McGuinty’s backward priorities continue to bear rotten fruit

Facts are inconvenient things, is everyone’s favourite saying these days. And it is a saying that continues to come to mind when one observes the record of the McGuinty Liberals in Ontario, who continue to write cheques that their competence can’t cash.

For example, facts on the ground continue to put the lie to the McGuinty government’s claim that it is tough on crime. Today, the Toronto Sun is reporting that a McGuinty-appointed judge ordered a police officer to check his firearm before testifying in an impaired driving trial:

Ontario Court Justice Melvyn Green told a flabbergasted cop witness in a routine impaired driving case Tuesday to “check (his gun) somewhere.”

Const. Chris Horton walked a gantlet of criminals as he stored his gun in a basement storage locker, the cop union says.

Transcripts from Tuesday’s impaired trial of Stephen Bodington at 1000 Finch Ave. W. court show Green told two cops who were set to testify that they must remove their guns and store them “somewhere.”

Green told prosecutor Nenad Trbojevic to “tell” cop witnesses that he did not want “anybody testifying while wearing sidearms.”

When Green was later advised by Trbojevic that on-duty uniform police officers are policy-bound to carry firearms, Green said while it “makes sense, I just do not see the need for them to wear them while they testify.”

Confusion over Green’s unprecedented order led to Bodington’s trial to be adjourned and put over for another five months, which prompted Bodington’s lawyer to suggest the case could be open to a charter challenge because of unreasonable delay.

The Sun also delves into Green’s career as a defence counsel:

During 25 years of work as a criminal lawyer, Green has handled some top -- and controversial -- criminal cases. Green was one of three lawyers who took the case of cop killer Clinton Gayle to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2001. Gayle is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years in the June 1994 murder of Const. Todd Baylis. The appeal court rejected defence arguments that the jury that convicted Gayle at trial should have been better screened to prevent any racial prejudice.

Green managed to overturn a 20-year prison term for Cuong Phu Ta, who as a teen was convicted of attempted murder after he walked into Brockton High School with a sawed-off assault rifle in 1994 and shot a vice-principal and another person. After Green’s appeal, Ta was found not criminally responsible, removed from prison and put into a mental hospital.

Green also took an active role in the Canadian Arab Federation’s challenge to Canadian citizen Maher Arar’s torture in his native Syria following his detention in New York while on a stopover during a Geneva-to-Toronto flight.

But Green’s most notable legal roles were as senior counsel at Justice Horrace Krever’s commission into Canada’s HIV tainted blood system, his co-presidency of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) and as counsel for Ontario’s Criminal Lawyer’s Association.

Now, I am not going to hold the man’s record as a defence attorney against him (though it no doubt helped shoot him to the top of Attorney General Michael Bryant’s judicial appointments list). But Green’s insistence that officers check their firearms is groundless, arbitrary, and just plain boneheaded on its face.

Firstly, Green has just handed defence counsel a new tool with which to attempt to delay trials. And it is clear from the crown prosecutor having to educate him that he had not put a lot of thought into the request (now that's the kind of guy we want on the bench).

More importantly, requiring police to store and retrieve their weapons before entering a court room would increase the already substantial time and costs associated with police testifying in court: time and money that would be taken away from such mundane stuff as catching criminals.

This latest embarrassment for the McGuintyites comes barely a week after the Toronto Star ran an above-the-fold story noting that, of the 32 people charged in a Toronto murder this year, 21 were under a court order, some multiple orders:

“In every case I’ve had this year, we’ve had to tell a victim’s family that the accused was out on bail,” said Toronto homicide Det. Stacy Gallant, who has worked on five cases this year.

“We’ve had to say we believe if this (the accused) person had been kept in jail, their son or daughter would still be alive.”

“We’re seeing a number of murder cases where accused people are out on previous bails,” said Staff Insp. Brian Raybould, the head of the homicide squad.

“I’m not talking about theft under. They are on bail for very serious offences, firearms possession, sexual assault, violent crimes. Why are they on bail?”

In May, Attorney General Bryant released a long list of initiatives in an attempt to convince the public that the Liberals are getting tough on gun crime, including “Bail Blitz Teams” designed to “expedite the bail court process at certain sites for criminal cases, including those involving guns.” Given the Star story, it looks like criminals are being put through the bail process -- and put back on the street -- pretty quickly. Good work, Bryant!

The foregoing can be contrasted with the McGuinty government’s bizarre decision to redesign the Ontario government’s four-decades-old trillium logo to more closely resemble the Ontario Liberal party’s logo, including awarding their favourite ad agency $219,000 to do the deed. Talk about assbackwards priorities. When even the mentally challenged can manage to put their underwear on before their pants, what's McGuinty's excuse?

And all this is feeding into a Toronto by-election campaign that began yesterday, to fill the seat that Gerard Kennedy was finally shamed into giving up several months after he began running full time for the federal leadership.

Ironically, crime was an issue in the York South by-election that first sent Gerhard to the Legislature in 1996. No surprise, given the riding includes depressed neighbourhoods such as Jane-Woolner and some pretty rough establishments on Weston Road. But, shortly after Kennedy won the seat, there were two murders in the riding and Kennedy never said much about crime again. Then in the 1999 general election he switched to the more placid constituency of Parkdale-High Park (though it does include some rough areas), York South having been eliminated through redistribution and reduction.

McGuinty chooses chaos over (court) order – again

What with jihadists hiding explosives in PowerAde and Dippity Do containers, and the imminent possibility of World War III – or the Second Coming, take your pick – it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Dalton McGuinty has turned out to be an even more pathetic premier than could have been anticipated by the most die-hard Harrisite.

But, as was said in Death of a Salesman, “attention must be paid,” even to the Willie Lomans of the world.

The tally of election promises broken by the Guinster (or “S***head” as my old boss used to describe him) and his Fiberal brothers and sisters is somewhere north of 50. Having failed to fill the purported $23-billion “gap” between what Ontario taxpayers pay to the federal government and what the federal government hands McGuinty to blow, he is now trying to tee up the federal Conservatives to take the fall for his own failure to deliver on his health care promises, despite having been in office nearly three years and implementing the largest personal income tax increase in Ontario history (another broken promise, by the way) – an increase that he said was to pay for his health care promises.

But nowhere is Premier Pinocchio’s craven nature more evident than in his government’s hot-potato-style handling of the native occupation in Caledonia. After the OPP failed in their initial attempt to clear the occupation in the spring, protests and blockades have lingered, with violence and tension ebbing and flowing, and the non-native community’s frustration growing, as they wonder what they did to deserve being abandoned to a Hobbesian nightmare (other than live in a Tory riding).

Frustrated that his original Order, that natives leave the site, had still not been enforced, a month or so ago the presiding judge called all parties on the carpet to explain themselves. Then a few days ago Judge David Marshall ordered the government to stop negotiating until his original Order had been satisfied.

Of course, the government could have thought to stop negotiations themselves until the natives obeyed the Order. And they had an excellent basis on which to do so: the government has now purchased the disputed land from a private developer. The smart negotiating move would have been to ask the natives to show similar good faith by ending their occupation.

But that would have made too much sense. And instead of welcoming the judge’s latest order as a welcome spine donation, which provides them with the legal cover to demand that natives obey the law, the Fiberals are appealing the judge’s Order so that they will be free to continue negotiating with scofflaws.

In an open letter yesterday to McGuinty, PC Leader John Tory astutely points out that the only time anything constructive occurred on this file was a brief moment when the Fiberal government had the cojones to demand something in exchange for something:

I would remind you that the last time we saw any real progress in this dispute was when your government briefly stepped away from the negotiating table and said it wouldn’t return unless a particular set of conditions were met. You said at that time “we are no longer prepared to continue negotiations until two important conditions are met: First of all, the barricades must come down, and they must stay down; and secondly, we are asking the leadership to co-operate in any way with the Ontario Provincial Police so that they might apprehend the individuals involved.”

(The remainder of Tory’s letter is below. It will likely be posted at the Ontario PC Party website shortly.)

Clearly, McGuilty’s crew is paralyzed by the fear that death or serious injury will occur if the original Order is enforced and any attempt is made to remove the natives before they’re good and ready. More importantly, the natives know this, and are acting accordingly.

There is often an attendant risk when police enforce any warrant or order. But that is a risk that police officers knowingly and willingly assume. And society demands that this risk be assumed, because order depends partly on the expectation that open defiance of the law will be stopped, then punished. When that expectation breaks down, you get Caledonia. And possibly you get more of them.

As a non-lawyer, it seems to me on the face of it that the government may well have a good argument, that a judge has no business telling them whether or not they can negotiate with a native group. But as a Conservative, it will be amusing to watch the Charter party argue against what might be loosely termed “judicial activism.”


August 10, 2006

Hon. Dalton McGuinty
Premier
Main Legislative Building
Room 281, Queen’s Park
Toronto, ON M7A 1A1


Re: Restoring the Rule of Law in Caledonia

Dear Premier McGuinty:

I write you today to urge you to use the time provided by the decision to appeal Justice Marshall’s recent court ruling to achieve a restoration of the rule of law in Caledonia and to better protect the safety of people on all sides of the dispute. I think all of us would agree that the incidents which have been taking place up to and including recent nights are not acceptable in our province. I have repeatedly stressed, as you have, the need for calm, but calm can only prevail when civility and the rule of law prevail.

This situation has gone on for months and in my view, it is reaching another crisis point. I believe it is a fundamental role of your office to uphold and promote respect for the rule of law across Ontario and that is why I am asking you today to adopt a more pro-active approach which can both help restore the rule of law and continue us along the path to a long-term resolution. The rule of law is still being ignored in Caledonia and I urge you today to use the period of suspended negotiations to address these issues of lawlessness so that negotiations can ultimately resume within a more orderly environment.

