Draft version of Declaration of Commitment that prompted end of Chief Theresa Spence's liquids-only protest

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

DECLARATION OF COMMITMENT

First Nations: Working Towards Fundamental Change


In the true spirit of commitment to initiate dialogue to discuss both Treaty and non-Treaty Indigenous issues on behalf of our First Nations Peoples of Canada, Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat First Nation and Mr. Raymond Robinson of Cross Lake, Manitoba will continue their Hunger Strike, pending outcome of this written Declaration. We also like to acknowledge Mr. Jean Sock of Elsipogtog, New Brunswick and all other Fasters who have shown their deep dedication and courage in support of protecting and honouring both Treaty and non-Treaty obligations as written, entered into or understood by all Peoples, with the Federal Government of Canada including each Provincial/Territorial signatory.

Further, we agree the self-sacrifice and the spiritual courage of Chief Theresa Spence, along with Elder Raymond Robinson and all other fasters have made clear the need for fundamental change in the relationship of First Nations and the Crown. We fully commit to carry forward the urgent and coordinated action required until concrete and tangible results are achieved in order to allow First Nations to forge their own destiny.

Therefore, we solemnly commit to undertake political, spiritual and all other advocacy efforts to implement a renewed First Nations – Crown relationship where inherent Treaty and non-Treaty Rights are recognized, honoured and fully implemented as they should be, within the next five years.

This Declaration includes ,but is not limited to, ensuring commitments made by the Prime Minister of Canada on January 11th, 2013 are followed through and implemented as quickly as possible as led by First Nation on a high-level priority with open transparency and trust. Furthermore, immediate steps are taken working together to achieve the below priorities:

An immediate meeting to be arranged between the Crown, Federal Governments, Provincial Governments and all First Nations to discuss outstanding issues regarding the Treaty Relationship, as well as for non-Treaty area relationships.
Clear work-plans that shall include deliverables and timelines that outline how commitments will be achieved, including immediate action for short, medium and long-term goals. Addressing the housing crisis within our First Nation communities shall be considered as a short-term immediate action.
Frameworks and mandates for the implementation and enforcement of Treaties between Treaty parties on a Nation-to-Nation basis.
Reforming and modifying the comprehensive claims policy based on inherent rights of First Nations.
A commitment towards resource revenue sharing, requiring the participation and involvement of provinces and territories currently benefiting from resource development from traditional lands.
Commitment towards ensuring a greater collective oversight and action towards ensuring the sustainability of the land through a sustained environmental oversight.
A comprehensive review and meaningful consultation in regards to Bill C-38 and C-45 to ensure it is consistent with Section 35 of the Constitution Act (1982).
Ensure that all federal legislation has the free, prior and informed consent of First Nations where inherent and Treaty rights are affected or impacted.
A revised fiscal relationship between First Nations and Canada that is equitable, sustainable and includes indexing and the removal of arbitrary funding caps.
A National Public Commission of Inquiry on Violence Against Indigenous Women of all ages.
Equity in capital construction of First Nation schools, including funding parity with Provincial funding formulas with additional funding support for First Nation languages.
A change in how government operates that would include direct oversight, a dedicated Cabinet Committee and Secretariat within the Privy Council Office with specific responsibility for the First Nation-Crown relationship to ensure implementation.
The full implementation of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – UNDRIP.

As expressed from time to time by Chief Theresa Spence, “Our Treaty Rights continue to be violated and ignored”. Elder Raymond Robinson says, “Treaties were entered into on a Nation to Nation basis and we need to do our best to re-bridge that balance to walk and work together as was the original intent of the treaties”. Far too long, we have been denied an equitable stature within Canadian Society. The time is ours and no longer will we be silenced and idle. We will continue to call upon the insistence of truth, justice, fairness for all our First Nation Peoples.

What the Assembly of First Nations' national executive wants from meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

The Assembly of First Nations have put out a release outlining, in more detail, the eight demands that are on the table during the meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others on Friday afternoon. They were summarized in the Star's story on the meeting today, based on what National Chief Shawn Atleo, Saskatchewan Regional Chief Perry Bellegarde and B.C. Regional Chief Jody Wilson-Raybould said at their news conference on Thursday, but there is some more detail (or at least more words) here.

