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Advice for Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau: Hammer Stephen Harper on the economy

by David Climenhaga on April 15, 2013 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Justin Trudeau, Oil Politics, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair with 3 Comments

The neoliberal Harper economy at work: a Toronto street scene, last week. Below: Thomas Mulcair, Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper and Margaret Thatcher.

Here’s some free advice for a couple of would-be Canadian prime ministers who are both in the news these days, the NDP’s Tom Mulcair and the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau: Hammer Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the economy.

Both of them were with their party faithful yesterday – Mr. Mulcair at the final day of the NDP’s policy convention in Montreal and Mr. Trudeau at his coronation as Liberal leader in the evening in Ottawa. Either of them, it is said here, has the potential to form the next government of Canada if the planets line up the right way.

But that means, to succeed, something is going to have to go wrong for Mr. Harper – because, as we pretty well all know, more often than not opposition parties don’t win elections so much as governments lose them.

And the strongest card in Mr. Harper’s hand right now is the economy – crazy as it may seem to readers of this blog, public opinion polling consistently shows voters trust him on it, and they don’t necessarily trust either opposition party as much on economic matters. Moreover, until recently the economy has been ticking along smoothly enough for government work.

As a result, though, the economy is also Mr. Harper’s greatest weakness.

The Big Three issues that matter to Canadians on just about every pollster’s radar screen nowadays are the economy, health care and the environment.

Combined with our sourpuss prime minister’s unappealing personality, they have the potential to add up to the Four Horsemen of the Tory Apocalypse – but it’s the economy that rides the pale horse!

These issues don’t always come up in the same order from poll to poll, but the economy will tend to bob to the top of the worry list whenever the real economy doesn’t seem to be doing as well as it ought. So it should concern the Mr. Harper’s so-called Conservative Party of Canada that so many Canadian public opinion surveys show concern about the economy trending upward as the economy itself softens.

As for hea

lth care and the environment, Canadians don’t trust the Harper Conservatives on either file – and with good reason, as their agenda on both is well known. Those agendas, it can be said with confidence, are to destroy public health care and ignore the environment, especially where either issue gets in the way of encouraging the pursuit of private profit.

Still, they’ll try – if only half-heartedly – to do better in those areas. Look for more fluff in the months ahead about “Green Conservatism” and more pledges not to mess with health care … at least until the next ginned-up economic crisis.

If the Harper Conservatives’ stewardship of the economy is not particularly sound in reality, they’re stuck with their approach because they view the funds it can raise as essential to their long-term effort to implement the other key planks in their plan for the political and economic deconstruction of Canada.

With only a few words changed, Tariq Ali’s brilliantly pithy assessment of Margaret Thatcher’s program in Britain could as easily be used to describe Mr. Harper’s plans for Canada today: “On the economy the Thatcherite model (astonishingly, still being praised by blind politicians in denial) was effectively the deindustrialization of the country, the purchase of working-class votes by squandering the monies that accrued from North Sea oil and laying the foundations for a financialized economic model that exploded with the Wall Street crash of 2008.”

Replace the worlds “North Sea oil” with “Alberta Oil Sands” and you’ve pretty much got the Harper scheme in a nutshell. No need to drop the term Thatcherite.

That’s why they’re in such a lather to complete those pipelines so quickly.

But as long as the economy is perceived to be burbling along as well as can be expected, the Harper Conservatives can likely cobble together enough votes between their die-hard market-fundamentalist and social conservative s

upporters and wet Tory voters fearful of upsetting the economic applecart.

Voters for whom either the environment or health care is the top-of-mind issue are much more likely to have figured out where the Harper Government really wants to go in these areas and hence are much less likely to vote for Conservatives.

Then there’s the matter of the PM’s personal popularity. As pollster Frank Graves put it in iPolitics Friday, Mr. Harper’s personal approval numbers are not particularly auspicious lately.

“…But he has shown considerable resilience in the face of such challenges in the past,” observed Mr. Graves, who is the founder and president of EKOS Research Associates Inc. “The more important threat to Mr. Harper is the state of public outlook on the economy – and its impact on how confident Canadians are that the country and the government are moving in the right direction. This is the challenge which – unaddressed – is most likely to be fatal to Mr. Harper’s future prospects.” (Italics added by me.)

