Sounds About Right To Me

About That War Thing

I am dismayed over the general collective amnesia that has once more taken hold of political leaders and the public over the latest so-called world threat. In the solution being embraced, few seem to remember the abject failure of past incursions in the Middle East, incursions that only gravely exacerbated existing problems. It is as if hysteria has replaced critical thinking.

But my dismay is ameliorated, however slightly, by evidence that at least some have retained their faculties sufficiently to call into question the current prevailing 'wisdom' that says ISIS is a clear and present danger to all of us, and perpetual war against them and all subsequent threats is the answer. I therefore offer you some snippets of what, sadly, must now be labelled 'unconventional wisdom.'

In The Star, Haroon Siddiqui offers this assessment of Barack Obama's motivation for airstrikes against ISIS:

What if the U.S.-led war on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is designed, wholly or in part, to prop up Barack Obama’s sinking presidency and salvage the Democratic majority in the Senate in mid-term elections on Nov. 4?

Although Obama has tried to avoid wars and concentrate on things like the economy and climate change, his efforts have made him appear feckless and weak in the eyes of some.

Launching air attacks fit the bill. Overnight, he was the “war president,” without launching a full-scale war. Not only the far right but also the moderate centre and the left came on-board.

And very pertinently, Siddiqui asks,

Can Islamic State be destroyed without fixing the dysfunction in Syria and Iraq, the primary cause of the rise of these jihadists?

While one may not agree with everything he says in the piece, the important thing is that he is asking the right questions, something few others are doing.

Siddiqui's fellow Star columnist, Rick Salutin, also probes beneath the surface of this complex issues, offering The case for doing nothing about the Islamic State.

Pointing out that this is a war where we do not have to confront the casualties of bombs and drones, from our perspective, it is quite bloodless. He therefore invites us to partake in a thought experiment:

So imagine being a villager. From high overhead, others are raining Hellfires, literally, on you. You can’t see them but you know they don’t look like you or speak your language, and care only in the most abstract way. Then along come the Islamic State thugs. They look and talk like you. They’re brutal but they create some administrative order, after the chaos of invasion and civil war: 3 million to 5 million people in Iraq and 9 million in Syria displaced due mainly to U.S. military operations since 9/11. It’s an awful choice between those two forces but it may not be a hard one.

I close with two letters from Globe readers who offer some trenchant insights:

Re Harper Pitches Expanded Role In Iraq (Oct. 2):

Whether it’s a Liberal or Conservative government, the playbook seems somewhat the same. We begin with some small, relatively manageable commitment and before you can say “Bob’s your uncle who didn’t come back intact from the war,” we are knee deep in the blood of the innocent citizens of other countries who are collateral damage, and that of our own troops.

Whatever the solution is to extremism in the Mideast and beyond, I’m with NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. Let’s practise our time-tested caution and restraint and not succumb to Stephen Harper’s rush to battle.

Bill Engleson, Denman Island, B.C.

The world’s mightiest superpower failed to bring peace and security to the people of Iraq and the entire region, despite an all-out effort over many years.

If Stephen Harper thinks sending our sons and daughters to war will make a difference, he should lead by example, slip on his flak jacket, and take his son Ben, now 18, over with him to see the war through to its conclusion. Then he might begin to understand why Jean Chrétien told George “Dubya” Bush no to his face when pressured to join the ill-advised American invasion of Iraq.

Mike Priaro, Calgary

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.

My CBC Letter Of Complaint

Although probably a futile effort, here is the letter of complaint that I have sent to the CBC ombudsman, The National, and CBC Audience Feedback regarding the Corporation's absolute failure to keep Canadians informed about the Health Canada's unwillingness to protect Canadians from tainted pharmaceuticals:

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to complain about the abject failure of the CBC to inform Canadians on an issue that is a potential threat to both health and life. That issue recently emerged when The Toronto Star conducted an excellent investigative series into the lack of drug safety oversight being provided by Health Canada: http://www.thestar.com/search.html?q=apotex

The investigation revolved around the agency's failure to hold generic drug manufacture Apotex to account for issues that resulted in several of their drugs being banned by the American Food and Drug Administration, which maintains a publicly accessible database to keep its citizens informed over drug investigations, recalls, etc. Health Canada refused to make this information public; Health Minister Rona Ambrose cited 'proprietary privacy issues.'

The Star investigation also uncovered the fact that Health Canada asked Apotex to suspend the importation of certain drugs, and the company refused. Again, no details as to the suspect drugs were released to the public.

This matter was taken up in the House of Commons, and as a result of the efforts of both the NDP and The Star, action has finally been taken, as reported in today's edition: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/09/30/health_canada_bans_drugs_from_two_indian_factories.html

I am sure you would agree that this story is of national interest and significance. Yet as far as I can determine, on none of your platforms, be it radio, television, or Internet, has a word of this scandalous situation been uttered or printed.