These eight "elements of consensus" came out of discussions with First Nations leaders in Ottawa this week.

• Commitment to an immediate high level working process with Treaty Nation leadership for establishing frameworks with necessary mandates for the implementation and enforcement of Treaties on a Treaty by Treaty basis, between the Treaty parties Nation-to-Nation.

• Facilitating fair, expeditious resolution of land claims through reforming the comprehensive claims policy based on recognition and affirmation of inherent rights rather than extinguishment

• Resource Equity, Benefit and Revenue Sharing – building on treaty implementation and enforcement and comprehensive claims resolution there must be a framework that addresses shared governance of resource development and the fair sharing of all forms of revenues and benefits generated from resource development.
• All legislation must be unquestionably consistent with s.35 of the Canadian Constitution and the UNDRIP. Legislation and provisions of legislation as in C-38 and C-45 that contravene our Treaty and inherent rights must be reconsidered and implementation of these provisions be put to a halt. We must have an environmental regulatory regime in this country that respects our rights. Legislation that tinkers around the edges of the Indian Act must stop and be replaced with support for First Nation government and nation re-building including a mechanism for our Nations to push away from the Indian Act as they determine. To fulfill the original relationship, Canada must put in place an ongoing process that all new bills and policies of the federal government must be in full compliance with section 35 and consistent with international human rights standards.
•  Fundamentally transformed fiscal relationship guaranteeing fairness and sustainability and removing all arbitrary caps and burdens on the current inefficient, ineffective and unfair funding relationship for First Nation programs and services.
• Immediate Commitment to the establishment of a National Public Commission of Inquiry on Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls, including special focus on murdered and missing Indigenous women, and the broader factors that lead to increased vulnerability among Indigenous peoples.
• Guarantee, as in Shannen’s dream, of First Nation schools in every First Nation that each and every First Nations parent and child can be proud of, that fully reflects our languages and cultures and provides a safe and supportive place to learn.
• In order to be effective, progress on these areas will require fundamental change in the machinery of government including direct political oversight, a dedicated Cabinet Committee with a secretariat within the Privy Council Office with specific responsibility for the First Nation-Crown relationship to oversee implementation.

On Santa Claus and Arctic sovereignty

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney offered his Christmas wishes to Santa Claus on Friday, teased him about his old-fashioned navigation ways and then capped it off, just in case one was tempted to think this was entirely innocent and adorable, with some political spin.

Minister Kenney Offers Christmas Greetings to Santa Claus

Ottawa, December 21, 2012 — During a week when an empty Parliament gave way to mirth-making and gift-wrapping, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney took the opportunity to wish Santa Claus all the best in his Christmas Eve duties.

“We are honoured that Santa begins his annual journey in Canada,” Minister Kenney stated. “And, as a Canadian citizen living in Canada’s North, he may re-enter the country freely at the end of his international trip.

“Personnel at Nunavut’s Alert Airport will run the control tower lights throughout Christmas to guide Jolly Saint Nick southward on his departure and northward on his return,” Minister Kenney said.

Situated at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, 817 kilometres from the North Pole, Alert is the first landmark for Santa and his reindeer as they make their way to the homes of millions of children. A well-known traditionalist, Santa has not yet adopted GPS technology, preferring the instincts of his reindeer, with a helping hand from the Alert Airport workers.

“The Government continues to invest in measures that exercise Canada’s sovereignty and create more economic opportunities in the North,” said Minister Kenney. “We want to ensure that Santa, and all Canadians, benefit from the potential of the North, making it a prosperous and secure region within a strong and sovereign Canada.”