“Numerous indicators show that concerns about the economy are the dominant concerns of Canadians and that long-term anxieties about our economic future are mounting,” Mr. Graves noted elsewhere in the piece. “The notion that we were the stalwart economic performer in the G8 has been displaced as our growth and growth forecasts have cooled substantially. There is a broad sense that the middle class (Mr. Harper’s prime political constituency) is in deep trouble. While they may be comforted by the thought that at least we aren’t Greece or Spain, the long grind of growing fears of economic stagnation – or worse, erosion – weigh heavily on an incumbent after a certain amount of time.”

I hope Mr. Graves will forgive me for quoting him at such length, but this is a key point. It’s not just that the economy is Mr. Harper’s greatest strength. It is his only strength.

This is why the Harperites “came out swinging” at Mr. Trudeau within moments of his victory last night – they have been swinging at Mr. Mulcair for some time, of course – mocking his famous name and claiming he lacks experience.

Well, good luck to them on that. Unlike Mr. Trudeau, who has been a teacher, their own leader is a political and Astroturf hack who has never held a “real job” in his life.

But both the Liberals and the New Democrats will do better not to rise to that bait but to attack Mr. Harper on the economic front instead.

Indeed, for the reasons noted above, it is axiomatic that his opponents attack him now, strongly, consistently and continually, on his current economic performance and its future economic potential.

Every doubt that can be raised about the ability of the Harper fundamentalists to manage the economy needs to be raised now – especially while the economy is clearly foundering – because the perception Tories are competent economic managers is the foundation that underlies Mr. Harper’s only chance of continued success.

The evidence is in: the Thatcherite market fundamentalism that Mr. Harper espouses is a cruel fraud. It has proved to be a catastrophe wherever it has been implemented. Even as we ponder this, it is hollowing out the economy of Central Canada and leaving future generations of Western Canadians with the bill for the environmental cost of financing his scheme.

Mr. Mulcair, Mr. Trudeau: Hammer him on the economy!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

How far will Prime Minister Stephen Harper go with separatists to hang onto power?

by David Climenhaga on June 26, 2012 in Canadian Constitution, Canadian Politics, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, Wedge Politics with 4 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, left, with Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois … or something very much like that. The politicians pictured above may not be exactly as illustrated in real life. Below: Thomas Mulcair, Jack Layton.

Now that our sullen neo-conservative prime minister is on speaking terms once again with former PM Brian Mulroney – in desperate hopes of staving off an eventual electoral disaster in Quebec at the hands of the federalist NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair – one wonders how long it will be before the Harper Government sits down to sup with separatists.

Sure enough, it was only a few hours after Mr. Harper’s meeting with Mr. Mulroney that Industry Minister Christian Paradis, the PM’s “Quebec lieutenant,” had proclaimed a rapprochement between the Harper Conservatives and the separatist Parti Quebecois. Details, it is reported, will follow.

What a catastrophe from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s perspective that he must eventually face an opponent who is both immensely popular in Quebec and a demonstrably a committed federalist!

Indeed, it can be persuasively argued that Mr. Mulcair is a much better federalist than Mr. Harper. Mr. Mulcair, after all, took a chance on the federal NDP at time when being anything but a sovereignist in Quebec looked like a recipe for electoral suicide. Mr. Harper is well known as a signatory to a sovereignist screed in Alberta that refuses to go peaceably down the Memory Hole, despite the best efforts of the Conservative media establishment here and elsewhere.

So now Mr. Harper, after long rejecting Mr. Mulroney as a political embarrassment over the Airbus Affair, has come hat in hand to his elder for some tips on how to make Quebec behave itself.

And one of the key secrets to Mr. Mulroney’s electoral success, as is well known, was his willingness to welcome Quebec nationalists into the federal Conservative fold.

This is not to suggest that Mr. Mulroney was making common cause with the separatist movement in Quebec for cynical reasons. On the contrary, the Conservative apologist Robert Fulford likely had it right when he stated that Mr. Mulroney “set out to bring permanent internal peace to Canada by dissolving the arguments for separatism.”

This is what drove the genuinely patriotic Mr. Mulroney’s efforts to recognize the reality that Quebec constitutes a “distinct society” within Canada, which culminated in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords that had failed so irrevocably by 1992.

It was English Canada’s deep discomfort with recognizing that reality – with Mr. Mulroney’s vision of Canada as two nations in one country – that provided the wedge for the Reform Party under Preston Manning not only to defeat Mr. Mulroney’s constitutional proposals in a national referendum, but to set up the takeover by the Reform Party of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 2003.

