Rogers Communications turns 50
By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - 3 Comments
Rogers Communications celebrated their 50th anniversary in Ottawa at the Metropolitain Brasserie.
(Left to right) Rogers president and CEO Nadir Mohamed and Rogers Vice Chairman Phil Lind.
(Left to right) U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.
Liberal MP Justin Trudeau.
Loretta Rogers.
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In the shadow of 9/11
By macleans.ca - Friday, September 16, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 2 Comments
Debating the impact of the attacks and how it changed Canadian life, laws and liberties
Photography by Greg Locke
Last week in St. John’s, Maclean’s and CPAC hosted a round-table conversation entitled, “How has 9/11 changed our world?” In this wide-ranging discussion of the emotional, practical, political and cultural fallout in the decade following the attacks, Maclean’s columnists Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells were joined on the stage by David Collenette, Canada’s minister of transport at the time of 9/11 attacks, Sukanya Pillay, director of the national security program for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and Tarek Fatah, political activist, author, broadcaster and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. The discussion was moderated by CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen. The following is an edited excerpt.
Andrew Coyne: I don’t know what future historians will make of the grand sweep of September 11 and its place in world history, but there’s no doubt the last 10 years of our lives have been in the shadow of it and very much dominated by it. If there’s one thing that we should certainly remember on this anniversary it is the nature of the threat that al-Qaeda presented and still to some extent presents. It is, I think, unique and new, something new in world history, the combination of the willingness to inflict casualties on just an enormous scale, and the technological capacity married with it. I do think, though, we should, if we’re putting everything in the balance, take stock of the fact that 10 years later we have seriously degraded al-Qaeda’s capacity. We’ll discuss a lot of the pros and cons of how the battle has been fought, but I just want to leave people with the impression that it was a battle worth fighting, and it’s been broadly successful.
Paul Wells: The question before us is how did his happen, and I think it’s a combination of two things, extremism—or, to use a simpler term, evil—on one side, and complacency on the other. The extremism persists, and the complacency is gone, but it’s important to understand what those 19 men in those airplanes were trying to do: they were trying to provoke the West. The nature of asymmetrical warfare is you use the limited means at your disposal to essentially trip up a much larger and more powerful opponent, and to some extent those 19 men have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. We have to keep our vigilance up, we have to keep working. This is not a war that is going to go away just because a zero comes up at the end of the anniversaries. I think we are still in this for a very long time, which is why we have to make sure that, in defending our values, we don’t betray them.
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The last 25 years in books
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 8 Comments
Samara and the Writers’ Trust of Canada have released their shortlist for the best political book of the last quarter century.
Included is Right Side Up by our own Paul Wells.
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The quiet cuts
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 3:03 PM - 33 Comments
The hunt for the government’s mysterious cuts—as initiated by our Paul Wells—continues. Bill Curry finds $45-million taken from the Green Infrastructure Fund. Meanwhile, Tim Naumetz reviews the main estimates.
Almost all of the government’s security and public safety programs are increasing either modestly or substantially, including a 21 per cent hike in spending for the Correctional Service to $2.98-billion. The Canada Border Services Agency is receiving a 14 per cent increase, to $1.84-billion, and the Office of the Correctional Investigator, responsible for hearing complaints from offenders, is going up by 21 per cent, to $4.3-million.
But spending by the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is being reduced by 5.9 per cent to $414.6-million … The National Research Council will have its spending cut by 7.8 per cent to $690,836,000. Spending by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is set to drop by 10 per cent to $118,264,000 … The Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission is targeted for a 20 per-cent reduction in its spending, to $4.5-million from $4.7-million. Among the other agencies where cuts are planned, the Public Health Agency of Canada is set to have its spending cut by 8.2 per cent to $622-million.
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Paul Wells on the Liberals' platform
By macleans.ca - Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 4:05 PM - 0 Comments
Your daily campaign minute from Maclean’s columnists
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A day in the life of Michael Ignatieff's election campaign
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 5:45 PM - 0 Comments
Paul Wells follows the Liberal leader around Toronto
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MPs get bookish – Politics & the Pen
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 2:36 PM - 3 Comments
At this year’s Politics & the Pen gala, Anna Porter took home the $25 000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing for her book The Ghosts of Europe: Journeys Through Central Europe’s Troubled Past and Uncertain Future. Below, Porter with House Leader John Baird.
