Harper Off His Game, Terrified of Parliament Holding Him to Account

Surely the blind Conservative partisans won’t see this, but it’s plain to see that in the past week Harper has been all over the map and now seems to realize he’s between a rock and a hard place. Take just over a week ago when we saw this story.
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Harper plans pre-election trips as Tories say Dion will 'cave' on vote
CAMPBELL CLARK
OTTAWA — The Conservatives are laying the ground for a charged political season this fall by taunting Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion with assertions his own party's support for his key policy is shaky and that he will again “cave” on triggering a vote.
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So on August 13th he’s taunting Dion saying he doesn’t have the guts to bring him down - basically daring him to do so. Then Harper calls a by-election he didn't need to in Don Valley West for September 22nd. Whether that election happens or not, millions of taxpayer dollars will be spent because of that call. Then just days later when absolutely nothing has changed, and after being so sure there would be no fall election, Harper decides to throw up his hands and say “Parliament is dysfunctional!” This is when he knows full well nothing has changed and any “dysfunction” is due to Harper and the 200 page Conservative chaos manual all his MPs have on how to disrupt Parliament themselves.

So now he’s actually musing about calling a general election BEFORE any by-elections take place!

If he does this it will signify several things to the public:
A) He knew his party was going to lose badly in all 4 by-elections
B) He knew the Liberals were going to win all 4 by-elections and get strong momentum out of them
C) He has NO regard for the views of the people in the ridings where by-elections were scheduled. To call an election days before they would get to cast their vote is extremely anti-democratic - if he calls an election anytime before Sept. 22 this still applies - remember he didn't have to call that one. Surely we should ask a PM to have made up his mind about an election call sooner though I guess it’s not easy for Harper to make priorities. EVERY Conservative candidate in these 4 ridings should be asked this week what their view is on Harper calling an election before the people in their ridings have a chance to cast their vote.
D) He has NO regard for taxpayer money whatsoever. While some Conservatives will try to claim Harper is respecting taxpayer money by having a general election before the by-elections, that argument falls to pieces because Harper didn’t have to call a by-election in Don Valley West and millions will have been spent for no reason. Not to mention all the money that went into drafting and passing Harper's own fixed elections bill that he will be showing to have been useless. In such tough economic times Harper would be showing he could care less about wasting taxpayer funds. No matter that the money could have gone to crucial priorities - all that matters is serving his partisan interests.
E) He is fine with going into an election with his word meaning ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Harper specifically promised to take away the advantages of the PM to call an election at a time of his/her choosing and leave the decision of whether to go before 4 years up to Parliament. Add to that to the incredibly long list of other lies Harper has told, but this one would DEFINITELY be an election issue Harper would have to answer for. How can he trusted with ANY of his promises in a campaign when he has broken others so blatantly? Dion certainly doesn't have that kind of reputation (even Layton has praised him as an honest principled man) so it would be a great contrast.

So why would Harper willingly take all these risks by calling a premature election?

- He’s terrified of having it fully revealed what a financial mess we’ve been put in. Flaherty’s hocus pocus yesterday certainly does raise a few questions and it does seem ominous for what’s to come.
- He's terrified of the result of the U.S. elections helping the Liberals.
- He’s terrified of what will be revealed in more committee hearings on In and Out.
- He’s terrified of what would come out in the Mulroney Inquiry.
- He’s terrified of more investigations into the Bernier Affair.
- He’s terrified of facing a confidence motion with the opposition unified against him (I might remind Conservatives that Martin didn’t have a fixed election law and yet he still faced a no confidence motion when he could have called an election instead – quite the contrast) amongst other reasons.

Harper knows there is nowhere to go but down. Despite what Paul Wells (whom I read often and like) has consistently said about Harper wanting to go the distance - the PM has clearly given up. No matter – whichever option Harper chooses it will be very far from his ideal election scenario. Someone so terrified of governing should surely not be given a renewed mandate. If Harper calls an election it will be out of weakness not strength.

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Cadman Vs. Mulroney/Shreiber

Some time ago the RCMP looked into Mulroney and Shreiber's dealings and decided there was no evidence on which to lay charges against Mr. Mulroney. Yet some people continued to allege impropriety on the part of Mulroney and ALL parties have agreed to the need for a public inquiry into the Mulroney/Shreiber affair because there are still a plethora or answered questions. I agree we need a public inquiry to get to the bottom of the matter.

Yet now the RCMP have similarly decided there is currently no evidence on which to lay charges in the Cadman affair and now we have Conservatives and some other individuals (who are staunch supporters of further investigating the Mulroney/Shreiber scandal mind you) saying we should never discuss this affair again, or even more surprising that the Liberals should apologize before this was even looked at in committee? Do you see the consistency here? I sure don't.

I welcome someone to explain to me how can you support the Mulroney/Shreiber inquiry (which again Stephen Harper said he was firmly committed to holding) when no RCMP evidence was found to charge Mulroney in that case and yet say the Cadman affair should be dropped entirely just because there was not enough evidence (the RCMP does not lay charges unless they have very solid hard evidence that would hold up in court remember) to charge anyone? I wonder if Stephen Harper could explain.

In both cases there are a still a large number of unanswered questions and that I believe Canadians deserve answers to (has Stephen Harper even tried to explain the tape?) and more avenues to be explored and in BOTH the cases of Mulroney/Schreiber and the Cadman affair, I think we need to get to the bottom of them. There is more work to be done on both fronts, not to mention something can still be highly unethical and worth investigating even if it's not criminal, we need to hold our MPs to a higher standard. Many parliamentary committee investigations have proceeded on that basis and I would hope the NDP will finally agree to let the Cadman affair be investigated by the Ethics committee.

One would think though that if those involved with the Cadman affair really have nothing to hide they wouldn't be screamly loudly to have us forget about all this right now just because there is no evidence on which to lay charges at this point.

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Mulroney's twistic logic

Mulroney from this morning: "... my biggest mistake in life, by far, was ever agreeing to be introduced to Karlheinz Schreiber in the first place."

The ethics committee really should have followed up with this:
Given that there are serious questions about whether Shreiber paid for a huge number delegates to go to the PC convention that brought down Joe Clark and ultimately lead to you being leader (and then PM), is it not possible that Shreiber played a small part in helping you becoming Prime Minister?

Is becoming Prime Minister another of Mulroney's "mistakes" that he regrets? I wonder...

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Harper does a 180 and calls Mulroney probe

I have to say I was quite surprised to read this in the news today. Still it’s about time Harper flip-flopped on this issue and established an independent probe looking into allegations against Mulroney. I tend to agree with Radwanski on this though that it is a bit too convenient that Harper announces this the day that Dion announces his excellent proposals on poverty (the subject of my next post). Still, I’m glad to see Harper has made the right call for once though it definitely took lots of noise from Liberals to make it happen.

However even though this is a good start in getting to the bottom of this matter, Liberals still have to make sure that the person chosen to lead the review is completely independent and impartial and that the findings of the review will be made completely public. Anything less is still unacceptable.

It will be amusing though to see all those Tories who so strongly argued against any kind of investigation on this matter to now have amnesia and praise their wonderful leader for having made the right call on this.

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