Canada's Best Political Blogs - My new aggregator

I've created a new blog aggregator which I've branded "Canada's Best Political Blogs". As regular readers will be aware, I like to take in varying viewpoints from the political blogosphere. There's no point reading only those who share one's partisan slant, not if you're seeking a deeper understanding of the political landscape in this country.

I only have seven blogs listed currently, but I expect that it will grow over time. For those who author a well written blog I invite you to hit the Add My Blog button so that I can review it. I don't promise inclusion, but I won't exlude blogs based on partisan leanings, already I've got Liberals and Tories and Dippers, oh my. The description says:

"The best of Canadian Political Blogs. Opinion and commentary from a variety of sources, well written and representing the full spectrum of political thought".

Of course this blog is included...and measuring it up against the others I've already added, well consider this the minimum standard.

Bloggers who have their site added are welcome to add this widget:

member of

Canada's Best Political Blogs

But its not a requirement.

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Stephen Harper - Running Canada like a Nortel CEO

A common analogy favoured by conservative business types is to compare the job of a Prime Minister to that of a corporate CEO. In this scenario the leader of Canada's governing party is equated to the head of a major business concern, with voters representing shareholders.

As analogies go its not without merit, Canadians are stakeholders after all, no different from shareholders in a company like Nortel. In the market a CEO's performance is reflected in a myriad of ways including: growth, share price, dividends and the balance sheet. A CEO who delivers increasing returns, a strong balance sheet, a robust share price and increasing dividends...that CEO can be expected to have the support of shareholders.

Likewise a Prime Minister who delivers on election pledges, lowers or holds the line on taxes and balances the books...or better yet delivers a surplus, that PM should expect to have the backing of the electorate.

So how is our Conservative Prime Minister performing?

Well...that depends. Are we looking at job performance or polling results? If we look at the polls the verdict could be seen as tentative approval. If we look at the actual results though, the picture is anything but pretty.

Just three and a half years ago Mr. Harper lead the Conservatives to a minority victory in Canada's parliament. Part of his campaign platform was to never tax income trusts, and he did it with panache. Even for those of us skeptical of political promises, this Calgary MP's conviction seemed truly genuine. Watch for yourself.



Notice how convincingly Harper lied back in that campaign, its absolutely masterful. I'd rate it right up there with Jean Chretien's repeated promises to scrap the GST.

Fast forward to our last election in October of 2008. With the same unwavering and reassuring tone, Harper pledged that Canada would avoid recession, and that there would never be a need for deficit financing under his watch. Again, if you missed it or forgot, here's the video:



I could cram this blog with more videos I guess...I could include pledges made by our Prime Minister not to stack the Senate with partisan cronies and about all the failed budget forecasts. I could include Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's laughingly absurd assertion that "nobody" saw this recession coming. Oh, what the hell...here's our forecasting challenged Finance Minister making a fool of himself in front of Canada's Senate...although it probably doesn't matter.



Polls right now show that a sizable number of Canadians either aren't paying attention, or they don't care.

There's much truth to the political axiom that voters prefer a tasty lie to an unsavoury truth. That's something Stephen Harper seems to understand very well. But like a CEO who keeps making rosy promises amid declining returns, eventually reality slams stakeholders in the face.

I just hope Canadians realize it before this country turns into the Nortel nation state, a one time corporate champion reduced to penny stock status...then sold off in a foreign takeover.

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9-11 - The Mother of conspiracy theories....

With this being the 8 year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks I feel it something of a necessity to offer up some thoughts.

Like many people I spent the day relating and listening to stories centred around: 'Where were you on September 11, 2001'? For my own part I was in downtown Toronto, first at my sales office and later at a meeting around King and Bay streets. I went to the meeting knowing the first plane had hit, and left the meeting after hearing the news of the second. I remember weighing the options of heading back to Yonge and Dundas either through the bank district, or up University. Given the that the US consulate is on University I opted to pass under the shadow of Canada's bank towers.

It was because of 9/11 that I started investigating 'alternative' news sites: whatreallyhappened, prisonplanet, rense among them. While I prefer gathering my news from more respected sources, I found the mainstream media sadly lacking when it came to investigative reporting. Instead of seeking answers to many unanswered questions, the MSM became simply a conduit for government statements.

What were those unanswered questions?