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Belinda Stronach and Peter Mansbridge.
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Why Egypt worries Israel
By Paul Wells - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 10:01 AM - 71 Comments
Many Israelis see the uprising as a sign of a dangerous new instability in the Arab world
Photograph by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
By Monday Ephraim Sneh had heard quite enough talk about democracy in Egypt.
“I am not interested in democracy in this region,” the former Israeli deputy minister of defence told a conference room full of dignitaries at the annual security conference in Herzliya, a Mediterranean Sea resort north of Tel Aviv. “Personally I prefer to have stability.”Sentiments like Sneh’s are easy to find in Israel these days, although the wiry 66-year-old expressed them more bluntly than most. Just look around, he said. Everywhere Israel’s neighbours get the vote, things get worse. Take Gaza, or as Sneh called it, “Hamastan,” after the ruling Hamas party’s 2006 election victory. “Based on a democratic, free election, we are facing now some of the worst terrorists.”
Or consider Lebanon, where a Hezbollah-backed candidate became prime minister in January. “Lebanon is democracy, so-called,” he said. “Lebanon is a constitution without a state. But it’s very democratic. You have an elected president, you have an elected prime minister, you have a speaker of Parliament, you have all these institutions. But the country is losing itself. We call it Hezbollahstan.”
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Coyne v. Wells on the protests in Egypt
By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 4:47 PM - 34 Comments
Columnists Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne discuss the prospects for democracy
RELATED: Maclean’s special report ‘Portrait of a tyrant: the life and times of Hosni Mubarak’
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Coyne v. Wells on five years of Harper
By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 10:04 AM - 39 Comments
Paul Wells’ and Andrew Coyne’s weekly podcast is back
ON NEWSSTANDS NOW: Paul Wells and John Geddes’ special report ‘What you don’t know about Stephen Harper’ and Andrew Coyne’s column ‘The damage done by doing so little’
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Coyne v. Wells on thin ice
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 6:58 PM - 0 Comments
Our Video postcast with Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells
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Inkless dialogue: the transcript
By Paul Wells - Monday, May 3, 2010 at 5:01 PM - 22 Comments
Macleans.ca: Chat will start at 3:00pm EST, you can submit you questions or comments before then. As usual, keep your questions clean and well written if you would like them to be answered. InklessPW: All right. Let’s see if this works. If it does, let’s live the dream, everyone! SeanStok: Why do the Liberals increasingly seem to lack focus? I don’t know if it’s Ignatieff or the broader ‘brain trust’, but they seem fundamentally unable to hone in on a substantive matter and stick with it cohesively. Why? InklessPW: Sean, I’m not sure it’s fair to say the Liberals “increasingly” lack focus, as they haven’t been busting out with focus ever since they lost the 2008 election on a focussed program of taxing carbon and using some of the savings to cut income taxes. I think it’s fair to ask what Michael Ignatieff wants to do in politics — or at least what he wants to do that would be different from what the government is doing. It’s also fair to note that he’s begun to address that question, especially in the speech he gave at the end of the Canada 150 conference in Montreal. (…) InklessPW: But escapades like yesterday’s scrum on renewing the Governor General’s mandate don’t help him. At worst, it’s a dreadful attempt to politicize the Crown (Colleague Coyne’s interpretation). At best, it’s random and distracting. It’s not a great day when spectators who are giving the Liberal leader the benefit of the doubt conclude he’s not sure what he’s saying or doing. Craig: Read your Afghan piece in the print addition. Give the change you think is/maybe taking place, what do your think Harper (or Parliament) will do as we draw closer to 2011? InklessPW: Craig, I’m honestly not the most reliable guide on what the government should do in (and about) Afghanistan after 2011. I’ve been all over the map on that, sometimes calling for the mission to be extended, sometimes calling for it to be cut short. All I can say is, I would really like any decision to be evidence-based, not inspired by a desire to keep a promise the prime minister made in 2008, an eternity ago by the fast-moving standards of the Afghan theatre. dejrabel: lol Why don’t you guys purchase the Mcleans.ca web address? That’s where I end up more than half the time that I’m looking for a Coynegasm. InklessPW: We are stuck hoping you folks will learn how to spell our magazine’s title. So far, 106 years in, it’s going so-so. Adam: Does the Conservative