All posts in Brian Mulroney

Order of Canada for Stevie Cameron sets the right tone for the coming Year of Mulroney

by David Climenhaga on December 31, 2012 in Brian Mulroney, Canadian Politics, Lobbying with 5 Comments

Happy New Year … and this time I mean it! Author and cook Stevie Cameron wearing the official regalia of a member of the Order of Canada. Actual Order of Canada recipients may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Ms. Cameron; Brian Mulroney, the 18th prime minister of Canada, wearing his OiC pin in his official portrait by Igor Babailov, which kind of captures the guy, you have to admit.

What a delightful and ironic twist on which to end one year and start another was the announcement yesterday that Stevie Cameron had been awarded the Order of Canada!

And here I thought I was finished writing about – or at least during – 2012, with my bloviations yesterday on the future of Alberta’s NDP.

Ms. Cameron’s appointment on the cusp of 2013 makes up for some of the rather inferior choices by the committee that has picked the Order’s recipients over the past few decades. (You all know who I have in mind, I’m sure.)

Now, Ms. Cameron was supposedly given “Canada’s highest civilian honour” for her work as a philanthropist and a chef, but we all know better, surely?

The fact that Ms. Cameron strove to drive a stake (metaphorically speaking) through former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s Conservative heart must have been factored into this decision – if only at the committee’s subconscious level.

Alert readers will recall that Ms. Cameron is also a journalist and author, who wrote about Mr. Mulroney at some length in her 1994 tome, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years.

For some reason, the Toronto Star did not mention this notable fact of authorship in its summary of this year’s excellent crop of OiC winners, a list that also includes former Liberal Deputy PM Sheila Copps, former Newfoundland Liberal premier Brian Tobin, former B.C. NDP premier Mike Harcourt and pianist Jane Coop.

But who can forget On the Take, which Amazon.com describes on its sales site to this day as the “stunning expose of greed and crime in the Mulroney era” that “confirmed and detailed” the “widespread corruption the public suspected during Brian Mulroney’s regime”?

Mr. Mulroney and his many supporters of course vigorously dispute this assessment by the editors at Amazon – a fact that leads us to the irony in Ms. Cameron’s elevation to the heights of Member of the Order of Canada. For 2013, whether we like it or not, is surely bound to be the Year of Brian Mulroney.

That is, 2013 will be the year that Mr. Mulroney – a Companion of the Order, its highest rank, since 1998 – will almost certainly subject Canadians to the full-court press in his tireless campaign to salvage his tattered reputation before the final judgment of history is rendered. (The court referred to in this expression, I am reasonably certain, is the kind on which one plays tennis, not the kind Mr. Mulroney’s former associate Karlheinz Schreiber appealed to in hopes of not being extradited back to Germany to face accusations of tax evasion.)

Mr. Mulroney will do this, as has been previously reported in this space, with the able assistance of the professional lobbyists at the Earnscliffe Strategy Group, many of whom have past associations with the former PM.

For her part, Ms. Cameron has a fairly low opinion of Mr. Mulroney. She once told an interviewer she’d really rather write about serial killers.

That cruel assessment notwithstanding, Mr. Mulroney did some things right, and history should recognize his achievements.

But his record, in toto, is hardly universally lustrous. Perhaps Ms. Cameron’s appointment to the Order of Canada late in 2012 can remind us, at those moments in 2013 when the 18th prime minster of Canada positively seems to glow, that may be because a group of professional lobbyists are shining us on.

Again, Happy New Year! And Happy New Year to you, Stevie!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The rehabilitation of Brian Mulroney: There’s a reason he’s looking so good these days

by David Climenhaga on October 9, 2012 in Brian Mulroney, Canadian Politics with 5 Comments

Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney in his heyday, grabbed from the website of Libraries and Archives Canada, and doesn’t he just look terrific! Below: Mr. Mulroney as he appears nowadays; Earnscliffe Strategies Principal Robin Sears.

