David Attenborough Takes Off the Gloves - At Last

He's been criticized for ducking the hard issues of climate change in his breathtaking nature series. That's over. David Attenborough's hour-long BBC documentary, "Climate Change - the Facts," lays bare how we are eliminating life on our planet.



Watch it if you've got the strength and then reflect on Canada as a petro-state and the driving forces behind it, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party of Canada.  Time is running out. Carbon taxes won't get us where we need to be, not in time. We know that the global economy has to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030. Canada is nowhere near that target. Our focus is on a rapid expansion of the production and export of high-carbon, high-cost, low-value garbage fuels like bitumen.

Ralph Goodale's Plaintive Plea

When I read it my gut reaction was "So?"

"It" was an e-mail from Ralph Goodale warning that the New Democrats are on the verge of a first, out fundraising the Liberals for an entire year.   The Libs apparently need $100,000 to close the gap on the NDP, assuming there are no particularly generous New Democrat supporters writing cheques between now and New Year's Eve.

The way the plea was written you might have imagined the Red Army was massed on the gates of Berlin.

I like Ralph Goodale.   I think he's a fine and honourable man and a first-rate Parliamentarian.   Maybe that's why the party hands him their begging bowl every time they want a whip round.

But I kept coming back to "so."   So, just why are the Libs trailing the NDP in fundraising?   So, why are the Libs trailing the NDP in the polls?  So, why are the Libs still comfortable on the Conservative-Lite perch?  So, just what does Canada lose from having the Liberal Party wallowing in the cellar?

If the Liberal Party is in political penury they need to ask themselves what they're doing wrong and what they need to do to make things right with the voting public.   The Libs need to explore their role in the collapse of public faith in Parliament.  Jesus Christ on a Crutch!   A majority of Canadians now feel the path to political action is to take to the streets.

The majority of respondents said they supported grassroots protests, including the Occupy movement and the British Columbia referendum against the harmonized sales tax. People are looking at other methods of political participation beyond conventional parties, said Environics pollster Keith Neuman, in an interview discussing the poll on Canadian values conducted jointly with the University of Alberta.

Also, when it comes to taxes, the poll suggests politicians are out of touch with Canadian values, adds U of A’s Harvey Krahn, a sociologist who assisted with the poll. It was conducted from Oct. 2 to 14 with a sample size of 2,001 people.

Keeping taxes as low as possible ranked last on the list of 12 shared values identified by Canadians, yet politicians, including Alberta Premier Alison Redford last week, staunchly rule out increasing taxes even when the province faces a serious deficit, said Krahn.

“There’s a disconnect between Canadians’ values and politicians on this issue,” said Krahn.

Ah, Oh, Hmmm.   There's a disconnect between Canadians' values and those of their politicians.  Golly, gee whiz - there it is.  Maybe that's why you've gone from Sussex Drive to Stornoway to Motel Six out on the Gloucester highway.   That's because you, yes you, have created a disconnect between your political values and ours.  We've made it clear.   We would actually prefer to take to the streets than to follow you and, with the likes of Trudeau, Garneau and Hall-Findlay, you're not showing any sign of changing.

So, sorry Ralph.   You're such a nice guy but I have to give you a pass.   Maybe a little more time in sackcloth and ashes might be just the thing to save the Liberal Party of Canada.

If You're a Liberal, Explain It To Me

If you're a real, committed Liberal, I could use your help.   As a truly disaffected Lib, I've become disconnected from the party, detached from whatever it supposedly stands for today.

For most of my life I considered myself a true Liberal.  I certainly wasn't a New Democrat, although I admired David Lewis, nor was I ever attracted to the Progressive Conservatives, although I had great respect for Robert Stanfield.  

No, I was pretty much a Trudeau Liberal and, to me, Lloyd Axworthy would have been a fitting successor to lead the party.   Instead it went to Turner, Chretien, Martin, Dion and Ignatieff as the party ushered itself out of Sussex Drive, out of Stornoway and, quite deservedly, into Motel 6 out on the highway near Kanata.

