Three's company, four's a crowd

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 4:06 PM - 0 Comments

A couple of people have suggested the Couillard story has legs because it’s got boobs. I disagree. I think the Couillard story has legs because the people involved won’t stop lying about it.

Take this latest bit, for example: La Presse has uncovered evidence Couillard was involved with someone in Montreal’s Cotroni clan before she was with Gilles Giguère. Giguère had previously been believed to be her first of three romantic links to Montreal’s criminal underworld. Turns out, she dated Tony Volpato, Frank Cotroni’s right-hand man, a few years prior.

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ITQ Witness Watch: M(ulroney) R(ecall) Day Minus Nine (and counting)

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 7:32 AM - 0 Comments

… and still no word from the official site on whether former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has accepted the invitation from the House Ethics committee to make a return appearance before June 12th. Of course, if the current Prime Minister finally gets around to setting up the fabled promised public inquiry, the whole issue could become moot — but unless and until he does, the clock is ticking.

In other, vaguely Mulroney-related news …
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The Commons: The boys are back in town

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 2, 2008 at 5:42 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister and his loyal Doberman return to rouse the government lads

The Scene. As is his habit, Stephen Harper slouched. As Question Period began, he leaned back on only his left elbow. Later, he settled on both.

He appeared satisfied. Relaxed. Undisturbed. Content.

Indeed, with he and John Baird freshly returned to the House after a week away for each, there was a certain air of confidence in numbers. The boys club—Peter, John, Jason, Jay, Stockwell, Rob, PVL and the rest—was back together. Each visibly happy to be in each other’s midst, the bunch of them lounging around the government front benches in their typically dark suits and ties.

Oh sure, this is an administration under seige—one of their brothers lost to the wiles of a female interloper. But to expect obvious signs of concern from this bunch would be to assume a certain seriousness for the business of governing that has blessedly never burdened more than a couple of them. Except of course when the camera turns their way and a furrowed brow or pensive glare must be summoned. Continue…

Nobody expects the Public Safety committee interrogation: Liveblogging debate on the Bernier motion

By kadyomalley - Monday, June 2, 2008 at 3:50 PM - 0 Comments

3:30:00 PM
Ooh, perfect timestamping. So it turns out that there’s a pretty good chance that the Bernier motion—the one to hold a four-star spectacular committee hearing on the whole Affair—may be up for debate at Public Safety this afternoon, even though it wasn’t listed on the most recent notice. The mere possibility, however, is enough to motivate a dozen or so journalists—some with camera crews in tow—to West Block, where we’re currently staked out in front of the very closed door.

My guess: if the motion comes up, someone—an opposition member, that is —will call for a vote on whether to open the meeting up to the public (read: media).

3:33:32 PM
And that’s exactly what just happened. We’ve been ushered back into the room, where Serge Menard is explaining his motion—you can probably guess what his reasoning is, since we’ve heard it all before. His colleague, whose name I always forget, concurs – and moves a friendly amendment to begin holding hearings by next Monday. The chair, Garry Breitkreuz, seems bemused, but the debate is officially on.

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Say goodnight, Boo Boo (Weekend Edition)

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 10:57 AM - 0 Comments

So while the Globe advances the Berner/Couillard story on several fronts this weekend (see below), the Post opts for a single story. And then manages to bury the lede. For convenience, here’s the third sentence: “But a slim majority, 55%, also want the RCMP to investigate whether Mr. Bernier breached national security, and they want the Mounties to delve into his relationship with Julie Couillard, according to a new poll.”

Support for an RCMP investigation is highest in Alberta and only in Atlantic Canada did support fall below 50%.

And yet, Ipsos Reid’s John Wright manages to make lemonade of it all. “If anything, this may have been the linchpin for changing the face of the government and actually getting on with the business of government.” Continue…

Me and Mom

By Andrew Coyne - Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 5:36 PM - 0 Comments

From today’s Globe: Bikers suspected Couillard was police informant

Whoa, wait a minute! I was only joking.

UPDATE: The cops are denying it. Well they would.

BTC: As the minister goes…

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 30, 2008 at 3:22 PM - 0 Comments

Following-up on the Star’s report this morning that Maxime Bernier’s former chief of staff and senior policy advisor have been relieved of their respective duties, this will apparently be the last day for Bernier’s former director of communications, one Neil Hrab.

