Birth Announcement: It's a Baby Blog!

I am pleased to announce the birth of a brand new team blog. It's called 'Kats 'n Dawgs', and the team members consist of myself (Runesmith/Jennifer Smith) and self-described centrist/conservative Raphael Alexander of 'Unambiguously Ambidextrous'.

No, I do not have a brain tumour. Thank you for asking.

For the record, this was my idea. As a resident of Garth Turner's riding of Halton and a frequent visitor of his blog, I have had the opportunity to observe what happens when Conservatives (from Garth's old party) get to interact with Liberals (from his new party) on a regular basis in the comments section of single blog.

It ain't pretty.

Still, it made me aware of just how isolated most political bloggers have become. It made me wonder if there might be some place, some way, that liberals and conservatives could discuss and debate the issues of the day without shrieking at one another.

I ran across Raphael's blog by accident, I believe through one of several mocking links from Canadian Cynic. The particular post I read impressed me as exceedingly rational and non-partisan, so I kept checking in from time to time.

Ok, so I don't agree with everything (or much) of what Raphael has to say. Still, here was someone who was at least attempting to go beyond partisan positions and talk about what he REALLY thought, despite identifying himself as a small-c conservative. On impulse, I suggested doing some sort of bi-partisan / non-partisan / unholy freak-of-nature team blog together.

The son of a bitch took me up on it.

This blog is an experiment. I have no idea if I'm going to be able to take it for any length of time, let alone expect readers to subject themselves to it on a regular basis. Nonetheless, I think it's important to try. We are all Canadians after all, and if we can't even talk to each other without descending into a food fight, there really is no hope for us at all.

This is our manifesto. Subscribe if you dare.

Playing Chicken

The issue of Senate reform was resurrected once again yesterday as the merits of Bill C-20 (the Senate Appointment Consultations Act) were debated on the floor of the House of Commons. The bill is a somewhat half-hearted attempt to show some progress towards the Conservatives’ stated goal of a ‘triple-E’ senate by allowing individual provinces to decide whether or not they want to elect candidates for the senate to represent them.

Even the Conservatives admitted during the debate that the measures in the bill are "incremental" (there’s that word again), and that this is really all they can do without actually getting consensus from the provinces to make more fundamental changes to our constitution. As one rather articulate Member from Nova Scotia pointed out, it is nothing more than "a piece of red meat thrown at their base of old Reformers".

This rather sparsely attended drama was played out shortly before the far more public spectacle of an unprecedented government motion demanding that the senate pass their crime legislation by March 1st. The background was explained yesterday in the National Post:

The Conservatives argue the Senate has been impeding the government's crime agenda for months. The Tackling Violent Crime Act actually repackages five crime bills that the government failed to get through in the last parliamentary session. Among other things, it would impose tougher sentences for gun crimes and raise the age of sexual consent to 16 from 14.

But the Liberals point out it was the Harper government itself that prorogued the last session in the summer, thus requiring the bills to wend their way through Parliament again. And they note the bill was introduced in the Senate on Nov. 29, and Parliament only recently resumed after a holiday break.

The Senate legal affairs committee, which is studying the bill, has extended its sitting hours and will likely meet during a parliamentary recess next week to fast-track the bill, said Liberal Senator Sharon Carstairs. But she said it's "unrealistic" to expect the Senate to pass the bill by March 1.

"They clearly don't want their bill. If they wanted their bill, they clearly would give the Senate time to examine it," said Carstairs. "We have a constitutional responsibility to give it sober second thought."

Quite right. The Conservatives are far less interested in whether or not this bill passes than they are in playing chicken with the Liberals. And today the Liberals obliged by jumping out of the car - again.

Liberals walk out of Commons before crime vote

OTTAWA–The Liberals walked out of the Commons en masse today rather than vote on a government motion demanding that the Senate pass an omnibus crime bill by March 1.

They dismissed the vote as a political stunt, pointing out that the Commons has no say in how the Senate conducts its business.

In their absence, the motion passed easily, 172-27.

Sigh.

I’m sure the rationale in the Liberal caucus was that this is a minor issue that Canadians don’t care about enough to go to an election over. That it’s all just political maneuvering and the motion doesn’t carry any legal weight. And from the numbers it’s apparent the motion would have passed anyway, although I wasn’t watching so I don’t know if it was the NDP or the Bloc who voted for it (my guess is the Bloc - they’ve never liked the Senate anyway).

While all this is true, the fact remains that the Honourable Members of the House of Commons have just been bullied and coerced into passing a pointless and probably unconstitutional motion designed to bully and coerce the Upper Chamber. And regardless of you may think of the Senate, that, to me, is unacceptable.

