‘Let the other parties have their cynics’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 4:12 PM - 0 Comments

A note sent to NDP members yesterday by Brian Topp, in response to Lise St-Denis’ move to the Liberals.

Fellow New Democrats,

Last May, four and a half million of us marked our ballots for Jack Layton’s New Democrats. We voted for real change.  And while we fell short of government, many of us felt that just maybe, a new dawn was breaking.

Jack Layton showed us that a new type of politics is possible. Not the same old scandals, entitlements and tired debates, but an optimistic politics with the concerns of everyday people at its core.

It was a tremendous moment we shared together. And it turns out not one we can take for granted.

Continue…

America the democratic

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 12:16 PM - 0 Comments

JJ McCullough looks enviously to the south.

Last Tuesday, Mitt Romney eked out his narrow victory in the Iowa caucus with a total of 30,015 votes. That slim tally in a single, Midwestern state is nevertheless only slightly fewer than the 31,150 votes that elected Jack Layton leader of the national New Democratic Party in 2003, and much greater than the 16,149 that elected Stephen Harper leader of the federal Conservatives in 2004…

What makes these comparisons particularly odious is that Canadian party leaders aren’t really even analogous to U.S. presidential candidates — they’re much more powerful. Should Romney eventually emerge as the GOP flag-bearer, he will have precious little power to influence much of what his party supports or believes. As we’ve seen over the last three years, the President of the United States is in many ways a very weak figure subordinate to the authority of 535 free-voting Congressmen.

The Commons: Lise St. Denis’ day

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 1:06 PM - 0 Comments

“This decision,” she explained at the outset, “has been made serenely.”

And so Lise St. Denis, dressed here in black and white, elected as a New Democrat some eight months ago, slipped from one party to the other. To her left sat Denis Coderre, beaming. To her right, Bob Rae listened intently. Both men had helped her with her chair when she arrived at the table. When she finished, the interim Liberal leader patted her on the back. She and they seemed reasonably happy with this little moment.

However serene the undertaking, however justifiable this business of euphemistically crossing the proverbial floor, it was not so easily explained. Continue…

Another year’s federal politics in 12 chapters

By John Geddes - Friday, December 30, 2011 at 2:07 PM - 0 Comments

Stages in the legislative process that make a bill law in the Canadian Parliament; ministers (not including the Prime Minister) on cabinet’s powerful Priorities and Planning committee; former political figures (not including sovereigns or social activists) memorialized in bronze around Parliament Hill—twelve is the number in each of these interesting categories. But for our purposes here, in this second annual stocktaking of the year just ending, it’s the 12 calendar months that matter. Pick just one political story for each page, and 2011’s kaleidoscope might just take a turn from jumbled to intelligible.

January: We glimpsed how Ignatieff thought a leader should look

By the start of 2011, we had long since figured out Stephen Harper’s disciplined style and thought we understood the limits of Jack Layton’s appeal. But Michael Ignatieff had taken over as Liberal leader in an odd way, with no conventional leadership race to bring him into focus. Instead, Ignatieff had been defined for many Canadians by Conservative attack ads. For those who had paid attention to him before politics, his globetrotting-intellectual persona still loomed large.

Then came his Jan. 25, tone-setting address on Parliament Hill to the Liberal caucus, with the media invited in. This was no detached thinker. Sleeves rolled up, Ignatieff ripped through a 15-minute speech in which he mocked Harper, invoked Barack Obama, and answered his own question—“Are we ready to serve the people who put us here?”—with a shouted, “Yes, yes, yes!” Hopeful Liberals saw a fiery campaigner, astute Conservatives a man ripe for ridicule. We didn’t know it then, but this was a clear foreshadowing of the campaign to come.

February: We watched Conservatives smoothly execute a key transition

As an opposition leader and especially as Prime Minister, Harper has shown a remarkable ability to shed and replace chiefs of staff, communications directors, and other key advisors. But the one constant in his electoral machine was the beard and brogue of Doug Finley, his  campaign director. When Finley stepped down at the very end of January as he recovered from colon cancer, the party began a testing transition. Guy Giorno and Jenni Byrne stepped into new roles.

