Cons Shoot the Messenger

They told the truth the Government didn't want to hear.   They had to go.

"They" are the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.   The message advocated introduction of a carbon tax to reduce emissions.   For that the independent advisory group's funding has been axed.

Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks.

But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.

"'Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected? That is a message the Liberal Party just will not accept,' Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period.

"'It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government. No discussion of a carbon tax that would kill and hurt Canadian families.'"

When exactly have Canadians "repeatedly rejected" a carbon tax?  When were they ever given the opportunity?  Dion, in opposition, tried to raise the idea once but it died in an electoral ambush. 

What are these characters, North Koreans?   The entire Harper cabinet functions like a politbureau.  If the message doesn't "agree with the government," it's off with their heads.   What's next, a gulag?  

Why Can't Ignatieff Close the Deal With Canadian Voters?

When you do the math, it simply doesn't add up.

Stephen Harper. We don't like the guy and we like him less now than ever.

Quebec. Harper has positively gored his Conservatives in la belle province.

The recession. Harper has screwed that up six ways to Sunday. He's screwed us up. He's screwed up Canada. He was hopelessly screwing this up long before anybody recognized the recession was happening in the United States.

The scandals. Harper is up to his knees (at least) in them. He's broken most of the White Knight promises on which he eeked into office. Arrogance and secrecy where he promised accountability and transparency. A flurry of failed and abandoned litigation. Then there's listeria, Chalk River, Cadman, income trusts, the list goes on.

So why, oh why, is the newly-minted Liberal leader not sitting on a solid, 10-15 point lead in public opinion? It's not that the NDP is nipping at Ignatieff's heels.

Could it be that Ignatieff is simply too far right for center-left Liberal supporters? Has he tried to position that party too closely to the Conservatives for his and the LPC's own good? Is there something about the guy that Canadians just don't like? Could it be that Dion left deeper scars on the Liberal brand than anyone imagined?

I'll admit I don't know what's to blame for the Liberal malaise but I do know that being positioned to possibly win a minority with everything Harper has done for the Liberal Party shows that Liberals don't have much to celebrate.

The Green Shaft

I was deadset against the Green Shift gambit from the outset.

It was precisely the type of core policy you don't advance while you're in opposition. It takes the power of government to tackle something of that magnitude.

You have to be able to present a cohesive, coherent policy that you can explain in detail and at length to a skeptical voting public. That takes money and resources, plenty of both. The Liberal opposition had neither the time nor the money to take that on.

Mr. Dion allowed the plan to be uncovered weeks before it was unveiled. That allowed Mr. Harper to exploit his party's powerful financial advantage to frame the policy in the public's mind and then kick it to the curb. By the time the Dion Liberals got around to presenting this policy the damage was done, the Green Shift was fatally gored.

It's not as though Mr. Dion didn't know better. In today's Toronto Star, Linda Dobeil writes that the party's own pollster warned Dion that the Green Shift was a vote loser seven weeks before it was unveiled:

"Despite the confidential warning to senior campaign officials April 29 from pollster Michael Marzolini, the Dion team pressed ahead and, with great fanfare, announced the plan on June 19.
Johanne Senécal, Dion's chief-of-staff, emailed campaign co-chairs – Senator David Smith, Mark Marissen and Nancy Girard – that more focus group testing was required in order to sell it properly.

"Tell (Marzolini) that SD (Dion) is putting his political career at risk here and that we would be insane to let him go forward without testing the messages," she wrote in a May 8 email.

http://www.thestar.com/FederalElection/article/519051

The article makes clear that Dion gambled, and lost, not only his own political career but the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party by ignoring these warnings.

What in God's name was he thinking?

Harper & Dion Served Up Mallick-Style

Heather Mallick, writing in The Guardian, filed this post-mortem on our election and, if nothing else, it should lift your spirits:

There are three wings to Canadian political life. Harper, the Conservative PM, is a rightwing extremist, although he doesn't suck up like Cameron. He is an anti-choice, pro-prison, poverty-ignoring, food-safety-privatising, arts-ridiculing, Afghanistan war-loving, cowboy hat-wearing guy.

The Liberals, the nation's natural rulers, are in the middle of the road like an expiring woodchuck. They are sensible people without passion; they own just the one house; they're New Labour without the ratlike cunning, without the Cherie, shall we say. The New Democratic party is old Labour.

