Simcoe-Grey Federal Liberal Association

National Post
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Page: A20
Section: Issues & Ideas
Byline: Michael Ignatieff
Source: National Post

U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada offers us an opportunity for partnership that we should seize with both hands.

We won’t get out of our economic crisis unless we work with our neighbour to make the North American economy more efficient and competitive. The crisis creates an opportunity for political leadership on both sides of the border, and a chance to break down the barriers that prevent our two economies from reaching their full potential.

A North American agenda begins with a strong defence of continental free trade. President Obama has shown leadership in condemning “Buy American” measures in Congress, and leaders in Canada need to stand up against protectionism in our own country, as well. Protectionist moves in Congress, like the Country of Origin labelling in livestock, continue to hold back our exporters. No country stands to lose more from a protectionist turn in the U. S. than Canada, and we need to say loud and clear that protectionism will lead both of our countries backwards.

Besides a renewed commitment to free trade, we need to work together to ensure that people and goods can move more freely across our borders. Over $1.5-billion in trade crosses the Canada-U. S. border every day, and

there are more than 100 million individual crossings each year.

While our competitors in Europe are tearing down the borders between their economies, our border with the United States is becoming a choke-chain on both of our economies. We’ve never succeeded in creating the “smart border” we thought we would after 9/11, and in many ways our border practices are less intelligent than ever. We need to invest jointly in border infrastructure, work together to improve security at our key maritime ports and increase pre-clearance for goods away from the border. We should try to persuade the Americans to stop the introduction of the passport requirement

due in June of this year.

A secure but efficient border is crucial for the growth of many industries in Canada, none more so than our automotive sector. We need to work with the U.S. government, but also with industry leaders and autoworkers, to ensure that the rescue package being put together by the Obama administration also safeguards Canadian jobs and product mandates. At the same time, Canada and the United States should develop common emissions standards so that we come out of the current crisis with a green, energy-efficient automobile industry.

President Obama’s administration offers Canada the first opportunity in eight years to develop a complementary approach for the sustainable development of natural gas, petroleum and hydroelectric energy. We should immediately begin working toward a common cap-and-trade system, with a hard cap on emissions and defined reduction targets for industrial emissions.

Our environmental partnership should extend into the far north. Canada and the United States should work together, with other northern nations, to protect this region for the whole

globe. We should applaud the President’s campaign commitment not to undertake drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We should maintain Canada’s long-held legal position that the North West Passage is an inland waterway and not an international strait, but we should not allow our disagreement with the Americans on the issue to preclude bilateral efforts to ensure good stewardship and orderly management by Canadians of passage through the waterway. We need to reinvigorate the Arctic Council so that all northern nations develop common strategies to mitigate the impact of global warming, avoid conflict over resource development and improve the lives of the region’s indigenous peoples.

Beyond North America, our two countries can work together to strengthen global institutions. This goes beyond the United Nations and the international climate change protocols. Canada has a good record in regulating our banking and financial services sector. We should work with the Americans and other G20 countries to develop new rules for international global finance to spare the world another financial crisis in the future.

The Americans respect the hard work we have done in Afghanistan. Our military engagement there is drawing to a close, but while we still have troops on the ground, we should work with Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to bring greater strategic coherence to the NATO mission and greater focus to our reconstruction and development efforts.

When President Obama visits us today, we have a choice. We can either complain about unsolved problems or seize the opportunity to excite him with the possibilities of partnership. Together we can make our economies stronger and the world a safer place. Let’s seize the chance his visit offers us.

- Michael Ignatieff is the MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The Toronto Star
Wed 03 Dec 2008
Page: AA08
Section: Opinion
Byline: Peter H. Russell
Source: Special to The Star

As Canadians live through the current political uproar in Ottawa it is important that they understand the constitutional rules of our parliamentary democracy.

The first rule is that when we hold an election we do not directly elect a prime minister. We elect a House of Commons. It is this elected chamber of Parliament that decides who governs the country.

The second rule of parliamentary government is that it is the leaders of the party or coalition of parties that have the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons who have the right to govern.

