Stephen Harper’s Senate Woes

It is amazing how things change in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa isn’t it?

Take the curious cases of Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin for example.  Mike and Pam were appointed to the Senate by Stephen Harper.  This was quite a coup for him… two trained Media celebs to carry the good word of Stephen Harper and to fill his purse with coins of silver.

The fact that attendees to the various Harper functions would bypass a chance to meet Stephen for an opportunity to hobnob with celebrities like Mike or Pam didn’t bother Stephen in the least.  They were professional speakers who could carry the message and as I said, people were willing to part with their hard earned money to see real Celebs.

So what happened?  I’m not entirely sure, but what looked to be an attempt to embarrass the Liberals in the Senate turned nasty on the Harper picks instead.  When the Harper dominated Senate turned its guns on Liberal Senator Mac Harb, trying to show that he was milking or bilking the system to line his pockets, someone noticed that a certain Senator “from” PEI had been living in the Ottawa area for decades.

He was doing the same thing!

And when the nets were cast a bit wider, Pam Wallin hit the radar as well for her travel expenses and the fact that she appears to live in Toronto rather than Saskatchewan like everyone was saying.

Now many want to blame the “Liberal Media” for all of this, but the story broke first in the National Post.  Everyone else showed up after that because they smelled blood in the water.

Then we had Stephen Harper defending Pam Wallin, saying that he had reviewed her expenses and that they were similar to other Parliamentarians from Saskatchewan and defending Mike Duffy after he repaid his excess expenses.  He said Mike was honourable and showed leadership in the Senate by repaying the money.  I think we all remember this, don’t we?

When Deloitte finished their reports on Harb, Duffy, and Brazeau, the Senate Internal Economy Committee (Internal) tabled their reports on the matter and washed their hands of it. 

The reports from Internal said that Harb and Brazeau has been cheating, claiming expenses that they were not entitled to, but the report on Duffy had been white washed to say that Good Old Duff had just been confused by the Senate Rules and besides, he had repaid the money.

And the bucket of paint and brushes appear to have come from the PMO as well as a cheque for $90,000.00 for cover Duffy’s debt.

Senators objected to the obvious kid glove treatment of Duffy compared to the stern admonishments for the enemy Liberal Harb and the Senate embarrassment Brazeau.  The matter was handed over to the RCMP to investigate and let the Senate say we can’t do anything until after the RCMP is done.

The issue lay there for a while until the Fund Raising Reports started to come in.  The Harper Party was being hurt, they weren’t getting the money they were used to.  The Party Base was angry and there was one obvious reason why… actually three.

The Harper Party needed to distance themselves from these three Senators.  Brazeau was already out of the Caucus and out of the Senate as well.  Having been charged with crimes, the Senate was able to put Brazeau on a “Leave of Absence” which the Rules of the Senate allowed for.  Duffy and Wallin both needed to be shoved aside.  Both received orders to quit the Harper Party Caucus.

Duffy maintains that he was bullied into leaving the Caucus by threats of expulsion from the Senate, former Harper Party Government Leader in the Senate Marjory Le Breton refutes this by saying the same thing.  Go figure.

Wallin on the other hand says she was trying to negotiate the wording of her statement that she was willing to recuse herself from the Caucus until the matter of her expenses was cleared up except Senator Le Breton beat her to the punch, pre-emptively announcing that Wallin too had resigned from the Caucus.

Things sat quietly simmering until the recent announcement of Senator Claude Carignan, Leader of the Government in the Senate that he was making a motion to have Senators Duffy, Wallin, and Brazeau suspended from the Senate without pay.

And now Stephen Harper is applauding this move by the man that he appointed to the Senate, who that he named as the Senate Government Leader, but says that he and his office had no influence on this.  Whatever.

Embattled Senators Duffy and Wallin have now gone from Harper Party show ponies to being the sacrificial lambs at the Harper Party altar.  It really must hurt to move from being knights and bishops on the board to being mere pawns in the game…

Surprisingly, a fair number of people from across the political spectrum have risen in defence of Senators Duffy, Wallin, and by association, Brazeau.  The latest move of the Harper Party to suspend people who are merely accused of something rankles people in Canada.

The Harper echo boxes are trying to argue this, but Canadians believe in the law and that the rule of law needs to be used fairly.  What Senator Carignan proposes is not fair, and may not even be allowed under the Rules of the Senate.

Those rules outline the use of Leave of Absence (LoA) and Suspensions in the Senate and the Suspension Rules do not apply to any of the three accused as I read it.  If a Senator is charged with a crime, the Senate may place that Senator on a LoA, and if that Senator is convicted and subject to jail time the Senate may place that Senator on Suspension.

