CANADIAN POLITICS:

WHISTLEBLOWER SMEARED:

The Parliamentary Committee hearing into the allegations of Canadian ex-diplomat in Afghanistan Robert Colvin that Canada knowingly handed over Afghan detainees to that country's government for torture continues. The Harper government responded with what it does best- a vicious attack on Colvin's credibility. The following is the story from the Harper Index news service, a site devoted to keeping a close eye on the manoeuvres of our beloved Prime Minister, Sneaky Stevie.

This matter has been commented on repeatedly in the mainstream press, and from what I am reading the general opinion of said commentators is that "nobody gives a damn". The more Conservative the author the greater amount of gloat with which this message is delivered. The sad fact is that it is probably true. Outside of the tiny ranks of "the left" most people in these parlous times have bigger fish to fry. One may hope, however, that this incident added to dozens of others may reinforce the also widespread conviction that Sneaky Stevie and his coterie are accomplished liars. If it adds to this realization it will have done some good.

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Colvin's gagging and public smearing highlight callousness:
Harperites deaf to suffering of detainees, innocent or not, and quick to slag courageous whistleblower.
OTTAWA, November 20, 2009, a special HarperIndex.ca report: The reaction to diplomat Robert Colvin's report, that top advisers gagged him when he tried to report widespread torture of Afghan detainees captured by Canadians, revealed the Harper government's callousness in two ways. First, the government, according to Colvin, who served as a top diplomat in Afghanistan, willfully ignored urgent reports from him in 2006 and 2007 that all detainees, guilty and innocent, were subject to torture, including being beaten with rubber hoses and electrical cable, shocked with electrical current, and raped.

Colvin pleaded for a year with top officials to deal with the situation, but he was told to keep quiet and to stop putting his concerns in writing.

Then, confronted this week with Colvin's explosive testimony to a Parliamentary committee, government ministers blasted Colvin as an incompetent official and under Taliban influence. "We are being asked to accept testimony from people who throw acid in the faces of schoolchildren and who blow up buses of civilians in their own country," defence minister Peter MacKay said in Parliament.

Attacks by MacKay and other government members came despite Colvin's support for Canada's military role in Afghanistan, and his posting, since 2007, to Washington in the high-security role of senior intelligence officer at the Canadian embassy.

"From ordering officials to stop documenting information on detainee abuse, to gagging witnesses, using delay tactics, and interfering with the Military Police Complaints Commission, this government continues to undermine the investigation into Afghan prisoner abuse," NDP defence critic Jack Harris (St. John's East) told a Parliament Hill news conference. "It places our soldiers in a perilous legal position. As Mr. Colvin testified, handing detainees over to people who we know will torture them constitutes a war crime."
Posted: November 20, 2009
Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca

CANADIAN POLITICS:

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF (CONSERVATIVE) BABES:

Everyone knows that governments lie, and one of the ways that they lie is by attempting to control the way things are referred to. The most famous example of this sort of thing is, of course, the phrase "collateral damage" which refers to the reality of "civilians killed". Examples are endless, and our dearly beloved federal Conservative government is one of the masters of this practice. Here's a little article from the Harper Index, a website devoted to keeping a close eye on the machinations of Sneaky Stevie and his band of unmerry men. Go on over and have a look.

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Language change foisted on diplomatic corps:
Humanitarian concerns conflict with Conservative frame, minister dares staff to challenge him.
OTTAWA, September 10, 2009, HarperIndex.ca: The Harper government has instructed diplomatic staff to adopt politically-approved language and rhetoric on international human rights and diplomacy and demanded they not use expressions that contradict the Conservative world view.

This summer, the Canadian news publication Embassy received a leaked copy of language guidelines issued to foreign affairs staff.

"Among the changes identified are the excising of the word 'humanitarian' from each reference to 'international humanitarian law,' replacing the term 'gender equality' with 'equality of men and women', switching focus from justice for victims of sexual violence to prevention of sexual violence, and replacing the phrase 'child soldiers' with 'children in armed conflict,'" the magazine reported.

The story resulted in a minor controversy most Canadians missed over the summer, with the government at first denying that the changes are meaningful then, later, admitting that they are deliberate acts of policy.

"I've told my people that this is the policy that we carry out and if anybody is not happy with these policies that we're carrying out, well all they have to do is go and run in the next election and get themselves elected and support a policy that is different from ours," foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon told Embassy. He said "... we're going to be changing policies so that they reflect what Canada's values are and what Canadians said when they supported us during the last election. That's the role of government, that's the role of an elected official."

The changes, while seemingly minor in some cases, could have a profound impact on Canadian foreign policy. "There are people who don't like Canada to be a leading humanitarian. There are people who think that's revolting," Desmond Morton, a historian and former director of McGill University's Institute for the Study of Canada, told CBC's The Current. Many believe the shift away from the term "child soldier" is intended to protect the government from charges it is mishandling the Omar Khadr case.

General Roméo Dallaire, who started the Child Soldiers Initiative, called the semantic shift "an instrument of camouflage".

Human rights experts such as Alex Neve of Amnesty International were astounded at the implications of the language edicts. "International humanitarian law is referred to...because the legal obligations that are at stake are from that particular area of law, which is an incredibly important area of law, it's essentially the law that governs in the midst of war," Neve told Embassy.

Another example is that the minister's office has removed the words "impunity" and "justice" from calls for an end to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The approved language now refers only to "preventing" sexual violence.

Harper Conservative vs. Public Values Frame

Excising of the word "humanitarian" / Humanitarian

Gender equality / Equality of men and women

Justice for victims of sexual violence / Prevention of sexual violence

Children in armed conflict / Child soldiers

Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca

CANADIAN POLITICS:

HARPER DODGES THE BULLET ONCE MORE:

You actually have to admire Steven Harper, at least for his skill as a politician. "Sneaky Stevie" sits on top of what is an essentially unstable alliance, of social conservatives and hard line free market ideologues. Whatever his personal religious views they are certainly secondary in Stevie's world to the need for providing his corporate friends with the ability to make money (and not incidentally adding to his "sum of friends" when he finally leaves politics). Stevie's well-famed intolerance of dissent in his own party is a necessity for such a leader. Loosen the screws and, before you can say 'Timothy McVeigh' every single nut in the Conservative coalition will be publicly voicing opinions that would put the Conservative Party at the level of public approval of say the 'Marxist Leninist Party'. No, 're-education camps for homosexuals' is a non-starter in Canada.

