All posts tagged Paul Martin

Everythinggate: Perfect storm lands Alberta premier in shark-infested waters!

by David Climenhaga on December 4, 2012 in Alberta Health Services, Alberta Politics, Alison Redford with 2 Comments

As a perfect storm blows, Alison Redford’s strategic brain trust parries Opposition attacks about the conduct of her government. The premier is in the centre of the boat, wearing a cowboy hat. Actual Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Your blogger with Paul Martin; queue-jumping inquiry chief John Vertes.

As the political gong show continued yesterday in Edmonton, it was becoming increasingly apparent Premier Alison Redford is the Paul Martin of Alberta.

Don’t scoff at this suggestion! Alert readers will recall that Mr. Martin was the last Liberal Prime Minister of Canada, the fellow whose idea of dealing with a scandal was setting up that Royal Commission led by Justice John Gomery to “get to the bottom” of things.

Well, we all know how that ended!

With Premier Redford trying vainly to put out several serious fires at the same time, it seems very much as if her political crisis-management skills, and those of her closest advisors, may be even worse than those of the unlamented Mr. Martin and his accident-prone strategy team.

Still, Premier Redford can’t be blamed completely for the timing as everything comes unraveled at once, a phenomenon known to mainstream journalists as “a perfect storm.”

Where to start? Well, the Speaker of the Alberta Legislature ruled yesterday that the Premier did not mislead the House when she told MLAs last week she had nothing to do with the appointment of her ex-husband’s law firm as part in the government’s multi-billion lawsuit against Big Tobacco, a case expected to take years and rake in millions in legal fees.

Ms. Redford told the House she’d stepped down from her job as justice minister to run for her current position when the decision was made. Memoranda produced by CBC journalists and Opposition MLAs suggested otherwise. So Wildrose House Leader Rob Anderson rose on a point of privilege in the House and accused Ms. Redford of breaking the rules by not being entirely forthright.

Speaker Gene Zwozdesky ruled yesterday in the premier’s favour – a development the Progressive Conservative government will try to pass off as a victory. But his careful explanation won’t exactly sink the Opposition’s case. “Legislatures must accept that there can be two different perspectives on the same set of facts,” the Edmonton Journal summarized. “But that does not constitute a breach of the rules or of privilege.”

And so, said Mr. Zwozdesky, “this matter is now concluded.” It is, of course, nothing of the sort.

Meanwhile, today also marked the beginning of Alberta’s long-awaited non-judicial inquiry into stuff other than physician intimidation in the province’s health care system.

When doctors and Opposition politicians started demanding a judicial inquiry back in 2010 into claims medical professionals were being bullied by influential figures tied to the government, they got instead a non-judicial investigation restricted to medical queue-jumping conducted by the Health Quality Council of Alberta, which answers to the government. John Vertes, a former judge, was asked to lead the effort.

This must’ve seemed like a pretty clever dodge to the government at the time they set it up – putting the inquiry off while things were hot with something that could be passed off as a judicial inquiry without as much risk as having a real un-retired judge looking into whatever he or she pleased.

Who would have thought the inquiry would start at the same moment as everything else was hitting the fan? It’s like … Everythinggate!

Among the witnesses scheduled to appear soon before former Justice Vertes’ $10-million investigation:

  • Former Alberta Health Services supremo Stephen Duckett, the fellow who discontinued the practice of allowing “discreet go-to guys” in the province’s health regions to help MLAs who wanted friends and constituents moved up health care waiting lists. Dr. Duckett, of course, was fired in November 2010 by Ms. Redford’s predecessor, Ed Stelmach, after an unscripted encounter with several reporters and a cookie. It’s probably safe to expect the PhD economist, who will testify from his home in Australia via video link, feels he owes nothing to the PC government.
  • Alberta Health Services VP Lynn Redford, the premier’s sister, fingered by the CBC as someone who made donations of food, supplies and booze to functions run by her sister’s political party, then successfully expensed them to her employer of the day, the Calgary Health Region. The question is likely to be asked if she was one of the go-to guys.
  • Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman, who before his reincarnation as an Opposition politician was also fired by Mr. Stelmach from his role as PC Parliamentary Secretary for Health. Dr. Sherman’s sin involved making accusations his fellow doctors were being pushed around by health bureaucrats. He too is unlikely to do the government any favours, except perhaps inadvertently.

