Forget Duffy, Canadians need to wake up to Harper’s true incompetence

It’s enough to have Stephen Harper’s base choking on their Kool Aid.

The same prime minister who adamantly blocked Cuba’s participation in the Summit of the Americas in 2012 now shaking hands with President Raul Castro. What’s next, Harper in a Che Guevara T-shirt having a stogie with Fidel?

While Canada’s PM was abandoning any ideological high ground by sucking around for a meeting with Castro, the federal cabinet was congratulating itself for its “world-class” reaction to an oil spill in the waters off Vancouver’s legendary Stanley Park.

Why we can’t just trust CSIS to do the right thing

If laughter really is the best medicine, then I have to thank Christian Leuprecht. His appearance before a Commons committee this week on Bill C-51 had me laughing so hard I won’t need to see a doctor again for years.

Leuprecht, an associate professor at the Royal Military College, appeared before the Public Safety and National Security Committee to offer an impersonation of someone who knows what he’s talking about.

Harper inadequate, inconsistent on China, former adviser says

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former top foreign policy adviser has published a scathing critique of the Conservative government’s handling of relations with China.

David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012, says Canada should boost its economic and diplomatic ties with China and even reinforce its naval presence off the west coast to show its serious about being a player in the region.

But Harper has failed to show adequate leadership and has been wildly inconsistent, with periods of estrangement and hostility followed by flurries of activity to try to woo Beijing, according to the ex-diplomat.

A Mission Gone Wrong -- Why are we still fighting the drug war?

One night in May of 2012, a Honduran police inspector received a phone call from an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a man he knew as Tony. Tony told him to get his men ready. They were about to intercept a large cocaine shipment, one of many such missions that U.S. and Honduran forces collaborate on each year. At 8 P.M., four helicopters flew east from a base near the city of La Ceiba to a smaller refuelling base deep in the wet lowlands of La Moskitia, on the Honduran side of the Mosquito Coast. Along with the inspector, the helicopters carried ten D.E.A. agents, eighteen other members of the Honduran security forces, and eight Guatemalan pilots. Around 11 P.M., they lifted off again. Their target was a small plane heading for a Honduran village called Ahuas.

The U.S. military monitors what it can of the hundreds of tons of cocaine that enter the U.S. by plane, boat, automobile, submarine, tunnel, backpack, and catapult. Its maps show red lines veining South America and North America with such tangled complexity that they are known as “spaghetti slides.” Most of the air routes, however, follow a predictable path. They begin in Venezuela and head north, avoiding Colombian airspace, where authorities can shoot down suspicious aircraft. Then they turn west, toward La Moskitia.

Stephen Harper and the North Pole

Santa Claus is magic. How else could he live at the North Pole, above 4000 metres of frigid water?

The North Pole, indeed, is located near the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Covered by drifting sea-ice, pummeled by high winds, it receives no sunlight for several months a year and is regularly exposed to temperatures of minus 50 degrees.

Stephen Harper may not be magic, but he knows that for many Canadians, the North Pole remains an idyllic location -- complete with Santa's workshop, elves, reindeer, and a candy cane marker.

Conservative campaign database fiasco costs party millions

The Conservative Party of Canada has scrapped a multi-million dollar database paid for by money raised through supporter contributions.

At least $7 million and perhaps as much as $9 million was used to pay for a database the Conservative Party was developing to track its supporters and donors.

The party is now reverting to its old system, the Constituent Information Management System or CIMS. That program is being rolled back out to MPs and riding associations over the next few months, starting with the four ridings facing November byelections, according to a memo sent by the party's acting executive director.

Harper's Growth Record Is the Worst Since R.B. Bennett

Stephen Harper went to Russia this week to lecture G-20 countries about fiscal responsibility. It all rang a bit hollow because of his fiscal record here at home.

In 2006, he was handed a steadily growing economy which had generated 3.5 million net new jobs, declining debt and taxes, a decade of balanced budgets, annual surpluses at about $13-billion and fiscal flexibility projected ahead five years totaling $100-billion. That's what Mr. Harper had to work with -- the most robust fiscal situation in the western world. And he blew it in less than three years.

Harper's vaunted Arctic naval refuelling station going nowhere fast

OTTAWA - One of the crown jewels in the federal government's Arctic strategy is mired in a slow-moving environmental clean-up and the threat of legal action, federal documents reveal.

The deep-water port at Nanisivik, Nunavut, remains under the control of the federal fisheries department, six years after Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced with much fanfare the establishment of a naval refuelling station high in the northern archipelago.

New nation-wide computer glitches at Environment Canada

OTTAWA — Environment Canada had its current weather observations online again early Thursday after an unexplained breakdown, but a further glitch has taken past weather data offline.

Anyone looking for weather data more than 24 hours old now gets this message: "The database is currently unavailable. This may be due to maintenance or we may be experiencing difficulties. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please try again later."