The section of the Rules that deals with LoAs and Suspension also state:

For greater certainty, the Senate affirms the right of a Senator charged with a criminal offence to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal. No intent to comment on or pass judgment with respect to a Senator shall be imputed to the Senate because of the operation of this rule. Emphasis mine, BC

Stephen, the issue isn’t about the money.  The money is only a part of it.  The issue is of fairness and rule of law.  I suspect these ideas are foreign to you.  Your statements only refer to expenses and return of money, you disregard the other rules.

Senator Segal gets it, Senator Plett gets it too.  There are reports that some of the MPs in your Caucus get it as well and that they have been contacting their counterparts in the Senate urging them to vote against Senator Carignan’s motion.

I’d suggest the Party Base gets it too.

Mike Duffy says that you told him that the problem was that the Party Base didn’t like the appearance of what he had done.  I’m inclined to believe him.  You did not chastise him for the expenses, you only told him to pay them back.

I’m not a fan of Senators Duffy, Wallin, and Brazeau.  I don’t think that they deserve to sit in the Senate, but I also believe they do not deserve the treatment that you and your people are putting them through.

One last question Stephen, if you can ask Senator Carignan for me… Why is Senator Stewart Olsen not sitting beside the others in the Independent’s Corner.  She did the same thing they did, but she’s allowed to sit in judgement?

Could it be that the Party Base is angry with you, Stephen?

Just wondering, BC

Some après Canada Day thoughts on #DenounceHarper

Well Canada/Dominion Day has come and gone, but there were some odd occurrences for this year’s “celebrations”.

I spent part of the day watching Twitter.com and the Twitterverse was absolutely lit up with #DenounceHarper messages.  Starting around lunch time here in Ontario, the Hashtag #DenounceHarper was trending in the second spot for Canada.  Number One was #HappyCanadaDay.

This made me curious, so I did follow a bit more closely.

Twitter is an odd bird, sorry for the pun, but it is social tool as well as a media tool and it is a polling tool as well.  Now I wouldn’t buy stocks based on Tweets or base my vote on them either, but there are reasons that things trend.

Things trend when something happens and it resonates.

#DenounceHarper resonated. (I’m going to cheat and use #DH for that, okay?)

I read a blog where the author did a statistical analyses of the #DH trend and concluded that a small number of authors of tweets and a larger number of retweets caused this to happen.  I can see that.  I was involved and retweeted a few times and had a few of my tweets retweeted as well.  A retweet only means that you agree with what I said.  And I only posted about 10 times all day.

He held out the example of one post that was retweeted over 400 times.  Someone said that because #DH was trending they were proud to be Canadian.  Over 400 people agreed.

It’s not a conspiracy.  If it were a conspiracy, then there would only need to be a couple of hundred posters with a few thousand repeaters.  The retweets I saw were not all that numerous.  The reasons for posting #DH were.

Some of the posts asked questions.

Why were there no media reports of booing at Harper’s message to Trafalgar Square?

Why were there no media reports of booing Harper’s message at the Blue Jays Game?

Why were people being screened at the gates to Parliament Hill before they could come on to the grounds for the Big Celebration?  And what were the criteria used to turn people away at the gates?

I guess you can say that because the media didn’t cover it that it didn’t happen, but I did find one media mention about the Blue Jays game… when the relief pitcher was removed he was booed more loudly than the Harper message was.  Jays fans can be vocal on occasion.

I don’t know how much booing there was in the first two cases, maybe in a day or two the video will surface on YouTube.  They always do.

The third one was mentioned by media personalities on Twitter but hasn’t made it into the “official” stories.

The reasons used by the posters with the Hashtag #DH were too numerous to mention.  The ecology people were posting, the economy people were posting, the lefties were posting, the political junkies were posting.  The Doves were posting, the vets were posting, and the conservatives were posting as well, the ones that felt betrayed by the Harper Government. The Democracy watchers were posting, the feminists were posting, labour was posting, I think you get the picture.

All these disparate groups were posting but they were themselves made up of a myriad of smaller groups on down to individuals each with their own voice and a #DH Hashtag.

I almost forgot the trolls.  Sorry guys and gals.  The echo boxes that gleefully repeat whatever they are told to repeat and the true believers, the ones who think that the lefties are all loopy and that the right is always… er… right.  Apparently they haven’t figured out that when they post competing Tweets using the #DH Hashtag, it just helps the cause that much more.  I did remember to thank them for this yesterday.

