Mario Lague

It is with sorrow and disbelief that I'm reporting the death of Mario Lague, Michael Ignatieff's communications director. Lague died in a motorcycle accident this morning on his way into work when his bike collided with an SUV, according to the CP report. He was just 52 years old, and leaves his wife and two children. 

I intend to do a larger story in the next few hours, but I do want to say a few personal things. Just last weekend, I was on the road with Ignatieff's tour, as was Mario. He'd switched assignments to cover this leg of the journey, and I'm so glad he did, now in retrospect. 

On Sunday, he was out on the road with his current boss and his former one, Paul Martin. If you look closely in the picture to the right, you'll see Mario beside Ignatieff at a Tim Horton's. I'm sorry that's the best picture of the most recent ones I have; I'll look out some more later.  Just a couple of nights ago, Mario sent me a picture of myself at a demolition derby: "In case anyone doesn't believe you were there."   

Mario was a gentle bear of a man, who loved his family, his work and his friends. Just a couple of weeks ago, we talked about what jobs we imagined ourselves doing at this age when we were in our 20s -- where did we dream of working? Mario, somewhat surprisingly to me, told me he'd wanted to be a filmmaker; he'd gone to school for that. But he somehow glided into the political communication business, working first for Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, then landing in the civil service, then becoming Paul Martin's first comms director when Martin landed as prime minister.  Martin appointed Mario to the ambassador's spot in Costa Rica; then, after a stint in Switzerland with an environmental organization, he landed last fall as Ignatieff's communications director.  He was doing a lovely job, as anyone on the summer tour would attest. And he loved the job. Maybe not the hours (14 a day during the week, 6 to 8 a day on weekends).

On Saturday night, we had dinner and drinks, as we often did on the road. We were in London, sitting on the outdoor terrace of the Ceeps, and Mario was talking, among other subjects, about the motorcycle he'd bought. I expressed my misgivings about motorcycles (I had a bad fall off one many years ago), but Mario assured me that he was a cautious driver. I'm sure he was. 

I can't imagine the grief now being felt by all those on the tour, let alone Mario's family. I'm finding it hard to believe, frankly. My profound sympathies and condolences to all who knew and loved Mario. 

Where will he turn up next?

Apologies for the long lag in blogging. I have been on the road in Southern Ontario for a lot of the past two weeks. Without further delays, though, let's get back into the rhythm of things with a video, made in honour of a popular political assistant who marks his last day today working for Belinda Stronach. His name is Greg MacEachern and apparently he is the Zelig of his generation.

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.

Best and worst of the year in politics

Before tonight's big "At Issue" panel on CBC's The National - the season-ender, which is always great TV for political junkies - I'm wondering if readers out there have their own ideas for most overrated and underrated politician, or the best/worst moments of the past year in politics.

My vote for best moment was the Conservative-Liberal agreement on extending the mission in Afghanistan, including that press conference by the Manley panel.

The worst moment is harder to choose. There were just so many bad moments in Question Period.

Ignatieff's new file

Here's Michael Ignatieff blogging on the latest addition to his to-do list.

As we reported in the Star yesterday, Ignatieff and Maurizio Bevilacqua have been put in charge of finding a new immigration policy for the federal Liberals.

Green plan spurs online tactics

Yesterday on my local CBC Radio morning show, bloggers Stephen Taylor and Jason Cherniak (Conservative and Liberal, respectively) were described as being "as influential as the mainstream media."  Beyond having their own websites, these bloggers also run large, aggregate sites that assemble a wide variety of blogs of the same political stripes: www.bloggingtories.ca and www.liblogs.ca.

Taylor, true to form,  was busy at his computer last night, putting together a knock-off of the Liberals' Green-Shift website. Taylor's is called www.theshiftygreen.ca and it is laid out exactly like the Liberal one, including the little tabs where you can "meet," "share," "support" and "calculate." If you click on the "calculate" tab, you get an opinion piece from John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, who seemed to be sharing talking points with the Conservatives yesterday when called upon to comment on TV about the Liberals' plan. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by the allegiance - Jason Kenney, the government's designated spokesperson on the green shift, was the head of the taxpayers' federation in his previous life.

It should also tell us that the Conservatives, wise to the ways of the digital world, have organized a viral attack/response for the Liberals' green shift, complete with spokespersons in interest groups.  Liberals, however, are also doing the same. Cherniak describes the "unprecedented" way the party prepped its spokespersons across the country for the green-shift announcement:

"Yesterday, the Liberal Party held an unprecedented briefing for Liberals across the country. Starting around 6 p.m. EST, there were simultaneous online presentations and conference calls to explain the most important part of the plan to candidates, riding presidents and donors. To the extent that bloggers fit into those categories (and most do), we also received briefings. These briefings even included personalized logins. As a result, the Liberal Party knows who each individual was who joined the conference and who was invited but did not attend. I was quite impressed with this massive effort at real grassroots democracy and I hope the story on how the logistics worked and who was responsible comes out some day."

I'm told that the Liberals deliberately courted potential critics or skeptics for these briefings, too.

What does this all mean for us in the mainstream media? It means we have to range farther than Parliament Hill or prime ministerial scrums for reaction to big policy announcements. The more the message spreads, the more these events look staged and predictable. (Though it's always fun to see a prime minister call something "insane."  Never let it be said that Stephen Harper doesn't like intelligent debate.)

Carbon tax wisdom

Tom Courchene, one of approximately a dozen people in Canada who actually understands the equalization program....

Wait. That's no way to get anyone to read this blog. Let's start that again.

