Trudeau continuing Harper's path of marine madness

Who would have thought that could be the epitaph of Justin Trudeau’s environmental policies?

Of course, the prime minister did not kill the North Atlantic right whales. I’m sure he loves all fish and mammals. Somewhere there is probably a selfie of Justin and a fawning whale.

But neither did he put the deaths of these endangered creatures, now down to 500 worldwide, on his personal radar. He should have. It is Canada’s duty under international law to protect endangered species.

Trudeau following Harper's lead in denying justice to illegally imprisoned Muslim men

If the Liberal government is serious about combating Islamophobia, they should award long-denied justice to those in Canada's Muslim and Middle Eastern communities whose fundamental freedoms were so callously swept away by Canada's eagerness to support the U.S. "War on Terror."

Canadians are likely familiar with the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian who in 2008, after a formal inquiry, received compensation and a formal government apology for the role of Canadian officials in his 2002 rendition and year of captivity and torture in Syria. While the pain and suffering caused to Arar and his family can never be fully remedied, at least Canada took responsibility to fulfill our legal obligation to award redress.

Why Stephen Harper doesn't matter anymore

This is the concluding chapter of The Harper Factor, a new volume of essays exploring Stephen Harper’s effect on Canada during nearly a decade in power. In it, editors Jennifer Ditchburn and Graham Fox argue Harper was essentially a transactional, cautious leader who left little in the way of a lasting legacy.

It is impossible to capture the “Harper Factor” over a broad range of policy areas with a single adjective. His impact after a decade in power is not one thing. In an important way, that is the point of this book: The measure of a prime ministership does not neatly fit into a single box defined as negative or positive, deep or shallow.

Why is Trudeau following Harper's lead and giving special protections to powerful corporations?

Foreign investors -- including some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful corporations -- typically generate little public sympathy and aren't usually lumped in with groups deemed worthy of special protections.

So the Trudeau government, which is in the process of granting wealthy foreign investors extraordinary legal protections and access to public money, is probably hoping the public isn't paying much attention.

Goodbye, Harper. Good riddance.

Like fame and drugs, politics consumes its own.

Stephen Harper is no exception. Marketed as the archetypal Strong Leader, he ends as a rickety Wizard of Oz. Out of office, he was left wriggling and exposed when the curtain of power was drawn back. It revealed a very small man in a very big office. He didn’t so much leave public life as skulk away.

He gave not a single interview after getting waxed in the 2015 election by Justin Trudeau. Las Vegas proved more attractive to the MP from Calgary Heritage than the House of Commons, where, post-defeat, he lurked rather than sat. And while he was doing little for his constituents other than cashing his paycheck, he did find time to set up his political consulting company in Calgary after a few visits to U.S. casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Adelson is the man who has promised, but not yet delivered, $100 million to support Donald Trump’s presidential bid.

Harper the hypocrite

With Friday’s announcement of the resignation of the MP for Calgary Heritage, the political career of Stephen Harper officially ends and the debate over his legacy begins.

The Alberta talk shows and Twitter traffic have been overwhelmingly positive. But like all legacies, Harper’s will be mixed. A balanced budget in 2015 has to be measured against the string of deficits that preceded it, after Prime Minister Harper inherited a sizeable surplus from the Martin/Chretien era. Over nine years as PM, Harper added significantly to the national debt. Harper ran deficits seven out of nine years and added over $150 billion in red ink.

Harper Government Gave Seaspan Shipyard $40M Contract On Election Day

On the very day of its defeat last fall, the Harper government quietly awarded a $40-million "engineering" contract to the Seaspan shipyard in North Vancouver, despite having promised that the yard would prepare itself to build new ships "at no cost to Canada."

Two months later, in December 2015, a confidential report for the new Liberal government, obtained by CBC News, found that the program remains chaotic, poorly managed and marked by "fragmentation, inefficiencies and delays."

Harper's Wireless Policy Created 'Phoney' Competition, Study Says

OTTAWA — Consumers were on the losing end of a gamble by the former Conservative government when it sought to create more competition in the wireless market by interfering in it, says a new report released Thursday.

And researchers at the Montreal Economic Institute say the country's telecom regulator can learn from that failed policy by backing away from calls to interfere in the broadband Internet marketplace.

Elizabeth May: Top Level Of Public Service 'Contaminated' From Harper Years

OTTAWA — Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is calling for all the top senior public servants to be removed from their current jobs because, she says, they are tainted from the Harper years and resisting change.

"It's awkward as a person in politics, you don't want to single out public servants," May said. "But it can't escape note that the deputy minister for trade negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the deputy minister at Environment Canada was Harper's lead negotiator at Copenhagen blocking climate action…

Duffy, Harper and the census — and the terrible price of paranoia

Only a nation of geeks could trigger the crash of a census website. That, at least, is what a lot of people seemed to assume after the StatsCan site flatlined on Monday.

