Harper espoused his tolerance for corruption, back on November 14, 2007.

I got the impression back on November 14,2007, that I was the only one making this point: which was the observation that Stephen Harper was arguing for an acceptable level of corruption.

Hopefully subsequent events have made this point more obvious to all to acknowledge.

Back on November 14, 2007 when faced with the prospect that Brian Mulroney was knee deep into scandal with the $300,000 in cash he received from arms dealer Karl Heniz Schreiber, Stephen Harper argued for tolerance on the part of Canadians for corruption by stating his opposition to a public inquiry into Mulroney’s alleged corruption:

“This is not a route that I want to go down, and I don’t think that if the Liberal Party thought twice about it, it is a power they would want to give me.”

Harper thought he could negotiate (in public no less) such a pact of acceptable corruption with Stephane Dion through, you guessed it, bully tactics

This comment and tactic also demonstrates an innate acceptance on the part of Stephen Harper for corruption and dirty tricks. As for the “power” comment, that was very telling as well. Stephen the omnipotent.

As for subsequent events, as Michael Ignatief pointed out in question period today, we now have the Conservative Party involved in alleged tampering with elections at the municipal (Baird/O’Brien), national (Harper/Cadman) and international level (Brodie/Obama)

Stephen Harper thinks ethics are something to be bartered and determined on a relative basis. Such a philosophy of “I’ll call your sponsorship scandal and raise you one Cadman affair” is certainly a race to the bottom. Ethics are to be measured against standards that are absolute in measure and not relative.

We need to establish what are the acceptable levels of corruption. To do that, one need only look to the law and the spirit of the law and not whether a Liberal sponsorship scandal or a Belinda Stronach floor-crossing for a Cabinet post affords Stephen Harper with the prerogative to engage in a Cadman scandal with impunity.

That would truly be a race to the bottom.

Stephen Harper: fish or cut bait

Stephen, the time has now come for you to “fish or cut bait”, as you are so fond of saying and admonishing of others.

Just what exactly what is the interpretation that Canadians should take from the following, if not that you had knowledge, and possible direct involvement, in your party’s attempt to bribe Independent MP Chuck Cadman?

"The insurance policy for a million dollars, do you know anything about that?" Zytaruk asks.

"I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions," Harper replies on the tape. "This is not for publication?"

"This will be for the book, not for the newspaper," answers Zytaruk, who works for a Surrey newspaper.

Harper goes on to explain on the tape that the offer to Cadman was "only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election." He adds that the offer was carried out by people who were "legitimately representing the party."

He also tells Zytaruk that he knew there was little chance Cadman would agree.

"They wanted to do it, but I told them they were wasting their time. I said Chuck had made up his mind," Harper said.

Getting hit where it hurts on the Conservative trust front

Getting hit where it hurts on the Conservative trust front
Lawrence Martin
Globe and Mail
March 6, 2008

"Trust, say the pollsters, is one of the Harper government's strongest selling commodities. Lose it and look out".......people might think you are fraudulent and/or incompetent

Hey Ian Brodie, is this EPIC BETRAYAL enough for you?

Obviously Ian Brodie is a smug, duplicitous, self-righteous person with no regard for the lives of average Canadians and the importance of integrity in high office or the fulfillment of promises made.

Evidently Ian Brodie also has no regard for the need to justify the breaking of solemn promises either. If that weren’t the case then Ian Brodie wouldn’t have felt that 18 pages of blacked out documents would have sufficed as the evidence for breakingStephen Harper’s widely touted 2006 election promise that he “would never tax income trusts”. After all, income trusts are fully taxable in the hands of their owners at anaverage rate of 35%. Why would they need to be double taxes at an additional 31.5%? Where’s the proof of tax leakage?

As Diane Francis so succinctly argued: “Prove the case or drop the tax.”

Instead, here was Ian Brodie’s smug, duplicitous and disingenuous reply to the loss of $35 billion in life savings by Canadian and the breaking of a promise that million made reliance on. Detrimental reliance that is:

"This would be a more compelling analysis if the government weren’t already in the midst of a steady program of cutting tax rates, including corporate taxes, across the board. The alternative to breaking the election promise and taxing trusts was to abandon all other tax cut plans as the corporate tax base quickly disappeared. Instead, Flaherty acted quickly, in the face of rapidly changing conditions, to break the trusts promise and save the rest of the government’s promises. Not a pretty choice, to be sure, but hardly an epic
betrayal either."

Ian Brodie
Chief of Staff / Chef de cabinet
Office of the Prime Minister / Cabinet du Premier ministre
Ottawa, Canada, K1A 0A2
Office / bureau : 613.992.4211
Email / courriel : ibrodie@pmo-cpm.gc.ca


So now we learn this same Ian Brodie, this same smug disingenuous back room operative is at the CENTRE of a massive BETRYAL of Canada’s relationship with the United States and deliberate efforts by the Harper government to undermine the campaign prospect of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama. The question I have for Ian Brodie is a simple one.

Is this EPIC BETRAYAL enough for you?

PM's top aide set off storm with Obama NAFTA leak
Source of initial tip revealed after Harper vows to investigate 'unacceptable' act

CAMPBELL CLARK
Globe and Mail
March 6, 2008

OTTAWA — The leak of a confidential diplomatic discussion that rocked the U.S. presidential campaign began with an offhand remark to journalists from the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Ian Brodie.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed yesterday to use whatever investigative means necessary to find the source of leaks that, he said, were "unfair" to U.S. Democratic candidate Barack Obama and may have been illegal — although opposition leaders insisted the Conservatives cannot be trusted to investigate political players on their own team.