There is no little irony in the reality these were the circumstances that allowed the rise of the American-influenced and ideologically fundamentalist wing of Canada’s conservative movement – eventually led by the steely eyed Mr. Harper after Mr. Manning and Stockwell Day proved insufficiently hard edged – to form the government.

And now the grip on the country by Mr. Harper and his fellow ideologues is weakening, in no small part because their neoconservative nostrums are so unconvincing to the people of Quebec.

But if Mr. Mulroney only welcomed Quebec nationalists to get them to become Canadian nationalists, can we trust Mr. Harper to be motivated by the same thing?

This seems unlikely. Mr. Harper’s (neo) Conservative Party, after all, is the one that has been willing to slap Quebec at every turn and on every issue – whether it’s support for the arts, the long-gun registry or military adventures abroad – the better to drive effective electoral wedges within English Canada.

This was the party that was prepared, for example, to scream that former Liberal leader Stephane Dion and the late NDP leader Jack Layton were “selling out to separatists” when they dared in 2008 to talk of a democratic coalition that would depend on votes from the sovereignist Bloc Quebecois, a story that has now been mostly purged from the Internet.

And this was the party whose MPs shouted down Quebec MP Gilles Duceppe, then the leader of the BQ, by singing O Canada when he tried to speak about the coalition in Parliament – a crude riposte that, quite literally, must have been music to the ears of Quebec’s die-hard separatists.

“This deal that the leader of the Liberal Party has made with the separatists is a betrayal of the voters of this country, a betrayal of the best interests of our economy, a betrayal of the best interests of our country, and we will fight it with every means that we have,” said Mr. Harper at the time. …But that was then.

Do you seriously think that facing a popular national NDP leader from Quebec with impeccable federalist credentials, Mr. Harper won’t take greater risks, drive deeper wedges, make more dangerous promises, make deals with anyone, in his efforts to keep his increasingly unpopular government afloat?

Yesterday’s grainy attack ad on Mr. Mulcair – almost a parody of itself – was one part of Mr. Harper’s strategy. Seeking out strange bedfellows is obviously another.

So will Mr. Harper sup with the separatists? It is said here he is bound to. And don’t count on him using a long spoon!

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.

Alberta Silly Season starts with fallout from Jason Kenney’s A-Bomb blast

by David Climenhaga on June 20, 2012 in Alison Redford, Blaine Calkins, Candice Malcolm, Danielle Smith, Ezra Levant, Graham Thomson, Jason Kenney, Peggy Anderson, Stephen Harper, Thomas Lukaszuk, Thomas Mulcair with 7 Comments
Federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, centre, with Public Safety Minister Victor Toews, left, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, get ready to assure members of their party’s Alberta caucus they’ll be protected from a*****e visitors from their home province. Actual federal Tory ministers may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Mr. Kenney, sort of, Thomas Lukaszuk and MP Blaine Calkins.

Here in Alberta, summer Silly Season arrived a few hours early with the revelation moments past midnight yesterday that federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney had dropped the A-Bomb on Thomas Lukaszuk, the province’s deputy premier.

“The A-Bomb,” of course, is a prissy euphemism for a seven-letter word beginning with A and ending with E that aptly describes the attitude of those federal Conservatives like Mr. Kenney who are working hard to bring the level of political discourse in Canada to historic new lows.

So “A-Bomb” is just the sort of squeamish circumlocution you’d expect from a fastidious old-timer who would try to “censor” Sun News Network commentator Ezra Levant’s foul-mouthed on-air eruptions or take exception to Mr. Kenney’s charmlessly frank assessment of Mr. Lukaszuk.

But there you go. Your blogger will now try to be up-to-date and in tune with the new neo-Conned Canada of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and tell readers exactly what was said by Mr. Kenney, who in addition to fulfilling the dual roles of Canada’s Chief Censor and Commissar of Ideological Purity is at 44 the country’s only known self-proclaimed 40-Year-Old Virgin.

To wit, apparently misunderstanding the purpose of the “reply all” button on his computer’s email application, Mr. Kenney sent to all the world the information that he thinks Mr. Lukaszuk is “a complete and utter asshole.”

According to Edmonton Journal political columnist Graham Thomson, who owns the scoop, Mr. Kenney was explaining in the email to the office of Wetaskawin MP Blaine Calkins, chairperson of the federal Conservatives’ Alberta caucus, why the distinguished federal minister wasn’t about to break bread with Mr. Lukaszuk when he visited Ottawa as part of Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s ongoing charm offensive.