Sure, we may be geeks … but apparently we’re trusting geeks, too. On Monday — which just happened to be the deadline for filing our annual tax returns — many Canadians were still keen to give the government even more information about themselves, overwhelming the StatsCan website with their replies to the 2016 census. “Here are all my receipts. Want my diary, too?”

The Duffy affair — and what it’s like living under the PMO’s bootheel

I suppose it’s tempting to view the Mike Duffy saga as a zero-sum game — one where the losses balance out the wins. In fact, nobody won this time.

Duffy himself certainly didn’t ‘win’ — not entirely. Contrary to what you may have read on this page and elsewhere, Duffy was neither vindicated nor exonerated. “Not guilty” and “innocent” are still two very different things.

Time to flush out the truth in the Duffy investigation

They cut off the wrong leg, mixed up the babies, confused the medications, screwed up the blood types and didn’t much like the patient.

If RCMP investigators and ministry of the attorney general’s lawyers had been doctors, they would have been facing a malpractice suit over Duffygate.

When will someone call for an investigation into this institutional witch-hunt in which a legal calamity was only avoided thanks to a crusading and indefatigable lawyer and a clear-eyed and fearless judge?

Tories Offer No Apologies After Duffy Verdict Shines Light On Harper's PMO

OTTAWA — There were no apologies from Conservatives on Friday following a scathing court judgment that exonerated Sen. Mike Duffy of 31 expense-related criminal charges while indicting his former political masters in the Prime Minister's Office of Stephen Harper.

Only Conservative MP Candice Bergen was willing to speak with reporters, offering up a stout defence of Harper's leadership while avoiding the specifics of the Duffy verdict.

After Duffy, there’s nothing left of Harper’s legacy but ashes

Mike Duffy wasn’t just acquitted — he was vindicated. And almost exactly to the degree he was vindicated in court, the Conservative leadership in the Senate was excoriated and the former PMO eviscerated in the scathing verdict of Ontario Justice Charles Vaillancourt.

While Duffy was acquitted of 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, Stephen Harper and his former PMO were convicted in absentia of abuse of power.

Canadian Press Freedom Suffered Through 'Dark Age' During Harper Era: RSF

Canada went through a "dark age" for press freedom during the government of Stephen Harper, but "only time will tell" if things will improve under the Trudeau government, an international media watchdog said Wednesday.

Canada fell 10 spots to 18th place in the latest ranking of press freedom from Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), while the U.S. rose eight spots to 41st place.

How desperate are Republicans? They’re taking tips from Harper.

One of the most frequently-asked questions in the wake of Election 2015 is: Where is Stephen Harper?

Since getting crushed last October 19 by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, there have been more wolverines spotted in Ottawa than confirmed Harper sightings. The odd vote in the House of Commons, a few leisurely afternoons in movie theatres with Ray the Popcorn Holder, and that’s about it for his public profile.

Harper Signed Free Trade Deal With Panama Despite Tax Haven Concerns

The release of the Panama Papers, linking numerous world leaders and high-profile figures to offshore accounts, may be a good time to remind readers that Canada has a free trade deal with Panama.

Critics of the agreement have said it could make it harder for the government to investigate and prosecute tax evasion involving offshore accounts held in the country.

The Harper government reached the deal with its Panamanian counterparts in 2009, agreeing to eliminate tariffs on 99 per cent of trade between Canada and Panama eventually, including trade in financial services.

Stephen who? The rapid collapse of the Harper legacy

One of the most remarkable features about the Trudeau Liberals’ first five months in office is the speed and efficiency with which they are undoing the legacy of Stephen Harper.

It began their second full day in office, when the new government announced it would restore the mandatory long-form census. It was a substantive and a symbolic reversal of the previous government’s policy. Since then, they’ve kept their thumbs firmly on the delete key — which carried them right into last week’s budget, where they unleashed the wrecking ball.

Harper’s GST legacy leaves the fiscal ship at the mercy of the world economy

Paul Martin’s spending plans were to be financed out of federal budget surpluses. By comparison, Justin Trudeau is walking a budget tightrope over a fiscal safety net frayed by a decade of Conservative tax cuts. Tuesday’s Liberal budget does little to address a structural revenue shortfall.

OTTAWA—For all the talk about a new activist federal era, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first budget largely picks up where Paul Martin left off — at least when it comes to spending priorities.

The stench of Harper’s zombies is becoming overpowering

Stephen Harper legislative monstrosities keep popping out of the ground like corpses in a zombie movie.

Harper invented the “future appointments” system as a way of governing for years beyond his mandate, tying the new government’s hands on the leadership of agencies like the National Energy Board. He and ministers like Lisa Raitt did it by “filling the pipeline” with Tory candidates for posts long before their existing appointments ran out.