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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The prime-ministers-in-waiting club

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 5, 2010 at 11:38 AM - 0 Comments

Despite theorizing to the contrary, Jim Prentice does not presently sound like someone much interested in making a triumphant return to politics.

“I am closing the door on political life,” he said, stressing his support for Mr. Harper and the party. “I have completed that tour of duty.”

Despite theorizing to the contrary, mind you, we’ve so far not seen the triumphant returns of Frank McKenna, Brian Tobin, John Manley or Bernard Lord.

For those considering whether to invest public money that would aid a Canadian NHL franchise

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

With an official request now on record that the federal government contribute public money for the purposes of building a hockey arena that would conceivably aid in returning an NHL team to Quebec City, here is the text of two media advisories which were issued, three days apart, in January 2000.

The first was sent out January 18. That day, industry minister John Manley announced a subsidy plan meant to aid Canada’s struggling NHL franchises. Three days later, amid much consternation, the Liberal government of the day scrapped the proposal. The second release was issued in response to that reversal.

To wit. Continue…

Jean Chrétien gets hung

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 24 Comments

Past and current MPs came out for the hanging of Jean Chrétien’s official portrait painted by artist Christan Nicholson. Below, Chrétien with the portrait.

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Former Liberal MP Martin Cauchon (left) with Liberal MP Denis Coderre.

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Aline Chrétien (left) and Laureen Harper.

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Riffling through the budget reaction

By John Geddes - Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 6:19 PM - 1 Comment

From interest groups at various points on the political spectrum:

On freezing of foreign aid spending at $5 billion a year:

“Canada’s performance is nothing short of an international embarrassment,” said Gerry Barr, president of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. “To announce a freeze to aid spending as Canada is about to host the G8 and G20 meetings shows a lack of leadership and is unconscionable.”

On the plan to shrink the deficit to $1.8 billion in 2014-15:

“By putting off balancing the books for at least five years, the federal government is sacrificing Canadian competitiveness,” said Niels Veldhuis, a Fraser Institute senior economist. “With revenues expected to rebound this coming year, the government could have balanced the budget within two years.”

On turning off the stimulus spending tap after 2010-11:

“All signals are that we are not yet out of the wood and cutting back on government spending will only add to the problem,” said Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress. “Imagine where we would be today if we had done nothing, as this government was proposing just 16 months ago.”

On pressing ahead with corporate tax cuts even while running big deficits:

“These tax changes, combined with responsible fiscal policies and unwavering support for open markets and trade liberalization, send an important signal to the rest of the world,” said John Manley, president and CEO of the Canadian council of Chief Executives.

Held accountable in the House

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 2:08 PM - 43 Comments

Some years ago, speculation arose that the Prime Minister of the day was preparing to prorogue Parliament, consequently delaying the delivery of a potentially damning report into his government’s conduct. Suffice it to say, the leader of the opposition and his de facto deputy of the day were quite displeased by this possibility and said so during Question Period that fall afternoon. Continue…

New politics

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 1:51 PM - 10 Comments

Bit late to this, but here is John Manley reflecting on his time in office, the current state of play and the way forward.

Many of the changes in political culture were healthy. We ceased to spend what we could not afford. We no longer assumed that growth was inevitable and learned that we had to have the right mix of public policy and investment if we wanted a strong economy. We demanded results and high ethical conduct from our public officials.

All of this is good. But what I see as the erosion of public space — the declining importance we attach to collective action, and the growing distrust of the state — are dangerous if left unchecked. If the past year and a half of turmoil in the financial markets has taught us anything at all, surely lesson number one is that public policy matters.

John Manley says he wasn't a player in the Donolo move

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:26 AM - 18 Comments

Among some versions swirling around Parliament Hill of how Peter Donolo was recruited as Michael Ignatieff’s new chief of staff, John Manley’s name figures prominently.

But Manley categorically denies reports that Ignatieff asked for his advice, or that he offered it. And he says he is mystified by a related rumour that he circulated word that Donolo was returning to Ottawa.