This is a pity, because Mr. Lukaszuk had a short meeting with Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair during the New Democrat’s recent bitumen sands tour, after which he claimed after not to have been impressed with the NDP leader’s observations. Lunch with Mr. Kenney could have given him some Conservative intellectual firepower to compare and contrast with Mr. Mulcair’s. Plus, unlike his visit with Mr. Mulcair, they could have guiltlessly gone Dutch.

But Mr. Kenney’s response, sent to everyone in the Tories’ leaky federal caucus and all of their assistants, read: “I say a definite ‘no’ to Lukaszyk. (sic) I don’t think it makes sense to create a precedent to do a special caucus meeting for every visiting minister from the provincial government. Plus he is a complete and utter asshole.”

Now, I have met and interviewed both Mr. Lukaszuk and Mr. Kenney over the years and I can assure readers that Mr. Lukaszuk is not what Mr. Kenney described him to be. Indeed, the deputy premier’s measured and diplomatic response to the revelation illustrates this.

On a more serious level, though, Mr. Kenney’s unexpectedly public ejaculation and his perfunctory apology late yesterday illustrates just how deep and broad the rift has become between Prime Minister Harper’s Tea Party of Canada and Ms. Redford’s Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

Indeed, Mr. Kenney’s tepid apology came only after a full day of unexpected political fallout from his outburst, and, by the sound of it, a talking-to from the prime minister.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the Harperites despise Ms. Redford and her supporters – all the more so because of their embarrassing failure to push the neo-Con Wildrose Party under former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith into power in the April 23 Alberta election.

Blogger Dave Cournoyer reminds us of Mr. Kenney’s connections to the Wildrose campaign. Mr. Kenney’s former spokesperson, Candice Malcolm, returned to Alberta to work for the Wildrose Party during the campaign. In addition, his Regional Affairs Director is Peggy Anderson, who was allied with Ms. Smith on the dysfunctional Calgary Board of Education from 1998 before then learning minister Lyle Oberg dissolved it in 1999.

Clearly, with Mr. Kenney firmly entrenched on the banks of the Rideau thanks to the inattentive voters of Calgary-Southeast, where he is actively working against Ms. Redford, the ambitious Alberta premier will need her Ottawa lobbying office to “advocate Alberta’s perspective on important federal and provincial matters,” as it was put in her government’s Throne Speech on May 24.

The fact a Conservative provincial government feels the need to create and staff an “ambassadorial” office in the Alberta-Tory-packed national capital brightly illuminates just what a bad job this province’s wall-to-wall Conservative MPs do for the Albertans they are elected to represent.

Alberta’s premier will no doubt breathe a private sigh of relief when Mr. Harper no longer heads the government of Canada, although she may leave the lobbying office in place for a spell to ensure better relations with whatever party replaces Mr. Harper’s potty-mouthed ideological puritans.

Indeed, Ms. Redford may then even give some thought to going to Ottawa herself – though not necessarily as the head of a mere lobbying group. Remember where you heard that first.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

It’s not necessarily the European economy running out of runway, it’s neo-Cons like Stephen Harper

by David Climenhaga on June 11, 2012 in Francoise Hollande, John Maynard Keynes, Paul Krugman, Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, Thomas Walkom with 2 Comments
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warns his countrymen about the fate awaiting Europe if it doesn’t crush unions and eliminate defined-benefit pension plans. Canadian Conservatives may not appear exactly as illustrated, but pretty close. Below: Francoise Hollande, John Maynard Keynes and Thomas Mulcair.

With the anticipated triumph of France’s Socialists obviously weighing heavily on his mind, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has donned the robes of an Old Testament prophet and taken to making apocalyptic predictions about the fate of Europe.

Europe is running out of runway, the Prophet Harper warned us last week, conjuring up the picture of a flaming plane wreck at the edge of the airport. Or maybe the picture is of the crash of a flaming wheel within a wheel!

Whatever… Europe’s in trouble all right, but because it’s been enacting the neo-Con “solutions” Mr. Harper and his fellow market-fundamentalist ideologues propose, not because France is sensibly turning away from them.

Thanks to the success of his Socialists in yesterday’s French elections, recently elected President Francoise Hollande should have the mandate he needs to push through bold stimulus policies instead of the destructive market-fundamentalism favoured by France’s previous president and Canada’s so-called Conservatives.

