Management, autocracy, tyranny

At week's end, we have some smart columnists reflecting on what we've been learning about Harper's leadership through the combined controversy over Guergis-Jaffer and the parliamentary showdown over Afghan documents. There's our own Chantal Hébert and then, some other must-reads: 

Paul Wells, in Macleans, has some important insights into the PM's obsession with secrecy. I particularly like this turn of phrase: 

But this Prime Minister cannot help himself. If he knows something you don’t, he values that thing out of all proportion to its true worth.

And this little snippet should give us all pause. 

During the 2006 election, one Conservative staffer was assigned to stake out the coffee shop where Liberal staffers would pause from long days in their party’s campaign war room. History doesn’t record that the overheard chit-chat did the Conservatives any good, but it made the leader feel better. Today, reporters seeking comment on any story are quizzed at length about their intentions. They may or may not get a call back with any information. But the information they surrender is collated and analyzed for trends on the issues that interest the media.

I'm betting the PMO is now wishing they paid as much attention to Mr. Jaffer's website and conversations as they do to reporters. As I mentioned on CBC this week, it takes the PMO approximately 10 minutes within putting something online to let reporters  know that we've done something to offend the folks at Langevin.  It took more than seven months after Mr. Jaffer's arrest for the PMO to exhibit any curiosity about his post-political dealings. 

The other must read of today is Dan Gardner's column in the Citizen. He apologizes for his alarmist tone, but I'm glad someone is rattling people's attention about this parliamentary standoff. If you thought prorogation was a slap in the face to democracy, pay some overall attention to the trend line here, Gardner is warning. 

Most Canadians have little or no understanding of how parliamentary government works, and Stephen Harper has consistently stoked that ignorance and used it to his advantage. He governs like a president, and since Canadians' understanding of government comes mostly from American television and movies, that seems reasonable.

What people don't realize, however, is that the American president is restrained by institutional checks and balances, including a strong and independent Congress. Stephen Harper is subject to no such checks and balances: If he is a president, he is a one-man government.

Errol Mendes calls it "prime ministerial autocracy." In 17th-century England, they had a simpler term for it. It is "tyranny."

Women in politics

The next federal election is shaping up to be a good one for women candidates, according to this impressive website, which is keeping track of nominations in all parties.

The New Democrats, so far, have a whopping 40 per cent women candidates. The Liberals, true to Stéphane Dion's promise to run women in at least one-third of the ridings across Canada, are at 37 per cent.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are stuck back at 17 per cent in terms of women candidates, but they can boast the largest number of candidates nominated so far overall - 262 out of 308, or 85 per cent.

For some time now, most pundits have been predicting that the next election campaign will be a nasty one. But people have also been predicting that the tone of politics will improve when more women enter the fray. It may be interesting to see which prediction turns out to be true.

Buckler rides the resignation wave

Sandra Buckler, the Prime Minister's communications chief, is leaving her job. Will this change things between the PMO and the media in Harper's Ottawa? My view is, probably not much. I was never really sure what Buckler did, frankly, beyond implementing higher-ups' wishes to antagonize the parliamentary press gallery and sending out terse, non-informational emails. I'm sure they'll be able to find someone else to do that job. Ottawa is filled with folks who can follow orders.

Buckler's departure, actually, is part of a larger wave of resignations we have been seeing and are going to see in the days ahead. Many will be prompted simply by the fact that "it's time" - Buckler, chief of staff Ian Brodie, etc.

Others may be looking at next week - July 2, 2008, when the measures of the federal accountability act come into force. Why is that relevant? Because the act creates something known as "designated office holders" - ministers, ministerial staff and others - who are not allowed to lobby for five years after leaving their jobs on the Hill.

So there will be plenty of folks in Harper's Ottawa right now, envisioning a lucrative lobbying career, who may be packing up their desks as soon as  today. Never  mind that Harper once famously said: "If there are (Parliament) Hill staffers who dream of making it rich trying to lobby a future Conservative government, if that's true of any of you, you had better make different plans, or leave."

One of my colleagues, returning from the 2005  news conference where that statement was  uttered, translated it this way: "Liberals can't be trusted, but I don't trust you guys much either."

At any rate, watch for a trickle or even a flow of exits before next Wednesday. And then we can start speculating on who's going to replace all these people.

UPDATE: Garth Turner has an extensive list of what Ms. Buckler did in her job at the PMO.

I join Garth, by the way, in wishing her well in future endeavours.

Cabinet shuffle

A contingent of us from the Star bureau are here at Rideau Hall for the so-callled mini-shuffle.

UPDATE: 7, 11:58 a.m. The irrepressible Senator Fortier did manage to say a few words to the media, but he spoke only of what a nice day it was and his vague plans for lunch. Paradis, new to cabinet, didn't buck the gag order much, saying only he'd "work hard." Moore said he "had a lot of work to do." I don't think anything uttered here today will be making it into Columbo's Canadian Quotations.

UPDATE: 6, 11:31 a.m. The PMO spokesperson, Dimitri Soudas, is just explaining to reporters why neither the Prime Minister or ministers are talking to reporters after this swearing-in. It has something to do with the fact that it's only a small shuffle.