Harper began passing laws making Canada more like the States. His most complimentary adjective was "CEO-like". He wants life sentences for 14-year-old murderers, of whom we have maybe three in a nation of 33 million citizens. He wants to build more prisons, ban safe-injection sites for heroin addicts, privatise universal healthcare, make the foetus not just a person, but someone who can dress for success – you know the drill.

...So we voted. As in the movie Groundhog Day, where the post-election morning was the same as the last one, with the result being another minority government born of a quiet desperation that won't be soothed until the Liberals get a new leader, not a sweet smart guy like Stéphane Dion, but someone with claws like Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian you Brits took to your bosom some years ago.

Thanks for sending him back. It's getting hot here, our trees are sawdust and our ice is melting. Canada needs a smart decisive cynic. Anything to haul that crushed woodchuck off the road.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/16/canada-georgebush

The Dion, ....er Harper Economic Plan

The Globe & Mail says it all. Harper has pretty much lifted Stephane Dion's plans for getting Canada through the hard times that we face:

Most of these measures are in fact actions one would expect a prime minister to take and the list looks similar to the five-point action plan proposed by Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion during the campaign.

They include:

• Taking "whatever appropriate steps are necessary to ensure that Canada's financial system is not put at a competitive disadvantage."

• Discussing the crisis at Friday's Canada European Union Summit and talking about strengthening the economic partnership with this bloc.

• Summoning Parliament to meet this fall and tabling an economic update before the end of November.

• Participating in the Group of 20 finance ministers' meeting November 8-9 and calling for a further meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers to "build on progress made at their meeting.

• Keeping government spending "focused and under control" by continuing a four-year review of government departmental spending.

• Convening a meeting with the premiers and territorial leaders on the economy to discuss a joint approach to the global financial crisis.

I've Never Seen So Many Holding Their Breath

It's the same story on both Liblogs and Progressive Bloggers - virtual silence. According to CBC, Lord Vader is still confined safely on the DeathStar, closer certainly but still no majority cigar. Maybe this time he'll face a responsible, co-operative opposition that is willing to act as though it had a pair. That, after all, is the only remedy for the playground bully.

Stephane Dion failed to meet the one challenge that faced him - doing at least as well as his predecessor, Paul Martin. In fact, the Dion Libs took a drubbing as though that should come as a surprise to anyone.

As far as I can tell just now, the only real losers tonight were the Libs under Stephane Dion. Is it any wonder?

If Stephen Harper is going to be run out of Dodge, it's going to take a Liberal leadership change and the sooner the better. I bit my tongue during the campaign but that's over now. There is a type of individual suited to leading the Liberal party. Mr. Dion is not of that standard. If he has any integrity he'll step down. If he doesn't, we need to show him the door.

A Gaffe Big Enough To Drive a Truck Through

Canadian prime minister Stephen "McSame" Harper says fear not, the Canadian economy is "strong."

“Today, we see more volatility in the financial markets due to the crisis in the United States. Remember, Canada is not the United States. The fundamentals of the Canadian economy are sound.”

Harper is right, in part. We're not the United States, not that he can claim a lot of credit for that. Harper's outspoken support for deep integration with the United States is on record and it speaks for itself.

Here's one fundamental of the Canadian economy that's anything but sound - our unhealthy reliance on trade with the United States. In trade, we've been putting almost all of our eggs in one basket, the one with all the stars and stripes painted on it.

It's the United States of America that creates our terrific balance of trade surpluses. It's the United States that generates our balance of payment surpluses.

The rest of the world, those countries that Harper has so often shown a cold shoulder? You don't find Canada enjoying a lot of balance of trade surpluses with them. In fact we're running a serious balance of trade deficit beyond the U.S.

So Harp needs a sharp one up alongside his goofy head. Our hull may not be leaking but when you're the rowboat tied fast to the Titanic, you've got a problem, one that you need to acknowledge and address and resolve.

The guy at the wheel of the Tory clown car doesn't want to talk about this. Harper is afraid that simply talking about what's in store for us could upset his plans when he's so close to an election win. Shouldn't we be afraid of a guy who acts like this?

