"Dirty Secrets From The Man Who Worked For Harper"

This needs to be watched by all Canadians concerned about our country's future. Please circulate widely:



H/t Operation Maple

More Praise for Kevin Page

Readers of this blog will know that I have a deep and abiding respect for people of real integrity, those capable of moving beyond narrow self-interest to embrace ethics and principles in the conduct of their lives. Kevin Page, of whom I have written several times, is one such individual who has set a sterling example for all of us.

Today's Star has several letters of praise for the former Parliamentary Budget Officer, several of which I am reproducing below. Please be sure to check out the full array of them on the Star website. The respect accorded him in the letters suggests his example will be remembered long after Harper and his ilk are but historical footnotes.

The job no one wanted, Opinion April 1

Not only does this reveal a man of courage, but it highlights the courage we all need to resist “the consolidation of power at the expense of citizens” taking place in our time.

Whenever privilege becomes concentrated to a few, whether we are talking wealth, political power or mass communication, nations fail. Canada is failing because political, economic and educational privilege is being consolidated to a few rather than dispersed among many.

But the remedy doesn’t lie within Parliament, or with big business or with the media conglomerates. It lies as Kevin Page rightly diagnoses, in our “need to wake up.”

Not only is ‘Canada’s Parliament losing its capacity to hold the government to account” but we are losing our capacity to hold our markets to account for making a few wealthy at the expense of the many, and our capacity to ensure the vulnerable are provided for by our social programs and our institutions of care.

To speak up against this trend is a job nobody wants, especially if job security is threatened. But without that courage, our democracy and prosperity are at stake. Not just for the vulnerable, but for all of us.

We need to wake up.

John Deacon, Toronto

Wow! What a letter. I am blown away by Kevin Page. Now here is a guy who gets it. He understands his role and does so with integrity and professionalism and with the best interests of the Canadian taxpayer in mind.

One may reasonably think that the Conservatives would do everything possible to ensure he stays on board instead of showing him the door and replacing him with someone nice but “not so efficient.”

This reminds me of Dalton McGuinty balking at the rehiring of Ombudsman Andre Marin in 2010. It turned out fortuitous for the provincial leader as his government needed transparency after the G20 debacle and Marin’s office was there to help.

Maybe Prime Minister Stephen Harper should reconsider his tired cloak and dagger routine.

Jeff Green, Toronto

Kevin Page and the PBO have made a great contribution to Canada in the past five years. What Canada needs to succeed in the future are more Kevin Pages and fewer Stephen Harpers. On behalf of Canada, thank you Mr. Page.

Charles Campisi, Oakville

Thank you Mr. Page for sharing your thoughts with Canadians. In spite of continual stonewalling from the present federal Conservative government, you, as head of the PBO, were truly a very conscientious, thorough, “sticking to the facts” and “no axe to grind” type of civil servant and we all Canadians should be proud of you. Best wishes in your future endeavours. Aquil Ali, Toronto Kevin Page is one of my heroes. I copied his letter in the Star and sent it, along with my own cover letter, to 20 of my family and friends. I asked them to contact their MPs and demand that they support even more power to the position to the PBO’s position in the future.

I sincerely hope that we have not heard the last of Kevin Page. We need his courage, character, skill and sense of right in this country. I hope that his service to Canadians will be recognized with an Order of Canada. (It certainly won’t be given by the Conservative government with Harper as leader!)

Listen up Justin Trudeau! Kevin has gifted his sons with an amazing legacy and has given “We The People” an incredible example to follow. This is a wonderful example of turning a tragedy into something very positive.

Kathryn Walker, Toronto

My sincere thanks to Kevin Page for his dedicated service to Canadian taxpayers like me. Under difficult circumstances, he has shown himself to be a man of integrity, class, and principle. It’s a shame his political masters in the Conservative government couldn’t manage something similar. Bravo, sir.

Susan Sterling, Toronto

The Face of Integrity

With a transcript of the extended interview.

H/t Alex Himelfarb

They Still Walk Among Us

I have always felt a deep, abiding respect and affection for people of integrity. During my career as an English teacher, I took special delight in teaching plays like Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Robert Bolt's Man For All Seasons, which told stories of real-life people who made the ultimate sacrifice to stay true to themselves and their beliefs.

Happily, those with integrity are not confined to either the history or literary pages. They still walk among us. People like Munir Sheikh, the former head of Statistics Canada who resigned his post rather than have his name, reputation and work brought down into the slime by the Harper regime. People like Nelson Mandela, who, rather than grasping at early release from prison in exchange for renouncing the African National Congress, served 27 years in prison and later became both the president and moral leader of South Africa.

People like Kevin Page.

Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer about whom I have written several times on this blog, will be completing his mandate and leaving office on March 25, no doubt much to the relief of the Harper regime, which has been persistently reminded of its fiscal ineptitude, lies, and manipulation of public information by his indefatigable quest for truth and accountability. The F-35 fighter jet debacle is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of the above litany of Harper shortcomings, and a steady target of the PBO, but not the last.

The Star's Tim Harper has a profile of the self-effacing Page in today's edition that is well-worth reading. As well, this editorial in the Montreal Gazetter, this piece in The Star, and this article from Macleans are also well-worth perusal.

For the sake of our national psyche, I believe it is incumbent upon us to honor heroes while they still walk among us.

More Harper Contempt for Transparency and Democracy

This story about Kevin Page's relentless and noble ongoing attempts to extract information about the public service impact of government budget cuts from the secrecy-obsessed Harper regime appeared in today's Star. Consequently, I couldn't resist the impulse to send the story link to the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, the body that recently named Stephen Harper The World Statesman of the Year for his 'stellar' efforts at promoting democracy and human rights.

By the way, it is not too late to sign the Avaaz petition to register your disgust with the foundation's decision.

Michael Harris Laments Democracy's Yoke Under Harper

With the specter of the Parliamentary Budget Officer taking the Clerk of the Privy Council to court, a momentous question looms over our public affairs: will the Harper government answer a single legitimate question about its conduct of Canada’s public business?

Or is the government’s message that we can all go pleasure ourselves until 2015?

And so begins Michael Harris's penetrating and insightful analysis of a wounded democracy under continuing threat in Canada.

Tory Revenge on Page

Well, that didn't take long.

Here There Be Heroes

No matter what age we may attain, I doubt that we ever lose our need for heroes. Certainly, as we grow up, the definition of hero must mature, changing from someone with superpowers who fights evil and injustice, to someone who looks very much like we do, has no special abilities affording protection from the negative vicissitudes of life but who, when put to the test, show all of us what humanity is ultimately capable of.

Who may be considered a hero depends to a large extent on personal points of view and values; from my perspective, a hero is someone who takes actions while aware that those actions will likely lead to real problems and suffering in his or her life. The one true hero in my life is Nelson Mandala, a moral giant whose story needs no retelling here, but whose life is a testament to integrity, courage, and, for me, the existence of the transcendent.

Although perhaps not of the magnitude of Mandela, I do believe that we have heroes among us in Canada today, people for whom integrity is paramount. I have written in the past about Munir Sheik, the former head of Statistics Canada who resigned that position rather than to go along with the Harper-perpetrated lie that the elimination of the mandatory census was just fine with the statisticians.

Currently, another person showing all of us the stuff he is made of is Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, a man appointed by the Harper government but who has already incurred its anger exposing lies that government has pedaled to the public. His latest foray into fortitude is reported on in today's Star, which outlines how Harper's acolytes are breaking the law by refusing to provide details of the government’s spending cuts to Page.

Rather than 'going along to get along,' Page said his last recourse is go to Federal Court to seek disclosure of the information though he added that “nobody wins” under that scenario.

“That said, we have to draw a line in the sand with respect to the Act of the Parliament and the provision of information,” he said.

The very existence of the aforementioned individuals must be an affront to our craven politicians, the ones who, for example, have aided and abetted the Harper omnibus budget, Bill C-38, forsaking their duty to their constituents and their country in the hopes of promotion within the government, something worth about 30 pieces of silver by my measure.

Given that the Harper mandate doesn't end until 2015, Kevin Page will likely lose his job in the near future, something I'm sure he is very much aware of. Yet despite my very cynical nature, it is the people like him walking among us who keep me from ever making a final submission to absolute despair.

Conservative Ethos: Caviar for Corporations, Cake For Canadian Masses

Stephen Harper and his wrecking crew continue their agenda of altering the fundamental nature of Canadian society. By engineering an ever-dwindling supply of government revenue through corporate tax cuts that neither attract nor keep jobs in Canada, making huge expenditures on jet fighters we don't need, and building super-prisons during a time of record low crime rates, the neo-liberal cabal seems to think that it will be easy to convince us of the need to make ordinary people pay the price of their folly.

And they are probably right, unless Canadians wake up and begin critically evaluating the nonsense coming out of Ottawa in a steady stream. A good place to start might be the editorial in today's Star that lays bare the ideological underpinnings of the current Conservative assault on Old Age Security, which the Harper regime has deemed to be unaffordable in its present form, despite solid evidence from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page.

Never Let Facts Get In The Way Of Ideology: The Conservative Credo

That's the only inference I can draw after reading about the report by Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page that there is no crisis in the current funding of Old Age Security, despite proclamations by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley and her dear leader, and hence no need for raising the age of eligibility.