UPDATE: 5, 11:20 a.m. And here's the official announcement, just handed to us: Emerson confirmed as Foreign Affairs minister. Fortier is now Minister of International Trade. Christian Paradis is Minister of Public Works. James Moore is secretary of state for the Pacific Gateway, the Olympics and Official Languages. The press release calls these "small but important changes."

UPDATE: 4, 11:10 I've just been reminded that this is the 15th anniversary of Kim Campbell taking office as Canada's first woman prime minister. And now, 15 years later, women are, uh, actually, nowhere to be found at this shuffle.

UPDATE: 3, 10:59 a.m. And now the Prime Minister has arrived. No sign of his wife, Laureen, and only a couple of communications folks. More evidence of a very low-key shuffle.

UPDATE 2, 10:53 And now Senator Michael Fortier, the unelected minister of public works, has rolled up to Rideau Hall, wife and children in tow. This is looking like a reprise of that first shuffle in February 2006, with Emerson and Fortier in starring roles.

The only thing to report so far is the arrival of James Moore, the B.C. MP who is finally getting a spot in cabinet it seems. Word is that he'll be a junior minister with responsibility for the Vancouver Olympics and the Pacific Gateway.

1. 

   We also have a protester here carrying a sign protesting David Emerson as a "hypocrite, coward and fraud."

   Emerson, who attracted a lot of attention at Harper's first cabinet swearing-in because of his floor crossing, is due to be confirmed today as foreign affairs minister.

Dion goes with hunch, Harper skips lunch

We interrupt this carbon-tax-announcement day to point out an interesting contrast, on the Canada-U.S. political front.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is planning to stay away from John McCain's lunch in Ottawa tomorrow - not wanting to get himself (any further) embroiled in the U.S. presidential election.

Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, however, is planning to attend the Democratic convention in Denver this August, where Barack Obama's candidacy will be officially sealed.

Usually the Liberals hold their end-of-summer retreat around the final week in August. But caucus sources say that this year's gathering, in Winnipeg, has been pushed to the first week of September so that Dion can be in Denver.

UPDATE: New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton will also be in Denver, we've learned. Layton has long made no secret of his admiration for Obama.

UPDATE 2 (June 20): I learned later last night that Stephane Dion, while he did consider  participating  in some event at the Denver convention, has decided not to accept the invitation.  The Winnipeg caucus gathering is still in September, a week later, but Dion will be watching proceedings in Denver like most of us - from afar, through the TV.

But Layton will be at the Democratic convention. That plan hasn't changed.  And Dion's office expects that some Liberal MPs will be in the crowd too.

For whom the bells toll

Presumably to play some mischief with the carbon-tax announcement, the Conservatives have called a vote for about 11 am. All the time Dion is talking, the Commons' bells are ringing in the background.

Car and driver

Industry Minister Jim Prentice gets ready to test-drive (or test-ride?) a new Ford Flex, made in Oakville, on Parliament Hill this morning:

Worried is as worried does

The smartest politicians, usually, are the ones who know how to read the fear in their rivals'  strategies -- and then know what to do with that fear.

Stephen Harper is one of those politicians. It's said that back in the spring of 2006 he watched Paul Martin making a budget deal with Jack Layton and realized then that Liberals were desperate to hold on to power.  Less than a year later, Harper was Prime Minister.

So where would Harper's rivals look for fear in his actions today?

One tiny hint is contained in the aforementioned post by Stephen Taylor, where the Conservative blogger acknowledges that the governing party feels vulnerable on the environment. He describes this as one of the "rare, if wrongly perceived strengths" of Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.

That same message turns up at the end of a good column in the Sun yesterday by Greg Weston, in which we learn that the Conservative government -- not party, government --  was looking to pay people to "evaluate" the long-dead Liberal government program on climate change. (Guess what kind of evaluation it was seeking?)

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn has nixed the contracts, probably because the whole thing looked a little transparently political.

It's also possible that Lunn realized that this was just more evidence of Conservative nervousness about the environment. Why give the enemy any proof that you're worried about the issue?

Watching for copyright reform reaction

The copyright-reform legislation has been released, at last.

For reaction, we'll watch the opposition parties of course, but Facebook is the place to go to see how this is landing at the grassroots.

A Facebook group, Fair Copyright for Canada, amassed tens of thousands of members last Christmas when the reforms were merely a rumour. As of this morning, the Facebook group has 41,670 members and there is talk on the site of doing a big invitation push today in the wake of the announcement by Industry Minister Jim Prentice and Heritage Minister Josee Verner.

The founder of this site, incidentally, is University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, who will be weighing in with his reaction in tomorrow's Star.

Partisan politics

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have grown more careful about being partisan when operating under the Government of Canada banner, especially since they stopped that "Canada's New Government" silliness earlier this year.

But this press release, from the Government House Leader, Peter Van Loan, appears to stray deeply into partisan territory.

In fact, I think it says here that partisan stuff like this is definitely a violation of the communications policy of the Government of Canada. You use your party website to do that -- if, for instance, you want to PhotoShop your opponents' head and put a funny hat on him or turn him into a walking salad. 

I'm looking specifically at the part that says the communications function of the government of Canada includes: "providing communications support and advice to ministers and senior officials on (non-partisan) government matters, including the preparation of speeches, news releases, briefing notes, presentations, memoranda and correspondence."