Political arts and crats

Via Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor, an anonymous Conservative MP explains some background behind the big cheques, and in the process, gives us an intriguing glimpse of the state of relations between the politicians and public servants in Ottawa  over the past few years.

When we formed govt the crats stopped bringing cheques to announcements & we were FORCED to cough up the $ to buy our own. Specifically, at [a government department I was involved with] the crats used to like to be in the photo ops giving out chqs, as though it was coming from them. They detested Conservatives being photographed handing out chqs, so they stopped bringing the chqs – when they even bothered to show up for announcements. They’ve screwed up dates for announcements so badly (trying to schedule announcements while the House is in session) that we don’t even bother to include them, thereby saving taxpayers thousands of $s in travel claims from the crats.

Vote early, vote often

It's election day today -- or it would have been, under the almost-forgotten legislation   to fix election dates in Canada. Our bureau chief, Bruce Campion-Smith, has written a helpful-reminder story in today's paper.

Going to the court

This late-in-the-day announcement from the government is interesting. (See below). Faced with some prospective backlash from the provinces about setting up a federal securities regulator, Ottawa is asking the Supreme Court of Canada whether it has the constitutional authority to do so.

Some provinces -- Quebec, notably, among them -- have also urged the federal government to go to the Supreme Court about its Senate reform proposals. There is an argument out there that any changes to the Senate, including fixed terms and elections, require approval at the provincial level -- and that the federal government can't go it alone on minor repairs to the Red Chamber.

I wonder if the Conservative government, now asking the Supreme Court about the securities regulator, will also consider asking the court to weigh in on the Senate-reform question? 

Here's today's announcement:

OTTAWA, October 16, 2009 – The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C, M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, today announced that the Government will seek the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada as to whether Parliament has the constitutional authority to enact and implement a federal securities regulatory regime. As part of this reference, the Government will submit to the Supreme Court of Canada draft legislation, expected to be ready in spring 2010.

“The Government strongly believes that Parliament has the constitutional authority to enact a comprehensive Federal Securities Act and is initiating preparatory steps in that direction,” said Minister Nicholson.  “In coming to this view, the Government is supported by many of Canada’s foremost constitutional experts. However, for greater certainty, we will be asking the Supreme Court for its opinion, which is why we are proceeding with this reference.”

The Government is mindful of the importance of having a definitive answer on the issue.  An opinion from the Supreme Court of Canada will provide legal certainty to all provinces and territories, and market participants, and thus protect the integrity of a Canadian securities regulatory regime.

Sing to us of stimulus

Say you're looking for information from your federal government about the economic-stimulus plan. You go to the government's website.

And then you notice that things are a little quiet at the old computer. Some piano music might be nice. Considerately, the federal government has thought about this -- just click on the YouTube link on the top corner, and you can be serenaded by Stephen Harper, singing a Beatles tune at the National Arts Centre.

What does this have to do with economic stimulus?  I have no idea.

** Update: Joan Bryden at Canadian Press has done a little story on this today and has PMO spokesperson Dimitri Soudas explaining the connection between piano playing and economic stimulus.

Dimitri Soudas said the website links to the prime minister’s YouTube site with a host of video clips including some Harper speeches and funding announcements related to the economic action plan.

 Soudas said the video of the singing PM pops up immediately only because it is the most recent video posted on the site.

 “At the core of this is how petty the Liberals are becoming,” Soudas said. “Instead of focusing on the economy, they’re becoming webmasters.”

h/t Steve V

Bad art

The real crime of the oversize cheques is their tackiness, according to Colby Cosh at the National Post and Tim Powers, writing at The Globe and Mail's website. Their only disagreement is about when the cheques started to be an idiotic way of communicating.

Here's how Cosh puts it, in a column arguing for the quick extinction of this prop species:

Given that the novelty cheque is a species of joke that stopped being funny no later than 1930 or thereabouts, no value can possibly be lost by its abandonment. Perhaps there lingers some variation of the idea that news photographers "need" an object of visual interest to focus on at ceremonies. But this rather assumes that photographers and art directors are halfwits, when in fact they're generally much cleverer than the median journalism-school graduate. Nobody would run a giant-cheque photograph in a newspaper, ever, if he had any reasonable alternative.

