Jailing the homeless 2.0

Need you be reminded, the following was written about Jim Flaherty's first failed attempt to become leader of the Ontario Conservatives and his policy of jailing the homeless:

Scourge of the homeless
The Globe and Mail
February 16, 2002
EDITORIAL

"Ontario Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was looking for publicity, and he found it. When quizzed by reporters, he had no idea what his policy of dragging the homeless off somewhere, anywhere, would cost. He just wanted it done. He wanted to solve a complex social problem by sending out special police squads.”


Will Jim Flaherty be the next leader of the Ontario Tories?
By Andy Radia | Canada Politics – Fri, 28 Oct, 2011
Yahoo News

Stephen Harper could be losing his most senior cabinet minister.

A column in Thursday's Toronto Star notes there are good reasons to believe finance minister Jim Flaherty will shift to provincial politics and make a play for the leadership of the Ontario Tories.

"(Flaherty) is reportedly tired of the heavy international travel required in his job, which keeps him away from his Whitby home for long stretches at a time. Also, Flaherty realizes his boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, isn't likely to step aside until well after the next election in 2015. Flaherty, who finished second to Eves in the 2002 provincial leadership race, has made little secret that he wants to run his own show," journalist Bob Hepburn notes.

"At the same time, Flaherty's wife, MPP Christine Elliott, who ran and lost against Hudak in 2009 for the party leadership, is said to be tiring of Queen's Park and would happily step aside for her husband to run in her Whitby-Oshawa riding."

Losing Flaherty would be a significant loss to the Harper government.

Canada's finance minister is well-respected both nationally and internationally and is credited for successfully steering Canada through the last recession.

But Canada's loss would be Ontario's gain - and Tim Hudak's pain.

Even without the threat of a Flaherty leadership bid, Hudak, the current leader of the Ontario PCs, was already headed for troubled waters.

Paul Tuns of the Ottawa Citizen suggests there are many Conservatives who blame Hudak for not dislodging the Liberals from power despite a double-digit lead in the polls just 12 weeks before the October 6 election.

Adding to Hudak's woes, is the decision by Tory MPP and former leadership rival, Frank Klees, to break ranks with Hudak and run for speaker of the legislature.

Klees's move is a blow to Hudak because if he becomes Speaker, he would reduce the number of voting opposition members to 53, the same number the minority Liberal government has.

And, by virtue of parliamentary tradition, the Speaker votes with the government on crucial issues, which would result in the Liberals staying in power until 2015.

The Conservatives' constitution requires the party to hold a leadership review vote at the first party convention after an election defeat, notes Hepburn.

If Flaherty were to declare his intention to seek the leadership before the convention planned for early 2012, it could spell the end for Hudak's reign as PC leader.

Creating perception of a crisis to sell the huge tax on income trusts in 2006

By creating the perception of crisis—when none in fact existed—the Harper government made it easier to sell an extreme policy action to voters, one that effectively eliminated a useful form of business organization.

Income trusts: One of the most important elements of the Harper government’s strategy for selling the new 31.5 per cent tax on most publicly-traded income trusts, announced on Oct. 31, 2006, was to convey to the public the idea that the government faced a crisis induced by a series of exogenous events, argues columnist W.T. Stanbury.

By W.T. STANBURY | Oct. 10, 2011
The Hill Times

One of the most important elements of the Harper government’s strategy for selling the new 31.5 per cent tax on most publicly-traded income trusts (announced on Oct. 31, 2006) was to convey to the public—largely through the news media—the idea that the government faced a crisis induced by a series of exogenous events. Recall that when he was opposition leader, Stephen Harper had repeatedly and clearly said less than a year earlier that he would not tax income trusts—as he claimed that the previous Liberal government was about to do (see Stanbury, The Hill Times, Jan. 26, 2009).

Crises Can be Useful Tools to Effect Major Changes

A crisis situation, or the perception of a crisis, may well induce people to see things in a different light, and to allow—even approve—changes that were previously held to be “unthinkable.” Under such a situation, managers may introduce a series of changes that they have wanted to make for some time, but could never gain sufficient support to be implemented. Note that some of the changes need not be related to the problem at hand.

The perception of a crisis may cause people to panic—and thereby act irrationally or at least fail to carefully evaluate the alternative possible (and practicable) responses to the problem situation.