But the story that reverberated through the U.S. presidential campaign began as a terse, almost throwaway remark that Mr. Brodie made to journalists from CTV, according to people familiar with the events.

Mr. Brodie, during the media lockup for the Feb. 26 budget, stopped to chat with several journalists, and was surrounded by a group from CTV............more

Today in Question Period: Liberal MP John McKay

Hon. John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood, Lib.)


Mr. Speaker, we are told that we can tell whether the Prime Minister is telling the truth or not by looking into his eyes. Canadians want to believe that when a Prime Minister makes a promise he will keep it.

Will the Prime Minister look into the eyes of two million hard-working Canadians and explain his betrayal of the income trust promise?


Mr. Speaker, when commenting on the TSX decline in public offerings, the CEO of the TSX said: “The federal government knee-capped the income trust industry and it hurt our reputation abroad”.

We now have a finance minister running around the country saying “invest anywhere but Ontario”. The Prime Minister has broken his word on income trusts, on the Atlantic accord, on equalization, on capital gains taxes and he trash talks the people of Ontario.

Why should Canadians believe the Prime Minister?

I believe Stephen Harper about as much as I believe Dominic D'Alessandro.

Why do some people have such a hard time fessing up to their own actions? They really must take Canadians to be fools.

Here we have Stephen Harper claiming that he was slandered by the Liberals for saying that Stephen Harper had knowledge about a financial offer being made in the name of the Conservative party to Chuck Cadman in order to affect the way Cadman would vote.

How does that possibly reconcile with the following:

"The insurance policy for a million dollars, do you know anything about that?" Zytaruk asks.

"I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions," Harper replies on the tape. "This is not for publication?"

"This will be for the book, not for the newspaper," answers Zytaruk, who works for a Surrey newspaper.

Harper goes on to explain on the tape that the offer to Cadman was "only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election." He adds that the offer was carried out by people who were "legitimately representing the party."

This reminds me of the revisionist history that CEO of Manulife Financial was pitching in testimony before the Finance Committee in February 2007, when he claimed:

Dominic D'Alessandro: “The notion and the implication that somehow the government on this file is responding to initiatives that originated with corporations is not based on reality.”

Well, if that's the case, then Dominic needs to get the Globe and Mail to retract their statement below. While he’s at it he might want to get an update from his fellow Vice-Chairman of the CCCE, Paul Desmarais Jr. about his unregistered lobbying activities against the competing product known as income trusts. As two members of Harper’s 10 member NACC panel, they need to get their stories straight in order for it to be believable and “based on reality”, as it were:

Income-trust crackdown: The inside story
When the telephone rang, Flaherty knew he had to act
SINCLAIR STEWART AND ANDREW WILLIS
Globe and Mail
November 2, 2006

“High-profile directors and CEOs, meanwhile, had approached Mr. Flaherty personally to express their concerns: Many felt they were being pressed into trusts because of their duty to maximize shareholder value, despite their misgivings about the structure. Paul Desmarais Jr., the well-connected chairman of Power Corp. of Canada, even railed against trusts in a conversation with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a trip to Mexico, and told him he should act quickly to stop the raft of conversions, according to sources.”

Michael Sabia's daisy chain

Bloomberg: Citigroup and other banks seen needing more Arab capital

Flow of funds diagram:

Sovereign wealth funds will fund Citigroup’s continuing bailout so that Citibank can lend money on an uneconomic basis to BCE and for which Citibank has no end buyers, in order to render BCE a junk bond credit in order that Teachers’ can exceed its 30% ownership threshold and buy BCE with 20% of the purchase price, and BCE itself can fund the remaining 80% on its own totaling $42.75 and somehow meeting the Telecommunications Act requirements that Canadian telecom be owned by Canadians and promoting Canadian Telecom to become “competitive and efficient”.

Speaking of efficient, wouldn’t it just be more efficient if Dubai International Capital just bought BCE directly? That would involve less paper work and the public wouldn’t be so confused.

Citigroup and other banks seen needing more Arab capital
Submitted Wed, 2008-03-05 05:28
By Will McSheehy and Matthew Brown
Bloomberg News Service
Tuesday, March 4, 2008


DUBAI -- Banks and securities firms led by Citigroup Inc. may need more money from Arab states as losses stemming from the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market increase, the head of Dubai International Capital said.

Citigroup, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, received a $7.5 billion cash infusion from Dubai's neighbor, Abu Dhabi, on Nov. 27 to replenish capital after record mortgage losses destroyed almost half its market value, leading to the departure of Chief Executive Officer Charles O. "Chuck" Prince III. Citigroup has since received cash from Singapore and Kuwait.

"In my view it will take a lot more than that to rescue Citi and other financial institutions," Sameer al-Ansari told a private equity conference in Dubai today.

Gulf states including Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, flush with cash from record oil and gas sales, have bought into U.S. financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, and UBS, after they lost more than $163 billion betting on securities backed by subprime mortgages. Banks and securities firms have raised $105 billion from selling stakes to cover subprime losses.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim bin Jaber al-Thani said Feb. 18 that the emirate is buying shares in Credit Suisee Group and plans to spend as much as $15 billion on European and U.S. bank stocks over the next year.

Abu Dhabi is Citigroup's largest shareholder, ahead of Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos. and Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

State-managed funds in countries including Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and South Korea have ballooned to $3.2 trillion in assets. Fueled by record oil prices and rising currency reserves, sovereign fund assets may gain fourfold to $12 trillion by 2015, equal to the capitalization of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, according to Morgan Stanley estimates.