Immediately after an election the incumbent prime minister remains in office no matter how badly he or she may have done at the polls. In 1993, Kim Campbell was still prime minister of Canada even though she her party had elected only two MPs. It was obvious that a Campbell Conservative government would not have the confidence of the newly elected House of Commons so she tendered her resignation to the Governor General. The Governor General then called on Jean Chretien, whose Liberal party had won a majority of seats in the House of Commons, to form a government.

The situation is not always so clear. After the 1985 provincial election in Ontario, the incumbent premier, Frank Miller, whose Conservatives had won the most seats but were nonetheless in a minority position in the Legislative Assembly, formed a government and prepared to meet the newly elected Legislature. But when it became clear that Liberal Leader David Peterson and NDP Leader Bob Rae, whose parties between them had a majority in the Legislature, had signed an agreement whereby the NDP for two years would support a Liberal minority government so long as it pursued certain legislative priorities, Miller submitted his government’s resignation to the Lieutenant Governor.

These precedents and many, many others illustrate the basic point that in parliamentary democracies we elect parliaments not prime ministers, and that the Governor General (or the presidential head of state in a republican parliamentary system) must be advised by ministers who are supported by a majority in the elected house of parliament.

Now let’s apply these rules of parliamentary democracy to the situation Canada now faces. After the Oct. 14 election, Stephen Harper remained Prime Minister, formed a new government and prepared to face the House. Although his party had improved its seat total it was still in a minority position in the House. This meant that to continue in office Harper would have to win enough support from the opposition benches to secure the confidence of the House.

For a few days it appeared that Harper would reach out in a conciliatory manner and garner the parliamentary support he needs on order to have the right to govern.

But, to put it mildly, on Nov. 27 just a few days into the session, through his finance minister’s economic update, he made an abrupt U-turn. Instead of seeking support from the opposition, his government presented an in-your-face, take-it-or-leave-it position.

The opposition parties – all three of them – decided not to take it. Instead, they announced that they would use their collective majority in the House to vote no confidence in the Harper government and support an alternative coalition government.

The no-confidence vote is to take place next Monday. If the government loses that vote, the rules of parliamentary democracy give Harper two options. He can tender his government’s resignation to the Governor General and clear the way for Madame Jean to ask Stephane Dion to form a Liberal-NDP coalition government. Or he can ask the Governor General to dissolve the 40th Parliament so that we can elect the 41st Parliament.

The first option – resignation – would be entirely constitutional. It involves no “usurpation” of power but is an honourable way out of the present impasse.

If Harper were to take the second option, the Governor General would have to consider carefully whether to grant his request for a dissolution. Her primary concern must be to protect parliamentary democracy. A steady diet of elections – four in four years – is not healthy for parliamentary democracy.

If there is an alternative government available that has a reasonable prospect of being supported for a period of time by a majority in the House of Commons, she would have reason to decline Harper’s request. Harper would then have to resign, and the Governor General would commission Dion to form a government.

If this happens, again there would be no “usurpation” of power but a proper application of the rules and principles of parliamentary democracy. It has been very disturbing to hear over the last few days, from people who should know better, wild unparliamentary theories about our system of government. Elections are not simple popularity contests in which the leader whose party garners the most votes gets all the power.

I am greatly concerned that there is so little public knowledge of the constitutional rules that govern our parliamentary system of government. These rules are not formally written down in a legal text or taught in our schools. Maybe the most important lesson to take from the situation we are now living through is to begin to codify as much as we can of this “unwritten” part of our Constitution and to ensure that it is well taught in our schools.

Peter Russell is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto and author of the recently published Two Cheers for Minority Government: The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy.

The Toronto Star
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Section: Editorial

Having discovered his inner Keynes, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is now saying fiscal stimulus and deficit financing are “essential” to avert economic disaster. He even suggests that Canadians who cling to a belief in balanced budgets are guilty of “simplistic” thinking.

This would be the same Stephen Harper who declared as recently as Oct. 14 (election day) in a front page article in the Star: “We’ll never go back into deficit.”

