Bitterness rising?

Somehow, it feels like there must be some political connection to this newest poll (.pdf) by Angus Reid.

Apparently, a lot of Canadians believe people are more angry this year than they were last year - with women and young people reporting they're losing their tempers more often. Women and young people are also most likely to report feeling alienated from politics too.

Anecdotally, I know that fellow reporters on Parliament Hill have noted a nastier tone in correspondence and emails. And in the daily political fray, things are meaner all around. Jeffrey Simpson notes that today in The Globe and Mail (subscription req'd), with regard to the NDP.

Or maybe it's just the weather.

Politics no kids' game

Here's a picture (at right) of the three children that London North Centre MP Glen Pearson and his wife, Jane Roy, adopted from Sudan. Two of them just arrived Canada last summer – after Pearson had to jump through some considerable immigration hoops of his own with this Conservative government.

Lucky kids – they were in the Commons gallery today to witness this delightful display of democracy in their new home country. Enduring some heckling from the likes of Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg on his first question about proposed immigration changes, Pearson persisted:

 

Mr. Glen Pearson: Mr. Speaker, six months ago in this House, the House rose and applauded the arrival of my two children from Darfur including the immigration minister and I appreciated it from everyone here. If this law were to go through, thousands of families like mine might never experience the joy of such a moment.

My children are in Ottawa today and for the sake of many like them, will the minister pull these proposals out of the larger bill and let it be debated fully in this House? There is too much at stake here in Canada. It is who we are. Let these families come, minister. Let them come.

Hon. Diane Finley: Mr. Speaker, where was that member when we were trying to protect the children of this nation between 14 and 16 years old by raising the age of protection? We are working for families. We have already improved the processing times for family reunification by up to 40%. We want to get families reunited faster and more skilled workers here sooner, after the Liberals did nothing for 13 years except balloon the backlog.

 

Yes, that seems to be Finley changing the subject – and as we heard it, appearing to accuse Pearson of being negligent about children and crime. Very nice.

 

Elections cash handed out

Perhaps this might prod the political parties toward the campaign trail?

Elections Canada has doled out some cash to them — the quarterly allowances to which they're all entitled under financing-reform legislation. Here's what was deposited in the coffers of the five major parties as the first of three installments for 2008.

Bloc Québécois	$742,042
Conservative Party of Canada	$2,567,462
Green Party of Canada	$317,258
Liberal Party of Canada	$2,140,041
New Democratic Party	$1,237,180

Live blog: Question Period returns

2:29 p.m. It's quite the scene here in the House with the swearing-in of four new MPs.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended the swearing-in of his new MP, Rob Clarke, just before Question Period began. Then he escorted him into the Commons, to applause all around.

But the marquee show was the display of the three new Liberal MPs. Bob Rae's friends, supporters and family have jammed the galleries. Rae's mother is here, as is the legendary cabinet minister of the Trudeau era, Allan MacEachen.

Rae also stole the show when he embraced and kissed Michael Ignatieff as he was taking his front-row spot.

Martha Hall-Findlay, meanwhile, was radiating such joy after her four-year long bid to get here that one almost needed sunglasses to view the beaming expression on her face.

All the new folks are going to get questions today. It's supposedly Hall-Findlay up first.

2:40 p.m. Well, there it is, the first shot at Bob Rae - from Jim Flaherty. Rae is clutching his chest, pretending to be offended.

2:43 p.m. And there's Martha-Hall Findlay on her feet, asking about the government's attacks on Ontario. The Conservative backbenchers who sit just below the press gallery are trying to drown her out, but she got two questions out.

2:46 p.m. One of the members of our bureau has noted how strange it seems today, given events of three years ago, to see Belinda Stronach sitting back in the second row and Hall-Findlay in front.

2:51 p.m. Joyce Murray, the Vancouver Quadra MP, has asked her debut question - on the Cadman affair. And James Moore, the Conservatives' designated hitter on this issue, replied with a classy and gracious welcome, and a nod of praise toward the former MP, Stephen Owen. You don't see that kind of good behaviour very often. Rae has not been up yet - soon, supposedly, and he'll be asking about Cadman.

