John Baird is either a liar or stupid ...

And, no, you are not limited to one or the other when trying to decide.

I've said before that Harper and his incompetent thugs are nothing more than hillbillies playing at governing with no coherent plan and no clear concept of the world around them. No one epitomizes the intellectual laziness of the Harper regime than his so-called Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird. This is the guy who's supposed be in touch with the world and understand the nuances of other countries and cultures. The truth is, he is utterly unqualified for the job.

After calling the former Canadian ambassador to Egypt, Ferry de Kerckhove, something close to anti-Semitic, Baird furthered the exposure of his own ignorance by stating an outright falsehood, proclaiming that de Kerckhove was on the payroll of the government of Qatar.

Ferry de Kerckhove squared this away quickly while making it clear what he thinks of John Baird and his penchant for making things up. Read it all.

[I] was never on the payroll of the Government of Qatar. Mr. Baird could have checked the fact rather than try to defame me!

...

Yet I would hope that he might understand the danger my grandmother faced during the German occupation of Belgium as she harbored a Jewish couple in her basement for the better part of 1944. She was visited by the head of the Komandantur of Liege who told her there were rumors she was sheltering Jews. She stared him down and challenged him to check if he did not believe her word that she did not. He backed off. The couple survived. That is real life Mr. Baird and I am deeply proud of my grandmother.

My mother, although born a catholic hailed from a well-known Jewish family of printers for the Vatican. Of course, Mr. Baird, you might not know that Catholics could not become printers for the Vatican a few centuries ago as it was not “kosher” (pardon the pun!) for Catholics to make money from the Vatican.

The people of Ottawa West - Nepean should be ashamed of themselves for sending this national embarrassment and total waste of skin to parliament.

Investigate what?

I tend to agree with pogge. There is nothing that has been posted on Twitter about Vic Toews that wasn't already a matter of public record. His demand for an investigation, (and the releasing of the Harper party's howler monkey in residence, John Baird), is nothing more than an attempt to distract people from the real issue - Toews does and has demonstrated a complete disregard for the rights of Canadian citizens.

In short, Toews is a typical conservative authoritarian. He won't be happy until you're all curled up in a ball and he's putting the boots to you.

The point, however, is the crap produced by the Ottawa Citizen.

An IP address connected to what is known as the Vikileaks30 Twitter account originates within the House of Commons.
In a bid to determine the origin of the account, which details personal information about Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, The Citizen undertook an investigation on Thursday.
An email was sent to the writer of the Vikileaks30 Twitter account, containing a link to a website. The website was monitored by The Citizen and only the author of Vikileaks30 had the address of the website.
About 15 minutes after the email was sent, Vikileaks30 opened the link and visited the page, leaving behind an IP address that belongs to the House of Commons.

Well, that little process proves four-fifths of just about fuck-all. 

For a detailed explanation of what the Ottawa Citizen's ridiculous little exercise actually produced ... we have Catelli. It's important that you read that because if you don't, you might continue to buy into the BS flowing from the Ottawa Citizen. 

Any investigation capable of producing a result would have to involve interviewing everyone whose traffic flows through a common server farm. Good luck with that. 

And just as a demonstration, this kind of thing shows up on this site about 30 times per day from the House of Commons. 

Oh yeah. What Boris said.

Harper : Fresh muzzles all round for everyone

According to Jane, Steve has a new plan to protect the Cons from their own appallingly bad ideas.

.

Twenty-six committees, comprised of three senators and six MPs each, will vet "proposed legislation, regulations and even ideas" before they hit daylight or an uninitiated Con MP's lips.

.

Under the watchful eye of John Baird and his former chief of staff, Rick Dykstra - both Mike Harris alumni - and with the parliamentary secretary from each ministry serving as the committee chair, the idea is to identify C.R.A.P. ideas - like gutting the census and building hockey arenas in Con-convenient places - before they can set the curtains on fire.

"These permanent committees have a mandate to provide a new layer of troubleshooting ... to flag potential policy land mines to cabinet, catch issues that may fly in Ontario but won’t play well in Western Canada, help with communications strategy and reduce the dependence on ministers receiving advice from bureaucrats sitting in Ottawa."

Sure. Screw the policy making; let's ignore the already muzzled people who have spent their professional lives making policy and just troll for better PR in the Bushlands .

"Mr. Harper asked several of his senior caucus members – Mr. Dykstra, ... Marjory LeBreton, the leader of the Government in the Senate; and former House leader Jay Hill – to work on the initiative."

That would be the same Jay Hill, now replaced by House bully John Baird, who previously oversaw the implementation of the Cons dirty tricks manual, aka the Cons Guide to Chaos, for destroying the parliamentary committees.

You know, the same all-party parliamentary committees these new Steve-appointed Con committees are so obviously intended to eventually replace.

Dear Citizen....

Fuck you!

