U.S. Ambassador on the fallen Canadian journalist

David Jacobson, the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada, met Michelle Lang when he was in Afghanistan last week and he's put up a touching blog post this morning about the encounter - and her tragic death yesterday.

I don’t know what to say except that she was a sweet, kind, optimistic young woman who literally always had a smile on her face – even in Afghanistan. If it is scant consolation to her family and friends she loved what she was doing. And she did it well. When she finished interviewing me we were both laughing.

It is a tragedy beyond words. It breaks my heart. My condolences go out to her family and to the families of all those who died today. While it is always terrible when someone dies like this; it is so much worse when you know them. When you care about them. This is a reminder to me that everyone who perishes over there is a person — not a statistic. Every one has mothers and fathers; sisters and brothers; children; friends.
I am so sorry.

The big shrug: II

So Parliament is shut down until March, after the Olympics. I'm sure I'm not the only one asking how this move fits with the little chat that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had with the Governor-General a year and a bit ago. As I understand it, he was granted a stay of execution for his government on the understanding that he would make Parliament work.  

 Perhaps it's just me, but defying an order of Parliament to produce documents on Afghanistan, boycotting a Commons committee and then shutting down Parliament all together doesn't seem to fit with the "making it work" thing. More to the point, Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff have made it clear in recent weeks and months that they're not about to provoke an election. So the PM can't make the argument that the opposition has made governing precarious. Nor can he legitimately argue that he needs a majority in the Senate. He is a minority Prime Minister, let's not forget. Canadians voted to keep a check on his power.

But of course, none of us know what Michaelle Jean told Harper during that longer-than-expected chat in December 2008. Who knows? Maybe she said that the Prime Minister should try to make Parliament work, unless the Olympics were on, and then all bets were off.

In the end, of course, it's not Michaelle Jean who has to approve this move. It's Canadians -- including you folks out there reading this -- who have to decide whether Harper has a legitimate reason to suspend the work of Parliament. Personally, I haven't heard one good reason yet. 

The big shrug

A new poll by Nik Nanos helps explain why the federal Conservatives have chosen the response they have on the Afghan-detainee issue -- everything from boycotting Commons committee hearings, defying an order to produce documents and now, the real possibility of shutting down Parliament altogether. 

One line in Nik's analysis stands out:

The overall confusion on this issue has meant that it has not been a significant vulnerability for the governing Conservatives.

So there we have it. There is apparently no price to be paid, in public-opinion terms, for giving the back of the hand to Parliament. It makes one wonder why we bother  to have one at all. 

A PM of few words

Two interviews. That's it. In past years, the Prime Minister of Canada has done a raft of end-of-year TV interviews, which are then shown to Hill journalists  in the theatre downstairs here in the National Press Building (complete with popcorn). Usually, it takes the better part of the day to view all of the interviews and then write up the various stories coming out of them.  Mindful of our time concerns, perhaps, Harper has given just two sit-down sessions for us to see tomorrow. The Star, by the way, did place a formal request for an interview. Apparently we're not alone, however, in being refused. Here's the notice we just received.

YEAR END INTERVIEWS

 

Please note that year end interviews with the Prime Minister will be viewed on Tuesday December 22 in the National Press Theatre.

The interviews will be distributed on the PM. LINE.

 

Feed and viewing schedule is as follows :

 

10:00 am   CTV  (Please see attached letter)

11:00 am   TVA  (No embargo, credit to TVA Nouvelles)

Honour to be nominated: results

The Star's own Antonia Zerbisias is the winner of the Canadian Blog Awards, in the "best blog by a journalist" category, with Kady O'Malley and yours truly as runners-up.  I'm delighted to be in such distinguished company and thank you to everyone who voted. Results are here.

"Not urgent" = No-show

Conservatives won't be at tomorrow's meeting of the special Commons committee on Afghanistan, according to Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh, who shared the heads-up on Twitter. Here's how he put it:

the Cons members of the spcl Comte on Afgn will not show up for the mtg called 4 2morrow. Issue of torture not urgent, they claim.

Word of the month: Brazen.