So, Mister Dion, it's time to act like the leader of the Liberal Party. The Globe reports that a group of Toronto Libs are urging Dion to appoint a panel of prominent Liberals to, "...to study the situation and suggest ways Canadians can keep their life savings and deal with the Wall Street crisis."
They're touting names like Paul Martin, Frank McKenna, John Manley and Don Johnston - men whose financial talents are unheard of in the Tory ranks.

“We believe this task force idea would help Dion recover at the 11th hour, because at the very least, it would remind Canadians of the stellar Chrétien/Martin record on the economy,” one of the Toronto Liberals said. “Desperate times call for desperate measures, perhaps. This is not a desperate measure but a smart one.”

Harper has taken his stand. The economy is sound, nothing to see here, move on. It's a position that defies reality and would leave Canadians at severe risk to an American meltdown. Harper hasn't given Mr. Dion many opportunities as good as this and Mr. Dion can't afford to pass on this one.

Rescuing Stephane Dion

It didn't have to be this way. If Keith Davey was still around, it wouldn't be.

Stephane Dion's Green Shift has been a disaster in its introduction and in its marketing.

We all know that the Green Shift stumbled at birth. Mr. Dion lost control of its introduction. It was uncloaked before it could be unveiled. It was released when it was most vulnerable to empty, alarmist attack and before it could be explained, defended and sold to the public.

Steve Harper was able to tie the Green Shift around Mr. Dion's neck and keep it there. After that, there was no separating the two which ensured that it would be Dion, not Harper, on the defensive in the critical opening weeks of the election campaign.

Everything we complained about Harper, every excess, every anti-democratic and authoritarian abuse, the scandals, every broken promise - it all got swept away. Harper hasn't had to defend his record at all, not even remotely. It's as though none of that stuff ever happened.

Harper's shield, his cloak of invisibility? Mr. Dion's Green Shift.

At no time since Mr. Dion assumed the party leadership have the Liberals been strong enough to launch an initiative of the scope of the Green Shift. It's much too big for a party to attempt from a position of relative weakness.

The Tories have held a huge financial advantage over the LPC throughout Mr. Dion's leadership and there was no sign he was ever making any inroads on that. That alone ought to have set the alarm bells ringing. The Liberals didn't have the luxury of launching a major and controversial initiative. They couldn't afford it.

The one thing the Liberals didn't have to buy was the litany of Harper's excesses. That was free. People had watched it all unfold - Cadman, Mulroney, Afghanistan, In and Out, accountability, environmental stonewalling, gagging the military, and secrecy, secrecy, secrecy.

So, why isn't Harper being forced to hop and dance around his own record right now? Why is he able to recast himself as an average guy in a sweater vest? It's because he grabbed the opportunity, back when the Green Shift unveiling was so terribly botched, to put Dion on the defensive and to keep him there.

The Liberals didn't have enough money to launch a Green Shift platform. They didn't have enough money or enough time. It's not a policy suited to an opposition party in any case. It takes a massive information campaign, meetings and discussions with the public and every key player, a building of consensus. That's a job only a government can tackle.

Dion needed sage advice and it seems he didn't get it. He needed to take the initiative and go on the offensive. He needed to frame the issues.

A - The first step ought to have been to assure the public that a newly elected Liberal government would absolutely not introduce Green Shift legislation unless certain key conditions had been met. In other words, Mr. Dion ought to have removed the Green Shift as an election issue altogether.

B - Mr. Dion should have promised broad consultations with the Canadian public and the most heavily affected sectors - transportation, energy, agriculture and so on. Mr. Dion ought to have made clear that his party would then seek to hone that input into the strongest possible consensus behind an effective carbon reduction programme. In opposition, the Liberals have neither the funding nor the time for an undertaking of that magnitude. Restating the obvious isn't a sign of weakness.

C - And then - the third condition - would have been to promise a plebiscite. Let the government come up with a policy, explain it properly to the public and then seek public approval. Promise the Canadian people that they would decide the Canadian response to global warming. After all, if you introduce policies they don't support, they'll do the deciding anyway in the next election.

The logic of this approach ought to have been obvious to any Quebecker. This issue shares a lot of the complexities of a sovereignty referendum. It's something that has to be sold to the voting public. They have to decide it's fate, they have to support it or send their government back to the drawing board.

Getting Dion and the cash-strapped LPC off Harper's hook ought to have been as easy as A-B-C. Then it might have been possible to make this election a verdict on Harper's greasy record of the past two years.