2:58 p.m. Rae's finally up. He's talking on foreign affairs, not Cadman. His question is short and succinct - about the sale of a Canadian satellite company to the U.S.

3:06 p.m. The Conservatives have clearly loaded up on old quotes from Rae, in his NDP days, criticizing Liberals, to throw out in Question Period. I imagine they have lots more for the campaign trail. But what's getting confusing in the House now is the various battles of Ontario and the tangle of characters. There's the old Harris Tories against Rae, there's the current Tories against McGuinty, whose brother is an Ottawa MP, David McGuinty. All told, about two decades full of old feuds and rivalries from Queen's Park being played out by proxy in Parliament.

Akin moves to CanWest

David Akin

David Akin, one of the CTV journalists embroiled in the saga over Canada's possible tampering in Barack Obama's presidential campaign, has indeed been "reassigned" in the wake of the affair — all the way over to another network, CanWest.

"At CNS, David will focus his reporting on ‘pop’ economics, finance and contribute significantly to the broader coverage of federal politics. As a truly multimedia journalist, and with his expertise in economics and business, David will be available to Global National and other Global programs to offer in-depth analysis, context and to help provide understanding of those complex issues for viewers," the CanWest announcement states.

The Obama/Canada controversy, just to recap, blew up during the Ohio primaries, when a Canadian official reportedly said that this country had received assurances that Obama's remarks about reopening NAFTA were just campaign rhetoric. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has subsequently deemed that intervention unhelpful and ordered an investigation into the leak.

Here's where Akin comes in.

In the midst of the furor, Akin spoke to a journalism class at Carleton University and described how CTV had been tipped to this story by none other than Harper's chief of staff, Ian Brodie. Brodie was talking to a clutch of CTV reporters during the budget lockup. CBC News and CP then went public with stories singling out Brodie as the source of the leak.

For a very good, blow-by-blow description of this whole affair, see CBC reporter Neil MacDonald's summary.

Akin disappeared immediately after those CBC and CP reports, with the word that he was going to be moving on to new pastures within CTV. However, it seems he's had a better offer.

 

Liberals' Cadman fixation

Some random observations from watching things in the Commons this afternoon, which is the last real chance to see the tension in earnest for the next couple of weeks. Fridays are kind of a fake days in the chamber and tomorrow Stéphane Dion will be in Vancouver. So this was the last chance to get a sense of tone and political dynamics before Parliament goes on a two-week break.

Independent MP Chuck Cadman voted with the Liberals during a budget confidence vote in the Commons on May 19, 2005.

Many of us have been wondering why the Liberals keep hammering away at the Chuck Cadman story every day in the House. That's the story — for those who've been away — that Conservatives allegedly offered the dying, independent MP a $1 million life-insurance policy in exchange for his vote in May, 2005.

It's an important story, to be sure, but there are other issues out there, not the least of which is the whole question of whether the government interfered in the U.S. elections, which even Harper agreed last week was a better story.

I've come up with three reasons for the Liberal fixation:

1. To prove they're not scared of this libel threat. Harper did formally launch the legal case today against the Liberals for alleging he took part in a bribe. He's suing the party for a whopping $2.5 million but he's not pursuing individual cases he threatened against Dion, Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Opposition House leader Ralph Goodale.

Harper said repeatedly that his family has been hurt by all this. Why does that sound strange?

2. Because they think there's something there — I got that from a Liberal official today when I asked. In other words, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

3. And then, maybe quite significantly, there are the by-elections on Monday. The Liberals aren't worried about the two Toronto by-elections, but the ones in Saskatchewan and Vancouver are worrisome for them. There's a fantastic site, called the Elections Prediction Project, which deems those two by-elections too close to call for Monday.

And where was Cadman from? Yes, Vancouver. And where will Dion be tomorrow? Yes, Vancouver.

