Potential And Reality

I remember when I first started teaching, everything seemed so clear, so obvious: students, for example, were no longer writing very well because they weren't taught grammar; a rigourous and systematic approach would fix that. I soon learned, however, that such a prescription was unspeakably naive. Like everything else, it did not exist in a vacuum, but rather was tied to so many other factors over which I had little or no control, such as family environment, motivation to read voluminously, etc., etc.

In some ways, and I really hope I am wrong, I wonder if Justin Trudeau's winning approach to electoral victory may partly mirror the naiveté I had so many years ago. After years of exposure to Stephen Harper's toxicity, expectations are very high among Canadians for a new political culture, and Trudeau's potential to disappoint is great. If he succeeds, his impact on the health of our democracy could be quite substantial.

Lawrence Martin writes that there is much to change:

If Canadians thought the operation run by Stephen Harper was ugly before, look at what we’re hearing now. Not from Mr. Harper’s opponents, but Conservatives themselves.

“They had almost a Stalinistic way of looking at things,” Philippe Gervais, a former Tory campaign co-director, told iPolitics . “You were either on-side, or you were dead.”

Here’s Geoff Norquay, the long-time Harper defender on TV panels. In the next edition of Policy magazine, he writes what the political operation was really like under Harper favourite Jenni Byrne: “They ran a closed circle, they humiliated staff, they berated candidates, they pushed every reasonable argument far beyond its logical limit, they shut out others with a different view.”

One of Trudeau's strongest suits is his style:

Style doesn’t make the man, but as Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy illustrated, it can change the morale, bring a new spirit to a country. Mr. Trudeau is no Reagan and he is no Kennedy but he has some of their charismatic attributes. If he doesn’t settle for half-measures, he could bring a new spirit.

That infusion of our waning spirits was clearly evident in the increasingly large crowds Trudeau attracted as the campaign wore on, and in the enthusiasm with which many greeted his majority government.

In more substantive matters, a test for the incoming prime minister will be how he handles dissent:

The wise leader doesn’t demand agreement from everyone in his party. If the news media gets all excited about an MP going offside on some issue, he should take it in stride, as in, “So what? That’s what a democracy is all about. The freedom to speak your mind.”

Lawrence Martin has several suggestions for Trudeau as his time in office draws near, but I'll end with one that I think all of us would agree upon:

To restore civility to our politics, Mr. Trudeau should ban personal attack ads. To restore sanity to Question Period, the Speaker needs to be empowered so that questions are answered.

Now wouldn't that be something to truly behold?

The Virtues Of Civility

Probably one of the most obviously distressing aspects of the last ten years has been the precipitous drop in political civility, earmarked by fractious and factious exchanges in the House of Commons. No longer a chamber for informed debate, under the Harper reign it became a vehicle by which the government denigrated all opponents and thumbed its nose at the concept of transparency and accountability, thereby alienating the general population and discouraging people from any form of participation in the democratic process.

We live now with high hopes that will all change.

There is an encouraging story told by Susan Delacourt suggesting that our hopes have a chance of being realized:

I asked Trudeau: what was the big difference in his two lives on the Hill — as the son of a prime minister in the 1970s and 1980s and as a backbench MP in 2010?

Trudeau said he had two answers to that question: one he was accustomed to answering publicly, one he kept to himself.

First, the oft-repeated answer: he was surprised to realize how much he liked constituency work, helping people in his Montreal riding of Papineau. He had never seen that aspect of MPs’ work through his father, who had staff to handle issues in the riding.

As for the other answer, Trudeau looked around to see who might overhear him. Careful to keep his voice down, he said he was stunned to see how some MPs treated their staff, and the air of entitlement around them. He was truly surprised to learn that many staffers had to endure temper tantrums from their bosses. “Who do they think they are?” he said, glancing in the direction of an MP or two dining nearby.

Apparently, Justin learned a valuable lesson from his father when he was a child:

Trudeau then told me about how when he and his brothers were young, the only times they got in serious trouble with Pierre was when they showed disrespect to their RCMP protection officers. Overhearing the boys call one of the officers “Baldy,” Trudeau gathered them together and furiously scolded them, telling them that these men had families and lives they were putting on the line to watch over them.

This is not a prime minister who is going to rule with fear, it seems.

Basic decency and empathy are qualities I think most of us try to practise in our daily lives. To see them applied in the public arena would, without question, mark a radical and highly desirable shift in our political culture.