NDP MP Romeo Saganash admits alcohol addiction; will go on sick leave

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

NDP MP Romeo Saganash apologized after the CBC reported he was escorted off a flight last Friday after Air Canada deemed him too drunk to fly. He later issued this statement:

STATEMENT BY MP ROMEO SAGANASH (ABITIBI—BAIE-JAMES—NUNAVIK—EEYOU)

Both as a Member of Parliament and a member of the New Democrat caucus, it is my duty to follow a code of conduct in keeping with my role as a Member of Parliament and the confidence that my constituents placed in me when they elected me.

Last Friday, my behaviour caused an unfortunate incident that delayed an Air Canada flight between Montreal and Val-d’Or. I want to apologize to the other passengers and staff for what happened and for any inconvenience I caused them. I would also like to offer my sincere apologies to Air Canada and the Aéroports de Montréal.

Neither fatigue nor stress can justify what I did. I need help to overcome a medical problem, a dependence on alcohol, like far too many other Canadians.

I am not looking at excuses, but I know that profound scars were left on me because of my time in residential school. I never shied away from that. The death of my friend and mentor, Jack Layton, also greatly affected me. Like him, I needed a crutch. The leadership race wore me out, on top of taking me away from my children and my loved ones even more often.

Life on Parliament Hill can be hectic and exciting, but it is also full of obstacles and pitfalls. Many of my colleagues can attest to this.

I have asked my leader to give me leave so that I can take the necessary time to treat this illness. I am deeply grateful for his support and the support of all my colleagues in this difficult period of my life.

I would like to thank the citizens of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou for their constant support in this difficult period of my life and ask for their understanding. I can assure them that my office will continue to serve them and that my New Democrat colleagues will be available to help while I’m on sick leave.

My priority is to serve my constituents to the best of my abilities and it’s with deep humility that I say thank you and see you soon.

Mental health wait times & "false hope"

By Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

While researching a story on how long it takes for Ontario patients to be moved from the emergency room to a hospital bed, I came across a rather poignant sentence about wait times for mental health services.

The sentence was included in the annual report card from the Wait Time Alliance, but it is originally from the national mental health strategy released by the Mental Health Commission of Canada last month:

Lack of access in the community to crisis support, mental health and primary care services also drives people to emergency rooms for help, increasing waits and stretching resources. Many community services do not even keep waiting lists, because it might give false hope to people in need that eventually their turn will come. Not only is it essential to do a better job of measuring waits for community-based services, but standards should also be set for wait times, similar to those that exist for several physical illnesses. (p.44)

Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews, when discussing the province's decision to track and publish wait times for emergency departments (Ontario and Alberta are the only provinces that do), told me on Tuesday: "We believe in measuring and publicly reporting and that drives change in the system. . . You know as they say, if you don’t measure it you can’t manage it, well, I believe that’s true."

That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is avoiding the responsibility of making promises because breaking them might give people false hope.

A better idea? Measure wait times and make an effort to reduce them. The result is real hope.

Bill C-38 vs. Bill C-36: a study in contrasts*, as explained by Elizabeth May

by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May believes the Conservatives' motive for lumping together all sorts of legislative changes into the omnibus Bill C-38 is "to avoid scrutiny" and she made the case by comparing it to Bill C-36, also known as the Protecting Canada's Seniors Act.

The former, as you have undoubtedly heard before, is 425 pages.

The latter is four paragraphs.

Here is how May described the difference at a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday morning, where she outlined why she had introduced more than 300 amendments to the federal budget implementation bill.

"Bill C-36, by the way, will get full scrutiny in Parliament. It goes to first reading, second reading, committee. We’ll have a lot of time on Bill C-36. It’s four paragraphs long. It amends one sub-clause of the Criminal Code. It’s not as though, for efficiency’s sake, Stephen Harper wants all laws compressed into one omnibus bill all the time. The ones he doesn’t want you to notice are compressed in an omnibus bill. The ones they want to put out in the front window, like C-36, has the grandiose title that it’s [the Protecting Canada's Seniors Act]. All it does, actually, is allow for at time of sentencing, a judge to consider the situation of the victim at the time of the assault. There is a lot I’d like to do to help seniors in this country against abuse, I don’t have any problem with C-36, but just in a contrast, C-36 is getting the full treatment of its own review in a committee, its own opportunity to have witnesses, and 70 bills are changed through C-38 with time allocation and running roughshod over hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition and democracy. This is the most egregious piece of legislation ever tabled, certainly in Canada, and they can’t expect us to roll over and play dead when this kind of outrage is put in front of us.”

