"moral indifference and general incompetence"

Harper's fairy tale on House of Commons Night in Canada

The entire system of checks and balances inside the Ottawa Bubble completely broke down. It is possible that a culture of moral indifference and general incompetence exists inside Langevin Block. If so, that culture was nurtured under this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is responsible constitutionally for the operation, ethical standards and general competence of his own office. He is the PM in PMO.

Either the Prime Minister’s honesty or his competence as a manager of his own office is under siege. At this point, it is far from clear to me which scenario is worse.

Brent Rathgeber 
Member of Parliament for Edmonton-St. Albert
Toronto Star

RON MACLEAN
Well Don, there's been a lot going on 

DON CHERRY
Tell me about it

RON MACLEAN
..and it seems now for you and me, too.

DON CHERRY
Tell me about it.

RON MACLEAN
So before we get to the hectic action in the House of Commons and the Senate, let's talk about Rogers getting Hockey Night in Canada for the next decade..

DON CHERRY
Well HNIC is a great institution created by the CBC, and though I know there are business reasons for making a change, I just hope that all the collected experience of the last 60 years doesn't get lost in translation.

RON MACLEAN
I think a lot of us are hoping that.  Is it sixty years?

DON CHERRY
Foster Hewitt ... 1953

RON MACLEAN
Coach's Corner doesn't go back that far, however.

DON CHERRY
Just seems like it.

RON MACLEAN
So here's the money question.  How do you see the future of Coach's Corner?

DON CHERRY
We'll have to hang 'em up some time, but meanwhile I'm not worried.  Now that I'm pretty much up to speed on Twitter and the other antisocial media..

RON MACLEAN
That's a joke, right?

DON CHERRY
...not really, no, but I see a real chance for us to go freelance, get ourselves a YouTube channel, and we could have Coach's Corner as often as we felt like it, see how many advertisers are interested.  We could even do the Olympics.

RON MACLEAN
Wouldn't the Olympics have something to say about that?

DON CHERRY
They'd try, but I'd like to see what would happen.  It'd be commentary on the Olympics, no different from any other sports journalism that doesn't pay the IOC.  It's free speech.

RON MACLEAN
This is boggling.  Grapes becoming a political activist.

DON CHERRY
All sorts of people have been outraged at my politics before, nothing new there.

RON MACLEAN
Well it's boggling me and my immediate plans for the future..

DON CHERRY
We'll talk...

RON MACLEAN
So now let's get to the House of Commons where all sorts of opposition questions are getting all sorts of answers, none of the answers having much to do with the questions.

DON CHERRY
Yeah, well we talked about this before.  In the British House of Commons the Speaker can inject discipline into the debate and shut people up.  Our current Speaker doesn't think he has this power, and certainly doesn't have it through the Standing Orders...

RON MACLEAN
As Bercow does.

DON CHERRY
Right.  In a perfect world the Harpers of the world would have respect for the institution of parliamentary democracy, but in fact the Harpers of the world treat the House of Commons and the Senate as tools to be manipulated and avoided in their attempt to return to feudalism.

RON MACLEAN
Not  respect.

DON CHERRY
Exactly, there's no respect.  This is where The Code comes in.

RON MACLEAN
You're suggesting there should be party enforcers and front bench-clearing brawls?

DON CHERRY
Something's gotta happen.  Like  Bruce Anderson  said on "At Issue", the message from the insiders in Harper's government is "We're perfect and you're scum."   That's contempt, and if the Speaker can't or won't control the game somebody's gonna stand up to the abuse.  The House of Commons has to do its job.

RON MACLEAN
A lot of people would say this government's strength is competence.

DON CHERRY
I keep hearing it, it's a joke.

RON MACLEAN
Really?

DON CHERRY
What has this government accomplished?  I mean accomplished at all?

RON MACLEAN
There's abolishing the long-gun registry.

DON CHERRY
Right, and reducing the GST 1%..

RON MACLEAN
And then eliminating the required long form census..

DON CHERRY
You're getting my point.  They've eliminated things that were useful, and reduced the GST in a politically attractive but realistically insane pretense of tax reduction.  Then there's all the things they screwed up.

RON MACLEAN
Like?

