job, she argues, but “the whole point of NATO taking over responsibility of Afghanistan—besides justifying its existence post Cold War—was to put a multinational face, earnest and humanitarian, on the mission.” Due to many factors including the component nations’ inability or unwillingness to commit enough troops to combat duty, DiManno seems more or less ready to call that mission a failure.

Continue…