But Sneaky Stevie's political sense extends far beyond knowing that the "terrorists for Jesus Brigade" is not the way to power. Like any good neo-conservative he throws the sexually obsessed the occasional bone, whatever his personal contempt for them, just to keep their preachers telling the congregations to come out and vote for the Conservatives. What is really masterful on his part is knowing when to backpedal on his core neo-conservative ideology. He has done this for some time now in relation to many issues, and the issue of medicare (which pretty well defines the separation of the USA from the civilized world) is perhaps the core issue where neo-con ideology conflicts with simple common sense.

Not that Molly is entirely satisfied with the Canadian medical system as it is. As a libertarian socialist I would much prefer that medical care be delivered through a network of cooperative institutions rather than through a statist single payer system that funds both overly bureaucratized "public" institutions and private practice. being as that is still far in the future, I have no doubt that our system delivers better medical care, at a considerably lower cost, than the American system where public bureaucracies are replaced with private ones and where millions of people have no coverage whatsoever. In terms of "bang for the buck" the American system actually delivers far poorer public health results than not just Canada, or almost every industrialized country. It is even substandard as compared to some "Third World" countries.

All that is obvious to those who bother to read and who are not consumed by ideology, as much of the American right is. The numbers are there. Look them up. Down USA way the frustrated right wing is focusing as the present Democratic health care proposals which are actually a far step below what the civilized countries have accepted as a standard of care. In this "holy cause" the right wing propagandists have stooped to every possible lie. The article below mentions one of them, the mendacious Shona Holmes ads. what is important about the following article is that, whatever Sneaky Stevie's public face of the moment, he has a long term commitment to turn medical care over to the tender mercies of his dream world of a free market.

Here's the article from the Harper Index, a website devoted to tracking the machinations of our beloved comrade Dear Leader.

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Health care defence intentionally vague:
Harper attempts to avoid debate over Canadian system because he despises it.
by Eric Mang
WASHINGTON, DC, August 13, 2009: While American debate rages over Canadian-style health care, Canada's prime minister is ducking the debate in order not to reveal his own feelings about a system most voters support wholeheartedly.

On August 10, Stephen Harper was interviewed by ABC News correspondent, Jake Tapper on issues raised at the recent summit between the leaders of Canada, the USA and Mexico, including H1N1, Mexican drug cartels, the coup in Honduras, and Afghanistan.

Given the raging health care reform debate south of the border, the Prime Minister's answers to Mr. Tapper's health care questions were revealing, as much for what they did not say as what they did.

Since the Conservatives were re-elected in 2008, health care seldom receives much attention as a federal issue compared with other portfolios or previous governments. Although social services are not a strong suit for the Conservatives, the government has tried to dodge accusations that they wish greater private involvement in Canada's health care system. As the record shows, these accusations are not unfounded.

In a response to the 2002 Throne Speech, Mr. Harper said: "A government monopoly is not the only way to deliver health care to Canadians. ... It [the federal government] must remove any barriers, any chill to increase private capital investment plans that the provinces have for our health-care system."

In the National Post in 2000, Mr. Harper said: "[former Reform MP and current Liberal] Dr. Keith Martin is a highly intelligent and capable member of Parliament. He is also advancing perhaps the most important issue of the next generation the need for private health care competition."

Harper's answers to health care questions were revealing, as much for what they did not say as what they did.

In the Conservative's 2006 election platform, they advocated a "mix of public and private health care delivery…"

However, the Conservatives, who are attempting to learn from their political missteps, are aware that a majority of Canadians support a universal, single-payer health care system. A recent Harris/Decima poll found that 70% of respondents thought our system to be working well and that 82% prefer our system to the American one. Notably, more than half of respondents thought more services should be covered in the public system (e.g. dentists) while only 12% thought more of the system should be private. Further, a Nanos Research poll found that 86% of respondents supported or strongly supported "public solutions to make our public health care stronger".

Wanting to slake the public's thirst for improvements in health care, in 2006 the Conservatives issued five commitments they would act on if elected to government; one of those pledges was a Patient Wait Times Guarantee: "Work with the provinces to develop a Patient Wait Times Guarantee to ensure that all Canadians receive essential medical treatment within clinically acceptable waiting times…"

When it appeared that the Conservatives could not meet their wait times commitment, it was quietly replaced by an ambiguous statement of a "strong, united Canada".

The Conservatives are now fully distanced from their 2006 promise of wait times guarantees. When asked by Mr. Tanner whether our wait times are too long, Mr. Harper replied, omitting any reference of a federal partnership with provinces: "Yes, but the responsibility for the health care waits, in our country, are the responsibilities of provincial governments."

The Canadian health care system has been used as a political football by many legislators and right-wing commentators in the United States. Unfortunately, many of their contentions are false, misleading and/or heavily embellished.

In a response to exaggerated claims made by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, Conservative Senator Hugh Segal was quick with a rebuttal: "The notion that we have some bureaucrat standing next to every doctor between the patient and that doctor is a complete creation, there is no truth to that at all…What you have[in Canada] is a longer life span, better outcomes and about one-third less costs [compared to the US]. That's what you have."

When Mr. Harper was given an opportunity by Mr. Tapper to correct misconceptions about Canada's health care system, Mr. Harper did not attempt to address the more specious falsehoods. Rather, he downplayed the federal government's role in health care, despite our system being a single national plan through the Canada Health Act, and responded: "In Canada, health care is principally the responsibility of our provincial government. The federal government provides some transfers. We do some of the drug regulation, a number of other activities. But it is principally a system run by our provincial government [sic]. So first of all, I don't feel qualified to intervene in the debate."

While it may not have been politically prudent for Mr. Harper to allow himself to be dragged into the Shona Holmes debacle (Holmes' claims have been largely debunked) he could have taken a cue from his colleague, Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, and been tactful and truthful about Canada's health care system.