I would remind you that the last time we saw any real progress in this dispute was when your government briefly stepped away from the negotiating table and said it wouldn’t return unless a particular set of conditions were met. You said at that time “we are no longer prepared to continue negotiations until two important conditions are met: First of all, the barricades must come down, and they must stay down; and secondly, we are asking the leadership to co-operate in any way with the Ontario Provincial Police so that they might apprehend the individuals involved.”

While I would argue that those very reasonable requirements were not met completely when negotiations were permitted to resume, it was at that time, when you did in fact set out some conditions precedent to negotiations, that the last tangible, visible progress was in fact achieved.

I would repeat my proposal that you immediately get personally involved and call all sides in this dispute into your office. I urge you to tell them as Premier that in order for Ontario to return to the negotiating table and achieve the peaceful resolution we all want to see, you require the following conditions be met by the collective leadership of the Caledonia area:

1. An end to “unscheduled gatherings” on all sides (many of which are taking place in close proximity to the disputed lands) which are increasing tensions and make violence more likely;

2. All participants agree to noise and activity limitations at night for a period of time to allow residents to try to resume living normally;

3. Removal of all barricades, signage of all kinds, etc. on and surrounding the site (this will also help address the fast approaching issue of kids returning to school);

4. The protestors leave the occupied land not later than the time at which negotiations are to resume, with assurances in hand from you, in writing if necessary, that the land in dispute will be held by the Government of Ontario in trust, that there will be no action taken in respect of that land pending the conclusion of the land claims negotiations and that the land will be dealt with in accordance with the ultimate determination of the land claims process, which can hopefully be expedited. Since the governments are parties to the land claims negotiations, it may well be that you would put the land apparently owned by the Ontario Government into the hands of an independent trustee acceptable to all participants in those negotiations.

Together with you, I remain committed to a peaceful resolution of this matter but I also have a very genuine concern about respect for the rule of law and the creation of precedents we will later regret. I am happy to discuss this further with you should you wish to do so and to assist in any reasonable way in the achievement of a peaceful resolution and the restoration of civility and respect for the rule of law in every corner of the Caledonia area.

Sincerely,

John Tory
Leader, Progressive Conservative Party

The World’s Whiniest Band

Despite strong sales of their album “Taking the Long Way,” the Dixie Chicks’ summer tour is turning into a real-life version of the mockumentary “Spinal Tap,” in which the self-proclaimed“World’s Loudest Band” limps from one cancelled gig to the next.

The Chicks have cancelled 14 dates mid-tour, including scheduled stops in Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville, due to poor ticket sales. But no matter what happens, somehow I don’t think their last gig will be at an Air Force base.

Their management says that they have replaced the cancelled gigs with additional Canadian dates. No doubt the Chicks’ appearance on CBC Sunday Night was in hopes of boosting ticket sales. (And way to tell our Canadian stories, CBC!)

They are also scheduled to appear at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, in support of the documentary “Dixie Chicks: Shut up and Sing.” I wonder if it will include footage of their management’s conference calls about the cancelled gigs? Maybe they’ll save that for the sequel, “Dixie Chicks: Failure to Hatch.” I hope they recreate the pod number from “Spinal Tap,” with all three of them trying to fight their way out of giant eggs. Now that’s a bootleg DVD I’d pay under the table for!

I wasn’t particularly outraged when lead singer Natalie Maines declared onstage a few years ago (at a European tour stop) that she was “ashamed” that President Bush was a fellow Texan. Ho hum, just another American entertainer attempting to ingratiate herself with the sophisticated continentals: yeah, I live in a 5,000 square foot house and drive an SUV, but I hate Bush so I’m really one of you.

But Maines’ initial apology didn’t cut it for a lot of country fans. The band was dropped from many country radio playlists and became a juicy target for conservatives.

Deciding to turn a negative into a positive, the Chicks promptly did a 180-degree turn and tried to portray themselves as victims and martyrs, appearing nude on the cover of Entertainment Weekly magazine with epithets such as “free speech” and “censorship” painted on their bodies(I bet those colours did run). Oh, the humanity. Tell it to the chicks in Iran, sisters.

To accompany the release of their current album, the Chicks concocted an elaborate set of talking points, which included (1) we were never really a country act and (2) we don’t want fans who don’t like our politics (viz. George Costanza: “I am breaking up with you!”)

The album’s first single, “Not Ready to Make Nice” is a tour de force of self-pitying lyrics combined with self-righteousness vocals, including timeless poetry such as “I’ve paid a price, and I’ll keep paying” and “I’m still mad as hell.”

Yes, Natalie Maines is willing to pay the price, but for concert goers the price was just too high. The Chicks may have attracted some new album-buyers among the ranks of Bush haters, but the poor ticket sales suggest that it won’t be enough to make up for the loss of country fans who shell out for concert tickets.

As record company flack Bobbi Flekman (played by Fran Drescher) asserts in “Spinal Tap,” “Money talks, and bull**** walks.”

Holy Shiite.

“I [am] right there alongside [producer] Robert [Lantos]. . . . after a lifetime of being a Liberal, I have made the switch,” Ms. [Heather] Reisman wrote. “Feels strange, but totally and unequivocally right.”

A recipient of the e-mail confirmed that Ms. Reisman, who was the Liberal Party of Canada’s policy chairwoman in the 1980s and who worked for Pierre Trudeau in his first election in 1965, had sent the e-mail to several friends, and that she has told others the same thing.
--“Liberal power couple back Harper on Mideast,” Globe and Mail, today

Schwartz and Reisman’s support for Israel is well known, but I am stunned that they would leave the Liberal party over this issue alone.

And does this mean we can’t call Reisman’s bookstore chain “Indhimmigo” anymore?

Cosmic convergences

There is no shortage of conspiracy theories in the world today, and this one certainly pales in comparison to the ominous “end times” talk going ‘round, but how can it be a coincidence that, on the very day that Mel Gibson (allegedly) delivered himself of a crazed, alcohol-fuelled rant, Toronto Councillor Rob "Matt Foley" Ford was the cover subject of the Toronto Star’s Eye Weekly magazine?

From the Eye profile, for the benefit of those who had forgotten (or missed it the first time):

May 2006: A complaint is filed with the city's integrity commissioner that Rob Ford, drunk at a Toronto Maple Leafs game, was abusive to neighbouring spectators, shouting "You right-wing communist bastards," "Green Party fucking rules," before being ejected from the game. Ford initially tells reporters, "I wasn't even at the game, so someone's trying to do a real hatchet job on me." The next day, he admits he's lied (while denying some specifics): "I'm going through a few personal problems, but it doesn't justify, you know, getting drunk in public and acting like an idiot, if you ask me."

Pass out the tin foil hats.

Mulroney for UN chief

Kofi Annan’s intemperate labelling of an Israeli bombardment that hit a UN post in south Lebanon last week as “apparently deliberate” – before he had even been briefed – is just another straw (Rwanda, Oil-for-Fraud) on the long-ago broken camel’s back of Annan’s credibility. And it firms up an item that should be added to the Conservatives’ majority government checklist: get Brian Mulroney in as Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Mulroney, as has been said only half in jest, has every major dictator on speed dial. He still maintains unsurpassed business and political connections worldwide. As Secretary-General, he would have the respect of the nations who do the heavy lifting and pay the bills, the skills to flatter the nuttier regimes, and the negotiating ability to convince all parties they will get something out of a deal.

If a majority were to be achieved while George W. Bush is still in office, Mulroney’s appointment would likely enjoy the enthusiastic support of the US. The Bushies’ naming of John Bolton as their UN ambassador, and the diplomatic tongue-lashings that Bolton has been delivering at the UN, suggest that the Bush administration does not view the UN as entirely useless, merely misdirected and mismanaged.

By coincidence, Mulroney’s eldest son, Canadian Idol host Ben Mulroney, has just been appointed a national ambassador for UNICEF Canada. Or maybe it’s not a coincidence.

It must be noted that Mulroney’s name has come up for the job before, in October of 1991. This was when Mulroney was barely three years into his second majority mandate, but one year after the GST was implemented and the Meech Lake Accord collapsed. After several days of fevered Toronto Star headlines, Sheila Copps’ demand that he resign, and one round of voting, Mulroney withdrew his name from contention. Boutros-Boutros Ghali of Egypt emerged the winner.

An Angus Reid-Southam News poll taken at that time suggested that 56 per cent of Canadians thought Mulroney should accept the job if it were offered to him, but this may have been more reflective of Mulroney’s unpopularity than Canadians’ enthusiasm for his diplomatic skills. The New Yorker magazine later reported that Mulroney had been actively seeking the job as a suitable exit from politics, but Mulroney denied it.

Underreported Stories Dept: Oil-for-Fraud

Even before the Middle East blew up again, and the words “proportionate” and “civilian” took on their new Orwellian meanings, the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food scandal had been severely underreported. Given recent events, it will likely pass quietly into the impressive annals of UN corruption and incompetence.

But it should not go without mention that a few weeks ago a major figure in the scandal was convicted in a Manhattan court room, try as the New York Times did to downplay it.

The New York Observer had an intriguing piece on the Times passing on covering the Manhattan (i.e. nearby) trial of UN Oil-for-Food bagman Tongsun Park. From a monetary standpoint alone, the scandal dwarfs AdScam.

Our own Western Standard is to be commended for its attention to this story, having done several stories on the scandal (nearly two dozen articles at their website refer to Oil-for-Food), including a lengthy Kevin Libin piece on the involvement of Power Corp. and Maurice Strong, lifelong UN groupie and Kyoto midwife.

Good news, however: in the future, the Times can blame their diminishing news hole for failing to cover fraud and chicanery at the UN, and other inconvenient stories that run counter to their anti-Bush administration viewpoint.

Some excerpts from the Observer story:

The story had everything: secret agents, political intrigue, personal betrayal and cash. Lots and lots of cash.

