Canadian Political Reporting Suffers Another Blow

But this time, the blow comes from within.

Thanks to Ed Tanas for bringing the following to my attention:

Ottawa reporters, photographers and cameramen face expulsion from Parliament Hill on the complaint of any politician or federal employee, with grievances to be heard at closed-door disciplinary hearings. The unprecedented measures are proposed by the Parliamentary Press Gallery, a volunteer group representing media.

“We thought we’d bring the proposal,” said Laura Payton, Gallery president, a CBC writer; “We’re leaving it quite open because the executive needs some discretion.”

On first blush, the proposals might seem reasonable, given the prevalence of harassment claims these past many months:

Under proposed amendments, members may be expelled for a range of new offences including:

•“personal harassment”;
•“sexual harassment”;
•“violence”;
•“threats of violence”;
•“intimidation”;
•“a criminal offence that was or could have been tried by way of indictment and for which the member has been found guilty”.

But, as the hackneyed saying goes, the devil is in the details. Perhaps the most telling detail:

The Gallery proposed to amend its own constitution, with the approval of Industry Minister James Moore, [emphasis mine]to suspend or banish media from Parliament Hill for a range of new offences including “harassment” and “intimidation”.

A reasonable person will immediately see that any involvement, let alone approval, of a politician cannot bode well for freedom of the press. Consider, for example, Herr Harper's recent inflammatory remarks about Radio Canada employees hating conservative values. Consider his government's egregious contempt for the media and the fact that the only time Harper seems even remotely accessible is when he is outside the country. Consider the fact that we are groaning under the most vindictive and paranoid prime minister this country has ever known.



So what do the experts think of these proposed amendments?

“The press should be held to account, but is this the instrument?” said Prof. Sean Holman, of Mount Royal University’s school of journalism. “I think it’s open to abuse.” Holman, a former member of the British Columbia Press Gallery, said he was unaware of any Canadian gallery with such an enforcement code.

“Reporters covering legislatures are often treated like parasites and barely tolerated by the administration,” Holman said. “The administration has enormous power. We should really think about that. How is it that this space that is supposed to be a public space is so often treated as anything but? That is troubling.”

Especially worrisome is the readiness with which the Press Gallery will cede authority to the politicians it is charged with covering:

The amendment also states the Gallery may defer to “House administration” if complaints against a journalist are deemed a “security concern”. The head of House administration is Conservative MP Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle), Speaker of the House of Commons.

In the past, parliamentary journalists never deferred to the Speaker and operated as a self-regulating association in a custom dating from 1867, noted Mark Bourrie, a 21-year gallery member and author of the bestseller Kill The Messenger: Stephen Harper’s Assault On Your Right To Know.

I am completely dumbfounded by this development. The amendments go to a membership vote February 27. Let us hope that they will act accordingly against this unprecedented assault on their independence.

Thomas Mulcair And Joe Clark On Bill C-51

H/t The Toronto Star

Yesterday, Tom Clark on The West Block asked both Mulcair and Clark for their thoughts on Harper's 'anti-terror' legislation. You will note that by the end of the interview, it would seem that Mulcair's 'principled' stand against the bill is perhaps less than what it seems as he hedges his political bets:

More On The Harper Record Of Contempt

H/t Peter Ormond

I've Made My Decision. What More Is There To Discuss?

H/t Occupy Canada

It would seem that our supremely arrogant confident demagogue, Dear Leader, feels little need to waste his time in the House of Commons talking about a bill (C-51) that represents a substantial threat to the rights of all Canadians. That, apparently, is a task for lesser mortals, but only if they can talk fast.

The Ottawa Citizen reports the following:

Despite hailing new anti-terror legislation as fundamental to the fight against “the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not attend either of two days of debate on the bill in the House of Commons this week.

Bill C-51 is expected to head to committee Monday after the Conservative government voted to limit the hours allotted in the Commons on what Justice Minister Peter MacKay called an “important debate (over) …. extraordinary powers.”

For anyone who might be puzzled, even outraged over Stephen Harper's absence from this “important debate (over) …. extraordinary powers”, these reassurance came via email from PMO spokesman Carl Vallée:

“The prime minister has spoken at length with regards to the bill when it was announced and in the House during Question Period.”

But what about the curtailment of debate, also known as closure?

I suppose a couple of considerations influenced the Great One there. First, of course, is the fact that Justin Trudeau, no doubt influenced by the polls, is supporting the bill, and really has nothing to add to the 'debate.' And then there is Thomas Mulcair, who, now that he has rediscovered some principles and found out he is opposed to the bill, has much to say. However, as Mr. Harper observed in his usual style when presented with a substantive question about whether the bill could be used against the government's political enemies, employed his usual contemptuous denigration by characterizing the NDP as 'the black helicopter crowd' always game for conspiracy theories:



And so Canada's very own Ozmandias continues on his merry way, content in his belief that his personal vanity production, the Government of Canada, will continue far into the future under his mighty vision.

A shame that Stephen Harper is not a reader of poetry.

Ralph Nader On Harper's Politics Of Fear

The following is a letter that the iconic American activist Ralph Nader has written to Stephen Harper regarding his 'war on terror.' Following the letter is a video of an interview Evan Solomon had with him. As you will see, there is little doubt that Nader views Harper's exploitation of fear as decidedly unCanadian.

Many Americans love Canada and the specific benefits that have come to our country from our northern neighbour’s many achievements (see Canada Firsts by Nader, Conacher and Milleron). Unfortunately, your latest proposed legislation — the new anti-terrorism act — is being described by leading Canadian civil liberties scholars as hazardous to Canadian democracy.