Back to school for Ignatieff

The Liberal leader has announced the 11 campuses he'll be visiting in the New Year, as part of his effort to connect with the "unconverted," as he put it in his interview with this paper last week. Here they are:

•    January 11, 2010 – Nova Scotia Community College
•    January 11, 2010 – Dalhousie University
•    January 12, 2010 – HEC Montréal
•    January 12, 2010 – Concordia University
•    January 13, 2010 – University of Toronto Mississauga
•    January 13, 2010 – McMaster University
•    January 14, 2010 – University of Manitoba
•    January 14, 2010 – University of Calgary
•    January 15, 2010 – University of Victoria
•    January 15, 2010 – University of British Columbia
•    January 18, 2010 – University of Ottawa

Decade of deception

New York Times columnist Frank Rich has written an apt and important summary of the past decade, and it's not pretty. In short, Rich believes that the 21st century -- to date -- belongs to the spinners and the sham artists.

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, (Ben) Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).

 Here in Canada, we can boast, I guess, that we're not as easily fooled -- we didn't join the Iraq war to search for imaginary weapons of mass destruction and our banking system kept us insulated from the worst of the damage of the U.S. market meltdown.   But Rich's (kind of gloomy) retrospective is a good reminder of the need for healthy skepticism.

The lumps of coal in 2009

Lots of interviews with the Liberal leader are now published and online. (National Newswatch has handy links to the series.) You can find my story here, and also this interesting little sidebar -- Michael Ignatieff's answer when I asked him about low points in 2009.  Frankly, I was watching that moment too and could not believe what I was  witnessing  in the House of Commons. 

 Speaking of inglorious politics.... wait a minute... is anyone talking about the sorry state of Canadian politics these days?  In case you've been otherwise occupied, a recap: in the last week, the Conservative government decided to defy an order of Parliament, to boycott a Commons committee meeting on Afghanistan/torture, and now we're hearing talk  that Parliament itself may just be shut down (prorogued). And should you want to criticize/question these decisions, you will be accused of abandoning support for Canadian troops -- at Christmas! How very un-Bing-Crosby-like of you.

If there is any glimmer of interest/unease out there about all this, here's some recommended reading from recent commentary.

There's our own Jim Travers in the Star today.

Out there, if Conservatives have it figured right, the manipulation of an inconvenient Parliament will slide by with the same ease as the piece-by-piece deconstruction of democracy.

Susan Riley, in the Ottawa Citizen, with her usual eloquence, sent this dispatch yesterday.

But at what point do Canadians become alarmed at the absolute control, the intolerance of dissent and the manipulative messaging, often publicly funded, that characterizes this regime? Why aren't we worried now? We elected a minority government in a modern liberal democracy, representing a messy range of opinion. Yet that government operates like a not-so-friendly dictatorship.

And then there's Lawrence Martin,  from earlier this week in the Globe, warning us that collective apathy has allowed the government to do whatever the heck it wants, democracy (the d-word) be damned.

If your campaign is waged effectively, you will enfeeble the checks and balances in the system and give the d-word a good clubbing, emerging very much in control.

That's effectively what's happened in Ottawa over the past four years. The Prime Minister is now in such command that he can get away with pretty much anything. And he is lauded for his conquests.

Does anyone care?  The evidence would seem to indicate otherwise.

**** (Image of stocking comes from http://www.thestockingplace.com/images/1009.jpg)

 

What Ignatieff shouldn't do in 2010

Yesterday, the Liberal leader gave a series of year-end interviews to journalists at Stornoway -- on the understanding that none were published until 3 p.m. today. I went over to the residence yesterday morning and my interview will be published in the Saturday Star tomorrow. I see that CBC is airing their interview tonight on Power and Politics.

Joan Bryden, of Canadian Press, has put her story on the wire this afternoon. Here's a link to the piece, which also features Allan Gregg talking about Ignatieff's problems getting any sustained attention in the media. I would highly suggest that Mr. Ignatieff *not* entertain the idea of doing one thing Gregg suggests.

"He's kind of got to eat a live rat on stage in order to get you (media) guys' attention."