Stephen Harper's Book of Fables - Logged and Chronicled

The closer Shifty Steve Harper gets to the political gallows, the better, the richer and more fulsome his memory becomes.  It all flows out in a progression of fables, each more obviously contrived than the last.

Fable One

When the Wright-Duffy scandal unexpectedly broke in the media, Steve said his prize assets - his top drawer chief of staff, Nigel Wright - had merely done the Wright thing in getting his "most valuable" senator, Mike Duffy, the funds to make good his debt to the Senate and Canadian taxpayers.

That's Steve getting caught off-balance, taken by surprise before he can conjure up a suitable fantasy that his base, the faithful Conservative gullibillies will swallow.

Fable Two

A few days after exonerating Nigel Wright, Shifty Steve said the guy had to go (as though that was Steve's decision - laugh, giggle).  But Shifty assured Parliament and the Canadian people that Wright acted alone and that nobody else in the top tiers of his prime minister's office who could have, should have and would have tipped him off knew anything about Wright-Duffy.  They didn't know so how could he, Shifty Steve?

Shifty was quick to add that the transaction between Wright and Duffy was unacceptable or worse and had he any inkling of it, he would have reared up on his hind legs in righteous indignation and put an immediate end to it.

Fable Three

As the scandal refused to just go away and continued to close on him, Shifty recanted Fable Two and admitted that Wright-Duffy wasn't quite the secret he had said a few months earlier.  Shifty said there were a few people inside the PMO who knew of it but just not him.

Wait a minute, when Shifty rolled out Fable Two, he insisted that no one inside the PMO new anything about Wright-Duffy.  No one as in no one, nobody, no staffer. It was all Wright's doing and he kept it secret.  How could he make that claim unless he got all his little minions together and asked them?  Did he not ask them or did they just lie their asses off to the nation's ultimate control freak?  Of course there's a third possibility.  Shifty Steve may have been lying through his teeth from the get go and is still telling whatever lie seems necessary to fit the constantly emerging facts and yet still prevent the scandal from morphing into Wright-Duffy-Harper.

At times like this it can be very helpful to look at how a person has behaved in the past.   Hmm, let me see, let me see.  Oh, I know, what about that guy, Bruce Carson?  Yes, Bruce Carson,  the disbarred lawyer, convicted fraudster, ex-jailbird that Shifty personally admitted to the top tier of his prime minister's office.  The old geezer with the 22-year old 'former' escort girlfriend.  Shifty's most valuable fixer.

Ah, yes.  Bruce Carson.   The guy who longtime Tory operative, then RCMP commish, Bubbles Elliott, swept through the security vetting despite five fraud convictions, disbarment, jail time and two bankruptcies - that Bruce Carson.

As your humble scribe wrote in April, 2011:

Harper says he didn't know, he was let down, Privy Council procedures failed. Maybe that sort of bullshit is palatable in Red Deer or Moose Jaw but don't try to peddle it in Ottawa.  One of my Tory friends volunteered that there were repeated warnings given to Harper's staff.  Apparently everybody failed, everybody that is except Harper.

Does this sound familiar?  Discern any patterns yet?  This is Bruce Carson, Fable One.  Blame unnamed staffers and plead complete and total ignorance.  Claim that if you had only known, none of this ever would have happened.  You would have seen to that.  Just add water, stir, and wait for the scandal to magically disappear.

But it was in the Bruce Carson affair, perhaps we should call it Carson-Harper, that we saw how effortlessly Shifty moved on to Fable Two when his first pack of lies wasn't quite enough to kill off the scandal.  Within the month, Shifty's Fable One denial ran up on the rocks of reality and that's when Shifty Steve transitioned to Fable Two mode.

Suddenly Shifty came back with a straight face and said, well okay, he knew about some of Carson's criminal record, the fraud, the disbarment, the misappropriation, the jail time but he thought a stretch inside the Harper PMO would rehabilitate old Bruce.  Yeah, right.  Sending Carson to the PMO for rehab is sort of like sending a wayward girl to a brothel to mend her ways.

It was an audacious, bald-faced lie - and yet it worked.  The prime ministerial lap dogs, a.k.a. the parliamentary press gallery, went back to their labours of rewriting government press releases, Carson hightailed it to Calgary and the whole thing died just like the stench eventually departs the dung heap.  Shifty Steve didn't even have to make a ritual sacrifice of his top aides.