A Tale Of Two Parliamentary Secretaries*

What do Paul Calandra and Dean Del Mastro have in common? Well, let's answer that question by first stating the obvious. Both are of Italian heritage; both have served as Prime Minister Harper's Parliamentary Secretary; both have made blubbering speeches in the House of Commons; and, surprise surprise, both have stood accused of illegal/unethical conduct.

You may recall that Del Mastro, whose trial for falsifying election documents and knowingly exceeding the Election spending limit is winding up, offered an emotional defence of his integrity in the House. Please watch only until you feel your gag reflex kicking in:



After his recent contemptuous behaviour in the House, Harper's current Parliamentary Secretary, Paul Calandra, offered this PMO-directed nauseating performance as an act of atonement. The same viewer advisory applies:



But how does the taint of criminal/unethical behavior apply to Mr. Calandra? Surprisingly, it is all part of the public record.

Mr. Calandra likes to talk about his hard-working father who may or may not have owned a pizza shop. (That story has changed over the years; earlier versions had him as a barber who owned a hair salon. What is indisputable is that he eventually made a small fortune in real estate.)

Interestingly, the stories rarely deal with his mother. There may be a good reason.

In January of this year, Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen uncovered some very interesting elements of Paul Calandra's dealings with his mother:

Before he was elected in 2008, the prime minister’s parliamentary secretary, Paul Calandra, was embroiled in an ugly family dispute in which he was accused of taking money from his dying mother and suggesting he should kill his sister.

The events are alleged to have occurred in 2005, and were the basis of a lawsuit launched by his sisters; the issue was settled in 2008 before Calandra was first elected.

In an affidavit filed in October 2005, Concetta Calandra described how her mother Franca allegedly confronted Paul about approximately $8,000 that had been charged to Franca’s Visa card and her TD bank account.

“Paul went ballistic,” Concetta claimed in the affidavit.

“He was completely out of control. He started calling me names, suggested that he should kill me and punched the pantry door.”

“He said, ‘mom didn’t need to know about it,’ and that when the money ran out, that he would use the money in her mutual funds,” the affidavit says of the January 2005 conversation.

Calandra, who at the time had power of attorney for his mother, said that his mother had authorized the expenditures as “compensation for the sacrifice the defendant was making by foregoing employment to care for his sick mother.”

His sister said it was fraud. Shortly afterward, his mother Franca transferred power of attorney to Concetta.

However, this did not stop Calandra from further alleged pilfering, behaving as if he still had power over his mother's finances:

Concetta said she found that her mother’s widow’s benefit had been garnisheed to pay down more than $10,000 in unpaid taxes. She said she was shocked because she believed $25,000 taken from her mother’s account had been used to pay the Canada Revenue Agency. In fact, she alleged in court documents, Calandra wrote the cheque to himself.

Calandra said in his statement of defence that he never claimed the $25,000 was intended to pay taxes. Rather, he said, “The money was given to the defendant by his mother freely, without pretext and on her own volition.”

Calandra's alleged thefts did not end there. Three months before her death, a farm property in Stouffville owned by Franca was transferred to list both her and Paul as joint tenants, a fairly common move that is used to avoid paying probate fees. However, Paul's

sisters alleged that Calandra wrongly caused the property to be transferred, then mortgaged the property for $240,000, even though he no longer had power of attorney. When Franca died, the sisters claimed, Calandra was able to claim ownership of the farm property.

The case ends there; a document filed on the first day of the 2008 federal election campaign said the parties had settled the case.

What is known is that a few weeks into that campaign, Calandra sold the farm property for $950,000 to a local landscape contractor.

None of this is perhaps surprising for close observers of a federal government that has long placed expedience before morality; that Calandra is now Harper's Parliamentary Secretary and sits on the House ethics committee seems in some ways both appropriate and emblematic of a regime that has debased the body politic for far too long.

* I am indebted to my friend Dave in Winnipeg, the catalyst for this post. He sent an email alerting me to Calandra's questionable past, and pointed out that it has been dealt with in the satirical political magazine Frank. You can read the Frank assessment of this tawdry episode here.

Shameful, Absolutely Shameful

It's terrible, isn't it, when people resort to stereotypes to express their political displeasure? An absolute disgrace. Unconscionable. Heh heh.



H/t Occupy Canada