Mr. Harper's comments on health care spending in Canada were also misleading. Defending his government's choices in allocating tax revenue, Mr. Harper oversimplified public sector budgeting meeting public demand: "At the same time, all of this costs money. If you are prepared to spend an unlimited amount of money, you can do an almost unlimited number of things in people's health care. But you don't have an unlimited amount of money no matter what your system is. And these are challenges that every system has to address."

While Mr. Harper is correct there is a finite source of tax dollars and revenue-raising instruments available his government's decision to cut the GST reduced government revenue by more than $12 billion. Further, tax credits and more tax cuts have deprived the federal treasury of a few more billion dollars.

There are very few in health care or in any sector who believe governments have unlimited funds or have only one spending priority. But most would agree that governments exercise decisions and make choices. When the decision is made to reduce the amount of revenue a government collects, the choices to fund government programs becomes increasingly limited.

Health care consistently rates as one of the top policy issues on the minds of Canadians and polls indicate that a majority support the public system. Although the Conservatives are reticent to involve themselves in health care issues, there were a number of points in his interview with Mr. Tapper where Mr. Harper could have set the record straight in front of an American audience and acknowledged how much Canadians cherish their health care system.

Eric Mang lives in Toronto and was a former political aide in the Harris government in Ontario and in the Campbell government in British Columbia. See more of his writings at www.ericmang.com.
Posted: August 13, 2009
Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca

CANADIAN POLITICS:

STACKING THE REFUGEE BOARD:

The following article is from the Harper Index, a website devoted to keeping a close eye on the machinations of our "beloved" Conservative federal government. Please go to the original website to view attached video. Before reprinting Molly has to say that she disagrees with at least one implication of the following ie that members of such a board will ever be appointed on the basis of some sort of "merit" (what on Earth would this "merit" be in this case?) rather than what pretty well all such government boards are ie patronage plums for whatever government is in power. In others words I don't think the present process is "reformable" by any simple exchange of personnel. All that being said it is obvious that the main point of the following is true, that there is indeed an anti-immigrant political bias behind the present stocking of the board. No amount of "fuzzifying" could hide such a thing.

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Refugee board patronage appointees will follow political directives:
Recent IRB appointees include anti-gay evangelical and brass from CLAC, the anti-union union.
by Ish Theilheimer, with Stephanie Fahey
OTTAWA, May 14, 2009, HarperIndex.ca, with YouTube video: Recent appointments to Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) show that despite the government's talk of reform, decisions on the fate of immigrants claiming danger in their home countries remain intensely political. Rulings can be made by a single board members and there is no right of appeal. As a result, the life-and-death decisions board members make are frequently arbitrary and questionable, which raises particular concerns when the appointees have strong ideological viewpoints.

New appointees announced in March include Doug Cryer and and Edward J. Bosveld. Cryer is an evangelical Chrisitan publicly opposed to same-sex marriage. Bosveld has worked for years for the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC), widely regarded as an anti-union organization favoured by construction and other companies trying to avoid dealing with actual unions. (ie the sort of "union" present in fascist and communist dictatorships-Molly)

How board members get appointed "has been suspect since the formation of the board in 1989," former IRB chair Peter Showler told HarperIndex.ca. Showler is the Director of the Refugee Forum.

"At one time it was a purely political process, and outrageously incompetent people were appointed to be board members," he said. "There have been slow and incremental improvements over the years. However both the previous Liberal government and the Conservative government say it is now a merit based process. That is false. There is no accountability on who is appointed, when they're appointed and most frequently whether or not they are re-appointed."

"I'm concerned the process is not as merit-based as it should be," Montreal immigration lawyer Mitchell Golberg told HarperIndex.ca. "On questions of life and death, I don't think any excuse for any patronage. It taints the whole system."

IRB decisions are made by individual board members. In the past, two board members made decisions jointly on each case. Currently, because the government has not fully implemented laws that have been passed, refugee claims are decided by a single board member with no appeal process whatsoever.

Critics are concerned that if an anti-gay board member hears a claim from a gay person fleeing persecution or death at home, the claimant's chances are poor. An anti-union board member might not admit a claimant from a country like Colombia, where trade unionists are routinely murdered.

"I do represent people who are gay. There is someone in my office right now making a claim," Goldberg said in a phone interview. "If I had that member [reviewing his case], my client would be very afraid he'd be biased."

Although many IRB members have professional training and all, theoretically, are screened for qualifications, and despite promises to make the process non-political, the Harper government continues to appoint members that suit its own purposes, activists say.

"This current Conservative government, the first thing that they did was fail to re-appoint very good members when they came up for re-appointment," said Showler. "The first consequence of that is they lost a third of their board members because they also failed to reappoint others."

In addition, the Harper government has failed to maintain full staffing of the board, leading to even longer-than-usual backlogs of claimants – 50,000 of them. Appointments slowed after the Conservatives were elected in 2006.

"We are now seeing signs that the Conservatives are starting to do what the Liberals did a lot of, which is to appoint people not based on merit but based upon their connections with the Conservative Party," said Showler. "Neither party have really taken refugee decision making seriously."

"This is part of the very backlog which the Harper government's [2008] amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act has allowed the government to ignore nearly completely," immigration researcher Salimah Valiani told HarperIndex.ca. "In other words, the Harper government's focus is on processing immigration claims of temporary migrant workers in the 38 occupations prioritized by employers, a list the Harper government made public in November 2008."

In March, Auditor General Sheila Fraser reported that the appointment process for federal boards is a "black hole." Valiani says Fraser highlighted "the lack of accountability of the current government – not only in assuring that public corporations are led by competent people, but in erecting the Public Appointments Commission which was to overlook the government's work in this area. Not surprisingly, the Privy Council has accused the Auditor General of over-stepping territorial boundaries in producing her report!"

Duff Conacher, of Democracy Watch, says the Harperites have broken an important election promise by not reforming appointments. "By not keeping their promise to establish the Public Appointments Commission (PAC), the federal Conservatives are practising patronage and crony politics as usual, and harming Canadian democracy and the rule of law in the same way as every government has since the country was created 142 years ago."

Conacher thinks the Conservatives "thought they were going to get a majority, and just threw the promise in so that if anyone raised fears about a Conservative majority government and patronage and cronyism, they could say 'Don't worry, our election platform states that we will.'"

Janet Dench, Executive Director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, says the appointments process has been a problem since 1989 when the current system came in.

