The Commons: The Prime Minister tries to bluster it all away

The Scene. The Prime Minister was full of indignation. All of it righteous in quality.

He chopped and swiped with his hand. He pumped his fist and jabbed his finger. He raised his voice and he scolded and he challenged and he dismissed. How dare the NDP, they who once propagated a phone campaign that directed disenchanted voters to call Lise St. Denis’s office, accuse him of wrongdoing. Who were they to stand here and challenge him? And with what evidence exactly? And the Liberals, they having recently employed someone who posted to Twitter excerpts of the Public Safety Minister’s divorce proceedings—perhaps they might just go ahead and apologize to the government for suggesting anything untoward.

It was a fine show. All the more so when delivered by the leader of a party that pleaded guilty three-and-a-half months ago to violating the Elections Act.

Perhaps buoyed by Mr. Harper’s bullishness, Pierre Poilievre decided to get cheeky. Noting that the NDP’s Alexandre Boulerice had asked about automated calls, Mr. Poilievre suggested that if the member had evidence he could press 1. If he wished to apologize, he could press 2. And if he had the wrong number, he could hang up and try his call again.

“Who’s calling?” “The Conservatives.”

Last spring, just days before the federal election, I filed into the Conservative party war room and took my seat. Everyone who’s had this experience knows the drill: an empty desk, a forlorn looking computer, some sort of phone and five weeks of exhilaration and hell staring you in the face.

Now, we’ve had some highly publicized disagreements with Elections Canada in the past, so the campaign leadership made it clear to everyone before they stepped into the building that accountability standards were to be incredibly high. We added new language to our volunteer and employee agreements, and even had an in-house independent accountability officer available to us at all times.

Have we been accused of being aggressive and rough-and-tumble in the past? Of course. Did we go after Liberal leaders with everything we had? You bet. But did the campaign organize a widespread voter suppression exercise in the 2011 campaign? No way.

And yet, in a matter of only a few days, we’ve gotten to a place where any misleading or erroneous call by a campaign or individual anywhere in the country during 2011 federal election is being treated as the work of Conservative masterminds. But some things don’t add up.

Washington’s pipeline war

President Barack Obama’s denial of a permit for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has not stopped a shadow battle from unfolding on Capitol Hill over the proposed link from Alberta’s oil sands to the Gulf Coast. Congress is teeming with proposed legislation for and against the pipeline, which has been transformed from a mere infrastructure project into a political litmus test on American energy policy. And while Obama’s decision may have led to some hand-wringing over the state of Canada-U.S. relations, it’s hard to recall another time that a Canadian government cause has garnered as much support and attention in Congress—usually a more challenging arena for Canadian interests given the parochial concerns of lawmakers.

For Republicans who control the House of Representatives, the pipeline has become Exhibit A in their case against Obama’s energy policy—while for Democrats it has become a way to make common cause with environmentalists. And both pro-pipeline Republicans and anti-pipeline Democrats are littering Congress with bills aimed at keeping the pipeline issue alive for their supporters. It is a phantom fight, because in this bitterly polarized election year there are few bills of any sort that can pass both the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate, and garner the required signature of the President to become law. But that hasn’t stopped either side from using the legislative process to keep the spotlight on the pipeline and the oil sands.

Tories imported 'American style dirty tricks' and now they're getting caught, says outraged NDP MP

PARLIAMENT HILL—A furious NDP MP Pat Martin exploded Tuesday over the latest revelations in the robocall election affair, denouncing Conservative Party operatives allegedly at the root of it “dirty little bastards” who put the integrity of Canada’s electoral system at risk.

Mr. Martin’s (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) outburst came after Question Period was for the second day dominated with allegations members of the Conservative Party used a speed-dial call centre in Alberta in an attempt to dupe Liberal supporters in Guelph, Ont., into believing their polling stations had changed on voting day during the 2011 federal election. The robocalls were placed with voices that identified the callers as representatives of Elections Canada.

Following a report posted during Question Period by Postmedia News and the Ottawa Citizen, quoting court documents showing a person who arranged the calls through RackNine Inc. of Edmonton used the name Pierre Poutin of Separatist Street in Joliette, Que., to register a disposable cell phone involved in the scam, Mr. Martin blew up.

Strategy, tactics, communications, big bureaucracy: welcome to lobbying

There are currently 5,165 registered federal lobbyists. Some are extremely good tacticians and strategists. Some excel at face-to-face meetings. Some know the intricacies of the way governments run and use it to their advantage. Some are excellent communicators, which is a big part of the GR industry. And in the cut-throat lobbying world, lobbyists say there’s no real “best lobbyist,” unless you want to ATIP the Canada Revenue Agency and find out who’s making the most money. But lobbying is much more than that. The lobbyists on The Hill Times’ Fifth Annual Top 100 Lobbyists list possess one or, most likely, more of the above qualities.