For a lesser partisan machine, the loss of a figure as dominant as the Scottish-born Finley would have been a marked setback. Instead, the transition seemed to go off without a hitch. Spring election speculation continued unabated. As for Finely—who ran Harper’s winning 2006 and 2008 campaigns and was rewarded with a Senate appointment in 2009—Twitter awaited.

March: We marveled as the PM fell, yet defined the moment his way

It was no surprise when the Conservative minority was voted down by the opposition Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois on March 25. The House had been an increasingly fractious and angry place. The actual non-confidence vote, only the sixth in Canadian history, found the  government in contempt of Parliament for refusing to supply full cost estimates for fighter jets, crime bills and corporate tax cuts.

Yet Harper largely succeeded in burying those reasons by asserting doggedly that the real issue was the opposition’s refusal to support his government’s budget. “There’s nothing, nothing, in the budget that the opposition could not or should not have supported,” he said. “Thus, the vote today that disappoints me, will, I expect, disappoint Canadians.” His refusal to even minimally acknowledge that the election was triggered by anything other than a clash over economic priorities carried him into the campaign and, arguably, to victory.

April: We absorbed the potential of Layton’s NDP surge in Quebec

The orange wave surged over Quebec so unexpectedly that even senior NDP veterans had difficulty knowing what to make of it. By April 23, when Jack Layton climbed to the podium at Montréal’s Olympia Theatre to address his party’s largest ever campaign rally in the province, the possibility of an NDP breakthrough was widely acknowledged. The Bloc was running scared. The Tories and Liberals were looking elsewhere in the country for any gains.

At the back of the Olympia, Layton’s young Quebec organizers spoke, wide-eyed, of a dozen or so new Quebec seats being within reach. That seemed remarkable enough. Yet had they been able to fully take in the spectacle of Layton podium performance, and the crowd’s reaction, they might have dreamed bigger. Holding his talismanic cane aloft, smiling as only he could, hitting his applause lines like the pro he was, “Bon Jack” embodied an unlikely convergence of long, careful political preparation and recent, inspiring personal determination. You can’t make this stuff up.

May: We experienced Harper’s majority win as an inevitability

It’s an illusion of course, maybe even a delusion, to think anything in politics had to happen the way it did. There are always too many variables. Still, Harper’s May 2 election victory had that it-was-written feel about it. He steadily built toward the moment, from his near miss in 2004, through his two minority wins in 2006 and 2008. The train was rolling toward this destination.

And Harper’s campaign-trail consistency was remarkable. His rallies were a model of methodical planning and error-free execution. He refused to be badgered by media complaints into taking more reporters’ questions or exposing himself to unscripted encounters with voters. He stuck to his key economic message even when Layton’s rise might have unnerved a more skittish campaigner. Election night was full of compelling stories—Bloc and Liberal failures, NDP ascent—but it belonged, in the end, to the Prime Minister.

June:  We shrugged as a political financing experiment was cancelled

On June 6 Finance Minister Jim Flaherty reintroduced his spring federal budget, which was never passed in the rush to an election, with a key twist: Flaherty added a measure to phase out the $2-per-vote subsidy to political parties by 2015-16. The taxpayer subsidy was introduced by the former Liberal government in 2004, to compensate for the curtailing of corporate and union contributions.

The Conservatives’ first attempt to get rid of the subsidy, announced in the fall of 2008, triggered the ill-fated bid by opposition parties to form a coalition and replace Harper’s minority. But with Harper leading a majority, there was no chance of his being thwarted this time. Few Canadians took much notice. And so an attempt to make raising money less central to our politics comes to an end. Constant, clever, insistent fundraising appeals to the party faithful—a Tory strong suit—will be essential to any party’ success for the foreseeable future.

July: We saluted as our troops left a battle zone still in question

When Canadian soldiers moved in large numbers into Afghanistan’s violent southern province of Kandahar in 2006, military and political leaders were unprepared for how much the mission would come to dominate foreign and defence policy. The hard fighting they were soon engaged in was unlike anything Canadians had experienced in decades. Before exit day, 158 Canadian soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan, along with a diplomat, two aid workers, and a journalist.