"There has been constant criticism of the partisan and poor quality of appointments under Liberal and Conservative governments," she says. The Liberals made reform attempts that were never completed and implemented. Things became more "politicized," she said, when the Conservatives came in, leading to the resignation in March 2007 of respected IRB chair Jean-Guy Fleury. Lawyers Weekly reported this was "sparked, at least in part, by the Conservative government's refusal to appoint and reappoint people to the board, despite his repeated entreaties to former Immigration Minister Monte Solberg, and Solberg's successor, Diane Finley.

"When I left it had been a very difficult year in terms of appointments and reappointments... we lost 300 years of experience in one year," Fleury told MPs April 24.

Showler says cynical observers think the government has left vacant positions "because they wanted the Board to fail, because it's quite clear the government and particularly the current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Mr.Kenny, have a different agenda. They want refugee reform. And what they mean by that is a far more drastic system where they have first level decisions being made by immigration or board security officers who will be quite untrained and base decisions not on the facts and the evidence but upon government policy. The current government has made it quite clear what their views of policy are."

Dench is also concerned about direct political interference in decision-making, saying Kenney "has been quite outspoken about what is the right way to make a refugee appeal. What is the possibility of influence if you've got a board member whose appointment depends on the minister and you've got a minister saying this is how refugees should have their claims determined? There's a clear likelihood that board members will be influenced."

"You're making potential life-and-death decisions about something that happened a long way away from Canada, and also about future events – whether the claimants have well-founded fears. The evidence is often very partial, and translation is often poor," said Dench.
Making matters worse, when the previous Liberal government changed the system so that decisions would get made by a single board member, they did not implement legislation to set up an appeal process.

In 2002, the Liberals brought in a compromise law, going from two decision-makers to one, "without implementing the section that gives claimants the right to appeal. The trade-off was completely sabotaged by this partial implementation," Dench said.

The result, is "a lottery", with "huge variations in acceptance rates" depending on which board member decides. "You can have two brothers with same experiences, and one will be accepted, and one refused," if their cases are heard by different board members.

"It goes both ways," said Goldberg. While agreeing with Dench, he says "There are people who are accepted who don't merit protection."

Related individuals, organizations and significant events

Public appointments and patronage
Harper Conservative vs. Public Values Frame Cheap labour / Equal treatment, fairness
Links and sources

Immigration privatized through extension of migrant worker program, PublicValues.ca
Posted: May 15, 2009
Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca

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MOLLY NOTE:

I am perhaps being unfair in my original implication that the above article overemphasizes "qualified professionals" as it does indeed make structural criticisms of the present setup. Still, I wonder what would count as "qualifications" in appointments to such a board ? Geographical knowledge ? Knowledge of international affairs ? Knowledge of the economic, social and political situation in a wide variety of countries ? What sort of "test" would be applied ? Anything that I would consider would undoubtedly flunk well over 95% of candidates in parliamentary elections. The anarchist approach is, if you cannot have the "maximum program" of no barriers to immigration, then to lower the barriers as much as is possible in the present situation. The liberal leftist approach is to mirror the conservatives by stacking such boards with presumably "good natured" appointees whose "expertise" is very often a barely disguised sympathy for immigrants. Not that this is such a bad thing, but it is not "qualifications" in any real sense of the word.

CANADIAN POLITICS:

DOW VERSUS DEMOCRACY:

The following story is the Embassy Online site via the Harper Index. It seems that Dow Chemical, having failed in previous court challenges to various chemical bans, both provincial and municipal, across Canada is trying a new tack. Dow has launched a NAFTA appeal against a Quebec ban on lawn pesticides, claiming that this ban "amounted to an unfair expropriation" of its business, illegal under NAFTA. This sort of challenge adds credence to critics of NAFTA who say that such international trade deals restrict democracy in the interests of powerful business. While not wishing to get into the ins and outs of the effects of pesticides Molly has to say that she agrees with this claim. It is, in fact, obvious, and this case is only one of many that demonstrate this fact. If Canada is be a truly democratic country, or at least more democratic than it is now, then it will have to withdraw from pacts such as NAFTA as a preliminary.

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Dow suit puts NAFTA Chapter 11 to the test:
Dow Chemical claims pit rights of communities to ban pesticides vs rights of companies to sell them.
Let's get one thing straight. The recently-launched NAFTA arbitration by Dow Chemicals against the Government of Canada is about much more than $2 million.

As was first reported in these pages last autumn, Dow claims that a Quebec ban on lawn pesticides has amounted to an unfair expropriation of Dow's Canadian pesticide business.

On March 31, the company filed for formal arbitration under NAFTA's Chapter 11, seeking at least $2 million in compensation from Canadian taxpayers.

However, $2 million won't even cover Dow's legal fees. So, what gives?

Quite simply, foreign investors are not obliged to tally up potential losses at the outset of these NAFTA arbitrations, which is why the Dow claim looks so modest, at least for now. In the months (or even years) to come, you can be sure that Dow will up the ante.

Indeed, Dow may expand its claim to challenge pesticide bans in other parts of Canada. With other municipalities and provinces looking at cracking down on such chemicals — an Ontario-wide ban comes into effect later this month — the $2 million figure may be the tip of the iceberg.

The wider ramifications of this dispute have spurred environmental groups to mobilize for battle. Some hint of the coming fireworks could be glimpsed on Parliament Hill late last month.

In hearings of the Standing Committee on International Trade, environmental groups signalled their plans to intervene in any forthcoming NAFTA arbitration proceeding.

These groups insist that governments should be permitted to act on a precautionary basis to shield vulnerable groups such as children — even when the scientific evidence is uncertain as to the long-term health impacts of certain substances. They plan to present their own views to the arbitration panel presiding over the NAFTA case.

However, the groups complain that the NAFTA Chapter 11 arbitration process is less than welcoming when it comes to hearing from concerned citizens and other interests.

In testimony to Parliament last month, environmental advocates observed that the NAFTA — unlike more recent trade pacts — allows foreign investors to sue a NAFTA government behind closed doors.

Will Amos, an Ottawa-based lawyer representing the David Suzuki Foundation and the Quebec group Equiterre, notes that his clients can submit written arguments to a NAFTA arbitration panel, but they may be blocked from showing up and watching or participating in these high-stakes arbitration proceedings.