Well, as they say in professional hockey – even when they’re not lining up for advance vaccinations during an influenza panic – timing is everything.

Given the timing of this inquiry, you can count on it that pandemonium will ensue.

Then, as if that all this were not enough, Alberta Health Services started posting all its senior executives’ expense accounts online yesterday too.

There’s probably not much there to get too excited about, else they wouldn’t be doing it. Leastways, there won’t be any more expensive bottles of wine like those successfully expensed by former AHS Chief Financial Officer Alauddin Merali back when he was CFO of Capital Health Services.

Still, one can’t shake the feeling additional mischief is sure to result once every busybody in Alberta with a blog or a Twitter account starts combing through the lists looking for something to screech about.

And those just the things that happened yesterday!

Never mind the still lingering questions about that $430,000 11th-hour election donation to Ms. Redford’s PCs from Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz and all his friends and relations. That one, which was dominating the Alberta news cycle just before Halloween, is being looked into by Elections Alberta, which surely will have to report eventually too.

Oh well. Presumably the government’s strategy is for everything to have been forgotten by the time the next provincial election rolls around, unavoidably scheduled thanks to Ms. Redford’s fixed-election-period law in the spring of 2016.

The Opposition’s strategy is to allow nothing of the sort to happen, but to use the generous publicity opportunities provided by these developments and others to paint the PCs as rotten to the core every day until voting day.

Given Ms. Redford’s crisis management skills to date, one hesitates to bet against the opposition!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Problems with their papers? No word yet on Conservative candidates for Calgary Centre

by David Climenhaga on August 5, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Canadian Politics, Conservative Party of Canada with 1 Comment

Members of the Calgary Centre Conservative Constituency Association puzzle over nomination papers presented by would-be candidates. Alberta political insiders may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: CPC Candidates Joan Crockatt, Joe Soares, Jon Lord and Richard Billington.

Wherever are the Conservative Party of Canada’s Calgary Centre candidates?

Or, more to the point, whoever are they?

Nominations closed Thursday afternoon. According to a report published that day by the Calgary Herald, party officials indicated they expected their internal vetting process could take until this week to figure out who could officially join the race to replace former MP Lee Richardson, who quit in May to become principal Secretary to Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

Still, that long time frame was mainly fudge factor in case of complications, and party insiders had expected to know by now, after which the word would have leaked instantly to various sources in the blogosphere.

All we’re hearing, though, candidates and bloggers alike, is echoing silence.

The delay suggests some of the nomination papers filed are proving problematic.

Conventional wisdom at this point seems to be that there will be six candidates, listed here in alphabetical order:

Of those, it is said here, Mr. Billington, a lawyer and past riding insider, Ms. Crockatt, a former journalist and well-known conservative on-air personality, and Mr. Lord, a businessman and former municipal and provincial politician, all residents of Calgary, are serious contenders. All three continued selling party memberships on riding doorsteps while it mattered. (It doesn’t so much any more, because anyone who joined after last Friday won’t be able to vote.)

The others don’t sound all that serious to me, although Mr. Soares, who is said to live somewhere in Gatineau, Que., has entertainingly tried to define himself as the most Albertan candidate of all, at least in spirit, as well as the Conservative who hates Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair with the passion of a true right-wing Quebecker.

Mr. Soares (or someone) has obviously identified Ms. Crockatt as a frontrunner, devoting a page of his colourful website to attacking her for a mild criticism of Prime Minister Stephen Harper made seven years ago in a story about MP Belinda Stronach, who had not long before defected from the Conservatives to the Liberal government of prime minister Paul Martin. Oh well, just goes to show that in the digital age, information can be created, but it can never be destroyed…

Mr. Soares is repeatedly identified in the media as a former Quebec advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office, which must be true since nobody’s denied it. No one from his campaign, however, has responded to my queries about his role, whether he was paid for it, how long he advised the PM, what the nature of his advice was, and why he stopped providing it.