Harper can’t argue that circumstances have changed since Oct. 14. The financial meltdown was already well under way then, and most mainstream economists – like the legendary John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s – were saying that maintaining a balanced budget in the face of the economic headwinds was utterly wrongheaded.

If Canadians are thinking simplistically, then, it is because politicians like Harper refused to be straight with them during the recent election campaign.

The best that can be said for Harper is that he was not alone. All the opposition leaders also pledged during the campaign to keep the federal budget balanced, including even NDP Leader Jack (”I am not a Keynesian”) Layton.

While we welcome Harper’s post-election conversion to economic reality, it is not at all clear that his finance minister, Jim Flaherty, has gotten the message. Yesterday in Toronto, Flaherty continued to play down the need for stimulus in his upcoming economic statement. “The fact is we have a stimulus of almost 2 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) already in the Canadian economy,” he said. “Fortunately we acted in advance. A lot of countries have had to play catch-up on that stimulus.”

This could be just a case of Flaherty following the tradition of finance ministers talking down their budgets in advance so as to diminish expectations. Or it could be that Flaherty’s neo-conservative ideology is getting in the way of his judgment.

Fortunately, U.S. president-elect Barack Obama is unfettered by ideology and is already taking steps to stimulate the economy, eight weeks before his wearing-in. His Democratic allies in Congress are talking of a stimulus package, including tax cuts and increased spending, of up to $700 billion.

American stimulus would certainly help to pull Canada out of the recession. But our national government should be taking proportional steps. A good place to start would be the economic statement Flaherty is to unveil on Thursday.

© 2008 Torstar Corporation

National Post
Fri 21 Nov 2008
Byline: Ralph Goodale

Not long ago, as Canadians were about to vote in the federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was emphatic about his Conservative government not running a budgetary deficit.

Now, barely a month later, he wants us to believe that he’s being driven toward unavoidable red ink by sudden international circumstances beyond his control.

It’s all the fault of a collapsing U. S. housing market, bank failures, a global credit crunch and continuing turmoil in financial markets world-wide. That’s the Conservative spin.

So now, the Canadian government has no choice but to sell off capital assets, or cancel programs and services, or run a federal deficit — or a combination of all three — if it’s going to safeguard Canadian pensions, salvage jobs in the manufacturing, automotive and forestry sectors and kick-start economic growth.

But wait a minute. This Conservative story just doesn’t add up.

Yes, the economic crisis that began in the United States is very real, and it will indeed inflict significant damage in Canada and around the world. But the fact that this country is not in a better position today to weather that storm is entirely Mr. Harper’s domestic responsibility.

The best economic forecasters in the private sector and within government have been warning successive finance ministers since at least 2003 about the huge downside risks posed by the precarious American situation. Previous Liberal governments took those warnings seriously. Stephen Harper did not.

From his Liberal predecessors, he inherited the most robust fiscal

The fact that Canada is not in a position to weather the economic crisis is entirely his fault

position in all the G8 group of world-leading economies, including an annual surplus of more than $12-billion and projected financial flexibility of close to $100-billion over the coming five years.

But as soon as he came into office, and long before any U. S. crisis materialized, Mr. Harper began frittering all of that away.

He increased federal government spending to an unprecedented level. He eroded the federal tax base, without bolstering productivity or improving disposable incomes. And he eliminated the extra prudence and the contingency reserve that used to be built into federal budget-making as “fiscal shock absorbers” to protect against sudden nasty surprises.

You always hope those surprises will never actually happen, but inevitably they do. Until Mr. Harper arrived on the scene, Canada had the wherewithal to defend itself.

We withstood the consequences of major international currency crises in Mexico and Asia, the SARS pandemic, mad cow disease and the fallout from 9/11, while still cutting taxes, paying down debt, investing in health care, education, innovation and infrastructure and staying solidly in the black at the same time.

But no more. Mr. Harper has squandered Canada’s fiscal capacity.

So the first external crisis to come along on his watch results in a deficit. And that’s entirely his responsibility.

