Lying: The Pillar Of Politics

This timely message is brought to you by the folks at Operation Maple:

This And That

The start of a new week inspires me to look back on the one past; thanks to an array of editorial cartoonists, it was a week not kind to our outgoing (one hopes) prime minister:











Government for all Canadians, not just the wealthy, offers this intriguing clip from the past. Keep your eyes on the late Jim Flaherty:

Watch Jim Flaherty's reaction when Steve tells the House of Commons that Nigel Wright didn't tell Ray Novak about the Duffy bribe.

Posted by Government for all Canadians, not just the wealthy on Sunday, August 23, 2015

Lest Angry White Guy be forgotten, The Star's Heather Mallick offers her views in today's edition:

#AngryCon, identified by the Star as “Earl Cowan,” was filmed in a tan suit, white shirt and, on a hot day, undershirt. His hair a limp version of Harper’s, he accessorized with a calculator watch and a Doug Ford for Mayor button, but no wedding ring. If there’s any man who needs a wife, it’s Earl. He has no one to say, “Earl that’s nuts,” which is one reason he watched himself shout in a high-pitched voice that the reporters were “lying pieces of s—t” and then accused them, a propos of nothing, of cheating on their taxes.

And a Star letter-writer has this suggestion on how to deal with the unstable volatile Cowan:

The now known profanities shouter, Earl Cowan, should immediately be investigated by the Canada Revenue Agency because he, in all probability, must have been cheating on his income tax returns. He thinks it’s okay to do that — everybody does that, and Duffy has done nothing wrong.

Satendra Ganjoo, Toronto

Your Morning Smile

Pinocchio, Snow White and Superman are out for a stroll in town one day.
As they walk, they came across a sign:
"Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world."
"I am entering," said Snow White.
After half an hour she comes out and they ask her,
"Well, how did you do?"
" First Place ," said Snow White.
They continue walking and they see a sign:
"Contest for the strongest man in the world."
"I'm entering," says Superman.
After half an hour he returns and they ask him,
"How did you make out?"
" First Place ," answers Superman. "Did you ever doubt?"
They continue walking when they see a sign:
"Contest! Who is the greatest liar in the world?"
Pinocchio says "this is mine."
Half an hour later, he returns with tears in his eyes.
"What happened?" they asked.
"Who the hell is STEPHEN HARPER?" asked Pinocchio.

More Fun With 'Deceivin' Stephen'

H/t Theo Moudakis

And this from Star letter-writers:

Re: Duffy scandal dogs Harper, Aug. 17

Liars.

There are many types, just as there are many kinds of lies – white, boastful, malicious, and the Big Lie. This last kind can perhaps be used successfully only by one class of liar – the Big Man or CEO type.

The method is familiar, probably taught at MBA schools. Appear calm and subdued. Begin by saying “Look,” or “Let’s be clear,” or “I’ve said this before.” Slump your shoulders as a visible sigh of exasperation. Use a somewhat rote, very slightly sing-song style of delivery, like one who is patiently taking up valuable time to re-explain something that the listener, disappointingly, lacked the perception to grasp the first time.

Then unleash the Big Lie. The black economy is actually white. Saving the climate is good, but taking any suggested step to that end is bad. Canadians are in imminent danger of terrorism, and bombing Syria will prevent lone-wolf attacks here.

Past tanker, railway and pipeline disasters have taught us so much that future incidents are impossible. Breaches of election spending rules and Parliamentary conduct are normal, nothing new, conform to past practice, nothing to see here, folks. The Senate scandal was rare, contained, and completely divorced from the practices of the party and PMO. If one didn’t use certain quoted exact words, therefore nothing of the kind was said.

The punctiliously polite Tom Mulcair, Justin Trudeau and Elizabeth May seem to think that on the debating podium they are still hamstrung by the Parliamentary rule against flagging an untruth. Well, Stephen Harper himself has killed the current Parliament, so those rules don’t apply, and good heavens, surely somebody has to bell the cat.

If they absolutely can’t bring themselves to use the word, how about witty references to lengthening noses, or: “Mr. Moderator, do we need to call 911? There seems to be a smouldering odour in here of pants on fire.”