Mr. Spargo is best known for flying an Alberta flag over his Calgary house, and Mr. McLean, who is some species of investment advisor in Cowtown, was back in the day president of the federal Conservative youth wing.

Meanwhile, while everyone who is not a Conservative agrees it would be best if New Democrats, Liberals and Greens all supported a single candidate, that pretty clearly remains a political impossibility.

The Liberals are still holding with two approved candidates – conservationist Harvey Locke and teacher Rahim Sajan. Two others were considering running but decided not to, Liberal riding president Arthur McComish informed me last week. It was incorrectly reported here that they had not been given the green light by the party – whoops … sorry! The Liberal nomination vote is scheduled for Sept. 15.

The Greens too have a candidate, with Calgary author Chris Turner and communications consultant William Hamilton named as possibilities.

The only hope for any of the opposition parties would be to find a high-profile candidate that could appeal to supporters of the other two. It was speculated here that for the New Democrats that candidate might turn out to be former Alberta Liberal leader David Swann.

Alas, Dr. Swann, still sitting as an Alberta Liberal MLA for Calgary-Mountain View in the Alberta Legislature, appears to have scotched that suggestion, despite having turned up at a Calgary nursing picket line with a case of Orange Crush for the strikers.

This likely means that whoever wins the Conservative nomination some time during the last week of August is a shoo-in for the seat in the House of Commons, no matter how terrible a candidate that winner proves to be. Ah well, this is Alberta, after all.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Politics ain’t beanbag: Stephen Harper is attacking the most vulnerable Canadians

by David Climenhaga on July 10, 2012 in Canadian Politics, Media with 2 Comments

Politics ain’t beanbag, people, and it’s not NERF ball either.

But Liberal leaders Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion both played it that way, so it was easy for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Reform Party bullyboys to walk all over them. As for Paul Martin, that guy’s own Liberal team worked him over in the corners before he even got to face off with the Conservatives.

Who knows what Jack Layton would have done, or how he would have played it? But when New Democrats chose Tom Mulcair as Canada’s Opposition Leader after Mr. Layton’s death, they chose someone who could judiciously hit back in the corners.

Elbow shots and rabbit punches like Mr. Harper’s recent “Risky Theories” attack ad will get a good solid body check in return, like today’s effective riposte from the NDP.

It’s said here this is exactly what’s needed. Watch for the Tiny Tory Rage Machine to be in full throat by tonight about the injustice of it all. Well, cry me a river. What’s good for the goose and all that.

Who’s your daddy?

Deconstructing the Liberals and other post-election puzzles

by David Climenhaga on May 4, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Whigs and Block-istes: Done like Liberals. Below: Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton. The future belongs to the NDP.

Other than their wounded pride — and, as we all should know by now, pride goeth before destruction — it’s hard to see why so many Canadian Liberals are complaining so vociferously about the Conservative majority that resulted from the May 2 federal election.

After all, notwithstanding the L-Shaped Party’s longstanding habit of campaigning as if it were the NDP, it has long governed as if it were the Tories, and more recently as if it were the so-called Conservatives of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative-Reform-Alliance Party coalition.

So, aside from some charmingly progressive rhetoric at election time and a looser interpretation of the need for its MPs to stick to the party’s official talking points, it’s fair to ask what Liberal supporters are missing under Stephen Harper that wouldn’t have been provided by Paul Martin.

Cuts to social programs? Concentration of wealth? Six of one; half a dozen of the other! Or, more to the point, 167 of one (Harper in 2011); 168 of the other (Martin in 2004).

Yes, ordinary Canadians have cause to be gravely worried about what Prime Minister Harper will likely get up to now that he has a comfortable majority, notwithstanding his gentle-sounding day-after rhetoric. But, really people, is it all that different than what we could have expected from Michael Ignatieff with a similar Liberal majority?

