Capital flame

The Olympic torch wound its way through my neighbourhood yesterday in Ottawa and a group of us went out to see friends and colleagues take part. Here's Karl Belanger, communications aide to NDP leader Jack Layton, triumphantly finishing his part of the run, and passing the flame to the next runner. It was great to be able to see this -- well done, Karl.

The annual constitutional crisis

Worth noting: it's December, and the Conservative government is once again at odds with the opposition parties on a foundational principle of Parliament. Make no mistake -- this could be serious.

Last year, the Conservatives  fought  off the challenge by portraying their foes as separatist sympathizers; this year, it seems they're trying to cast the opposition as friendly to the Taliban.

The tactic worked last year. Will it work this year? We'll see. 

The documents problem: a solution?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government appears to be ready to fight Parliament on releasing all the Afghan-detainee documents, unedited.   Or so International Trade Minister Stockwell Day indicated this morning. The argument seems to be that making the documents  available to Parliament is the same thing as releasing them to the public, and from there, it's a small step to making them available to the Taliban, and Canada's enemies.

There is a relatively simple solution to this, and there's precedent for it. Members of the special Commons committee looking into the Afghanistan mission could be given status as privy councillors, which commits them to national secrecy. This is what former prime minister Brian Mulroney did during the Meech Lake constitutional crisis, so that a Commons committee could grapple with a solution.

*** Update *** My old friend Norman Spector, who knows a thing or two about what happened during Meech, he being the senior bureaucrat in charge of the constitution at the time and all, tells me that my memory may be faulty on the Meech precedent.  In fact, I may be thinking of former NDP MP Lorne Nystrom, sworn into the privy council during the Charlottetown constitutional saga. Sorry. it's not like I wrote a book about Charlottetown or anything.

Anyway, when I raised this at Day's news conference today, he didn't respond. But is it an idea worth considering?

Fateful history

The fall of Joe Clark's government, 30 years ago on Sunday, was a fateful moment for Canada. It brought Pierre Trudeau out of retirement and, ultimately, back into power. And that in turn set the stage for the patriation of the Constitution and the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- two game-changing developments that are still making their influence known today.

In today's Star, one of the main players of the time tells his story of that Dec. 13, 1979 moment. Former deputy prime minister Allan J. MacEachen, in an excerpt from forthcoming memoirs, rivetingly  describes what it was like to be at Trudeau's side, literally watching him realize that his political retirement was over.

As in many previous and future parliamentary events, Trudeau and I were deskmates for the calling and taking of the vote that historic night. We had plenty of time to exchange views, but the only comment I recall making to him was that he would be expected to do his duty once the vote was over. He understood what I meant. He understood as well as I did that it would be irresponsible for him to lead our Liberal colleagues in the defeat of the government and then fail to lead them into a resultant election. He gave me his reply in the form of a smile. That was quite enough at that stage. Instead of conversing, we watched the developing scene intently, paying attention particularly to those who were on hand to vote on our side and savouring the knowledge that the NDP were on side and ready to join us in defeating the government.

Trudeau was in high glee when the vote defeating the Clark government was announced. He concentrated his gaze on the prime minister saying to me: "Look at Joe's face. Look at Joe's face."

Defeating the government under Trudeau's leadership was more than the defeat of the Clark government. It was, on the part of each member who voted, an act of confidence in Trudeau that did not terminate at the end of the vote.

Talking vs. listening on Twitter: the political ratio

One of the great things about politicians using social media, it's said, is that it creates two-way conversations between the electors and the elected.

But how much are the politicians listening, as opposed to talking --  as usual -- on Twitter? Former NDP communications guy Ian Capstick inspired me yesterday to look a little more closely into this. Capstick noted that MP Justin Trudeau now was boasting 10,000 followers on Twitter, but the number of people that Trudeau follows is a meagre 62.  That amounts to 0.5 per cent of his followers' list. 

I realized that this could be an interesting form of scorecard. In an ideal world, politicians would be listening as much as they're talking -- so 100 per cent would represent a perfect score.  And then I went and checked the following/follower numbers for leading Canadian politicans and here's what I came up with:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper: 41 per cent

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff: 31 per cent

NDP leader Jack Layton: 54 per cent

Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe: 22 per cent

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney: 9 per cent

Heritage Minister James Moore: 11 per cent

Toronto Centre MP Bob Rae: 41 per cent

Green Party leader Elizabeth May: 74 per cent 

You can draw your own conclusions from this scorecard. Only the NDP and Greens leader are over 50 per cent in this tally.   Ignatieff's pretty far back, behind the Prime Minister, but ministers Moore and Kenney seem to have Twitter set permanently on send, rather than receive. Interesting. If others want to join in the scoring, I'll post any other results.

