Poverty, terrorism and 9/11

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 38 Comments

During his interview with the CBC, Stephen Harper was asked about comments Jean Chretien made nine years ago on the first anniversary of Sept. 11.

Nobody who was killed on 9/11 deserved it remotely. It was a terrible thing, has nothing to do with wealth versus poverty. It has to do with, in this case, a particular hateful ideology that has attacked people around the world, not just affluent societies like our own, but some pretty poor places. You know, I think the people killed in Indonesia, in India. The fact that Afghanistan became a failed state, where you know, people just essentially lived in not just poverty, but brutality, to the point where a kind of Islamic fascist regime literally invited terrorists, international terrorists to set up camp in their country. I think that that kind of situation obviously bred a threat, and that’s why we are so worried when we look around the world now at other places where the same thing could happen. You know, I think you know some of them: Somalia, Yemen, that are there or at that kind of stage. That’s the kind of thing I think we really have to worry about, where you have not just poverty, but poverty and literally lawlessness becomes the nature of the state. And I do think it’s in our broader interests and the right thing to do to try and help people and help countries so that they don’t get into that situation. That’s why, you know, we obviously are helping with the famine in East Africa. It’s why we’re so involved in Haiti. Not to have that kind of a state in our own backyard. So those, I think those kinds of situations are very dangerous.

Mr. Chretien’s comments, as reported by the Globe, were as follows. Continue…

David Collenette on 9/11

By David Collenette - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 11:25 AM - 4 Comments

Lorenzo Ciniglio/Sygma/Corbis

“Wind up your speech. There has been a tragedy.” This hastily handwritten note, placed on the lectern as I delivered the keynote address at a conference of international airport executives, heralded the longest day of my political life. It was Sept. 11, 2001.

I had gotten up at 5 a.m. to take a Transport Canada Citation jet to Montreal, a groggy start to another long ministerial day. The conference should have been routine. But just after 9 a.m., the audience became restless. This was not unusual for a politician giving a speech; still I was puzzled. For the most part, people had appeared quite interested.

I continued to speak while reading the note, which instructed me to talk to assistant deputy minister Louis Ranger and avoid the media. I feared the worst, probably a serious accident, which Louis did confirm: at 8:45 a.m. a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. I immediately sensed some type of terrorist act had occurred, since passenger jets just don’t crash into tall buildings if they are in trouble. There are all kinds of emergency procedures for pilots: landing at the nearest airport or ditching in water around Manhattan.

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Security trumps trade at the U.S. border

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 1 Comment

Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, then-foreign minister John Manley was relaxing on an Air Canada flight from Germany when a pair of flight attendants asked him to come up to the cockpit. The pilots wanted to know what to tell the passengers about the extraordinary events on the ground. They gave Manley headphones for listening to radio updates. Airports in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa were closing. “It was chaos,” he recalled. “No one knew if it was four planes or a dozen.”

Canada’s then-ambassador to the United States, David Kergin, had just arrived at his office near the Capitol to see black smoke rising from the Pentagon building across the Potomac River. “We very quickly concluded maybe we were best to stay in the embassy because it was secure,” he recalls. As rumours abounded of bombs in the U.S. capital, the ambassador had a call from prime minister Jean Chrétien. “You know, the world will never be the same again,” Chrétien told him. It wasn’t—and neither was Canada’s relationship with the U.S.

Ottawa’s relations with Washington had generally focused on trade disputes such as softwood lumber and agriculture. Since then, the focus of time, energy, and spending has been the border. No longer is the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office the most important for Ottawa. Now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created in the aftermath of the attacks, eclipses all else. The job of DHS is not to ensure trade and prosperity, but help to prevent another attack. And Canadians have felt the difference.

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Good to be lucky, lucky to be good

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 2:58 PM - 6 Comments

Ian Brodie quibbles with the suggestion that luck explains Stephen Harper’s success.