-Ralph Goodale is the Liberal MP for Wascana constituency in Saskatchewan and House Leader for the Official Opposition. He was Canada’s finance minister from 2003 to 2006.

The Ottawa Citizen
Fri 05 Sep 2008
Page: A5
Section: News
Byline: Mike De Souza, with files from Randy Boswell
Source: Canwest News Service

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party has received a failing grade in a report card to be released today that evaluates the climate-change policies of the five federal parties.

The report, “The Voters’ Guide to the Climate Crisis Election,” produced by the Sierra Club of Canada, awarded an A- to the Green party for its climate-change policies. The Liberals ranked second with a B+, followed closely by the NDP, which got a B, and the Bloc Québécois with a B-.

The environmental group gave the Conservatives an F+ in its evaluation. However, Jean Langlois, the Sierra Club’s national campaigns director, said the governing party could have a chance to score better in a final report card to be released during the anticipated election by beefing up its policies.

“I think the pattern is pretty clear about which parties are trying to address the climate crisis and, based on the information so far, the Conservatives are just not trying,” said Mr. Langlois. “The challenge is for them to convince us otherwise.”

The evaluations looked at whether the parties set targets to reduce emissions based on the recommendations of peer-reviewed scientific evidence. It also examined whether their policies were strong enough to achieve those targets.

He said the minority Conservative government’s framework to regulate pollution from industry had flaws that would allow emissions of heat-trapping gases that cause global warming to continue rising in Canada. But he praised the government for pledging to introduce mandatory regulations, something the previous Liberal government failed to do.

Green leader Elizabeth May, a former executive director of the Sierra Club, received the highest marks in the guide for proposing a carbon tax and mandatory targets for a market trading system to put a price on pollution, Mr. Langlois said.

The Liberals, who are also proposing a carbon tax, scored lower in the evaluation because their overall emissions targets were not considered as tough as the Greens’.

Mr. Langlois added that he expected the NDP and Bloc to introduce more details of their policies during the election campaign that would allow them to score higher.

The Sierra Club gave the five parties a draft of its evaluation of their policies in mid-August to give them a chance to respond to criticism or correct mistakes, Mr. Langlois said.

While the Tories received a poor mark on their environmental policy from the Sierra Club, two of Canada’s leading scholars on the North have issued a ringing endorsement of the Conservative government’s Arctic strategy.

“The Stephen Harper government’s northern initiatives have strengths and weaknesses that are endemic to all public policy,” argue University of Saskatchewan political scientist Greg Poelzer and University of Waterloo historian Ken Coates. “Nevertheless, his government has taken some concrete steps toward a comprehensive northern policy, something that Canada hasn’t had since the Diefenbaker administration.”

The Tories have made the historically marginal issues of the North a centrepiece of their re-election campaign.

“Canada has avoided acting like a northern nation for generations,” Mr. Poelzer and Mr. Coates state in an essay published yesterday. “We should applaud any government that treats the Canadian Arctic seriously and aims to build a country from sea-to-sea-to-sea.”

Mr. Poelzer and Mr. Coates are voicing their support for the government’s Arctic policies after Mr. Harper was deluged by criticism last week from opposition parties.

The Leader-Post (Regina)
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Column: Bruce Johnstone

The Liberal carbon tax will a) plunge the country into recession, b) undermine national unity, c) make everything more expensive, or d) probably not be any more economically damaging than the Tory or NDP green plan.

If you answered either a), b) or c), then you’ve probably been listening to Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper recently.

Just the other day, Harper charged that the Liberal carbon tax would “wreak havoc on the Canada’s economy, destroy jobs, weaken business at a time of global uncertainty.”

Moreover, Harper said the carbon tax would centralize power in Ottawa and weaken the federation by dividing Canadians into carbon haves and have-nots.

“By undermining the economy and by recentralizing money and power in Ottawa, it can only undermine the progress we have been making on national unity,” Harper told a Montreal business audience.

Not to be outdone, Harper supporter and Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall said the carbon tax would increase electricity bills by more than 40 per cent and cause $500 million to leave the province annually.