I'm not sure there's still time for Mr. Dion to drag himself out of the Green Shift hole that Harper has dug for him. But, damn, he's got to try!

Okay Lardo, It's a Command Performance Now

Our Furious Leader, little Stevie Harper, may have to think twice about spurning Stephane Dion's challenge for an "adult debate" on the Liberal Green Shift proposal.

A Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll found 70% of respondents absolutely keen on the debate idea.

The Big Greasy Splotch is going to have to tread carefully through this one. If he doesn't debate, he won't look good to most Canadians. If he does debate, he runs even greater risks. He might just give Dion the opportunity to show he's not a wimp. Worse yet, he might give Dion a forum to showcase the real merits and limited downside effects of the tax shift proposal.

Poor old Lardo. He's great at sniping from the weeds but now he's being called out - by the Canadian people.

An "Adult Debate" on Climate Change?

Stephane Dion seems insistent on bringing Stephen Harper into the floodlights over climate change.

Dion has struck back, challenging our Furious Leader, Mr. "We're Screwed" Harper, to an adult debate on the Liberals' "Green Shift" plan to reduce carbon emissions.

"I call on the Prime Minister to debate with me any time on TV on this issue in a respectful, meaningful and adult way."

No word yet on whether the Great Greasy Spot will take Dion's challenge.

I've Seen This Movie Before

Responding to a critique by Castor Rouge of my critique of Stephane Dion this morning, I had a flashback to 1974. I was one of many menial scribes conscripted to cover the federal election campaign that year.

It was the challenger, Tory Robert Stanfield, versus Pierre Trudeau with David Lewis batting for the NDP.

Canada was in a mess with runaway inflation. Bob Stanfield campaigned on a promise/threat of wage and price controls to stabilize the economy. Make no mistake, Stanfield was promoting a very unpopular idea. He scared the living hell out of a lot of people, particularly organized labour.

Pierre Trudeau pounced. He got up on stage and lambasted Stanfield, warning voters that, if the Tories formed the next government, they would wake up one day and "Zap, you're frozen!" It was a shrewd bit of politicking and it worked. It stampeded the labour vote out of the NDP corral and into the Liberal camp. Trudeau won, Stanfield lost. David Lewis even lost his own seat.

Just a few months later, newly re-elected prime minister Pierre Trudeau introduced - why wage and price controls of course.

Bob Stanfield was a wonderful guy, honest and direct. However he looked like an undertaker and utterly lacked charisma. He went into that election advocating an unpopular policy, unpopular but necessary, that his rival was able to use to beat him senseless.

I think Stephane Dion is something of a latter-day Stanfield. He has no discernible charisma and he wants to champion an unpopular policy, one that can easily be used by his opponents to scare voters.

Like Pissing Into the Wind

One in ten. It doesn't make much difference what you're trying to achieve, if you're scoring 10% it almost always means you have a problem.

The carbon tax has a problem.

It's not so much a problem with the merits of the idea itself or the political hurdles it poses. Its main problem is the guy who says he'll stake all to make it happen - Stephane Dion.

The latest Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll shows that Dion isn't the guy to sell a carbon tax to the Canadian public.

"Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's approval rating has sunk to its lowest level yet, with nine of 10 Canadians saying they disapprove or are not sure of his performance as the head of the party, according to the latest Toronto Star/Angus Reid opinion poll.

Not since former Liberal leader John Turner bottomed out with a 14 per cent approval rating shortly after losing the 1988 election have things been so bad for the head of Canada's most successful political party. Just 10 per cent of those surveyed stand behind Dion's leadership, the poll shows, compared to 32 per cent for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

What's worse is that the number of people who said they were unsure about Dion's performance has dropped from 46 per cent at the end of last summer to 30 per cent this month, meaning that Canadians are making up their minds about a leader who has had difficulties rallying his party behind him as well as communicating his party's positions to potential voters.

"What's really disheartening is it's almost as if everyone's made up their minds already," said the polling firm's Mario Canseco. "Those who actually have something to say about Dion are saying negative things."

The online poll of 1,004 Canadians is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20."

I know this news is going to upset loyal Dion supporters and there are plenty of you among Liberal bloggers. You support Dion, you stand by him faithfully and that's all very nice. What you aren't going to do is get him elected.