Merging the Reform-Alliance into the Conservative Party may have looked easy to outsiders obsessed with the drama of David Orchard’s efforts to block his Party’s ratification of the merger deal.  But Harper had worked long and hard to overcome years of Reform-Alliance hostility to Toryism, and reaped the benefit of that work when the time came to do the deal.  Keeping the new party unified and focused in the face of predictions of the coming Martin “juggernaut” may have looked easy to outsiders, but required careful internal leadership and work.  Snatching victory from the jaws of victory in the 2005-06 campaign looks, in retrospect, like the inevitable unfolding of history, but required two years of brutal, disciplined work.  And is it lucky to be in charge during a mammoth economic crisis?  Does having an excuse for spending billions on economic stimulus lead to political success?  Please, someone, ask Barack Obama.

If Brian Mulroney had been lucky enough to be in power during a long, global economic boom with very low interest rates, he and Mike Wilson would have balanced the federal budget.  Instead, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin were the lucky ones.  But let the Liberals keep on thinking that Harper’s success is the result of luck.  Let them believe their current crisis is the result of bad luck.  Whatever we do, don’t ever persuade them they need to change their approach.  Let them keep rolling the dice and betting the house.

Prime Minister of the last 43 years

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 3:11 PM - 26 Comments

Angus-Reid asks a thousand Canadians to identify the best and worst prime ministers since 1968. The results below (with changes from four years ago in parentheses).

Best
Trudeau 36% (+3)
Harper 19% (+5)
Chretien 12% (+4)
Mulroney 6% (-8)

Worst
Mulroney 19% (-1)
Harper 19% (+4)
Trudeau 13% (-)
Chretien 10% (-3) 

Mr. Trudeau tops 36% in British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario and Atlantic Canada and bests Mr. Harper in every region except Alberta. Quebec is the only jurisdiction that ranks Mr. Harper less than second.

Nycole Turmel and the sovereignists

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 12:16 PM - 103 Comments

This post last updated at 5:30pm.

The Globe and Mail discovers that Nycole Turmel was a member of the Bloc Quebecois.

According to information obtained by The Globe and Mail, the 68-year-old became a member of the Bloc Québécois in December, 2006, the year she retired as president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. She sent back her membership card to the Bloc on Jan. 19 of this year in a signed letter to then-Bloc MP Carole Lavallée. “Enclosed is my Bloc Québécois membership card, which I wish to cancel. I wish to state that my request has nothing to do with the party’s policies, I am doing this for personal reasons,” Ms. Turmel wrote. She then wished “good luck” to Ms. Lavallée, who went on to be defeated by an NDP candidate in the May 2 general election. In addition to her membership in the Bloc, Ms. Turmel made four donations totalling $235 to the party between 2006 and 2011, according to party records. The donations, which ranged from $35 to $100, were not made public because they are under the $200 threshold for disclosure by political parties.

The NDP is playing down the revelation, but it is being reported—and the NDP now confirms—that Ms. Turmel remains a member of Quebec Solidaire. Rob Silver has eight questions for the New Democrats.

12:41pm… The Globe reports that Conservative MPs and supporters were briefed on Ms. Turmel’s ties to separatists in a memo distributed late last week. The Star notes that some of these issues were raised in April during the election campaign. Continue…

Jack Layton takes a leave

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 25, 2011 at 2:11 PM - 11 Comments

(This post last updated at 6:38pm.)

Looking gaunt and sounding hoarse, Jack Layton has told a Toronto news conference that while his fight with prostate cancer is going well, he is now dealing with a new cancer and will be taking a temporary leave from politics. He says he intends to return when Parliament resumes in the fall. In his place, he is recommending that Nycole Turmel serve as interim leader of the NDP caucus.

2:13pm… The official announcement is here.

If I have tried to bring anything to federal politics, it is the idea that hope and optimism should be at their heart. We CAN look after each other better than we do today. We CAN have a fiscally responsible government. We CAN have a strong economy; greater equality; a clean environment. We CAN be a force for peace in the world.

I am as hopeful and optimistic about all of this as I was the day I began my political work, many years ago. I am hopeful and optimistic about the personal battle that lies before me in the weeks to come. And I am very hopeful and optimistic that our party will continue to move forward.

We WILL replace the Conservative government, a few short years from now. And we WILL work with Canadians to build the country of our hopes Of our dreams. Of our optimism. Of our determination. Of our values… Of our love.