Or how about simply looking at the camera and asking Canadians directly: “On the economy, who are you going to believe – this guy or your own eyes?”

J.A. McFarlane, Toronto

For years we’ve known that Lyin’ Brian Mulroney earned his sobriquet; now we know that Deceivin’ Stephen Harper has earned his monicker, too.

Bernie Smith, Parksville, B.C.

If Nigel Wright believed that his $90,000 payment to Mike Duffy was a good deed, then why would he not have told the Prime Minister? Is there anyone in Canada who still believes that he didn’t?

Paul Axelrod, Toronto

Fun With Stephen

As a Facebook wag described the above, Harper's caucus room post-election.





I have always respected Smokey's advice. At this critical juncture, Canadians would be foolish to ignore him.

The Evolving Harper 'Narrative' On The Duffy Scandal

Of course, I am using the word narrative quite euphemistically here.

Reveling In Ignorance

It is perhaps the supreme irony of our age; for the first time in history we have access to a world of information and data literally at our fingertips; it is an era when profound ignorance should be quickly receding into the status of historical artifact; yet we are led by a federal government that revels in and promotes profound ignorance. This is not the way the twenty-first century should be.

In today's Star, Carol Goar begins her article with some damning facts about the Harper regime's relentless campaign of disinformation:

For the past year, Canadians have laboured under the misapprehension that thousands of jobs go begging because no one in this country has the skills to fill them. It turned out the government was using faulty online data.

For two years, people struggled to figure out how Ottawa could close prisons while ordering judges to impose more jail sentences. The auditor general solved that riddle last week: it couldn’t. Canada’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded.

For eight years, the government has been cracking down on lawlessness, despite a steady drop in the crime rate. Former cabinet minister Stockwell Day insisted “unreported crime” was rising.

Through three federal elections, Stephen Harper has campaigned as the prime minister who brought fiscal discipline to the nation’s capital. In fact, federal spending ballooned on his watch. He burned his way through the $13-billion surplus left by the previous government, leaving no rainy-day fund when the 2008 recession hit.

One of the key reasons the cabal has gotten away with these lies and carefully crafted pieces of propaganda is the downsizing of Statistics Canada, an agency that was once the envy of the world:

Half of the agency’s workforce is gone. Hundreds of its programs have been dropped. The mandatory long-form census has given way to a voluntary household survey. It would cost tens of millions of dollars to reverse these changes...

Auditor general Michael Ferguson's annual report offers some sobering insights into the costs incurred from the Stats Can decimation:

His most troubling finding is that StatsCan’s job vacancy survey is vague and unreliable. “It is not possible to determine where in a province or territory job vacancies are located,”...

Regarding the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census, whose response rate dropped to 69 per cent from 94 per cent in 2006, Ferguson says,

In parts of the country, so few households filled out the questionnaire that StatsCan could not produce reliable data. So it withheld the results in those areas, leaving municipalities, school boards, urban planners, developers, businesses and social agencies in 25 per cent of Canada without up-to-date information.

The Harper regime has, by stealth, changed the function of Stats Can, thereby eliminating the tremendous value it offered a wide array of people:

It has curtailed its consultations with entrepreneurs, academics and non-government organizations. It has narrowed its focus. “We found the agency primarily consults with the federal, provincial and territorial governments”

I suppose none of this should come as a shock to any of us. The greatest enemy of a regime intent on ruling through lies, fear and propaganda is truth. The Harper cabal is well on its way to eliminating that pesky problem.

Another Harper Lie Exposed

Despite assurances last year that the TFW (Temporary Foreign Workers) program was being reformed because of a myriad of reported abuses, those assurances, like so many other pronouncements and assertions coming from the Harper regime, appear to be false.

Business continues to abuse the program, with what one can only assume is the tacit permission of Employment Minister Jason Kenney. The latest offenders, as reported by CBC, are three McDonald's outlets in Victoria, British Columbia, which are currently employing 25 temporary foreign workers.

"The pattern is that the temporary foreign workers are getting more shifts and that the Canadians are getting less,” said employee Kalen Christ, a McDonald’s "team leader" who has worked at the Victoria location for four years.