Look, we’re all in agreement here: Dr. Ignatieff seems like a much nicer fellow than Mr. Harper, even if he did suffer from the common Harvard Ph.D.’s delusion that the rest of us were hanging on his every word just because his students used to take notes.

And we can agree that some of his election platform policies sounded pretty progressive – but then, so did Mr. Martin’s promise of a national child care program. And where did that one go? Other than the place all progressive sounding Liberal promises seem to go, that is – Zap! You’re frozen!

But when you get right down to where the rubber hits the road, there is no substantive difference between the policies the Conservatives now offer and those the late lamented Liberals would have been likely to deliver in the same circumstances.

Indeed, it may be the similarities, rather than the differences, that explain the prime minister’s irrational hatred for Dr. Ignatieff and Liberals, and his seemingly warmer feelings for Jack Layton and the NDP.

It is said here that a big part of the explanation for the Orange Wave that saw Canadians choose the New Democratic Party as the Official Opposition is that they wanted an opposition that actually opposes what the Harper government is likely to do. The only puzzling thing about this “shocking” development is that we Canadians took so long to get to it.

As re-elected Conservative Edmonton-Centre MP Laurie Hawn, getting it mostly right for once, put it in the wake of Monday’s election: “Canadians now have a clear choice, something that is right of centre and something clearly the left of centre.”

He exaggerates, of course, how far to the left the NDP under Mr. Layton really is, but we can almost forgive him that hyperbole under the circumstances. Because it is true, arguably for the first time since Confederation, that the Parliament of Canada now has an Opposition party that is in fact to the left of the governing party.

As frustrating as the next four years may be for progressive Canadians, who constitute the majority of citizens, in the long term that can only be a good thing.

The professional media and the political commentariat, steeped in generations of Liberal dominance, can barely come to terms with the notion that in Canada, just like the rest of the post-industrial West, the era of right-wing Liberal parties is almost as far gone as the age of Whiggery.

Come to think of it, the Whigs may have had a good idea or two – Down with the King! – but as a political movement they’re deader than the proverbial mackerel, just as the Liberals are today nothing more than a dead mackerel swimming.

Yet, steeped in the habits and delusions of the past, all the Canadian media can focus on is who the Liberals will choose to replace the hapless Dr. Ignatieff and how the party will reinvent itself.

Well, here’s a bulletin: the Liberals are not going to reinvent themselves, even with someone named Trudeau in the vanguard. They are done like dinner, thanks to Dr. Ignatieff’s incomprehensible campaign and the forces of history. They’ll no more recover from this blow than did the Progressive Conservatives, who notwithstanding the current governing party’s name were finished off by the combined efforts of Brian Mulroney, Preston Manning and Stephen Harper.

Ludicrously, professional pundits keep talking about how the NDP stole the progressive vote from the Liberals, as if the Liberals deserved it, allowing the Conservatives to triumph. In fact, it was the Liberals in their traditional campaign camouflage of mock progressives that did the vote splitting.

More sensibly, some Liberals – like former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae – are talking about the need to merge with the NDP. But no one should imagine that such a merger could be on anyone’s terms but the NDP’s.

Indeed, the effects of vote splitting in 2011 notwithstanding, it is hardly necessary, since the Liberals are likely to wither away all on their own without help. Certainly, there will be no need for a hostile reverse takeover by the NDP like that the Reform Party used to permanently hijack the Progressive Conservatives.

So don’t cry for me, Argentina – even if we Canadian have to live like Argentines for a while… The future belongs to the NDP!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

On that plummeting poll: thank god Harper’s so disagreeable!

by David Climenhaga on August 6, 2010 in Uncategorized with No comments
The human touch: Prime Minister Stephen Harper addresses the media after a Conservative caucus meeting in Ottawa yesterday. Canadian politicians may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Ralph Klein.