Party lack new ideas or is it just Harper’s obesession with tactical positioning that is dragging them down? InklessPW: Adam, I’m not sure they’re being dragged down. I know, I know, Harper has never held a majority of the House. Which makes him sort of like Lester Pearson. What he has done is governed, without interruption (OK, without interruption imposed by anyone but himself and the GG), for close to four and a half years. During that time, I believe he has sought to change the attitudes and comportment of the Canadian electorate more than the objective policy landscape: he does tactics, not governance. That’s really frustrating for a lot of people. But one thing that’s worth noting is, while the Harper Conservatives have been stuck below an absolute ceiling of about 38% in polls, and usually closer to 32%, they have also never sunk below about 29%. Contrast with, say, Trudeau and Mulroney, whose popularity was roller-coaster unpredictable. Harper has a hard floor, something his opponents should contemplate more often. Mark: Paul, I recall reading you have recently become a convert to proportional representation. What do you think are the chances that a majority of federal MPs might ever share your opinion? InklessPW: Really low. What would help would be if any province could pass an electoral reform that stuck and seemed, from the outside, to work. For that to happen, advocates of reform MUST ABSOLUTELY admit to themselves that all reforms proposed to date were too complex to be embraced by enough voters. Instead, reform advocates prefer to whine about the dumb voter. That rarely works well. peter: What do you think is the explanation for the recent Chritie Blatchford piece falling in such black hole? Do you think her angle repudiates Colvin’s story? InklessPW: I hope everyone reads Blatch’s column from the weekend, and Tim Powers’ blog post, also in the Globe, saying everyone should read Blatch’s column. Colvin’s testimony should have kicked off a debate, and several months after she spent a weekend dismissing Colvin with cheap contempt, it’s good to see Christie rejoining the debate. I’d add that any point of view supported by a marquee Globe columnist and a noted Globe blogger is not exactly in a “black hole.” AJP: Is it just me, or do you see the connection between the Wildrose Alliance and the Federal Tories? Danielle Smith is unwaveringly supportive of Harper, has his former inside man as one of her top guys, and they share strategists like Ezra Levant. Coincidence? InklessPW: AJP, Wildrose is more an illustration of the divisions in the federal Conservative party than of a straight-line connection between Harper’s party and Smith’s. Very roughly, former Reformers like Wildrose a lot, whereas former Progressive Conservatives — and there still are a lot in Alberta, especially in Calgary — think shifting support from the Stelmach Conservatives is pointlessly divisive. Both groups are well-populated, so far they manage to remain civil to one another, and I think the rift is more interesting than potentially dangerous to the federal Conservatives, as this is not really their fight. Out West: Paul, with the new trade deal signed by AB, BC and Sask last week do you think that the EU-Canada free trade deal is more likely? Also, is the gradual expansion of this agreement what will end interprovincial trade barriers? InklessPW: I do know for a fact the provinces have surprised European negotiators with their seriousness in attempting to deliver a coherent internal Canadian market for the purposes of free-trade negotiations. The “buy Canada” deal, which contained important provincial concessions on procurement, was one piece of evidence. So are the assorted interprovincial trade deals. I used to joke that Canada-EU trade couldn’t work because “Canada isn’t a real country, but Europe is.” That seems to be changing. Of course many hard decisions still lie ahead. dejrabel: Is there any hope for a truly fiscally conservative party in this country?Iggy wants to find as many grand projects to spend money on as possible (ie local food)& Harper is on the treadmill of infrastructure & announcements lead to more votes. InklessPW: We had a truly fiscally conservative part in the country once. It was called Reform and it topped out at 61 seats. (If I were mischievous I would say the Chrétien Liberals of autumn 2000 were pretty fiscally conservative too.) Stephen Harper decided a broader definition of conservatism, one based on social cues more than fiscal policy, was needed to achieve power. So far he is having a better few years than his monomaniacally fiscal-conservative critics. AJP: Does Maclean’s have an internship program for bloggers, or if not, are you open to that idea? there are many who would love to learn from you and the folks at Macleans. InklessPW: We have a one-year internship program, and I continue to be amazed at the quality of the people we hire for it. I’d frankly be leery of hiring young people to blog, a verb that so far in Canada means “bloviate about what reporters said in this morning’s newspapers.” We’ve had more success so far encouraging our