A real crisis is a situation where—if appropriate action is not taken promptly—will almost certainly result in great harm to people and or property. And it may be that some aspects of the harm are not reversible later.

A government can use the perception of a crisis to take strong actions, and then justify the move later by providing “evidence” that there was a crisis that forced it to act as it did. The evidence is couched in emotive rhetoric that usually emphasizes the very bad things that would have happened if the strong action had not been taken.

Note that the government’s stated justification need not be the real reasons for the strong actions—they only need to be seen as plausible. A widely-shared perception of a crisis can make the stated reasons for strong actions far easier to accept. The crucial element here is the creation of fear.

Even with its extraordinary array of communications machinery, it is difficult for a government to create the widely-shared perception of a crisis “out of whole cloth:” i.e., where there is—in truth—no indication that a crisis situation exists (think of the movie Wag the Dog). But what is far easier for a government to do is to build upon exogenous events whose meaning is somewhat ambiguous, and to change the public’ perception of them from “a matter of concern” into a “crisis” by proclaiming them to be fearful—justifying rapid and strong action. To create a widely-shared perception of a crisis requires the artful manipulation of the news media. This can be done both prior to and after the government acts. An important part of the phony crisis strategy is to keep the decision-making process secret and limited to a few people

Elements for the Creation of a Phony Crisis

First, it is much easier to create a phony crisis if there are exogenous events that have already raised legitimate concerns among Ottawa policy-makers. Note, however, that the true nature of the problem may not be well understood or could be misunderstood due to the mindset (analytical frame) of the officials in the department responsible for monitoring these events/developments (in this case, Finance). These exogenous events can be built upon to create the perception of a crisis, for example, by exaggeration and the failure to provide perspective.

Second, there must be one or more high status persons inside government who act as “pushers” for certain policy actions and they must be prepared to try to create a faux crisis to “sell” those actions to the public. (The pushers within government may be responding to pressures from interest groups. CEOs and directors lobbied in secret in 2006 and pressed the government to kill the trusts for entirely self-interested motives, although their justification was couched in terms of concerns about reinvestment, growth and competitiveness.)

Third, there must be a comprehensive communications plan to use the news media to get the public to believe there is a crisis—or that there was a crisis. The support of the news media is essential to help disseminate to voters the idea that there was a crisis situation requiring strong and swift action. Support in this context may mean nothing more than reporting the government’s claims without comment or effort to ascertain their veracity. The claimed perils of the situation were the justification for the hug e-tax on income trusts, and the reversal of the PM’s solemn promises made in the fall of 2005 when he was opposition leader.

The creation of a phony crisis was helped by the proposition that, in politics, perception, not substance, is everything. The related important points are these: (i) initial perceptions can be created near instantaneously, (ii) they can be created on very limited “evidence” or information (think of the half-second appraisal people give when meeting a person for the first time), (iii) the perception can be misleading, distorted, even utterly false in terms of the substance, (iv) perceptions—even false ones—can be very hard to change. See Stanbury, The Hill Times, Aug.15, 2011, and Aug. 22, 2011.

In the case of the income trust tax, the ability of the government’s communications plan to convince the news media and through them to the public that there was a “crisis” was greatly assisted by the complexity of the income trust tax issue.

Further, the simple, frequently-repeated message created by the so-called “Tax Fairness Plan” (see Stanbury, The Hill Times, March 7, 2011) overwhelmed the few deeper analyses of the issue which showed that the government’s central claims (most notably about “tax leakage”) were false or seriously misleading.

The Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty, was the single largest purveyor of the statements after the “Halloween Surprise” of false, misleading and unverifiable statements intended to create the perception of a crisis words were used as tools to create certain images in the minds of his listeners to achieve his political objectives.

Details Related to Creating the Phony Crisis:

Here are some of the things the Harper Government did to create the perception of a crisis:

• The new tax was announced in the most dramatic possible fashion—on Halloween.. This is what Flaherty’s director of communications called an “event.”

• The rapid rate of growth in the in the trust market was emphasized—and made fearful. Fear is a powerful motivator.

• Denigrating comments were repeatedly made by the minister of Finance to the effect that Canada was becoming a “trust nation” and a “nation of coupon clippers” and the stagnation in the growth of our economy with companies that are alleged to not reinvest in their business or in new technology. This argument was intuitively appealing and was the conventional wisdom of the executives who secretly lobbied against the trusts in 2006.