The other funny thing was how hard the media tried to ignore the #DH trend.  Huffington Post, who do follow things like Twitter trends were the first to offer anything on this phenomenon.  It was several hours later before any “main stream” press caught on that something was happening.  The last time I checked, the stronghold of Lefty Fear Mongering, the CBC had nothing on #DH.  The National Post did.  Global did.  CTV did.

What does all this mean?

Well, we have a lot of cranky people in Canada who for one reason or another have a bone to pick with one Stephen Harper.  And we all have our own agendas.

We are seeing the disconnect between the “news” and the media growing.  Here’s a thought to the media moguls of Canada and elsewhere.  Let’s go back to reporting the news.  Lose the spin, lose the opinion bits and just tell us what happened.  I saw a lot of complaints about the lack of media coverage of events that might embarrass the Harper Government, it’s just news.  Huffington gets it, why not you?  You might even sell a few more papers too.

The other thing I saw though was a large number of people who care enough about their country to shout “Stop!”  We know we had a good country before Harper and we want it back.  We do not want a government run by an inner circle behind closed doors, we want healthy debate between the Government and Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.  We want MPs on all sides of the House to represent us, not to be Harper’s or Mulcair’s or Rae’s representative to the constituencies.

You see it is not that we are “anti-conservative” like some are reporting, we are pro-Canada.  We know that there is good in Canada and the world knows that as well.  We have long been respected because of our ability to move between the lesser players and the super powers on the world stage.  We are losing that respect, if we haven’t lost it already.

The #DenounceHarper movement is a way to tell Stephen Harper and the Harper Party that Canadians do not share his vision for the future of Canada, our old vision was just fine.

Finally, for the echo box who opined that all the #DenounceHarper posters were 15 year old kids… in three years time we’ll be holding another election… in three years time, those 15 year olds that you are blowing off now will be able to vote.

Keep annoying them, please.

It’s supposed to be about Democracy.

Recently, Erin Weir, an economist for the Steel Workers Union spoke to the Commons Finance Committee.  His remarks were on the proposed changes to the Investment Canada Act included in the latest omnibus bill of the Stephen Harper Party.

A Harper Party member of the committee, Randy Hoback let loose with a series of rambling questions and witness abuse I think is appalling.  All because Mr. Weir is a New Democratic Party member.

The word used to describe Hoback’s actions was McCarthyism.

Hoback didn’t challenge the facts that Mr. Weir presented, he attacked the man on his politics.  That is a sure sign of a lost argument, if you can’t attack the argument, attack the person.

I think this should be filed under BS.  That of course means Blatant Smear.

Our Constitution includes a section on discrimination.  It is illegal to discriminate based on race, creed, colour, age, and so forth.  Unfortunately the colour of your tie is omitted.  If you are an economist with an NDP card in your pocket, you are not a credible witness according to Hoback. 

That is not Democracy.

The Harper regime has a history of making bureaucrats shut up and people they can’t force to shut up get shouted down, like Mr. Weir did.  It’s gotten to the point where a bureaucrat cannot wipe their nose without a signed note from their manager, countersigned by the Minister in charge.

We elected the Vogons.

The Harper Party has killed the F 35 committee, they took the committee behind closed doors and declared it done.  If it wasn’t for the opposition members on that committee breaking the rules and telling what happened behind those closed doors, we’d likely never know it occurred.

The Harper Party has tabled the most omnibus budget bills and the largest ones at that.  These omnibus budget bills contain many things that are not budget related, but get tossed in there for expediency.  There are at least 15 items in the budget that are deserving of their own bill and debate, but that won’t happen because the Harper Party chose to limit debate on this bill as well.

Stephen Harper used to say that omnibus bills were undemocratic, I guess he flipped, or is that flopped?

Limiting debate certainly doesn’t sound democratic either, does it?

Now, when they formed the Reform Party way back when, it was supposed to be about Democracy.  Constituency groups would select candidates and not have Government Issue ones imposed on them.  They wanted the power to have members who didn’t represent their constituencies properly recalled.

Ask MP David Wilks about Democracy in the Harper Party.  His constituents told him that they did not support the omnibus bill and he said he would vote against it.  Then after a quick trip to the wood shed he came back with "I look forward to supporting the bill and seeing it passed."

The real Reformers, the farmers and the townsfolk who wanted change in how government works are not the bad guys, they wanted Democracy.  They were the grassroots supporters of the Party, but they have been Astroturfed by Harper and the rest of the leadership of his Harper Party.  They just haven’t realized it yet.

I hope they wake up before it is too late.