Yet, for all that, a remarkable trial that ended last week in a Manhattan courtroom—a proceeding that implicated figures in the highest echelons of international politics—was barely mentioned in the major American press. If it weren’t for the journalistic wing of the conservative movement, outlets like the National Review Online and The New York Sun, it might not have been covered at all.

Take the events of last Thursday, for example. After two weeks of testimony, a jury took only a few hours to convict a South Korean national, Tongsun Park, of acting as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The conspiracy of which he was a part ran for 10 years, ending in late 2002, and helped one of the world’s worst regimes maintain its grip on power.

But The New York Times did not assign a reporter to his trial, its total coverage amounting to a brief wire report on the day following Mr. Park’s conviction. Of the other major national dailies, The Washington Post ran a single news-brief item, the Los Angeles Times not a word.

. . . . .

The episodes described during the trial involve the U.N.’s present as well as its past.

Maurice Strong was current Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special envoy to North Korea until the oil-for-food scandal began to lap around his feet last year.

Fresh details about a check for almost $1 million that Mr. Strong was given by Mr. Park emerged at the trial. The court also heard evidence that Mr. Park covered Mr. Strong’s private office expenses for several years.

Mr. Strong, like Mr. Boutros-Ghali, denies any wrongdoing. But, at the least, it is odd that people at the very highest level of the U.N. enjoyed such a close relationship with Mr. Park.

. . . . .

Mr. Avni, declining to “name names,” also recalled a conversation he said he’d had with a Times reporter some months back:

“I said to him, ‘We are covering the U.N. much more aggressively than you are.’ And he said, ‘Right, but we are covering the Bush administration much more aggressively than you are.’ We find faults where we are looking for faults, and they want to find faults where they are looking for faults.”

Claudia Rosett, a former member of The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board, is now a freelance journalist who has become an authority on the oil-for-food scandal. She blogged the Park trial for National Review Online. She contended that emphasis on the ideological affiliations of the media that have covered the story most effectively is, ultimately, detrimental—because it can too easily divert attention from the scandal itself.

“The criticisms we’ve been hearing about the U.N. would have no traction if they were not grounded in fact,” she said. “The reason this has become a scandal is that the accusations have been proven true.”

Bottom story of the day*

Another hot exclusive from People magazine, who also brought us the Star Jones "I feel like I was fired" story.

*With apologies to the Wall Street Journal Online's Best of the Web Today.

Another Fiberal backbencher with hoof-in-mouth disease

Dalton McGuinty’s backbench is stirring up memories of the old Reform and Canadian Alliance caucuses, which during the summer months saw regular eruptions of infighting and ill-advised public comments. (Until Harper took over in 2002 and introduced the party to the concepts of focus and discipline.)

“I believe the Harper government, which receives its foreign policy from David Frum direct from George Bush, should apologize to the Canadian people for their support of the collective punishment of people first in Gaza and now in Lebanon,” he [Ottawa Liberal MPP Phil McNeely] said in an e-mail obtained by the Citizen. “As an elected member of Parliament I cannot believe that the democratically elected members of Hamas have been captured and imprisoned by this rogue state.”

In an interview with the Citizen yesterday morning, Mr. McNeely stood by the comments in the e-mail. He is so upset about the death and destruction going on in Lebanon that he had to speak out, he said.
--MPP calls Israel ‘rogue’ state, Ottawa Citizen, July 20

This comes on the heels of Thornhill MPP Mario Racco’s musings on the have-or-have-not Maritimes the other day:

Liberal MPP Mario Racco (Thornhill) told the Toronto Star that an Ontario NDP proposal to cap gas prices as is done in the Maritimes and Newfoundland is poor public policy.

Racco went further, saying it would be unwise for Ontario to follow the lead of the poorest region in Canada. “Tell me something, what’s the economic status of the Maritimes? Are they `have’ provinces or `have-not’ provinces? How is their economy doing? Why is it that Ontario has been doing much better than them?” he said. “The past performance would suggest to me their (the Maritime provinces’) approach hasn’t been as effective as it has been in Ontario. Why would we rely on their system?”
--Toronto Star, July 19

Premier Pinocchio immediately distanced himself from the comments of both MPPs – and he was already in Charlottetown.

New Fiberal logo promoting same-sex polygamy?

It looks like John Tory’s fight against Dalton McGuinty’s latest screw-up – redesigning the Ontario logo – is gaining traction. The Star reports today that Tory’s website, SavetheTrillium.ca, has received 2,800 complaints about the logo:

Tory launched the site, http://www.savethetrillium.ca, after the Toronto Star disclosed on June 23 the province had quietly replaced the traditional T-shaped trillium logo with an A-shaped flower — panned as resembling an aerial view of three men in a hot tub.

The controversial new design, which is similar to the trillium that appears in the dot on the “i” in the Ontario Liberal Party’s logo, was done by Bensimon Byrne at a cost of $219,000.

Bensimon Byrne is the same ad firm that did the party’s 2003 election advertising.

Tory noted that the familiar rendition of the province’s official flower dates back to former PC premier John Robarts’ administration in 1964. [The year I was born – now I’m REALLY mad! Next thing you know, Pontiac will stop making the Star Chief my parents bought the same year. What do you mean they already did?]

“Dalton McGuinty took a historic icon of Ontario and changed it without even consulting the taxpayers,” [Tory] said.

Government Services Minister Gerry Phillips has said the change was made to update the province’s brand and make it seem more “contemporary.”--TheStar.com

Yup, when I think hip and contemporary, I naturally think of Liberal warhorse Gerry Phillips (who, as Minister of Paper Clips, has to carry the can for the Premier’s office on this one), tourism minister Jim “yes that’s my real hair, why do you ask?” Bradley, and Minister of Cement-Pouring and Ribbon-Cutting David “Flounder” Caplan.

But on closer examination, I have realized that, contrary to my first post on this topic, the logo is not merely the latest Liberal attempt to wipe out Canadian symbols (a la the flag, the three branches of the military, the royal coat of arms, etc.), nor another Liberal gambit aimed at equating its own partisan interests with those of the citizenry, but instead a subtle promotion of same-sex polygamy.

Wait, let me explain.

Some have said, as the Star reports today, that the logo looks like an overhead view of three people in a hot tub. It is clear from the V-shaped figures that these are male body-builders. Now what kind of a body builder gets in a tub with two other guys? The gay kind, that’s who.

So the redesign is not just about making the Liberal party synonymous with Ontario, or destroying a Canadian symbol, or helping their favourite ad agency, it’s apparently a subliminal advertisement for gay polygamy.

I’m just sayin’.

Bill Graham: building a bridge to a terrorist century

In the 1996 US presidential election, Bill Clinton’s re-election slogan was “building a bridge to the 21st century.” Like most campaign slogans, it was designed to inspire and veil at the same time.

Ten years later, we have the Liberal Party of Canada which, though leaderless, has lost not a dram of its well-honed sense of moral superiority, coating a tasty combination of delusion and toasted nuts (but I'm not going to talk about Dan McTeague today). It too has seen fit to invoke the handy bridge metaphor, though coming from its interim leader, in whose riding a short span to the island airport remains a bridge too far, the metaphor is a poor fit. But that is the least of Bill Graham's rhetorical problems:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper must move away from his hard-line position on the Middle East crisis in favor* of one which enables Canada to maintain its historic role as a bridge builder in the region, Liberal Leader Bill Graham said today.

“We're very concerned about Mr. Harper's change in Canada’s traditional position of working with all sides in the Middle East for long-term peace by being able to work with all sides of the conflict to bring them together and in a dialogue,” Mr. Graham said. “Canada has always been able to act as an intermediary, but we can only serve in that capacity if both our comportment and our actions enable us to play that role.”

Mr. Graham urged Prime Minister Harper to look to the G-8 communique as a starting point for a balanced approach to help all parties in the region come together.
--Liberal party website

* Note to Liberal communications tools: you can set Microsoft Word to Canadian English by going to the “Tools” menu and selecting Language, then Set Language. Select "English (Canada)."

Graham’s evoking of Canada as a “bridge builder,” while urging “dialogue” and a “balanced approach” are vague – and deliberately so – concepts that tiptoe around the rather fundamental questions of: building a bridge -- between whom? Dialogue – with whom? Balanced approach – between what?

The history of the region would suggest the answer is: building a bridge to, and dialogue with, terrorists determined to destroy Israel, five years after it has exited south Lebanon and after it evicted its own citizens from Gaza in the hopes that enough Palestinians preferred land, prosperity and normalcy to refugee camps, squalor and blowing up their own children. The fact that they apparently do not helps explain the reported 80% approval among Israelis for the current military action. What dialogue can there be with people who care more about destroying Israel than any other political goal? What balance can there be between Israel existing and not existing?

And by “all sides in the Middle East,” does Graham mean to include Hezbollah’s sugar daddy Iran, which imprisoned and murdered Canadian journalist Zara Khazemi, then sent the official believed responsible for her death to the recent conference of the UN’s new “we really mean it this time” human rights body?

Graham’s view is not only offside from reality; it is offside from the usual defenders (or at least silent bystanders) of attacks on Israel. Even the Arab League and Saudi Arabia have condemned Hezbollah for the attacks and kidnappings that started the current conflict.

There have been some stunningly naïve arguments offered in defense of Hezbollah, focussing on its charitable and so-called educational activities. I guess people still need to be reminded that Hitler ended inflation, and Mussolini made the trains run on time. I think the Hitler Youth also got a few wayward boys off the streets.

After 27 years of terrorism, it is disheartening to see that so many people still seem to think that treating terrorists as legitimate spokespersons for legitimate grievances is a fruitful tactic. As Osama bin Laden has famously written, the meagre response of the West toward incidents such as the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993, Somalia, the USS Cole, Khobar Towers, etc. convinced him that the West did not have the will to fight.

Terrorists cannot be co-opted, legitimized or dialogued with, because they believe that to negotiate is to capitulate. Anwar Sadat of Egypt made peace with Israel. His reward was an assassin’s bullet.