• In the technical paper released Jan. 28, 2007, Finance’s estimates of so-called “tax leakage” not only failed to include deferred taxes (serious methodological error), but also contained several other errors, each of which had the effect of inflating the estimate. This was proven by Dennis Bruce in his testimony before the Commons Finance Committee on Feb.1, 2007. He estimated the revenue losses for the federal government in 2006 to be $164-million, not $500-million as claimed by Finance—and that by 2010, the leakage would be just $32-million per year.

• Finance officials (and the minister) invoked the (supposedly) prestigious name of professor Jack Mintz whose own estimates of the revenue losses were larger than those of Finance for 2006. Mintz publicly defended the tax and defended Finance’s flawed methodology which omitted deferred taxes. Privately, however, Mintz was critical of the serious omission of personal income tax on units inside tax deferral accounts.

• The government provided no sense of perspective for the claimed “tax leakage:” $500 million for 2006, then later $1.1-billion (per Mintz) assuming Telus Corp and BCE Inc. had converted to trusts as they had announced they planned to do on Sept.11 and Oct.11, 2006 respectively. However, both estimates were grossly exaggerated. Yet they sounded large to ordinary folks, but they were tiny when put into a proper perspective. For example, the federal government’s total tax revenues in 2006 exceeded $160-billion. Corporate income tax revenues in 2006 were $37-billion. The federal surplus was then $12-billion.

• The minister made repeated reference to rumours of more possible conversions of large corporations to trusts, and claimed that such conversions would have near apocalyptic consequences—including the end of fiscal transfers to the provinces and big cuts in money for health care. The minister and other spokespersons made endless slanted or false statements where reporters were present. No reporter knew enough about this complex issue to “call” the minister on any of his statements. Columnist Diane Francis was a conspicuous exception.

• The “building blocks” for the rhetoric that there was a crisis and the government had to act quickly and strongly: The claimed growing “tax leakage”– in time to absorb all the surplus and return to deficits (horrors!); Rapid growth in the number of trusts– “becoming a trust economy;” It was claimed that the Telus and BCE announcements changed the nature of the problem, and not just as a matter of size. The minister (after the new tax was announced) emphasized that there were also rumours of big financial corporations planning to convert; rumours of energy giant EnCana Corporation was planning to put its mature assets into an income trust. It would have been a $20-billion deal.

Conclusions

The creation of a phony crisis by a government can be a powerful tool to sell an excessively strong policy action. This technique is closely related to the more explicit appeal to fear among voters which has been a staple strategy of the Harper government (see Scott Feschuk,www.macleans.ca, Oct.14, 2010).

W.T. Stanbury is professor emeritus, University of British Columbia.

news@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

WikiLeaks : US bid to "shore up" Harper from the day he was elected

Creekside

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

WikiLeaks : US bid to "shore up" Harper from the day he was elected

An embassy cable written by US Ambassador David Wilkins the day the Cons were first elected in 2006 suggests Harper would be useful in advancing the US agenda for Canada and that giving him " a success story" like the softwood lumber deal would "shore up" his ability to stay in office without appearing to "sell out to the Americans".
It's pretty well a quid pro quo blueprint for every Canada-US initiative Harper has dutifully followed ever since.
Excerpted :

The election of a new government, after thirteen years of Liberal rule, presents opportunities for advancing U.S. interests in such areas as law enforcement and continental security, and in developing Canada as a more useful partner in the Hemisphere and around the globe.
Significantly, the socially liberal core values of the opposition are more in line with most Canadians than the minority Conservatives, weakening their mandate even further. Given a relatively weak mandate and tenuous hold on power, Harper will move deliberately but cautiously to get a few successes under his belt before doing anything even remotely bold.

Relations with the U.S. will be tricky for Harper, who along with many members of his caucus has an ideological and cultural affinity for America. But as he has done already with many of his core social and fiscal values, he will simply have to sideline this affinity in order to not be painted as "selling out to the Americans" to a skeptical Canadian public. I know Harper will be warm and cordial in his dealings with the U.S., but he also has to demonstrate that he has the ability to advance Canada's interests with Washington, and he may feel compelled to step back from gestures that could be construed as a close embrace.