"There is no guarantee that the investor won't request confidential proceedings," Mr. Amos said, "which would further limit our ability to understand what case they're bringing, and there will be no opportunity for us to make oral representations before the tribunal.

"This is totally unlike the Supreme Court of Canada," he adds.

Indeed, it's unfortunate that the arbitration proceedings could be conducted in private. Otherwise, some of Canada's Supreme Court justices might benefit from sitting in on the arbitration hearings, and gaining a better appreciation of this NAFTA process. If permitted into the hearing room, the justices might be taken aback by the extent to which NAFTA tribunals can now review the actions of governments.

Indeed, one of the things that has incensed many members of the environmental community — and which might also bemuse members of the Supreme Court — is that pesticide bans in other parts of Canada have already been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada.

In 2005, the court dismissed an effort by a pesticide industry association to challenge a ban introduced by the City of Toronto. Environmentalists assumed that this ruling affirmed the right of governments to act proactively so as to minimize potential health risks. However, it now appears that the Supreme Court was merely engaged in a dress rehearsal.

Sure, pesticide bans in different parts of Canada have been declared constitutional by the highest court in the land, but in the 21st century, constitutions are not the only law of the land.

Rather, it will fall to three arbitrators — one appointed by Dow, one by Canada, and the third by mutual assent — to determine whether our North American constitution — the NAFTA — sanctions the actions of the Quebec government.

The Dow arbitration promises to be of seminal importance.

Dow protests that Quebec lawmakers failed to take heed of several risk assessments, including one by Canada's federal government, which showed that the pesticide ingredient 2,4-D "does not entail an unacceptable risk of harm to human health or the environment."

Of course, others, including some governments, have questioned whether risk assessments should be the final word on such matters. Environmental and medical groups like the Canadian Cancer Society have long argued that no amount of risk is worth taking when it comes to "unnecessary" chemicals, such as lawn pesticides, which are used for purely cosmetic purposes.

However, where governments wish to drive certain risks closer to zero, it will fall to a panel of NAFTA arbitrators to decide who shall pay the price for doing so: the chemicals industry or the Canadian taxpayer.

Luke Eric Peterson is an Embassy columnist and editor of Investment Arbitration Reporter, an online news service tracking NAFTA-style investor-state arbitrations.
Links and sources Embassy Magazine Online

CANADIAN POLITICS:

FUNDAMENTALIST INFILTRATION:

It is long ago and far away that Molly ceased to be a believer in any religion. Over the years I have even lost the edge of detesting most forms of religion, and I have come to accept religious practice as the sort of tolerable thing, like a devotion to a given sport, that is neither here nor there as to "social effects". In other words I am hardly a "militant atheist". Still, if there is one thing that history has demonstrated it is that the separation of Church and State has been one of the most civilized accomplishments in human history. Successful religions are, by their very definition of "successful", ones that contain memes of exclusivity. Religions that lack this meme are either 1)lost to history, 2)remain small cults (ala the Unitarian Church) or 3)endure only because of social conservatism in certain societies ie that of India or China where the original religions have been able to absorb foreign invaders.

It is this exclusivity, very much universal amongst monotheistic religions that explains both their success and the danger they pose to others who don't hold their views. Let any such viewpoint gain even the slightest political power and they will immediately attempt to impose their views on others, the "others" being held to be damned anyways. It's like the old adage says, true evil with evil intent accounts for very little of the evil in this world. The vast majority of evil is committed by those who think they are doing "good".

Here's the story, from the Harper Index, of how some of these people have achieved political power in the Canadian state, power with which they can press their agendas.

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Religious rightists get Harper promotions:
Faith conservatives get two senior positions in the Prime Minister's Office.
by Dennis Gruending
OTTAWA, March 24, 2009, HarperIndex.ca: It has been a good month for the religious right in Ottawa. The Hill Times newspaper reports that Stephen Harper has promoted religious conservatives to two senior positions in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) – the government's political nerve centre. Darrel Reid, Harper's former director of policy, becomes his deputy chief of staff. Harper also promoted Paul Wilson to replace Reid as PMO policy director.

Reid and Wilson have deep roots in both the religious right and in the Reform-Alliance and Conservative parties. There is a growing network of religious organizations active in political Ottawa. Among them are the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC), a conservative research and lobbying organization created by its parent organization Focus on the Family Canada. Another prominent organization is Trinity Western University, based in Langley, B.C. and one of the largest evangelical educational institutions in Canada. Trinity established an Ottawa "campus" in 2001 in an old mansion near Parliament Hill. It houses the Laurentian Leadership Centre, which places students as interns with Ottawa-based organizations and members of Parliament.

Reid was chief of staff to Reform Party leader Preston Manning while he was leader of the opposition. Reid later left to become the president of Focus on the Family Canada in its Vancouver head office for six years. Under his leadership, the group lobbied against public childcare, against legislation on same-sex marriage, and against adding sexual orientation to a list of minorities protected from hate crimes. Focus on the Family has also promoted conversion therapy for gays. Reid later made an unsuccessful attempt at a Conservative nomination for the 2006 election in Richmond, near Vancouver. When the Conservatives won that election, he returned to Ottawa as chief of staff to Rona Ambrose during her brief and tumultuous tenure as environment minister.

Focus on the Family in Canada is an offshoot of a powerful American organization of the same name created by psychologist James Dobson. It is a well-funded conservative lobby group that also trains activists and produces magazines, videos and books. Two hundred million people listen to Dobson's radio broadcasts, making his the most extensive network in the world, religious or secular. Harper's magazine has described Dobson as among the most powerful evangelical Christians in America and says that he was instrumental in getting the vote out for George Bush. Dobson believes that Christians are being persecuted in the U.S. and according to Harper's he also holds toxic views about gays, lesbians, those who support same sex marriage, and even the public school system. Dobson's daily broadcasts are available over the website of Focus on the Family Canada and the Canadian organization has received financial support from its American counterpart.