The Liberal Party brand is propping up Dion, not the other way around. Canadians' dislike and distrust of Stephen Harper is propping up Dion.

The election may be won or lost on Dion's leadership. Yet he's intent on transforming it into a referendum on carbon taxes. With this pleasant, well-intentioned, intelligent but hapless character at the wheel, Dion may be dooming initiatives such as carbon taxes in a vain attempt to save his own political neck.

We'll have another leader of the party but a loss on a de facto carbon tax referendum may just set back that initiative for years to come, if not permanently. Once the Canadian voters believe they have spoken, it's going to be enormously difficult for another leader to get them to change their minds.

Dion's legacy may be that of a failed leader who gambled on really bad odds and wound up dragging down the environmental initiative with him.

The carbon tax initiative is too important to be put to a referendum by a leader who can't even sell himself.

The good news. Canadians are still waiting for the LPC to come up with a leader they can support. The party can retake the government - only not until it does some essential housekeeping.

Until then it's just pissing into the wind.

The Suzuki Factor

David Suzuki's endorsement of Stephane Dion's carbon tax initiative is a mixed blessing.

Suzuki's outspokeness has made him a bit of a lightning rod for criticism that he's an extremist, a granola munching tree-hugger.

I think Suzuki sees the global warming issue as a politico-scientific challenge. Both sides have to work together like a team of horses or nobody gets anywhere - ever.

If Dion truly has the fortitude to stand behind the carbon tax policy and if David Suzuki genuinely believes there is no other way, the two must work together and very publicly.

For his part, Dion has to show a degree of genuine leadership that's rarely seen in the timid. He must refine his initiative, stand behind it, explain it, defend it and then persuade Canadians that it's not just a nice idea but an imperative.

For his part, Suzuki must use his considerable professional influence to enlist a large body of the best scientific minds in our country to join him in supporting the carbon tax proposal. They need to lend their voices, their credentials to present a solid scientific consensus on the issue. They need to assist Mr. Dion by doing everything in their power to explain the merits of carbon taxation to a sceptical and sometimes ill-informed public.

I think the concept is workable. A lot of the already stated fears are misplaced. For example, there's no reason that home heating fuel cannot be exempted from these taxes. I believe there are similar workarounds for other problems.

That's not to say that carbon taxes won't be felt. Of course they will as they must if they're to work. That's the whole point. The idea is to get people to change their energy consumption habits. If you must commute an hour each way to work, you might want to help us all out by ditching that SUV. Maybe you'll suddenly see the merits of car pooling or mass transit. Maybe jobs will have to relocate closer to the available workforce as has happened elsewhere, relieving already chronic congestion in our metropolitan cores.

Here's another thought. We don't consume energy equitably so why should those who consume substantially more not expect to contribute more in tax? If you want to live in a 4,000 sq. ft. house in exburbia because that's where you can afford that elevated lifestyle, don't complain that it's expensive to clog up the highways commuting downtown to work. That's your choice, live with it. If you want to spend your weekends racing about the lake in your ski boat rather than kayaking, that's your choice, live with it. If the taxes are unacceptable, change your lifestyle. Just don't bitch to me about how you choose to live your life.

A Pox on All Their Houses

Who is going to lead Canada's next majority government?

I don't know and neither do you because that person hasn't won their party's leadership yet.

Neither Stephen Harper nor Stephane Dion has struck the essential chord with the Canadian public to lift their parties out of the minority rut. If anything, each is propping up the other's mediocre performance. The best thing Stephane has going for him is Stephen and the best thing Stephen has going for him is Stephane.

Stephen has shown even the Tory faithful that he's a cold, secretive, manipulative guy, the sort few are willing to trust. Stephane has shown himself a weak and uninspiring leader with utterly atrocious communications skills.

Now before you jump on me for critiquing Stephane Dion, think about this. When you run for the leadership of a party, you're representing that you have the skills and the aptitude for the job. You're representing yourself to be able to reach beyond card-carrying party faithful and connect with the general public. After you win that leadership you have to make good on those promises. All you won was the right to lead but you have to perform and perform well.

Stephane Dion is a good man. He's certainly intelligent and well-intentioned. He probably has enough skills to get at least a passing grade. It's on the other part, aptitude, that he fails badly. It's the aptitude that's necessary to reach out to the general public - charisma, confidence, clarity. This is where Mr. Dion repeatedly comes up empty.