Signed
John Baird
Consummate Harper Fellatist

What Baird is telling you, reader, is that if you exercised your right to know how government works by asking your MP a question and that MP demanded that publicly funded information (read, your tax dollars) to give you a comprehensive answer, he would tell you, personally to get stuffed because he and his band of hillbillies are the underdogs.

Thanks John. Nice to know what you think of your employers.

Hands Across the Sand as the Cons rewrite history

Go to your beach on June 26 at noon. Join hands. That's it. NO to Offshore Oil Drilling, YES to Clean Energy

Hands Across the Sand began in Florida in February to "protest the efforts by the Florida Legislature and the US Congress to lift the ban on oil drilling in the near and off shores of Florida." Well it's a global movement now - here's the Vancouver Canada page.

But don't we already have a ban on tanker traffic and offshore drilling in BC?

Nope.

Natural Resources Canada - Review of the Federal Moratorium on Oil and Gas Activities Offshore British Columbia

ERRATA :

The Terms of Reference for the “Report of the Public Review on the Government of Canada Moratorium on Oil and Gas Activities in the Queen Charlotte Region of British Columbia” state that “in 1972, the Government of Canada imposed a moratorium on crude oil tanker traffic through the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait, and Queen Charlotte Sound due to concerns over the potential environmental impacts.” However; the moratorium on oil and gas activities offshore British Columbia does not apply to tanker traffic.

Prior to 1972, a number of permits for oil and gas exploration were issued for offshore British Columbia. Due to environmental concerns, rights under those permits were suspended as of 1972 by way of Orders in Council, thus forming a de facto moratorium.

Thank you, Pierre Trudeau, for suspending those offshore oil and gas exploration permits in 1972.

However in 1982 the Canadian government brought in the Canada Oil and Gas Act which allows the permits to be "renegotiated into exploration agreements" and "the time frame for renegotiation to be extended and the rights continued to be valid." In 1987, the Canada Petroleum Resources Act grandfathered the waiting exploration agreements.

"Thus, the moratorium continues to be maintained through government policy. No activity can occur until the former permits are converted to exploration licences. The decision not to negotiate with industry to convert those permits is a pure policy decision. There is no statutory impediment to carrying out those negotiations."

Shorter Con : No laws against oil tankers or offshore drilling in BC

The above "Errata", by the way, were added to the Natural Resources Canada webpage just last year.

Meanwhile the Pacific Regional Advisory Council on Oil Spill Response is being gutted :

Of the seven member panel, five new members replaced last year had to sign a "Letter of Expectation" limiting their meetings to only two half days per year and Transport Minister Baird has denied them access to drafts of changes to marine oil safety regulations on spill response preparedness

just as Enbridge tells us it wants its Northern Gateway pipeline shipping tankers of tarsands to Asia via the BC port of Kitimat "in operation by 2016."

We're going to need a lot more than Hands Across the Sands here but it's a start.

h/t to co-blogger West End Bob for passing on the Hands Across the Sand link from a friend of his in Florida.

The Bairds of this world get away with their behaviour....

Because we let them.

John Baird should have been physically removed from the committee room when it became apparent that his sole purpose was to disrupt the sitting committee.

There was no descent into chaos. Baird had every intention of disabling the work of a parliamentary committee. The push back was called for.

Keep in mind that John Baird is a party-state bullshitter. When he gets called on it, to his face, he squirms.

And never forget that he gets his marching orders from the top of his party's unitary command.

The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose of destroying the parliamentary system from within through its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of action.

Ernst Rudolf Huber (witness)
From the Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality
Volume I, Chapter VII
1946

One couldn't make that comparison unless it existed.

"Please your honour, have mercy on a poor orphan"

One of the advantages of being a conservative seems to be a willingness to engage in the most shameless of behaviours without the faintest scintilla of embarrassment or self-consciousness.


Exhibit A

"The whole concept of prison should be terminated, except for violent criminals and chronic non-violent recidivists, and replaced by closely supervised pro bono or subsistence-paid work by bonded convicts in the fields of their specialty. Swindlers and embezzlers, hackers and sleazy telemarketers are capable people and they should serve their sentences by contributing honest work to government-insured employers."

Imagine my amazement, Conrad "the sweetheart of cell block C" Black now thinks prisons are terrible places and that people convicted of fraud should not be incarcerated. How very, very convenient. I betcha Ted Bundy was opposed to capital punishment, too. Surprisingly, other than the aforementioned free ride for non-violent crimes, I mostly agree with Black's piece in the National Toast - somebody mark the day on calendar and check whether there is some kind of strange planetary alignment.


This, from the preceding paragraph, made me laugh out loud:

"The Canada I remember and look forward to returning to ..."

Oh, Lord Tubby of Fleet, how very droll of you -- how soon we forget.

Exhibit B

TORONTO, June 2 /CNW/ - Maclean's magazine in association with the Historica-Dominion Institute, L'actualité and Presenting Sponsor TD, celebrated the fourth annual Parliamentarians of the Year awards this evening on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Attended by members of Parliament, some of the country's most prominent journalists and other Canadians of note, the event honours Canada's top MPs, as voted by their peers in the House of Commons.