I was never fond of Dion but I still supported the Dion Liberals.  Ignatieff's coronation never sat well with me but I accepted a responsibility to give him a chance to earn my support.  He never did.   Instead it was Ignatieff's hapless machinations that severed my connection with the LPC.   Like Layton, Ignatieff carried Harper's water in shifting Canada's political centre well to the right.  The Liberals went to a spot on the political spectrum I could not accept.

So, what I'd like to know is why any of you Libs remain dedicated to this party or whatever remains of it?  What does the Liberal brand mean today?   How do you find any meaning, any purpose, and reason for existing in today's Liberal Party of Canada?   The easy answer is to say they're not Harper and his Cons or they're not Mulcair and his New Dems but defining them as what they're not doesn't establish meaning or purpose or even any reason for existing.

I know this may invite Dippers to wade in and slag the Libs but we don't need proof that the ranks of the New Dems have a generous stock of sphincters so, please, stay out of this.

Don't Be Calling Me for Money

As a former Liberal I'm finding the "ex" part is being overlooked these days.   Whenever the Libs pass the begging bowl I can expect to get an e-mail about it.

What I don't understand is exactly what the Libs have done that would warrant me, a very 'former' party member, handing over my cash to them?   What have they done to reach out to me?   What have they done to reconnect with me and, for that matter, the Canadian public?   How have they reformed the party I've already rejected?   What have they done to purge the Conservative-Lite mantle bestowed on them by Ignatieff?   What have they done to restore genuine progressivism in the LPC?

What have they done?  Bugger all.   And, by my calculation, that's precisely how much of my money they deserve - bugger all.

Clearing the Liberal Decks

 

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing.

Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.

Ignatieff is gone and small will be the loss.   There are plenty of Libs eulogizing Iggy today.  He was a swell guy, a real intellectual, such a hard worker.  Okay, when you're finished with the bullshit let's get down to reality.

Hard worker?  Really?

The time the Liberal Party and Canadians most needed hard work out of Ignatieff came when Harper first prorogued Parliament just as Canada was being overtaken by a global economic meltdown, the worst in generations.  Iggy had a window of opportunity to do some very hard work brainstorming a Liberal stimulus/recovery budget initiative, something with real vision.   Instead he took the time to write a very important book on his maternal ancestors.

When Parliament returned, Ignatieff came back empty-handed.  He left himself and the Liberals no option but to endorse Harper's pathetic "pinata budget."  He compounded his dereliction by making a fool of himself, boasting that he was putting Stephen Harper "on probation."

Bus tours and barbeques?   Is that "hard work"?  I suppose it is, sort of, for the bus driver anyway.

A two-year leadership/policy vacuum?  Is that "hard work"?  Really?  Oh yeah, there was that "thinkers' conference" thingee, the spectacle with the roster dead weighted with CEOs and management consultants.

Iggy did achieve some things.   He put the LPC on the side of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.  He even pre-absolved Israel of its atrocities in the Gaza invasion.  He certainly shifted the Party to the centre-right, fashioned it as something akin to Conservative-Lite.  In so doing he helped Steve Harper achieve his prime directive, moving Canada's political centre well to the right.  And Ignatieff also did Harper a solid by proposing an extension of Canada's military role in the FUBAR known as Afghanistan.

Ignatieff did a lot to the Liberal Party and it left scars.  He didn't even bother to hold the centre, allowing Layton to move in from the left and Harper from the right until Iggy was squeezed so tightly he struggled for air.  In so many ways he is directly responsible for bringing the Liberal Party to ruin.

Now he's out - two years too late, but he's gone.   However the job's not done.   The Party needs to ensure that those who engineered Ignatieff's ascendancy are also put out to pasture.  I will end this with another observation from Oliver Cromwell:

I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain,

that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows,

than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else.

 

Great, Just In Time for an Election, a Liberal Senator Convicted of Fraud

Thanks for nothing, Raymond Lavigne.   The senator was convicted today of fraud and breach of trust.   I'm sure we'll be hearing about him again in the coming months - from the Tories.

We'll have to wait a couple of weeks to find out if Ray gets booted from the Senate but I'm betting the Tory-majority would like nothing better, especially as that would give Harper the opportunity to appoint yet another Conservative, this time from Montreal.

