Not quite a Hallmark sentiment

A giant, "Support our Troops" card is circulating around the Commons lobby today and MPs of all political stripes are signing it with heartfelt sentiment. Conservative MP Rob Anders, however, appears to have opted for a more, ahem, robust message. Here's a snapshot of his signature on the card:

I don't recall- part II

Okay, I really don't mean to pick on Jason Kenney here on this blog, but this little blast from the past (CP story, circa 1995)  is really too good to pass up, given all the concern about astronomical security costs for the coming G8 and G20 summits next month.  Call it another instalment in the that-was-then, this-is-now series:

Tax group says Halifax wrong choice for G-7 Canadian Press Newswire

Sun Apr 30 1995, 1:21pm ET

Section: National General News

Byline: By Steve Lambert

Dateline: HALIFAX

 

HALIFAX (CP) - The federal government was wrong to put next month's G-7 summit in Halifax because the city needs too many government-funded fixups, says a national taxpayers' lobby group.

 

The heads of the leading industrialized nations meet in the Nova Scotia capital June 15-17 and the federal, provincial and local governments are spending $8.1 million to spruce it up.

 

The federal government ``should have chosen a location which wouldn't cost that kind of money,'' said Jason Kenney, spokesman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a watchdog group promoting cuts in taxes and government spending.

 

``There are conference facilities available, I'm sure, in that part of the world as well as across Canada that could have hosted an event like this without spending several millon dollars to upgrade them.''

 

Halifax has a modern trade and convention centre, but the G-7 isn't being held there. Organizers have chosen instead two waterfront buildings - the brick Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and a nearby green-tinted office building that some locals call The Green Toad.

 

The infrastructure money is being used for everything from road repairs and a new outdoor stage to temporary parks that will cover vacant downtown lots. Boards around empty buildings will be painted.

 

``We're supposed to be a major industrialized country,'' Kenney said from Toronto.

 

``A major industrialized country surely has conference sites where it can host significant dignitaries without having to spend millions of dollars sprucing up the environment.''

 

Kenney's remarks are not the first critical pre-summit comments on Halifax or the province.

 

An article in the February edition of the magazine Stern - widely circulated in Germany, one of the G-7 countries - called Nova Scotia a ``dump'' and its people lazy.

 

The magazine said ``fish catches are unloaded and inspected in slow motion, and everybody has a minute to chat.''

 

On top of infrastructure spending, Ottawa will pay millions for security, accommodations and other costs.

 

But local politicians and some economists say they're confident that economic spinoffs and future tourism will more than make up for the spending.

 

``My feeling is that the biggest impact will be on the reputation of the city,'' said David Amirault, an analyst with the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council.

 

The three-day summit is expected to pump $7.3 million into local businesses and the Nova Scotia government, and Amirault said images of Halifax broadcast around the world will boost tourism for years to come.

 

Kenney disagrees.

 

``I'm sure it will raise Halifax's name recognition throughout much of the world,'' he said. ``But apart from seeing some photo-ops with politicians, I don't know how this is going to promote tourism to Halifax.''

 

"I don't recall": Kenney

Further to the previous post, in which I mentioned the lack of institutional memory in Ottawa, have a look at this video, illustrative of amnesia on the part of a senior minister in this government. Watch it right through to the end. It's worth it.

Harper and Chretien

Lawrence Martin, who wrote a biography of Jean Chretien and is currently working on a new book about Harper's government, is well-placed to observe the similarities between the former prime minister and the current one. He's penned a good column today on that subject. 

Martin's point is important -- Harper has chosen to imitate all the worst things about Chretien; not his strengths. In Ottawa these days, where institutional memory runs to about two weeks, it's easy to forget that Chretien could be partisan and bullying too - never so much as he was with his perceived enemies within his own, Liberal party. And we saw how that worked out. Let's not forget that Chretien, by 2002-03, could not muster his own party behind him. It makes that little line of Chretien's the other day to Harper -- about how  someday he'll face a hanging too -- a bit more than a throwaway joke. 

Coincidentally, I was talking last night about the similarities between Harper and Chretien's style of government and the way both take advantage of the media's need to focus on news. We are incapable, it seems, of reporting on things that don't happen or words that aren't said. And in that situation, the best kind of ministers are those who babble on with empty talking points, as Bev Oda and Rona Ambrose did yesterday at the Commons committee on the status of women. 