Tim Powers, meanwhile, says it this way:

 

Maybe all MPs can agree to a moratorium on participating in the arts-and-crafts sessions many seem to receive involving 1980s communication props. God forbid public policy debate lifts itself off the construction paper.

Well said, on both counts. Every time I see one of those photos, I  feel sorry for the member of Parliament in the picture. When they're in Ottawa, they're given lines to recite, like children. When they're back in their ridings, they have to pose like circus artists for the cameras. I'm continually amazed that anyone wants that job.

 

Given that the novelty cheque is a species of joke that stopped being funny no later than 1930 or thereabouts, no value can possibly be lost by its abandonment. Perhaps there lingers some variation of the idea that news photographers "need" an object of visual interest to focus on at ceremonies. But this rather assumes that photographers and art directors are halfwits, when in fact they're generally much cleverer than the median journalism-school graduate. Nobody would run a giant-cheque photograph in a newspaper, ever, if he had any reasonable alternative.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=8850f188-a64f-471a-8204-1ee5a1795062#ixzz0U5q49fOn
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Toronto, Mississauga short-changed?

Two opposition politicians, one New Democrat, one a Liberal, are crying foul today about Toronto and Mississauga missing out on a fair share of stimulus money.

Omar Alghabra, a former Liberal MP, has put the results of his investigation/calculation about Mississauga  here. 

Olivia Chow, meanwhile, has chosen YouTube as her medium of protest.

Hotheads

More head-of-state confusion. This website seems to think that Stephen Harper is Canada's head of state, and as such, gets a #61 ranking among world leaders on the "hotness" scale. Strong letter to follow, I'm sure.

Hundreds of coincidences

Here at this Flickr site (which I suspect was set up by some enterprising Liberals), you can find the amazing evidence -- all by themselves, more than 30 Conservative MPs, cabinet ministers and backbenchers, all getting the crazy idea to take personal, partisan credit for taxpayers' money. H/t to commenter "Ted" for directing us to the site.

At present, there are 170 photos  gathered up there. I suspect there may be more as word spreads.

Feschuk: funny but true

Scott Feschuk has accomplished a significant feat for a columnist with this piece for  Macleans, which manages to be hilarious and thought-provoking at the same time -- all revolving around the Prime Minister's recent piano playing at the National Arts Centre.  I direct people's attention to these bits  in particular.

"Intermission followed the Harper cameo and the conversations were revealing. People weren’t marvelling at Harper’s warmth or humanity. They were marveling at how effectively he had portrayed himself as warm and human....

But are there any “ordinary voters” left? Is there anyone who still views a political appearance—no matter how allegedly spontaneous or sincere—as anything other than the combined effort of a dozen communications advisers, a personal stylist and, in Harper’s case, a prosthetic smile?

We’re all political strategists now, conditioned by the media and the parties themselves to interpret everything through the prism of tactics and positioning."

******

     "But we’ve all built up a pretty good immunity to hypocrisy. What we can’t get enough of is The Game—who’s up, who’s down, what the latest poll says, what the strategists are strategizing, and what we’d do in their place. We’d make Iggy more decisive. We’d shave Jack’s moustache. We’d paste Jack’s moustache clippings on Iggy. We don’t actually believe Stephen Harper has changed, become any warmer, grown or softened or evolved as a leader. But we admire him for being sharp enough to make it look as though he has."

Check the record

In July, Dimitri Soudas, the PM's spokesman,was remarkably vague -- and not at all contrite --  when I  talked to him for this story, which was written after  constituents in Peter Van Loan's riding complained about the minister passing off government cheques as his own, or as Conservative party benevolence.

In fact, the federal Treasury Board investigated whether it was proper and in the face of that, all Soudas could tell me was that he was "proud" of the big cheque given to the good citizens of Innisfil.

Tonight, I heard Soudas telling CTV's Tom Clark that it was "NOT   appropriate" for MPs to be slapping party logos and MPs' signatures on government cheques.

So, my questions are:

1. When did the PMO decide that Van Loan and others were off side with their carnival-sized  cheques? They've known since at least July that this was going on.

2. And, since when did MPs start doing anything independently in this government? Did all these MPs and ministers just head to to the copy shop and get these cheques printed up themselves, by huge coincidence?

If Mr. Soudas would like to answer these questions, in light of his comments to the Star last July, we'll happily print them here.