Guergis's troubles

This is quite a remarkable editorial in the King Township Sentinel, coming from Helena Guergis's home riding and written by someone who's obviously a friend of the former minister of state. On top of the sad details of what Guergis has been enduring the past few months, it also contains the news that even Guergis doesn't know what the RCMP is investigating.  I'm copying it in full here:

Helena Guergis: Much ado about nothing

The story of Helena Guergis and her husband Rahim Jaffer may be “much ado about nothing.”

It seems that media has given excessive attention to this matter, but most of what has been reported appears to be difficult to verify.

We have been trying not to report on the personal life of this MP from nearby Simcoe — Grey ,but it seems now is the time to reveal more to you since it has moved into the realm of dramatically affecting her job.

Yes Helena, did throw a tantrum at Charlottetown airport but this was following her second miscarriage in a few months and when one’s hormones are badly out of whack, life can be difficult. She immediately apologized for her behaviour.

As we all know, Helena and Rahim got married right after the last election about a year and a half ago. They expressed at the time that they wanted to start a family.

As for Jaffer having a meeting with Nazim Gillani, that does appear to have taken place but what Gillani boasted about in his e-mail seems to be in the character of this promoter exaggerating events.

We remember well when former MP Paul Bonwick lost Simcoe — Grey to Guergis, that he was not very popular in the Paul Martin camp. Most reasonable people can imagine that Stephen Harper would not have been very happy with Jaffer for losing an Alberta seat. For anyone to claim that Jaffer had a big influence in the PM’s office is beyond belief and certainly mystified Harper’s team.

As for the investigations into Guergis, a lot appears to be bogus. The ethics commissioner is not investigating her and as for the 100 per cent mortgage on her Angus home, that doesn’t appear to be an issue. Lots of people have 100 per cent mortgages.

As for the RCMP investigation, no-one seems to know what that is about (not even Guergis) except that it is a complaint from a third party.

We were trying to keep Helena’s personal life personal and with two miscarriages, finishing off her Master’s degree, dealing with a heart attack and two cancers among close family members all within a few months, we thought she was performing as well as could be expected and we really have seen nothing to change that opinion.

Guergis has offered to cooperate completely with any investigation. Let’s hope this cloud gets wrapped up quickly.

Hey kids, how'd you like to run the country?

You just can't get good help in Ottawa these days.  This is, I kid you not, a real ad, for a real, forthcoming job fair. Who knows -- they might even start hiring ministers this way someday. There is an opening at Status of Women.

Are you interested in working in a Minister's office but aren't sure where to start?

 

Please join us for an informal networking reception Thursday evening where you will have the opportunity to meet with Chiefs of Staff and discuss availabilities in their offices.

 

When:   Thursday, April 15^th, 2010

               7:00-9:00pm

 

Where: 131 Queen Street, 8th Floor 

 

Please register for this event by emailing your CV to jacqueline.bird@tc.gc.ca   or aaron.campbell@pmo-cpm.gc.ca

 

You will then receive an email confirming your registration and receipt of your information.  Please also bring copies of your CV with you to the event.

 

We look forward to meeting you.

 

Sincerely,

 

Guy Giorno                                    Chris Froggatt

Chief of Staff                                 Chief of Staff

Office of the Prime Minister              Office of the Minister

                                                    Transport, Infrastructure and     Communities

 

The ex-driver speaks

In this morning's Globe, we have a former chauffeur talking about Guergis and Jaffer. Is that unusual? You bet it is. Next to the RCMP, I don't know a more discreet group of Parliament Hill employees. Back when West Wing was in its prime, I had this recurring idea for a Canadian political TV drama that would revolve around the drivers of Parliament Hill. They are silent witnesses to all kinds of political events -- they have opinions about them too. They have great stories, if you can convince them that you won't put them in the newspaper. Yet most of them are determinedly non-political -- they've had Liberal and Conservative bosses. What matters is how they're treated. When one of them speaks out, even from post-employment, you can guess that there are some treatment issues there. 

Usually, but not always, when you see a politician going down in flames in Ottawa, you find stories of unhappy or disgruntled staff.  Other politicians  might want to take note. 

Relatedly, my colleague Jim Travers has a column today about the unbearable lightness of being a minister in Harper's government. This is another situation that had a limited life span, as far as I could predict. When you have a cabinet that doesn't even know what's in the Throne Speech until a few hours before it's delivered, you don't even have a focus group anymore -- you have the human equivalent of office furniture, or "potted plants" in Greg Weston's famous phrase. 

What took so long?

Political commentators have many synonyms for "I don't know" ... one is "time will tell" and another is "there are more questions than answers here." And given about how little was said about the departure of Helena Guergis from cabinet and caucus yesterday, the question-to-answer ratio in this case is rather large. I'll throw out some, mostly revolving around process or optics: 

1. If the Star's ace reporter, Kevin Donovan, was able to find out all he did about events surrounding Mr. Jaffer's arrest and "business" dealings, why couldn't the government? Wouldn't you think that government lawyers or even some of that huge communications bureau in the PMO would high-tail it down to Southern Ontario and ask some questions of their own? Like -- "Is there anything here that could hurt the government?" It has been seven or so months since Jaffer's arrest. 