Tom Courchene, of Queen's University, has now turned his attention to the big issue of the day -- no, not Julie Couillard, but the carbon tax. (Okay, I'm really sorry -- this post has nothing in it about bikers or mattress microphones.)

Courchene is a fan of the carbon tax  and spoke today in Ottawa about the wisdom of it.

It was an elaboration on an article he wrote recently in the respected Policy Options magazine.

His main message appears to be that the environment is emerging as the big federal-provincial issue of tomorrow -- eclipsing those old debates about equalization and, going farther back, the constitution. It may even eclipse health care -- the big topic of fed-prov wrangling several years ago.

"Environmental federalism," Courchene  calls this new era. Certainly yesterday's joint agreement by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Quebec Premier Jean Charest would give some credence to this prediction by Courchene.

After the lunch, Courchene reportedly went and had a little chat with Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who's also recently become a convert to the carbon-tax idea -- much to the consternation of some partisans who believe the Conservatives will use the idea to paint Liberals as tax-and-spenders.

 

Harper's walking the pounds away

It is now well-known that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has dropped about 40 pounds.  In Rome last week, Harper's weight loss was even noted with approval by Jose VerosoJosé Manuel Barroso the European commission president. "You are losing some weight. You look more elegant," VerosoBarroso told Harper.

Harper's weight-loss regimen includes exercise - walking, in particular.  This is one thing he can't do in secret. Residents of the Ottawa community of New Edinburgh now know that when you see a cluster of slow-moving black RCMP cars moving through the streets, it probably means that  the Prime Minister is on the move.

If you're curious about the sights that Harper sees on his periodic rambles through the neighbourhood, the New Edinburgh News has published its own walking tour in its current edition. The community earned its name from the large number of Scottish residents who made their home in the area - stone masons, in fact, brought here to help construct the Parliament buildings.

Alexa's rare act won't be back

Alexa McDonough announced today she is not running for re-election.

She made the announcement 11 years to the day since the 1997 election, when she first came to the Commons as an MP, after a respected time as head of the Nova Scotia NDP, and after being elected federal NDP leader in 1995.

She was a rarity in federal politics -- a woman leader, though she followed Audrey McLaughlin, who was the first woman elected to lead a major federal party. Though she helped revitalize the NDP after its bruising 1993 showing, when it lost official party status, McDonough still couldn't get the party the breakthrough it wanted. The current leader, Jack Layton, has most definitely improved the NDP's standing, but none have done better than Ed Broadbent did in the 1988 general election, with 43 seats. That's still the high-water mark for the NDP.

It's worth noting too, that no women have risen up to assume leadership of a party in the Commons since Alexa's reign. It's almost as if the big parties said in the 1990s, let's give this a try, and abandoned the project when none won the job of prime minister. (Kim Campbell was Canada's first woman prime minister, to be sure, but she was thrown out, along with the rest of her party, in the 1993 election.)

The Greens have Elizabeth May, who, like McDonough, is trying to build her party from a Nova Scotia riding, but she still doesn't have a seat in the House yet.

My most vivid McDonough memory isn't really about her. In the 1997 campaign, I was on the road with then-Conservative leader Jean Charest and landed in Halifax. I decided to go door-to-door with then-Liberal MP Mary Clancy, to see if it was true that Liberal fortunes were collapsing in the Atlantic. (It was -- the Liberals were wiped out in Nova Scotia and lost seats all over the East Coast.)

Clancy was in a seniors' residence and many people were politely rebuffing her. One elderly woman, however, heard Mary out, nodding politely as she stood at the door in her bathrobe.

"That's lovely, Mary," the woman said. "But I won't be voting for you."

Clancy gulped and said: "May I ask why?"

The elderly woman at the door looked surprised. "Because I'm Alexa's mother."

What do Harper's PR people do?

All this week, the Star has been running a series called Secret Capital. The purpose of this series was to give Star readers a multi-faceted, close-up view of the way in which an unprecedented degree of control is being exerted over communication in Ottawa these days. My contribution to this series ran yesterday.

The final two installments, by my colleagues Tonda MacCharles and Allan Woods, appear in today's paper. Tonda tells how the control fixation comes right from the top, from the Prime Minister himself.

Allan has given us a closer glimpse into the communications shop of the Harper PMO when it's on the road.

The Woods' piece raises a question that all of us who have travelled with the PM have asked -- why bring along so many media handlers when you have a practice of not dealing with the media? Why is the Canadian taxpayer footing bills running to the tens of thousands to ferry these folks around the world, when, from Woods' reports, they seem to be little more than political tourists, rushing into elevators, for instance, to have their photos taken with President Bush?

I was on the first two foreign trips with Harper in early 2006, and like the rest of the pack, I simply was at a loss to understand what the communications folks were doing all the time we were in Afghanistan and Cancun. We rarely saw them and when we did, they had nothing to say. They seemed to function more as junior security officers. (In Afghanistan, I'm not sure additional security was needed, since Harper appeared to be well protected by the formidable, and scary, JTF2 guys.)

Subsequent foreign trips have just sealed and reinforced the pattern of virtual absence by the PMO communications team. Now reporters know to go to foreign governments for information about what Harper has been saying and doing on the road.

At any rate, it's worth reading the whole series if you have the time. It may help answer the question, often asked by supporters of the Harper government, about why we don't tell the government's side of the story often enough in our reportage. Here's the simple answer -- we can't tell the story if we don't know it.

Harper, it's said, is a long-term planner; his genius lies in his ability to identify the goal at the end of the road, and let the skirmishes and tactics sort themselves out along the way. So we've seen the skirmishes and tactics. The bigger question is: to what end?