DON CHERRY
Like... 1. Lecturing China on human rights and then discovering they had to suck up to China when it was a little late.
2. The F-35. Let's leave it at that.
3. The whole Afghan detainee mess in which Rob Nicholson obstructed justice to interfere with the Military Police Complaints Commission, among many of other examples of trying to operate in secret.
4. Taking bad care of Afghan vets while jumping on NATO bandwagons to bomb things.
5. Proroguing the House of Commons to avoid political responsibility.
6. Trashing the Palestinians and then being crushed in a bid to be elected to the Security Council.
7. Failure to see the pipeline disaster coming.
8. Politicizing the civil service.
9. Muzzling of scientists
10. Bundling together of unrelated legislation in an attempt to avoid reasonable debate.
11. Holding committee meetings in secret to avoid public accountability.
12. Non-cooperation with Parliamentary Budget Office that it created...

...want more?

RON MACLEAN
That'll do for now, but you think the way to deal with this is dropping gloves in the Commons?

DON CHERRY
Like I say, if the Speaker can't control the House, the House will have to control itself.

RON MACLEAN
Well, on that mind-bending image we'll have to say that's it for tonight on House of Commons Night in Canada.

DON CHERRY
Whaddya think of the YouTube idea?

RON MACLEAN
I'm liking it.  It'll be the power of the Free Market.  I can't see them doing Hockey Day in Canada without us.

DON CHERRY
Also, they won't have any fashion sense.

"If only white men voted..."

If only white men voted here is what the 2012 map would have looked like source: http://t.co/RXZd6YqyW5 MAP: pic.twitter.com/6tMbcLyCsU
— PoliticaI Charts (@PoliticalCharts) November 28, 2013

The Supreme Court on Senate Night in Canada

Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

RON MACLEAN
Don, I don't think we need flowery introductions, what's going in in The Supreme Court?

DON CHERRY
It's just so...I don't know...this is beyond the playoffs....I've never seen...

RON MACLEAN
I've never seen you speechless.

DON CHERRY
Gimme a second. You keep talking about my command of English.

RON MACLEAN
For sure.  It has an impressive robfordian quality to it.

DON CHERRY
Do. Not. Go.....

RON MACLEAN
So bring us up to speed on demolishing the Senate.

DON CHERRY
Now we're talking.  As if we didn't have enough excitement on Parliament Hill, the government is in the Supreme Court getting an opinion on whether King Steve can disband the Senate on his own say-so and turn the whole thing into the new PMO.  Naturally, most proceedings would be conducted from the dais.

RON MACLEAN
What would they use the rest of the space for?

DON CHERRY
Well, command centres for CSEC, CSIS, DND, RCMP, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers....it goes on and on.  So, no problem.

RON MACLEAN
Does it matter what the Senators themselves think?

DON CHERRY
No, they have problems of their own.  Craig Anderson out with a concussion...

RON MACLEAN
Lehner played well.

DON CHERRY
Absolutely.  So the government is now yanking the chain of the Supreme Court, trying to get it to say the government on its own can abolish the Senate, which with the current government, interprets the Constitution to mean the House of Commons can abolish the Senate.

RON MACLEAN
Is that bad?

DON CHERRY
Of course! If a majority in the Commons starts exercising rights it doesn't have to alter independent institutions, it's game over for Parliamentary Democracy in Canada.  Where does it stop?  The government then starts looking at the Supreme Court Act, decides to reduce the number of justices to three and then makes each justice a political appointee, and there's no Senate to blow the whistle, and maybe no Governor General either.

RON MACLEAN
That's pretty extreme.

DON CHERRY
This is serious.  Kids, the game of Parliamentary Democracy is beautiful, but it's been put together over a long time and you don't wanna mess with it; if it ain't broke don't fix it.

RON MACLEAN
So what are the chances of your worst nightmare coming true?

DON CHERRY
I'm an optimist, you know that. I think there's almost no chance Harper can pull this off.  First of all, the hearing at the Supreme Court last week did not go well for the government, although I'm waiting for the transcripts.

RON MACLEAN
What transcripts?

DON CHERRY
Of the hearing.

RON MACLEAN
How do you get Supreme Court transcripts?