Oh, I score 87 per cent in this system, and I swear I didn't sign up to follow anyone new to boost my results.

Open government

 Perhaps if the information contained photos or video of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, it wouldn't be so difficult to find out what's  happened with Afghan detainees. For as PMO spokesperson Dimitri Soudas explained to Bruce Cheadle of the Canadian Press, you can't have too many photos and videos of the PM:

"It's another form of communication with the media," Soudas said in an interview. "Sometimes they say a picture is worth a thousand words."

 

"The media can't have it both ways," Soudas recently told CBC.

"They can't criticize us for not providing enough information, and then criticize us for providing too much information."

Um, I think we can.

Eleven years later

On this day in 1998, my old friend Shaughnessy Cohen, a Liberal MP from Windsor,  collapsed in the House of Commons right after Question Period and died a few hours later in hospital. That night, as tonight, was the annual Christmas Party for the caucus; it was a gloomy gathering.  She is still much missed (especially when I want to know what's going on in Liberal caucus). 

But two political developments in particular have put me in mind of Shaughnessy the past few weeks. One was the vote to dismantle the gun registry.  As co-chair of the Liberal caucus committee on gun control, as a lawyer, and as a member of a family with a long attachment to hunting and guns, Shaughnessy, a gun-control advocate, poured her heart and soul into the effort to set up the registry. She would have been saddened by the recent vote in the House of Commons, and especially saddened by the fellow Liberals who voted for the registry's demise.

The other development is the debate over the Conservatives' 10-percenters, alleging connections between Liberals and anti-Semitism. Shaughnessy was head of the Canada-Israel committee in  Parliament and made several trips to Israel to feed her passionate interest in the issue.  Though not a Jewish person herself, she was married to one, and made it a little life mission to gain a better understanding of Israel and anti-Semitism.  During the recent debate over this in the Commons, one of the most eloquent interventions came from Joe Comartin, the man who now holds Shaughnessy's old seat in Parliament.  He is a New Democrat, and was Shaughn's political rival back in Windsor, but I do know that she regarded him warmly (and even predicted to me that he'd probably win that seat from her someday).  I believe she would have been proud of what he had to say about the Conservatives' ad campaign  and his staunch condemnation of it.

These days, Shaughnessy's name is attached to the annual political-book prize by the Writers' Trust, handed out each year at the gala Politics and the Pen dinner.  At the next dinner, in March, the Writers' Trust intends to do a little tribute to Shaughnessy, to mark the 10th anniversary of the prize established in her name.  As one of the organizers explained, it's useful to remind people about the remarkable woman who left us too soon, at the age of 50.  This post is dedicated to that same goal -- 11 years later,  Shaughn's  not forgotten.

Conservatives against HST

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is not the only leader having trouble holding the team together on the HST. Conservative MP Dona Cadman has told  the Surrey North Delta Leader she's voting No too. That probably explains why Conservatives aren't whipping up too much of a you're-weak campaign against the Liberal leader over  Keith Martin's announced intent to be absent for the votes this week.

VIPs' Christmas reading

Prominent members of the Public Policy Forum have let us in on the books they plan to read this holiday season; some interesting choices. If their tastes are any indication of the wider book market this season, history is big and John English's Trudeau biography is going to do well at the cash register.

Former privy council clerk Kevin Lynch has listed Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani and  The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power by David E. Sanger.

Conservative MP James Rajotte plans to read Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter; Milennium: the End of the World the Forging of Christendom and Fathers and Sons by Ivan  Turgenev.

NDP MP Paul Dewar is reading Pierre Berton: A Biography, by Brian McKillop

Former justice minister Allan Rock, now president of Ottawa University, is reading Memories of the Future, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.

Allan Gregg, regular panelist on CBC's At Issue panel, is reading Journals: 1952-2000 by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.  and The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles.

The full list is available  by clicking here.

Ignatieff responds to "coup" story

Here's Michael Ignatieff's view of the story that appeared in The Star yesterday, during a scrum with reporters a few moments ago.

"I think it starts by not taking Angelo Persichilli too seriously. Look, this is a tempest in a teacup. This is not serious business. There's journalism -- and you're all reputable and thoughtful journalists -- and then there's gossip. And this is gossip. I'm continuing to do my job. We've made some tough decisions, the caucus has held together through those decisions, I'm proud of the decisions that  we've been taking, sometimes they're not popular but they're in the national interest. I've made them. The caucus has stuck with me."