For whatever it’s worth, I’m led to believe the move has most to do with eliminating redundancy between David Emerson’s staff and those who remain from the Bernier Era.

Megapundit: Being Sharon Stone

By selley - Friday, May 30, 2008 at 1:24 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: John Robson, Don Martin and Susan Riley on the leave-behind affair; Rosie DiManno on journalist casualties in Afghanistan.

The Bernier-Couillard Affair, Day 104
Or maybe it just feels that way…

“The only fruitful line of inquiry” for a Commons committee investigation, the Ottawa Citizen‘s Susan Riley opines, “would involve Couillard’s role, if any, in helping her former biker pals apply for a security contract at Montreal airport in 2005, presumably to facilitate their drug trafficking.” As for the whole leave-behind affair itself, she can’t imagine what Couillard could have done with the information to threaten national security. “Sell it to the Taliban? Pass it to her geo-politically astute former biker pals?” And besides, Riley quite trenchantly notes, we’ll never know what those documents contained anyway—either because the information really was that sensitive or, more likely, “because it would give rise to awkward questions about why they were declared confidential in the first place” and imperil the “‘national security’ dodge” that keeps so much in Ottawa needlessly under wraps.

John Robson, writing in the Citizen, “shed[s] no tears for Mr. Bernier,” and if Couillard is “a babe in the woods,” he says “the bears better look out.” His goal today is simply to expose the hypocrisy of Canadian politicians to “maximum ridicule.” By saying the matter has nothing to do with “the minister’s private life,” he argues, Stephen Harper is suggesting the same fracas would have erupted had he “been married to her for 15 years”—which is laughable. The claim that Bernier only found out about the bikers when the press got wind of it is “as useless as it is implausible because it tacitly admits he would have worried if he had known.” And Michael Ignatieff, meanwhile, says it’s all about the possible “link between organized crime and airport security in Montreal” and that he doesn’t care about Couillard’s past. “But the possible link with organized crime is her ‘past,’ ” Robson counters.

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The Commons: ‘What happened is what happened’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 6:08 PM - 0 Comments

It ain’t much. But it’s the best explanation this government’s got.

The Scene. Oh how cruel and uncaring are these bounds of logic.

“Mr. Speaker, for at least five weeks classified documents about our forces in Afghanistan and our allies at NATO lay open in a private house. The government has failed to explain how such a security breach was allowed to happen and then go undetected for five weeks at least,” Michael Ignatieff surveyed. “The government is either incompetent or it is covering up the truth. Which is it?”

Peter Van Loan, for the 54th time in the last 48 hours, rose to respond. “On the contrary,” he cried, “such a security breach was not allowed. It was not permitted. That is why the Minister of Foreign Affairs, when he took responsibility for the breach that occurred, tendered his resignation.”

Ignatieff repeated his charge. Van Loan restated his dismissal. And so the Liberal deputy was up for a third time.

“Mr. Speaker, that is again telling the House that a gross security breach was discovered on a Sunday night and there was no action until five o’clock the next day,” he said. “It is just not credible.” Continue…

BTC: Back to you, Mr. Bernier

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 3:56 PM - 0 Comments

The former foreign affairs minister, in a statement, yesterday. “Last Monday, I informed the prime minister of my resignation as Canada’s minister of foreign affairs as soon as I became aware of a security breach whereby I forgot confidential government documents at Ms. Julie Couillard’s residence.”

The Prime Minister’s deputy secretary, in an email to Macleans.ca, just now: “Maxime Bernier was informed on Sunday. The Prime Minister was informed on Monday later afternoon. Maxime Bernier offered his resignation and the Prime Minister accepted it. That’s the bottom line.”

And in case you were wondering about any hair-splitting between when the Prime Minister was informed and when the Prime Minister’s Office was made aware, there’s this too from Mr. Harper’s director of communications, Sandra Buckler: “The Prime Minister and his office first became aware of this issue on Monday afternoon, well after the media availability with the President of the Ukraine.”