 

*Yes, I am aware this is the most clichéd headline phrase of all time.

NDP Leadership: a final word from Brian Topp

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Former NDP president Brian Topp, who finished second to Thomas Mulcair in his unsuccessful bid to lead the party, has sent a message of thanks to supporters of his campaign (which his spokesman emailed to me at my request).

The statement does not include a promise -- or anything at all -- about running for the NDP in the 2015 election, although he does call for unity and talks about the campaign to replace the Conservative government.

Given this might be the last you hear from Topp for a while, I thought I would share it here.

Dear friends,

I have said it on Twitter and on Facebook, and now I'd like to say it in a letter to you:

Thank you so much for your friendship and support during the 2012 leadership contest, just concluded.

When it's over, it's over. And like all New Democrats all across Canada, there must be only one thing on all of our minds from now on -- unity behind our new leader, Tom Mulcair; strength; and an absolute focus on the task at hand, which is to offer Canadians a better government.

Still and all, perhaps I'll offer a few parting thoughts on what we've all just been through.

National campaigns are always intense experiences -- but they usually last for seven weeks or so. And then we go whew! that was quite a ride. This seven month marathon was of an entirely different magnitude. And so, it was a unique opportunity to see our country, to get to know our party in its deepest grass roots, to get to know my colleagues in the race, and to renew and make friendships I will treasure for the rest of my life.

This really is a remarkable country. It's an ocean of land. It is an archipelago of communities. And it is something more -- a country of citizens who share some powerful communitarian values and principles that our current government does not understand. Canadians are looking for something better. That's going to be us.

Our party is remarkably strong -- Jack Layton's gift to Canada. It is bursting with young people; crackling with ideas; it is asking good questions; it is smiling, optimistic, and serious about its role. I will always be grateful to the many hundreds of members who came to talk to me during this campaign I was honoured to have my time with you.

Martin Singh with his passionate commitment to national pharmacare; Robert Chisholm with his deep experience as a successful provincial leader; Romeo Saganash, one of Canada's most accomplished First Nations leaders, with much to teach us; Nikki Ashton with her remarkable polylingual prairie determination to renew politics; Paul Dewar with his passionate decency, engaging family and impressive grassroots campaign; Peggy Nash, my fantastic MP here in Parkdale High Park, the rassembleuse; Nathan Cullen, who reminded so many of Jack, challenging us to think new about what it's going to take to unseat Mr. Harper; and Tom Mulcair, my colleague on the last ballot, now my leader, who lived up to his reputation as a truly formidable opponent -- not a bad thing to put up against this Conservative government. All of my colleagues in this race were members of the "Layton generation" -- and collectively, they have proved that we have the leadership under Tom Mulcair and the team  to not only challenge Mr. Harper but to replace him. I was very lucky to have been allowed to stand with them on those stages.

Finally, I hope you won't mind if I take a moment to thank the many people who helped me in this campaign.

I was blessed to have the support and endorsement of some of the most impressive and accomplished Parliamentarians, past and present, federal and provincial, in our party. I will find my way to each of you in coming weeks to thank you personally. I was deeply honoured and moved by your support. I hope you won't mind if I say what a particular thrill and honour it was to see Shirley Douglas stand up to nominate me and to remind us all, once again, why we are here -- and why we will never give up.

My campaign manager Raymond Guardia is the architect of our electoral victory in Quebec, a goal he has worked towards all his adult life, so much of which he has devoted, passionately, to our party and our cause. He headed an extraordinary team of organizers, writers, web-warriors, phone bankers, videographers, and many many others who gave their hearts and souls to my campaign through grinding hours. To all of those who helped me in so many ways: I will always be grateful to you. I will always treasure your help. And what a treasure it is to have such friends, now and for the rest of our lives.  