Have you noticed how Brian Mulroney is looking pretty good lately?

Back in the day, after Mr. Mulroney left office in 1993 as the Conservative prime minister who brought us “free” trade, failed constitutional change and sundry other disasters, real and imagined, he could have been fairly described as the most unpopular man in Canada.

And that was before the sleazy sounding but never proven allegations made the rounds about whatever the heck was going on between the former prime minister and Karlheinz Schreiber, plus those envelopes of cash and those airliners.

Mr. Mulroney’s replacement to lead the then-still-Progressive Conservative Party to another term in government, the hapless British Columbian Kim Campbell, was swept from the board by angry voters along with all but two of the party’s Members of Parliament.

Canadians were particularly incensed by a comment of Mr. Mulroney’s that he had “rolled the dice” by deliberately timing a first ministers’ conference on constitutional change in 1990 to provoke a sense of crisis.

A long (and some might say happy) period of Liberal rule followed in Ottawa. Alas, it also paved the way for the hostile takeover of the PC Party by the Reform Party of Canada in the Invasion of the Party Snatchers of 2003, spelling the end of traditional Conservatism in Canada.

Mr. Mulroney is now 73, and all of a sudden our assessment of the man is changing for the better, and changing quickly.

Well, people, this isn’t just happening. There’s a major campaign under way to improve Mr. Mulroney’s image for posterity. It has to be costing big money and it may have an agenda that’s bigger than just history’s view of Mr. Mulroney.

Indeed, while I can find no direct confirmation with my primitive Googling skills, the footprints in the snow strongly suggest Mr. Mulroney has either hired Earnscliffe Strategy Group, a high-powered Ottawa lobbying house with ties that go back to his government, or that Earnscliffe is working to rehabilitate Mr. Mulroney’s reputation for some other reason.

Perhaps it is just motivated by friendship and loyalty. Two Mulroney insiders – Bill Fox, his former press secretary, and Harry Near, his campaign manager in 1984 and 1988 – played key roles in the establishment of Earnscliffe.

Whatever it is, though, Mr. Mulroney’s reputation certainly has a new shine on it, and Earnscliffe is clearly involved.

First there was that long and balanced, but ultimately positive story about Mr. Mulroney in the Globe and Mail back on Oct. 1. The opinion piece was written by Robin Sears, the former national director of the New Democratic Party. Mr. Sears’s current role? Why, he’s a “principal” of the Earnscliffe Group, of course.

On Oct. 3, the Canadian Diabetes Association sent out a “media advisory” noting that it would be the beneficiary of a tribute dinner for former prime minister Mulroney. Mr. Mulroney would be the featured speaker at the dinner that night, which was timed to mark the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, the news release noted.

“The net proceeds for the event will be donated to the association to help lead the fight against diabetes by helping people with diabetes live healthy lives while working to find a cure,” said the release, and you have to agree that was a nice thing for Mr. Mulroney to do.

The contact on the bottom of the release for journalists who wanted more information? Well, in addition to someone from the Diabetes Association, it was none other than Mr. Sears of Earnscliffe.

On Oct. 4, Mr. Mulroney held a meeting with the editorial board of the Globe and Mail, which prompted some very kindly reviews. For example, under the headline “Brian Mulroney’s lasting legacy,” a fawning Globe and Mail editorial stated that for free trade, “Mr. Mulroney deserves a great deal of credit.”

“His willingness to roll the dice made all the difference,” the Globe’s smart-aleck editorialist added cleverly, presumably assuming the rest of us have long forgotten about Mr. Mulroney’s original use of the phrase and Canadians’ reaction to it.

The Globe’s editorial writer didn’t see fit to tell us what Earnscliffe’s role, if any, was in setting up that meeting. Nor did the Globe reporter who wrote a friendly news story on the event. But here’s a confident bet that Earnscliffe was involved.

