Conservatives won’t say who is on “enemy” lists

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is facing demands to reveal who it has placed on “enemy” lists reportedly compiled for new ministers after Monday’s cabinet shuffle.

Opposition critics were using words like “creepy” and “paranoid” in reaction to reports that government staffers had armed ministers with lists of people, organizations and public-service projects to avoid in their new jobs.

“It shows a prime minister who has a really kind of creepy viewpoint of Canadian political life, which is really not something we’ve seen before,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus. “That should send red flags.”

Liberal MP Scott Brison, a former cabinet minister, said no such “blacklists” existed in any documents prepared for him when he served in government.

“Canadians deserve to know who’s on these lists,” Brison said. “We did not keep blacklists. This is no way to run a government. . . . This is the most secretive, paranoid government we’ve ever seen.”

Brison and Angus say the lists remind them of former U.S. president Richard Nixon, who kept enemy lists in the 1970s as the Watergate scandal grew and eventually forced him from office.

In an email obtained by the Star on Monday, when Harper announced his cabinet shuffle, a PMO official is seen directing staffers to include lists of “enemy” interests and troublesome public servants in the transition booklets — “Transition Binder Check List” — given to new ministers.

Erica Furtado, author of the July 4 email, says that the booklets should contain information on looming hot issues, who’s in line for appointments, as well as who and what to avoid, including “enemy stakeholders” and “pet bureaucratic projects.”

The source who passed on the email — which the PMO will neither confirm nor deny—said that staffers had also been instructed to compile lists of unfriendly reporters and bureaucrats too, but plans to put these in writing had been scrapped.

Angus says this highly partisan, us-versus-them approach to government is the same kind of thinking behind the ongoing Senate-spending scandal, in which the PMO’s then-chief of staff, Nigel Wright, went to extraordinary lengths to rescue Senator Mike Duffy from controversy, writing him a personal cheque for $90,000.

“If you believe that the world is full of enemies and loyalists, then it becomes OK to go over whatever lines are needed,” Angus said.

Sean Bruyea, a veterans’ affairs advocate who found out he was on an “enemy list” of sorts a few years ago, said he was disturbed by the reports of the briefing binders.

“Wow,” he said. “On so many levels this is highly troubling.”

Bruyea, a Gulf War veteran, won an apology and a financial settlement from the government in 2010 after it was revealed that his private medical and army records were circulated among hundreds of public servants and government staffers. He alleged that his private information was accessed in efforts to discredit him in his fight for better compensation for veterans like him who were suffering from post-combat trauma and illness.

“It just speaks to a more draconian state than we’re promised, doesn’t it?” Bruyea said after reading about the enemy” lists. “This is not Soviet Russia. It’s not supposed to be, anyway.”

In an interview with CTV on Tuesday, newly appointed Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said of the lists: “I’ve never heard of them. I’ve never seen them. They are not part of the orientation process for a new minister . . . in my case.”

Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author:  Susan Delacourt