The last Canadian commander of Task Force Kandahar, Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner, didn’t really want to leave. He would have preferred to stay a bit longer to help the Americans, whose troop surge into the province had put the Taliban on the run and stabilized previously volatile districts. Canadian troops remain in Afghanistan, but mainly engaged in training the Afghan National Army. But the years of fighting changed the place of the military in the Canadian public imagination—and Canadian political calculations.

August: We mourned Jack Layton, moved by what he’d come to mean

The death of the NDP leader on Aug. 22 at just 61 was not entirely surprising. The previous month Layton had announced that he was battling cancer for a second time, his ravaged face and desiccated voice shocking the country. But the way he died was unprecedented. He drafted a farewell letter and organized a public funeral in Toronto, knitting together the personal and political in his final weeks and days in a way that made them indistinguishable.

Layton came at the end to represent, in an era of deep cynicism about politics, an unapologetic zeal for total immersion in public life. All through the spring campaign, struggling back from a broken hip, Layton had exuded his relish for the democratic fray. Facing death, he didn’t shy from explicit partisanship. “Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us,” he told the New Democrats in that last letter, “that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.”

September: We were reminded by judges that even majorities face setbacks

With Parliament in session again, the Conservatives sitting pretty with their fresh majority, it seemed that nothing could slow the implementation of Stephen Harper’s vision. Then came the Sept. 30 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that the federal government could not shut down Vancouver’s Insite supervised injection clinic for intravenous drug users.

The unanimous 9-0 decision delivered a rebuke to the Conservative position that Insite’s clear track record since 2003 of helping addicts avoid infections and overdose deaths should be trumped by the government’s desire to send a strong anti-drug, law-and-order message. The ruling also validated the pro-Insite positions of the British Columbia provincial and Vancouver municipal governments. For those left disheartened by Harper’s resounding spring victory, the court offered a fall tonic.

October: We witnessed the lasting emotional power of a populist cause

From the time it was implemented in 1995, the federal registry for rifles and shotguns was deeply controversial. In the broadest of strokes, rural gun owners resented it, while urbanites who feared gun crime approved. Opposition gathered steam after a 2002 report from Auditor General Sheila Fraser put estimated the registry tab would climb to $1 billion by 2005.

With hot-button right-wing populist issues like abortion and capital punishment largely off the table in Canadian politics, the long-gun registry took on disproportionate importance for that portion of the Conservative base. Harper extracted maximum political benefit from attacking the registry. On Oct. 25, the bill to eliminate it was finally tabled in the House. A drawn-out, culturally fraught episode in Canadian political life was coming to a bitter close. Even the data in the registry was to be destroyed, so no province or future federal government, not to mention police force, could make use of the information. Few outcomes politics are so categorically one-sided.

November: We took comfort from a Canadian’s prominence in troubled economic times

The Cannes summit of the G20 club of major developed and developing nations was dominated by gloomy, even alarming, news about Europe’s deepening debt crisis. This was the backdrop for the appointment of Mark Carney, the Bank of Canada’s youthful governor, to head a key oversight body called the Financial Stability Board. Never mind what the FSB does—highly technical banking stuff. Pay attention to what Carney represents—solid Canadian economic management.

Carney is a fascinating story in his own right. His assessments of the state of banking regulation, economic policy and its international coordination, are parsed closely by rapt global market players. Beyond his personal qualities, he embodies the new Canadian swagger concerning our sound banks and solid government finances. But can Canada’s political and business leaders build beyond those oft-mentioned fundamentals to more innovative manufacturing and competitive service sectors?

December: We watched a familiar national shame unfold in the hinterland

On the first day of the last month of 2011, the federal government imposed what’s called third-party management on the Northern Ontario reserve community of Attawapiskat. That meant an administrator appointed by Ottawa would run the Cree community of 1,800 on James Bay, where a crisis of abysmal housing began drawing national attention in late November.