Dobson also created the Family Research Council in Washington D.C. as a conservative research and advocacy group. Focus on the Family Canada created the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) in Ottawa to provide socially conservative research and advocacy. The Institute worked closely with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and other groups in opposing the Liberal government's same sex marriage legislation. Dave Quist, who is IMFC's executive director, spent six years working for a Reform-Alliance MP from British Columbia. Quist ran for the Conservatives there in the 2004 election and after losing he spent a year working in Stephen Harper's office.

Paul Wilson, Reid's successor in the PMO, worked for both Preston Manning and Stockwell Day in the Alliance and Conservative parties. Later he served with Trinity Western's leadership centre. Among his tasks was coordination of an internship program for students, many of who served in the offices of opposition MPs when Reform, the Alliance and Conservatives occupied that role. When Stephen Harper won in 2006, Wilson left Trinity Western to become a senior policy advisor to Vic Toews, the justice minister. Wilson later served in a similar policy role for Diane Finley, the minister of human resources.

Trinity Western has close informal ties with many Reform-Alliance and Conservative politicians. The university hosts an annual lecture by a prominent public figure. The speaker in 2009 was former Reform-Alliance-Conservative MP Deborah Grey. Previous lecturers include: Preston Manning, Chuck Strahl, the federal Indian affairs minister, and Ralph Klein, the former Conservative premier of Alberta.

The month of March has been an unduly busy season for religious groups on or around Parliament Hill. Trinity Western hosted John Redekop, retired professor of political science, for a lecture called: What does God expect of governments and of citizens? Cornelius Van Dam, a professor at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary in Hamilton, was here to talk about: God and government: a biblical perspective on the role of the state. (I betcha it wasn't from the perspective of "God versus the State-Molly)

Dave Quist's Institute on Marriage and the Family Canada hosted a conference for about 120 people on March 12 and Monte Solberg, a former Reform-Alliance-Conservative MP, gave a welcoming address. The Manning Centre for Building Democracy had an event in Ottawa that week as well, which was described on the centre's website as a "networking conference and exhibition". Preston Manning and his wife Sandra created the centre in 2006 and it is focused on training conservatives to win in politics. Manning's conference featured Rick Hillier, the retired chief of defence staff, as the speaker for a gala dinner, and included an array of researchers from the right-wing Fraser Institute and columnists from the National Post.

The event also featured Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Proposition 8, a plebiscite in the November 2008 American election aimed at enshrining the traditional definition of marriage into California's constitution. The proposition carried. Manning used his Centre's website to promote Quist's family conference occurring on March 12 – for strategic reasons and perhaps as a favour to his former chief of staff.

One does not have to agree politically or theologically with any of these individuals and organizations to respect the networks that they have built and the growing influence that they appear to have with government. Political and religious progressives, should they be aware of this activity, must be envious indeed.

George Lakoff, the well-known American linguist, describes in his book Don't Think of an Elephant, how political conservatives in the United States made a conscious decision in the 1970s to spend the money to build an intellectual culture on the right. Donors included the Coors family – famous for their breweries and their right wing politics. Lakoff says these wealthy people set up professorships and scholarships at many universities, including Harvard. "These institutions have done their job very well," Lakoff writes. "The conservatives support their intellectuals. They create media opportunities... Eighty per cent of the talking heads on television are from conservative think tanks." Lakoff adds, "Nothing like this happens in the progressive world, because there are so many people thinking that what each does is the right thing."

There is little in progressive Ottawa to rival the networks that have been created by the religious and political right. They are in a minority in Canada but groups that are well organized can punch above their weight as the saying goes – particularly in an era of fractured parliaments and minority governments.
Dennis Gruending is an Ottawa-based writer, a former member of Parliament, and author of the blog Pulpit and Politics.

CANADIAN/AMERICAN POLITICS:

THE EMPEROR INSPECTS THE PROVINCES:

Now that the hoopla is over and the Emperor has returned to Rome carrying a snow globe tribute as a "Canadian" souvenir (aren't they all made in China these days) the pundits are opining about what was accomplished with the visit. Do these things ever accomplish anything ? Well, it is nice to see a Canadian Prime Minister having to bow to the left to greet a US President. It's a nice change. Whether there is any substance to Obama's caring rhetoric is another matter entirely. Time will tell. Meanwhile, here's an opinion piece on the visit from the Harper Index, a site devoted to keeping a beady eye on Harper's beady eyes.

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Obama turns the tables on Harper:
Prime Minister is forced to take or at least accept positions he normally condemns.
by Ish Theilheimer
OTTAWA, February 20, 2008 – a special report from HarperIndex.ca: The Obama effect on Stephen Harper was to pressure him into taking positions that appeared to contradict three decades of work as a right-wing strategist and ruthless political operator.

The news conference was without precedent and full of ironies. For decades, Canadian prime ministers have either pressured US presidents on progressive issues such as ending the Vietnam war (on which Pierre Trudeau pressured LBJ) or Iraq (on which Jean Chrétien pressured George W. Bush), or played up to them (as Brian Mulroney did with Reagan and Harper himself did with Bush).

Yesterday, the tables were turned. The wildly-popular Obama used his trademark charm and openness to repeatedly maneuver Harper into saying, or at least appearing to agree with, things for which he would have blasted domestic opponents. To appear onside with Obama, he even had to say a few things that stretched truth or credibility.

The focus on clean and renewable energy was unusual for Harper, who, despite his own close ties to the oil industry, painted himself as a champion of climate change action in the face of American obstruction. "Canada has had great difficulty developing an effective regulatory regime alone in the context of a integrated continental economy," he said. "It's very hard to have a tough regulatory system here when we are competed with - competing with an unregulated economy south of the border."

Environmental protection and addressing climate change was a key plank in Barack Obama's election platform, where Harper rarely mentioned these things in his. Yet the Prime Minister found himself saying, "When I look at the President's platform, the kind of targets that his administration has laid out for the reduction of greenhouse gases are very similar to ours."

Harper then made the startling claim that his and George W. Bush's proposal of "intensity-based" targets for greenhouse gas reductions, widely decried by environmentalists as a license to pollute, are the same as Obama's plans.

"You say we have intensity, they have absolute -but the truth is these are just two different ways of measuring the same thing. You can convert one to the other, if that's what you want to do."

As the David Suzuki foundation has written, "... even if intensity-based targets seem to call for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, actual emissions could very well continue to rise."