That said, I see a real opportunity for us to advance our agenda with the new government. I recommend early on that we look for an opportunity to give Harper a bilateral success story by resolving an irritant such as the Devil's Lake filter system or entering into good faith negotiations to reach a solution on softwood lumber. Early success on a bilateral issue will bolster Harper and allow him to take a more pro-American position publicly without as much political risk.

Another area where the new government will seek engagement will undoubtedly be border security. Finding a few high-profile SPP-type deliverables to improve cross border movement of goods and services would help our image here as well as shore up Harper's credentials. Laying this groundwork would then open the way for progress on cross-border law enforcement initiatives of interest to us, such as enhanced information-sharing, joint maritime operations, and more robust counter-narcotics efforts.

Enhanced info sharing on Canadians, the shiprider program, the imported war on drugs.

On other issues, Harper is committed to increasing spending on the armed forces and will do so, making the Canadian Armed Forces a more capable and deployable force; we have little to contribute to this debate and should stay out of it. He has also suggested that the missile defense decision could be re-examined.

With regards to our transformational agenda, there will be numerous opportunities for engagement. However, I suggest quietly working such cooperation with the new government through official, non-public channels, and that we focus on a handful of priority areas -- keeping Canada in the game in Afghanistan as the mission turns more difficult and possibly more bloody; continuing to work together to keep the pressure on Iran; increasing support to the new government in Haiti, possibly even taking on more of a leadership role there.

And right about now I'm guessing you're remembering some of Harper's more bizarre outbursts on Iran, his caginess about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, and Canada's new "leadership role in Haiti" where DFAIT is buying up property to house an infusion of Canadian officials.
Back to Wilkins' cable :

"We're going to be recommending senior level visits and consultations on foreign policy issues to help bring Harper and his new, generally inexperienced team into the fold as more useful partners.

I look forward to helping connect the dots with the new government so we can effectively advance our agenda."

Afghanistan, Iran, Haiti, enhanced information sharing, war on drugs, joint maritime operations, security perimeter ... There's also a section on Canada "engaging more actively in other hemispheric trouble spots such as Venezuela, Colombia, and Cuba."

Has Canada done anything independent of this cable under Harper?


David Emerson, who crossed the floor to the Cons to implement the soft wood lumber deal a week after he was elected as a Liberal in Vancouver, is mentioned in a second Wilkins cable just after the deal was signed with USTR Ambassador Susan Schwab eight months later.
Here they are quoted discussing International Traffic in Arms Regulations, a US law which proscribes Canadian dual nationals from some countries from work on the arms deals that comprise 40% of Canadian defense procurement from the US, and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative :

"It would be better, she continued, if we could look at issues as if there were a common border surrounding Canada and the U.S., rather than as an issue caused by the Canadian-U.S. border. Emerson agreed. He said that policies such as the WHTI are a "running sore" in the bilateral relationship and are inconsistent with policies to integrate the Canadian and U.S. economies to the maximum extent possible."

So, again, Steve, we ask : How's that US security perimeter deal with Barry coming along?
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Posted by Alison at 5:18 AM
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Labels: Afghanistan, Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, David Emerson, deep integration, Haiti, Harper, Obama, security perimeter, softwood lumber, SPP, WHTI, WikiLeaks, Wilkins

Is it possible that Flaherty doesn't have a clue?

Tax Changes Hurt Some REITS [July 20, 2011 2:20 PM]

Dennis Mitchell of Sentry Select Capital on BNN states:

"This is kind of the Department of Finance basically acknowledging that they really don't know what they're doing and they have no clue about how the capital markets work."

"...This is incompetence really....you can't keep changing the rules, I am sure Jim Flaherty will say that he is giving the market clarity. If we keep getting clarity every six months nobody will be able to allocate capital properly."

See video clip here

Eric Reguly on: Why doesn't Canada have more top companies?

My posted comment on the Eric Reguly artcile entitled: Why doesn't Canada have more top companies?:

Canada doesn't have more top companies for the simple fact that Canadian companies and CEOs do not know how to compete. Canadian companies and CEOs are coddled at every opportunity by the policies enacted by their closely held and controlled politicians. In the US they have the industrial military complex to worry about, Here we have the CEO-politician complex. What do you possibly think was behind the killing of income trusts, if not to destroy the competition that trusts represented for these coddled CEOs who sought to kill them as competition, (read: Gwynn Morgan, Dominic D'alessandro, Paul Desmarais Jr. etc etc) and which threatened the established order by the placing of shareholders' rights ahead of the greed driven CEOs?