Two days after the anniversary, better a little late than never, Postmedia News published a similarly supportive piece by L. Ian MacDonald, editor of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s house publication, which contains a story on the negotiations by Mr. Mulroney himself. Mr. MacDonald’s conclusion, like that of Mr. Mulroney in his own piece, was that free trade has been a resounding success.

None of this may be news to Parliamentary insiders, of course. But it is to most of us who just pick up our papers or read them online out here in the hinterland and wonder, “Gee, maybe we did misjudge that Mulroney fellow.”

Did we? My guess is that history will be a little kinder to Mr. Mulroney than most Canadians were at the time he left office. Indeed, it’s been said in this space that he was probably right about the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, though it hardly seemed so at the time.

But will it be as kind as the Globe and Mail and Postmedia News writers with their paeans to the benefits of freeish trade deals? This is highly doubtful. Indeed, historians may mark Mr. Mulroney’s NAFTA as the beginning of the end of Canada as a sovereign nation, a trend the current Harperist government in Ottawa seems determined to accelerate.

Beyond the former Conservative prime minister’s own understandable desire to repair his still-tarnished reputation, this is what likely lies behind the full-court press to rehabilitate Mr. Mulroney.

The Globe’s editorial ended with a call for new rounds of free-trade negotiations with Europe, East Asia and beyond. It emphasized the need to end “agricultural protectionism” – a veiled shot at Canada’s supply management of dairy, poultry and eggs. It suggested no one should worry about that, though, because all will be well thanks to “generous phase-out provisions.” And it advised us that “in light of the challenges facing Canada today, it’s important to recall Mr. Mulroney’s example.”

In other words, it is said here, free trade and globalization, and the bogus sense of crisis and attacks on working people that go with them, are at the base of the full-blown professionally organized campaign to rehabilitate Mr. Mulroney’s reputation.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Be very afraid … Prime Minister Harper wants to woo Quebec!

by David Climenhaga on June 22, 2012 in Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, W.L. Mackenzie King with 9 Comments

Yikes! Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper: It’s always dangerous when Conservatives decide to counter threats to national unity. Below. W.L. Mackenzie King.

Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Why should you be afraid, you wonder? It’ll be right there on the front pages of tomorrow’s Alberta newspapers: Prime Minister Stephen Harper is heading to Quebec to, in the words of Postmedia News, “counter a potential threat to national unity.”

Now, it’s never a good thing in this country when Conservatives start messing with the national unity file. Those of us who were around at the time saw what happened when Brian Mulroney succumbed to this temptation – and Mr. Mulroney was reasonably well intentioned, at least as far as Quebec’s role in Confederation went.

But Mr. Harper, it is said here, is not all that well intentioned, and he sure as heck has a tin ear when it comes to what will play in la belle province.

But naturally our dour neo-Con prime minister wants to save his own political skin – what with Thomas Mulcair and the New Democratic Party continuing to hold onto their lead in Quebec public opinion – so this dangerous foray into French-speaking Canada was probably inevitable.

To hear Mr. Harper’s friends tell it, the PM merely has an image problem, and it’s not his fault. He’s practically the next William Lyon Mackenzie King, some of them say, an unloved but effective strategist.

“Party supporters say Quebecers generally agree with the Conservative government’s economic policies, but the problem comes from personal attacks and criticism directed at Harper that rarely draw a response from the government,” intoned the friendly Postmedia stenographer in what’s bound to typical of the coverage of the PM’s upcoming charm offensive – an oxymoron, come to think of it, that’s astonishingly appropriate for what is likely to happen.

But one of those friends had a more revelatory quote about the mood in Quebec: “People hate the guy,” Postmedia quoted a veteran Conservative organizer from Quebec explaining. “They really hate him. They think he’s got horns and a tail and eats babies, and I’m sure Harper has no idea that this is the case.” (Emphasis added.)