Toronto Star national affairs columnist Thomas Walkom recently suggested Mr. Harper’s comments mean our sour neo-Con prime minister is preparing us for the punishing regime he intends to impose on Canada in the months ahead. “This time around, his government won’t respond with another stimulus package to boost jobs,” the Star correspondent wrote. “Instead, Ottawa will forge ahead with its current strategy of deregulation and wage reduction, a strategy aimed at reducing costs for business.”

In other words, Mr. Walkom concluded, the PM’s “brief flirtation with Keynesian economics is over and he is reverting to the Harper of old.”

Now, let it be said that this is a perfectly reasonable explanation for Mr. Harper’s behaviour, entirely in character with what we know about the man and his core beliefs – which are quite capable of withstanding both logic and empirical evidence. It doesn’t take a professional “mentalist” to figure that out.

Still, taking into account the principle of Occam’s Razor – that is, that the simplest explanation is usually the right one – it seems more likely that Mr. Harper’s petulant outburst was merely the public expression of his fear that the French Socialists’ plan might actually work.

Where will he and his bench mates from the Conservative Party of Canada (Manningite-Harperist) be then?

How’s he going to keep us down on the farm now that we’ve seen Paree – especially if the Socialists in power in that city manage to restore their economy to health using the Keynesian economic techniques our prime minister and other followers of his primitive 19th Century economic cult despise as heresy?

This is a particularly upsetting state of affairs for Mr. Harper given the increasing popularity of his opponents in the House of Commons – New Democrats led by Thomas Mulcair who advocate roughly the same economic approach as is likely to be adopted by President Hollande.

After all, the historic success rate of the ideas of the British economist John Maynard Keynes is actually pretty good. If they work again in France – grind his teeth and tear his garments though the Canadian prime minister may – Canadians might just conclude the solution to their problems is political, not economic.

As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman observed recently about the economic problems in Europe and North America: “None of this has to be happening. We didn’t have a plague of locusts, we were not hit by a tsunami, there wasn’t some act of God that created this terrible situation. It was acts of man.”

Men like Stephen Harper, as a matter of fact.

Under these particular circumstances, if more Canadians start to see Mr. Mulcair as the obvious solution to their political problem with Mr. Harper, even the Opposition leader’s famous French passport won’t help the Conservatives!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Harper Conservative response to NDP seems delusional – and apparently ineffective

by David Climenhaga on June 9, 2012 in Conservative Party of Canada, Dutch Disease, Jim Flaharty, Nanos Research, NDP, Nik Nanos, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair with 4 Comments
The Conservative Party’s Parliamentary brain trust figures out how to respond to Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair during Question Period. Below: Nik Nanos.

No one should be particularly shocked that yelps of protest by western premiers and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in Ottawa have failed to dent support for the Opposition New Democrats after they dared speak the evident truth about the economic impact of Canada’s muscular petro-Loonie.

Indeed, according a reasonable analysis of the Nanos Research poll published yesterday by the Globe and Mail, screeches by various conservatives may have even helped Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair and the NDP Opposition.

In an interview with iPolitics, pollster Nik Nanos suggested Mr. Mulcair’s original reference to the effects of “Dutch Disease” on the Canadian economy was no gaffe – as repeatedly claimed by mainstream media commentators playing the role of the PM’s Greek chorus – but “should be seen as part of a longer-term plan that has broken the NDP’s strategic mold.”

Mr. Nanos argued in the interview that while the NDP once tried consistently to appeal to a broad range of Canadians, now Mr. Mulcair “seems ready to ‘take a page from Harper’ and focus on segments that he has a chance to bring on side.” In other words, practice wedge politics.

Well, it could be. New Democrats certainly chose Mr. Mulcair as someone who would play politics like a grownup. But it may also be simply that the Harper Conservative strategy on this issue to date has been so laughably crude most Canadians see right through it.

Given the astonishing lack of sophistication of the recent Conservative attacks in the House of Commons, Canadians may, in fact, find Mr. Mulcair’s plain talk refreshing!

Meanwhile, voters outside the two main petro-provinces may actually see the hysterical response by these Prairie conservatives as evidence of their self-interest, and indeed as affirmation of Mr. Mulcair’s arguments.