What else did CEO lobbyist John Manley means when he said "you can't have two different structure for the same businesses" in arguing to kill the one structure that was in the best interests of the country, while preserving the one that is rife with abuses and bad for the country in the short, medium and long term?. Too bad dolts like Eric Reguly were too stupid to understand the game that was being played, and how he was being gamed by the CEOs to advance their world of coddled CEOs who are incapable of competing.....even in their own lousy back yard, let alone on a world stage.

Wake up Eric! You're so easily duped and manipulated, you could be a lazy non-competition engendering Canadian Politician like Jim Flaherty yourself some day too!


Why doesn't Canada have more top companies?

ERIC REGULY
Globe and Mail
June 23, 2011

Aren’t we clever? Our Top 1000 lists more than 30 Canadian companies with profits of $1 billion or more in 2010, a remarkable achievement given the worldwide corporate bloodletting since the 2008 financial crisis. Most Canadians know the names of the biggies, from Royal Bank to Rogers Communications, and probably consider them money-spinning proof that we can compete with the best of the best.

When I look at the list, however, my heart sinks. I recognize every one of the top 100, but I can only spot three, maybe four, that: a) compete in the international big leagues, b) have a brand that is known outside Canada and c) are making news. They are: Research In Motion, Thomson Reuters, Bombardier and perhaps Royal Bank or Barrick Gold. A few years ago, I would have put Manulife among that group, but its image has waned in the post-Dominic D’Alessandro years.

Congrats to those four, even though each lacks the “cool” factor that has, for instance, made Apple a supernova. So why doesn’t Canada have more international corporate champions?

Some of the world’s smaller countries, by population, are home to global giants. Australia has BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Macquarie Group. Switzerland has Nestlé, Syngenta, Glencore, UBS, Novartis and Xstrata. The Netherlands has Shell, ING and Philips. Sweden has Volvo, Ericsson and Ikea.

There’s no paucity of excuses from Canada’s political right, middle or left for our poor global showing. Corporate tax rates are too high? They’re among the lowest in the Western world. There’s too much government coddling? There’s too little. Canada is too small? The Swiss wouldn’t buy that argument. Costs are high, and training and education are inadequate? CEOs can’t endure Canada’s winters? Celine Dion intolerance? Blah, blah and blah.

Here’s my reason: epic Canadian investor greed.

I’ve worked as a business journalist in four countries—Canada, the United States, Britain and Italy—and nowhere have I witnessed greed to rival Canadian greed. From 1997 to 2007, I felt all I did was chronicle the eradication of corporate Canada as investors, and CEOs who encouraged them, hit the sell button. Here are just a few of the companies I no longer write about: Inco, Falconbridge, Dofasco, Stelco, Algoma Steel, MacMillan-Bloedel, Molson, Alcan, Ipsco, Gulf Canada, Newbridge Networks, Poco Petroleums and Masonite.

The sellout continues. In February, the successful TMX Group agreed to sell itself to the inferior London Stock Exchange. The TMX should have been the buyer.

Last year, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan almost became another hollowing-out victim. True, CEO Bill Doyle fought off BHP Billiton, but I don’t think he wanted to keep the world’s biggest fertilizer company in Canadian hands to generate local wealth and jobs. The share price wasn’t to his liking, and as things turned out, the takeover was blocked by the feds.

To be sure, each sellout is a special case. In a few takeovers, such as Falconbridge, the offering price was so huge that sellers would have been foolish not to take the loot and run. But others were just instances of plain, short-term greed. Canadian investors would rather take even a meagre payout today than stick with a company for years to create a world-beater.

Of course, short-termism isn’t uniquely Canadian, but patience often generates even bigger rewards. When Ralph Robins was CEO of Rolls-Royce in the 1990s, he earned no love from British investors and analysts by investing fortunes in jet-engine technology that wouldn’t pay off for years, if at all. But Sir Ralph refused to cave in to the gimme-returns-now mob. Today Rolls is one of the world’s top manufacturers and tech innovators.