A central criticism was ably summarized in a February 2015 Globe and Mail editorial titled “Parliament Must Reject Harper’s Secret Policeman Bill,” to wit:

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force.

“Canadians should not be willing to accept such an obvious threat to their basic liberties. Our existing laws and our society are strong enough to stand up to the threat of terrorism without compromising our values.”

Particularly noticeable in your announcement were your exaggerated expressions that exceed the paranoia of Washington’s chief attack dog, former vice-president Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney periodically surfaces to update his pathological war mongering oblivious to facts — past and present — including his criminal war of aggression which devastated Iraq — a country that never threatened the U.S.

You are quoted as saying that “jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced” as a predicate for your gross overreaction that “violent jihadism seeks to destroy” Canadian “rights.” Really? Pray tell, which rights rooted in Canadian law are “jihadis” fighting in the Middle East to obliterate? You talk like George W. Bush.
How does “jihadism” match up with the lives of tens of millions of innocent civilians, destroyed since 1900 by state terrorism — west and east, north and south — or the continuing efforts seeking to seize or occupy territory?

Reading your apoplectic oratory reminds one of the prior history of your country as one of the world’s peacekeepers from the inspiration of Lester Pearson to the United Nations. That noble pursuit has been replaced by deploying Canadian soldiers in the belligerent service of the American Empire and its boomeranging wars, invasions and attacks that violate our constitution, statutes and international treaties to which both our countries are signatories.

What has all this post-9/11 loss of American life plus injuries and sickness, in addition to trillions of American tax dollars, accomplished? Has it led to the stability of those nations invaded or attacked by the U.S. and its reluctant western “allies”? Just the opposite, the colossal blowback evidenced by the metastasis of Al Qaeda’s offshoots and similar new groups like the self-styled Islamic State are now proliferating in and threatening over a dozen countries.

Have you digested what is happening in Iraq and why prime minister Jean Chrétien said no to Washington? Or now chaotic Libya, which like Iraq never had any presence of Al Qaeda before the U.S.’s destabilizing military attacks? (See the New York Times’ editorial on Feb. 15, 2015, titled “What Libya’s Unraveling Means”.)

Perhaps you will find a former veteran CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, Robert L. Grenier more credible. Writing in his just released book, 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary, he sums up U.S. government policy this way: “Our current abandonment of Afghanistan is the product of a . . . colossal overreach, from 2005 onwards.” He writes, “in the process we overwhelmed a primitive country, with a largely illiterate population, a tiny agrarian economy, a tribal social structure and nascent national institutions. We triggered massive corruption through our profligacy; convinced a substantial number of Afghans that we were, in fact, occupiers and facilitated the resurgence of the Taliban” (Alissa J. Rubin, Robert L. Grenier’s ‘88 Days to Kandahar,’ New York Times, Feb. 15, 2015).

You may recall George W. Bush’s White House counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who wrote in his 2004 book, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror — What Really Happened, “It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting, ‘Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.’”

Mr. Bush committed sociocide against that country’s 27 million people. Over one million innocent Iraqi civilians lost their lives, in addition to millions sick and injured. Refugees have reached five million and growing. He destroyed critical public services and sparked sectarian massacres — massive war crimes, which in turn produce ever-expanding blowbacks.

Canadians might be most concerned about your increased dictatorial policies and practices, as well as this bill’s provision for secret law and courts in the name of fighting terrorism — too vaguely defined. Study what comparable practices have done to the United States — a course that you seem to be mimicking, including the militarization of police forces (see The Walrus, December 2014).

If passed, this act, piled on already stringent legal authority, will expand your national security bureaucracies and their jurisdictional disputes, further encourage dragnet snooping and roundups, fuel fear and suspicion among law-abiding Canadians, stifle free speech and civic action and drain billions of dollars from being used for the necessities of Canadian society. This is not hypothetical. Along with an already frayed social safety net, once the envy of the world, you almost got away with a $30-billion purchase of unneeded costly F-35s (including maintenance) to bail out the failing budget-busting F-35 project in Washington.

You may think that Canadians will fall prey to a politics of fear before an election. But you may be misreading the extent to which Canadians will allow the attachment of their Maple Leaf to the aggressive talons of a hijacked American Eagle.

Canada could be a model for independence against the backdrop of bankrupt American military adventures steeped in big business profits . . . a model that might help both nations restore their better angels.

Stephen Harper To Canadians: Just Trust Me

Of course we will, Stephen. Of course we will.



H/t Graeme MacKay

Harperian Hypocrisy: The Family Values Regime Disappoints Yet Again

While the Harper regime always touts itself as a government that stands up for family vlaues, evidence once more indicates this is little more than rhetoric and rank hypocrisy, aided and abetted by an almost completely politicized RCMP.

The CBC reports

RCMP have been holding back millions of dollars from the force's vaunted program to fight online child pornography, partly to help the Harper government pay down the federal deficit.

CBC News has learned that over a five-year period, Canada's national police force Mounties withheld some $10 million in funds earmarked for its National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre and related projects, linchpins of the government's anti-child-pornography agenda.

The cuts, made partly as an RCMP contribution to the government's so-called deficit reduction action plan, have occurred even as the number of child-exploitation tips from the public increase exponentially.

The systematic underfunding is highlighted in a draft report prepared for Public Safety Canada, and obtained through the Access to Information Act.

For its part, the Harper regime denies that the underexpenditures have anything to do with fiscal matters; it's just that the force can't find good people to do the job.

Really? And this problem goes back to 2008? Past evidence suggests that explanation simply won't fly.