We're not talking simply about political embarrassment here, spin control or keeping up  appearances. If it was only on Thursday night that Harper discovered something about Ms. Guergis that required RCMP intervention, what has the government been doing up to now to protect the integrity of cabinet and government? Couldn't someone have taken some time out of all that recalibrating, proroguing, etc. to see whether institutional interests had been compromised? 

2. I'm curious too why Mr. Jaffer's website and its use of Conservative logos only became problematic for the government on Thursday.  When we reporters put something online that the PMO finds distressing, it takes approximately 10 minutes after it's posted for the phone calls to start. Again, seven months after the arrest, more than a year since he became an ex-MP and husband to a cabinet minister, and no one thought to take a glance at what he was peddling? Kady O'Malley tells me that she made mention of the Conservative logos on his website several months ago (can't find the link). If they weren't going to check for themselves, wasn't that a tip enough? 

It all begs the larger question of due diligence from a government that has constantly shown an obsession with controlling the message -- at least superficially. Someone, though, was clearly too preoccupied or maybe too confident in PMO  spin abilities  to seriously look into matters in this affair that had direct bearing on the government. Or maybe they've forgotten the first rule of politics -- it isn't your enemies who will do you in, it's your friends.  

Two words: why they stuck

Non-Canadians, or apolitical types, might have been confused today when the Canadian Twittersphere exploded with a couple of words lifted from the lead of a Toronto Star story on Rahim Jaffer. I wrote about this burst of activity in a previous post, but I thought it might be worth putting it a bit of context. 

First, I'm giving Kady O'Malley (@Kady on Twitter) some credit for an early sighting of those words as rather unusual in a Canadian political story. Early this morning, Kady  noted that she might get through her entire journalistic career without ever using that colourful phrase in  anything she ever wrote in the future. 

And that summed it up -- it isn't every day that political reporting drifts into what Leslie MacKinnon, on CBC's The National described tonight, as akin to a bad mystery novel. Is it sad that a former member of Parliament is accused of peddling non-existent influence in such low-rent circumstances? Yes.  Is it at odds with the Harper government's claims to have no truck nor trade with that kind of politics? Of course it is. Will it hurt the career of his wife, the Minister of State for the Status of Women, Helena Guergis? Almost certainly. 

So why the hilarity on Twitter today? About two words? 

First, I think that  there was a bit of journalistic self-deprecation/glee in  "playing" with that hashtag today (note to non-Twitter users: this is a way of sorting the little bursts of information and smart remarks, by putting a # sign in front of a word or phrase, so you can search Twitter or arrange your settings to see variations on a theme).  It was, as Kady O'Malley noted, a rare adventure to have such a colourful story in politics. The last time I remember something like this was when Belinda Stronach crossed the floor, in the process dumping her boyfriend Peter MacKay, and a subsequent interview in a potato patch. It should be noted that the then opposition leader, Stephen Harper, played right into the melodrama, even agreeing to take part in a hugely awkward football toss on Parliament Hill (sorry, can't find link), to show how he was helping his pal get over the heartbreak.  I can't wait to see how he's going to help his minister of state deal with this crushing blow in her personal life. 

Second point (sort of like the first) every part of this Guergis/Jaffer story is like a soap opera. Thrown boots, tantrums, arrests -- it's celebrity gossip, TMZ, on Parliament Hill. The fact that we've now got "busty hookers" in the story sent many of us over the edge.

Third, the Twitterverse is the land of smart remarks. At some point today, the challenge was dropped -- make those two words a trending topic (most often cited) on Twitter in Canada.  Almost incidental to the root of the story, politicos and journalists took up the challenge; that's a game we can play.  The more ridiculous or tendentious the connection, the better. I thoroughly enjoyed the creativity of some entrants. 

So is all this proof of some general dumbing-down or lost sight of the real issue here? I don't think so. We'll be back to the more pedestrian reporting and commenting very soon. For instance, when we keep having to report the PMO's very imaginative, oft-repeated "the padlock is locked" thing. (I'm not linking to it here, that's all you need to know about it.) For today, however, thanks to The Star's Kevin Donovan, we were giddily lifted out of the world where politics is all smug men in suits, uttering inane repetition. 

Two words. Rhymes with rusty cookers.

Just two words in the lead of  the blockbuster story on Rahim Jaffer, in today's Star, have started a small stampede on Twitter. As I write this, there is a concerted effort to have "busty hookers" become a trending topic in the Canadian Twitterverse. The attempts are hilarious. You can view them here.

Or, you could also take a look at what happens when you take the word "Canadians" out of the Speech from the Throne and insert today's two new favourite words.

Download Speech From Throne

Media control

Here's a new twist in controlling the media... Ban them from the washrooms. Well, the women, anyway. 

My colleague Tanya Talaga snapped this photo today while covering Harper's trip to Mississauga.  Here's what she sent along with the photo: 

At a joint federal-provincial infrastructure announcement with Prime Minister Stephen Harper female journalists were not allowed to use the bathroom due to security reasons. There was only one bathroom on site at the Mississauaga maintenance yard and it was men's only. When Sun columnist Christina Blizzard tried to use it, she was removed by security.