Harper was then forced to endure an Obama lecture on the problems that the "two relatively wealthy countries" share in terms of dirty energy sources. "Here in Canada you have the issue of the oil sands. In the United States, we have issues around coal."

Then the President mentioned the diversity of approaches that will be needed, including a cap and trade system. "There are other countries who've discussed the possibilities of a carbon tax," Obama said, months after Harper beat Stéphane Dion by mercilessly attacking the idea.

All this starkly contrasts with Harper's long-held views on climate change. In a famous Canadian Alliance Party fundraising letter in 2002, he called the Kyoto treaty, with its emphasis on carbon trading, a "massive transfer of wealth from rich countries to poor countries."
On trade treaties and NAFTA, Obama pushed for change, with Harper resisting.

"... With a NAFTA agreement that has labor provisions and environmental provisions as side agreements, it strikes me if those side agreements mean anything then they might as well be incorporated into the main body of the agreement so that they can be effectively enforced," Obama said. "And I think it is important, whether we're talking about our relationships with Canada or our relationships with Mexico, that all countries concerned are thinking about how workers are being treated and all countries concerned are thinking about environmental issues..."

Harper, who recently struck a trade deal with Colombia, where union leaders are routinely murdered, was forced to defend trade deals and claim he is concerned with protecting rights and environment through them.

"You know, our position is that we're perfectly willing to look at ways we can address some of these concerns, which I understand, without, you know, opening the whole NAFTA and unraveling what is a very complex agreement. But we had a good discussion on that and I think – I'm hopeful we'll be able to make some progress."

On stimulus, Harper used a new line to justify a federal budget that committed to only about half the two percent stimulus to which G20 nations agreed. He claimed that matching funds from provinces and municipalities will meet the gap. The Canadian stimulus package, he said, is "certainly larger than the kind of numbers the IMF was talking about in the fall with the provincial action that we will bring in to our stimulus spending – will be close to 2 percent of GDP for this year, a percent and a half for next year.

"This is not as large as the stimulus package in the United States," he admitted, without addressing whether it is legitimate to claim the provincial and municipal funds – money already in those governments' spending plans – as federal stimulus spending.

It will be left to Canada's opposition parties and the Canadian public to hold Harper's feet to the fire Obama has lit in support of progressive positions on environmental and labour rights.
Related individuals, organizations and significant events

A Stephen Harper Timeline

Intensity-based targets promote oil industry frame

Human rights rhetoric contradicted by rush for Colombia trade pact
Links and sources

Beware those bearing intensity targets, David Suzuki Foundation

Transcript of a news conference held Thursday, February 19 by US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as released by the White House press secretary's office

CANADIAN POLITICS:

CONSERVATIVE LIES:

Molly has been kicking this dog before. The following article from The Harper Index is almost 10 days old, but it is still topical despite the lull in Canada's present political scene. As has been mentioned before Sneaky Stevie decided to whip up public opinion against the NDP-Liberal coalition option by draping himself in the Canadian flag, as a "barrier to separatism".

To say the least it wasn't exactly that way at all, and Molly has mentioned previous dealings of the Conservative Party and their previous incarnation as the Reform/Alliance party with the Bloc Québeçois on this blog. Here's a little fleshing out of the details on one such incident.

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Lies and name-calling blow up on Conservatives:
Separatist-bashing could undo all Harper's efforts to win Quebec over.
by Ish Theilheimer
OTTAWA, December 3, 2008: The Harper Conservatives got caught up today in their own bashing of Quebec sovereignists. Not a single government member missed a chance to denounce the "separatist coalition", as the Conservatives mockingly term the proposed Liberal-NDP coalition that would govern with the support of the Bloc Québécois (BQ).

This tactic blew up in the government's face when the Bloc circulated a draft agreement, from 2000, that it made with the Canadian Alliance Party, led by Canada's current trade minister Stockwell Day.

Day, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the Liberal-NDP coalition, angrily denied that he had anything to do with any such deal. "It would be against my very DNA(For a fundamentalist who imagines that the world was created 6,000 years ago this sort of statement doesn't mean much-MOLLY) to do a coalition deal with socialists, and it would absolutely go against my heart and the heart of Canadians to do a deal with separatists," he told the House on Wednesday.

The printed evidence circulated by the Bloc was damning, however. It included both the text of the agreement and a Globe and Mail article from July 29, 2000. It reported that "Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day refused yesterday to rule out forming a post-election coalition with the separatist Bloc Québécois..."

CBC News reported that in July 2000, "Day indicated a willingness to form political ties with the Bloc if it meant ousting the federal Liberals from power. He said his party's position was 'to be open to anybody who's interested in a truly conservative form of government.' ... 'I'm not big on labels,' Day told reporters at the time when asked about a possible coalition to oust Chrétien's Liberals."

This evidence made Day's categorical denials unbelievable, and undermined the Conservatives' main argument, that the Liberals and NDP have betrayed Canada by dealing with the Bloc.

"They're always using us to throw names at one another," shrugged Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe. "That's their problem, not ours." The problem could grow especially acute for Conservatives, if all their separatist-bashing turns Quebeckers permanently against them, after Harper has worked so hard to attract them.

Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, who helped engineer the coalition pact, is shocked by the number of untruths being told by the Conservatives. He told CBC News in an interview posted on YouTube, "I've never seen the leader of the Conservative Party lie the way Mr. Harper has."
Conservative lies that he listed included saying that: - there was no Canadian flag in the backdrop of the coalition-signing ceremony when, in fact, there were two; - the Bloc is part of the coalition; and - the coalition agreement included Senate appointment for Bloc members.

"They make it up," said Broadbent. "They're trying to change a serious economic situation into a political crisis."

The Bloc, he notes, supported votes of confidence for Harper 14 times.

Broadbent emphasized the importance of focusing on the main goal of the coalition, which is to take quick and decisive action to address the economic crisis by investing in infrastructure and environmental protection.