2:18pm… NDP president Brian Topp says the NDP caucus will meet Wednesday morning to consider Mr. Layton’s suggestion and who will lead the party until his return. Advice from the caucus will then be reported to the party’s federal council and then the council will choose the leader. Mr. Topp says Mr. Layton was in hospital for a period of time, but has no details on what his coming treatment will involve. “I wouldn’t bet against Jack Layton,” Mr. Topp says. Mr. Topp wrote about his own battle with prostate cancer last year.

2:25pm… Mr. Topp notes that Ms. Turmel is already caucus chair and thus already has a mandate from the caucus. More on Ms. Turmel here, here and here.

2:36pm… Video of Mr. Layton’s announcement is available here.

2:40pm… Early reports from the Canadian Press, Globe, Star and Postmedia.

2:46pm… The NDP has set up an online form for Canadians to send get well messages to Mr. Layton.

2:51pm… The Post’s Kathryn Blaze Carlson reports that doctors have not yet determined which type of cancer Mr. Layton is dealing with. Continue…

The short, underwhelming history of pie-throwing

By Claire Ward - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 2:14 PM - 0 Comments

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The short, underwhelming history of pie-throwing

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Ann Coulter (but they missed her)

Assailants: Two University of Arizona students, allegedly of the group 'Al Pieda'

Weapon of choice: Cream pies

Outcome: The two students are reportedly arrested. Coulter continues to gives speeches and appear on television and radio shows across the U.S.

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It’s all fun and games until someone demands an answer

By Erica Alini - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 9 Comments

John Allemang profiles Terry Milewski.

“I happen to think that Canadians can be a little too complacent and pacific,” says Mr. Milewski, the lone-wolf outsider slotted in among the power-lunchers at Hy’s Steakhouse. “Our job as reporters is not to meekly accept whatever answer we’re given, but to challenge and provoke and press.”

Mr. Milewski was, somewhat famously, shouted down by Conservative partisans during a media availability with the Prime Minister during the last campaign. He has since been singled out for not showing proper deference to Mr. Harper.

Fans of irony will note that a decade ago it was Conservative MPs—including Stephen Harper—who rallied to Mr. Milewski’s cause when the CBC journalist was hounding Jean Chretien.

Canada's best prime ministers

By Norman Hillmer and Stephen Azzi - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 62 Comments

CP; Chuck Mitchell/CP

Stephen Harper has his majority government. The Liberal party is in tatters, and the Bloc Québécois is devastated. The NDP, inexperienced in the limelight and leaning to the left, is a reliable target. No one now doubts the Prime Minister’s capacity for raw politics, or his staying power.

Harper is one of a select few Canadian leaders to have won three consecutive federal elections. When his current term ends, he will have been in office longer than many past titans, including Brian Mulroney, John Diefenbaker, and Lester Pearson.

All that remains, and it is a great deal, is to discover what Harper will make of his new lease on parliamentary life, and what history will make of him. To set a benchmark, we’ve undertaken Maclean’s second rankings survey on Canadian prime ministers, to determine the greats, near greats, and also-rans, as well as the ingredients of success and the reasons for failure.

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Nardwuar v. Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 35 Comments

As he did with Paul Martin, Jean Chretien and Jack Layton before, the incomparable Nardwuar did the hip-flip with Michael Ignatieff the other day in Vancouver.

Statistical probabilities

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 9:18 AM - 51 Comments

Pollsters continue to debate the meaning and prominence of their work.

Gregg said the proliferation of sometimes conflicting polls and the hypeventilating analysis that frequently accompanies them does not strengthen democracy. On the contrary, he said: “Rather than have a public that’s informed, you have a public that’s misinformed.” He said he’s not arguing that polls should be ignored; only that their import needs to be interpreted much more cautiously. Rather than pontificate on weekly fluctuations in individual polls, he said it makes more sense to average the results of various surveys and look at the trends over longer periods of time.

It is probably important to consider, as Eric Grenier did this week, how much and how often polling responses change when an election campaign is conducted. Consider, for instance, that the last three changes in government were not obviously foretold by publicly available polling data released immediately before the election was called. Continue…

Stephen Harper and Canada, a love story (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 at 9:04 AM - 251 Comments

Eleven years before he declared himself and his side to be “Canadians first and only,” Stephen Harper declared his allegiance to an Alberta quite apart from Canada.

