Using Vic Toews to Defend Justin Trudeau, Or the Abuse of the PMO

Does anyone know who Julie Carmichael is?  Probably not.

"His testimony has raised serious questions as to why the Liberal dirty tricks machine is collecting personal information on their political opponents using taxpayer dollars," Julie Carmichael said in an email. Link: Huffington Post

Julie Carmichael is the Director of Communications for the Minister of Public Safety.  Nice title eh?

Her comments were to do with Adam Carroll of #vikileaks fame.

Vic Toews himself weighed in on the matter, raising a question of Privilege…

The fact that House of Commons resources appear to have been used in an attempt to anonymously degrade my reputation and obstruct me from carrying out my duties as a member of Parliament is, I contend, a contempt of the House. I take no issue with an open attack on the floor of this House, in which the source of the attack may be seen by all. I take strong issue with the idea that House resources would be used to secretly attack a member of the House. Vic Toews: Hansard February 27, 2012

It seems that everyone from Dean Del Mastro to John Baird and then some had an opinion on how evil it was for a mere staffer to access and distribute embarrassing information.  They loudly proclaimed it an abuse of taxpayer money and so on…

But what happens when it involves the Prime Minister’s Office? 

Early last week, June 17^th to be exact, the Barrie Advance and the Barrie Examiner both ran very similar stories.  Both of these papers had received information from a “source” designed to degrade the reputation of a Member of Parliament, that being Justin Trudeau.

The “source” as you probably already know was the PMO.

Kudos to both Papers for choosing the high road and deciding to not run these stories as they were given to you, but for having the chutzpah to stand up to the PMO and tell the world, well Barrie anyhow, how the unelected staffers of the PMO were trying to turn you into part of their propaganda public relations machine.

The Advance chose to include some portions of the email they received.

The material included invoices, a promotional poster and an accommodation receipt for the Toronto Four Seasons. Meekes wrote, “To be fair, there is an in-house yoga studio at the Four Seasons!” From the Barrie Advance

Meekes is Erica Meekes, a Communications Officer within the PMO.  When the Advance contacted her at the PMO she said that they “routinely” reach out to the media like this.  I’m not sure if the sarcasm is part of the routine, but obviously there was some time and effort involved in uncovering this damning information from a period in time when Justin Trudeau was just a private citizen.  And we paid for it.  And it’s a routine thing.

Nice.

We also get to pay for Andrew MacDougall and his tweets on Justin Trudeau.  Andrew is a Director of Communications within the PMO.

The PMO has around 90 of these folks running around, some of them are the infamous “boys in short pants” that the Harper Party backbenchers deride.

The bottom line is we are paying the salaries of these people.  They are supposed to be advisors to Harper, not his hatchet crew.  Prior to Stephen Harper, most of us had never even heard of the PMO.  The most we ever got was “a spokesperson for the PM” saying something when the PM wasn’t available.

If the Harper Party wants to complain about the other parties and their staffers, they need to start in their own yard first.  Partisan politics is the realm of the parties, not the staffers or the PMO.  Using government employees for partisan efforts is an abuse of the public’s purse and of the public’s trust and should not be condoned by any of the parties.

But true to form.  The Harper Party loves to jump all over the other guys in the House, cite all sorts of rules and privileges and what not.  But none of that stuff ever applies to them, does it?

Keep this in mind Stephen, I will not forget and I will remind everyone who does.

Laters, BC

Did You Hear What Justin Trudeau Did?

I’m serious!  Did you hear what he did?  It’s scary, he went to New Brunswick and forced a charity to let him speak!  And then he made them give him $20,000.00 and fire their only employee!

It’s all over the news.  I can’t believe it.

And I don’t.

The Grace Foundation decided to hold a fund raiser and they decided that they would like to hire Justin Trudeau.  Trudeau is a professional speaker, and they knew going in that they were going to have to pay whatever the contract they signed said. 

Now, according to the Grace Foundation’s website the event was “an evening to remember.”  They also went on to thank the “sponsors who contributed to the success of Grace Foundation’s first fund raising event”

So, the hosts invited Trudeau to speak, they were pleased with his speech and that he took the time to answer audience questions, and they thanked the sponsors because the event was successful.

So what changed?

When Trudeau was hired to speak, he was just an MP whose father had been the Prime Minister of Canada.  He had even cleared the fact that he was a professional speaker with the Ethics Commissioner, a Harper appointee I might add.

Over nine months later the Grace Foundation sends Trudeau a letter complaining that they lost money and that they wanted a refund.  This was when Trudeau had gone from being just an MP with a noted name to the odds on favourite to win the Leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Imagine that.

I don’t know when the Harper Party got hold of the letter, but the timing of the reveal is suspect.  Can the attack ads be far behind?