young recruits to pick up reporting skills. Even our dear departed Colleague Kady was a print reporter for nearly a decade before she started blogging, and her qualities are the qualities of somebody who likes to dig up facts rather than pushing out opinions. Craig: GG replacement…does it REALLY matter? (And feel free to weigh in on AC’s commentary on the Grits using it as a political point). InklessPW: Craig, my interpretation wasn’t Andrew’s — as I’ve said elsewhere, I think Ignatieff was wandering through his day in a cheerful daze, not launching a Machiavellian plot against the (to me highly hypothetical) independence of the office of the GG. But I do like Andrew’s blog post, because it at least posits a motive for Ignatieff’s behaviour yesterday, whereas I can’t really come up with one. Scott: Any thoughts on the new Pirate Party of Canada? There are some who think they may help engage younger and/or disaffected voters. InklessPW: First I’ve heard of it. Godspeed, Pirates! From what little I know about European Pirate Parties, this sort of clean-government group could be a small but welcome voice. margery: what is the mood in Ottawa re Igs Gov general comments InklessPW: I think it’s fair to say the mood is “extremely calm.” As in, the government didn’t even bother to try to shove his comments down the Liberals’ throats at QP today, from what I saw. I think the whole thing will be forgotten within days, and Mr. Ignatieff won’t much mind. Yijun: As an anglophone who has seemed to make quite a headway on your French language ability, I’m curious about your thoughts on the bilingual requirement for Supreme Court justices. InklessPW: I ran into the Language Commissioner, my old friend and colleague Graham Fraser, in an airport the other day, and if anyone could persuade me it’s a good idea it’s Graham, and he almost managed it. His argument, of course, is that the SCC is an appeals court, and a disproportionate number of the appeals it hears are from Quebec courts, and a single unilingual anglo forces every other Justice to deliberate in English. And finally (…) InklessPW: …that of course a bilingualism requirement would severely restrict the number of potential candidates. As would any competency requirement. It’s really sad that unilingual Canadians can’t aspire to the top court, but then, neither can the great majority of hard-working Canadians who don’t know much about the law. Life’s a two-by-four sometimes. InklessPW: Anyway, Graham didn’t entirely sway me, but he sure launches into an argument with a lot of gusto. Sol: How vulnerable is the government on the Afghan-detainee file, in the wake of the Speaker’s ruling last week? InklessPW: Well, I continue to think the detainee file is one Canadians should care about, regardless of its (probably very limited) impact on voter intentions. We’ve had a fun four years around here, more like six years really with the Paul Martin minority, viewing every issue through the lens of its likely electoral impact, but that’s not the only reason to care about something. As for the Speaker’s ruling, it depends how the opposition parties press what the Speaker ruled is their essentially uncontested right to call for the production of any documents the majority in Parliament deems relevant. I know the Conservatives are betting that at least one opposition party won’t push hard. SeanStok: Am I too cynical in thinking that the current ‘detainee document’ negotiations will be more influenced by the respective parties’ desire (or lack thereof) for an election than anything else? InklessPW: You are probably not too cynical. David: Would Canadian federal politics be improved in party leaders didn’t have the power to approve or reject candidates? InklessPW: Yes! In fact I believe, with the Toronto historian Christopher Moore, that it should be roughly the other way around: sitting MPs should have the power to change leaders, at any time, on any day. Suddenly the choice of a local MP would become very important. Of course this sort of change is usually dismissed as “undemocratic,” which means it is too democratic. Crit_Reasoning: Kevin Rudd’s government recently shelved its proposed emissions trading scheme until 2013. Do you think this is indicative of a broader trend? InklessPW: Yeah. Now, Rudd absolutely still wants an emissions-trading scheme and has been stopped only by an opposition majority in Australia’s upper house. So he hasn’t really changed his mind, he’s just been stymied. But here we see something interesting: politicians generally prefer a tradings scheme over a simple carbon tax, because it’s easier to be in denial about what you’re doing. But tradings regimes are so cumbersome and complicated to implement that the number of opportunities to derail the process is multiples higher than with a simple carbon tax. Dennis: Paul, this isn’t a question, but I read Right Side Up a few months ago, and it’s the best political book I’ve read in a while. You should write more books about this silliness we call Canadian politics. I’ll buy each one. InklessPW: Thanks very much. Right now, though, I’d need somebody else to write