One would think, with abortion and maternal health at the top of the news agenda, that hearing from these ministers would be a significant event on Parliament Hill this spring. But in one hour, the two ministers simply talked out the clock with empty rhetoric, avoided any questions and kept changing the subject in a bid to talk about (yawn) the bad old Liberal government and bad bad things that anyone but Conservatives stand for. The most spirited part of the day was when Oda was chased by reporters all the way to her car (including a bathroom stop) by reporters who wanted to know her contribution to the decision-making process in which Canada banned support for abortions overseas. Nothing happened. Nothing was said. Hence, no news. This is ideal in a government -- like Harper's or Chretien's -- in which the objective is to keep voters bored, apathetic and tuned out. Just watch Question Period any day and see how many times the government talks about Liberals. You'd swear the Conservatives  were still in the opposition benches, even now, four years after moving to the other side of the Commons.  

But make no mistake, Harper's government knows this is boring and meaningless. That's the idea. If you tune them out, chances are better that they'll stay in power. Chretien benefited for years from a divided opposition and Canadians' vague idea that  if they weren't hearing anything about politics in Ottawa, things were probably just fine. Harper has learned that lesson well. 

The currency plunge of information

Every reporter who comes to Ottawa is told: "information is currency" here in the capital. It's become a cliche.  I'm not sure the public agrees. 

Look at public reaction, for instance, to the ongoing controversy about disclosure of MPs' expenses. If I read the polls and the commentary correctly, Canadians want to know every single detail of where MPs spend their money. Anything less than full disclosure is unacceptable. 

We don't see the same reaction, however, at the repeated suppression of information here in Ottawa by this government. The fact that the Conservatives have moved this week to prevent staffers from testifying at committees is not stirring popular outrage, as far as I can see.  Hiding money, now that's one thing. Hiding information? Big shrug. Barbara Yaffe usefully links the two types of non-transparency in her Vancouver Sun column today. 

 Remember too, there wasn't any huge reaction when the government waited more than three months to even respond to a Commons order to produce Afghanistan documents. But proroguing Parliament? That did get the public riled, but again, a lot of the anger revolved around suggestions that MPs were being paid to do nothing. 

It's the money thing that gets people upset when it comes to politics -- information, not so much. So maybe that old cliche isn't all that accurate? 

Chretien as fine art

A little more than six years after he left power, Jean Chretien is back on Parliament Hill to have his official portrait added to the gallery of former prime ministers on the walls of Centre Block. No one wants to miss today's event (except Paul Martin, probably) and  Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be making remarks.

Personally, I'm hoping the  painting  looks a little like this. 

Ah, memories. Here's the CBC video archive of that day. 

But looking at the website of the artist commissioned to do the portrait, Christan Nicholson, we'll probably see something more like this.  Here's how Mr. Nicholson (rather immodestly) describes his work.

With the passing of time I have become recognized as Canada's foremost portrait painter. My training at Mount Allison University was academic, learning from techniques developed during the Italian Renaissance through the Parisian Academy period under the tutelage of Lawren Harris, David Silverberg and E.B.Pulford. This means I completed thousands of hours of figure drawing and painting , learning chiaroscuro to create form, and the structure and proportion of the human body. I was always first in my class and, as a result, was the first person in the history of Mount Allison to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts cum laude. Today, there are few places in North America where the academic tradition is fundamental to a B.F.A. program.

I draw the composition directly on the canvas and begin the oil painting with an underpainting in sepia tones (a brown and cream rendition of the final painting). This is both as an aid and so that raw white canvas does not show through at any stage of the painting. (Many masterpieces are unfinished paintings, but look finished because of the underpainting - for example, Degas' "Portrait of a Lady" at our National Gallery.)

From here my own individual technique and style takes over. I work in glazes, often of pure color in the beginning. From there the painting is worked up in layers of thin oil paint. At a certain point the brush strokes become more evident with final strokes of thicker paint.

I am particularly noted for capturing some aspect of the sitter's personality on canvas. This is innate to myself, and cannot be taught. Just as there is a life-like quality to my work (as if the person is about to speak, or is looking at you or about to walk off the canvas). Everyone comments on this.

My work is considered realistic yet contemporary. The painting's development from drawing to the final thick brush strokes can be seen if the painting is observed closely. There is a luminosity of colour and a striking use of light particular to my own style of portraiture.