NSA Surveillance Prompts Several Bills But Little Action In Congress

WASHINGTON -- In the three weeks since Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency's widespread surveillance programs, the legislative response to his revelations on Capitol Hill has slowed to a glacial pace and public obsession has noticeably shifted from a debate on national security versus privacy to Snowden's latest whereabouts.

Civil liberties advocates in Congress introduced a slew of bills in response to reports that the NSA has been collecting phone records from millions of Americans and mining electronic communications from nine major Internet companies:

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) proposed legislation would require the federal government to have a warrant based on probable cause in order to seize phone records from Americans;

    Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who long warned of the government's surveillance methods, are seeking to limit the government's authority to collect data;

    Unusual bedfellows Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) co-sponsored a bill that would declassify FISA court opinions;

    And this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced legislation to revisit the Patriot Act Section 215 and FISA Amendment Act Section 702, under which the NSA programs are lawful.

Chronicle of a disaster foretold: Calgary and the floods

The frequency with which Canada experiences events such as heavy rainfall of a given intensity (known as the return period), is projected to increase such that an event that occurred on average once every 50 years will be likely to occur about once every 35 years by 2050." -- Telling the Weather Story, Insurance Bureau of Canada, 2012

My city, a vibrant place that often transcends the province's narcissistic oil culture, has had a Manhattan moment.

World can’t wait until 2020 on climate change, says new, highly-disturbing International Energy Agency report

TORONTO, ONT.—Politicians love to make bold commitments. But more times than not, they fail to follow up, perhaps hoping the public will forget once the headlines become a memory. In December, 2009, global leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, acknowledged that  “deep cuts in emissions were required”  if grave effects from climate change were to be avoided.

That meant, the leaders said in their Copenhagen Accord, that the increase in global average temperature should be kept below two degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial era, the maximum increase tolerable without devastating climate change. In fact, some climate experts argue even this is too high.

Government warned before loss of student loan, CPP data

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada was alerted to several security concerns months before breaches last November in which the department lost data belonging to more 500,000 recipients of student loans, CPP and disability benefits, CBC News has learned.

In June 2012, the department's security plan, obtained by CBC News Network's Power & Politics under Access to Information, concluded: "To continue building a strong culture of security and a robust security program for the department, additional resources will need to be made available.

Canada Jobs Grant: Harper Government Buying Ads To Promote Program That Doesn't Yet Exist

OTTAWA - The Harper government is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising a program that does not yet exist.

Prime-time ads began airing this week during NHL playoff games — currently the priciest advertising real estate on the dial — that tout a new federal Canada Jobs Grant for training workers.

The trouble is, the freshly announced program is at present little more than a concept that has yet to be negotiated with provincial governments, and requires buy-in from employers as well.

Job grant program advertised by Harper government doesn't yet exist

OTTAWA -- The Harper government is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising a program that does not yet exist.

Prime-time ads began airing this week during NHL playoff games -- currently the priciest advertising real estate on the dial -- that tout a new federal Canada Jobs Grant for training workers.

The trouble is, the freshly announced program is at present little more than a concept that has yet to be negotiated with provincial governments, and requires buy-in from employers as well.

In war on fear, missing billions a mere rounding error

It should be no surprise that the federal government can’t account for $3.1 billion in national-security spending. When you are splurging public fear money, as Canada has been since 2001, what’s a few billion?

I’m not the only Canadian concerned about the track we’re on when it comes to security spending in our democracy, where we’ve been overwhelmed by the mythology of threat. Questioning where the money goes is akin to treason. No wonder it goes astray.

AG says trying to track $3.1-billion in unaccounted anti-terror funding would be like ‘tracing serial numbers on dollars’

Auditor General Michael Ferguson, who last week revealed that the federal government can’t account for $3.1-billion in anti-terrorism spending between 2001 and 2009, told The Hill Times that tracking down that money would be like “tracing the serial numbers on the dollars,” but opposition MPs on the House Public Accounts Committee want to see the federal government try.

“We would have had to go back through every single dollar that those departments spent, and try to determine whether it was [Public Security and Anti-Terrorism—that would be a huge task,” Mr. Ferguson told The Hill Times following the April 29 release of his office’s 10-chapter spring 2013 audit.

Canada paying far more than going rate for shipbuilding design

A CBC News investigation has uncovered a $250-million mystery at the heart of Canada's ambitious shipbuilding program.

Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose and Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced March 7 in Halifax that Ottawa will pay Irving Shipbuilding $288 million just to design – not build – a fleet of new Arctic offshore patrol ships.

Irving will then build the ships under a separate contract.

Search plane purchase delay sparks government bickering

The military's failure to purchase new search and rescue planes has led to an apparent disagreement between two federal Conservative cabinet ministers.

Auditor General Michael Ferguson, in his spring report released Tuesday, said the military's persistent failure to buy new search planes was a significant risk that affected the sustainability of Canada's rescue program.

Foreign Temp Workers Changes Not Enough: Labour Leaders

Two federal ministers yesterday jointly announced changes in the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker Program, including a "temporary suspension" of the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion program criticized by labour leaders.

But one high profile labour leader described the announced changes as "simply public relations."