I have not spoken to Manley directly on this (he’s not in Ottawa today). But through staff at the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, he told me he has not talked to Ignatieff since August, when he briefed him on the situation in Afghanistan. Manley said he was not in the loop in any way on the Liberal leader’s deliberations about shaking up his staff.

In fact, Manley, who held a series of senior cabinet positions in Jean Chretien’s government, has generally been keeping his distance from Liberal party matters since June, when he was appointed as the next president of the CCCE. His term there begins officially on Jan. 1, 2010, but he’s already moved into an office at the umbrella group for Canada’s top corporations.

Hey look: We found John Manley

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 2:10 PM - 10 Comments

From the latest print edition, my column, featuring the next head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. He looks oddly familiar. He says interesting things.

Innovation isn’t in Canada’s DNA

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 38 Comments

I caught up with John Manley by telephone at his eastern Ontario cottage, where his summer vacation was already drawing to a close. The former Liberal minister, who served as deputy prime minister in Jean Chrétien’s last years as PM, will have a busy autumn.

Manley has had five years of relative calm as a corporate lawyer and member of assorted blue-chip boards—Canadian Pacific, CIBC, Nortel. Well, the Nortel chip used to be blue, anyway. He did agree to run that Afghanistan panel for Stephen Harper, a decision that earned Manley a lot of detractors in the Liberal party. But then, he never was much good at passing tests of ideological purity. Continue…

What are we doing in Afghanistan? (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 1:25 PM - 29 Comments

A week after the Canadian government authorized military action in Afghanistan, the House spent a night debating the decision and the way ahead. The record of that discussion, which lasted until two in the morning, can be found here—including comment from Jean Chretien, Stockwell Day, Gilles Duceppe, Alexa McDonough, Joe Clark, John Manley and Irwin Cotler.

Chretien’s conclusion is perhaps noteworthy in our present circumstance. Continue…

Post-partisan? Show, don't tell

By Andrew Coyne - Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 4:32 PM - 51 Comments

The lesson we are all supposed to learn from this episode is the need for both sides to reach across the aisle and cooperate on the people’s business. The public, we are told, is fed up with hyper-partisan gamesmanship at a time of such economic peril. The Liberals, with large sections of the media on board, have been especially critical of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in this regard.

All right. So who is willing, not just to talk the talk, but to walk the walk? More to the point, who has shown that ability to work across party lines in the national interest? How about, I don’t know … John Manley?

The thing that was supposed to have been the biggest obstacle to his leadership hopes — that he accepted Harper’s appointment to chair a commission on the future of the Afghanistan mission — is exactly the sort of thing that recommends him for the job, post-crisis: that is, if the Grits mean what they say about dialling down the partisanship. The Manley report was a masterpiece of statesmanship, so well received in all quarters that it provided the template for both parties, Liberals and Conservatives, to come to a common position. At a time when there was real danger of Afghanistan becoming a wedge issue, with all that that might mean for the safety and morale of the troops in the field, Manley’s report showed both sides the road to compromise.

I’m just saying…

Oh hello, the grown-ups have showed up at last

By Andrew Coyne - Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 3:41 PM - 52 Comments

The news in John Manley’s piece in the Globe and Mail today is not that he’s calling for Stephane Dion’s resignation — everybody’s onside for that — but that he has come out firmly and publicly against the coalition — the first leading Liberal to do so. To wit:

As a Liberal, I believe the first step for my party is to replace Stéphane Dion as leader with someone whose first job is to rebuild the Liberal Party, rather than leading a coalition with the NDP.

There’s more in that vein (“the notion that the public would accept Stephane Dion as prime minister, after having resoundingly rejected that possibility a few weeks earlier, was delusional at best “), but it is best seen not as an attack on Dion, but as a shot across the bows of the current declared candidates to replace him, all of whom have publicly endorsed this “delusional” notion — and continue to do so.

That would obviously include Bob Rae — who is gearing up to campaign across the country in favour of the coalition — but also Michael Ignatieff, whose opposition to the deal has been confined to leaks from subordinates to the effect that he was the last person to sign the caucus letter calling on the Governor General to ask the coalition to form a government.

