Can unilateralism, voodoo science, and perpetual campaigning create a new Canadian political landscape?
Stephen Harper is certainly giving it the old college try. The most remarkable feature of the first half year of Conservative majority rule is how quickly we have been herded toward a one-party system. Strangely, a lot of people seem to like it.
Take the government’s “Father Knows Best” Medicare deal. When finance ministers assembled in Victoria this week, they were expecting a conversation, not a policy haiku from their federal counterpart.
This was the clearest indication so far that the Harper crowd does not play well with others. In a few clipped sentences, Jim Flaherty laid out the new Canada Health Transfer deal – $38 billion for health care by 2018 with the 6 percent escalator intact in the run-up to that date. After that, the escalator will be tied to GDP. As a safety net, the feds will never let the escalator fall below 3 percent. In the event any province egregiously breaks the Canada Health Act, claw back provisions would apply.
The new deal is arguably good, though it does punt the thornier issues of financial sustainability down the road beyond the next federal election. But the deal came down like a ton of bricks on an ant hill. Provincial finance ministers thought they were going to Victoria for a Finance Ministers meeting. Instead, they got a Finance Munchkins meeting – eat your soup and listen to the Big Kahuna.
The same treatment has been meted out to Opposition MPs sitting on House of Commons committees. At best they have been treated like unruly children; at worst, as nobodies. Opposition motions at committee are taken in camera (which means the public never hears them), witness lists are controlled by the government, and virtually no amendments to government legislation from the other side are ever adopted. As one Liberal MP told me, “They have reduced the whole thing to a charade to the degree that you start asking yourself what’s the point of going through the motions.”
That became comically clear on the government’s omnibus crime bill, where none of the brilliant Irwin Cotler’s amendments were adopted, though he made a powerful case for them. But then the government simply took over the Liberal MP’s ideas and presented them as amendments to their own bill. In a stroke of poetic justice, the “government’s” amendments were struck down by the Speaker on procedural grounds.
The bottom line is that, for better or worse, the Harper government has reduced the workings of the parliamentary system to an exercise in minimal compliance – a token role for the opposition in the legislative process, and a painfully obvious disdain for debating issues in the House of Commons. The Conservatives have used closure on MPs the way they have wielded back-to-work legislation against striking workers – to instantly impose their political will on those they consider not as colleagues or constituents, but as people not with the program.
Which brings me to voodoo science and Prime Minister Harper’s pronouncement this week that the opponents of Alberta’s tar-sands are spreading “misinformation.” As proof, he said that Alberta’s bitumen is no dirtier than other heavy oil. This tawdry piece of sophistry completely disregards the real comparison his words so carefully avoid – the relative emissions from conventional versus tar-sands oil from well to refinery.
The only person spreading misinformation on behalf of Conoco-Phillips, Shell, Chevron, and Total is Mr. Harper. As the European Union discovered before issuing its Directive on Fuel Quality that eschewed Alberta bitumen, tar-sands oil is 22% dirtier than conventional oil, emitting 107 grams per megajoule of CO2 equivalents as compared to 87.5 grams from light, sweet crude. The corporate Tories and their enabling army of flat-earther, climate-change deniers may seethe, but the science is what it is.
This is not the first time the prime minister has attempted to use his political declarations to trump science in order to advance a pet policy. Remember his exertions on behalf of ethical asbestos, a cancer-causing product that is banned in Canada and is currently being removed from public buildings, including 24 Sussex Drive? Mr. Harper said that other countries were selling Chrysotile and it was still legal in some countries to use it. Bottom line according to the prime minister: “The government will not put Canadian industry in a position where it is discriminated against in a market where it is permitted.”
If Mr. Harper is prepared to endorse the export of a known carcinogen to poor and ignorant countries in the interests of Canadian industry, is there any reason for surprise that he invents information about the tar sands and ignores the wicked impact on health and environment of the world’s dirtiest oil? He says the industry is doing a better job of controlling emissions from the tar sands, but that’s not true, all things in. According to the Pembina Institute, even Alberta is going to miss its emission targets for 2020 by a staggering 36 million megatonnes. That’s because whatever small gain is realized by better extraction practices is quickly eclipsed by massively increased production.
Six months into the Conservative majority mandate, it is also clear that we have entered the age of perpetual campaigning, albeit with a twist. Using social media and paid ads rather than relying on the mercurial judgments of the media, the Harper government is constantly reaching out to voters to make their pitch – even though the next election is not even a twinkle in Bob Rae’s eye. Although Tony Clement acts more like Tony Soprano in the House when it comes to answering questions, he’s already hosted a Twitter town-hall on, are you ready, openness in government. The other night I got a call on my home phone from justice minister Rob Nicholson inviting me to a town-hall meeting. Even though the formal interment of the Gun Registry has not yet occurred, the Conservative Party of Canada is running ads crowing about a promise kept. In the Harper era, politics — like money — never sleeps.
I will end with the Irwin Cotler fiasco. The Tories have hired their defeated candidate in Mount Royal, Saulie Zajdel, to work in the office of MP James Moore. Cotler says Zajdel is in fact a shadow MP. The party lusts after Pierre Trudeau’s old seat the way Michael Jackson wanted Elvis Presley’s skull for a goblet because he was the real king of rock and roll. And they hired a polling firm to make phony calls into the riding to tell constituents that their MP was retiring and a byelection was imminent. The Conservatives said this was just an exercise in free speech that needed protecting: the Speaker of the House of Commons found that their actions were reprehensible.
Now you know why the real author of our misfortunes is Chiquita Banana.