It was yet another example—they happen every few years—of a burst of media attention to the plight of an impoverished, remote First Nations village briefly forcing Canadians to contemplate the worst policy failure of successive federal governments. But how to break that desultory cycle? As Attawapiskat took centre stage, the Harper government was quietly introducing legislation to reform band council elections and improve financial transparency. Maybe this incrementalism will help where past grand gestures did little.

Hindsight

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 10:32 AM - 0 Comments

My first print column of 2011 was accidentally prescient. I say “accidentally” because I didn’t even realize one of the points I was making. Re-reading the piece with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see not only how Stephen Harper managed to hold power, but also how the NDP could make such strong advances. Yet I ignored the evidence at the time and continued to treat the NDP as a non-story until that became impossible in late April. My bad.

The column used a then-new poll to show how completely public faith in the Liberals had shattered:

A new poll from an upstart Ottawa polling house, Abacus Data, asked respondents how they felt about the three big national political parties. Abacus found respondents were likelier to agree the Conservative party “keeps its promises” than the Liberals or New Democrats do. They were also likeliest to agree the Conservative party “has a good team of leaders,” “has sensible policies,” and is “professional in its approach.”…

Abacus found Canadians have less trouble agreeing about the Liberals. When comparing the three parties, respondents were least likely to agree that Michael Ignatieff’s party “keeps its promises,” “understands the problems facing Canada,” “looks after the interests of people like me,” “defends the interests of people in my province,” “has a good team of leaders,” “stands for clear principles,” “has sensible policies,” or is “professional in its approach.” Continue…

Overrated in 2011: The List

By Paul Wells - Saturday, December 24, 2011 at 10:26 AM - 0 Comments

1. Peter Donolo. Continue…

The one thing you can’t fight

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments

Olivia Chow reflects.

“Arguing with fate is a completely useless exercise,” she said. “There’s one thing in life, you don’t know when you’re going to die, how you’re going to, so why question it . . . It’s a waste of emotional energy.”

Quebec’s not making it easier for the NDP to pick a leader

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:15 PM - 0 Comments

Oh, this poll is not helpful at all. At 26% in Quebec, the NDP would lose most of its MPs in that province.

(I know, I know: polls between elections do not predict the outcome of elections. Every number can shift wildly and will certainly do so before the next vote, unimaginably far in the future. And polls of disengaged voters about hypothetical choices may not measure much of anything. But try getting New Democrats to ignore the polls as they pick their next leader.)

The choice facing New Democrats is, roughly: Do they try to nail down their 2011 windfall in Quebec, and grow in other provinces — or do they try to find a “national (read: pan-Canadian) leader” and hope Quebecers will like that person?

The good news is that, if they’re super-lucky, they might be able to hold Quebec and grow outside. The bad news is, if they are only moderately unlucky, they may find it’s impossible to do either. Continue…

Your parliamentarians of the year

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Last night at the Chateau Laurier, Maclean’s and our gracious sponsors handed out the annual awards for the best in Parliament. This year’s parliamentarian of the year is Bob Rae and you can read my appraisal of him here. Previous winners include Bill Blaikie, Ralph Goodale, Jason Kenney and John Baird.

We introduced a new prize this year for a former parliamentarian who contributed significantly to the House of Commons. The inaugural winner is Jack Layton.

Parliamentarians of the Year (lifetime achievement): Jack Layton

By John Geddes - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 7:31 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Jenna Marie Wakani

After he led the NDP to its breakthrough in the election last May 2, Jack Layton returned to Ottawa vowing to set a new tone. “One thing that we’re going to be doing is having no heckling,” said the new leader of the official Opposition. “It is difficult to speak in the House of Commons when you have boorish comments being yelled in your ear at top volume by people a few feet away.”

But Layton would have only the briefest chance to watch his marching orders be put into effect. In July, his fragile health took a terrible turn, and on Aug. 22, he died of cancer at just 61. In the national mourning that followed, Layton’s personal qualities and campaigning abilities were celebrated. But his parliamentary style and strategy were less frequently remembered, even though he established himself over his mere eight years on the federal stage as an uncommonly talented—and unusually shrewd—performer inside the House.