Manley’s intervention has sent shock waves through the party, where there is deep disatisfaction with the deal. If Ignatieff, the acknowledged frontrunner, does not forcefully dissociate himself from the coalition, a Draft Manley movement is inevitable. In fact, given the damage the coalition has already done to the party — 20% in the polls, anyone? — one may be under way as we speak.

Notes on a crisis: Where have you gone, John Manley?

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 11:49 PM - 101 Comments

The Liberal Party turns its lonely eyes to you. Or might.

By now it is clear — especially after tonight’s catastrophic performance by Stephane Dion — that the coalition is toast. Assuming Harper seeks, and obtains, the Governor General’s assent to prorogue Parliament until next month, there will be no quick assumption of power, the glue that might at least hold the Liberals together, if not the coalition. But without it, and in view of the decidedly cool — in some places, red hot — public response to the proposal, Liberal nerves are starting to crack.

Guelph MP Frank Valeriote has come out publicly against the idea — to the conspicuous applause of Warren Kinsella, Ignatieff supporter and Chretien diehard. Toronto area MPs Judy Sgro and Jim Karygiannis have also publicly expressed misgivings. Ignatieff himself is widely reported to be distancing himself from the proposal, as have Frank McKenna — and Manley. And we’re only two days in.

I am willing to bet much of the party rank and file have no use for the coalition idea, and even less for the destruction it will wreak on the party. They will be casting about desperately, looking for someone to save them from ruin. The logical avenue for this is the leadership race. But having publicly endorsed the deal, all three current candidates are hopelessly compromised. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for them to row back from their position with their credibility intact.

Let a candidate of stature enter the race on an anti-coalition platform, and he or she would instantly attract a wave of support. Until now, the Ignatieff and Rae machines would have precluded any serious challenge. But the party is in such turmoil after the events of recent days that the situation has suddenly become a lot more fluid.

But who? Martin Cauchon? As a federalist from Quebec, he’d help repair the damage to the party’s base in that province. But a Manley candidacy would be particularly compelling, in view of another factor: the sharp decline in Stephen Harper’s fortunes. Such is the damage he has sustained that the centre-right vote is now very much in play — provided the Liberals can arrest the lurch to the left implied by their participation in the coalition, and provided they can put forward a credible centre-right leader. The candidate that most readily fits that description: John Manley.

What’s that rustling sound? Is that a draft?

UPDATE: Threat of defections shifts the sands beneath Dion’s feet:

The Liberals’ chief whip is asking his MPs not to abandon the party as concerns grow about dissatisfaction over Stéphane Dion’s leadership.

At a closed-door caucus meeting yesterday morning, Rodger Cuzner said that if rival parties approach MPs about crossing the floor “we want to hear about them first” – a recognition of how fragile things are for the Liberals under Mr. Dion.

A caucus insider said there is growing unease in the party with the accord reached between the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tories mount a public-relations war against the coalition, which they are characterizing as an alliance with the separatists.

One Liberal MP said that if Mr. Dion does not prevail and become leader and prime minister of the proposed coalition government, “he can’t stay until May.”

Skip a debate? This guy walked out on the whole campaign

By Paul Wells - Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 10:42 PM - 16 Comments

Here’s an excellent speech on stuff in general by John Manley. I sang its praises when Manley delivered it in the spring and I have recently talked about it to some friends, so now I’ll have a link I can send to them. There is something very mercenary about the way I run this blog on weekends.

How many times does he have to tell you?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 3:26 PM - 3 Comments

From Maclean’s, Dec. 18, 2006. Page 18, Chapter 1 of our Liberal leadership epic. From the night of Paul Martin’s defeat.

John Manley, the former minister of industry, foreign affairs and finance in successive Chretien governments, was doing analysis on CBC television on election night. “I was as surprised as everybody” when Martin announced his resignation, Manley recalls. The first thought that came to mind: “I have to make a decision quickly.”