And unlike the usual excuse used by business that they cannot find Canadian workers willing to do the job, McDonald's has been caught red-handed, with numerous attestations of Canadian applicants being denied jobs:

Tim Turcot is a 21-year-old local resident who said he applied to work there during the same period. He wasn’t hired, despite his four years of restaurant experience.

“I don’t know why they didn’t hire me. I told them I am available 24/7 and just never got the job,” said Turcot.

As well, those Canadians 'lucky' enough to have a position with the house that Ronald built are seeing their hours slashed, hours taken up by the temporary foreign workers, according to team leader Christ, who himself has seen his job dropped from 40 a week to 36 then 32.

Another employee, who didn’t want to be named, also said hours have been cut and people fear losing health benefits next, because they need full-time hours to qualify.

“There’s a guy with a kid who works here who is getting his hours cut. In a minimum-wage job. That isn’t right.”

Now that the problem has been exposed, the office of Jason Kenney has predictably gone into damage control. You can read it here, should you have an especial interest in Harper regime propaganda.

They Tell Tales Designed To Frighten Children

They, of course, are all who comprise the Harper cabal, that conglomeration of feckless, ambitious and disloyal louts who, through their lies, distortions and propaganda, would frighten, confuse and bully the uninformed into surrendering much of what it means to be Canadian.

People will recall, for example, the infamous lie told by Maxime Bernier of the thousands of complaints his office had received about the long-form census and its intrusion into people's lives. A closer analysis suggested that three complaints had been filed.

But of course, ideologues never let logic supplant hysterical distortions, and the mandatory long-form was thus abandoned.

In more recent times there was the whopper told by Tory MP and lapdog, Brad Butt, who, in loyal service to his masters claimed, not once but twice, that he saw people root through garbage and recycling in apartment buildings, then pass on voter information cards to others to be used for wrongly casting ballots. Given such a cautionary tale, the provision in the Fair Elections Act to prohibit the use of vote identification cards and vouching was clearly a justified measure to prevent widescale voter fraud.

Except, of course, Butt later admitted to having 'misspoke' (Toryspeak for lied) and had never actually witnessed such egregious criminal activity. Happily (for him) the good representative of Mississauga-Streetsville escaped unsanctioned, thanks to the parliamentary cover provided by Mr. Harper and his fellow travellers.

But, as noted earlier on this blog, he did not escape the wrath of a Rick Mercer Rant.

The fact that falsehoods are an integral part of the Harper arsenal formed a very interesting piece by Susan Delacourt in this morning's Toronto Star. Entitled Veiled voting furor’s unlikely ending, Delacorut reminds us of the furor that ensued back in 2007 when

Elections Canada ruled that Muslim women were allowed to vote while wearing burkas or niqabs in Quebec byelections.

In perhaps one of the seminal moments when the body first came into the sights of the Prime Minister,

Harper publicly chided Elections Canada (not for the first or last time in his tortured relationship with the organization.) He said he was “very disappointed” with the ruling and presented its decision at odds with the will of Parliament.

Several days ensued of wild stories of masked marauders at the ballot box and what horrors could unfold if we gave the franchise to people who showed up to vote wearing hockey helmets or Darth Vader costumes.

To counter the attempt to whip up the hysteria and anti-Muslim racism so favoured by the regime,

... [Chief Electoral Officer Marc] Mayrand pointed out that Canada’s election law actually does allow people to vote without showing their faces — voting by proxy or by mail, for instance, as tens of thousands of voters have done the past few elections. Singling out one constituency for a show-your-face voting requirement, namely Muslim women, could be problematic in a pluralist nation.

He and various Muslim spokespersons also pointed out that there was no great surge in people showing up at the ballot box with their faces covered — and no demand for it, either. Muslim women had already been removing their veil to vote.

Thus, rationality, logic and empiricism ruled the day, and that particular Tory attempt at frightening the electorate faded away.

Never one to take defeat lightly or graciously, the Harper cabal, apparently converted to the old adage that revenge is a dish best served cold, has bided its time and, with the Fair Elections Act, will be able to both mete out retribution to Elections Canada and achieve its goal of voter suppression.

A shame we can't call in the United Nations to help protect us from this rogue regime.