-Why did World Trade Centre building number 7 collapse when it was never hit by anything? As far as I'm aware this is the first time in history a steel framed building imploded due to fire.

-Why are the images from the plane striking the Pentagon so crappy? I thought the Pentagon was one of the most watched buildings in the world in terms of video surveillance.

-What caused the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania to almost completely disintegrate? I've seen photos of plane crashes before, with large sections of the plane strewn about, parts of wings, engines etc. According to emergency workers on the scene in Pennsylvania that day, there was nothing left bigger than a telephone book.

-Why was golfer Payne Stewart's plane tracked so quickly years back when it went off radar, yet on 9/11 the US military was unable to get planes in the air to intercept the hijacked planes?

-Why did the Secret Service let G.W. Bush stay at Booker T. elementary for so long? Given that the president's itinerary for the day was on the White House web site you think the best course would have been to remove him as quickly as possible.

-What was the source of all the short interest on companies like UAL in the days leading up to 911? Shortly after the event reports were given that in some cases short interest had climbed as much as 2,000% over historical norms.

-Was there ever any investigation of the early warning messages received by WTC employees of instant messaging company Odigo?

-The anthrax laced letters that started appearing around Washington after the attacks, that later turned out to have originated from a US military base. Why were the perpetrators trying to frame Muslims and what was the motivation?

That's just a sampling of questions, there are probably at least twenty or thirty more. Like the Kennedy assisination I think we'll be asking questions for years, with few answers forthcoming.

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Harper's Conservatives - The vast left wing conspiracy trumps incompetence

Leaders of Canada's opposition Liberal, NDP, Green and Bloc parties have a monumental task ahead of them in unseating the Harper Conservatives from the seat of power in Ottawa. Monday's Globe and Mail reports that polling indicates the Tories have opened up a 5 point lead nationally on the second place Liberals. The Strategic Counsel poll pegs the Conservatives at 35% and the Liberals at 30, with the NDP and Greens at 14 and 9 respectively.

Stephen Harper has assumed the mantle of Canada's Teflon man, nothing sticks. In his first mandate the Prime Minister broke his promise to "never, NEVER" tax income trusts, still Canadians returned the Tories with an increased minority. In calling an early election last October Harper may have even broken his own law respecting fixed election dates. A judge will now decide if that election call was illegal instead of just politically self serving.

Despite such a short tenure as Canada's ruling party, the Conservatives have done plenty to raise the ire of the voting public. Promises of balanced budgets have joined the tax exempt status of Income Trusts on the trash heap. Jim Flaherty's laughingly inept budget projections should definitely give Canadians cause for concern about the running of the nation's finances.

Add to that Lisa's Raitt's salivating at the 'sexiness' of cancer patients having treatment delayed, the boondoggle of funding for GLBT events in Toronto and Montreal, Harper breaking his promise not to engage in patronage politics to become the all time patronage champion with Senate appointments...its a long list for a party with so little time in power.

And yet despite financial mismanagement and scandal after scandal....Harper's Conservatives continue to lead in the polls. Why?

Simple, Harper's socially conservative base in convinced that there has long been a conspiracy afoot to rob Canadians of certain God given rights. There is a pervasive belief that a "Liberal Elite" is bent on ramming through an agenda that extols the 'dubious' (sic) virtues of things like multiculturalism and equality of the sexes.

The challenge for the likes of Ignatieff, Layton and May is to energize the roughly ten million Canadians who didn't bother voting last time around. Shaking the Conservative tree in hopes of diminishing Harper's core base will yield slim pickings at best. Stephen Harper can run the economy into the ground, break almost every election promise and prove himself the epitome of hypocrisy...and it won't matter to roughly 25% of Canadian voters.

I do believe the Liberals are off to a decent start with their chosen theme of "We Can Do Better". But its going to take more than a catchy slogan to reverse Mr. Ignatieff's fortunes and propel him to 24 Sussex Drive.

The fact that the Liberals are finally willing to state their intention of fighting an election at a time when their polling numbers are less than robust nullifies any appearance that their strategy is opportunistic. When Harper broke his own fixed election law last summer in an attempt to garner a majority mandate, that was political opportunism at its most blatant.

Canadians do deserve better government than what we've been getting recently, but Harper's socially Conservative base will be doing its best to blur reality. Its Machiavellism at its best and worst, Harper is their lesser evil.

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