The following op-ed was published by the National Post on December 8, 2000, shortly after that year’s federal election. Sorting out how he got from writing what appears here to saying what he says now probably goes as far as any question towards sorting out Stephen Harper. Continue…

Those who do not remember history (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 1:14 PM - 42 Comments

From the Prime Minister’s remarks to the Conservative caucus this morning, a slight adjustment to yesterday’s line.

As you all know, at the best of times, it is rare for governing parties to pick up seats in by-elections…

Indeed. While governments of the last 40 years have retained about 60% of their own seats in by-elections and won about 40% of by-elections overall, I count only a dozen pick-ups for the governing party of the day (four each for the governments of Trudeau, Chretien and Harper).

Those who do not remember history

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 12:42 PM - 138 Comments

From the Prime Minister’s statement today on last night’s by-election results.

“Though it is rare for a governing party to win by-elections, we are buoyed by the fact that the Conservative Caucus in the House of Commons has increased.”

As noted previously, and according to Wikipedia’s records, heading into last night 31 seats last held by the incumbent government have been contested in by-elections over the last 30 years, 22 of those—71%—remaining with the government.

Since taking office in 2006, the Harper government has now picked up four seats that were held by opposition parties. The Chretien government won an equal number of opposition seats between 1988 1993 and 2004. The Mulroney government retained six two of its nine six seats and picked up two opposition seats.*

You have to go back to the The Trudeau government to find an incumbent administration that significantly struggled in by-elections—between 1968 and 1979 1984, 20 25 Liberal government seats were contested, 11 13 of those going to the opposition by my count. Over But over the same period, the Liberals picked up three four opposition ridings.

Going back to 1968 then, a total of 57 53 seats last held by an incumbent government have been contested, 34 32 of those retained by the incumbent. Over that same period, the governing party has picked up a dozen seats held by opposition parties.

*Wells checked my math and it seems I took a slightly wrong turn somewhere in the 80s. Larger trend still holds.

The myth of the returning hero

By Aaron Wherry and John Geddes - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 11 Comments

Prentice with Harper after the announcement | Chris Wattie/Reuters

It was not long after Jim Prentice announced his impending departure from federal politics that speculation about his leadership aspirations began anew. But it’s entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that Ottawa has seen the last of him.

Explaining the decision to accept a senior executive position with CIBC, Prentice said it was merely a matter of time. “When I entered federal politics in 2001 I made a commitment that my time in politics would last eight to 10 years,” he said. “It has now been nine years and it is time for me to pursue new opportunities outside of public life.” A well-regarded cabinet minister who ran for the Progressive Conservative party leadership in 2003 (finishing second to Peter MacKay), he was sometimes thought to be a potential successor to Stephen Harper. That speculation will not end with Prentice’s exit, but if he stays away he would do so in good company.

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The Commons: Stephen Harper lets it all out

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 6:44 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister is a busy man and so he cannot always attend to the House. His appearance today, for instance, was his first in a week. And this, it seemed, was long overdue—not so much for us, this place and our democracy, but for him. Indeed, judging from his subsequent behavior he arrived quite pent up, needing very much, from a spiritual perspective, to openly air his concerns and grievances.

This is perhaps the best way to understand the man’s outbursts—as a natural and necessary unburdening, a shouty rebalancing of his chakras. So let us think of this as somehow healthy. If only so that we might say these proceedings serve some purpose.

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Let the people ask

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 1:18 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff’s relating yesterday of a question from a young man named Derek harkens somewhat to a program the Reform party attempted upon arriving in Ottawa in 1994.

In ye olden days, during those dreary days before electronic mail, Preston Manning’s side set up phone and fax lines to receive questions from average Canadians that could then be put to the government of the day during QP. Manning’s second question of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in fact, was asked on behalf of Dr. Dean P. Eyre of Ottawa.

A week later, Reform MP Randy White attempted to relate a question from Raymond Watts of Surrey, but was admonished by the speaker of the day, Gilbert Parent, on procedural grounds. It’s unclear, at least to me, how much longer the program lasted. Its existence was still being boasted about a month later, but by the end of that year, the Reform side had more or less abandoned its larger goal of turning QP into a genteel exchange of relevant information.

