Don Martin needs to act now to exonerate Harper: Our PM of False Pretenses

The interesting thing about my line of work is that a “no” is as good as a “yes”. It some cases even better.

In this case, “no” took the form of a “nah”.

For reasons that didn’t make much sense, Calgary Herald journalist Don Martin was unwilling to respond in substance to this indirect request I made of him several days ago:

“Speaking of Committee Hearings, when is Don Martin going to release his copy of Harper’s 200 page manual of how to obstruct Parliament? I think it would be an important public service. Might swing a few votes in Harper’s direction?”

Since that email, we have learned that Stephen Harper may call an election, citing the dysfunctional nature of Parliament as his excuse.

Don Martin was kind enough to contact me today, to which I responded:

“Don; I appreciate the response. Are you saying the full text of 200 pages is available? Brent

To which Don Martin responded:

“Nah, most of it is just photocopied procedural paper anyway. The juicy stuff is a slide show given to the chairs that was only about 30 pages.”

Oh that’s most interesting. Why am I not surprised? It’s not a 200 page manual on how to obstruct parliament. Instead its a 30 page picture book on how to obstruct Parliament. In any event it’s germaine to whether Harper’s reasons for calling an election are events of his own creation, and hence a false pretense, or events not of his own creation, hence quasi-legitimate.

In my last attempt to get information from Don Martin to exonerate Stephen Harper from the charge of being the Prime Minister of false pretenses, I sent this last furtive request to Don Martin:

“In that case please send it to me and black out any indications of your source. This has become relevant to today's political debate. Stephen Harper may be using false pretenses of a "hung parliament" to call an election that only serves his interests. Harper is the master (?) of false pretenses. Just look at tax leakage as the false premise for his broken income trust promise/fraud.

I will nominate you for the Order of Canada. Don Newman feels lonely up there. Thank you in advance.”


To which I have received no response from Don.

Maybe the aforementioned Don Newman O.C. or Susan Bonner of the CBC can have better luck than I in getting Don Martin to share what he knows. The spin has to stop somewhere?