Bill Graham’s Pollyanna euphemisms only reinforce the argument that, while his rhetoric may be scarcely a decade old, the clock in the Liberal Party’s foreign policy Delorean is permanently set to 1956.

Yes, he is Canadian

“But a positive note: Is Stephen Harper an hombre or what? Are we sure he’s a Canadian? I mean, an elected one — and one elected prime minister at that?”

That’s National Review managing editor Jay Nordlinger’s observation on Stephen Harper, especially as compared to Chirac and Putin (yes, a rather low bar, but nevertheless).

Nikola Tesla: the man who put the AC in AC/DC

Given that the Toronto Star is among my favourite whipping posts, it feels odd to commend them, but they deserve a nod for Tyler Hamilton’s feature on Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla. It appeared in the Star’s business section yesterday, the 150th anniversary of Tesla’s birth (go to TheStar.com and search “Tesla”).

Hamilton tiptoes around Tesla’s ethnicity, describing him as a Croatian-born Serb. Just to be clear: Tesla was the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest, born in a heavily-Serb area of what is now the independent state of Croatia. But to be fair, Tesla never had much interest in the centuries-old ethnic tensions of the Balkans, and is reported to have said that he was ""equally proud of my Serb origin and my Croatian homeland."

However neither this fact, nor their attempts to ethnically cleanse Croatia of ethnic Serbs, have stopped Croatia from trying to adopt Tesla as its own:

“I am happy that we are here today to celebrate Tesla, a Serb, a son of Croatia and a citizen of the world,” Croatian President Stipe Mesic said.

He spoke at a ceremony held just near the house where the scientist, an ethnic Serb, was born in 1856 in the south-central village of Smiljan while Croatia was a part of the old Austro-Hungarian empire.
--physorg.com

But an Associated Press story published by the Buffalo News notes the lack of electricity around Tesla’s birthplace, and suggests something else is afoot:

The crowning irony for war-battered Croatia is that hundreds of villages around Smiljan, his [Tesla’s] native town, have no electricity.

“If Tesla rose from the dead, he wouldn’t believe it,” said Marija Batinic, 50, who lives near Smiljan and believes that the heavily Serb region of central Croatia is being deprived of electricity because of ethnic discrimination.

One reason for Tesla’s transformation from nonperson to national hero in Croatia is the European Union, which wants the country to show gestures of reconciliation toward its Serbs as a condition for joining the prosperous club of democracies.

The government has spent $8.75 million turning Tesla’s house into a museum, and the presidents of Croatia and Serbia will come together Monday to dedicate it on the anniversary of his birth. A new statue of Tesla was unveiled Friday in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, and two more are planned.

Croatia’s Serbian minority, about 12 percent of the population of 4.5 million before the war, is down to 3 percent, many of them in the villages around Smiljan in central Croatia.

The government denies discrimination, blaming the power shortage on a lack of funds. It has promised to restore electricity to about 300 villages when it can get the money.

From the Star story:

He died alone, poor and a little nutty — the Croatian-born ethnic Serb genius whose innovations had a profound impact on development of the modern-day electrical grid.

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, who grew famous in the late 1800s for his public battles with inventor Thomas Edison during the “War of Currents.”

Tesla, at 28, emigrated to the United States in 1884, a time when Edison was aggressively promoting the concept of direct-current power generation. But Edison’s invention had major limitations. The “DC” power stations he was building had to be located in the centre of industry, since the direct current Edison was producing could only travel a kilometre in any direction.

Only 18 central power stations based on DC existed in the United States at that time, and about 370 smaller stations were located within factories. Tesla’s vision was to liberate this electricity through the use of alternating current, or AC, systems, which make it possible to efficiently transmit power over hundreds of kilometres at high voltages.

“He knew down the road, when industry develops, that there would be large amounts of power required to be transferred from one place to another,” says Mike Radan, a Serbian-born Canadian and electrical engineer who worked 35 years at the former Ontario Hydro. “Edison felt threatened.”

But Tesla, on his own an inept businessman, was no match for Edison. It took the support and foresight of American entrepreneur George Westinghouse and his Westinghouse Electric Corp. to push the “AC” concept forward — and to ultimately defeat Edison’s active fight against the AC movement and his aggressive public relations campaign promoting the deadly nature of alternating current.

In the end, Tesla and his AC inventions won the currents war after the Niagara Falls Power Co. and the Canadian Niagara Power Co. embraced the technology for an unprecedented power project at Niagara Falls, which was dependent on Tesla’s “polyphase” AC systems and patents. Westinghouse was chosen to lead construction of the massive hydro stations.

....

Yesterday, the Niagara Parks Commission unveiled a Tesla monument in recognition of his contributions to the region and the world of electricity. The Professional Engineers of Ontario have also declared 2006 to be the year of Tesla.

....

Tesla, who never married, died alone in 1943 of heart failure at 86. But his name lives on. This fall rock idol David Bowie will play Tesla in a movie called The Prestige, which will also star Michael Caine and Hugh Jackman.

MP mortgage story silent on McGuinty subsidy

Today’s Toronto Star reports MP Garth Turner’s claim that MPs may be able to apply their $75-per-day meal subsidy toward a mortgage if they purchase a home in Ottawa (sorry, no link: the Star’s links never work for me, but you can go to TheStar.com and find the story on the “Canada” page):

A GTA Conservative MP is calling for the immediate end to a little-known perk that allows MPs to put their $75 daily meal allowance towards their mortgage on an Ottawa residence.

Turner said that, as it stands, an MP can decide to buy a house in Ottawa, rather than rent. (Those who rent are entitled to accommodation and related living expenses of up to $24,000 a year, recently increased from $20,000.) If the house is eventually sold at a profit, the MP pockets the difference, even though taxpayers’ dollars enabled the politician to buy the home.

“I can get my $75 cheque delivered to my office, I can save them up and once a month I can put them against my mortgage.”

The author of the story is GTA Bureau Chief Richard Brennan, late of the Star's Queen’s Park bureau, who would be familiar with the fact that in 2004 the Ontario Liberal party purchased a house in Toronto for Dalton McGuinty to live in. There is no mention in today’s story of the fact that McGuinty hands his approximately $1,460-per-month MPP housing allowance over to the Ontario Liberal party as “rent” on the Rosedale house.

As I posted on my blog in May, the purchase price of the house was $995,000 and a $1,000,000 mortgage in favour of Scotiabank is registered against it. I estimated that the monthly carrying costs for the house would be close to $7,000, including a mortgage payment of $5,845.90 (assuming 5% interest and a 25-year amortization). All the documents are posted here.

To date, the Star has published little detail about McGuinty’s housecapades, revealing only that the house’s price was “in the high six figures” and that the party would accept his monthly housing allowance as adequate rent.

A search of the Star’s archives using the terms McGuinty, house or home, and mortgage, reveals no articles mentioning the payment of the Ontario Liberal party’s mortgage with McGuinty’s MPP allowance.

If an MP were to claim the meal subsidy for 20 days out of a month, that would translate into $1,500, roughly equivalent to what McGuinty is handing the Ontario Liberal party every month.

In fairness, it could be argued that there is a difference between a housing allowance going to pay a mortgage, and a meal allowance going to pay a mortgage. But I am puzzled by the Star’s two-and-a-half-year silence on McGuinty subsidizing a mortgage with his allowance, while trumpeting only the theoretical possibility that MPs might subsidize a mortgage with theirs.

Hands out of my pocket, hands out of my pocket . . .

Price of my Second Cup “small” coffee (which used to be called a “regular”) last week: $1.66

Price of my Second Cup coffee today: $1.64.

A government that I worked to elect keeping a promise: priceless.

(But at which Tim’s does Reg get an extra-large coffee for the same price?)

Lorne Gunter rhapsodizes at length about the meaning of it all in today’s National Post:

What thrilled me was the principle of it -- for once, a federal government was keeping less of my money rather than grasping for more.

I have grown so tired of the assumption within government that just because they print the money it all belongs to them and those of us who earn it should be grateful for whatever fraction they permit us to keep.

Those who favour massive social programs believe themselves to possess a heightened sense of social responsibility, and have convinced themselves they know so much better how to spend our money then we do.

They have no particular right to our money, no matter how high-minded their goals for it.

…….

I know the GST rollback is piddling -- hardly worth all my excitement. Still, it marks a change in philosophy about who's in charge, whose rights are paramount -- those of government or individual citizens.

We’ve seen tax cuts before. The Mike Harris government in Ontario significantly reduced personal income taxes (30% in its first term; 20% its second – but I believe the McGuinty Fiberals clawed back part of the 20%).

Unfortunately, the Ontario Tories were succeeded by a government that imposed the largest personal income tax hike in Ontario history and has broken 50-plus election promises, yet is still hovering between 35% and 40% in the polls. I remain hopeful that a change in philosophy is happening (or, as Trailer Park Boy Ricky would say “I’m not a pessimist, I’m an optometrist”). But, as I like to say, only time will tell.

I didn’t know Cheech and Chong owned a courier company . . .

Elections Canada has confirmation that the Marijuana Party's [2005 fiscal] return has been sent by courier and is in transit.
--“Registered Political Parties Submit 2005 Fiscal Returns,” Elections Canada news release, July 1, 2006

Star Jones was right – Walters didn’t have her back

Note: this post has been updated. Please scroll to the end.

I never thought I would see the day when I took the side of Star Jones – the Bridezilla grifter and slavering fan of Hillary Clinton – but alas, that day has arrived. I am marginally – marginally – on the side of Jones, in the imbroglio over her departure from the View and the hiring of Rosie O’Donnell to replace Meredith Vieira.

As I recall, and as Jones reminded the public on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show this morning, the View announced the hiring of Rosie O’Donnell to replace Meredith Vieira the same week that O’Donnell publicly dissed Jones: O’Donnell said that Jones should fess up to having had gastric by-pass surgery. (Yes, when I am looking for someone to keep it real, I always think of Rosie O’Donnell, who was pretending to be straight and in love with Tom Cruise when she last had a daytime talk show in the 90s.) From the Drudgereport.com:

Star Jones fired back on Ryan Seacrest’s morning radio show in Los Angeles, PerezHilton.com reports.