Sorry, but his doesn’t sound like Mackenzie King to me. The trouble, from the perspective of the prime minister’s professional spinners, is that it’s what the prime minister actually stands for that really seems to bug Quebeckers.

Remember, Mr. Harper and his coterie are the people who repeatedly told tout le monde Quebec to bug right off on the topic of the long-gun registry, and who indeed continue to do so, the better to play wedge politics in the last federal election and the next one. The arts? Ditto. Afghanistan? Ditto. F-35s? Ditto. The environment? Ditto. Neo-conservative economic calls for the privatization of everything? Well, maybe ditto there too, or at least enough agreement to get some good pot bashing going in certain parts of town on a Saturday night. And, yeah, I think you can add “Dutch Disease” to that list too.

Hell, maybe they don’t even like it in Quebec that this government seems determined to kick the crap out of refugees who wash up on our shores to win a few votes in some of the more backward corners of the West.

Let’s face it, Mr. Harper’s problem with Quebec may not be that the criticisms directed at him are unjustly effective – it may be that Quebec’s voters are actually paying attention to what he says and does!

Well, nobody’s going to accuse us of paying attention out here in Alberta! (Jason Kenney, c’mon down!)

What’s dangerous about this charm offensive is that it’s being mounted by the most divisive prime minister in Canadian history – quite willing to pit one region of the country against another for transitory electoral advantage. (And never mind his projecting his own strategies onto Mr. Mulcair, who had the temerity to speak the obvious truth about the impact of Canada’s petro-loonie on its manufacturing regions.)

Facing a tough and focused opponent for the first time in a spell, he’s likely to do or say anything to hang onto his majority.

Add this to his tone deafness on Quebec and his now-closeted history as a firewall-touting Western independentiste, something that’s bound to be useful to genuine Quebec separatists, and you can see how this adventure has the potential to end badly for everyone.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Lee Richardson: Alberta Ambassador to the Mulcair Government? Or what?

by David Climenhaga on June 5, 2012 in Alison Redford, Brian Mulroney, Conservative Party, Farouk Adatia, Joe Clark, Lee Richardson, NDP, Peter Lougheed, Progressive Conservatives, Stephen Carter, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, Wildrose with 8 Comments
Alberta Premier Alison Redford speaks with Principal Secretary Lee Richardson while Chief of Staff Farouk Adatia looks on. Alberta officials, elected and not so elected, may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Mr. Richardson and Mr. Adatia.

So what exactly is a principal secretary, anyway? And why does Alberta Premier Alison Redford need one? I mean, really, didn’t she just appoint a chief of staff? How is this principal secretary thingy she’s just hired different from the chief of staff she’s just appointed? Who is the boss of whom?

Questions, questions…

Hold it, let’s roll the tape back to last Thursday, when your blogger was climbing off an airplane in Ottawa, hitherto the home away from home of Calgary Centre MP Lee Richardson, without so much as a laptop computer for instant analysis of the pressing questions of the day, such as body parts in the mail or how the Tories and the mainstream media would spin NDP Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair’s visit to the oily sands of Alberta.

That was the moment word was Tweeted Mr. Richardson had resigned his seat in Parliament to become principal secretary to Ms. Redford.

As far as anybody seems to know, there is no generally agreed upon job description for a Canadian principal secretary – although, in fact, there have been quite a few of these fellows, at least in Ottawa. The Wikipedia lists more than 50 people who have held the job or one a lot like it, and suggests it’s the name for the top guy in a first minister’s office – unless, of course, that top guy happens to be a chief of staff.

In Ottawa, Mr. Richardson played the role of a generally well-liked holdover from the days when Canada’s Conservatives could be progressive too. But maybe he felt bored having been sidelined by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a far-right ideologue who doesn’t take kindly to Red Tories, even ones most everyone else gets along with. Good lord, Mr. Richardson is even reported to have suggested in caucus the PM’s polices sometimes go too far!