Why would Stephen Harper go so far as to make something as ridiculous as this into a confidence motion? Not to fast track some crime bill - the Senate will just ignore it.

To further impugn and discredit the Senate? Probably. As we’ve seen before, there’s nothing like an imaginary crisis to turn public opinion against an organization that Stephen Harper would like to be rid of altogether.

To make himself look tough and made Stephane Dion and the Liberals look weak and foolish? Most certainly.

Did he succeed? I don’t know, but just for once I would like to see Stephen Harper jump out of the car first.

(cross posted to Kats 'n Dawgs)

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UPDATE: The always insightful Senator Elaine McCoy weighs in.

Arnie vs. the U.S. Government: Round Two

The Governator is at it again.

After putting his state way out front in the battle against global warming by legislating strict GHG emission standards on cars in California (and fighting the EPA and the federal government tooth and nail to do it), Arnie is taking the same approach with another environmental issue:

Toxic chemicals.

Arnie's "green" chemicals proposal shames Montebello Agreement on toxics

Once again, the California state government of Arnold Schwarzenegger has stuck its neck out for the environment. Amidst federal movement toward a continental approach to toxics regulation -- the so-called "Montebello Agreement" -- California is exploring "a wholesale shift" in the way industry manufactures everything from prescription drugs to plastics, pesticides and household cleaners.

"In an effort to reduce industry's reliance on toxic compounds, state environmental officials today will lay out a framework for transforming California into a leader in the development and use of 'green' chemicals," wrote the Los Angeles Times last week.

"The goal is to blast California way ahead of the world," Maureen Gorsen, director of the Department of Toxic Substances Control, told the paper. "We're trying to develop an entirely new state policy framework to move California to a... sustainable society. No government's ever done that."

You know, if he keeps this up they're going to take away his key to the Republican bathroom.

The article is well worth reading in its entirety because it outlines the fundamental difference between the U.S. 'risk management' approach to regulation, which puts the onus on the EPA to prove a chemical is dangerous, and the European 'precautionary' model, which puts the onus on the chemical company to prove that it isn't.

You can guess which model the Bush and Harper governments prefer.

From the sounds of it, Arnie is going to have a fight on his hands over this one as well. The chemical industry is lobbying hard against European-style regulations and encouraging the U.S. government to "preempt state laws on chemicals" - just like the auto industry lobbied against a "patchwork" of state laws on GHG emissions. And even assuming a regime change on both sides of the border within the next year, I'm not naive enough to think that these corporate interests are going to lose their political influence any time soon.

The irony is, the chemical industry is already adapting itself to a greener way - partly because of stricter European regulations and partly because of the soaring costs of petrochemicals. But with the American economy tanking and many Canadian businesses looking to Europe to help soften the blow, our government's regressive attitude towards regulatory policy might just shut us out of the European market altogether. At which point the Americans may just go from being our largest trading partner to being our only trading partner.

Now there's a cheery thought.

Super Tuesday: The Post Game Show

Every blogger and pundit on the planet has been up to their elbows in entrails today, analyzing, deciphering and dissecting yesterdays Super Tuesday results. I won’t bore you with my sad attempts at analysis - you can check out Daily Kos or this excellent and optimistic post for all that.

What came to me last night as I fretted over the numbers on CNN was a realization of just how emotionally invested I have become in the prospect of Barack Obama becoming President of the United States.

I stated some of my reasons here, back when I was still ok with the idea of any of the three democratic front runners bagging the nom. But today, with Obama doing well but Clinton ahead in the overall delegate count (and seriously, what the fuck is a ‘superdelegate’?!), I am struck by the thought that if she wins, I will be… disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure she’d make a fine president. It’s just.. I dunno. It would just seem like more of the same somehow. I can’t even get all that excited over the whole ‘first woman president’ thing. After all, just about every other western democracy has already had a female president or prime minister at some point, including ours. Even now we have a black female head of state, so the novelty factor for either candidate doesn’t hold much appeal for me.

But the idea of an outsider with fresh ideas becoming president by inspiring a populist movement of the young and the disenfranchised demanding more and better from their government and their country? That excites me.

Jason Cherniak is not excited. Jason is thoroughly unimpressed with Obama's ten years in politics, is dismissive of his legal and social activist credentials, and is baffled by the appeal of a man who he describes as "no different than any other pretty boy who thinks his looks and charm will get him everything in life".

Hillary, on the other hand, he admires and respects.

In Hillary Clinton, we have a woman who has taken every advantage offered to her to make a difference in the world. In Barack Obama, we have a young, charismatic guy who just decided one day that he wanted to run for president. This isn’t a high school popularity contest. It’s a vote for the person who will literally hold the lives of billions of people in his or her hands. Experience has to count for something and I’ll never understand how so many Canadians can ignore that important fact. We’d never elect the Canadian equivalent of Mr. Obama to lead the Liberal or Conservative Party. We never have.