My brothers and sisters at the United Steelworkers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union led a fine labour team. I was just about as proud to stand with you in this campaign, as I will be in the many campaigns we in the labour movement will work together on in the years ahead. A special thank you to Leo Gerrard, Ken Newman, and Dave Coles for your help and support -- and to all my labour colleagues in many unions across Canada who stood with me. Now we stand together with our party and our leader, Tom Mulcair.

I am blessed to have a remarkable partner, Rebecca Elbourne, and two remarkable sons, Simon and Alex who, fortunately, take after their mom. They were pretty hoarse after convention (twelve hours or so of chanting slogans will do that to you), just a little taste of the support my family gave me on this journey. Paul Dewar's partner told the media after convention, "we have each other, we're ok". That's exactly how I feel about things, and am so lucky that is so.

So this campaign is over and the next begins -- our campaign to replace this Conservative government with a better one.

To work, friends.

All my very best,
Brian Topp

NDP Leadership: Nathan Cullen ahead on Twitter, says media monitoring firm (Google searches too)

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

It's hard to say whether Twitter is having an impact in the New Democrat leadership race (or determine the size of that impact), but Ottawa-based media monitoring firm MediaMiser has nonetheless been tracking how much attention each of the seven current candidates have been getting on the social networking site.

Who knows what it means, but it's some interesting trivia for geeks like me (and you, because you know that's why you're reading this) to chew on. If you want to see this done on a bigger scale, check out @mentionnachine, where the Washington Post is tracking Twitter traffic for the Republican primaries.

The company collected all tweets referring to the NDP leadership candidates from Feb. 1 to early afternoon on Tuesday (Mar. 13) and found that B.C. MP Nathan Cullen had the highest proportion of mentions in the tweets collected during that time period, followed closely by Deputy Leader Thomas Mulcair.

Here are the statistics:

Nathan Cullen: 23.4 per cent

Thomas Mulcair: 21.4 per cent

Peggy Nash: 18.2 per cent

Brian Topp: 15.1 per cent

Paul Dewar: 13.7 per cent

Niki Ashton: 6.2 per cent

Martin Singh: 2 per cent

MediaMiser also considered what sort of tone or sentiment was associated with the top three candidates on Twitter (ie. Cullen, Mulcair and Nash) of tweets taken in a random sample on Mar. 13. Positive language contributed to a positive score, negative language to a negative and tweets that included simply a news headline and/or a link to a news story were considered neutral.

The results on that front:

Nash: 59 per cent positive; 38 per cent neutral; 3 per cent negative

Cullen: 54 per cent positive; 43 per cent neutral; 3 per cent negative

Mulcair: 37 per cent positive; 50 per cent neutral; 13 per cent negative

Jim Donnelly, director of content at MediaMiser, said the existence of anti-Mulcair Twitter accounts are probably contributing to some of the negative tone, but likely so is the perception that Mulcair is the frontrunner and therefore coming under attack from fellow candidates and their supporters.

“I would say right now it’s looking like Mulcair has had a lot of momentum in the last few weeks, but to me it looks like the other candidates and other supporters are trying a tactic of almost an ‘Anybody but Mulcair’ sort of thing," Donnelly said Wednesday. "So you’re seeing that in some of the negative comments, but I think right now it’s just looking like it’s going to be a bit closer race than people are thinking at the moment.”

MediaMiser also took a look at the Twitter hash tag most commonly associated with the NDP leadership race (#ndpldr) and found that between Feb. 1 and Mar. 13 it was mentioned 32,166 times.