Given that he doesn’t have a lot of clout with Mr. Harper’s inner circle, it likely wasn’t all that hard for Premier Redford to make Mr. Richardson an offer he wasn’t inclined to refuse.

Which brings us to the premier’s chief of staff. Back at the end of April, Ms. Redford appointed a Calgary lawyer named Farouk Adatia as chief of staff. Mr. Adatia, who was chief financial officer for Ms. Redford’s leadership campaign, proved that you just can’t keep a good man down, as long as he’s got close ties to a successful premier.

Before the April 23 election, Mr. Adatia tried for the PC nomination in Calgary-Hawkwood, but was unsuccessful. Then it was rumoured he was about to be appointed as Tory candidate in Calgary-West after the first nomination there was controversially overturned by the party. When that didn’t happen, he was appointed as Conservative candidate in Calgary Shaw. On election night he was defeated in that riding by the Wildrose Party’s candidate.

What he didn’t have was any experience with actually working in the Parliamentary system or running a high-pressure political office – a gap that is unprecedented in the ranks of people who hold this kind of job at this level of government. Even political strategist Stephen Carter, the ardent Tweeter who was the premier’s last oddball choice for the position of most powerful unelected person in the province, had more relevant experience!

There’s bound to be some bitter grumbling in the Redford Tory ranks about Mr. Adatia’s mysterious appointment, since there’s a feeling his flunkies are going to have to carry him across the goal line every day and then avert their eyes while he spikes the ball.

Since his appointment, we’ve heard very little from Mr. Adatia – although, in fairness, it’s early days yet for this government, which has about half a year to get to know where the washrooms are, two and a half years to try to implement Ms. Redford’s agenda, and a year after that to get ready for the next election.

Which brings us back to Mr. Richardson. Unlike Mr. Adatia, he certainly knows his way around a legislature. He was chief of staff to the sainted Peter Lougheed, the original proprietor of the Alberta Tories, from 1979 to 1983. He was Deputy Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He was Progressive Conservative MP for Calgary Southeast from 1988 to 1993, lost for a term and was elected again as a (by now unprogressive) Conservative MP in Calgary-Centre in 2004.

Does this mean Ms. Redford realized – too late, perhaps – that Mr. Adatia lacked the parliamentary know-how, or perhaps the necessary toughness, to be a first-rate chief of staff? Heaven knows, a chief of staff needs to know how things work, and how to be hard nosed. When unpleasant or distasteful work comes along – like firing a cabinet minister – it’s up to the chief of staff to get on with it.

Maybe this is why Ms. Redford felt the need to have both a chief of staff and a principal secretary – a duplication of services that is bound to provide a nice bulls-eye for the Opposition Wildrose Party to shoot at.

Another possibility is that Mr. Richardson’s primary role is to be oil-rich Alberta’s “Ambassador to Ottawa” – a well-respected voice that could represent this province’s positions on oilpatch development and petroleum exports with equal aplomb to the court of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives or prime minister Thomas Mulcair’s not-so-conservative government in the not-so-distant future.

Ms. Redford has said repeatedly she would like to develop a pan-Canadian energy policy and, in the face of an uncertain political future, a respected Parliamentarian like Mr. Richardson might work out well in that role.

But a case could also be made that Mr. Richardson, who has little pull with the market fundamentalists who surround Mr. Harper, could be less than ideal if the Harperites manage to cling to power after 2015.

Either way, the departure from Ottawa of Mr. Richardson will soon create the need for a by-election in Calgary-Centre. Already potential Conservative candidates are starting to crawl out of the woodwork.

This could provide the Premier with an opportunity to rap Mr. Harper’s knuckles for so foolishly openly backing the Wildrose Alliance in last April’s provincial general election.

While she’s unlikely to be as obvious as that, Ms. Redford surely won’t cry too hard or too long if Calgary Centre – a riding, after all, that was once represented by the virtually progressive Joe Clark – ends up in the hands of someone not entirely to the prime minister’s taste.