Star told KIIS FM: “I’m not trying to be emotional about this. I understand it was a business decision. I understood it was a business decision when I was told then. But then in that same week, I was told they were adding a new co-host and it was Rosie O’Donnell. And that was the same week that she had been so nasty and vicious towards me. Rosie insulted me. She tried to damage me professionally and personally...

“It’s a little shocking to me that Barbara feels betrayed. I was really surprised that Barbara feels betrayed. If you watched me yesterday, I said that she was the most amazing mentor and I thanked her for the most amazing opportunity. My departure was orchestrated some time ago. And while I can accept any business decision, it’s hard to accept the manner in which it was handled during the last two months. But, if you use words like betrayal, if anyone should be betrayed, it should be me! Barbara didn’t have my back...

I recall that, instead of defending Jones against O’Donnell’s criticism, Walters was reported to have said that if a problem were to emerge on the View after O’Donnell’s arrival, it would not be because of O’Donnell. (Take that, Star!)

Walters’ choosing to defend the incoming O’Donnell over the not-yet-outgoing Jones was telling, and surprising, considering that of all the View co-hosts, Jones has been the most reliable and notorious braun noser of Walters.

True, after O’Donnell’s hiring was announced, Jones apparently did float some items in the gossip columns about looking for other work. Why shouldn’t she, after Walters had already taken O’Donnell’s side? And Jones' outburst yesterday should not have been unexpected.

Further, Walters’ story is that ABC made the decision to fire Jones (or, in their words, not renew her contract). Are we to believe that if Walters had opposed that decision, she was helpless to reverse it? ABC Daytime was nowhere until Walters came along and created the View. She is also the View’s co-producer. If she really wanted Jones to stay, she probably could have made it happen. Instead, she is hiding behind the ABC suits.

Walters’ claim that she has been trying to protect Jones is not credible, in light of the facts that (1) she apparently made no effort to challenge ABC’s decision to dump Jones, (2) she and her co-producer hired someone who had publicly trashed a current co-host and (3) she publicly took the side of O’Donnell over Jones.

Frankly, I am baffled by the hiring of O’Donnell. She doesn’t have Vieira’s gravitas, and her addition to the View table seems redundant: Joy Behar already amply fills the mold of the fat, angry, menopausal, New York liberal.

And speaking of angry, O’Donnell is a very angry woman. During the trial of the suit against her by the publishers of McCall’s magazine – the demise of which followed O’Donnell’s becoming its editorial director – some very ugly testimony was heard about O’Donnell’s behaviour. She told Cindy Spengler, head of marketing of McCall’s, that her silence in a meeting of the magazine was tantamount to lying. Spengler quoted O’Donnell as saying, “You know what happens to people who lie. They get sick and they get cancer. If they keep lying, they get it again.”

Ironically, O’Donnell was caught in a lie herself, when she admitted having lied in a deposition that she never made the remark.

Check out this link for more stories of Rosie’s public tirades.

I don’t envy the View’s staffers. Methinks there will be some serious resume-polishing going on over the summer.

O’Donnell is reportedly returning to TV to bolster her own fading celebrity, having whinged that she recently had to wait in line for a table at a restaurant. Oh, the humanity.

I don’t know that I’ll be watching the View regularly when O’Donnell joins the table in the fall, but I’m definitely looking forward to see what Saturday Night Live does with the new lineup and Jones' absence from it.

Addendum: Part of the Walters camp’s spin is the claim that ABC had done audience research that found viewers had been turned off by Jones’ weight loss and wedding. I guess that’s possible, but I’d love to see the research – if any – on O’Donnell.

After her ugly lawsuit over McCall’s, same-sex wedding in San Francisco (which, like all the others performed there, there was nullified because cities can’t change marriage laws), same-sex family cruise line, regular attacks on Bush (sorry, but some of the View’s audience supports him – why else do they let the inept Elisabeth Hasselbeck defend him on occasion?), etc., could O’Donnell have a better image among the View's target audience than Jones? I doubt it, which lends more weight to the theory that Walters was behind dumping Jones – not the suits at ABC.

Another Liberal stinkbomb disguised as a flower

Roses are red, violets are blue, the Ontario trillium is white – right?

Not if you were a Liberal in Ontario in the late 1980s. To adorn the cover of the government's 1988 budget documents – the first budget after winning their huge majority in September 1987 – Liberal treasurer Robert Nixon chose a red trillium. Soon it came out that the red trillum differed from the traditional white one in more than its colour.

The red trillium emits a noxious smell – not unlike the stench left by the 1985-90 Peterson government that jacked up welfare rates, the size of the civil service, and taxes (33 separate tax increases!), leaving their successors in the NDP government of Bob Rae with a time bomb, instead of the balanced budget they claimed (but it was Rae who put the Liberals in power in 1985, so there was a sort of poetic justice to him having to clean up their mess).

Now, as if their 50-plus broken promises weren’t enough, the McGuinty Fiberals have dropped another Liberal-scented stinkbomb on unsuspecting Ontarians. From today’s Toronto Star:

The Liberal government has quietly replaced the traditional Ontario trillium logo dating back to 1964 with a version of the flower similar to the party’s trademark.

In a move opposition critics blasted as “a waste of money” at a time when Premier Dalton McGuinty’s administration is running a deficit, the stylized trillium has been radically changed.

Gone is the classic T-shaped rendition of the official provincial flower introduced by Progressive Conservative premier John Robarts 42 years ago.

In its place is a more detailed A-shaped trillium that is eerily similar to one that appears in the dot on the “i” in the Ontario Liberal Party’s three-year-old logo.

Bensimon Byrne, a Liberal-friendly advertising firm, designed the new provincial logo at a cost of $219,000. The agency’s Peter Byrne created the Liberals’ 2003 election ads, including the now-infamous spot featuring McGuinty saying: “I won’t raise your taxes.”

(For the full story, you’ll have to go to TheStar.com and find it – posting the Star’s links never seems to work for me.)

So what appears to be an innocent “rebranding” of the Ontario government is really (1) an attempt to subliminally equate the Ontario government with the Ontario Liberal party and (2) another reward to the Fiberals’ favourite ad agency. I guess you could call the new logo a Trojan flower.

But who is surprised, really? The arrogance symbolized by the phrase “l’état, c’est moi” is deep in the marrow of the Liberal party. Appropriating government symbols to meet the Liberal’s party’s ends – which ends are, after all, questioned only by bigots and Bible-thumpers – is merely one of the more innocent manifestations of their manifest destiny. The sponsorship scandal is one of the more guilty ones.

Another memory of Peterson-era arrogance: after they brought down the Miller PC government in June of 1985, a Liberal banner hung from the front of the Ontario Legislature – for the entire summer. I’m not kidding.

John Kerry*: in favour of withdrawal by year-end before he was against it

Kerry used to be funny. Now he’s just pathetic. From the Boston Globe:

Senator John F. Kerry is pushing back by six months the deadline he wants to set for removing combat troops from Iraq, as he seeks to build support in the Senate for his plan for troop withdrawal.

The proposal to be offered by Kerry today would require President Bush to remove nearly all US troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007. The Massachusetts Democrat's initial plan -- to remove troops by the end of 2006 -- received just six votes in the Senate last week, and the later date is intended to build support for the proposal, said April Boyd, a Kerry spokeswoman. (Hat tip: Lucianne.com)

Sure, maybe Kerry’s latest gambit is a thoughtful attempt to get more than the six votes he got for his original cut-and-run plan. Or maybe he’s just a dangerous idiot. The fact that he chose to propose this on the day the mutilated bodies of two American soldiers were found in Iraq would suggest the latter.

* The French-looking Massachusetts senator, who by the way served in Vietnam. He didn’t learn anything, but he still has the hat (hat tip: OpinionJournal.com)

Reporter bites owner

A newsboy cap tip to David Giles for steering me to this scathing op-ed in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix penned by Les MacPherson. It is a bracing – to put it mildly – corrective to the adoring obituaries of Lord Thomson in the wake of his death last week:

What the obituaries don't mention, however, is Thomson's pathological greed. His celebrated media empire was built on monopoly newspapers that treated their employees like dirt while providing a third-rate product to captive subscribers.

I speak here from personal experience. I worked for the Prince Albert Daily Herald for a few years back in the 1970s, when it was part of the Thomson newspaper chain. This was the meanest, cheapest organization I've ever known.

What follows are anecdotes of filthy offices, staff working unrecompensed overtime hours, and reporting standards that would only fly in a one-newspaper town. And here’s MacPherson’s take on the writing-instrument policy at Thomson Newspapers, which apparently was even worse than the lore I had heard:

It was in Moose Jaw where reporters had to take notes with pencils because pens were deemed too expensive. To get a new pencil, they first had to turn in the old pencil stub. When the photographers exceeded their film budgets, editors were told to run old pictures until next month. This at a daily newspaper. That's how Ken Thomson got to be the wealthiest man in Canada.

The dog that didn’t bark

I am somewhat confused by the unadulterated praise for the late Ken Thomson, citing his (a) business acumen (b) philanthropy (c) common touch (d) love of art (e) love of dogs, in particular walking his own among the common folk of Rosedale (and seeing to the scooping personally).

Not that any of this tribute is untrue or undeserved, but where are the oft-told tales of the legendary parsimony at Thomson Newspapers, the bits of grit around which the pearl necklace of the Thomson empire was built?

Where are the anecdotes related by reporters who had worked on Thomson papers, poured into the credulous ears of journalism students such as myself? Anecdotes such as reporters being required to turn in a dry ballpoint pen before being issued another. Black humour (no pun intended) along the lines of: if Thomson managers could figure out how to use both sides of a piece of toilet paper, it would be company policy.