Stephane Dion's command of the English language is not good and it's not one bit better than it was when he was running for the leadership. He ought to have dealt with that, he plainly hasn't and that's inexcusable.

So, let's clean house. It's time for an election. Conventional wisdom in Liberal ranks holds that Mr. Dion, regardless of his performance, has won the right to lead our party into the next election. If that's the way things are then, fine, let him lead but let's get this over with so that the Liberal Party of Canada can actually move ahead.

Look at it this way. The first party, Liberal or Conservative, to move to a powerful, effective leader will form the next majority government of Canada. Wouldn't it be great if that party was ours?

Wake Me When It's Over

They folded on Afghanistan. They folded on the Tory budget. They even folded on their own amendments. They folded on the environment. Every time the Tories shout "boo" Stephane Dion dives for cover and takes his MPs with him.

He was supposed to get his government ready to fight an election. That's the first rule when leading a party in a minority parliament.

Now he's up against it. He goaded the Tories with a tax cut and they're calling his bluff. Will Dion fold again? Does it even matter? James Travers, writing in the Toronto Star, argues that Dion allowed himself to be outflanked even on his strongest issue:

While the Conservative performance is long-term threatening to the environment, the Liberal failure is more immediately politically damaging.

The difference for Dion is that the environment is a point of a departure, an easily grasped way of presenting Liberals as the vector for a country moving forward in optimism, not back in nostalgia.

How the party skidded past that point puzzles even many Liberals. But two factors are clear.
One is that Dion's green credentials had more currency with the party than they now have with the public.

The other is that Conservatives were as skilfully swift in positioning Dion as an impotent environmentalist as they were framing him as a weak leader.

Even before the echoes of Dion's victory speech faded, Harper's spin-doctors were tracing the sorry record of Liberals who signed Kyoto but did next to nothing to rise to its challenges.

Since then, outflanking Dion on potential ballot questions has become the Conservative norm. They succeeded on Afghanistan and the management of a slowing economy while the renewed climate activity coupled with last night's vote on the NDP motion leave Dion without a compelling election issue.

- Update - This post has attracted a great deal of interest from Blogging Tories and their ilk. Before you do something embarrassing in your drawers, calm down. This post is about Mr. Dion, not the Liberal Party which, as each of you knows in the dim recesses of your narrow minds, will be back in due course. You, my friends, are gloating on borrowed time.

A quick question. Where would you be if you didn't have a leader like Harper? If there was ever a time you ought to be steamrollering the opposition into a powerful mega-majority, this is it. But you're not, not even close and you can blame lard-ass for screwing up your great and yet fleeting opportunity.

And Now a Word From Our Leader?

Well I said I would post any response I received to my open letter to Stephane Dion about the Canadian mission to Afghanistan. I did get an unsigned reply, one that I was reluctant, for the sake of the Liberal Party, to post. Yet, here it is. You may note that it doesn't even attempt to address any of the fundamental questions I posed.

"Thank you for taking the time to write to the Liberal Party of Canada. As you know, the Liberal Opposition recently put forward an amendment to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s motion to extend Canada’s mission in Afghanistan until the end of 2011. Since that time, the government has modified its own motion to reflect many of our amendments.

We will not abandon the people of Afghanistan, but Canada’s mission has to change. We are pleased that the government has adopted some of the Liberal language in its motion, but we will carefully study the new motion before deciding whether or not to support it.

Regards."

Muddling Along Meaninglessly

It looks as though Harper and Dion have found a compromise on Afghanistan - stay until 2011 and then out.

Excuse me while I wretch.

What these clowns have compromised on is a big bag of nothingness. It is less than a joke, darker than a farce. Where to begin?

Let's start with the absence of the most important players at the negotiating table - NATO and Washington. Harper and Dion can agree to anything they like. Without the agreement and binding committment of NATO and Washington, it's as meaningless as the previous agreement to extend "the mission" to 2009.

When we said "out in 2009" what did that comedian de Hoop Scheffer do in recognition of our offer to extend our nation's committment, to sustain further losses? He did nothing. The Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took it as a freebie and gave absolutely nothing in return. He didn't begin pestering other NATO members to have replacements ready to take over in early 2009. Neither did Washington which, after all, intends to maintain permanent garrison forces in Iraq and needs NATO soldiers to make that possible by carrying America's baggage in Afghanistan.

