Mismanagement

There hasn’t been a formal announcement yet, but with each passing day, it grows more likely that Canada will bow under the pressure and choose not to apply for a seat at the U.N. Security Council. With Germany and …Portugal as sole competitors for two available seats, our government seems poised to decide that the odds of placing third in an election that Canada has never lost are too high to make it worth the political risk.

Why? Two words: Maxime Bernier.

It’s not that all it’s his fault, but Maxime Bernier is a symbol, a prime piece of living evidence showing how little we seem to care about foreign affairs and how insignificant our country has resultantly become.

This man was out of his depth right from the swearing-in ceremony. He has been as much of a flop as could have been predicted. Just last week, after committing the horrendous diplomatic faux-pas of asking for the governor of Kandahar’s head, he confused Haitian President René Préval for his predecessor Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haiti, by the way, is one of the largest recipients of Canadian foreign aid.

But before Bernier, it was just as bad: Peter MacKay. His experience in Foreign Affairs was serving as a Crown Attorney in Nova-Scotia and having his drivers licence suspended for speeding in 2005.

Foreign policy, today, matters only to the government if it can help win votes. That’s why, for example, Harper was so unrelenting in his praise of Israel: he’s after the Jewish vote. That’s also why a colossal proportion of foreign aid goes to Afghanistan: it’s necessary for selling the mission to Canadians.

But when it comes to getting real international recognition, such as a seat at the Security Council, we discover that all this inaction and policy mismanagement is costing us. We’ve dramatically reduced foreign aid to most African countries, but guess what, there are an awful lot of African countries and they each have a vote. We’ve been so strong in praising Israel that we’ve angered many Arab countries and lost our reputation as a moderate broker that could help link the U.S. and Europe. But guess what, there are an awful lot of Arab countries and states that used to vote for Canada because it was perceived as being balanced.

This is all very sad, but all very true: we’ve lost most of our stature in the world. Sure the change is mostly due to demographics, but it’s also mismanagement, total mismanagement.

Carbon tax and leadership

Two interesting stories came out today.

First, a Harris-Decima poll reveals that Canadians find Stéphane Dion weak and uninspiring, but still find him more likable that Stephen Harper.

Then, a Globe and Mail article indicated that the Liberals were seriously leaning towards embracing a carbon-tax and putting it at the centre of their platform.

Well, in my mind, it's all very clear: they HAVE to go with a carbon tax.

Leaving aside the fact that it's unquestionably the right thing to do, a carbon-tax would finally give Dion something to fight for. If we look at recent polls, the two vices that Stéphane Dion is most often accused of are weakness and inability to communicate. But interestingly enough, before he became Liberal leader, his English was perfectly acceptable and he certainly wasn't thought of as weak.

That's because he hasn't had anything to fight for. Since January 2006, he's been acting as Leader of the opposition and spending all of his time attacking the government. Visibly, he hasn't done the greatest job.

But attacking the government has never been Stéphane Dion's strong suit. He's always been fighting for a vision. First it was national unity which led him to pass the Clarity Act and almost single handedly provoque Lucien Bouchard's frustrated exit from Politics. Then it was uniting the environment and economy, an issue which he championed in Cabinet under Martin and then as a Liberal Leadership candidate.

Dion'a strengths are honesty, sincerity, and true command of the issues. They were evident in the past, but are now being overshadowed by accusations of weakness, indecisiveness, and lack of vision. A carbon tax could be the magic pill that puts Dion's problems behind him and gives his strengths a chance to express themselves. It won't be an easy sell, especially when the Harper spin machine gets going, but he's got to have a better shot at selling a carbon tax that framing the Conservatives as an "evil right wind ideological government". And if polls are to be trusted, here's an interesting fact: Harris-Decima concluded last week that 61% of Canadians support a carbon-tax. So clearly, there's potential.

Selfdestruction

Susan Delacourt, a senior journalist from the Toronto Star, was apparently told by Liberal Senator David Smith that his party was planning on putting off an election until the government simply killed itself. Some people may call this a risky strategy, but history does show that governments tend to face their biggest problems towards the end of their terms. And considering that the Conservative policy book was written with the assumption that their would be an election after 18 months of governing, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea after all.

I actually believe that the government has already started to self-destruct, and that the terrain should be ripe for an election by the fall. Why? Because, the government's everyday policy is simply not in tune with the desires of most Canadians.

Let's just look at two stories today: first, Health Minister Tony Clement is attacked by leading scientists for refusing to renew the funding of the Vancouver safe injection site despite clear evidence of the pilot project's success. Second, the government takes heat for eliminating a database often used by journalists of all Access to Information requests since 1989.

These are all relatively small stories -small coverage, no legs-, but they do add up and contribute to a wider unease about the Conservatives. However good they may be at spinning a message and attacking the opposition, these everyday policy decisions do matter.

The Conservatives have a good shot at another minority (they won't ever get a majority), but they need to start acting like a party of government rather that a party of opposition. This means toning down the personal attacks, staying clear of national institutions such as the Nuclear Safety Board and Elections Canada, and most importantly, leaving their right wing ideology out of day-to-day policy.