each one. I may regain my self-discipline and journalistic ambition at some point. I came damned close to writing a Harper book this year. I have a hunch this isn’t the last year I’ll have a chance to do so. Crit_Reasoning: If you were to grade all MPs based on their performance in the past six months, who would get an “A” or “A minus”? InklessPW: Um. This question has been lurking down there in the moderation queue for a while, and I still can’t think of a lot of MPs who’d get really good grades. Generally speaking, I’m impressed with Siobhan Coady, Tom Mulcair, Bob Rae, and others. I like to tweak my colleagues by saying I’m often impressed by Pierre Poilievre, but I also say it because it’s true. I do think the general decline of our parliamentary debate, led by the morass of Question Period, makes it hard to tell who’s a good MP and who’s not. And I should admit that I suffer from a form of Pundits’ Disease, which makes me too rare a presence on Parliament Hill to observe MPs directly. My younger colleagues Aaron Wherry, Kady O’Malley, Althia Raj, Jeff Davis, and many others are way better positioned to hand out letter grades than I am. Carolyn: Have you ever done an interview with Harper? If so, what was your impression of him in that setting? InklessPW: I’ve interviewed him I think three times since he became Conservative leader, including most recently during the 2008 campaign, and many times before then when he was easier to get at. He’s a very strong interview, always consummately well-briefed, confident, low-key and amiable. As a bonus, he never hesitates to misstate the positions and arguments of his opponents, so an interview with Harper is always a highly entertaining festival of straw men. (…) InklessPW: So, I’m often asked, why don’t reporters call him when he sets up a straw-man argument? One reason is because he is careful to make himself available rarely, and to provide only a very short window for any given interview. Sometimes 15 minutes, often 10. If a reporter gets caught up trying to cross-examine him on any given point, that 10 minutes drains away. So a lot of us, including me, prefer to leave an apparent contradiction hanging and get on to the next question topic. Imperfect, but there it is. danielblouin: Jean Charest is down to 16% approval in Quebec. Is this really it for him, or is he going to enter yet another down-but-not-out phase of his political life (comedy option: leader of the federal Liberals)? InklessPW: I’d be really surprised if Charest leads the Quebec Liberals at the next election. He’s had a long run of it, and made useful changes to the Quebec political culture, but I think he’s worn out and these assorted scandalettes will grind him down further. Will he jump back to Ottawa? No. Money, family, and an endless vacation from the likes of me will beckon him to the private sector. Harbles: Have You found Twiiter a useful addition to your reporters toolbox or more of an ammusement? InklessPW: I see Twitter more as a social tool and a way of staying connected with friends, although I’m happy to hear from all the strangers who follow me too. Well, most of them: anyone who pushes argument anywhere close to confrontation gets blocked. I’m not paid to tweet and I don’t need to put up with nasty people there. I’ve found I rarely need to block anyone. Crit_Reasoning: You probably get asked this question a lot by guys on the street: Do you think we’re likely to have an election this year? InklessPW: I get asked that a lot. I don’t know; honest people from every party admit that no party controls the agenda on this question; but my hunch is that we’ll likely stumble through to the end of the year and into the new year before there’s an election. Only a hunch. InklessPW: This is apropos of nothing, but as I write this, Justin Trudeau is debating youth criminal justice legislation on CPAC in the background, and he’s doing a pretty good job of it. David: Stephen Harper keeps his party under tight control. What do you think will happen to the CPC when Harper steps down? InklessPW: I think the divisions among the “sisters” of Canadian conservatism — Loyalist Tory, prairie populist, Quebec nationalist — will re-emerge and do a lot to define the race to succeed Harper. He’s managed to forge a durable amalgamated Conservatism, but a lot of people in his party have never learned the tune or aren’t interested. So there’ll be a Jason Kenney candidate (who may well not be Jason Kenney), a Max Bernier candidate, a Jim Prentice candidate, and so on — each very offensive to a large part of the party base because each is closely identified with a faction in the party. (…) InklessPW: That makes it possible to imagine a sleeper candidate who is not, today, closely identified with one of the factions. Somebody bilingual. Somebody who presents as a low-key central Canadian moderate, but is able to speak in red-meat social-conservative terms Reformers will love. Somebody hard to attack, who comes with a ready-to-run campaign organization close at hand. (…) InklessPW: I speak, of course, of Diane Finley. You heard it here first. Stop giggling. I’m