Really, it takes a lot of brass for the Harper Cons to claim their main opponent is dividing the country by stating an observation that makes eminent sense to Canadians in every part of Canada except those corners of the Prairies awash in petro-cash. This is especially so when the Conservatives are running the most openly divisive government in Canadian history.

As has been said before in this space, the severity of the problem can be disputed, as can the best solution, but acknowledgement of the impact of oilsands development on the dollar, or the strength of the dollar on the country’s manufacturing sector, is apparent to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics or a hankering to travel to the United States.

Moreover, instead of just sticking to this factually wrong but faintly plausible storyline, the Harper Government’s claims have grown more delirious by the day.

Mr. Mulcair calls oil patch workers themselves a disease, some Tory claims without a shred of evidence. Mr. Mulcair has a specific date in mind to close down Alberta’s bitumen sands, another one chimes in, failing to provide a hint of substantiation.

Where do they get this stuff? Does anyone believe them? (Other than the plethora of conservative commentators in the mainstream media, that is.)

Never mind Dutch Disease, the Tories apparently make stuff up out of whole cloth on any topic.

When Mr. Mulcair asked a Question in the House Thursday about the prime minister’s unexpected ramblings about the shortness of the European runway if neo-Con economic bromides are not adopted with alacrity, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty responded by pretending the Opposition leader wants to give money to the Europeans.

Since there’s no evidence whatsoever Mr. Mulcair ever said any such thing, presumably the finance minister just made it up.

We ought not to be too smug about this. Eventually, the deep-pocketed Harperites will turn responsibility for sliming Mr. Mulcair and the NDP over to their highly competent propaganda professionals, and the results will be neither pretty nor ineffective.

The form the NDP response takes will tell the story of how successful the Tory onslaught proves to be.

But for the moment, watching the supposedly cunning and devious Harper Conservatives unravel into pathological delusions and pathetically transparent fantasies is a highly salutary experience.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Harper Phenomenon is explained to Perfesser Dave

by David Climenhaga on June 6, 2012 in Jack Layton, Perfesser Dave, Pierre Trudeau, Questioner, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, W.L. Mackenzie King with 3 Comments
Perfesser Dave, left, with W. L. “Willy” Mackenzie King, centre, and Pat, right. Some Canadian prime ministers are exactly as illustrated. Below: Several shots of Willy and Pat.

Some stories are just too complicated for ordinary bloggers to explain. That’s when we turn to the expert knowledge offered by Perfesser Dave, the Answer Guy. Perfesser Dave knows practically everything there is to know about politics in Canada. And when he doesn’t know, he knows where to look to find out! So if you have questions, don’t just ask some blogger! Ask Perfesser Dave!

Questioner: Perfesser Dave, I’m just totally confused! Nobody I know likes Prime Minister Harper, and yet he’s been the prime minister of Canada now for, like, forever. Why would anyone vote for that guy? He’s just creepy! Can you do anything to illuminate my fuzzification?

Perfesser Dave: I really can’t help you, Questioner. But I can tell you this: you’re not alone. All the experts are completely mystified by this. We call it “The Harper Phenomenon.” We have an expression in science: “It defies explanation.” Mr. Harper’s success defies explanation.

Questioner: But what can we do to find out, then? Don’t you think we need to know? Don’t you think Canadians need to know? C’mon, Perfesser Dave! Help us out with this.

Perfesser Dave: I understand completely, Questioner. At times like these we use finely calibrated scientific instruments to help us analyze the past and the present in order to determine what the future may hold. Just hold on a moment, please… [Rustling noises] … All right, we will use this precisely calibrated prognostication device to …

Questioner: Perfesser Dave! That’s not a precisely calibrated prognostication device! That’s a Ouija Board! That’s…

Perfesser Dave: I’m sorry questioner, you’ve asked me to try to answer questions no one really has the answer for, and I’m attempting to do my best, now just sit down over there while I apply the scientific method and put your hands on this heart-shaped indicator…

Questioner: Perfesser Dave…

Perfesser Dave: Questioner! Do as I say! This is a science lab not …

Questioner: More like a séance lab…

Perfesser Dave: What was that?

Questioner: Oh, never mind… Oh, alright… Where do I put my hands?

Perfesser Dave: Right here…

[Long silence. Followed by thumping noises]

Questioner: What’s it saying?

Perfesser Dave: Just a minute… [In a strange reedy voice] “Pat! Pat! Come here Pat! Where are you Pat! [A piercing whistle!]