Surprise, surprise - here we are long after the deadline has passed to muster a replacement force and Brussels and Washington have done SFA. So, now we'll draw another line in the sand, this one two years further down the road, 2011, and - naturally - we'll neither demand nor obtain any committment from the US or NATO.

So let's flash forward to 2010. That's the year the Dutch say they're pulling out of Afghanistan. What are the chances Scheffer is going to be bothered with Canada's deadline in 2010? We've shown him what Canada's deadlines mean - nothing. Ignore us and we'll bitch and then roll over.

Better yet, what does 2011 mean to the Taliban? Two years is essentially meaningless to a nationalist insurgency. "We have all the watches, they have all the time," remember?

And what of Afghanistan's New Government, Karzai's Kabul Klan? There'll be elections next year and word has it that the Americans want to get rid of the hapless Karzai in favour of a more reliable water boy. But power in Afghanistan has already passed into the hands of the warlords who have ensured the countryside is safely contained in fundamentalist feudalism. If we don't have even a small fraction of the soldiers needed to combat the Taliban, just how are we to wrest power from the iron fists of the warlords and drug barons?

And what of Pakistan? Now that the Pakistani army has been "militarily defeated" in the autonomous Tribal Lands and the Northwest Frontier to the point where it has again negotiated a ceasefire with al-Qaeda and the Taliban forces, what will staying until 2011 do to ease that threat? Is it A: Nothing, B: Nothing or C: Nothing. Full points if you chose "Nothing."

So, if staying until 2011 isn't likely to result in any significant change on the ground in Afghanistan, then why stay at all? Of course if you're interested in fighting a political war at home and indifferent to the military war abroad, you can duck that question entirely.

By the way, who do you think will be leading the Liberals and the Conservative parties when 2010 rolls around and we find ourselves still stuck firmly in Afghanistan and playing politics over whether to stay or leave?

The Battle of Kabul, Ottawa

Well it looks like our Furious Leader has found an issue he's prepared to hang an election on - Afghanistan. Word has it he's going to toss out a confidence motion calling for an extension of Canada's Afghan mission beyond 2009.

Sounds to me like Stephane Dion had better pull his thumb out and find a clear position he can explain to the Canadian public, a position they can support. I'm betting that's what Harpo believes Dion can't do and he plans to make the election a referendum on the Liberal leader. The way everything else is going for Lardo this is probably his best bet.

The first thing Dion needs to do is to ensure that his policy is viable. As Hillier has said we can't stay in Kandahar and not fight. It's bandit country and, unless Dion can get the Taliban to go away, they'll take over if we don't fight to defend our turf. Can't be any simpler.

Reconstruction? Sure, just as soon as we establish an adequate level of security. Oops, there we go again, fighting.

No, I think this is a "take it or leave it" question and the Libs are going to have to support the Cons or fall into line with the Dippers. I'm pretty sure that's what Harpo's thinking too.

Maybe it's time to reassess the whole business. Let's not get snowed by the Manley panel report. It's simply not reality based. An extra thousand soldiers and a few helicopters isn't going to secure Kandahar province, not even close. That's a political sop, nothing more, and Manley ought to be ashamed for playing Harper's stooge.

We could begin by asking what "success" in Afghanistan would look like and then contrast that with conditions on the ground to see what needs to be done to get there if that's even possible. What do we want out of this? What's our bottom line?

If our goal is simply to be a dutiful member of NATO, success or failure against the Taliban is irrelevant, the corrupt and chaotic central government is irrelevant, the Afghan security services that alienate the people in the countryside are irrelevant, the looming unrest and threats from the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan are irrelevant. Just by staying there, we succeed. Afghanistan may utterly fail but that doesn't matter.

If the Canadian people want a "goal oriented" approach then our participation in the NATO/ISAF mission becomes less significant and all the irrelevant considerations above suddenly become very meaningful. Suddenly it becomes relevant that we're not winning against the Taliban. It becomes relevant that the central government is corrupt and unviable. It becomes relevant that the Afghan security services are actually undermining our best efforts to build support among the Afghan people for their central government. The descent into violence and destabilizing religious extremism across the border in Pakistan becomes relevant.

