Foreign to them

The Hill Times has the latest Maxime Bernier shuffle speculation (featuring anonymous Tory sources! Hmmm....). Favourite quote:

"The talk is that Maxime is going to end up at something fun and more at his level, like Revenue," one Conservative insider told The Hill Times last week.

Snap! You'll remember that Bernier was assigned to the portfolio less than a year ago, after a series of high-profile bumbles by Misters MacKay and O'Connor. I'm not sure this is neccesarily a portfolio I'd want to get if a shuffle does happen this summer.

If you were doing a report card on the performance of the Harper government in different areas, you have to think that Foreign Affairs would get their lowest mark. It's been one mistake after another in that file.

Which kind of makes you wonder why the Liberals didn't think Afghanistan would be a winning issue when they had a chance to make it the issue earlier this spring.

How to Lose an Issue in 10 Days

Afghanistan is off the table as an election issue, as the Liberals and Tories agree on a compromise.

This is probably a good example of how a minority government can work but it's probably a better example of how to skillfully make a hot button issue disappear. As for who the skillful one was in all of this, I tend to lean Harper's way, but I guess it all depends on who you thought would benefit from an election focused on Afghanistan.

The Manley Report

First of all, kudos to Stephen Harper for his wickedly brilliant selection of John Manley to chair this panel. I know, I know, the tendency is always to assume everything Harper does is some sort of evil strategic ganius coup de force but his time it really is, for reasons that a lot of other smart people have already mentioned.

As for the report...things like this take time to digest. John Manley's a pretty smart guy and my military knowledge is limited to Steven Spielberg movies so I'll try to focus on the political ramifications. And from a political perspective, the key recommendation is to extend the mission indefinitely if other countries pick up some of the slack. Presumably, this will be a big issue when NATO meets in Bucharest this April so one would think the vote won't come until after then...

...or not. If Harper's itching for an election, this might very well be the issue he uses to force it and, with the economy expected to stumble, it might make sense to get things rolling before the next budget. While I could see the Liberals abstaining on the budget, in the words of Stephen Colbert "we're at war, pick a side" - abstaining on this one just isn't an option. Siding with the government would mean the end of one of Dion's best wedge issues so this would be a very hard motion to support. (Then again...)

But let's assume for a minute that Harper takes Manley's recommendation and waits until after Bucharest to hold the vote. What happens if Harper can't talk NATO into ponying up the extra 1,000 troops? Does he pull out then? One presumes Harper's going to get that hypothetical question a lot between now and April and the bluff doesn't really work unless Harper's willing to go all in. Now on the flip side, if he talks NATO allies into picking up the slack and Canadian troops get rotated out of the hot spots, could the Liberals actually oppose it? Well...it'd be a hard vote for Dion to whip.

Interesting times ahead...


UPDATE: Radwanski hits the nail on the head with respect to vote timing:

What we've got is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Harper can't really go to other countries without first getting the Liberals on board, but if there's any chance at all of the Liberals coming on board it'll only be after those other countries commit to extra troops.

The obvious solution is for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Official Opposition to sit down like two grown men and plot this thing out. It wouldn't exactly be unique; partisanship is supposed to occasionally take a back seat when your country is at war. But it remains to be seen if either of these two have it in them, let alone both at the same time.

Four Quick Hits

Municipal, provincial, federal, and American political links on this Labour Day Monday.


Municipal: The Alnoor Kassam campaign will be running the first batch of radio ads this week, on traffic. They're kind of cute, so feel free to give them a listen here.


Provincial: Apparently Ed Stelmach is getting the always unpleasant Mr. Dithers label, according to the Globe. As much as I'm not a fan of Stelmach, I've actually never heard him called Mr. Dithers. I've heard "Unsteady Eddie", "Mr. Ed", "Special Ed", "Harry Strom Jr." and about 50 other insults, but never Dithers. The article also has this inspirational quote:

“Will there be people without homes? Yes. Will there be some sick people that we can't save, despite all the medical technology that we have? Yes, there will be. But people are continuing to move here because where else are they going to go in Canada?”

I think we may have a new slogan to replace wild rose province. "Alberta: Where else are you gonna go?"


Federal: The Tories continue to try and neutralize the Afghanistan issue.


US: Lots of Republicans seem to get themselves into sex scandals. And, for whatever reason, a large percentage of them seem to be gay sex scandals.

What's My Line?

Andrew Coyne has a funny take on the government's ever evolving position on the monitoring of Afghan detainees. For those looking for the specific facts, I present them in an easy to understand chronological order. If you understand the following, MENSA should be calling within the next few days.


2006-early 2007: Gordon O'Connor maintains that the Red Cross are monitoring transferred detainees and reporting their findings to Canada.

March 8: Gordon O'Connor admits that the Red Cross does not inform Canada of the treatment of detainees captured by Canadian troops and transferred to Afghan authorities.