DON CHERRY
You ask for them.  This is Canada.  If that's not enough, the provinces are going to have something to say about this, and after that there's the Governor General who I think will not be keen on that sort of approach to governing Canada, and if all else fails there's the Queen.

RON MACLEAN
We'll be looking forward to even more developments next week on Senate Night in Canada.

DON CHERRY
Kids, the price of freedom is always keeping your head up.

RON MACLEAN
I see there's a by-election in Brandon Souris coming up.

DON CHERRY
We're in Wheat Kings territory, and it's not a slam dunk for the Conservatives.

RON MACLEAN
That's unheard-of

DON CHERRY
You heard it here .

The Neverending War

And what is this bill? 

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations

Major-General Smedley Butler
US Marine Corps
"War is a Racket" 




November 11, Remembrance Day, 2013

James Wilfred Elliott
Regimental Number 908082
195th Battalion
Canadian Expeditionary Force

Dear Uncle Wilfred,

Well, it's over 98 years since you were in the Battle for Hill 70, got seriously wounded, and received the Military Medal as a result.  And it's 4 years since I wrote you last so I thought I should bring you up to date.

A lot has happened, and not much has happened. The International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan is leaving in confusion, and leaving chaos in its wake.  I don't think it's what anybody had in mind. On the first page of the UN Security Council Resolution 1386 of December 20, 2001, the goal was stated to be "root out terrorism."

As a goal, it seemed preposterous, nobody defined it.  The definition of "terrorism" has remained fuzzy all this time, even though people are dying trying to root it out.  This goal was originally defined by NATO as a "collective act of self-defence" and therefore qualifying the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan as legal.  I'd like to know what they would have thought of that  at Nuremberg.

Anyway, and after about 12 years, almost all the troops are back in Canada. Nobody can define the purpose of all that dying and wounding and civilian casualties, or even had the honesty to define what "winning" would have looked like.  They had the same problem in Vietnam.

To be fair, there were a lot of statements about Afghanistan becoming a peaceful society in the modern world, having elections and everything, but even if - despite the lack of plan - Afghanistan had miraculously been transmogrified into such a society, it would have still been surrounded by nations who still view things differently, which means the whole region would have had to go through a miraculous evolution to the same type of society that would have - miraculously - come to exist in Afghanistan. Nobody asked the Afghans if that's what they wanted.

However, the cost of not knowing what your goals are getting in, and therefore not having a clue how to get out, is horrendous and apparently neverending, as you would know.



 

Return of the Serial Proroguer Part 2

It was bizarre, and yet....

"She doesn't want me to go back to the Privy Council does she?"

"It is not for me to say. She requests only a meeting at the Savoy."

"When?"

"Tomorrow in the Grill at nine o'clock in the forenoon..  She will offer you a $16 glass of orange juice and ask if you can get her some raw seal."

"I've worked for that woman. I'll know her when I see her."

"Then I need say no more." He lurched into the night, leaving a faint aroma of cod.

I considered leaving immediately for a warmer climate, but thought the present opportunity too good to pass up. What could possibly go wrong?

Hell in Bruges

Excerpt from The War Diary of ISAF's Media Operations Centre NATO Headquarters Blvd Leopold III 1110 Brussels, Belgium. Friday, November 1, 2013 9:30 AM.  Diverted on way in to work to super secret meeting in Bruges, nowhere in Brussels is safe. Chief showed considerable imagination convening at top of Belfort Tower. Who would know? Also, three hundred and sixty-six freaking steps to the top, a test of loyalty and resolution. 12:30 PM  Chief arrived at top, not looking at all well, clutching bottle of Delirium Tremens, half full, or empty.

His aide-de-camp carried a picnic basket of moules et frites, a welcome relief from the cold and wind, not to mention the bells.  The bells, the bells!

There were three of us, the Chief, Secretary to the Chief and me. The others presumably had died on the way up, or been driven mad by the bells and leapt to their deaths poetically in the market square below. OK I saw the movie. After more Delirium Tremens, we turned to the business at hand, the complete disintegration of NATO security. 1:00 PM. Unfortunately the bells, while providing total operational security, destroyed any chance of effective communication. Maybe it didn't matter. 1:30 Moules et frites, Delirium Tremens long gone. Bells quiet. Chief remarks that everybody in NATO is bugging everybody else.  Thing is, everything is going on as before. Even if everybody knows everybody else's secrets, it doesn't matter.  Advantage, Snowden. 1:45 PM. We descend 366 steps and retire to the Staminee de Garre.