It wasn’t always obvious that Layton would put such emphasis on the Commons. When he was running for the NDP leadership in 2002, his background as a Toronto municipal politician made him a Parliament Hill outsider. His main rival, Bill Blaikie, was a veteran MP and acknowledged expert on the House. Blaikie says Layton used the 18 months he spent as the party’s leader before finally winning a seat in the 2004 election to study the place. “He certainly claimed at the time,” Blaikie recalls, “to be learning the art of asking a question by watching me and others as well.” It paid off. Layton proved himself a probing question period inquisitor and a stirring speech-maker.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL LIST OF WINNERS OF MACLEAN’S PARLIAMENTARIANS OF THE YEAR AWARDS

And he didn’t hesitate to aggressively leverage his NDP votes when it mattered. In 2005, he extracted $4.6 billion for NDP priorities like affordable housing in return for temporarily propping up Paul Martin’s minority Liberal government. In 2008, he tried to forge a coalition with the Liberals—a controversial move he had quietly studied for years—to oust Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority. It nearly worked.

How he would have fared facing a Harper majority is, sadly, now a matter only for conjecture, as we pay tribute to the late Jack Layton’s rare achievements as a parliamentarian.

Invoking the memory of Jack Layton

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 12:54 PM - 0 Comments

Via Twitter, Conservative backbencher Stephen Woodworth is profoundly saddened by Pat Martin.

Isn’t the real question whether Pat Martin’s foul language was momentary lack of self-control or reflecting ordinary quality of thought?

Is whether one responds to frustration and defeat constructively or destructively an indicator of character?

Whatever happened to “My friends, love is better than anger”(or hopes to that effect).Perhaps PMartin didn’t get that memo

Perhaps politicians who don’t tweet & act consistently with “love is better than anger” should apologize to the memory of JLayton 

This is the not the first time a Conservative has invoked Mr. Layton’s final words to scold a New Democrat.

A letter in song

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 3:34 PM - 0 Comments

Raffi has composed Jack Layton’s final letter as a song.

“In his last letter to Canadians, Jack Layton expressed a spirit of cooperation and positivity that resonated strongly with me and with many Canadians. This message was so widely shared immediately after his passing, I wanted to capture its wisdom in song to help us remember,” says Raffi, who in recent years has written songs inspired by the likes of Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall, and the Dalai Lama.

Who will pay for these statues of Jack Layton?

By Alex Derry - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 5 Comments

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

When Lea Vivot heard that Jack Layton had died, she went to find some clay. Sculpting a life-sized likeness of the late NDP leader would be the renowned Czech-born artist’s way of mourning his death. She went to the studio in her 100-acre Kleinburg, Ont., farm to dig up the grey-coloured clay she had always used, only to find it had all dried up. Then Vivot, whose statues are found in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Prague, discovered what she calls her divine inspiration: the only usable clay in the studio was orange. “Only a higher force can commission the true artist,” Vivot, who has begun work on three statues of the late NDP leader, told Maclean’s. “Everything else falls into place.”

The statues are bound for Toronto, Ottawa and Layton’s hometown, Hudson, Que., yet neither sites nor payment for them has been secured. Vivot, after all, has developed a reputation as a provocateur in Canada’s arts scene for the way she installs her art. Many of the heavy sculptures are simply dropped off by Vivot and an assistant using a crane without the knowledge or approval of city governments or building owners; Vivot then asks for payment from proprietors, though not all have paid up. One such statue, Lovers Bench, was actually ordered removed from its Bay and Bloor location by the city of Toronto in 1979, and bounced around Montreal and New York until it was finally bought for $250,000 by Toronto developer Murray Goldman in 1991. In 1989, Vivot was also asked to remove The Secret Bench from its impromptu location outside the National Library of Canada due to the artist not having “gone through the right channels.” But a public campaign to have the bench reinstalled resulted in the Department of Public Works and the Canada Council Art Bank allowing her to unveil a recast version of the sculpture outside the library five years later. “It lent warmth and humanity to the front of the building,” said library spokesman Randall Ware.

Continue…

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.