Two former staffers testified that Lavigne filed bogus expense claims for their travel and pocketed the reimbursements.   The judge also found that he used a staffer to cut trees on Lavigne's Wakefield, Que. cottage.

Maybe it's time to start a new, genuinely liberal, Liberal Party from the ground up.  Right now who can reliably say how much rot is in the existing one?

An Open Letter to the Liberal Leader and his Caucus

This is the text of an e-mail I sent today to the Liberal Party of Canada.   I will post their reply, if any.

- As a lifelong, but now former, Liberal I was embarrassed for the LPC yesterday to read in the former CanWest paper, the Montreal Gazette, a report on how far prime minister Harper has gone to gag the public service to advance Harper's personal agenda. Here are a few excerpts:


"The Harper government has tightened the muzzle on federal scientists, going so far as to control when and what they can say about floods at the end of the last ice age.


Natural Resources Canada scientists were told this spring they need “pre-approval” from Minister Christian Paradis’ office to speak with national and international journalists. Their “media lines” also need ministerial approval, say documents obtained by Postmedia News through access-to-information legislation.


The documents say the “new” rules went into force in March and reveal how they apply to not only to contentious issues including the oilsands, but benign subjects such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago.


They also give a glimpse of how Canadians are being cut off from scientists whose work is financed by taxpayers, critics say, and is often of significant public interest — be it about fish stocks, genetically modified crops or mercury pollution in the Athabasca River.


“It’s Orwellian,” says Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at University of Victoria. The public, he says, has a right to know what federal scientists are discovering and learning.

Orwellian indeed and it's been going on almost since Harper took over and installed political commissars in the PMO to regulate and filter communications between the public and the public and armed services. Let me be blunt. This is despotism.

Chalmers Johnson, in his book Nemesis, the Last Days of the American Republic, offers an insightful discussion of the importance of access to government information to the health of democracy:

"James Madison, the primary author of our Constitution, considered the people's access to information the basic right upon which all other rights depend.


"A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it," Madison later wrote, "is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."


"...federal appellate judge Damon Keith wrote in his 2003 ruling against the Bush policy of holding hundreds of deportation hearings in secret, 'Democracies die behind closed doors... When government begins closing doors it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation.'"

Judge Keith is totally right. The information that Harper denies the public is not his. It is ours. It belongs to the people of Canada. These are the people that we once believed an Opposition was to serve, to protect.

Again from The Gazette:

“Departmental officials speaking on behalf of the department are to consult the minister’s office in preparing responses,” Joanisse says. “While this may have been misinterpreted as being a new policy, it has been in place for years.”


The documents show several communications managers, policy advisers, political staff and senior officials were involved drafting and vetting “media lines.”

And Harper gets away with it thanks to a haplessly impotent opposition leader. When did the Liberal Party sink this low? If Ignatieff can't figure out that his job is to defend Canadian democracy against the excesses of Stephen Harper, you Liberals had better spell it out for him. And, by the way, screw arts funding.

As you can probably tell by the variation in fonts, etc., much of this e-mail has been copied over from my blog. Our country will face many enormous challenges this century and while I, blessedly, won't be around to confront them, my children and theirs certainly will. Their future is being written today, indelibly, and a good part of that is being written by our federal government. Looking on what passes for the Official Opposition today is more than discouraging. It's depressing.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

I think it's slowly becoming apparent that academics do not necessarily make good political leaders. Yes they're highly educated and, in their own ways, quite bright and they've read a lot of books and, usually, written a few but they've also picked up some habits and traits that can be drawbacks at the top tier of politics.


Academics don't lead. They direct. They don't amass their power from below - from the rank and file students they teach. They're endowed with their power from the institution and its governors. They're directors, not leaders.


Professors are poor consensus builders. Their tools are course plans and reading lists. They impart knowledge that way but they don't shape their courses to conform to the interests and views of their students.


Academics are poor fighters. They may be quite skilful manipulators but they're not really good at the rough and tumble stuff that seems to lie in the background of most great politicians. Many academics tend to be timid sorts and, when they do show a bit of courage, it often comes across tinged with bitterness or resentment.


Academics tend to be bland and uninspiring. They come from a world that doesn't highly value charisma and fiery rhetoric. I'm sorry Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff but the two of you have been boring, at times even stiffs. It's hard to get people to vote for boring stiffs, even accomplished ones. Ask Bob Stanfield.