These are strong charges and, if true, a damning indictment of carbon tax concept as proposed by the Liberals and their leader Stephane Dion.

But what evidence is there to support these apocalyptic predictions?

In Harper’s case, we have to take him at his word as a politician and economist. There seems to be no explanation of where Harper’s visceral hatred of carbon taxes comes from, other than sheer political partisanship.

For his part, Wall cited “very preliminary analysis” by the provincial environment department for his projections of the dire consequences of carbon taxes on Saskatchewan.

So what do the real experts say?

Jack Mintz, the Palmer professor of public policy at the University of Calgary, recently compared the two competing systems for reducing carbon emissions — the Conservatives’ regulatory approach and the Liberals’ carbon tax.

His conclusion? Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of the Liberal plan, Mintz says, is that it will price carbon more generally rather than target specific sectors, like the Tory scheme.

The carbon tax will also tax consumption rather than production, and domestic consumption, rather than exports. The tax will apply to all regions of the country, but particularly those with large resource and manufacturing sectors, which are large energy users.

The advantages of the Tory plan is that it is “more directed at reducing carbon” than the Liberal carbon tax. Mintz says. And the Tory plan is “quite tough on companies to find carbon-reducing technologies,” he says.

But, as Mintz points out, the Tory plan is not without its costs. It’s just difficult to estimate those costs with precision. “Each plan could substantially affect prices paid by Canadians. Each approach has it merits and demerits,” Mintz said

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has estimated the cost of the Tory plan at 0.5 per cent of GDP or $7 billion to $8 billion a year in economic output in order to meet the government’s targets of reducing carbon emissions’ “intensity” by 18 per cent by 2010.

While no fans of carbon taxes, the CTF says the Conservatives’ regulatory approach will penalize energy intensive industries twice by forcing them to invest in carbon-reducing technology and then by paying higher energy prices.

“These cost increases could hurt the international competitiveness of some of the biggest companies in Canada,” the CTF says.

The point here is that neither scheme is perfect nor without its costs. Both put a price on carbon and both will require changes in the way we do business and consume energy.

Other countries, like Sweden, have introduced carbon taxes, at much more onerous levels, and their economies haven’t collapsed

For Harper to claim that the carbon tax will destroy the economy, or break up the country, for crying out loud, is taking political rhetoric to a new low, even one noted for defecating puffins.

It smacks of demagoguery and, worse yet, desperation.

- Bruce Johnstone is the Leader-Post’s financial editor.

Source: The Canadian Press
Sep 11, 2008 18:56

By Alexander Panetta

ST-EUSTACHE, Que. _ On a day when Stephen Harper strolled peacefully through a vineyard, the earth around him was being scorched again.

The Conservative leader’s photo-op in an idyllic field offered a fitting snapshot of his day _ and of his campaign so far.

Harper has delivered a message of calm, competent, even cheerful leadership. But that message has been squashed by moments of intemperance, ineptitude or downright nastiness within his ranks.

While he strolled through that vineyard with a candidate he hopes will be his first-ever elected in the Montreal area, one of his aides was ordering the RCMP to handle his public relations.

“I want that camera out of there,” Harper spokeswoman Carolyn Stewart Olsen told a Mountie after spotting CTV reporter Robert Fife and a network television crew.

That camera was rolling.

The agent tentatively raised his hand and quietly, almost apologetically asked the news crew to move away.

He might not have been a public-relations professional, but the plainclothes officer appeared to recognize a bad PR decision when he saw it.

It’s been such a week for the Conservatives that asking a man carrying a gun to keep the news media at bay was not their worst communications move of the day.

Things looked so promising on Thursday morning. With his war room’s puffin-pooping gaffe far behind him, Harper entered Quebec. He hopes the province will deliver a dozen Tory seats and serve as the building blocks of a Conservative majority government.

Early headlines from a morning speech carried his suggestion that the Liberal carbon-tax plan would be bad for national unity.

But the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan was upset by the announcement of Canada’s pullout in 2011. He took his anger at the Conservatives public.