Perhaps over the past decade or so Thomson has been eclipsed by Conrad Black as the gold standard of malevolent media ownership, allowing Thomson Newspapers’ bean-counting to fade into the mists of memory. And to be sure, having to beg a supply clerk for a 25-cent Bic hardly compares to being described by your owner thus: “My experience with journalists authorises me to record that a very large number of them are ignorant, lazy, opinionated, intellectually dishonest and inadequately supervised.” (My favourite epigram about Conrad Black has always been former Saturday Night editor John Fraser’s observation that “If Conrad Black didn’t exist, journalists would have to invent him in order to have someone to be fearful of.”)

But for there to be almost no mention of the penny-pinching at Thomson? Odd.

Reading Thomson’s obits, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the initial flurry of obituaries after Richard Nixon’s death in 1994, which highlighted his achievements after leaving the White House in 1974, and the regard in which he was held at his death. Within days there was a bit of a push back from boomer journalists and commentators along the lines of, “Er, sorry to spoil the wake, but didn’t this man try to subvert the constitution, and resign in disgrace after the House Judiciary Committee recommended that he be impeached?”

I wonder if there will be any similar correctives offered on Thomson. Only time will tell.

Unpopular views test tolerance limit

Letter published in today's Toronto Star, on Ryerson University's award of an honorary degree to ethicist Margaret Somerville:

As a Ryerson graduate, I commend the university for standing by its decision to award an honorary degree to Margaret Somerville. The academic council committee put it well in its statement that says, in part, "If we withdraw the award, then we demonstrate that as a university we show tolerance for some contestable views but not others."

In recent years it seems that many in the gay community — having now checked off most of their own agenda items — have forgotten the meaning of tolerance. They also seem to have forgotten that it is unpopular views that test the limits of tolerance and that their views were once in that category.

Joan Tintor, Toronto

Postscript: I heard on CFRB yesteday that Ryerson had no idea about Somerville's "controversial" views on same-sex marriage. Not doing a news database search on people being considered for honorary degrees is a bit careless and it reflects badly on Ryerson that this basic due diligence was not done.

Had they found the news stories about her testimony before Parliament and decided not to honor her because of her position on gay marriage, I would have had no quarrel with that -- there is no "right" to receive an honorary degree and universities are free to base them on whatever criteria they wish.

But Somerville is being honored for her academic work, not her views on same-sex marriage, and rescinding the degree after it had already been publicly announced would have been unfair to Somerville and sent the wrong message, as per the quote from Ryerson above.

Channelling “Carrie” on a Thursday morning

I was waiting in line this morning to buy a coffee. The guy ahead of me had brought his own mug, a blue glass job bearing the unmistakeable logo of OPSEU – the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Silently I cursed OPSEU and all public sector unions.

I looked away for a few seconds, then heard a loud “pop” and breaking glass. The OPSEU mug had exploded into several large pieces after its owner filled it with fresh coffee. No one was injured, but I suspect my look of contentment might have put Mona Lisa to shame.

One of the coffee shop staff pointed at me jokingly, saying “she did it.” Well now, maybe I did.

Pitfield says take back our public services – on second thought, never mind

I was surprised to hear a report that Toronto councillor and mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield had argued in favour of phasing out the unions that deliver Toronto’s public services such as transit and garbage pickup:

"The unions are stronger than I have ever seen them," Pitfield said. "It's not healthy for the city. Perhaps it's time to start phasing out unions."

Pitfield seems like a smart woman and a common-sense pol, but she has never struck me as particularly visionary or bold – which any politician who dares question the existence of public sector unions would have to be.

By close of business yesterday Pitfield had issued a clarification:

"I wish to state clearly that organized labour can have an important role to play in municipal government and do not believe that they should be decertified or eliminated," she wrote. "However, this is clearly distinguishable from the increasing influence that unions have currently, which in my view is threatening the ability of our city to function to the best of its ability."

One of the few remaining contracts not handled by the unions is garbage pick-up in Etobicoke and York. City staff prepared a report saying it would cost $21 million extra for the city to take over those routes.

Pitfield said she'd like to sit down and speak to the heads of the city's unions about how the union contracts are stressing the city's operating budget. [insert laugh track here]

My regular readers (all five of them) will know that ”taking back our public services” is one of my most cherished hobbyhorses. While I continue to hope that some gutsy politician(s) will take up this fight someday, it’s obvious that Jane Pitfield is not going to be the one to do it.

California voters reject Meathead’s universal preschool plan

This story is several days old, but I didn’t see it reported in the Canadian media, despite the parallels to the debate here over the federal Liberals’ child care scheme – a scheme to which many Liberal leadership candidates remain firmly wedded.

Last week California voters rejected a proposition that would have provided “free” preschool to all 4-year-olds. The measure was spearheaded by director Rob Reiner, who first rose to fame as Mike “Meathead” Stivic on the 1970s TV series All in the Family. (My fellow geezers may also recall that Reiner alternated with Canadian actor Stuart Margolin in the role of “Snake” on the Partridge Family; Snake was a biker and would-be suitor of Laurie Partridge.)

As the Los Angeles Times reported last week:

Voters rejected a ballot measure that would have taxed the wealthy to provide free preschool for all California 4-year-olds, while a $600-million library bond issue appeared headed for defeat early today.

Proposition 82, the universal preschool proposal created and bankrolled by Hollywood filmmaker Rob Reiner, was designed to raise an estimated $2.4 billion annually by taxing individuals who earn more than $400,000 and couples who earn more than $800,000.

Shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday, Reiner acknowledged to a crowd at Los Angeles' Westin Bonaventure Hotel that Proposition 82 was not faring well.

"But it doesn't matter," he said. "Win or lose, we have raised the profile of the importance of early childhood education and preschool in this state, and it will never go away."

To those who didn't like the initiative, Reiner said: "Help us come up with another way."

The measure envisioned free half-day preschool at public schools and private learning centers for all children, regardless of family income. Opponents, who raised about half as much money as supporters, argued throughout the campaign that the measure was well-intentioned but fatally flawed.

The billions of dollars it would raise would be better spent on the state's public schools, they said, instead of providing a subsidy to the middle-class and well-off who can afford to pay for preschool.

You’re going to Torment! (as are we all)

Do you ever turn on the closed captioning feature on your TV? I often do, and it’s fascinating. For instance, on South Park, sometimes Kenny’s muffled dialogue is translated into clear English in the captions. On Law & Order, the clanging sound that signals the transition to the next scene is described as "[echoing bang]". Often there is helpful additional information, such as the way in which a line of dialogue is delivered, for example, "sarcastically" or "mockingly."

When MuchMoreMusic aired the movie Training Day a few months ago, the many expletives in the dialogue were bleeped out, yet in the closed captions they were spelled out to the letter (mostly the letter “F”).

Which is all by way of lead-in to my main point, which is that sometimes the words in the caption do not match the words that were spoken, and hilarity occasionally ensues (well, for me, anyway). On last night’s premiere of Canadian Idol, one of the judges informed a lucky auditioner that they had earned a gold ticket, declaring “You’re going to Toronto!” Unfortunately, this was translated in the closed caption as “You’re going to Torment!” Sigh. And taking all of us who can’t resist the Idol shows with them.

Take back our public services redux

Today’s illegal transit strike in Toronto is a classic example of what a public sector union that delivers a monopoly service is prepared to do, when it decides that it doesn’t like a decision made by officials acting on behalf of the public who supposedly own the service. (To add insult to injury, union officials reportedly went into hiding earlier today, to evade service of a cease-and-desist order obtained by the city early this morning.)

Listening to radio and TV today, I heard the usual entreaties that the TTC should be declared an essential service, or the workers should all be fired a la Reagan and the air traffic controllers, etc. (though Reagan always insisted that he did not fire them -- they abandoned their jobs). These are understandable reactions, but anything that leaves union control intact merely scratches the surface of the problem -- the problem being that the public lost control of its “public” services by allowing them to be unionized.

Time again to revisit my op-ed from last fall, about why unions should not be permitted in the public sector.

McGuinty daring the gods on Sorbara reappointment

For a comment on Dalton McGuinty’s puttanesca-speed restoration of Greg Sorbara to the Ontario cabinet, I highly recommend today’s Toronto Sun editorial, which neatly contrasts the Guinster’s disinterest in the five-week-old Caledonia blockade, with the four-man cabinet shuffle completed in less than one business day – and before the ink was dry on Friday’s court ruling expunging Greg Sorbara’s name from RCMP warrants executed at the Sorbara family business last October:

If only Premier Dalton McGuinty had been in as big a hurry to resolve the native land claim dispute in Caledonia as he was to rush Greg Sorbara back into his cabinet yesterday.

Perhaps local natives and townspeople would not have been at each other's throats on Monday after five weeks of increasing anger and frustration on both sides. But no one in Caledonia is as important to McGuinty as Sorbara, his right-hand man and most important political ally.

When innocent citizens have their lives disrupted due in large part to government inaction, which is what happened in Caledonia until this week's crisis, politicians like McGuinty lecture them about staying calm and being patient -- ad nauseam.

But when one of their own is caught in a situation they perceive to be unjust, which is how McGuinty regarded the circumstances Sorbara found himself in, well, then, they just can't act fast enough ... Can they?

Perhaps McGuinty was encouraged by yesterday’s editorial in the Ottawa Citizen, which concluded that “From the perspective of the law, Mr. Sorbara is as clean as wind-driven snow. At present, there is no legal reason why Mr. Sorbara should not be in cabinet.”

The Citizen’s editorial writers make a serviceable argument, but they miss the point. The standard they offer is a narrow, legalistic standard, not an ethical standard. An ethical standard was set by former premier Mike Harris, under whose regime several ministers stepped aside, before any direct wrongdoing had been proven (and as I recall, in all cases there was no wrongdoing proven). As opposition leader, McGuinty paid lip service to a similar standard, when he said that any minister under a cloud should step aside.