Continue…

Occupy Sparks Street

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 2:39 PM - 28 Comments

The Occupy Wall Street movement arrives in Canada this weekend with hopes of influencing the political scene.

“I think our movement can energize the political left,” Lasn said. ”In Canada we have Harper so strong, the Conservatives so strong because there is no energized opposition. Over the next few months, and possibly one year, it’s possible for fascinating, exciting new ideas that the political left has had for a long time, for those ideas to push up from the grass roots and start having an impact again on Canadian politics.”

Tilleczek said youth organizers in Canada have been trying to galvanize the movement, criticized by some for lacking a clear expression of its demands, by invoking the image of former New Democrat leader Jack Layton, whose death in August from cancer touched off a remarkable display of national grief and affection.

Taking it to the streets

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 2:04 PM - 52 Comments

Brian Topp considers the Occupy Wall Street protests.

There are false roads open – like the fantasist right-wing populism of the American Tea Partiers. And there are better roads open – like modern, prudent, determined and fearless social democracy, of the kind Jack Layton was talking about. Perhaps we will go down that first road, brought to us in Canada in our mild Canadian way by Stephen Harper and his team. Hopefully we will go down the other, on offer in Canada through Mr. Layton’s team.

But the Wall Street occupiers are there to let the Wall Street revellers and bonus-hunters know that their own particular party – and the whole approach to government that made it possible in the United States and here in Canada – has just about had its day.

This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 2:21 PM - 1 Comment

Paul Dewar, a man of faith, launched his bid for the NDP leadership. Martin Singh joined the race too. Peter Julian decided to stay out. Brian Topp stated his cases for supporting the arts and taxing the rich. Team Mulcair and Team Topp took shape.

Peter MacKay wasn’t involved in the decision to launch an independent review of the Afghan mission. The NDP questioned the Prime Minister’s control and the government insisted on a separation of public and private business. David Johnston celebrated one year at Rideau. PEI, Manitoba and Ontario voted for their incumbents. The Harper government worked towards an office of religious freedom. The Liberals called for a national strategy on suicide prevention and the House came together to consider the challenge.

Continue…

The idealist

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:03 PM - 2 Comments

The Literary Review of Canada excerpts Jack Layton’s foreword to a new book about Charles Taylor, George Grant and CB Macpherson.

Tommy Douglas understood that our human journey had to be a collective project, something we would, could and should do together for and with each other, as a community of free individuals. Freedom, in this view—an idealist view—has enormous positive potential, not just for individuals but for all people as part of a fabric of diverse communities. Obvious questions flow. How can the pursuit of what would be right and good for the whole community be sought, at the same time, by each free and independent individual? How can a group effort not limit liberty but rather enhance it?

The idealist current holds that human society has the potential to achieve liberty when people work together to form a society in which equality means more than negative liberty, the absolute and protected right to run races against each other to determine winners. Idealists imagine a positive liberty that enables us to build together toward common objectives that fulfill and even surpass our individual goals.

The House: On weakness

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 1:30 PM - 41 Comments

A footnote on the meaning of Brad Trost.

Here is a question put to the government by the NDP’s Francoise Boivin last Thursday. Emphasis mine.

Mr. Speaker, women’s rights should not be open for debate, yet members of the government seem to think they are. The Supreme Court of Canada has clearly ruled that access to abortion is a fundamental right. Either the Prime Minister has lost control of his caucus or his government’s new policy is to outlaw abortion and turn back the clock on women’s rights. Which is it?

This attempt to define Brad Trost’s public stance as a reflection on the Prime Minister’s leadership is especially interesting given the party to which Ms. Boivin belongs. A year ago it was Jack Layton who was apparently failing to keep sufficient control of his caucus. Continue…

Newsmakers: Sept. 22-29

By Colby Cosh, Jaime J. Weinman, and Richard Warnica - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Jason DeCrow/AP

No, they didn’t walk home

Two American hikers convicted of espionage in Iran were released after the sultan of Oman posted US$930,000 bail for them. Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, 29-year-old pro-Palestine activists and former Berkeley classmates, were seized along with a female friend while on holiday in 2009; Iran claims they illegally crossed their border on foot. The woman, Sarah Shourd, Bauer’s fiancée, was freed last fall on medical grounds. Bauer and Fattal’s release, with both in apparent good health, is seen as a political victory for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over hardline clerics in the Islamic republic.