The Tories responded this brush fire as they often have: They whacked it with a sledgehammer.

They did to the mourning father _ Jim Davis _ what they have habitually done to those who criticize the government. They’ve done it to political opponents across the floor, to NGOs, and to celebrity spokespeople including Al Gore, Bono and Sarah Polley.

They attacked. They impugned Davis’s motives. They called him a Liberal. In politics they call it “pushback” _ and nobody pushes back more aggressively than the Conservatives.

It was the default position for much of their time in government to any difficult question they faced on the floor of the House of Commons. The prime minister has employed that modus operandi since taking office.

The opposition asks about prisoner abuses in Afghanistan? They’re supporting terrorists.

Liberals ask about the environment, the economy, climate change, or foreign policy? Well, Liberals did nothing for 13 years in government, goes the stock reply.

Sticky questions about Canada’s policy on the detention of Afghan prisoners of war? They didn’t shy away from blaming their generals.

Harper’s singing a different, more open, more positive tune in this campaign.

“I want it make it very clear that I have set a tone and an expectation as leader for this campaign,” Harper said.

Someone did not get the memo.

The same campaign war room that produced a graphic of a bird defecating on the Liberal leader produced more unwanted attention Thursday.

When a reporter asked the prime minister about Davis’s remarks, he replied that losing a child was obviously a horrific ordeal but maintained he was doing the right thing.

His war room, in the meantime, was firing off an e-mail aimed at discrediting a grieving father.

The Conservatives’ communications director, Ryan Sparrow, sent CTV reporter Tom Clark an e-mail suggesting Davis was a Liberal.

Within minutes, Sparrow was suspended. The prime minister’s communications director, Kory Teneycke, was trying to limit the damage.

He described the remarks as unacceptable and said Sparrow would be disciplined for the duration of the campaign. A few television crews were hoping to get the prime minister to say the same thing on-camera. So they tried asking him during the scheduled photo op at a vineyard during his next campaign stop.

Cue the RCMP.

Teneycke _ who was recently hired onto Harper’s staff in the hope of improving its communications _ was not around during the testy exchange. But he quickly sought out the media and apologized.

That made for three apologies from Conservatives in three days.

The Toronto Star
Mon 01 Sep 2008
Page: AA06
Section: Opinion
Byline: Martin Knelman
Source: Toronto Star

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has made it clear he plans to ignore my advice.

I had been presumptuous enough to suggest that in light of widespread distress in the cultural community about Ottawa’s series of shocking cuts to arts funding, he should find an excuse to be elsewhere on Thursday, rather than attend opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival at Roy Thomson Hall.

In a letter to the editor of the Star published last week, Flaherty wrote: “I would like to inform Martin Knelman that I plan on attending the Toronto International Film Festival again this year. It is a personal highlight, but more importantly it allows us to showcase some of our best and brightest Canadian filmmakers.”

That is why, he explains, the Harper government is contributing $25 million to the building of the TIFF Group’s new home, the Bell Lightbox, currently under construction at the corner of King and John Sts.

No doubt this show of support from Flaherty, who also happens to be the minister in charge of the GTA, is gratifying. The only trouble is that is in total contradiction to the mood of fear and loathing that has engulfed the entire cultural community of this country over the past few weeks in light of more than $45 million in arbitrary and destructive funding cuts – with hints that more devastation lies ahead – made by this alleged champion of the arts.

Even more alarming, Telefilm Canada, the arm’s-length federal agency which has invested $3.5 million in TIFF’s gala opening movie, Passchendaele, is at risk of losing $15 million in funding for new media. In the circumstances, I would like to inform Flaherty that one of us is delusional – and I don’t think it’s me.

To put the dilemma into terms that film lovers will recognize, the man who controls the nation’s coffers has been giving a long-running, Oscar-worthy performance as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Dr. Jekyll takes credit for increasing the budget of the Canada Council – even though the increase fell far short of what had been put in place by the previous Liberal government, despite a Tory election pledge to honour the Liberal plan.