McGuinty failed the first test of that standard in early 2004, when it became public that Royal Group was being investigated by the RCMP, Ontario Securities Commission and Revenue Canada. Sorbara had known about the investigations for two months, but didn’t bother telling McGuinty. McGuinty refused to ask Sorbara to step aside. And McGuinty discarded the standard entirely when he refused to ask erstwhile transportation minister Harinder Takhar to step down earlier this year, even after he became the first cabinet minister in Ontario to be reprimanded by the Integrity Commissioner.

As an aside, it is odd that Takhar has been handed the newly-chiselled portfolio of Small Business (though in fairness, Joe Cordiano was probabably paying it little attention, what with his puttan-esque pursuit of automakers). One of Takhar’s main defences to his conduct with regard to his family company, the Chalmers Group, was that he was a mere investor, and had little to do with the day to day conduct of the business:

"I don’t go there very often…I only go there when I have to see my wife or when I have to have lunch with her. I never went there before. I was never actively involved in the business, ever."
--Christina Blizzard, Toronto Sun, June 12, 2005 (as quoted on page 2 of Commissioner Osborne’s report)

And how to describe McGuinty’s ethical standard today? Straight out of "Hogan’s Heroes":

"I'm not sure who among us here is under investigation for what. We just don't know those kinds of things," he [McGuinty] told reporters. (Toronto Star, today)

Contrast this with McGuinty’s conduct as opposition leader, when one of his MPPs, Claudette Boyer, was alleged to have been involved in the cover-up of a vehicle accident in 1999. At the time, McGuinty claimed that he had tried to find out whether she was being investigated. Today, when deciding who will oversee an $80-billion budget and manage over $100 billion in public debt, it’s “I see no-thing, I know no-thing!”

Both the Sun and the Star noted that it would have been prudent for McGuinty to at least wait out the 30-day appeal period that follows Friday’s ruling before returning Sorbara to cabinet. I guess McGuinty didn’t relish the prospect of four weeks of whining from Sorbara.

By moving before the appeal period is up, and ignoring the fact that Royal Group is still the subject of investigations by the RCMP, Ontario Securities Commission and Revenue Canada – not to mention a class-action lawsuit by the Canadian Commercial Workers Industry Pension Plan – McGuinty is gambling that there will be no major eruptions on this file before the general election of October 2007.

Sorbara’s court challenge of the RCMP’s warrants, and his public comments on the matter have no doubt ticked off RCMP investigators. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on 18 months of quiet.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

"Her [Hillary Clinton’s] national appeal and national strength is not based upon her relationship with Bill Clinton, but her extraordinary stature and success as a U.S. senator," said Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic donor and supporter of the couple.

That’s the money quote from today’s front-page New York Times story about the Clintons’ marriage – a quote that also reveals the entire motivation for the piece.

The story quotes other Clinton pals, such as Leon Panetta and Donna Brazile, which suggests that the Clintons okayed their interviews.

Of course, one would like to believe that this sort of stuff won't wash with the public, but these world-class grifters have gotten away with a lot (e.g. Bill's recent announcment of a multi-million-dollar advance to write a book -- about public service!), so you can't blame them for trying.

Victory for Sorbara, dilemma for McGuinty

Erstwhile Ontario finance minister Greg Sorbara has succeeded in having his name struck from the RCMP search warrants that resulted in his resignation from the Ontario cabinet last October. From the Canadian Press story:

Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer's ruling quashed parts of the search warrants that included Sorbara's name. The rest of the warrants stand.

Sorbara stepped down as finance minister after his name surfaced during an RCMP criminal investigation into allegations of fraud by Royal Group Technologies (TSX:RYG).

Sorbara had been a board member and part of the audit committee at Royal Group until he became finance minister in October 2003.

In his ruling, Nordheimer said police acted too quickly and without enough information to add Sorbara's name to the warrants, which included several other former top executives at the company.

"I am left with the nagging concern that the application for a search warrant, at least as it related to the applicant (Sorbara) was very much premature," Nordheimer wrote in his ruling.

Premier Dalton McGuinty, however, has yet to indicate whether he will put Sorbara back into cabinet now that – in Sorbara’s mind, anyhow -- Sorbara has been cleared. No doubt Sorbara is of the view that getting back the keys to both his government car and the Ontario treasury are his due.

More than any single individual, Sorbara is responsible for installing McGuinty in the second-floor corner office at the Pink Palace. In the late 90s, Sorbara was comfortably retired from politics and active in business. But watching McGuinty blow the 1999 election lured him back to politics: he ran for party president in the fall of ‘99, raised money, found candidates, set up the campaign team and, at McGuinty’s urging, ran for the Vaughan-King-Aurora seat left empty by Al Palladini’s untimely death in 2001.

Word has it that, prior to his resignation, Sorbara’s sign-off was required on all government initiatives. The PCs took to calling him “the Real Premier” and had T-shirts made to that effect (one of which is proudly owned by Sorbara himself).

All of this is no doubt why McGuinty expended political capital by refusing to remove Sorbara from cabinet when news of the investigations into Royal Group first broke in early 2004 – when Sorbara’s story on Royal was that he had done a good job and any criticisms were unjustified (more on this later). This was in contrast to McGuinty’s assertion while opposition leader that ministers under any cloud should step aside.

But when Sorbara’s name appeared on search warrants in the fall of 2005, McGuinty had no choice but to ask him to step aside. Sorbara’s news conference in the lobby of the Frost building was the first time I have ever seen him publicly rattled.

Whether McGuinty sincerely wishes to put Sorbara back into cabinet or not, I have no clue. But politically, the move has more downsides than upsides.

While the absence of Sorbara has had little apparent impact on the McGuinty regime, putting Sorbara back in the cabinet means exposing him to questions about the investigations and his past statements.

In the days after his resignation, Sorbara gave media interviews in which he described himself as a “passive participant” in his family’s real estate and development business. This despite the fact that the Sorbara Group’s website described the firm as having “an experienced management team combined with the personal hands-on approach of the principals Edward Sorbara, Joseph Sorbara and Gregory Sorbara.”

And according to the Globe and Mail this past March, Sorbara swore in court documents that his older brothers, Edward and Joseph, made it clear "that I ought not to contemplate becoming involved in the management and direction of 'their' business."

Also in the days after his resignation, he claimed that, although he was an independent director at Royal Group and a member of the audit committee, the board never examined any deals below a certain dollar figure (I believe it was $60 million), and that figure excluded the deals Royal Group did with the Sorbara Group.

He also told the Star’s Richard Brennan that he knew there were governance problems at Royal Group and, though he tried valiantly to fix them, met with little success. Sorbara told Brennan that he was concerned “from Day 1” he began serving on the board in 1994 that “we [the board] had no capacity to reverse the decisions of management.” Sorbara says he tried to assert the board’s oversight over management, but he was unsuccessful.

Though Sorbara may have succeeded in convincing a judge that his latest version of what went on at the Sorbara Group and Royal Group is the truth, once back in cabinet he may be called upon to explain his glaring inconsistencies on (a) whether he was a successful developer or the Gary Ewing of the Sorbara family, and (b) whether he was a competent independent director of Royal Group, or a failed corporate governance reformer.

And while Sorbara may have succeeded in having his name removed from some court documents, they remain on others, namely a class action lawsuit brought against Sorbara and several other former and current Royal Group officials by Canadian Commercial Workers Industry Pension Plan. Though admittedly, this lawsuit stems from the conduct alleged in the criminal investigation. Perhaps Sorbara will try to bootstrap today’s ruling into getting his name removed from the civil suit.


Then there’s the matter of Sorbara’s alleged leaking to local politicians of the McGuinty government’s biggest ticket item in its March budget: building the Spadina subway extension. Sorbara denied being the source, but several news articles resulted, mentioning Sorbara Group land holdings along the subway route.

Sorbara is also notorious for having an arrogant streak that may reflect poorly on a government facing a by-election in Parkdale-High Park and 18 months away from a general election, intent on branding itself as “on the side of” average folks. Most average folks are not in a position to hire $500-per-hour lawyers to amend search warrants in a police investigation still in its early stages.

And then there’s the problem of moving aside current finance minister Dwight “Spanky” Duncan, who appears very comfortable in the finance spot. Bringing Sorbara back means demoting at least one cabinet member. And those who may not be interested in running again in 2007 – names such as Gerry Phillips spring to mind – may not be any more willing to give up their car and driver than Sorbara was.

Still no ideas from Belinda, while Brison cribs from Clement

It is one year to the day since the sleek HMS Stronach made her maiden crossing in the House of Commons, finding a comfortable berth alongside the Martin JuggerNot. How were these unsinkables to know that a paunchy iceberg by the name of Stephen Harper lay just a few knots ahead?

Enough bad metaphors. It has also been nearly six weeks since Stronach announced she would not be seeking the Liberal leadership, offering the risible rationales that (a) the riding-weighted selection process was unfair, and (b) she could only speak her mind on policy and party renewal as a backbencher, not a leadership candidate:

Stronach also told CTV that she was interested in, "pushing the envelope for ideas that will bring about greater renewal of the party."

The MP for Newmarket-Aurora told reporters that she could have launched a strong bid for the leadership, but she is more interested in being "free to express my views."

"I think I'm less restricted as a member of Parliament to speak about renewal from the grassroots up," she said.
--CTV.ca, April 6, 2006

Well, perhaps it’s not fair to hold Stronach accountable after only six weeks. But look over here! Another erstwhile Conservative, Scott Brison, has come forward with a new idea! Well, sort of new: no one’s proposed it for at least two years.