Original Article
Source: iPolitico
Stephen Harper is certainly giving it the old college try. The most remarkable feature of the first half year of Conservative majority rule is how quickly we have been herded toward a one-party system. Strangely, a lot of people seem to like it.
Take the government’s “Father Knows Best” Medicare deal. When finance ministers assembled in Victoria this week, they were expecting a conversation, not a policy haiku from their federal counterpart.
This was the clearest indication so far that the Harper crowd does not play well with others. In a few clipped sentences, Jim Flaherty laid out the new Canada Health Transfer deal – $38 billion for health care by 2018 with the 6 percent escalator intact in the run-up to that date. After that, the escalator will be tied to GDP. As a safety net, the feds will never let the escalator fall below 3 percent. In the event any province egregiously breaks the Canada Health Act, claw back provisions would apply.
The new deal is arguably good, though it does punt the thornier issues of financial sustainability down the road beyond the next federal election. But the deal came down like a ton of bricks on an ant hill. Provincial finance ministers thought they were going to Victoria for a Finance Ministers meeting. Instead, they got a Finance Munchkins meeting – eat your soup and listen to the Big Kahuna.
The same treatment has been meted out to Opposition MPs sitting on House of Commons committees. At best they have been treated like unruly children; at worst, as nobodies. Opposition motions at committee are taken in camera (which means the public never hears them), witness lists are controlled by the government, and virtually no amendments to government legislation from the other side are ever adopted. As one Liberal MP told me, “They have reduced the whole thing to a charade to the degree that you start asking yourself what’s the point of going through the motions.”
That became comically clear on the government’s omnibus crime bill, where none of the brilliant Irwin Cotler’s amendments were adopted, though he made a powerful case for them. But then the government simply took over the Liberal MP’s ideas and presented them as amendments to their own bill. In a stroke of poetic justice, the “government’s” amendments were struck down by the Speaker on procedural grounds.
The bottom line is that, for better or worse, the Harper government has reduced the workings of the parliamentary system to an exercise in minimal compliance – a token role for the opposition in the legislative process, and a painfully obvious disdain for debating issues in the House of Commons. The Conservatives have used closure on MPs the way they have wielded back-to-work legislation against striking workers – to instantly impose their political will on those they consider not as colleagues or constituents, but as people not with the program.
Which brings me to voodoo science and Prime Minister Harper’s pronouncement this week that the opponents of Alberta’s tar-sands are spreading “misinformation.” As proof, he said that Alberta’s bitumen is no dirtier than other heavy oil. This tawdry piece of sophistry completely disregards the real comparison his words so carefully avoid – the relative emissions from conventional versus tar-sands oil from well to refinery.
The only person spreading misinformation on behalf of Conoco-Phillips, Shell, Chevron, and Total is Mr. Harper. As the European Union discovered before issuing its Directive on Fuel Quality that eschewed Alberta bitumen, tar-sands oil is 22% dirtier than conventional oil, emitting 107 grams per megajoule of CO2 equivalents as compared to 87.5 grams from light, sweet crude. The corporate Tories and their enabling army of flat-earther, climate-change deniers may seethe, but the science is what it is.
This is not the first time the prime minister has attempted to use his political declarations to trump science in order to advance a pet policy. Remember his exertions on behalf of ethical asbestos, a cancer-causing product that is banned in Canada and is currently being removed from public buildings, including 24 Sussex Drive? Mr. Harper said that other countries were selling Chrysotile and it was still legal in some countries to use it. Bottom line according to the prime minister: “The government will not put Canadian industry in a position where it is discriminated against in a market where it is permitted.”
If Mr. Harper is prepared to endorse the export of a known carcinogen to poor and ignorant countries in the interests of Canadian industry, is there any reason for surprise that he invents information about the tar sands and ignores the wicked impact on health and environment of the world’s dirtiest oil? He says the industry is doing a better job of controlling emissions from the tar sands, but that’s not true, all things in. According to the Pembina Institute, even Alberta is going to miss its emission targets for 2020 by a staggering 36 million megatonnes. That’s because whatever small gain is realized by better extraction practices is quickly eclipsed by massively increased production.
Six months into the Conservative majority mandate, it is also clear that we have entered the age of perpetual campaigning, albeit with a twist. Using social media and paid ads rather than relying on the mercurial judgments of the media, the Harper government is constantly reaching out to voters to make their pitch – even though the next election is not even a twinkle in Bob Rae’s eye. Although Tony Clement acts more like Tony Soprano in the House when it comes to answering questions, he’s already hosted a Twitter town-hall on, are you ready, openness in government. The other night I got a call on my home phone from justice minister Rob Nicholson inviting me to a town-hall meeting. Even though the formal interment of the Gun Registry has not yet occurred, the Conservative Party of Canada is running ads crowing about a promise kept. In the Harper era, politics — like money — never sleeps.
I will end with the Irwin Cotler fiasco. The Tories have hired their defeated candidate in Mount Royal, Saulie Zajdel, to work in the office of MP James Moore. Cotler says Zajdel is in fact a shadow MP. The party lusts after Pierre Trudeau’s old seat the way Michael Jackson wanted Elvis Presley’s skull for a goblet because he was the real king of rock and roll. And they hired a polling firm to make phony calls into the riding to tell constituents that their MP was retiring and a byelection was imminent. The Conservatives said this was just an exercise in free speech that needed protecting: the Speaker of the House of Commons found that their actions were reprehensible.
Now you know why the real author of our misfortunes is Chiquita Banana.
Original Article
Source: iPolitico
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