Dr. Jekyll takes credit for help funding the Bell Lightbox, even though the $25 million in question was committed by the previous government a year before the Harper Tories came to power.

And he waxes eloquent, assuring me: “Our government believes that culture and art are the cornerstone of Canadian society, and should be nurtured and supported.”

It’s lovely to hear such fine sentiments, but in the middle of the night, a scary Mr. Hyde emerges from an Ottawa cellar with an axe and chops millions of dollars that were doing a fine job of nurturing and supporting the arts.

All this happens with no warning, no consultation, and the flimsiest explanation about not wasting taxpayers’ dollars – along with muttering that too much money is going to leftists who presumably don’t share their wholesome family values.

Upshot: Artists across the country feel like mugging victims in a dark alley.

As Karen Kain, artistic director of the National Ballet, noted in a letter to Stephen Harper the other day, recent funding cuts will make it impossible for Canadian dance companies to perform in other countries. So much for showcasing our talent abroad.

Economically, it makes no sense. Ottawa’s $2.3 billion investment in culture brings an economic payoff of over $80 billion (according to the Conference Board of Canada). And presenting our talent abroad enhances this country’s global profile and attracts foreign dollars.

Another senseless cut hacks close to $1 million out of the budget of the Canadian Film Centre – which means less money to train and develop those talented, bright filmmakers showcased for the world at TIFF.

No wonder virtually every arts organization in Canada has condemned the cuts, and 2,500 people turned out in Montreal the other day to protest. No wonder the opposition is demanding a parliamentary review of what strikes many as a war on culture.

Not to worry, Mr. Flaherty. Ignore the fallout and enjoy the film festival.

Martin Knelman’s column on the arts appears every other Monday on this page.

National Post
Thu 28 Aug 2008
Section: Financial Post
Byline: Eric Beauchesne
Dateline: OTTAWA
Source: Canwest News Service

OTTAWA – The federal and provincial governments should accelerate business tax reforms to help Canadian firms be more productive to deal with the strong dollar, the Conference Board argued in a report yesterday.

“Canadian firms are facing two major obstacles in their efforts to compete globally, lagging productivity growth and the strong dollar,” said Glen Hodgson, the think-tank’s chief economist. “Broad business tax reform would help Canadian firms invest in productivity-enhancing machinery and equipment, give companies a competitive advantage in global competition, and encourage investment in leading-edge environmental technologies.”

The reforms should include the introduction of controversial carbon taxes, along the lines of what British Columbia has already introduced and what federal opposition Liberals have proposed, which would not only help reduce greenhouse gases but would provide additional revenues to cover the costs of accelerating tax cuts in other areas, such as corporate income taxes, Mr. Hodgson said in an interview.

“The easiest way to do it, frankly, is by putting a tax on fuel related to the amount of CO2 produced by a litre of gasoline or heating fuel in the home,” he said, noting that the federal Liberal carbon-tax proposal draws upon an earlier conference board recommendation. “Any time you raise the price of something people are going to look for alternatives or ways to become more efficient.

“Green taxes are coming; it’s only a question of when,” he said.

Governments should also introduce an environmental technology investment tax credit, the board said.

“It’s a carrot-and-stick approach,” Mr. Hodgson said, noting that the carbon tax is the stick and the tax credit the carrot to get firms to look for cleaner processes.

Other reforms the board wants to see accelerated include cutting corporate income tax rates to the low end of the range in the Group of Seven major industrial nations to meet the federal government’s target of a combined federal-provincial corporate income tax rate of 25%.

It also urges that provinces that haven’t yet done so eliminate any remaining capital taxes, which are a tax on the assets of a firm and applied whether a company is profitable or not.

The Ottawa Citizen
Thu 28 Aug 2008
Page: A15
Section: News
Byline: Errol P. Mendes
Source: Citizen Special

It now seems almost certain that Stephen Harper will visit the governor general just after Labour Day to seek an early election. This is despite the fixed election date of October 2009 which was established by a law that his own government was eager to pass as a demonstration of political fairness, accountability and transparency. It was also a key Reform party core belief and part of the Conservatives’ 2006 election platform.