Rick Mercer Denounces Tory MP Brad Butt's Lies

As usual, Rick Mercer offers an unsparing assessment of his target, in this instance Tory MP Brad Butt and his outright lie about being a witness to voter fraud. Thanks to the usual Conservative obstructionism, Mr. Butt escaped his lie unscathed.

The Little Station That Could

Living as I do close to both Toronto and Hamilton, it is my practice at 6:00 P.M. each evening to flip back and forth between Hamilton's independent station, CHCH, and the CTV Toronto for my local news. Sometimes, despite resources that are constrained compared to those of CTV, CHCH offers some insightful coverage. Friday night offered one such example.

In covering Stephen Harper's visit to a Brampton manufacturing plant, a visit that was billed as “a question and answer session with members of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters” ... “moderated” by Jayson Myers, President and CEO of CME and Jason Langrish, Executive Director of The Canada Europe Roundtable for Business” report Scott Urquart that this billing was essentially a lie:

... the two men read prepared questions to the Prime Minister, and he gave them prepared answers, that neatly emphasized government policies. No questions were taken the floor — and certainly not — from the media.

Not even to clarify — or possibly challenge the accuracy of the Prime Minister’s power point presentation.

While this kind of manipulation, distortion and control is nothing new to those of us who follow the cruel parody that openness and democracy have become under the Harper cabal, it was nonetheless refreshing to see that kind of editorializing and slant happening at the local level.

Here is the video of the news item. Enjoy:

The Measure Of The Man

Sounds like Rick Mercer has the Harper cabal's number:

"I Know Nothing"

It seems I am not the only one to have connected the dots between Harper and Sgt Schultz:



RCMP allege PMO played greater role, Nov. 21

Quoting from this news item, “On Wednesday, (Stephen) Harper repeatedly told the Commons the RCMP had found ‘no evidence’ he knew of the Wright repayment plan.” I am reminded of Sgt. Schultz (of Hogan’s Heroes) who frequently claimed: “I know nothing.”

Jaggi Tandan, Hamilton

No Disagreement Here

H/t The Toronto Star

And a Toronto Star reader weighs in on the issue:

Re: RCMP investigating Nigel Wright, PM says, Nov. 20

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn’t know about illegal payments being made to Senator Mike Duffy (as he has claimed on numerous occasions) he doesn’t deserve to be in the office. We have a disgraced mayor in Toronto. Harper is a disgrace to Canada.

David C. Lawton, Sutton

Plausible Deniability?

After watching the Prime Minister's ongoing repetitive and wholly unconvincing responses to Thomas Mulcair's incisive questions during Question Period, and after reading the latest details of the RCMP investigation into the scandal engulfing his government, I couldn't help but wonder if Stephen Harper, as a youngster, was unduly influenced by Hogan's Heroes and perhaps identified with the always charming Sgt Schultz:

Rick Mercer's Disgust With Harper

The following video is self-explanatory, but if you would like to read more about it and the Harper clan's seemingly endless capacity to not answer questions, check out this link to The Huffington Post.

A Shocking And Inconvenient Truth

It is a statistic that should disturb even the most unflappable among us. It is also a window through which we see the bald lie in the Harper claim that his government is the best one to manage the nation's economy.

An RBC survey has revealed that three-quarters of Canadians are imprisoned by debt, exclusive of their mortgages, to the tune of an average $16,000.

That number reveals a myriad of truths. It reveals that good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce. It reveals that the precariat is extensive, and hardly limited to university grads carrying heavy debt and contending with contract work. The statistic attests to a world in which minimum wage jobs are proliferating, new jobs being created are largely part-time ones. food bank use is rising. and increasing numbers are facing retirement with little or no savings.

But of course, the wily Harper has a secret weapon at his disposal: people's greed and self-interest. Because deficit reduction continues apace, it is doubtlessly his strategy to go into the 2015 election with it eliminated so that he can make good on his promise to allow income-splitting for parents with children under 18; under the proposal, people would be allowed to split up to $50,000 of income with their partner. It is a scheme, as pointed out by Andrew Jackson and Jonathan Sas, that

will further shrink the federal tax base with little economic or social gain for most families. What it will achieve is the hamstringing of future federal governments, whose ability to make needed public investments and fund critical social programs like child care, parental leave, good pensions, or world-class public health care will be blunted.