kind of serious. Chris: In your opinion, given Harper’s distaste for reporters and his governments failing grade on access to information, why don’t more reporters speak out? Does the press have anything to lose by reporting there lack of access to the PM? InklessPW: Chris, I just don’t think anyone cares if the government is mean to us. Just as I don’t think anyone cares if the government is mean to, say Carolyn Bennett or any other opposition MP. Well, some people care: typically highly politically engaged people who were already likely to vote against the Conservatives every chance they get. But elections are won and lost when people who voted for the governing party last time decide they will vote for another party next time. And those people tend to swing when they get the impression that a government used to care about them but cares no longer. That has very little to do with access to information. The prime minister understands this better than his opponents have, which helps explain why he generally manages to hang on to a modest poll avantage. Crit_Reasoning: I’ve often wondered: Are you a monarchist? Do you think Canada should keep its ties to the British crown, post-QE2? InklessPW: I’m this much of a monarchist: I like a clear distinction between the state and the government. I don’t care for three seconds that our head of state is, to use my illustrious predecessor Fotheringham’s phrase, “a foreigner who lives in a castle in another country.” I find that perfectly charming. It reminds us of our history, and by “our,” I mean every Canadian’s. (I’m an Adrienne Clarkson nationalist that way: she likes to tell people at citizenship ceremonies that they are inheriting all of the rights and obligations of citizenship along with the shared heritage of every Canadian, with all its fascinating contradictions.) (…) InklessPW: So I think a monarchy is handy, on balance, to keep around, and painless to maintain. But I have struck a kind of personal deal with the Royal Family: I will support the system for as long as I don’t have to pay any attention to that horrible family. Jason: Speaking of Justin, when do you think he makes a run at the leadership? Does he jump at the first opportunity regardless of timing, or does he wait 5-10 years to gain more experience as an MP? InklessPW: Justin Trudeau has impressed a lot of people because he has been willing to bide his time, learn his craft, and resist overestimating himself. He does, it must be said, often show up at social functions on the Hill wearing ridiculous footwear, but nobody’s perfect. I’m not 100% sure he’ll ever run for the Liberal leadership, but I suspect he would be a candidate if Ignatieff and Rae ever became part of the party’s past. And I think his name and charm would make him a formidable, but not unbeatable, candidate. linda: if harper is still found in contempt at the end of two weeks, can harper go to the g.g and ask for an election while in comptempt also would he call an election just before g8 and g20 would he hold these meetings while in comtempt InklessPW: I believe the prime minister will essentially ignore any finding of contempt, if the Commons majority or the Speaker reaches such a conclusion, and continue to proceed according to a reading of parties’ strengths and weaknesses among the electorate. His estimate of those strengths isn’t always flawless: he thought he could prorogue over January and February at no cost and he was wrong. But I’m quite sure he would depict, and perceive, a contempt finding as “the opposition doesn’t like me. So what?” InklessPW: Okay folks, that took a little over an hour. I’m going to bring this session to a close. Thanks once again for your excellent questions and all your support. AJP: thanks for engaging with us! c_9: Thanks Paul, always a pleasure. -
Maclean's live chat with Paul Wells
By macleans.ca - Monday, May 3, 2010 at 1:24 PM - 0 Comments
*LIVE* Join Wells for a live chat about the Speaker’s ruling, pre-election Ottawa, and the UK election
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Coyne v. Wells on Helena Guergis and Jean Charest affairs
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 2:59 PM - 10 Comments
Our Video podcast
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In Afganistan the final battle begins
By Paul Wells - Friday, April 16, 2010 at 10:10 AM - 57 Comments
Paul Wells: This time the tactics are different and backup has arrived
Louie Palu/CP
“This is the edge of the moon,” Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie told me as we dismounted from our armoured vehicles at the foot of the Soviet-built mountain fortress of Sperwan Ghar. He pointed westward. “If you go 100 m that way, you will die.”
For now, this little outpost, only 30 km from Kandahar City in the rolling farmland of the Panjwayi district, marks the outer edge of the territory Canadian troops control and patrol. It’s impenetrable: a steep man-made hill with heavy guns, a moat, and a tethered balloon whose cameras allow the 200-odd Canadian Forces soldiers there to monitor and sometimes target insurgent activity in every direction.