So what we need is to engage the voting public on these issues, to make them see the fundamental flaws in the Afghan mission. The Canadian people have been kept in the dark about this little war and that's understandable - the less they know the better it is for Lardo. The same goes for Hillier. Then there's John Manley. Manley has done Harpo an enormous favour, a shield that Stevie can hide behind and a club he can use to bludgeon Dion.

Working around Harpo, Hillier and Manley will be tough. It'll require a clear message and solid communication with the voting public and I'm not sure the Libs can manage either challenge. Their message is muddled and indecisive and, as for a communicator, well it's Stephane Dion.

Dion, Make Up Your Mind - Stay or Leave?

I'm not sure where Stephane Dion stands on the question of Canadian participation in the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. It strikes me that he's more intent on finding a place to stand that's not already occupied than in taking a clear, genuinely principled position.

He's allowed himself to get snookered again. Harper's occupying the "stay" corner, Layton has staked out the "leave" corner. It seems that Dion's focus is to define a posture that is somehow betwixt and between - as though that were possible.

So we'll stay in Kandahar but someone else will do the fighting. And NATO is going to adopt rotational deployment so that all those other nations that are lining up to jump in can get their fair share of the combat mission.

The trouble with Dion's position is reality. If you're in Kandahar you're going to fight. Option B doesn't exist. And NATO doesn't have any suitably sized reinforcements available to rotate in. That's the problem Stephane, that's why we're in this 2009 predicament.

Germany's defence minister announced today that his country's forces, like those of Italy, France and Turkey, will be staying in the relatively peaceful north. They're not budging and so any prospect of rotation is unrealistic.

Unfortunately for the Liberal leader, Harper's also got the "stay, but..." option, the Manley option, staked out.

Between them, Harper and Layton have pretty much got the reality options filled. So, Stephane, who are you going to side with?

The Coherence Vacuum

These days the leaders of Canada's two top parties - and no, that doesn't include the NDP - are eager to avoid having to set actual policy. With their support wobbling like jello in the low to mid-30's, it's as though each sees the way forward as something of a minefield where one mistep could be fatal.

Harper has done almost nothing of consequence this past session of parliament save to lower the GST by one point. He doesn't dare bring out his social conservative agenda for fear he might hand the Liberals a solid majority by default. He talks about global warming and greenhouse gas curbs but ducks and weaves his way around any concrete action. He even dodges Afghanistan, the one issue where his opinions are fixed.

Then there's Stephane Dion, the man most responsible for Harper maintaining even a slim lead in the polls. He says he's green but won't say what that means in terms of the Athabasca Tar Sands and its pending expansion. He says he wants Canada out of its combat role in Afghanistan but wants NATO to somehow kick ass inside Pakistan. He too seems to have less to offer by the day.

Nobody has a coherent policy save, perhaps, for Smilin' Jack, the guy whose greatest ambition is to advance out of the political cellar. Safe from the prospect of ever having to govern, Layton is the very image of clarity and decisiveness. Policies are wonderful things when you'll never have to enact any of them. Wind and noise, that's all there is to Jack Layton.

Mr. Layton's posturing, however insincere and opportunistic, lets neither Dion nor Harper off the hook for failing to express coherent, effective and acceptable policies of their own.

My guess is that Harper truly doesn't want to act. He certainly doesn't want to betray his ideological fellows by being responsible for withdrawal of the Canadian contingent in Kandahar. That may account for the deft way in which he backed Canada into a "too late to leave" corner. It may be duplicitous, manipulative, even despicable but it's been done and, for the far right, it is at least a temporary victory.

On global warming and carbon emission reductions, I suspect that Harper only feigns his conversion to belief. He probably still sees the potential advantages of also backing Canada into a deadlock where economic growth is only notionally balanced against emissions. After all, when it comes to carbon curbs, it's a charlatan's paradise. That's not to say he won't set some emission reduction targets. He will. Yet they'll likely be little more than "intensity based" tomfoolery, mere window dressing.

In these things, Harper will be aided and abetted by Stephane Dion. The well-intentioned but timid Mr. Dion has shown that he's unwilling to genuinely press Harper because that would require him to spell out clear and meaningful policies of his own. That is a risk only to be taken by someone who can capture the public's imagination, confidence and support. That is the work of a leader of a nation, not a mere party boss.

There's talk of Mr. Dion triggering an election. Maybe that's just what we need to get the long overdue debate on so many important issues.