We should do this more often.

Senate Night in Canada

RON MACLEAN
Hello, I'm Ron MacLean here with Don Cherry on the occasion of our first ever broadcast of  "Senate Night in Canada." Don, we should give people a little background on this.

DON CHERRY
Yeah well we were as you know covering the Senate as a sort of sideline on House of Commons Night in Canada, when all of a sudden it took on a life of its own. The Red Chamber really demanded its own coverage, and there's no end in sight. So I talked it over with Kathy Broderick...

RON MACLEAN
Your Twitter manager...

DON CHERRY
Yeah, I'd be lost without her, and we decided - we being all of us, you too - that we needed dedicated coverage.  Who knows where this will go, but we thought we should follow the money.  We thought of having an all inclusive "Houses of Parliament Night in Canada" but it sounded either boring or the highlight reel from a bordello, so we decided to separate the powers.

RON MACLEAN
What about "Governor-General's Night in Canada"?

DON CHERRY
We thought of that too when Michaëlle Jean was GG, mainly because we were all huge fans....

RON MACLEAN
But how about David Johnston? He actually played for Harvard and had a shot at a pro career.

DON CHERRY
I know.  A great guy.  But I think of him like Bill McCreary, he works best when he's invisible...

RON MACLEAN
I think you had a crush on the previous GG.

DON CHERRY
Who didn't?  But she doesn't play a contact sport.

RON MACLEAN
Well...

DON CHERRY
Stifle yourself. We're talking about the Senate.

RON MACLEAN
So bring us up to date.

DON CHERRY
Hard to know where to start.  It's like sudden death overtime...

RON MACLEAN
Mike Duffy might not agree it's "sudden"...

DON CHERRY
Yeah OK, it's more like "death of a thousand cuts" overtime, but Duffy's fighting back. That's what makes it so interesting.

RON MACLEAN
There's a lot of people suggesting this whole debacle shows that the Senate is useless and should be abolished...

DON CHERRY
That's so old.  People complain about political institutions when the institutions don't follow orders. Harper calls political debate "bickering" and has, just in my opinion, no idea why there's an actual opposition that has a job to do in British Parliamentary Democracy, which is to hold the government to account, as opposed to forelock-tugging obedience to an executive that rules by Divine Right...

RON MACLEAN
Wow...

DON CHERRY
I'm just getting started.  Then, when it starts to leak out that there's some kind of malfeasance...

RON MACLEAN
What?

DON CHERRY
...playing fast and loose with expenses and residency requirements, the Prime Minister wants to fire the Senators he appointed - having said he wanted Senators elected and also, now that I think about it, championed a Federal Accountability Act after which he has avoided accountability and transparency like the plague, Duffy and Nigel Wright both having a plague to be avoided, and is confused about why anybody objects...

RON MACLEAN
And who is objecting?

DON CHERRY
Hugh Segal for one, Don Plett for another.  Both these guys are Conservatives but have some respect for due process and the rule of law, neither of which is in evidence in current motions to disbar, fire, suspend, excommunicate sitting Senators.  In fact, the Senate is now caught up in figuring out the rule of law. Everybody's on the hook, including Noël Kinsella.

RON MACLEAN
The Speaker of the Senate...

DON CHERRY
Exactly.  The guy who has the power to suspend proceedings in case of "grave disorder"..

RON MACLEAN
As you talked about before...

DON CHERRY
As I talked about before.  So the show will continue next week, and I can hardly wait.  In the meantime we have the Conservative annual meeting in Calgary to entertain us, with apparent rebellion brewing about the shabby treatment of Nigel Wright...

RON MACLEAN
...which we'll have to leave until next time on Senate Night in Canada.

DON CHERRY
You know, David Bulger said when Duffy was appointed that he didn't think it was constitutional...

RON MACLEAN
And now it's coming back to bite Duffy?

DON CHERRY
It's coming back to bite the entire government. Yagottaloveit.