Questioner: Owww! What the heck was that?

Strange Voice: It’s me. I’m looking for my dog. Have you seen a little dog? He answers to the name of Pat? Have you seen my little friend Pat? Come here, Pat!

Questioner: Who the heck are you? Why don’t you sound like Perfesser Dave?

Strange Voice: Why, I’m W.L. MacKenzie King. The Prime Minister of Canada, of course. And I’m looking for my dog. He answers to the name of Pat. Have you seen Pat? Pat!

Questioner: I haven’t seen any dogs, Mr. King. I was trying to get Perfesser Dave to explain why the prime minister keeps getting elected when he’s not a very popular fellow at all. And now your voice is coming out of Perfesser Dave! What’s going on?

Strange Voice: I’m here to illuminate your fuzzification, Questioner, just as you asked. Isn’t that what you wanted? You may call me Willy, by the way. Have you seen my dog?

Questioner: I told you, Willy, I haven’t seen your dog. But how can you be the Prime Minister? The Prime Minister is Stephen Harper!

Willy: Stephen? My dog’s name is Pat!

Questioner: Pat? The prime minister’s name is Stephen. Who are you again?

Willy: I’m the prime minister. Mackenzie King. Willy. And you don’t have to be liked very much at all to be the prime minister. If anyone would know that, it’s me! That’s the thing, though, Questioner, you just have to be liked more than the other fellow, the leader of the Opposition. Plus, of course, you have to have good timing. And it’s a good idea to make sure you have your own man as Governor General. That was a problem for me, I’ll tell you, Sir!

Questioner: What was that problem?

Willy: Oh, the Governor General. But never mind that just now. What were you asking about this Stephen fellow?

Questioner: Stephen Harper.

Willy: Oh, I’ve heard about your Mr. Harper…

Questioner: But how?

Willy: We’ll come to that in a moment. Just explain your concern, please…

Questioner: Are you sure you aren’t Perfesser Dave? I’m confused.

Willy: Questioner!

Questioner: All right, Willy, it’s like this: People liked Jack Layton way better than they like Mr. Harper but they still elected Mr. Harper’s party. How do you explain that? Oh, wait, do you know who Mr. Layton was?

Willy: Oh yes, I know Mr. Layton, Questioner, and, for one thing, Mr. Layton wasn’t the leader of the Opposition when he ran against your Mr. Harper. And as Jack was just telling me the other … day – over at Mr. Trudeau’s place, as a matter of fact – if the campaign had run another week or two, he would have been the prime minister…

Questioner: You were…? What? I’m totally confused!

Willy: Don’t be, Questioner. It’s really pretty simple, really. Canadians are sensible people. And they’ll elect a leader they think is sensible too if they don’t think the alternatives are as sensible. And they’ll even elect a leader they think isn’t sensible if they think the alternatives are even less sensible, which is what Jack was saying happened last time, at least until he started getting through to the people of Can…

Questioner: Sounds like you’re making a speech, Mr. King…

Willy: Well, let me make it simple then… Canadians think, “Stephen Harper if necessary, but not necessarily Stephen Harper…”

Questioner: What are you saying?

Willy: Well, I was going to say something about your Mr. Mulcair. Mr. Thomas Mulcair, whom I haven’t met, but whom I’ve heard about … Oh, there you are, Pat! Where have you been you naughty little fellow! Come here at once. Well! We really must be getting back to Mother!

Questioner: Mr. King! Wait! Willy! Please wait! You have to explain…

Pat: Arf! Arf!

Willy: Come along Pat!

Questioner: Mr. King! Come back…

Perfesser Dave: Unghhh! Wha? Wha? Where am I?

[Sound of Ouija board falling to the floor]

Questioner: Awwwwww! Perfesser Dave!

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.

Casseroles Night in Canada: Working its way into our consciousness with no media help

by admin on May 30, 2012 in Casseroles Protest, Jean Charest, Michael Holden, Murray Dobbin, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, War Measures Act with 8 Comments

A scene from the casseroles video by Montreal videographer Jeremie Battaglia that has gone viral worldwide, telling the story of Quebec’s dignified and powerful protest as the Western Canadian media refuses to do. It is still largely unmentioned and unseen here in the West.

If tonight is “Casseroles Night in Canada,” will any Albertans show their support for affordable education for all – and opposition to the all-too-typical neo-Con restrictions of our fundamental freedoms – by clanking their pots and pans in sympathy with our fellow citizens in the streets of Quebec?