Here is how that hash tag compared to other ones used for other tweets about the NDP leadership:

Hash Tags	Mentions
#ndpldr	32166
#cdnpoli	6611
#ndp	6151
#ndpdb8	994
#tm4pm	572
#lpc	477
#bcpoli	471
#cpc	407
#cullenplan	254
#hw	167

 

And here were the most commonly mentioned words (including hash tags):

Words	Mentions
#ndpldr	32166
#cdnpoli	6611
#ndp	6151
nathancullen	5570
peggynashndp	4920
thomasmulcair	4423
pauldewar	3176
ndp	2874
briantopp	2674
support	2187

 

MediaMiser also looked at the "top influencers" for the #ndpldr hash tag, measured by the "retweet ratio" (number of retweets measured against number of original tweets including the #ndpldr hash tag). Here are the top 15 (with yours truly at the bottom of that list):

1) @ThomasMulcair                29.4

2) @LaurinLiu                           17.7

3) @PeggyNashNDP              16.2

4) @BrianTopp                           12.1

5) @CraigScottNDP                   9.2 

6) @PaulDewar                         6.9

7) @NDP_HQ                            5.4

8) @aaronwherry                       4.9

9) @nathancullen                     4.6

10) @fitzpatrick_m                     3.9

11) @acoyne                              3.9

12) @LibbyDavies                     3.4

13) @RachelNotley                   3.2

14) @matness                           3.1

15) @smithjoanna                    3.1

In other NDP leadership fun-fact news, the Cullen campaign is drawing attention to what Google Insights says about how many searches have been done for the candidates over time.

It appears one can analyze only five search terms at a time, so here is the report comparing searches for Mulcair, Topp, Cullen, Nash and Dewar in Canada from September 2011 to this month (the link sent by the Cullen campaign ran from October to April). You'll notice a big spike for Topp in September, presumably when he launched his campaign, then spikes for Dewar, Mulcair and Nash in October, when they launched theirs. Things remained pretty calm from then until now, when there is a sharp increase in the number of searches for Mulcair and Cullen (hence the Cullen campaign sending this around).

Again, it's hard to say what this means, but it has been shown there is a correlations between Google searches for flu symptoms and actual flu outbreaks, so at the very least it shows that people are have been more curious about Mulcair and Cullen of late.

I took a look at the searches for Ashton and Singh over the same time period. There was a big spike for Ashton in November, which is when she launched her campaign, then a small bump for both around the time of the first official all-candidates debate on Dec. 4 and then increased interest in both candidates this month as voting began and the convention draws near.

It is interesting to note that search volume for Ashton was high in Ontario (see regional interest section). For Singh, search volume was high in B.C. and medium in Ontario. But in Manitoba, where Ashton is from and represents the riding of Churchill, and in Nova Scotia, where Singh is a pharmacist, interest was low. So low, in fact, that Google Insights reports "there was not enough search volume to show graphs". Ouch.

Before the other five candidates feel too confident, they should know that they too are all ranked "low" in search volume for every province except B.C., Ontario and Quebec. (Dewar is "low" in every province but Ontario and Cullen is "low" everywhere but B.C. and Ontario).

Now go have fun entering your own NDP leadership search terms to see what you come up with.

CIMS, the Conservative Party of Canada's voting and fundraising database

 

-posted by Tonda MacCharles, Ottawa bureau, Feb. 28/12

Like other media, we've been trying to pull together threads of the allegations of deceptive and/or harassing calls during the 2011 election campaign.

My colleague Susan Delacourt has been writing about the role of marketing strategies in Canadian politics for some time now, and is on leave writing a book about same.

In light of the discussion around the political parties' targeted voter contact efforts, I dug up a cached link to a piece by the CBC's Keith Boag a few years ago about this. Not sure how long the original ran, but this ends somewhat abruptly at 8:23, so probably incomplete.

While it makes clear all parties are doing this kind of voter profiling, Boag focused on how far ahead, even back then, the Conservatives were on the technology and national/local input into the Constituency Information Management System or CIMS - a database that has been fattened with information about Canadians' voting habits by the effective direct marketing techniques employed by RMG or Responsive Marketing Group Inc.

In a story in today's Star, colleague Allan Woods and I write about RMG and one of its lead political marketers, Stewart Braddick.

Braddick is currently on vacation, and declined interview requests. The people he referred me to at RMG did not return our calls or emails. Interesting marketing strategy.