“There are two elements of the lobbying universe of what we need to know. You need to know how decisions are made in government—the steps, the timelines, where the decision-making authority lies, the machinery of government—and you also need to know why decisions are made. That’s the political element. As a basic prerequisite to having anything intelligent coming out of your mouth is a fundamental understanding of those two and how they interact. If you look at the list, you see people who have had in-depth experience in the bureaucratic or political worlds or both. It helps to have an interest in politics as well,” one lobbyist, who did not want to be identified, told The Hill Times.

Leaked Stratfor Email Suggests Secret U.S. Indictment of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

he whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published an internal email from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that suggests the U.S. Justice Department has obtained a sealed indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The email is one of around five million obtained from Stratfor’s servers by the hacker group, Anonymous. "Somehow you have a private intelligence company, Stratfor, a 'shadow CIA,' as people have called it, having information about this sealed indictment—secret again—that Julian Assange doesn’t have, that WikiLeaks doesn’t have, that his lawyers don’t have," says Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is a legal adviser to both Assange and to WikiLeaks. "What you see here is secrecy, secrecy, secrecy." News of the indictment comes less than a week after Army Private Bradley Manning was arraigned for allegedly leaking classified U.S. military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks.

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Conservatives’ communications strategy needs work

OAKVILLE, ONT.—Best laid plans often go astray. This is true for mice, for men, and also it seems for Conservative Party strategists.

Case in point is the Conservative government’s proposed internet surveillance law otherwise known as Bill C-30.

As is well-known by now, the plan for this bill definitely went astray.

But why?

After all, on paper, at least, this issue must have seemed like a sure winner to the Conservative brain trust.

Bill C-30 is designed to give authorities more power to police the internet so they can crack down on child pornographers.

This “law and order” stuff has typically played well for the Conservatives when it comes to galvanizing public support.

But in this case something went horribly wrong.

Robocalls phone number registered to 'Pierre Poutine'

A telephone number used to place automated calls directing voters to the wrong polling station in Guelph, Ont., in the last federal election was registered to a "Pierre Poutine" of Separatist Street, Joliette, Que., court documents reveal.

The documents also show a link between the national Conservative campaign to the call centre through which the automated calls were made.

The documents were sworn by an Elections Canada investigator and filed in Edmonton court to get a production order for Racknine, the call centre used to make the robocalls. A production order requires documents to be made available to law enforcement officials within a specified time.

The allegations contained in the document have not been tested in court.

The investigator is looking into allegations somebody claiming to be from Elections Canada telephoned people in Guelph and falsely told them their polling stations had moved.

Records obtained from Bell Canada "identified the phone 450-760-7746 subscriber as 'Pierre Poutine of Separatist Street, Joliette, Que.,'" according to the sworn production order.

Fraudulent calls a sophisticated attempt to disrupt an election

A political operative hiding behind the alias “Pierre Poutine” engineered an off-the-books scheme using robo-calls and a disposable cellphone to discourage opposition voters from casting ballots in an Ontario riding last May, Elections Canada alleges.

Documents retrieved from an Edmonton court for the first time describe in detail exactly how Canada’s elections watchdog believes someone linked to the Conservative campaign in Guelph, Ont., tried to suppress the vote for rival candidates on May 2, 2011. This comes as opposition parties accuse the Tories of election misdeeds across a broader array of ridings – about 30 throughout the country.

The allegations laid out by Elections Canada paint a picture of a sophisticated dirty tricks campaign, one that is likely to damage the governing Conservatives despite their insistence that any wrongdoing was the work of a rogue political aide.

Former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley said he has never encountered a vote suppression scheme on the scale of the one alleged in Guelph.

“Absolutely not, I can say that honestly,” he said in an interview. “This is the first I hear of something of this scope.”

Canadians need an aboriginal history lesson

Among the 20 recommendations released last week by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigating the residential schools scandal, those directed to teaching the history of the period garnered the most attention.

Implicit in the TRC’s interim report is that the history of residential schools is not being taught. As such, the recommendations join a long list of occasions during which Canadians have been reminded of how their educational system is letting them down when it comes to teaching them about their country’s past.

But this reminder has another, constructive dimension: It highlights the practical and vital value of a history education as well as the instrumental role it can play in closing a rift between aboriginals and non-aboriginals.

While it’s true that history can be abused and be divisive, the study of the past can also have a positive impact. It can be used to heal and to develop understanding and empathy, and it can encourage critical discourse among people. More obviously, studying history is one of the most important components of active citizenship. Learning about your country is essential.