March 19: Gordon O'Connor apologizes for misleading the House.

April 23: Amid calls for his resignation, Gordon O'Connor defends himself by "telling Commons that a recent agreement with the human rights commission of Afghanistan guaranteed any detainee abuses would be reported."

April 24: A front page Globe story reveals that "the Harper government knew from its own officials that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse and extrajudicial killing." It shows that many of this information had been blacked out in documents.
April 25: The government maintains that it is the AIHRC and not any Canadian organizations who monitor detainees.

April 25: AIHRC says that "we couldn't go there [to the prisons]".

April 25: Gordon O'Connor's elevator scrum reveals that Canada has struck a deal with Afghanistan to allow Canadian officials to monitor detainees "any time they wanted".

April 25 (later): Peter MacKay is first told of this deal by journalists.

April 26: In QP, Stephen Harper says that there is no signed deal.

April 27: Stockwell Day says that Corrections Canada has made 15 17 trips to prisons to monitor detainees, saying they are there "to see if there are cases of torture".

April 28: "Urging an end to the "political circus" over Afghan detainees, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada says no Canadians, including corrections officers, have monitored treatment of prisoners turned over by Canadian military forces."

April 29: Stockwell Day tells Question Period that there have been no specific accusations by detainees of torture.

May 1: Stockwell Day says that Correctional Services Canada had been told by 2 detainees that they had been tortured.

May 1: The opposition parties decide to move on to far more important issues - the captaincy of Shane Doan to Team Canada. Stephane Dion calls the Tory silence "shocking", Ducceppe criticized Harper for not taking a stand on the issue, and Jack Layton said Doan's captaincy would "cast a shadow" on the team. Elizabeth May says the choice of Doan was akin to Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis.

May 2: Foreign Affairs complains that they were not consulted on Hillier's 2005 detainee deal.

May 3: Rick Hillier concedes that "perhaps [the deal he signed] was no sufficient"

May 3: The Canadian ambassador signs a new detainee deal.

A Fortnight to Forget

Stephen Harper hasn’t had many bad days since becoming Prime Minister but, boy, the last two weeks have been tough ones for him.

The rough patch all started last week with the taxpayer funded stylist turned psychic fiasco (she really should have seen it coming). Sure, it’s not a big deal, but it’s one of those quirky little mini-scandals like Romanian Strippers which gives the opposition parties a guaranteed joke in every stump speech from now until the end of the next campaign.

Then there’s been the environmental file which was going to be a headache no matter when it came to a head. John Baird’s Martin-esque hyperbole probably discredited some very legitimate economic concerns surrounding the Liberal Kyoto plan. Having the Tory plan leak out in advance (possibly breaking Canada's securities laws) didn’t help matters at all, especially since it led to a rushed release. As for the plan itself? Well, take a look at the less than enthusiastic response it has generated.

Worst of all, the Tories took a big hit on Afghanistan, which is guaranteed to be an issue during the next campaign. The Globe's front page story on blacked out torture documents was bad for optics, regardless of who edited the documents. The week-long game of "deal or no deal" left opposition leaders, pundits, and probably quite a few Tory Cabinet Ministers confused. It's unclear when this "deal" was signed, if it was signed, who negotiated it, what it entails, if it changes the status quo, or who knew about it when.

O'Connor himself has been crippled beyond repair and paying homage to Paul Martin's famous escalator scrum, by doing an elevator scrum, likely wasn't the best way for him to announce this deal. At the very least he could have let Peter McKay know beforehand...

As for the fall-out, well, just take a look at the CTV wire story and count the number of times "contradiction" and "incompetence" appear. For a government that prides itself on decisiveness and messaging, this has certainly been a week Harper would love to put behind him.

Paint it Black

(warning: This post has been edited by the department of Foreign Affairs for national security purposes)

In a fairly remarkable front page story in today's Globe & Mail, Paul Koring reveals that Canada's New Government knew that "torture and abuse were rife in Afghan jails", despite claims to the contrary. The Foreign Affairs department also blacked out parts of the documents released under access to information that claim the situation is getting worse in Afghanistan (even though there was no national security reason to remove this information). For example, the sentence "the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in 2006" was removed completely.

The results of this report should be very disconcerting for all Canadians.

Bag 'O Links

-Lots of Afghanistan news. The Liberal motion to set February 2009 as the withdrawal date will be voted down tonight thanks to the NDP even though 2/3 of Canadians agree with it. Gordon O'Connor, meanwhile, is in trouble for the treatment of prisoners, and Dion has some egg on his face for an odd proposal.


-After going 7 for 8 in first round predictions, I'll go with the Ducks, Sharks, Sabers and...I dunno...let's say Sens.


-Looks like the Clean Air Act is dead, although I wouldn't be surprised to see one of the opposition parties bring the amended version back on an opposition day.


-The sexy centrists are no more...it'll be Royal versus Sarkozy in the French election run-off.