Stephen Harper and religion

There's been a lot of talk this week about the influence of the Christian right on Stephen Harper's government. Primarily, this is the result of Marci McDonald's newly released book, The Armageddon Factor. Exquisitely timed, as Antonia Zerbisias pointed out in the Star this week, this comes on the heels of Harper's decision to ban support for abortion in overseas aids projects and at the same time as the National Prayer Breakfast and the huge March for Life Rally on Parliament Hill. 

Paul Wells, in Macleans, has weighed in with some skepticism about McDonald's arguments, saying more or less that she's overstating the whole thing. 

Here's what I know. Back before he became prime minister, Harper and I used to talk quite  a bit. No surprise. We're contemporaries on the Hill; the same age and (believe it or not) we were of similar views on things like Meech Lake, democratic reform  and political cynicism in general. He helped me a lot with my book on the Charlottetown accord and gave me a lot of good advice/insights through the years. I think he's changed, but that's a topic for another day.  

In all my conversations with Harper, the subject of religion never came up. Except once. I asked him why he was inserting the God-bless stuff into his speeches when he became the leader of the Canadian Alliance. He said, cryptically: "You'd understand if you had children." Fair enough. We left it at that. 

The only other insight I had into Harper and his religion was shortly after he won the 2006 election and a then-new book, the Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper, by Lloyd Mackey, implied that Harper and his wife, Laureen, were deeply religious.  She was keen to correct that record and got in touch with me to help do that among the media. She wanted folks to know that Harper was only an occasional church-goer (maybe a half-dozen times a year?) and that she and her alleged Christian-temperance family celebrated the election win with cases of beer. I duly passed the word around. 

Does this mean that all this talk of Christian influence is wrong-headed? As mentioned above, I don't claim to have any special understanding of  the Harper I see as prime minister and have a hard time connecting the dots from the guy I used to know with the one I see in power. That's not unusual, though. Many folks change when they come to office; some for the worse, some for the better. 

What is clear is that he now sees no downside in giving some air time to the Christian right among his supporters. As I noted in the story of the pro-life rally this week, no one is telling these folks to shut the f--- up. They're not being punished, as Diane Ablonczy was last year, for being overly visible with controversial folks.  Is that a tactical or theological development? I'd lean toward this being a political calculation by Harper and his advisers; political calculating being the the closest thing I've seen to a religious crusade  in this regime. McDonald, as far as I've seen in interviews, seems to be making the same point: whether or not Stephen Harper agrees with the organized Christian right, he's sending some important signals to them in recent weeks. They seem to be happy about that, and so they should be. 

The digital future

I'm away at a conference for the early part this week, missing all the excitement over Helena Guergis going public and so on. I'm sure I'll be able to catch up tomorrow upon return. 

 The conference is Canada 3.0 and a few of us from the media have come here to see if there's any clear route to the future of our industry. My colleague Chris Carter and I are putting most of impressions on Twitter -- hashtag is #can30 for the really curious.

 For now, after day one, there are, as the cliché goes, more questions than answers. The fact that the Industry Minister arrived with a consultation paper, rather than anything more concrete, is ample illustration of that fact. But for some really smart questions, read David Eaves here. He has  the most succinct and eloquent description of where things are at right now, in terms of the conference and the wider issues out there. I hope to have more to say upon my return. 

Women on the outside

Women's groups have rallied to the cause this week, but not to the cause of the former status of women minister Helena Guergis. This is probably because it was never clear to women's organizations what Guergis had ever done for them. 

Guergis has been cut loose this week, permanently, it seems, from the Conservative government. Perhaps now she might want to talk about this government and women. What she saw; what she did. She is, after all, under no official orders to shut the f--- up. Just a thought. 

Where I work

Today's Question Period should be stricken from the record, in my view, just in case aliens ever land here and are moved to read Hansard to see if there are signs of intelligent life. But that's just one person's opinion. For the full story, click here. 

Update: And for a view from the public galleries, click here to see what MP Glen Pearson wrote about a group from London, Ont. who were watching the proceedings. 

We have reaction from Minister Baird, belatedly. He says he wasn't quoting Martin Luther King, whose precise quote, he notes, was "let freedom ring." He says if he'd been quoting King, he would have had the quote correct. 

Baird's aide, James Kusie,  would like to correct the record too and adds this to the debate in an email sent to me a little while ago: "This is what Liberals think of duck hunters and farmers. They equate them with murderers. More evidence of their culture war and of Ignatieff being out of touch with rural Canada." 

Yes, this is where I work. At other workplaces, I think this would be called dysfunctional. At school, this would be called recess.