Soft On Crime

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson staged several announcements last fall to highlight legislation to fight white-collar criminals that was never adopted; it now must be re-introduced in the spring.

Legislation to eliminate house arrests for serious crimes, cracking down on auto theft and requiring Internet service providers to report child pornography content found on their servers are also among the bills which must now start over in Parliament.

Mind you, Bloc Québécois House leader Pierre Paquette makes note of the fact that some the crime bills introduced by the Harper government last session don't even address the issues they are supposed to be targeting:

"...this is a smokescreen to support Conservative propaganda suggesting they are tough on crime and opposition parties are soft (on crime), when this is totally false," Paquette said.

But the nice thing about smoke is you can produce more and more of it again and again and again. Some of these Tories bills are in their 2nd and 3rd incarnations. And the whole point seems to be that they should always and forever be in the process of becoming law, but never actually become law. That way the Tories never have to deal with the consequences of their own legislation.

PS. One of the bits of legislation that lives through the prorogation is Bill C-384, the Right To Die With Dignity Bill. In some quarters, and wondering now if C-384 will ever come to a vote:

"Since the Conservative government appears to be setting up an election for May or June, Lalonde may find a way to trade-back again in the order of precedence and prevent C-384 from ever being voted on" by this government, Schadenberg observed.

Tories Co-Opt United Way

Rural Sandi noted this in the comments of my last post. Below is a shot from the 2009 United Way Hockey Challenge (back last January), from Dean Del Maestro's website. You can see it in a few pictures, but this one is clearest (see white arrow on guy far left): the Tories have stuck CPoC logos on the United Way team jerseys. Pretty damned brazen, and I wonder if its entirely kosher.

Added To The Lexicon

Harper Hŏ’lĭday (-dā, -dĭ) n., & v.i. 1. n. month or multiple months of recreation when work remains outstanding, when no work is done; period of this, paid vacation, esp. annual paid vacation, eg. Although the renovation was not halfway done and already behind schedule, the carpenters took a Harper Holiday anyway and still expected to be paid. 2. v.i. to avoid responsibility or accountability, eg. John had not studied enough so he Harper Holidayed his mid-term examinations. 3. n. act of avoiding or undermining fundamental democratic institutions, eg. the Prime Minister saw his popularity declining and risked losing a confidence vote so he declared a Harper Holiday to avoid further investigations and accountability. [OE haarpr haligdae]

PS. This was from the pen of Ted. I can take no credit for it.

Tis Done

Heather Forsyth and Rob Anderson cross the floor. I hear Stelmach's next. He's tired of all the assholes.

What Topp Said

There is nothing in Mr. Harper's approach that disarms his opponents, fundamentally broadens his party's base, or changes the game. Once the current half-hearted stimulus program is wound up, Mr. Harper has committed his government to spending all of Canada's available resources on tax cuts, and is otherwise committed to inaction on all important issues. That is an accountant's agenda – an exercise in bean counting and dismantlement – not an inspiring 'big tent' that can appeal beyond the Conservative party's core vote.

What else he said:

Mr. Ignatieff's year-end interviews included a misty-eyed commitment to reconquer Canada this winter by conducting a lengthy national tour of that place where (apparently, in Mr. Ignatieff's view) most Canadians are to be found – "the universities."

Somebody keep an eye on Iggy: make sure he's not handing out resumes.

Tories Vow To Gut Their Own Legislation Every Year

Government sources say they are contemplating formally shutting down Parliament at the end of every year, so the government can start afresh with a throne speech and a budget.

And at the beginning of every year, they'll promise to get tough on crime and repeal the gun registry.

If You Can't Wait Until Monday...

...the best writing so far on the GST rebate case is here and in the main post here. I'll admit that most of this flies over my head, so really this is just FYI.

Tory MP James Moore Is Hilarious

He really is. Though as a taxpayer, its reassuring to know that he'll have plenty of time to post crap to his videoblog this winter. What's next? Maybe John Baird will take up macrame to while away the long hours.

Just Futile, Or The Very Height Of Futility?

Some disagreement over how much the Tories actually managed to accomplish last time around. Gov. whip Jay Hill says:

Our Conservative Government introduced a total of 70 bills and, even in this minority parliament, 34 of those bills, or half, received Royal Assent.

Michael Geist, on the other hand, puts the number a bit lower, and has the links to back him up:

Only 27 of the 64 Government bills introduced during the current session have received royal assent, leaving 37 bills in need of a restart.

Either way, back in the 38th parliament the Libs were batting .560. Furthermore, one of the bills passed was Bill C-38 - the Civil Marriage Act. Compare that to the bucket of chicken-feed this session represents.

Inside The Tory Mind

...its not too good for numbers & letters & such. Norm Spector thinks Tuesday April 13th will be our next election day. Except in the body of his latest, he writes:

With these documents on the public record, Mr. Harper could then cross the street to Rideau Hall to request a vote on Tuesday April 12th, explaining to voters that Canada needs a single set of safe hands on the wheel (namely, his!) to deal with the next phase of the economic recovery through gradual expenditure restraint and no tax increases.

The discrepancy is because Norm got the day wrong until someone in the comments told him April 12th was a Monday.

Poor calender reading skills aside, this

Waiting until the fall would also give Michael Ignatieff more time to recover from his disastrous 2009. On the other hand, dropping a quick writ in the spring — a page straight out of the Jean Chrétien playbook — would throw a spanner in the Liberals’ thinkers conference, planned for Montréal from March 26 to 28.

... makes some sense. So I am rather hoping Iggy et al have some kind of policy "plan B" ready should this "thinkers conference" abruptly need to be called off. I have been told that they do, that's there's been stuff ready since the election threats back in September. We may soon find out.

