We are in Edmonton right now, and when people ask us where we are from, I mention our community as being about 70 kilometers from Toronto; I then hasten to add that we have nothing to do with Rob Ford, one whose escapades every westerner we meet seems to be well aware of. Never have I felt a greater urge to distance myself from Ontario's capital, with obvious good reason.
I therefore found especially interesting Rick Salutin's thoughts on civic embarrassment and its effects on the people. You can read it here.
Off to Banff tomorrow. I wonder if the Rockies will resound with derisive laughter as well.
We are about to go out exploring downtown Edmonton, so just a little something for your viewing pleasure today. It might be useful to bear in mind the context within which this should be viewed, the decision by Mike Duffy in 2008 to show the false starts and stops of Stephane Dion, then the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, a decision that some say was a significant contributing factor in the Liberal electoral woes that ensued.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council found that CTV Atlantic violated the Radio Television News Directors Association Code of Ethics in a broadcast on October 9, 2008:
The CBSC has concluded that CTV violated Article 8 of the Code, regarding decency, consideration and conduct, for broadcasting the interview outtakes after it had said that it would not do so.
Hmm... decency, consideration, conduct - seems like the now disgraced Seantor Duffy learned nothing from the decision.
CTV's Robert Fife has been doing exemplary work on the sordid tale of corruption and coverups in Ottawa that has been emerging these past several days. As the true nature of our Prime Minister and his regime becomes increasingly apparent to more and more Canadians, the latest news is that the Senate’s internal economy committee chair David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen appear to have been the prime movers on the sanitization of the Deloitte report on disgraced Senator Mike Duffy's fraudulent expense claims.
You can see the original and the doctored reports here.
Robert fife's video report, and the accompanying story, can be accessed here.
Of course, quite predictably, David Tkachuk is claiming that this is all an innocent misunderstanding and, like his political master and dear leader, didn’t know about the cheque until [he] found out about it in the media”.
P.S. We are heading off to Edmonton tonight to visit our son, so I'm not sure how much blogging I will be doing for the next week or so.
Funny thing about the Internet, isn't it? Almost everything that is uttered or printed by public officials cannot, happily, be rewritten à la Orwell's Nineteen -Eighty-Four. But then again, the government depicted within the novel must have felt the need to guard against uprisings by the people and so relied on scapegoating, invective, close monitoring of citizens, etc. While these techniques are certainly used with regularity by the Harper regime, I suspect that our 'government' feels that its greatest defense against repercussions over its corruption and its debasement of democracy is the apparent monumental indifference of large swaths of the Canadian public.
It must be thus, otherwise how can we explain Harper's shameless and very obvious contempt for the truth? For example, last Wednesday on Power and Politics the regime was expressing its full confidence in Nigel Wright's payment of the $90,000 to the disgraced Senator Mike Duffy. Indeed that staunch defence continued until Wright's resignation on Sunday. :
And yet now, in what can only be viewed as a massive middle finger sent from Peru to the people of Canada, the odious Stephen Harper would have us believe that he acted immediately upon learning of the payoff, an "inappropriate deal' that, he says, elicited sorrow, anger and frustration when he learned about the payoff. Left unexplained was why Wright continued to enjoy his full confidence until Sunday, long after the payoff had been revealed:
And if you have the stomach for it, you could watch the video below in which Eve Adams, who has apparently replaced former Harper pet parrot Pierre Poilivre as public defender of all things Harper, launches into a sycophantic justification of 'dear leader.' Her nauseating performance begins at about the 7 minute mark:
So the evidence is there for all to see that our Prime Minister is also our prime prevaricator. As Oscar Goldman used to say on The Six Million Dollar Man, We have the technology. The real question is, do enough Canadians have the will to use it in the interests of beginning the process of restoring our country in 2015?
What does it say about a man who flees the country before he will answer even one question about perceived corruption in his regime? Is "I knew nothing' even remotely credible?
P.S. Harper describes himself as "frustrated" about the scandal. Perhaps now he might begin to understand how millions of Canadians feel about him and his government.
UPDATE:Here are some embarrassing details that were included in the original Deloitte report about the disgraced Senator before it was altered on orders originating 'at the highest levels.'