It must be pretty obvious that our prime minister is an inveterate liar who will say whatever he thinks he must to get himself out of a jam, tailoring his lies to conform to changing facts on the ground, confident that the media scribes are just too cowed to ever call "bullshit" on him.  It's something of an artform for Shifty Steve.  Wright-Duffy-Harper is an obvious carbon copy of Carson-Harper, only with one or two extra chapters.

What Greased Bruce Carson's Slide Into Harper's Office?

More revelations about how Bruce Carson came to take pride of place in Stephen Harper's PMO.   I should have guessed the transition.  Thievery, disbarment, conviction, imprisonment, tar sands, Harper.   Talk about a linear progression.

Read Geoff Dembicki's expose in the latest Tyee and you'll see why Canada is falling into the cesspit of petro-statehood.

Who's Watching the Mounties?

When it comes to federal elections there's good reason to keep a careful eye out for electoral shenanigans from the RCMP.   Who can forget the leg up the then Commissioner gave Stephen Harper in defeating Paul Martin?

That was then, this is now and, at the moment, the national police service is headed by a Harper appointee in the form of a former Tory political functionnaire who is scheduled to gradually step down some time this summer after a very controversial reign.

Just prior to the election Harper's office tried to pre-empt a scandal by announcing it had called in the RCMP to investigate a former advisor to the p.m., Bruce Carson, for alleged illegal lobbying.   This was after the Aboriginal Television Network broke the story possibly forcing Harper's hand.

Harper tried to stay ahead of the scandal by floating the narrative that any skullduggery in his prime minister's office would be sent directly to the cops.  We were given the impression that Harpo had no idea of Carson's shady background.

That background included being caught misappropriating trust funds, disbarment, criminal conviction and imprisonment.   Harper's reaction seemed to be "Who knew?"   Now it seems there were plenty who knew and reason to believe that included plenty within the PMO as well, and quite possibly the RCMP too.

There is ample reason to question whether the RCMP is being used as a political firewall to shelter Harper from having to answer some pretty direct questions in the midst of an election campaign.  We need at least some assurance that the RCMP has not become a political agency of the Conservative Party and its leader.

Indeed, the RCMP in its role in the Carson affair may have as much explaining to do as the PMO.   Carson was well known around Ottawa long before Harper became prime minister.   It seems hard to believe that Carson's reputation wouldn't be known to a life long Tory insider like RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliott.  Did the RCMP vet Bruce Carson before he came aboard as a Harper advisor?  If not, why not?   If so, did the RCMP warn the PMO about Carson's chequered background?   If the prime minister wasn't informed, who in the PMO was told and what was done with that information?  What role did Harper play in the selection of Carson as his advisor?

These questions need to be raised - now.   They need to be raised in the midst of this election campaign.   Given the bizarre circumstances - facts, not smears - Harper needs to explain himself and give a clear accounting for the actions of his prime minister's office.   Given its own past record and the fact that the force is now headed by a Tory Party insider, the RCMP needs to do some accounting and explaining of its own.    Should the RCMP itself be investigated or is there some other means available to ensure the voting public it hasn't been transformed into an agency of the Conservative Party - again.

Look Mr. Ignatieff, this is a genuine scandal that has fallen into your lap.  Harper shamelessly contrives smears to take down his opponents.   You don't have to contrive anything here.   All you need do is start asking some pretty obvious questions and not accept any lame excuses in answer.  If you do any less you don't deserve to lead your party.

Is There More to Bruce Carson?

A usually-well informed Tory source has passed along a couple of interesting additions to the Bruce Carson saga.

It seems Carson's troubles go back to his tenure with the Ottawa Carleton Regional Municipality.  He apparently left OCRM under some sort of cloud.   From there he reputedly scarpered off to Soloway Wright & Co. where he got caught dipping into the trust funds which led to his disbarment, conviction and imprisonment.

The smoking gun, if it can be proven, is that Harper's PMO was warned "a number of times" not to let Carson anywhere near the prime minister.    If true, who decided to ignore those warnings and why?   What else was going on in Mr. Harper's office that would enable a guy with Carson's record to hop aboard?

It's almost impossible to believe that the RCMP would not have run a security check on Mr. Carson either immediately prior to or subsequent to his appointment.  What did the mounties report?   To whom?   Did the RCMP Commissioner, himself a lifelong Tory functionnaire, have anything to do with Carson's vetting?  It may not be possible to get the whole story through FOI requests but I'll bet it might be possible to get enough to require some clear explanations.

And, by the way, how does a 22-year old living with a 66-year old dodgy ex-con become a "former" escort?