...although I think a good portion of Harper's current "popularity" (under majority support in all polls) is predicated on his not being seen to act opportunistically, and that it will dissipate if he triggers an election. But, again, we may soon find out.

Learn To Google

From The Prince Albert Daily Herald:

Kenney apparently confused KAIROS Canada, a charity with a 35-year history of good deeds to its credit, with a small, unrelated Palestinian group. It's a grievous error roughly equivalent to calling a group of Norwegian photo buffs, the Kristiansund Kamera Klubb or KKK, a white supremacist group. (We note that some among KAIROS Canada have called for an end to bloodshed and violence in the Middle East: hardly an anti-Semitic view.)

The gong-show gongs on.

Have A Nice Vacation, Mr. Prime Minister

...but some of us have to work this winter. These guys, for example.

I'm Not Outraged, I'm Overjoyed...

...at all the dead and delayed Tory Legislation, for the only way to to reintroduce these bills at the same stage they were at before prorogation is through the unanimous approval in the House of Commons, and we can assume that this will not be given. Now, Kady notes
But why bring down the government when it is so thin on new ideas that it has to repeatedly sabotage its own agenda so as to campaign on the old ones over and over? I mean, governing becomes a pointless exercise but at least no harm is being done.

PS. More on the dead bills here. The CN strike will go on, and don't even try suing Khadafi in a Canadian court! All so Dean Del Maestro won't have to watch figure-skating and legislate at the same time!

What Happens With The Long-Gun Registry?

According to Cowboys, given how prorogation resets all the clocks, its probably still alive into 2011. His conclusion: The Harper government doesn't really want it to pass. This is something I've suspected about many of the govs.' bills--they're there to keep the faithful agitated, not to actually become law. This one? Well, I don't know anymore. You can't keep promising the same thing forever, can you? If you keep ringing the bell, but don't ever provide the doggy snacks, doesn't the conditioning eventually wear off?

PS. No, Bill C-391 does not die. I know that. The various delays it is now subject to now put passage either at way the end of next year or into 2011.

A Smell Wafts Through The Blogosphere

It's Ezra Levant, and he's calling Irwin Cotler a "porch Jew", 1st on twitter, and then on his blog. Now, Jason Cherniak thinks Kotler is being compared to a lazy black slave that gets on by pleasing his white master (the most obvious definition of the term, given its historical antecedents); Levant is employing ethnic slurs, in other words. And Cherniak's right. Ezra is 1) comparing Kotler to black slaves that might have chosen to serve their white masters as domestics rather than risk a more difficult life in the fields, and 2) implying by analogy with the origonal term that Kotler is not Jewish enough. He makes his commitment to 1) quite clear:

I used the phrase "porch Jew", an anology to the dichotomy between field slaves and house slaves. Cherniak read that as code for a racist anti-black epithet ("p0rch m0nkey") that I have never used in my life.

[...]

Sort of like Uncle Tom, really -- they liked being porch slaves a lot better than being field slaves, so why cause a fuss?

But another thing is, "porch monkey"--the term Cherniak thinks (correctly) that Ezra is riffing on-- is really just a nicer term for the more common "porch nigger", and when you realize that you realize what a dark ugly place Ezra's mind really is. I'm with WK here. Why are the Tories treating this guy as a legitimate spokesperson? Why does the MSM even deal with him? He should be Shaidled off the airwaves.

Prorogation Nation

Yeah Baby! Its been confirmed. Cue 3 months of "not working on behalf on Canadians" jokes. Or maybe Harper will finally finish his book on hockey...reading it, that is.

PS. Or, as Kady suggests, is everyone working off the same QMI/Sun Media story from earlier this morning?

Our Government Of Eternal Return

Here's a list of government bills that will die when the Harper Tories suspend Parliament, only to be introduced under slightly different names when it is recalled after The Olympics. Of course, by that time they'll have a plurality in the Senate, so they'll have to think of new ways to prevent their "red flag bills"--those (mostly "tough on crime") bills they know are bad law but which, while passing through the legislative process, keep their base in a state of constant agitation, cheque-books at the ready--from passing.

PS. Why, you might ask, is that dragon licking its own balls? Find out here.

Canada Has Enviro Canada Parody Pages Shut Down

The government of Canada has used strong-arm tactics to shut down two parody websites criticizing Canada's poor environmental policy, taking down 4500 other websites in the process.

Pretty typical of the Harper Tories. The response of the IP in question, Germany's Serverloft, is more than a little disappointing, however:

In response to Environment Canada's request, Serverloft immediately turned off a whole block of IP addresses, knocking out more than 4500 websites that had nothing to do with the parody sites or the activists who created them. Serverloft was shown no warrant, and never called the web hosting company about the shutdown.

I have sent them a bitchy email.

h/t

I Don't Know What This Is, But I LIke It

...and they link to me, so what the hell.

And One Day I Shall Be A Man...

I agree with Imp on this one.

More generally, Iggy has to stop making the narrative about himself. Yes "leadership" remains an important issue, but I don't think he can make much headway with it by going all meta and detailing the steps by which he is transforming himself into an effective politician. Is this supposed to lead to a statement two/six/ten months down the road to the effect that "I, Iggy, have arrived!"?

I also don't like the implication that Liberal policy under Iggy is still, still in process. For one thing, a few solid planks have already been laid out, at least on environmental issues (my personal hobby-horse) and maybe pension reform. For another, it seems unwise to rely on a "think-fest" to produce some shiny new idea that's not a fat target for ridicule and attack ads. Especially when a more likely result will be a repackaging of some old Lib stand-bys. Not that re-packaged policies are necessarily bad (although a few of them are hard to take seriously anymore), but to have so much hinge on a single confab seems like a build-up to a let-down.