Maybe a few will, for, notwithstanding the best efforts of our Western Canadian media to make it appear otherwise, it is increasingly apparent even here in darkest Alberta that a democratic social movement of startling potency and potential has arisen in Quebec.

After more than three months, the burgeoning social protest by a broad swath of Quebec society has typically been reported here, when it is reported at all, as if it were an effort to skip classes and make trouble by a minority of lazy students, who are greedy, self-interested and violent to boot.

The meaning of nightly eight o’clock demonstrations by dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands and eventually hundreds of thousands of Quebeckers who are outraged at the neo-Conservative policies of the government of Premier Jean Charest – and, it is safe to say, at the same polices at the federal level by the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper – failed to arouse much interest among our media.

Even the totalitarian suppression of Quebeckers’ fundamental rights of assembly, association and free expression, so reminiscent of the imposition of the War Measures Act in 1970, was met with silence or outright support by the Alberta media and those right-wing political parties and their offshoots so influential in this province that tirelessly portray themselves as defenders of our rights.

Where the nightly demonstrations by masses of ordinary Quebeckers were discussed at all, they were typically portrayed in the context of Alberta’s continual whining about its financial contribution to Confederation, as in the ignorant and offensive screed by a Calgary Herald columnist who argued, in effect, that the neo-Con ideologues who run this wealthy province ought to have a veto over Quebec’s social policies

Well, that would make our continual efforts to cry poverty in the midst of plenty less embarrassing, one supposes, but that’s about it.

The reality is it’s all baloney, as even a senior economist for the Canada West Foundation, hardly a liberal think tank, was moved to point out recently. The money for the federal transfer payments the Calgary Herald complains about so vociferously doesn’t come from Alberta revenues, Michael Holden explained more patiently than I would have, it comes from federal taxes collected all across this great big land. They’re even collected in Quebec, a fact that may have escaped the Herald editorial staff’s attention, preoccupied as they must be with their own fading prospects.

“Equalization does not affect the Alberta government’s bottom line,” Mr. Holden explained more gently than the Herald really deserved.

So if we Albertans want to stop feeling so ripped off, the solution is pretty simple – start collecting a reasonable level of taxes and royalties (or even just make the effort to actually collect the ones that are on the books) and build some decent social services of our own.

No matter what the Herald may tell you, it’s not as if Quebeckers are taking something from Albertans. Au contraire! It’s pretty obvious that most of the people in the streets of Montreal and throughout Quebec for the past 107 nights are not just fighting for themselves and their children, they are fighting for all of us, whether or not we have enough sense to recognize it.

The credit for our sense of dismay at our own shabby government and health services amidst all the wealth of this province resides squarely with the Conservative governments at both senior levels of government, the very people we keep trooping back to the polls to re-elect with metronomic regularity.

As Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair said of these Conservatives in the House of Commons yesterday: “Under their policies we are becoming the first generation that will leave less to our children than what we inherited from our parents. … We are one of the richest countries in the world and yet we are one of the countries with the greatest disparity between the richest and the poor.”

The legacy of these Conservatives, said Mr. Mulcair, who is scheduled to visit Fort McMurray and the Suncor plant in the Alberta bitumen sands tomorrow, is “unprecedented attacks on the middle class.”

If Mr. Harper used one of his F-35s to drop an atomic bomb on Alberta, how many of the survivors would crawl out of the rubble to vote Conservative?

Well, a few might not. Tonight some people will gather in Edmonton to bang their pots and pans in solidarity with Quebec. There are signs this respectful but forceful form of protest – which requires no one to venture too far out of their own neighbourhood comfort zone – is creeping across the border into Ontario too.

Who knows, perhaps it will keep growing in places other than Quebec as citizens face down the neo-Cons. Perhaps even Mr. Charest’s conversion to the idea he must seek a deal with the students will not put the genie of this social movement back in the bottle, as the Harper Conservatives must devoutly hope.

As progressive commentator Murray Dobbin wrote recently, “We owe the Quebec students (and their hundreds of thousands of supporters in civil society groups) a huge debt of gratitude for shaking us out of our ideology-induced political torpor.”

Slowly, one clank at a time, the sound of those hundreds of thousands of pots and pans and casseroles in Quebec may be working its liberating way into our stubborn English Canadian consciousness!

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.

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