Canadian voters of all progressive stripes should thank the gods of politics that our prime minister is such an uncongenial, unbending and self-righteous person. Just imagine the damage a dogmatic neo-liberal radical like Stephen Harper could do if he didn’t frighten voters so badly, or if he had the capability of treating his nominal friends in the mainstream media with anything but arrogance and contempt.

Instead, this man is simply disagreeable. He utterly lacks a common touch. Most attempts to humanize him, short of covering old Beatles tunes, instantly fall flat.

One could not help thinking of this yesterday when the prime minister, reminiscent of Wiarton Willie on Groundhog Day, popped out of his slit trench just long enough to address his loyal caucus with the usual anodyne platitudes and then insultingly dismiss the gathered media. That done, he ducked back underground without addressing any of the pressing questions of the day.

Compulsory census questions? Leave that issue to Tony Clement and Stockwell Day. Maybe old Stock can come up with an imaginary unreported statistic or two to make the government’s case!

With performances like this, it’s no wonder the latest EKOS public opinion poll shows the prime minister and his misnamed Conservative Party plunging for the prairie like a CF-18 over Lethbridge. OK, that was hyperbolic. The poll indicates that the Conservatives’ nationwide popularity dropped 3.5 per cent in a week. But sticking with flight analogies for a moment, if an Air Canada Airbus fell that far that fast, there’d be ambulances waiting on the tarmac!

Yeah, Mr. Harper got to be prime minister. But a sensible analysis of how this came about suggests it had more to do with former prime minister Paul Martin’s mismanagement than the charmless Mr. Harper’s particular political skill set.

Knowing how to deal with the media, and understanding that doing so is part of a politician’s basic job description, is not a partisan quality, of course. Rare politicians of all parties have the magic touch, just as many more from all over the ideological spectrum do not.

Think of Mr. Martin’s predecessor, Jean Chrétien, who was not exactly a failure as prime minister no matter what you may think of his policies. On a personal note, I will always remember fondly how Mr. Chrétien gently shooed away the big-shot reporters from Toronto so that he could do an interview “with my friend, Dave,” the unknown reporter from a second-rate provincial newspaper. “I can talk to you guys any time,” he explained to them. “I only get to speak with Dave today.”

Yeah, it was all baloney, but it still makes me feel like I was 10-feet tall! I can’t imagine Mr. Harper saying anything to the likes of me but “Get the hell out of my sight.”

But the incumbent prime minister need not look outside his own party for examples of how to do the essential job of managing the media. Consider Ralph Klein, premier of Alberta for 14 years to the day.

Mr. Klein had many faults. Some of his policy ideas were catastrophic – Albertans are still paying for his irresponsible decisions on the health care file, including destroying desperately needed medical facilities. Others were plain weird – who can forget the $400 “prosperity bonus” cheque we Albertans all received in September 2005?

But Mr. Klein rarely met a voter he didn’t like – when he was sober, anyway. And above all, he knew how to deal with the media. Rain or shine, when the Alberta Legislature was sitting, Mr. Klein met the members of the press gallery in the Legislative rotunda every afternoon at 3 o’clock and answered whatever questions they threw at him.

Mr. Klein didn’t always like it, but he always did it, usually with a smile on his face. Like Mr. Chrétien – and unlike Mr. Harper – Mr. Klein enjoyed successive majority governments.

What’s more, as the polls of the day illustrated, Alberta’s voters never tired of him. It was bored members of his own Conservative party who grew weary of Mr. Klein and effectively turfed him in March 2006 – a decision they no doubt have come to rue.

If yesterday’s EKOS poll is accurate – and with a decline that steep and swift you’ve got to wonder a little – Prime Minister Harper won’t be long for his job, short of a perpetual Parliamentary prorogation, anyway.

And if our scowling prime minister leaves office any time soon, we can all heave a sigh of relief – including, one suspects, many members of his own Parliamentary caucus. After all, as the late prime minister John Diefenbaker tried to persuade Canadians, now and then Progressive may even fit with Conservative!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.