This is behaviour totally unacceptable for Canada's national broadcaster.

I avidly await your explanation for this egregious failure to keep Canadians informed.

It's Why I Subscribe

To borrow a line from one of my favourite Shakespearean plays, Macbeth, "So fair and foul a day I have not seen."

It is fair because the newspaper I subscribe to and heartily endorse, The Toronto Star, has achieved a victory whose significance cannot be overestimated. Thanks to its investigative series into Health Canada's scandalous and potentially life-threatening negligence in overseeing drug safety, Health Minister Rona Ambrose, has finally acted:

Health Canada has banned the import of all drugs and drug ingredients made by two Apotex factories in Bangalore, India, with Health Minister Rona Ambrose saying Tuesday night that the trust between the regulator and the Toronto-based drug company has been “broken.”

Despite that action, long in coming, there are no plans to recall any of the 30 suspect drugs manufactured at the plants, drugs that include

a generic form of Viagra, the antibiotic azithromycin, and other drugs made to treat hypertension, dementia, high blood pressure, asthma, convulsions and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Not surprisingly, the information that led to the decision was taken from the FDA database, which is fully transparent and accessible to the public.

So what is foul? Two things:

One, had it not been for the tenacity of The Star, Health Canada would have continued to give its imprimatur to potentially life-threatening drugs, thereby egregiously failing in one of the most important aspects of its mission.

Two, despite the significance of the scandal, and despite the fact that it provoked some intense questioning from the NDP in The House of Commons, no other media outlets reported the story to my knowledge, not even the CBC, our putative national broadcaster.

Why the silence? One can only speculate, but I do intend very soon to write a letter to the CBC to ascertain the reason. Some might link it to the Corporation's policy of appeasement, about which I have written previously.

I will let you know if I get any response from the CBC.

Cheap Rhetoric Versus Practical Questions

With regard to the ISIS threat, here is what Prime Minister Harper had to say in the House:

“These are necessary actions, they are noble actions” .... “When we think that something is necessary and noble, we don’t sit back and say that only other people should do it. The Canadian way is that you do your part.”

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, on the other hand,

asked a series of questions on the matter, including the length of the planned mission, the exit strategy and the exact demands of the United States for a Canadian military contribution.

While Harper is content to wrap himself in the flag, one wonders how ordinary Canadians will react once that flag is draped around coffins coming back from the Middle East.

This Is Not The Time For Absolutism

In the absolutist world of Stephen Harper, there are those who wear white hats and those who wear black. No berets (especially berets!) of middling colours are recognized. So when he declares that Canada will not stand on the sidelines on this possibly endless battle against ISIS, King Stephen is positing an absolutist scenario, one that sees military action as the only way to make a meaningful contribution.

It is a blinkered perspective with which not all agree.

Writing in The Globe, a professor of political science, Michael Bell, offers the following observations and reminders:

Western “boots on the ground” in Afghanistan and Iraq have been abject failures, leaving behind a still more profound conundrum. Could this happen all over again?

It is ironic that the American-led invasion of Iraq and the abortive Arab Spring in Syria, albeit the latter a noble failure, combined to let loose the explosive radicalism we are faced with today. The subsequent power vacuum unleashed unchecked ethnic nationalism and extremist ideology. The law of unintended consequences prevails again. Whether “boots on the ground” will ultimately be the answer is more than doubtful.

Roger Barany of Vancouver points out that there are viable alternatives to military engagement for Canada:

The disturbing examples of extremism we have seen (or avoided seeing) from Islamic State are no justification for Canada to be part of a massive aerial bombing campaign that could kill as many innocent civilians as intended targets. And this is assuming that the intelligence is reliable in the first place (For Harper, Decision To Deploy Must Come With Full Disclosure – Sept. 29).

This is not our war, but not being part of it does not mean sitting on the sidelines. Canada will always have a humanitarian role to play. It can start by joining a coalition of countries willing to help deal with the massive refugee outflows and human suffering caused by the air strikes in Syria.

If the Prime Minister is intent on Canada having a direct combat role, the debate should be premised on the worst-case scenario: Canadian soldiers deployed in a long-term ground war in the Mid-east. Then the question should be put to a free vote in Parliament so that MPs of all stripes can vote their individual conscience and that of their constituents.

Today's Globe editorial also warns against hasty commitments:

...sending our forces into combat is not the only alternative to standing on the sidelines and watching. The Harper government is among the world’s most vocal supporters of Ukraine and Israel – but no Canadian troops or planes have ever been involved in the fighting in those countries. Opposition to the IS does not necessarily mean a direct combat role. Humanitarian aid, technical support, financial support, weapons, training – there are ways Canada can participate usefully in Iraq and Syria without intervening directly.

And it warns that once engaged,

no one should believe that this is a battle that will begin and end with a few fighter-jet sorties.

Expect these warnings, based as they are on logic, recent history and reflection, not to be factors in the Harper regime's decision.