Ok, there’s no way I could let that one slide.

Never? Oh, c'mon Jason - you should know better than that. Three words:

Pierre. Elliott. Trudeau.

I go on at length, so just check the comments for the rest of my rant. I'm number three of 46.

Of the 45 other people who commented on his post, most seemed to agree with me about Obama’s worthiness as a candidate, if not my comparisons to Trudeau. But I can understand where Jason is coming from. He has his reasons for rejecting the whole notion of charisma and inspirational oratory as the basis for electing a leader. He even tips his hand when he offers Joe Clark as "a good example of how a smart person can win without any charisma at all".

I may be wrong, but I don’t think he’s just talking about Clark here.

Face it - as much as many of us may admire and respect Stephane Dion and support his leadership of the Liberal Party, one could never accuse him of being charismatic. And that’s ok too. Jason is right - you don’t need to be charismatic or a brilliant speaker to be a good or even a great leader. But having those qualities as your greatest strength should not disqualify you, nor should it negate the rest of your experience and qualifications. It should only enhance them.

Or as one particularly dim pundit on CNN put it, "voters like to vote for people they like".

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Cherniak.

Happy Super Tuesday Everyone!

My cutie was in Chicago last week and got me a button:

The Purge Continues

Add another name to the list of "Liberal hacks" removed from office:

Wheat Board fires official who criticized government

WINNIPEG — A Canadian Wheat Board vice-president who was an outspoken critic of the Harper government's tactics in its dealings with the marketing agency was sacked yesterday.

Deanna Allen, the board's vice-president of farmer relations and public affairs, had been a thorn in the side of the government as it attempted to end the Wheat Board's barley-marketing monopoly.

Ms. Allen said in an interview late yesterday that she was “dismissed without cause” by Wheat Board interim president Greg Arason.

“I was told that Greg had just come in from an in camera session with the board and that he was to inform me that I was dismissed effective immediately,” she said.

The news “came as a bit of a shock,” she said, adding she had no idea that her dismissal was imminent.

Interestingly, the federal government cannot directly hire or fire members or staff of the wheat board - only the appointed members of its board and it's President, which they did a year ago when they replaced the uncooperative Adrian Measner with interim president Greg Arason. Happily for them, Mr. Arason is considerably more cooperative with the government's agenda of eliminating the Wheat Board, as he has just demonstrated by firing Allen.

Even more cooperation is expected from the government's newly announced permanent replacement for Measner - Australian agri-business executive Ian White.

Buckdog knows a lot more about all this than I, so I recommend that you wander over to his joint and continue reading there.

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And on a somewhat unrelated topic, please read this editorial by Dan Gardner on the increasingly Orwellian atmosphere in Ottawa. ADD: And this one by Randall Denley. Brrrr!

It's Getting Chilly In Here

Remember that creepy funny story a couple of days ago? The one about Harper's Wall o' Harper in the government lobby in the House of Commons? The one that inspired Garth Turner to go in and take a few pictures?

We obviously forgot that Our Dear Leader has no fucking sense of humour.

Yes, the pictures of the redecorated Government Lobby in the House of Commons which were posted here yesterday are gone.

... If the pictures remained here, I believe that some blameless, hard-working employees of the House of Commons would be disciplined, or worse. This could be the outcome of complaints made against them by the Government of Canada, for allegedly allowing material which was published here to have been photographed. This situation was made known to me just before QP today, presumably after Conservative officials had been in touch with their counterparts in the Liberal Party.

Just to be clear, no political colleague of mine ordered the pictures off this blog. No Harper official has gone on record asking for it, either. But by using the threat of professional injury to Commons security personnel, unless it happened, that outcome has taken place.

You know, anyone with any class at all would have just laughed it off. Harper could have cracked a couple of self-deprecating jokes for the media, rattled off some lame justification, and that would have been that.

But no - like everything else, he has to go at it with a sledgehammer. Quashing dissent. Muzzling criticism. And as a last resort, punishing the innocent when he can't get his way otherwise. It's bad enough when he does this to get his way or promote his political agenda or cover up the incompetence of a minister.

But to bring down the hammer just because someone made him look foolish?! That, to me, is even more disturbing than erecting a Shrine to Steve in the House of Commons.

Disturbing, and profoundly frightening.

Turner's removal of these photos from his blog was prudent given his personal involvement and the animosity his former party has towards him, but in the long run it's a moot point. They are already all over the net, so getting rid of them all is going to be like putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Just look at what I found today:









Honestly, I have no idea where they came from. They're just out there. I know I didn't take them. I'm just saving them from spiralling down the memory hole.