Imagine if Tony Clement had accepted the scientific evidence and given the safe injection site funding. He wouldn't have made huge political hay, but instead of putting off more scientists and receiving negative media coverage once again, he might have gotten a few endorsements and brought the government another hundred votes. A hundred votes a day can go a long way...

Quote...

This quote is from Tom Flanagan's recent book:

"Even though there is a cap on national campaign spending, it is easy and legal to exceed it by transferring expenditures to local campaigns that are not able to spend up to their own legal limits."

Just to let you know, Tom Flanagan is Harper's ideological guru and former campaign manager.

Charest

A en croire le dernier sondage Léger Marketing – Le Devoir sur les intentions de vote des Québécois, la résurrection est chose possible. Jean Charest, le chef Libéral que tout le monde croyait mort, a réussi l’exploit de regagner la confiance des électeurs dans son second mandat moins d’un an après avoir fracassé les records d’impopularité.

Personne n’arrive vraiment à y croire. Rattraper un retard de quelques points, c’est déjà assez difficile, mais réussir en neuf mois à hisser son parti à la tête des intentions de vote après avoir touché le fond, c’est un miracle.

Mais comment?

Bien sûr, il y a un élément de chance. L’expérience adéquiste ne semble pas avoir plû aux Québecois et Charest a repris une partie importante des votes perdus à Mario Dumont. C’etait prévisible, l’ADQ n’est tout simplement pas un parti d’opposition crédible.

Mais ce qui a vraiment donné aux libaraux leur avance, c’est tout simplement la compatence. Charest est à l’aise à la barre, ses ministres connaissent leurs dossiers, l’économie se porte relativement bien, et le gouvernement dont le premier mandat avait été marqué par une inabilité à gérer des petites crises comme Hérouxville ou le Mt. Orford peut enfin offrir aux électeurs un message positif et cohérent. Il n’y a pas de coups d’éclats, pas de grands projets pour l’avenir, mais une réelle maîtrise des enjeux d’aujourd’hui.

Stephen Harper devrait prendre note : la compétence paye bien. S’il fait tout simplement du bon travail, en tachant de guider le pays vers l’avenir tout en évitant les scandales et grandes polémiques, il sera récompensé. Mais on peut penser qu’ à l’inverse, s’il débute la prochaine élection sans bilan sérieux, il connaîtra de sacrés problèmes.

Elections Canada

As much as the politics of last week’s Elections Canada raid on Tory headquarters are proving to be absorbing, there is something much more important at stake: the credibility of the independent body in charge of monitoring elections.

In a nutshell, the Conservative Party is currently accusing Elections Canada of bias. They are calling the organisation “unfair to Conservatives”, and insisting that “other parties are allowed to transfer money without any problems.”

Elections Canada, in case you hadn’t quite realised, isn’t some kind of Liberal lobby group or anti-conservative think-tank. Elections Canada is the independent body in charge of monitoring federal elections in our country. It’s the organisation which makes sure that all of our ballots are counted, that the candidates and their parties obey election laws, and that the democratic process is fully respected on voting day. They are the ones, who, after polling stations have closed, decide whether the next government will be Liberal or Conservative.

This isn’t just any job. It is a role that requires full impartiality, respect for the democratic process, and, well… competence.
Until last week, none of this was ever in question. Actually, Canadians were so confident in Elections Canada that they sent members abroad to teach other countries how elections should be run. Elections Canada was like Statistics Canada: always right.

Now though, the governing party is calling Elections Canada biased and refusing to abide to its interpretation of the law. Actually, the Conservatives are suing the Elections Canada. It’s almost like disagreeing with the results of the latest Census and suing StatsCan to prove your point. Simply put, this is unacceptable. We need to know before the next election whether Elections Canada is incompetent, with all the implications this would entail, or whether the Conservative Party simply lied.

Drama, Drama!

This thing is serious. In an unprecedented move, senior Conservative Party officials staged a secret meeting on Sunday afternoon with hand-picked reporters to unveil the content of the search warrant that led the RCMP to raid Party headquarters for most of last week. You can watch the drama unfold here.

As everyone expected, the warrant alleged that the Conservative Party used an elaborate accounting scheme known as the “in and out method” to exceed the national election spending limit by over a million dollars. These allegations have actually been around for a long time, but their level of complexity prevented them from having much of an impact of the government’s numbers.

What Elections Canada is now claiming though, is far more damaging: apparently, the Party would have deliberately filed “false and misleading statements” on its financial returns.

It’s going to be very interesting to watch this issue develop over the next week. It may be a disaster for the Conservatives, or it may just disappear off the radar, but the fact that Elections Canada and the RCMP are involved leads me to suspect that it will stick around for some time yet.

We’ll have to wait until Monday afternoon at the earliest before the full set of documents pertaining to the search warrant are unveiled. The Tories can count themselves lucky that the House isn’t currently sitting, but I can still guarantee that this will be a crazy week.