Burqa fine

Only in France is having it and not flaunting it a crime. Last week, a court outside Paris fined two women for refusing to show their faces in public. Hind Ahmas and Najate Nait Ali were the first Frenchwomen charged under a law that bans full facial coverings outside the home. Passed last spring, the ban was aimed, rather transparently, at France’s substantial Muslim minority. It may also have been an attempt by President Nicolas Sarkozy to shore up his vulnerable right flank. But if anything, the law has galvanized supporters of the niqab. Ahmas told reporters she intends to challenge her fine in the European Court of Human Rights—while Kenza Drider, who also wears the niqab, now says she intends to run against Sarkozy in the presidential election. “When a woman wants to maintain her freedom she must be bold,” Drider told the Associated Press.

Continue…

A no-name race to replace Jack Layton

By Paul Wells - Friday, September 30, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 15 Comments

Jacques Boissinot/CP

These days, after question period, Thomas Mulcair gives a little nothing-has-changed statement, through teeth clenched into an approximation of a cheerful smile, before he comments to reporters on the issues of the day. What hasn’t changed is Mulcair’s indecision over whether he’ll run for the leadership of the New Democratic Party. He is widely assumed to be a candidate. He isn’t a candidate yet. He’ll get back to us.

So will Niki Ashton, Paul Dewar, Peter Julian, Robert Chisholm and maybe more. Decent people, maybe more than that. But not really names to set the heart pounding. “There’s no excitement about this race,” a veteran New Democrat told me. “People aren’t excited about this. But it makes sense that they wouldn’t be. Their guy just died.”

Indeed. Jack Layton is gone barely five weeks. The NDP leadership convention isn’t until March 23. There’s half a year between the party’s last leader and its next. The hesitation of potential candidates is natural. The breakthrough party of 2011 is heading into a world of uncertainty.

Continue…

Orange ribbons for Jack

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, September 26, 2011 at 10:26 PM - 4 Comments

Last week MPs sported orange ribbons to remember Jack Layton.

Liberal leader Bob Rae.

Liberal MP Mark Eyking (left) and NDP MP Megan Leslie.

The first day back, and two MPs’ ‘messy breakup’

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, September 26, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Photography by Mitchel Raphael

Jack Layton’s chair to go to his family

MPs arriving back on the Hill for the first day of Parliament were greeted by black coffins covered in cut-out, pastel-coloured butterflies on which were written the names of murdered and missing Aboriginal women. It was part of an awareness campaign coordinated by Walk4Justice. That morning, there were tributes for Jack Layton, and his green House of Commons chair was left empty for the day. NDP MP Peter Stoffer says his caucus is buying the chair Layton sat in for $950 and presenting to the late leader’s family. MPs wore orange ribbons in honour of Layton, though at question period it was mostly NDP, Liberal and Bloc parliamentarians wearing them. That included both interim Liberal leader Bob Rae and interim Bloc leader Louis Plamondon. On the Hill for the tribute was former NDP leader Alexa McDonough. The day before, she had helped with the orientation sessions for new MPs from all parties, covering issues ranging from office management to how to avoid temptations like the endless supply of booze at Hill functions. Question period started with interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel reading her questions from her papers, which lessened the impact. She was followed by NDP finance critic Peggy Nash, whose voice boomed out. “I’m used to speaking at rallies,” quipped Nash, who is seen as a strong potential NDP leader candidate.

MPs call it splits

Liberal MPs Mark Eyking and Rodger Cuzner were both elected in 2000 and until Parliament resumed on Monday they were also roommates. “It’s a messy breakup,” jokes Cuzner. “Eyking wants visitation rights for the clock radio.” In reality, two of Eyking’s sons have moved to the capital. One sells real estate and the other is at university. That means Eyking’s wife is in the capital more often too. Cuzner jokes he was “tripping over” Eykings at their place. So he moved out and is now living with his nephew.

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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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