In the mean time, we are left to puzzle out who will do what in the premier’s crowded inner office.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Tories train their intellectual big guns on Tom Mulcair: if Rex Murphy fails, there’s always Don Cherry!

by admin on May 21, 2012 in Alison Redford, Brian Mulroney, Don Cherry, Dutch Disease, Noorudin Jiwani, Norman Spector, Paul Revere, Rex Murphy, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair with 10 Comments
Prime Minister Stephen Harper (clutching the balloon, centre) sets off his attack on Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair, who is illustrated standing in the background. Beep-beep! Actual federal politicians may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Tory big guns Rex Murphy and Don Cherry, plus former Tory big gun Norman Spector, all of whom have appeared exactly as illustrated.


“BRIEFING NOTE: Respond to criticism about economic impact of high-Loonie, everything-for-petrochemical-industry policy by making voters see Thomas Mulcair as recklessly un-Canadian…”

This isn’t an actual quote from the Tories’ current list of talking points, but it seems to be what the Strategic Heavy Lifters in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative brain trust have in mind for their main attack on the leader of the NDP Opposition. Expect them to trot out that French passport momentarily.

They promised us the Mother of All Battles, and the best they can come up with before Mr. Harper’s Republican Guards bug off to the dusty hills of Alberta is to call the NDP leader un-Canadian?

Pathetic!

Oh, I know, I’m being hyperbolic. I admit it. It’ll be a long road before Mr. Mulcair and the NDP form the government of Canada, and the possibility’s quite high the old slime-hurlers of Mr. Harper’s Tea Party of Canada will come up with something more effective than this kind of fake patriotism, the last refuge of the modern neo-Con petro-scoundrel. So I guess we shouldn’t start measuring the orange shag carpet for the prime ministerial residence on Sussex Drive just yet.

But, really people, does Mr. Harper seriously think getting his party’s Media Auxiliary over at the National Pest to assign Rex Murphy the job of calling Mr. Mulcair “recklessly un-Canadian” is a strategy? Rex Murphy?

And for what does the thankfully inimitable Mr. Murphy level this charge of un-Canadianism? Because Mr. Mulcair called three of the four western premiers “Harper’s Messengers”!

For lack of a more suitable phrase usable in the public prints: Take off!

Surely this is unworthy of a mighty “public intellectual” like Mr. Murphy. They must be holding back the really big guns for when things get truly desperate … you know, like Don Cherry!

Mr. Murphy’s screed is a laugh a minute, like the bit about how “it’s taken more than a couple of decades to exorcise the demon of the NEP from Western memories — particularly Albertan ones…” Excuse me, but we’ve heard about nothing but the alleged depredations of the National Energy Program here in Alberta pretty much every day for the past 32 years. (“The NEP destroyed Alberta! Would you like fries with that, sir?”) Some exorcism!

Mr. Murphy also descends into the fuzzy arithmetic typical of his so-called conservative ilk since really only three of the four Western premiers have had anything to say on this topic, and the one from British Columbia is being pretty mild and cautious for obvious reasons. You know, like the well-known Mulcair-style predilections of a majority of B.C. voters, who may well have concluded they have nothing whatsoever to gain from Alberta bitumen being pumped through their forests to the ocean but oil dumps, oil spills, dead fish, dead animals, pissed off environmentalists, angry First Nations, litigation, cancer, high security costs, terrorism risks, lawsuits and the ruination of a few more local small export businesses. Did I miss anything?

Perhaps Mr. Harper and Alberta Premier Alison Redford could explain the advantage of this to British Columbians again. A couple of dozen maintenance jobs and a boost for the private security industry? Or what?

But, hey, half a loaf is better than none – especially when you’re apparently just trying to stick as close as possible to the PMO’s talking points. And Mr. Murphy’s effort truly outshone the line of Zs thrown up by the Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson, who worked himself into what passes for a swivet at 444 Front Street, calling Mr. Mulcair’s commentary … “political nonsense.” Whew!