Today, openly gay and really openly bilingual Liberal MP Scott Brison unveiled the first whiz-bang idea of the Liberal leadership. Yes, the man whose last leadership campaign (for the PCs in 2003) featured a light bulb as its logo, is hoping to capture the imagination of Liberals and soon-to-be Liberals with an idea last seen in Tony Clement’s bids for the Ontario PC leadership in 2002, and for the Conservative leadership in 2004:

The first $25,000 in annual earnings by young adults would be made tax free under a proposal floated today by Liberal leadership candidate Scott Brison.

The tax break would apply to a person's first 12 years of full-time work, thus helping young Canadians pay off student loans and start families, Brison told a Bay Street lunch crowd of 1,000 people at the National Club.
--www.TheStar.com (sorry no link, the Star's links never seem to translate into my blog)

When then-Ontario health minister Tony Clement ran on the idea in 2002, it was called JumpStart 250 – 250 referring to the notion that the first $250,000 in income earned by 18-year-olds would be tax-free. He resurrected the idea in his bid to lead the new Conservative party in 2004.

As someone once said, a week is a lifetime in politics. And a year? Consider that a year ago, Stronach and Brison were considered two of the brightest lights in Ottawa and two huge losses for the Conservatives – losses for which Harper was blamed. Brison was offering spirited defences of the sponsorship scandal in Question Period.

Now Stronach is squinting into the fluorescent lighting cast on those whose achievements never matched their hype (though the Star's political blog reports that she has been named head of the Liberal women's caucus). Brison is stealing ideas from Tony Clement, and both are struggling to master French.

But, as we should all remind ourselves, Stronach and Brison have not been the first to undergo reversals of political fortune. They will surely not be the last.

Harper is playing chess while the opposition plays checkers

That's the conclusion I draw when I see that the Prime Minister has quickly dropped his plans for a new commission to oversee all public appointments, mere hours after the government operations committee rejected his nominee to head the commission.

Rookie NDP MP (and former Buzz Hargrove grenade-catcher) Peggy Nash offered the rationale that former EnCana Corp head Gwyn Morgan’s previous comments on multiculturalism and the roots of gang violence rendered him unsuitable for the role. From the Canadian Press story:

"(The) opposition this morning voted down the government's key efforts to clean up the appointments process," said Harper spokeswoman Carolyn Stewart Olsen.

"It is now clear that we will not be able to make progress on this issue in a minority Parliament.

"The NDP and the Bloc will have to explain why they co-operated with a party that doesn't want to clean up the government appointments process to snub one of Canada's most respected business leaders."

Olsen said the government will campaign again on accountability in the next election and try to set up the appointments committee in its next mandate.

She added that Harper will invite Morgan soon to serve the country in another role.

"Recent riots in France and Australia are timely and troubling examples," [Morgan] said [in a February speech]. "It seems as if `multiculturalism' in these countries has created `subcultures' bearing little relation to the mainstream culture and values of the country."

Last year, Morgan linked Canada's gang-violence problem to immigration from places such as Jamaica and Indochina — "where culture is dominated by violence and lawlessness."

The government was obviously ready and waiting for the opposition's short-sighted tactic. And the NDP have just handed the Harper government the first plank in its next election platform.

Will Nash learn from her mistake? Too early to tell. Did her former boss Buzz Hargrove ever learn from his?

Addendum: I was remiss in not mentioning the other recent case of chess-playing by the Harper regime: calling for a snap debate and vote on extending the Afghanistan deployment past February 2007.

Yes, there is a sound logistical argument for having a vote now: it is impractical to wait until the fall or winter for the forces to learn whether that mission will be continuing or not. But there are also good political reasons for doing it now.

First, having the vote now means the issue will have been decided at least at year (we hope) in advance of the election. Second, it catches the Liberals leaderless and in the midst of a leadership contest in which several candidates have already been unable to resist backing away from the Martin government’s decision to commit to a more aggressive and dangerous mission in Afghanistan. (For the Liberals who are despairing over what to do tonight, here’s a wacky idea: how about a free vote?)

It is less than a year since a Liberal government made the decision to commit to the current mission in Afghanistan. Now we have several of their MPs and leadership candidates publicly questioning a deployment they voted for mere months ago.

If the vote fails and the mission has to end in 2007, it will be clear that it was because of lack of support from the Liberals and NDP – not the Conservatives.

Pre-election periods – and this one began on January 24th – are all about defining who you are. When a party has taken two or more different stands on an overseas deployment within a 12-month period, the public is wont to say “I don’t know where these people stand or who they are.” But they’ll know who the Conservatives are: the party that supported the troops, supported the mission, and held a vote in Parliament – like they promised.

Is “Draft Belinda” censoring comments?

Demonstrating the same brand of message discipline that has gotten Belinda Stronach through a leadership campaign, two elections, a floor-crossing and an aborted leadership bid (by the way, we're still waiting for those bold ideas that Stronach said she could only put forth from the sidelines), the "Draft Belinda" blog appears to have a general ban on any comment that falls outside the realm of Belinda worship.

Yesterday I couldn’t resist posting a comment along these lines on the blog, set up by someone calling himself “Jon”:

“Jon, get back to the Magna assembly line!”

And I posted under under my own blogger identity. So far, however, the comment has not appeared, though comments made after that point in time have – all throwing bouquets of encouragement to Stronach, some anonymously. (Now why would anyone not want the world to know that they're someone who thinks Stronach would make a great PM? Oh, yeah.)

I noticed that at Canadian Jedi, several commenters mentioned they had also posted comments at Draft Belinda. Theirs have not been published either.

Paul Martin’s forgotten foray into Ontario politics

Such a fuss – especially at the Toronto Star – over Stephen Harper’s perceived failure to show sufficient deference to Premier Pinocchio (or, as my former boss used to call him, “s***head”). And the nerve of Harper – appearing at the Ontario PCs’ major fundraising dinner to endorse John Tory!

The opposition and some media outlets are playing along, forgetting that McGuinty has no lessons in courtesy to teach anyone, having himself walked out of a recent premiers’ meeting a day early.

Liberal leadership candidates – glad for the opportunity to talk about something other than their party’s record and the Conservatives’ lead in Quebec – are happily piling on. When I hear erstwhile New Democrat Bob Rae – the highlight of whose political career was moving the non-confidence motions that brought down the Clark and Miller governments – accuse Harper of “injecting a totally partisan approach to the entire enterprise of being prime minister” . . . Well, I don’t whether to laugh or cry.

Anyhow, as is often the case, the current brouhaha is in dire need of some context, other than reporters’ top-of-head claims that Harper’s conduct is unprecedented. While the details may be, the substance is not.

Andrew Spencer of Calgary helpfully supplied some context in a letter published in the Star yesterday, noting that “On Jan. 18, going into the final days before the election, Dalton McGuinty told reporters: “I continue to believe that Prime Minister Paul Martin is the best choice for the people of Ontario." He also actively campaigned for his brother, David McGuinty, a Liberal candidate for the federal riding of Ottawa South.”

Here’s another example. In September of 2003, Liberal backbencher Paul Martin was the Prime Minister in waiting, his elevation to leader of the Liberal party the following November a mere formality.

With no portfolio and no leadership foes left to crush, Martin was free to insert himself in the Ontario election Premier Ernie Eves had called for October 2, 2003. He did so by making a highly publicized visit to the riding of St. Paul’s to endorse Liberal MPP Michael Bryant. I don’t have access to any databases at the moment to confirm the details, but I recall Martin endorsing Bryant with the phrase “this is my team” (meaning all Liberals and therefore the Ontario Liberals).

Eves was a sitting premier, and Martin was, for all intents and purposes, a prime minister elect. Yet Martin’s campaigning, as I recall, did not inspire any public whinging from Eves, even though as finance ministers, Martin and Eves had enjoyed a cordial relationship. And Bryant had defeated Eves’ “life partner” – former Harris cabinet minister Isabel Bassett – in St. Paul’s in the 1999 general election.

McGuinty’s rent control: a $1 M house for under $1,500 a month

Shortly after the McGuinty government’s election in October 2003, the Toronto Star reported that “Dalton McGuinty has embarked on the ultimate urban challenge: finding an affordable house in downtown Toronto.”

In January, 2004, some vague details about the house – purchased by the Ontario Liberal party for McGuinty – were released to the Star’s Ian Urquhart:

The party bought a house for McGuinty in the tony Yonge-Summerhill area of mid-town Toronto. The price was in the high six figures.

That's beyond McGuinty's price range, even with his salary of $152,835 a year.

So McGuinty will rent the house from the party for an amount equivalent to the housing allowance for out-of-town MPPs, or about $1,460 a month - well below the market rate for the area.
--Toronto Star, January 31, 2004

The article also noted that “It is not unusual for political parties in Ontario to subsidize housing costs for their leaders. When Mike Harris was Conservative leader his party helped defray the cost of his $4,000-a-month waterfront condo.” An article in the Ottawa Citizen earlier that month reported that the PC party was paying $7,000 monthly to rent a house for former premier Ernie Eves, in the Cedarvale area of Toronto.

Two years later, the actual price the Liberal party paid for the house and mortgage details have not, to my knowledge, been publicly revealed. Hence, the public has no idea how much housing subsidy McGuinty is receiving from the party.

Below are the deed, mortgage and assessment documents for the house. I have whited out any information that might identify the property address. (I apologize for the poor resolution -- I was trying to keep the files to a manageable size.)

The purchase price was $995,000. Scotiabank’s commercial banking group has a $1,000,000 mortgage on the property.

As the Star reported, McGuinty is paying only $1,460 monthly to occupy the house, far less than its carrying costs.

To give you an idea of the costs, a $1-million dollar mortgage at 5% with a 25-year amortization period would require a monthly payment of $5,845.90.

The 2006 assessment for the house is $1,050.000. At this year’s mill rate, plus the 3% increase approved by council, that means an annual tax bill of $9,806.42.

Add in $300 a month for utilities and insurance (a modest estimate) and you get monthly costs of $6,963.10 (this does not include maintenance or repairs).

Minus McGuinty’s monthly contribution of $1,460, that’s $5,503.10 every month out of party coffers.