He will claim the right to do so on two grounds. First, he will claim that he is legally able to do so despite the law he championed. This is because he will claim the law, which is a minor amendment to the Canada Elections Act, still gives the governor general the right to dissolve Parliament on the advice of the prime minister. Some experts claim that the prime minister would only be bound by a constitutional amendment that entrenches a fixed date for elections. The experts could well be wrong.

Much of the powers of the prime minister and the governor general are governed not by the written Constitution, but by constitutional conventions, including who has the right to dissolve Parliament and call for elections. Constitutional convention gives the prime minister only the right to advise the governor general to call for dissolution of Parliament and thereby trigger an election. The governor general has an uncontested residual power to deny a prime minister’s request for dissolution.

Constitutional conventions can be both entrenched in and overridden by statute law. That is precisely what the Conservatives did when they decided to constrain the conventional power of the prime minister to seek dissolution whenever he smelled political advantage to do so.

However, the fixed election law does not constrain the residual power of the governor general as it expressly stipulates that “Nothing in this section affects the powers of the governor general, including the power to dissolve Parliament at the governor general’s discretion.”

Historical precedent demonstrates that the use of the conventional residual power by the governor general contrary to the advice of the prime minister has the potential to cause political controversy and create trouble for the Crown in Canada. In the 1926 King-Byng affair, governor general Lord Byng refused William Lyon Mackenzie King’s request to dissolve Parliament after losing a confidence vote and called on the Conservative opposition leader Arthur Meighen to form the government. When Meighen could not gain the confidence of the House, Lord Byng granted dissolution of Parliament and Mackenzie King won a majority government, in part by campaigning against the decision of Lord Byng. This precedent, while not a constitutional convention, would present a serious political hurdle for a governor general to refuse to grant the request of a prime minister for dissolution, no matter how contrived.

Even if the fixed elections law does not constrain the governor general’s discretion to grant dissolution of Parliament, one could argue that the law constrains the prime minister’s power to ask for one until October 2009. Hiding under the political constraints of the governor general’s residual power is nevertheless a violation of a statute. Some aggrieved citizen may even consider seeking court action to stop this legally dubious move.

The imminent violation of the fixed elections law is even more distasteful when one considers the second reason for Mr. Harper’s claim to ignore his own law. He claims that he may seek the dissolution because Parliament is dysfunctional and will continue to be so with the next session to start soon after Labour Day.

Ignoring the fact that most of his agenda has passed through Parliament and become law, Mr. Harper and other Conservatives point to the dysfunctional nature of parliamentary committees such as the one examining whether the advertising expenses practices of the Conservatives breached the Elections Act. The parliamentary channel’s coverage of the proceedings has revealed that it was primarily the disruptive antics of the Conservative party members on the committee and the failure of Conservative witnesses to appear before the committee that was the cause of the dysfunction of this committee. The secret, 200-page Conservative guidebook to disrupt and manipulate parliamentary committees — including chairs storming out of meetings — is proof that it is the Conservatives who are orchestrating the dysfunction in Parliament and then blaming it on the opposition parties.

It is as if this Conservative government is convinced that opposition parties have no right to object and oppose policies and practices that they may find repugnant.

There is also the damning logic of Mr. Harper’s own admission that any election will result in another minority government. So why call it now if that is the case? To continue the alleged dysfunctional Parliament with a new minority government at the cost of almost $200 million to the Canadian taxpayer? Or is it to put off more scrutiny on the alleged wrongdoings of the Conservatives that fly in the face of their promise of transparency, honesty and accountability?

If the prime minister does decide to ignore the fixed election date and ask the governor general to dissolve Parliament soon after Labour Day because it is dysfunctional, it would be akin to a person who has blown up his own house asking the rest of us to build him a new one.

If not the rule of law, a most basic sense of political morality should make the prime minister think twice about breaking his own law.

Errol P. Mendes is a professor of international, constitutional and human rights law at the University of Ottawa and editor-in-chief of the National Journal of Constitutional Law.