In any event, for the curious, here's more of what Tom Flanagan, one-time chief of staff to Stephen Harper, wrote in his excellent book, Harper's Team, about the development of CIMS (some of which made it into the story today, apologies for duplication).

Flanagan portrayed RMG, which now claims 400 employees nationwide, as riding to the rescue of the Conservatives’ early efforts to develop a modern, sophisticated voter ID and political fundraising machine.

Before RMG came along in 2003, things were in disarray.

“The Reform Party and the Alliance had had a chronic problem of losing all voter identification data acquired during campaigns,” wrote Flanagan. "We were starting from zero as far as direct voter contact was concerned."

Under Harper’s leadership, the Canadian Alliance launched the development of the new system, which was a modified version of the Trackright system developed by the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, Flanagan wrote.

“Theirs was a voter ID management system; we wanted to go further by incorporating financial data into CIMS,” he said.

The beauty of the new system would be its availability to campaigns at the national and local level, but it would be owned and maintained by the national party, ensuring that “all data would be saved from one election to the next,” said Flanagan.

For example, if the national party sold a new membership and entered the tombstone data in CIMS, that same information would become available to the local riding association, which could then approach the new member to volunteer in the campaign or put up a lawn sign. Similarly, if the local campaign found a new supporter by door-knocking and entered the data in CIMS, the information could be used in national fundraising programs.

Flanagan says the party was making all the "classic mistakes" in developing its database, including seeing "techies" gaining too much influence and loading it up with "feature creep."

The CIMS project was running behind schedule and over budget, prompting Harper to refer to it, “in a moment of exasperation, as ‘the Conservative Party’s own gun registry,’” writes Flanagan.

RMG came along in early spring 2003 when the company’s president Michael Davis contacted Flanagan, and pitched how they could work together.

Very quickly, says Flanagan, the party “gave all our voter-contrat work to that company.”

“Our relationship with RMG linked nicely with our development of CIMS. RMG was already familiar with a CIMS-style system because of the work they had done with the Ontario PCs, and CIMS provided a receptacle for the hundreds of thousands of records generated by RMG’s large-scale calling programs.”

When the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives merged into one, the party had to quickly mount the 2004 campaign, and though it didn’t win, Flanagan said RMG’s work was key to electoral gains that snowballed in the elections to follow.

 

Green Gables diplomacy in China

Posted by Tonda MacCharles, Ottawa Bureau 

BEIJING-Now it's Green Gables Diplomacy.

Laureen Harper, wife of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, wrote the foreword of a Chinese translation of the Canadian classic, Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Her husband was in the spotlight at a Canadian tourism event in Beijing to launch a 2012 travel campaign to lure tourists.

And signed copies of the book she pitched were on offer.

At the Chinese Youth Travel Services Bureau, Mrs. Harper watched as giant three-storey banners were unfurled picturing the Calgary Stampede - her Alberta stomping grounds.

She is fiercely passionate about the West, and she craned her neck to see the massive wall-sized mural.
But she is clearly a Green Gables fan herself.

READ MORE: Harper in China

Her foreword entices the Chinese to delve into the land further east than Canada's west.
"In the character of Anne Shirley, author Lucy Maud Montgomery created someone we can all recognize – and love – for her independent spirit, her kind and generous heart, and her boundless imagination," writes Harper.

Montgomery’s "powerful story of an orphaned child growing up in a small farming village on Prince Edward Island often moves readers to tears, both of sadness and joy."

"At the same time, Anne inspires us with her honourable universal values, including love of nature, respect for community, and finding satisfaction in hard work and accomplishment. "Like good people everywhere, Anne makes her small world a better place."

"I hope you enjoy Anne of Green Gables as much as I and my family have," she says, inviting Chinese readers to travel to Canada to discover her world.

Ottawa says the traffic of Chinese tourists to Canada has jumped 25 per cent since 2009 when China granted the country "approved destination status" - and was worth $15 billion in 2010.

in the first 11 months of 2011, it meant 232,000 travellers from China made the trek.