MPs in testy mood

It may not be a record by any means, but there sure were a lot of points of order after Question Period in the House today. That's the space in the parliamentary day when MPs can complain about insults and slurs levelled against them. It seemed that everyone was aggrieved, and many MPs were angry. Not just theatrical angry, but really angry.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay, with his typical sensitivity, called it "crybaby day" in the Commons.

 

McTeague takes defeat in stride

Liberal MP Dan McTeague didn't seem too upset that his private member's bill, making RESP contributions tax-deductible, died in a Ways and Means vote Thursday afternoon.

In fact, there he was, over by the Speaker's chair, talking intensely to Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier. All McTeague will say at this point is that he was talking about Brenda Martin, that Canadian citizen trapped in the Mexico prison — the one who got a visit yesterday from former prime minister Paul Martin.

It's worth noting that Bernier is now on the case and Helena Guergis, the secretary of state for foreign affairs, is off it. From my conversations with Brenda Martin's mother and friends yesterday, that's a welcome development.

Harper: Politician or pundit?

About a year ago, Norman Spector, former chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, and now a freelance columnist and media critic, wrote what I think is one of the better analyses of Stephen Harper's  leadership abilities.

Essentially, Spector said that Harper was not the brilliant strategist that everyone thinks he is -- he's more a pundit. True enough, in his out-of-politics life from 1997 to 2001, Harper quite enjoyed being a freelance columnist and op-ed writer in several newspapers.

Today, in Question Period,  we saw a vivid, even surreal  illustration of this, when Harper accidentally slipped out of prime ministerial mode and lapsed into punditry.

It happened when  Liberal leader Stephane Dion got up to ask a second round of questions, abandoning the Cadman controversy and turning to the Canada-Obama affair, which the NDP has been hammering away at all week.   

Harper said: "I would point out to the Leader of the Opposition that when he was throwing around wild accusations of scandal, the leader of the NDP was already on top of this issue."

What?? As some of us wondered, how  else to translate this but:  "Hey, Jack Layton's on to the bigger scandal here, Stephane -- take note."

Harper doesn't normally make mistakes like this.  A sign of pressure?

Dion, to his credit, however,  had a pretty decent comeback. "We do not know how to choose among all the scandals he has," the Liberal leader said.

Tense and ugly affairs

Last night, BlackBerries in Ottawa were buzzing when CBC and CP confirmed that Ian Brodie, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, was indeed the source of all the trouble for Barack Obama's "Canada problem" in the U.S. presidential race. This is huge. We are expecting reverberations today.

Readers of this blog will remember that this is the second time Brodie has been outed, so to speak. Last week, ABC News in the U.S. also reported that Harper's chief of staff was the leaker. ABC reported that the confirmation came from someone "close to the Prime Minister." Now we're getting a second confirmation, this time from the CTV reporters who received the leak. Brodie apparently was chatting to a clutch of CTV reporters in our federal budget lockup last week, they passed the news to their Washington counterparts, and thus, Obama's troubles began.

And so, if Harper is looking to "get to the bottom" of this international incident, he need only look at the next office over.

A couple of things that shouldn't get lost in today's firestorm:

1. Brodie apparently also told CTV that Hillary Clinton offered similar reassurances to Canada - that all this talk of NAFTA was just campaign rhetoric. So why did CTV only pursue the Obama angle? And interestingly, CTV had not a word to say about this developing story on its news last night - at least the one I viewed at 10 p.m.

2. Clinton's officials are confirming that this incident helped seal Obama's poor results in the Ohio primaries. That's serious too. Obama will remember Canada, and not in a nice way.

3. In ordinary times, heads should roll in Ottawa for how this government has responded to this incident and the whole controversy over whether a $1-million life-insurance policy was offered to the late MP, Chuck Cadman. The statements in the Commons and from the PMO to reporters, to be diplomatic, have hovered at the fringes of out-and-out untruths. I didn't write that last sentence lightly. These are tense and ugly affairs and many of us will be writing about them in the days to come.