But to the west, Canadians have left the area to insurgent fighters. There are perhaps only a few hundred of them in a local population of 3,000, Maj. Wade Rutland told Leslie. But the bad guys have “complete freedom of manoeuvre” in and around three villages, Zangabad, Mushan and Talukan, that Rutland called the area’s “insurgent Axis of Evil.”
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Coyne v. Wells on Obamacare
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 5:29 PM - 20 Comments
Our video podcast
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The real trouble at Rights and Democracy
By Linda Frum - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 11:52 AM - 64 Comments
Sen. Linda Frum on the controversy; Paul Wells responds
Photograph by Andrew Wallace/ Toronto Star
Let’s say I gave you $11 million of Canadian taxpayer money and told you I wanted you to use the money to repair the ills of the world as you perceived them. Let’s say I told you that you could spend the money entirely as you saw fit. No questions asked. Odds are you would have little difficulty identifying your favourite causes in the most deserving regions of the world. Lovely fantasy isn’t it? Spending other people’s money to cure the troubles of the world, as you identify them, exactly the way you deem best? Well, for the senior managers of Rights and Democracy, Canada’s publicly funded human rights organization, this was no fantasy. It was a blissful reality. That is, until a group of pesky governors, burdened by such governance concepts as accountability and responsibility, came along to spoil the party.
If you have been following the controversy surrounding Rights and Democracy, a “short-arm” organization set up by prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1988 to promote human rights in the Third World, you know that the organization is in crisis.
Some claim that the crisis pits a professional management against a partisan board controlled by the Prime Minister’s Office. (That is the view, for example, of this magazine’s otherwise brilliant analyst Paul Wells.) But every key player in this story, on both sides, is a Harper appointee. And, as a short-arm organization, R and D is constitutionally autonomous of government but not independent of it. Each fiscal year, the chair of R and D is required to table a report with both houses of Parliament. In other words, R and D is not an arm’s-length, independent NGO.
To really understand what’s truly at issue here, you must go to the heart of the trouble.
It really heated up in March 2009 when newly appointed board chair, University of Toronto political science professor Aurel Braun, discovered questionable grants made by R and D’s president Remy Beauregard. One such grant was made to a group called Al Haq, based in Ramallah, West Bank. According to the Israeli Supreme Court, Al Haq’s leader is a senior activist of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group. The $10,000 grant for Al Haq—distributed from a discretionary fund controlled by Beauregard and his management team—alarmed Braun and the majority of his current board. What other grants, they wondered, might be equally suspect? What about, for example, the $144,000 donated to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a sponsor of 2009’s scurrilous Durban II conference, which was boycotted by the government of Canada? What exactly was that $144,000 spent on? Or the several hundred thousand dollars that R and D sent to that UN office over the past few years?
Anyone who has ever served on a board knows that such inquiries on the part of a board chair and the audit and finance committee are necessary in order to fulfill the duty of “due diligence.” But to the managers of R and D—unaccustomed to any challenge to their authority and hostile to investigations into their pet projects—the board’s interest was deemed “harassment” and requests for “sensitive” information were rejected or stonewalled. To this day, management refuses to co-operate fully with an audit being conducted by the respected firm of Deloitte & Touche. Instead, they have launched a self-righteous campaign of media sniping and obfuscation—aided by the disappearance of managerial laptops and computer records.
The sudden death in January of Remy Beauregard has injected an element of sorrow to the situation, but it does not alter a public body’s duty to account for public money. By January 2010, even Beauregard finally came to the conclusion that giving money to Al Haq (and like organizations) was wrong and voted to repudiate it. But the staff he left behind remain resentful of the board’s scrutiny.
The R and D staff’s anger at the board’s curiosity suggests that something has gone very wrong at R and D. On March 29, Gerard Latulippe, an experienced administrative law and labour lawyer with professional expertise in promoting democratic accountability in the third world (most recently in Haiti), will take over as Rights and Democracy’s new president. He has the tough task of reforming an agency gone rogue long ago. Yes, some of the staff are complaining anonymously to the press. But the complaints do not prove them right. On the contrary, their complaints prove how very deep the problems go.