That stick-to-it attitude is almost extinct in Canada. Evidence? How about the big push early in the last decade to turn corporate Canada into one monstrous, bloated income trust?

The income trust was a peculiar beast—discouraged or outlawed in many civilized countries—that avoided taxes by paying out almost all cash flow to unitholders. But that left little money for R&D, corporate development or overseas expansion. When Telus and BCE, Canada’s two largest phone companies, announced their intention to convert to trusts in 2006, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty did the right thing and shut down the party. Five years later, investors still moan about that.

In 2008, Don Argus, then-chairman of BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, denounced Canada’s sellout culture. “Canada’s policies are a worst-case scenario,” he said. “Canada has lost more head offices than any other country. Canada has already been reduced to an industry branch office and is largely irrelevant on the global mining stage.”

Policies? I don’t know if there are any. For every buyer, there’s a seller. Canadians love to sell. Yes, we have many companies in safe, protected industries that are making billions in profits. Sadly, most of them are nonentities on the world stage.

Hunt for yield creates new risks: BoC

My posted comment to today's Financial Post article entitled: "Hunt for yield creates new risks: BoC":

Just another of the obvious "unintended consequences:" that CAITI (www, caiti, info) has been talking about since its inception in December 2006. Only took Mark Carney the better part of 5 years to realize the folly of his idiotic ill-conceived and ill-executed actions of killing income trusts ( on the totally false premises of alleged "tax leakage") and the certainty that his actions against yield hungry investors would spawn more Asset Backed Commercial Paper schemes or Manulife Income Plus near disasters to come to pass.

What a clueless idiot we have for Governor of the Bank of Goldman Sachs in the person of Mark Carnage.

Hunt for yield creates new risks: BoC

Barbara Shecter
Financial Post
Jun 22, 2011

The sort of low-interest-rate-driven risk taking that lead to the 2008 global financial crisis is on the rise and posing an increasing threat to the stability of Canada’s financial system, the Bank of Canada said Wednesday.

“The popularity of riskier securities and strategies is growing” both globally and in Canada, the central bank said in its bi-annual Financial System Review released Wednesday, highlighting the boom in lower-grade bonds that is drawing in new investors who may not be aware of the risks.

While stimulative monetary policy is needed to support the global economic recovery,” a long period of low interest rates may fuel excessive risk-taking,” the report said, noting that this risk to the system has increased since its most recent report in December.

The report highlighted the role of misunderstood investments — notably asset-backed commercial paper — in the most recent market meltdown a few years ago.

This “search for yield could cause risk to be underpriced or lead investors to take on exposures that they may not be able to manage” if the global economy falters, the stability report said.

In particular, Wednesday’s report points to the growing popularity of non-investment-grade bonds and the near historically low price of their credit risk relative to government bonds.

“It is uncertain whether all new investors have the ability to adequately manage the risks associated with these securities and investment strategies,” the report says.

The report also cited “covenant lite” loans that delay the pain of likely defaults, and complicated developments in exchange-traded funds in Europe.

Global economic issues including the high risks associated with sovereign debt continue to put pressure on financial stability, edging higher in the most recent period, according to the report which also urged “further moderation in the pace of debt accumulation” by Canadian households.

While economists at TD Bank do no expect interest rate hikes before 2013, that could change if other risks looming over the Canadian and Global landscape were to abate in the coming months. In such a scenario, “the Bank of Canada could very well start to lift rates before the year is up,” a TD report concluded.

The central bank also warned Wednesday that Canadian institutions could be put at a disadvantage in the global move to regulate derivatives, and made a strong case for a domestic solution to meet G20 commitments to stability-driven central clearing and settlement.

The bank, which is playing an active role in the country’s G20 commitments on the regulation of derivatives, highlighted risks of electing to have over-the-counter derivatives contracts cleared by central counterparties (CCPs) outside Canada.

“Global CCPs may not provide a level playing field to Canadian dealers that are smaller than the global dealers,” the report warned, adding that “offshore clearing may not provide the public sector with sufficient scope for oversight or control to mitigate and manager the effects of a financial crisis.”

Has the entire NDP caucus decamped to Vegas?