CANADIAN POLITICS:

HARPER FIDDLES THE 'CHICKEN SONG' WHILE THE ECONOMY BURNS:

Sneaky Stevie has actually "out-Bushed Bush", his older brother in neoconservatism. While the outgoing American President has pretty well restricted himself to making religious sounding sounds about the ultimate virtues of the free market along with trying to set as many legislative traps as possible to preserve the vested interests he represents from evisceration once he leaves office our own dear beloved leader has actually gone against the collective wisdom of both the consensus of world economists and other industrial nation governments by refusing to see the need to put forward a stimulus package. The federal Conservatives rather have put forward a "mini-budget" that goes in precisely the opposite direction by purporting to cut expenditures.

The cuts are, of course, trivial, but they are well chosen for maximum populist appeal. The tying og the refusal to "prime the pump" via increased expenditure to the proposition of abolishing the electoral subsidization of federal political parties via the "money for votes" provision of our electoral act is particularly brilliant. Even though the amount of money saved will be trivial it puts the opposition parties in an unenviable position of appearing to be advancing merely their own interests when they oppose the do-nothing Conservative "budget". This little addendum, of course, hardly belongs in a budget. Its inclusion is an obvious manipulation. Sneaky Stevie is, if nothing else, well...sneaky. Few outside of party members have any affection for the idea that tax money should be spent subsidizing political parties. Abolition of this give away would even get my approval providing it was coupled to a cap on total political spending such that the Conservative Party's expenditures would be no more than that of the Communist Party of Canada, or ,better yet, the Marijuana Party. Good idea the latter...more dope, less dopes.

As I write this the backroom deals between ex-leaders of the Liberals (Jean Chretien) and the NDP (Ed Broadbent) are being negotiated. Conspicuous by his absence is ex-Liberal leader Paul Martin. Actually quite strange this way of making deals. Bloc Québecois leader Gilles Duceppe has made his feeling apparent. The idea of his party being an official coalition partner is, of course, absurd from both a federal and a Québec perspective, but he is a "kingmaker" who will extract more than the potential coalition partners will extract from each other in terms of policy and expenditure.

One actually has to hand it to Sneaky Stevie with this move- tying an obviously absurd economic do-nothing policy to a trivial but resonant populist measure. One wonders what is in his mind. Perhaps he is so used to playing chicken and winning from his time in minority government that he feels he can "bluff off" the opposition and change his policy to whatever is necessary next spring. Perhaps he actually wants to abandon power temporally either by provoking an election that he thinks he could win by dint of frustration or by putting a divided opposition into power during an economic downturn which will be much more serious than his Pollyanna projections say.

That is one of the things that Molly has noticed. While the Conservative government says that the present recession/depression will end next April 9an obviously absurd case of wishful thinking) they have proposed that federal civil servants should be prohibited from striking or receiving anything but trivial wage increases for three years. I would submit that the latter is a much more realistic time frame for how long we will be in hard times. Hopefully not longer, but that is possible as well.

The possibility of a coalition minority government may be the best thing that we could see at this time. The madder ideas of any one party would be inhibited by the need to satisfy the other coalition partners. The government would actually be more open to objective economic facts rather than ideology. Not a bad thing indeed. Most importantly the government would be much more open than what we have become accustomed to under the recent rule of the Conservatives. Molly is, of course, an anarchist, and she has no delusions that such a situation would be utopia. It would, especially, not safeguard us against future economic vagaries nor would it lead to the fastest recovery. A cooperative and localist upsurge, along with a redesigning of our industrial production via producer cooperatives would be best. . In the absence of this utopia, however, proper bargaining rather than ideological dictation is a better way.

Here's another view of the prospect of an upcoming coalition government from the Harper Index, a website devoted to keeping a microscopic eye on Sneaky Stevie's manipulations.

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Coalition push forces Harper onto the defensive:
Momentum - including open online letter grows to replace minority Conservatives.
OTTAWA , November 28, 2008: Momentum is growing for the replacement of the Harper Conservatives by a Liberal-NDP coalition. Two months ago, when the idea was first broached in StraightGoods.ca, almost all parties dismissed the idea. Now, a non-confidence vote could see the government fall as soon as Monday night.

All day today, negotiations took place between the opposition parties, with former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent taking lead roles. Then tonight, Harper took the extraordinary move of making a special address to Parliament and the nation. In it, he postponed a confidence vote on the economic statement finance minister Jim Flaherty made yesterday to a week Monday instead of Monday. And he attacked the opposition as undemocratic for wanting to replace his government without an election.

"While we have been working on the economy, the Opposition has been working on a backroom deal to overturn the results of the last election without seeking the consent of voters," Harper said. " They want to take power, not earn it." Ironically, the bulk of reaction to the economic statement was over widespread perceptions that the government's statement showed a lack of work on the economic crisis.

Harper has difficulty making the kind of compromises demanded of a minority prime minister. Instead of bringing Canadians together to fight the crisis, Flaherty's statement Thursday was viciously partisan. In it, he trashed longtime political targets like pay equity and labour rights in the public service, as well as political finance rules put in place to level the playing field.

Open online letter to Dion and Layton calls for a coalition government As political leaders huddle in Ottawa, activists across Canada are becoming involved in the push for a coalition. Canadians everywhere are being urged to sign an online open letter calling for coalition that began with a small group pulled together by the Rideau Institute. The letter urges the Liberal's Stéphane Dion and the NDP's Jack Layton to "set aside all partisan considerations in favour of decisive action to help Canadians who are suffering and whose livelihoods are in jeopardy."

The letter argues it was bitterly ironic for Stephen Harper to promise to work cooperatively with opposition parties, and then deliver such a partisan attack with no plan to fight the economic crisis and the stated intention not to run deficits, in the face of what other G20 countries are doing.

"Instead his Conservative government is using the crisis to attack the democratic process, violate the rights of public servants to bargain collectively and end pay equity," states the letter. "Canada now stands alone as the only government in the western world without a coherent economic stimulus plan. The Harper government talks of balancing the budget by selling off assets and restraining spending, the exact opposite of the stimulus response that virtually all economists and many others are arguing is necessary." The original signers of the letter are : Paul Moist, National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees

Ken Lewenza, President, Canadian Auto Workers

Dave Coles, President, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada

Denis Lemelin, National President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Steven Staples, President, Rideau Institute

Bruce Campbell, Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

John Urquhart, Executive Director, Council of Canadians

Mel Watkins, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Toronto

Peggy Mason, Former UN Ambassador for Disarmament