As well, the authors go on to cite this study:

A detailed analysis for the C.D. Howe Institute calculates that 40 per cent of the benefits of family income-splitting would go to families earning more than $125,000. David Robinson of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives calculates that 61 per cent of the benefits would go to families earning more than $100,000.

And, as Thomas Walkom points out in today's Star, while the spectacle of the Prime Minister giving non-answers to Thomas Mulcair's probing inquiries about the Senate scandal is diverting, it masks a deeper rot which the Prime Minister refuses to acknowledge: his inept handling of our economy.

Quite a legacy the man will leave, when he is finally forced from office.

The Web Grows Ever More Tangled

They say that when he was a journalist, Mike Duffy would often regale his listeners with tales of political intrigue gleaned from his many sources. A raconteur at heart, Duffy is now turning his story-telling talents to narrate a tale of corruption, cover-ups and lies emanating from the PMO and, increasingly, by inference, from Stephen Harper himself.

It now seems ghoulishly appropriate that the Conservative Conference begins in Calgary on Halloween, given that attendees, during the public portions of the gathering, will have to be wearing masks of contentment with and approval for Mr. Harper's 'leadership' during this crisis, masks that will surely slip away to reveal something quite different during the private sessions. They may also have some questions over why Dear Leader is having an increasingly difficult time in keeping his stories straight.

Below is a nice summary of yesterday's revelations:

Harper Lies Multiplying

The trouble with lies is that after a time, they become hard to keep track of. The latest untruth from Mr. Harper came today during a radio interview with a 'friendly' who did not even bother to raise the fact of the discrepancy when the Prime Minister asserted, for the first time, that he had fired Nigel Wright.

Funny, up to this point I thought he had resigned. Perhaps Wright was simply resigned to his fate after he was fired?

How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up, Winston?

O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the
thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
"How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"
"Four."
"And if the Party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?"
"Four."
The word ended in a gasp of pain.
-- George Orwell 1984

As a resident of Harperland, there are indeed days when I feel like Winston Smith, the beleaguered protagonist of Orwell's prescient novel, 1984. Like Smith, I live in a land of lies perpetrated by a government that claims to represent its citizens, claims that are as far from truth as most of us are from sainthood. It is a land where civic engagement is discouraged, genuine concerns derisively dismissed, and the most passionate often find themselves on government enemies' lists. It is a land of cruel delusion.

My friend Steve yesterday alerted me to yet one more instance of the kind of Harper propaganda and subterfuge that bears little relation to truth.

Most of us assume that when we fly, we are protected by stringent government oversight, and that when we purchase a ticket from a Canadian airline, we are purchasing the services of both a Canadian plane and crew. That is not necessarily true.

There is a term in the airline industry called wet leasing, a practice that allows Canadian companies to lease not just a foreign aircraft but also its crew, maintenance and other essential elements.

While there is nothing illegal about the practice, it does open the door to potential threats to safety.

Take, for example, an incident that occurred on July 16, 2012, when two Canadian CF-18 Hornet fighter jets scrambled to intercept a Sunwing Airlines flight near Quebec City, after the Toronto-bound aircraft lost contact with air traffic control for more than an hour. The plane and crew, leased from Portugal, placed everyone in danger of being shot down as a terrorist threat for one simple reason: the pilot forgot to change radio frequncies when he entered a new flight zone, a standard requirement that even the most unseasoned of domestic pilots are well-aware of.

Yet in Harperland, we are told not to worry. Last week, six months after CTV News reported the near-death experience of the Sunwing passengers, Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt announced the government will limit wet-leasing by imposing a cap of “20 per cent of a Canadian carrier’s fleet that can be wet-leased from a foreign company for periods of more than 30 days.”

In addition to this wholly inadequate and belated response, Minister Raitt had the audacity (or is it just the usual contempt for the intelligence of Canadians?) to issue the following statement:

“Our government is working to make sure that Canadians are first in line for Canadian jobs, to open new markets for Canadian companies and to give more options to Canadian consumers”.

Message to Ms. Raitt and the other apparatchiks of Harplandia:

You are holding up four fingers.