A Triumph Of The Blogosphere

...is what I was thinking when I read this requiem for the Tory's veiled voter legislation. The fact is, when this story first broke, all of Canada was headed for a six day bender of capital "X" xenophobia. Then, in a terrific series of posts back in 2007 that seem to have entirely disappeared, Red Tory did what, apparently, no-one else in Canada, and certainly no-one else in the MSM or HOC, had done--which was read the recently passed changes to the Elections Act and point out that they did NOT require that voters provide photo ID, something that (for example) Canwest News had not figured out at the time (and still seems a bit confused about).

Afterwards, the fake outrage died off relatively quickly.

The kind of story to mention when someone tells you we need the MSM for their standards.

My origonal take on the controversy here.

Yeah, But the CRA Never Kicked In My Door

Tory whip Jay Hill emits the government line in his column last Thursday:

I believe it rather timely today, the deadline for Canadians to file their income taxes, to demonstrate how the elections financing dispute between Elections Canada and the Conservative Party is just like a disagreement you may have with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

All the elements of the great conspiracy theory are in place: everything was legal, no documents were withheld, Elections Canada broke its own rules, and so forth.

What I wonder most about is this statement:

Elections Canada didn’t bother to notify any Conservative officials or their legal team that they wanted additional documents.

Surely EC must have detailed records of exactly what they requested when. If this is a lie, you would think that it is one easily uncovered.

They Huffed And They Puffed

...but Canada's chief electoral officer, Marc Mayrand, stood firm. Our electoral laws will not get rewritten on the fly by the Elections Canada bureaucracy so that purely hypothetical burqa-wearing Muslim women can be hassled during next week's Quebec by-elections.

Any bets on where this ends? I say it peters out after some additional mumbling and grumbling, because any rewrite of the Elections Act that is not obviously racist will have to figure out how to let (for example) Canadian Snowbirds vote by mail while meeting some kind of photo ID requirement.

In any case, RT is still on this, and LK has also picked up the gauntlet. I will probably have nothing more to say today, as I am in meetings all morning and all afternoon.

PS. The comments on the CTV story linked above are really quite encouraging. The vast majority of posters seem to have figured out that its the government and opposition parties who screwed-up in this case. And this realization seems to extend across the political spectrum.

Harper's Veil Flip-Flop

In a terrific series of posts, RT has teased out the mixture of racism, demagoguery, and just plain stupidity behind the whole broo-ha-ha re Election's Canada Veiled Voter Ruling. The take-away lessons are several:

1) Everyone, including Stephen Harper, knew that these rules would allow veiled voting:

The fact remains that the regulations were clearly established and approved by parliament, that all the federal parties were thoroughly briefed on the guidelines back in July and there can be no excuse for their faux shock and surprise now. Elections Canada is NOT circumventing the will of parliament, it is NOT making up its own laws and it is NOT acting out of some imagined sense of “political correctness

So the question becomes: if Harper is so incensed by the new rules, why did he allow them to go forward in July? Was he overwhelmed by a flash of hatred for Canada? Did he suddenly go soft on Terror? Who knows, but he was for these rule changes before he was against them.

2) Demanding that velied muslim women expose their faces while at the same time NOT requiring that they present photo ID is the height of futility, unless the point is merely to hassle some Muslim women. Think about it: to what is one comparing the unveiled face?

3) This has nothing to do with National Security and voter fraud, everything to do with pandering to Quebec Yokeldom in particular, Canadian Yokeldom in general. If the radio shock jocks that originally stirred this pot were English and Western, the correct term for them would have been "hicks from the foothills outside of Gooberville". Unfortunately, I don't know an equivalent French phrase. And, frankly, it is terribly disappointing that some elements of the French race--who after all gave the world Bardot, Democracy, Destouche, snails, the corkscrew position AND the doggy style--should descend to this level of race baiting.

4) Sucks to Dion for being weak, to Duceppe were being himself, to Harper for being a demagogue. Kudos to Jack Layton and the NDP for not playing along.

Update: It's official. Stephen Harper doesn't know the contents of his own legislation (nor does anyone else, apparently, given the immensely confused coverage of this issue in the MSM):

Elections Canada says the parliamentary legislation governing how people can cast a vote does not require people to show their faces.

Chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand said Monday that the law does allow for veiled voters to decide whether or not to reveal their face.

Speaking at a press conference in Ottawa, he said that if people are not happy with that situation, “I invite parliament to re-examine the law, and [amend the law] if they feel it necessary.”