But let’s back up a step and look at the bigger picture.  When the letter of complaint was sent nine months after the fact, another Harper appointee Mike Duffy was trying to find out where to go to demand more money from the Harper Party for all his good works and trying to explain where he lived.

Aye, there’s the rub.

We have the RCMP looking into the Duffy/Wright/PMO/Senate scandal.

 We have the Pam Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, Arthur Porter (in a Panama Jail), Arthur Porter’s wife, James Bezan,  Shelly Glover, Dean Del Mastro, Jeff Watson scandals with Eve Adams looking like she might be in trouble too.

We have the F35 fiasco, and the new Navy ships are costing more to design than they cost to build in Norway, Denmark, and Ireland.

Oh and a Fearless Leader who disappears whenever anything comes to a head, “Having a wonderful time in the UK and France, glad you’re not here…”

Look, it’s unfortunate that when the Grace Foundation hired Justin Trudeau they didn’t make money on the event.  But it’s not Trudeau’s fault, it’s the host that has the responsibility to get people to attend their event.

Maybe they should have hired someone else.  Mike Duffy does paid speaking events, he’s from out East they tell me.  Maybe they should have hired him.

Besides he only costs half of what Justin Trudeau does.

That’s it for now…

Cheers! BC

Stephen Harper Needs Your Money!

Did you get your call yet?

I haven’t, but a friend of mine did.  Stephen Harper needs money to defend you against heroin addicts using safe injection sites and other assorted scary things…

The news of this made for some interesting conversation, why would Stephen Harper need money now?  The next election is already slated for 2015, is there going to be a snap election to surprise everyone?  Maybe the Harper Party needs to start working on more non election Attack Ads, this wouldn’t surprise me since the last one went over so well.

That was sarcasm by the way.  The last ad generated lots of money, for the Liberal Party of Canada.

I’m more of the opinion that Stephen Harper needs your money because he has spent a pile of bucks on lawyers, and they don’t come cheap.

Do you remember the Etobicoke election?  The Liberal candidate, Borys Wrzesnewskyj challenged the results because of “irregularities” in the vote.  The Harper Party man, Ted Opitz countered the argument and the whole thing went to court.  Borys, using his own money won the first round and the results were overturned leaving Ted to decide if the ruling would be challenged at the Supreme Court of Canada.  At the last minute Ted’s team took the case to the high court.  Ted had to get clearance from the Harper Party I guess, since they were bankrolling his legal team.  I wonder how much it costs to contest a case at the Supreme Court.  I’ll wager it isn’t cheap.  Ted won, by the way and has gone on to represent Canada as a voting observer overseas.  The irony is… well words fail me.

How about the Robocalls challenge in 6 contested ridings?  The Council of Canadians backed the 8 people who were arguing that the elections in their ridings were affected by fraudulent Robocalls and the 6 Harper Party People who had won in those seats took to their lawyers to fight this.

Although the 6 MPs retained their seats, the judge found that the “trench warfare” and other means of delaying and trying to derail the case meant that the MPs would not be reimbursed for their expenses.  The Harper Party will remain on the hook for the bulk of the legal costs.  The judge even noted that the Harper Party money was underwritten by the taxpayers of Canada in his ruling.

Add to this the Peter Penashue election expenses case where the Harper Party repaid the money in question for Penashue so he could run in the by election in Labrador as well as his legal costs I’m sure.

Currently there are two Harper Party MPs in trouble with Elections Canada and they are starting litigation to retain their seats and there appears to be at least one more of these cases on the horizon.

More time in court, more Harper Party money for the lawyers.  And these are just the highlights, there’s probably a lot more that never made the press.

So why should I care that the Harper Party is spending tons of cash in the court room anyway?  For the simple reason that I am paying for it.  So are you.

I haven’t donated to the Harper Party, I’ve never donated to any party.  Most people haven’t.

But… the people who do donate get a percentage of their donation back at tax time.

You and I are subsidising the Harper Party.

If someone gives the Harper Party, or any other party $200.00, they get back $150.00 from the government.  We make up the difference.  When you get your call they’ll even brag about this to you.

All these court cases, all the attack ads, the computer database that the Harper Party maintains with information on virtually every Canadian alive is paid for, in part, by You and Me.  I don’t know if the $90,000.00 that Nigel Wright gave to Mike Duffy came out of the Harper Party Fund, but I’ll bet the cost of the lawyer brought in by Nigel was.

For the record, it wouldn’t bother me all that much if they located a safe injection site in my area.  The police would keep an eye on it and the people using the service would be encouraged to not loiter in the area.  It would probably be far safer than having a crack just down the street from me.

And there really was a crack house just down the street from me.

Cheers, BC