That seems a fairly definitive denial of what a Bernier friend whispered in Jane Taber’s ear earlier this week. To wit. Continue…

Is that a prosthetic device, or…

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 3:44 PM - 6 Comments

Talking of bugs in the bed, Couillard’s story is not that implausible. Apparently the Mounties did just the same to Gerda Munsinger, the East German prostitute and spy whose assignations with various members of the Diefenbaker cabinet set the gold standard for sex scandals in federal politics (with the Francis Fox forgery case a close second). What they heard on the tapes was for a time the source of some puzzlement back at HQ: a loud “whump” sound every so often, as if something heavy had fallen to the floor.

Eventually the source of the noise was explained. It was Pierre Sevigny, the decorated war veteran and associate minister of National Defence, removing his wooden leg in preparation for action.

Or so one reads.

Undercovers agent

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 3:21 PM - 0 Comments

In all the hoo-haw over the Bedbug^TM affair (incidentally, talk about burying the lede: this Toronto Star story doesn’t get around to that particularly salacious detail until the eighteenth graf), amid all the unanswered questions and unfounded accusations, one possibility has not yet been considered: that the lovely Ms Couillard is actually an RCMP agent.

That would explain why she kept urging her underworld lovers to turn Queen’s evidence. That would explain why she was not detained when she and some of her biker gang associates were picked up in a police sweep.

It would also explain why there was no police background check on her after she became Maxime Bernier’s official girlfriend, or why, if there was, it did not seem to ring any alarm bells with the security people — it is not often, after all, that a person who had spent many years in the intimate company of organized crime is invited to meet the President of the United States, unless they’re a campaign contributor. It would explain why the government has been so signally unable to explain any of this. It may even explain why Bernier felt comfortable leaving classified documents in her possession.

I know what you’re thinking. Her behaviour since the story broke is hardly what one would expect of a trained police agent: going on TV, trying to sell her story to the press, complaining of bugs in her bed. Well, of course. If she was an undercover agent, the last thing she would do is act like one. Rather, she’d behave erratically, flightily, exactly like the serial former mobster moll she presents herself as.

I’m just sayin’….

The amnesiac, the control freak, and the 'woman scorned'

By selley - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 2:13 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Christie Blatchford on the National Day of Action; Lawrence Martin on Maxime Bernier; Greg Weston on the Olympic boycott fizzle.

Left behind
Maxime Bernier, Julie Couillard and Stephen Harper sift through the post-apocalyptic rubble.

The National Post‘s Terence Corcoran doesn’t think much of Julie Couillard, her “glamour-puss makeup,” her TVA interview with its “preposterous dialogue only a soap opera writer could create,” and her insistence that she’s not a security threat despite calling her lawyer, and then the media, instead of Bernier himself when she discovered the documents. He also doesn’t think much of Bernier’s taste in women. And he doesn’t think hardly anything of Stephen Harper’s decision to pull Bernier out of Industry, where he was “continuing a telecom revolution,” and ship him “to outer Afghanistan, a country he possibly couldn’t locate on a map prior to running for office,” and where he had no independence to put his considerable talents to good use.

Indeed, The Globe and Mail‘s Lawrence Martin notes, the leave-behind affair exposes a paradoxical and crippling weakness in Harper’s management style: he won’t suffer insubordination, but he’s quite “prepared to suffer fools.” This problem goes back to the Reform days, Martin notes, as chronicled by Preston Manning in his book. (We can’t recommend poking around Manning’s website highly enough, incidentally, starting with this.) If anything’s going to convince the Prime Minister to dial back the self-defeating micromanagement, Martin says the Bernier fiasco might be it. Making it happen will be Guy Giorno’s job one.

Continue…

BTC: Say goodnight, Boo Boo (Day Three)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 9:41 AM - 0 Comments

Not to dwell unnecessarily on this question of timing, but compare these two sentences.

First, from Mr. Bernier’s statement today. “Last Monday, I informed the prime minister of my resignation as Canada’s minister of foreign affairs as soon as I became aware of a security breach whereby I forgot confidential government documents at Ms. Julie Couillard’s residence.”

Then, from the letter of resignation distributed Monday night by the PMO. “I informed you late this afternoon that last night I became aware that I had left behind classified government documents at a private residence.”

Is there any reading by which both those statements can be true? Continue…

The Commons: Wait for the book

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 12:57 AM - 0 Comments

Oh what insights Peter Van Loan might one day bestow upon us

The Scene. Down south, where political reputations are taken quite seriously, the chattering classes are all atwitter about a former White House spokesman’s decision to come forward in book form and detail life in George W. Bush’s midst.