The general notion though of constituent questions is quite central to Michael Chong’s hopes for QP reform. Continue…

What lies beneath Quebec's scandals

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, September 24, 2010 at 5:50 PM - 0 Comments

JONATHAN HAYWARD/ JACQUES DESCHENES/CP

No, Quebec is not the only province where political scandal sometimes erupts. Governments and business have been corrupting each other across this country since pre-Confederation days. But in no other province does it feel quite so . . . inevitable. British Columbia has thrown up the odd chiselling premier, Atlantic Canada is famously steeped in patronage, but there is no comparison to the kind of octopussal industry-union-mob-party configuration lurking just below the surface of politics in Quebec. Toronto may have been scandalized by the cronyism of the Mel Lastman era, but only in Montreal would a candidate for mayor publicly confess to being afraid for his life. When a senior adviser to Ontario premier David Peterson was forced to resign after it was revealed he had accepted a refrigerator from a party donor with ties to a developer, puzzled Montrealers phoned their friends in Toronto, asking, ‘What was in the fridge?’ ”

The roots of corruption run deep in the province. Scrounging for funds to carry him through the 1872 election, the eminently corruptible Sir John A. Macdonald didn’t have far to look: Montrealer Sir Hugh Allan, said to be the richest man in Canada, was even then angling for the contract to build the CPR. Fifty years later, with Prohibition in force and Montreal a flourishing centre of the cross-border smuggling business, Mackenzie King saw fit to put Jacques Bureau in charge of the customs department, with comically debauched results: the scandal that ultimately led to the King-Byng affair.

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Jean Who?

By Michael Petrou - Sunday, September 5, 2010 at 6:03 AM - 0 Comments

Former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien is given one paragraph in former British prime minister Tony Blair’s new 700-page autobiography, A Journey. Not to worry, though;  Chrétien also features prominently in a photograph. Unfortunately, it would appear no one associated with the book was able or remembered to identify him, so in the photograph’s caption he isn’t named.

Better know a talking point

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 11:53 AM - 0 Comments

From the official government lines distributed over the weekend.

The Ignatieff Liberals promise to force all Canadians to answer personal and intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of jail, fine, or both.

Though the threat of imprisonment is included in the Statistics Act of 1970, no one has ever apparently been sent to prison for refusing to answer the census. The threat of a fine appears in both the Statistics Act and the Census Act of 1870. Until 1951, the census was conducted every 10 years, afterwards every five years.

The following prime ministers then—assuming the threat of a fine was not momentarily suspended between 1870 and 1970—would seem to have forced Canadians to answer personal and intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of jail or fine: John A. Macdonald (thrice), Wilfrid Laurier (twice), Arthur Meighen, RB Bennett, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent (twice), John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Trudeau (thrice), Brian Mulroney (twice), Jean Chretien (twice) and Stephen Harper.

Hey look: From out of the fake waters…

By Paul Wells - Friday, June 11, 2010 at 9:50 AM - 2 Comments

In close consultation with my editors, I decided to relax and have some fun in this week’s print column. Somber cogitation to return next week, probably.

Iron Jean: A Liberal party fantasy

By Paul Wells - Friday, June 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 97 Comments

Fahad Shadeed / Reuters

Nobody who was there will ever forget the day Jean Chrétien came back to politics. It was a perfect sunny day at the edge of summer in Toronto. An eerie quiet reigned over the G20 media centre. The only action worth mentioning was a technical briefing on agriculture policy by the Japanese deputy chargé d’affaires. Suddenly an ominous burbling sound emanated from the fake lake. Without any more fuss, the 20th prime minister of Canada rose up out of the water, dressed in a navy two-piece as if for lunch at Hy’s.

A watching cameraman opened his mouth in a silent “O” of surprise, only to discover that a golf ball had somehow wedged itself between his teeth. Pierre Trudeau rowed past Chrétien in a canoe, wearing a buckskin jacket, and offered to lend a hand.

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This just in from the school cafeteria

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 9:01 AM - 29 Comments

So Warren says that Alf told him that someone said something to Ed and Roy. And John says that Alf told him that Jean talked to Ed and Roy and Joe. But Alf says he’s only talked to Warren and John and that he only heard about Jean and Ed because Warren told him. Anyway. Hopefully the guys at the West Beverly Blaze will figure it all out soon.