PM Harper may call Parliament back 'mid-May,' but NDP MPs say it's too early

With 68 new MPs to swear in, the NDP needs time for training, establishing new offices, constituency offices, hiring and swearing in, among other issues.
By TIM NAUMETZ
Published May 4, 2011 5:49 PM
The Hill Times

[Back to work: NDP leader Jack Layton, pictured in the House in March. The government has not said when Parliament will return this spring.]
The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright
Back to work: NDP leader Jack Layton, pictured in the House in March. The government has not said when Parliament will return this spring.

PARLIAMENT HILL—The first tussle between the new official opposition NDP and the majority Conservative government may be on the close horizon—not over legislation but timing of the new Parliamentary session.

NDP whip Yvon Godin (Acadie-Bathurst, N.B.) told The Hill Times on Wednesday he understood—apparently from something Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) said—that the government may intend to call the 41st Parliament to begin sometime in mid-May.

With 68 new MPs to swear in, all but two of them newcomers to Parliament and some not even familiar with politics, let alone federal politics, the NDP needs time for training, establishing new offices, constituency offices, hiring and swearing in, among other issues.

“I think it’s too early,” said Mr. Godin. “The House is not on fire there. To be fair to the democracy, to be fair with the process, leave people to take breathe a little bit. I know what it is, when I got elected in 1997, you want to be fair to your constituents, you want to open an office, people are looking for you.”

But, though the official proclamation from Governor General David Johnston dissolving the last Parliament set May 30 as the date to “summon and call together” the new one, it can be changed at Mr. Harper’s direction. House Speaker Peter Milliken’s office said the pro forma date always set at the dissolution of a Parliament is usually changed by the prime minister following an election, and it can be pushed either back or ahead.

But, other than Mr. Harper’s statement that it will be “soon,” the Prime Minister’s office as of Wednesday said no decision had yet been made.

Andrew MacDougall, Mr. Harper’s press secretary, told The Hill Times in an email, “We will have a spring session. The budget will be front and centre in that session.”

The proclamation dissolving the last Parliament set May 23 as the final date for the return of all 308 election writs from ridings across Canada, but that was only the final deadline.

NDP MP Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.) also acknowledged the New Democrats, with 56 of their rookie MPs from Quebec, have a formidable training period ahead of them, as the new caucus band engages Parliament Hill. Mr. Comartin said the party’s normal trainee programs are being expanded.

The first step, Mr. Godin told The Hill Times, is a caucus meeting by telephone on Thursday with the entire caucus, and a full caucus meeting likely sometime shortly before the new Parliament begins. The Liberals hold their first caucus meeting next week.

As Mr. Godin and other veteran MPs fended off criticism Wednesday about the inexperience of many of their new Quebec MPs, some of whom lived in Ottawa and were just names on ballots as far as their new constituents were concerned, the party also absorbed its first round of sniping from the Liberals, now occupying the third party range at the far end of the Commons where the NDP sat until now, for five decades.

Wayne Easter, the feisty Liberal MP from Prince Edward Island, told The Hill Times NDP Leader Jack Layton (Toronto Danforth, Ont.) might regret giving up his influential spot as leader of the third party in a minority Parliament—where he often wrested legislation or other measures from Liberal and Conservative governments—in exchange for opposition leader status where a majority government needs no support, in raw balance of power terms, to pass bills.

Mr. Easter said Mr. Layton is going to learn “you had a hell of a lot more power before this election as a third party than you do as the official opposition. All Stephen Harper needs to say to him is ‘Jack, what are you talking about man, I have 167 seats, I don’t need to talk to you.’”

Mr. Godin, NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.), and House Leader Libby Davies (Vancouver East, B.C.) brushed the Liberal poke off as “sour grapes.”

“The facts speak for themselves. The Conservatives have a majority so it’s obvious that if they want to jam something through, they’ve got the votes to do that,” said Ms. Davies. “What it does mean though is we will have to be creative, we will have to be tough in being the official opposition, and think of what we do in a variety of ways to keep accountability and transparency and keep pressure on the government.”

Ms. Davies said she feels “tremendous” about the new caucus, especially the young MPs who she said will “learn the ropes” quickly. “New Democrats, we’re political animals, we get into this fast. This is going to change so many things,” she said. “I think it’s a whole new ball game. It’s going to be a whole new kind of politics.”

tnaumetz@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times