Of course, the post-employment tell-all is something of a tradition in U.S. politics. And not only among those who have a war to denounce. Just before this latest tome was released, Doug Feith, former under secretary for defense, was promoting his own account. A true believer in the Bush doctrine, he even appeared on The Daily Show to rather courageously defend what is now so widely scorned. It was, if nothing else, enlightening.

And at this it is surely tempting to wonder what books may one day emerge from the ranks of this Harper government. Which expressions of patent nonsense will come to be denounced. Which expressions of patent nonsense will come to be redeemed. Continue…

BTC: Who, what, when and so on

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 5:46 PM - 0 Comments

So back once more to the morning’s Globe story and the assertion that Maxime Bernier tried to resign Monday morning, but was made to wait until it was slightly more convenient.

Mr. Bernier has since released a statement that notes, “Last Monday, I informed the prime minister of my resignation as Canada’s minister of foreign affairs as soon as I became aware of a security breach.”

On Monday it was reported in the Globe that the documents in question were returned to Foreign Affairs “late Sunday night.” The Star said Foreign Affairs was notified “over the weekend.” (The CBC confirms tonight that Foreign Affairs had the documents on Sunday.)

The government though is staying firm to the original timeline. Continue…

Stock answers one

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 2:38 PM - 0 Comments

That sounds like a Yes from where I’m sitting.

Transcript to follow.

Ms. Munsinger, we presume?

By selley - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Christie Blatchford and Chantal Hébert on the leave-behind scandal; Dan Gardner on perfectly safe pesticides; Rosie DiManno on love in Afghanistan; John Ibbitson on Hillary Clinton.

His only crime was loving too much. And leaving all those documents at his girlfriend’s house.
It’s official: appointing an unqualified libertarian economist as foreign minister just because he’s from Quebec isn’t a good idea. Live and learn.

Continue…

BTC: Defending the life of the already dead

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

As Paul notes, sources are now claiming Maxime Bernier tendered his resignation Monday morning and it was the Prime Minister’s Office who put off accepting it until the evening. This would seem to reflect negatively on both the Prime Minister’s afternoon statement and Mr. Bernier’s publicly released letter of resignation.

And then there’s everything the likes of Peter Van Loan said in the House that fateful day. Let’s go to the highlight reel. Continue…

Bernier: Make the bad teevee machine stop

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 8:14 AM - 0 Comments

Principles of cabinet secrecy, my bum bum: he offered his resignation on Monday morning, but the PMO spent the day figuring out how it would play on TV? How… how… how Paul Martinesque.

BTC: Say goodnight, Boo Boo (Day Two)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 11:36 PM - 0 Comments

The latest on the misplaced dossier from the Globe. “Many relatively routine documents get stamped classified inside the government, and some Conservative government figures and bureaucrats were privately skeptical that misplacing an anodyne briefing note, even one with a classified tag, would lead to a minister’s dismissal. Either Mr. Bernier left behind secrets far more sensitive than suggested publicly, they said, or Mr. Harper used a relatively minor incident to axe the minister over repeated gaffes and Ms. Couillard’s embarrassing interview on Quebec television.”

***

The Globe says David Emerson won’t be expected to handle both his own portfolio and Foreign Affairs and Tony Clement may fill whichever post he vacates. CTV offers that Emerson will lose International Trade and keep Foreign Affairs. The network’s sources further the suggestion that Jim Prentice and Jim Flaherty will switch spots, while Helena Guergis will be demoted. (See previous thoughts on this.) Continue…

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…

BTC: If they wanted her once, they don't now

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 5:17 PM - 0 Comments

As to Julie Couillard’s claim of once being approached to run for the Conservatives, an e-mail was sent to the party earlier today seeking comment. The response from spokesman Ryan Sparrow: “To my knowledge she was not approached.”

This seemed a slight equivocation. So a follow-up e-mail was dispatched. Continue…

Bernier: A handy reminder

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments

The Chinese wall between what Stephen Harper cares about (loose documents) and what he claims not to care about (other loose objects) is an artificial construct, as we pointed out here 10 days ago, in a post that pointed to this article in Le Devoir. Because that article is now over the subscriber wall, here are pertinent points: Continue…