And he did. “When I walked out of the CBC studio onto John Street in the morning, I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ I knew what I had to do: I had to get up in the morning and get on the phone and start lining up supporters. And I had to get out of a lot of things that I was newly into, some of them non-profit, some of them volunteer, some of them paid, and wind down my investments.” If Manley hadn’t already dropped out of politics, if he had stayed on as a Martin minister, “I would certainly have been in the race,” he says. But now his life was heading another way. A few days after the election, Manley published an op-ed article in the Globe and Mail and La Presse announcing his decision.

Several months ago, I did a little work on a piece about Manley, looking at his leadership potential. That piece died for two reasons. Continue…

John Manley is not running for the Liberal leadership

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 12:41 PM - 38 Comments

This has been another instalment of Things That Won’t Surprise You At All.

BTC: The opinion too hot for Megapundit

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 3, 2008 at 5:22 PM - 12 Comments

“If Canadians only could vote in tomorrow’s U.S. election, Barack Obama might take upward of 90 per cent of the vote. Yet if Obama were a Canadian and running for office in this country, voters might well put the boots to him for being so damn full of himself.”
—Roy MacGregor, today

Megapundit: Sticking it to the Ayatollah

By selley - Monday, October 27, 2008 at 2:35 PM - 29 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Daphne Bramham on Nazanin Afshin-Jam; David Olive and Greg Weston on tough economic times; Scott Taylor, off to the Caucasus; Haroon Siddiqui on the Iacobucci inquiry; Dan Gardner on ending the oil addiction; Barbara Yaffe on Bloc Québécois fundraising.

About those election promises…
Prepare to be disappointed for your own good.

The Toronto Star‘s David Olive observes the “awkwardly choreographed dance” currently being performed by the prime minister and the provincial premiers on the matter of deficit financing, whether it’s necessary and who should be blamed for it if it is. “It’s not just that if a swimming pool somewhere has to be closed next year, the premiers want Ottawa to wear it,” he writes. “They also want Ottawa to speed up its spending on job-creating infrastructure projects for which the premiers and territorial leaders could claim some credit when the unemployed start pounding on the doors of legislatures from Charlottetown to Victoria.”

So long as deficits are short term and exist only when times demand them, The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson says there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. But as a habit, they’re a ruinous addiction that’s incredibly hard to break. Consult Hansard from the 1980s and you’ll find “Liberal and NDP MPs … predicting that any attempts at fiscal prudence would result in tens of thousands of people becoming unemployed, communities being crushed, grim fates awaiting millions of vulnerable people,” says Simpson. As such, it would behove the Tories to ditch as many useless, costly election promises as they can—he suggests the two-cent cut to the diesel excise tax and the $5,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers—before they’re forced to ditch the one about never running a deficit.

Continue…

Manley

By Paul Wells - Monday, October 27, 2008 at 11:31 AM - 0 Comments

Maybe.

The Commons: The ghosts of statesmen past

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 7:27 PM - 0 Comments

Joe Clark gets his portrait, Maxime Bernier is merely hanged

The Scene. Not that anyone expected to see him within a kilometer of this place, but, for the record, Maxime Bernier was not in his newly-assigned seat when Question Period was declared open at 2:15pm this afternoon.

Which is surely his loss. For he missed quite the show.

Rising with the first query, Stephane Dion’s voice cracked, the leader of the opposition apparently so excited at the prospect of an obvious advantage to claim over his government tormentors.

“Mr. Speaker, five hours before the foreign affairs minister resigned, the Prime Minister said, ‘I don’t take this subject seriously.’ It is true. He did not take this subject seriously and this speaks volumes about the appalling lack of judgment of the Prime Minister. Why was the Prime Minister more interested in protecting his protege than protecting the interests of Canadians?”

The Prime Minister, safely away in France, likely would have objected most to the suggestion that Bernier was any kind of protege. A project, maybe. But a protege? Surely we know better by now than to ever believe this PM would entertain the idea of grooming a rival, let alone one of Mr. Bernier’s capabilities. Continue…