With stirring headlines like “Mulcair should drop the ‘Dutch Disease’ rhetoric,” the Globe had better be careful it doesn’t provoke rioting in the streets of Calgary!

Meanwhile, out here in the west, the Conservative echo chamber is really testing our arithmetical skills: Friday’s edition of the Edmonton Journal includes a story under a headline that reads: “Alberta exporters don’t buy Mulcair’s loonie concerns.” (“Loonie concerns” … Geddit?) The story quotes five business people, all of whom are … uh … concerned about the strong petro-Loonie.

Representative quote: Edmonton frozen-Indian-dinner exporter Noorudin Jiwani “acknowledged that a strong Canadian dollar makes exporting more difficult, but he said he realizes that oilsands companies dwarf his firm, which employs about 70 people. ‘The Canadian dollar is too strong for us,’ he said. ‘I would like that not to happen, but then I’m a small potato.’” (Emphasis added.) Got that?

I’m sure they’re slapping themselves on the back at the PMO. “Great media coverage, chief!” … if you don’t bother to read the story.

And it’s all just so divisive, our Pecksniffian Conservative MPs keep sniveling – this from a group of people who repeatedly told tout le monde Quebec to bug right off on the topic of the long-gun registry, and who indeed continue to do so, the better to play wedge politics in the last federal election and the next one.

Oh well, like the big lie about how it was Pierre Trudeau’s energy policy and not world petroleum prices that caused Alberta’s one-dimensional economy to fall on its keester in 1980, a certain number of people will eventually start to believe anything if you repeat it often enough.

Meanwhile, Mr. Harper’s semi-official Conservative Party newspaper and the state broadcaster over at Sun Media keep telling us Mr. Mulcair is not only a suitable candidate to be hauled before the House Un-Canadian Activities Committee (HUCAC) but he’s a firebrand, a hothead and a perpetually angry guy.

But constant repetition of this meme doesn’t actually change the fact that Mr. Mulcair is probably just as coldly calculating as our divisive and un-Canadian prime minister.

For this reason, western Canada’s current crop of parochial Conservative leaders – and that includes the sanctimonious Mr. Harper – really ought to think carefully about how their hysterical McCarthyism is going to go over in what they privately think of as the cheap seats of Confederation.

As Norman Spector – the “steely political insider” who was once chief of staff to prime minister Brian Mulroney and holder of several other illustrious positions, and who is now one of Canada’s Top Tweeters – shrewdly observed last month in the Vancouver Sun: “To prevent Harper from forming another majority government, Mulcair must break the coalition between Ontario and the West that the Conservatives fashioned in May 2011. To become prime minister, Mulcair must create a coalition of his own. …

“He will invite Quebecers to join with ‘progressives’ across Canada to help replace the Conservative government they have come to revile. And he will focus on re-creating the coalition with Ontario that has governed Canada for most of our history, while not giving up on the prospect of winning more seats in B.C. and Manitoba.”

Note which western provinces are not on the old civil-service slasher’s list – the ones that benefit most from the conditions that are causing our national outbreak of Dutch Disease and which are currently led by petrocrats hostile both to increased Canadian control of the oil patch and to policies that would help restore the country’s manufacturing sector to health.

We can expect to hear a lot more of this divisiveness codswollop about Mr. Mulcair over the next couple of years unless Mr. Harper’s advisors manage to come up with something more effective.

But if that’s all the Harperites can think of, they’d best phone their Republican mentors south of the Medicine Line right quickly! Maybe those guys can send out a Tweet demanding to see Mr. Mulcair’s birth certificate or dress up like Paul Revere and light lanterns to warn us Albertans, “One if by land, two if by … uh, land.”

Either that or just hand over the keys to 24 Sussex while they’re still in possession of some tattered remnants of their dignity.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.