Linda Frum is a Conservative member of the Canadian Senate.
Read this response by Paul Wells, published Monday, March 22
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Harper’s hard right turn
By Paul Wells - Friday, March 19, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 465 Comments
Social conservatism is on the rise in Ottawa, and across Canada
Photograph by Chris Wattie/ Reuters
It says in all the papers the well has run dry. The commentators keep writing that Canadian conservatism has died on the vine, that four years into his reign of tactical obsession and fiscal profligacy, Stephen Harper has forgotten why he ever went into politics.
“Where’s the big, strategic agenda for the next election?” John Ivison quoted a senior Conservative in the National Post. “I haven’t found one yet.” In the same paper, Terence Corcoran ran a string of columns identifying programs the feds should cut, because Harper seems unwilling to do the work himself. And Andrew Coyne delivered his annual post-budget verdict of despair and mourning. “Those Conservative faithfuls who have been hanging on all these years, in the hopes that, eventually, someday, with one of these budgets, this government would start to act like conservatives, must now understand that that is not going to happen. Conservatism is not just dead but, it appears, forgotten.”
But it’s a funny thing. If Canadian conservatism is dead, somebody forgot to tell Canadian conservatives.
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Quite an introduction
By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments
Between the sometimes-luminous opening ceremonies and the corny clichés of the closing show, Canada presented versions of itself the world had never seen
Photograph by: Amy Sanchetta/AP (left), Tannen Maury/EPA/Keystone (top right), David J. Philip/AP (bottom right)
Careful what you wish for. For two weeks, armchair pop-spectacle producers from coast to coast indulged in one of the most popular events of this Vancouver Olympic season: critiquing the opening ceremonies. Too morose. Too much weird symbolism. Too many Aboriginal dancers.
And, this being Canada, everybody had their own checklist of the excluded. Not enough Ontario (said the Ontarians). Not enough spoken French. Not enough youth, humour, urbanity, what have you.
But what would happen if some cosmic joker actually wrote down the sum of all the kvetching and produced a show that gave Canadian audiences what so many had complained was missing? Okay, you nation of backseat drivers, we’ll give you rappers and phonetic French and rock bands and Michael Bublé until you beg for Aboriginal dancers.
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Any Questions? Paul Wells live chat
By macleans.ca - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 10:24 AM - 12 Comments
From politics to jazz, Paul Wells has an answer for you
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Harper's rut
By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 179 Comments
PAUL WELLS: Suddenly, things aren’t so clear and focused
“In support of building a stronger Canada,” said the Harper government’s Speech from the Throne, “the government’s agenda will be clear and focused.”Perhaps I should specify. That’s what they said—or gave unto Michaëlle Jean to say—in their first Throne Speech. Four years ago.
In the latest Throne Speech, earlier this month, Stephen Harper and his crack team of recalibrators had a bit more to say. They pledged to “launch a digital economy strategy.” To “extend support for…prototyping of new space-based technologies.” To “ensure that unnecessary regulation does not inhibit the growth of Canada’s uranium mining industry.”
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Coyne v. Wells on the Olympics
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 4:57 PM - 7 Comments
Our video podcast
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Difficult-to-Access-Information on Rights and Democracy
By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 4:41 PM - 14 Comments
There’s little I can add to colleague Paul Wells’ reporting on the mess at Rights and Democracy. He has almost single-handedly driven this story and though mentally exhausted by his efforts should be proud of them.
My own involvement in the story started last year when I got word that trouble was brewing at the organization. No one was willing to go on the record at the time, so I filed several access-to-information requests to the government, including one to the Privy Council Office asking for a copy of a performance evaluation report on the now deceased president of Rights and Democracy, Rémy Beauregard.
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A losing battle
By Paul Wells - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 97 Comments
PAUL WELLS: How the late president of Rights and Democracy tried to fight back
Last June, Rémy Beauregard, the president of a federal government-funded human rights organization called Rights and Democracy, read aloud to his fellow board members from a long memo he had written. The memo was his response to an evaluation of his job performance written by two members of the federal government-appointed board, Jacques Gauthier and Elliot Tepper. The board’s chairman, Aurel Braun, had sent along his own note endorsing the evaluation, which was highly critical of Beauregard.
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Coyne v. Wells on Jim Prentice, Danny Williams, and sacred cows
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 26 Comments
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