In so many ways the political arena must seem positively alien to an academic. It ill suits them and, try as they might, they can't help but exude a scent of unease.


Why is it that, when one looks at really great leaders from the past, they usually come across as colourful people who brought to politics rich, eclectic pasts often marked with an element of adventurism, real adversity, even controversy.


I'm convinced that Canada is in urgent need of that kind of political leadership that's nowhere to be found today in any party. Yes the current party structure makes it harder for any leader to obtain a majority government but surely that simply calls for much better leadership than we have today.

We Need To Talk

While we can hope that the departure of Ian Davey as Ignatieff chief of staff will somehow lift the LPC leader's sagging fortunes, there's a real risk that it's too little, too late. lt's good that the leader has gone for an experienced hand but I'm not sure that Donolo has ever had the challenge he's now facing. He never had to rescue Jean Chretien from Jean Chretien. His former boss was a political veteran, a skilled campaigner.

I think one of the first things Donolo should do is teach the Liberal leader to talk. Mr. Ignatieff needs to speak to the Canadian people, to present them an array of ideas and policies they can support. Day care, arts funding... blah, blah, blah. I'm sure they're all wonderful and deserving but they hardly rank among the existential crises facing Canada and the world.

Just because Harper doesn't want to talk about the serious stuff - and he doesn't if only because that would mean he might have to do something - doesn't mean the Liberal leader should follow suit.

I think the Canadian public realizes that bad stuff happens, that it is happening and that no one in Ottawa is even talking about that much less dealing with it. If the future of Canada and the fate of future generations of Canadians is a political potato too hot to handle, why have a national government at all?

We need to talk about things that matter to the Canadian public - things such as the security of our healthcare system, the rapidly growing gap between rich and poor, Canada's position and role in the world and every aspect of the global warming problem. Those are just for starters. We have to discuss these and, in the process, remind everyone of what liberalism is supposed to mean.

This isn't about polls or electoral tactics. It's about the heart and soul of the Liberal Party. It's about deciding whether the LPC is going to cleave to its liberal roots or content itself with being transformed into centre-right Democrats to the Tory's far-right Republicans.

Michael, let's talk.

What Happens When Liberals Aren't

If you're curious what a future, federal Liberal government might look like you could do worse than to take a gander at British Columbia's provincial Liberal government. Take a close, hard look at what passes for our Liberal government. It's a useful object lesson in what happens when right-wingers take over a supposedly liberal political party. It's not a pretty sight.

Rafe Maier, himself a former Social Credit cabinet minister and subsequent political columnist and broadcaster, gives you an idea what to expect in his latest dissection of premier Gordon Campbell in The Tyee.

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/04/13/WhatsUp/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=130409

Get Over It - He Was No Messiah!

I carry no brief for any Liberal insider, no preference for who ought to become the next leader of the LPC. None, I'm neutral.

I wanted Dion to step down solely on performance reasons. I read a post the other day that described Mr. Dion as a person best suited to serve as Prime Minister but ill-suited to becoming elected Prime Minister.

The fury and outrage of Dion loyalists is profound. I realize that, in any party, there are people who are more closely attached to an individual than to the party. I confess to a bit of that myself when I was young and Pierre Trudeau was our leader. Maybe it's something one grows out of, who knows?

Not all of our party's leaders have been iconic. Some, such as Mr. Chretien, caught an awful lot of breaks. Brian Mulroney, after all, left the PCPC in a shambles when Mr. Chretien stepped in and the right remained terminally divided during the Chretien years. I liked Mr. Chretien and happily supported him but I never overlooked the role that circumstances not of his or our party's making had in his success.

So, now we must seek a new leader. Good, I hope we can focus on finding someone who will unite and motivate the party as Mr. Dion never managed to do. We have to ensure that the next leader has the aptitude for the job, an ability to connect with voters outside today's narrow Liberal realm. That will be a leader with vision, political acumen, solid communication skills and the charisma essential to motivate voters who stayed away from the polls last week or who voted for Mr. Harper because they saw no viable alternative.

We need a leader, now more than ever.