Almost 70 per cent of all members of Parliament from across all parties voted for this year's Parliamentarians of the Year. Winners and runners-up cross all political lines as well.

The award winners will be featured in a special issue of Maclean's hitting newsstands tomorrow, Thursday, June 3, and in L'actualité, on newsstands Friday, June 4. Full award results, photos, runners-up and methodology can also be found at macleans.ca/parliamentarians.

Parliamentarian of the Year

This year's Parliamentarian of the Year is the Hon. John Baird (Conservative), minister of transport, infrastructure and communities and MP for Ottawa West-Nepean. Mr. Baird was elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2008, the same year he was sworn in as minister of transport, infrastructure and communities.

Seriously. That would be this John Baird.  Yeah, this one, this stonewalling obstructionist douchbag. I can only guess that this award is a reaction to the snark shortage resulting from this. I won't even get into the matter of CTV getting Tom Flangan -Stephen Harper's former chief of staff - to come on and "analyze" Baird's behavior with a series of false equivalencies and outright apologetics. I'll just say that Walter Cronkite would not have invited Pat Buchanan or G. Gordon Liddy onto his newscast to analyze the Watergate hearings.

Crossposted from the Woodshed.

Getting unprepared for the next Exxon Valdez

In the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the federal government created six regional advisory panels of volunteer experts to :

• advise on an adequate level of oil spill preparedness and response in each region; and


• to promote public awareness and understanding of issues and measures with respect to preparedness.

"Their mandate is significant," reads the Transport Canada webpage, because :

"they are able to make recommendations on the full range of policy issues affecting regional preparedness and response, and may request information from Transport Canada, Canadian Coast Guard or response organizations on equipment placement, plans, resources, costs, training, exercises, or reviews undertaken of response operations, in pursuit of their mandate to advise and report on the adequacy of preparedness in the region."

Unless of course Transport Canada says they can't.

Over at the Tyee, Mitchell Anderson tells us the Pacific Regional Advisory Council on Oil Spill Response is being gutted:

• Of the seven member panel, five new members replaced last year had to sign a "Letter of Expectation" limiting their meetings to only two half days per year "unless pre-approved by the Regional Transport Canada Office."


• Their travel budget is restricted to attending those two half day meetings. So much for a mandate for research and "promoting public awareness"


• They have been denied access to drafts of changes to marine oil safety regulations on spill response preparedness because Minister Baird regards them as too "confidential" ... but not apparently too confidential to share with an industry based group.

New RAC member Stafford Reid has "20 years of experience in marine vessel risk assessment and spill response preparedness. He served for 17 years as an emergency planning specialist for the B.C. government." Reid asks The Tyee's Anderson :

"how the government or industry can hope to have public buy-in on new oil spill regulations when the review process is not even open to the committee of experts who are charged under federal law with advising the minister, let alone coastal communities or First Nations."

Anderson : "What is puzzling is why, at the very moment that tanker traffic is poised to increase on the B.C. coast, Transport Canada has seemingly weakened Pacific RAC's ability to monitor the shaping of key regulations, advise decision makers all the way to the top, and communicate with a worried public haunted by images of the Gulf oil catastrophe."

No, Mr. Anderson, sadly it really isn't all that puzzling. They'd just get in the way.

Enbridge seeks nod for Pacific oil gateway

Enbridge has asked Canadian regulators for permission to build its controversial Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry crude from Alberta's oil sands to the Pacific Coast.

The C$5.5 billion (US$5.2 billion) project would move up to 525,000 barrels a day of oil from Alberta to the port of Kitimat, British Columbia, giving Asia direct access to Canada's vast oil sands via tankers. The line would also be used to import condensate.
Enbridge has said it wants the Northern Gateway line in operation by 2016."

"No one takes Ethics Committee summons seriously"

"At the end of the day, [Ethics Committee Chair]Paul Szabo and this kangaroo court have no credibility and no one takes their summons seriously."

So said Con MP Pierre Poilievre in August two years ago when he was only an associate member of the Ethics Committee.
Since becoming fully-fledged, and also Parliamentary Secretary to Steve, his job there is apparently to pipe up "Point of order" every few minutes like some demented Energizer bunny until the Chair finally cuts his mike.

Lib Wayne Easter's spirited response to John Baird's surprise appearance before the Ethics Committee on Tuesday in place of Dimitri Soudas has already been well covered. Soudas cancelled only minutes before the committee convened, in keeping with Steve's new rules forbidding ministerial staffers from appearing before committees.

Chair Paul Szabo at first let Baird speak, setting off an hour of angry opposition motions to dismiss the usurper, interspersed with Poilievre's points! of! order! By contrast, the Con committee members dutifully bent over their brand new talking points on "ministerial responsibility for their staffers", carefully read aloud with heads bowed down when it was their turn to speak.
Eventually Szabo broke a tie vote over whether or not to let Baird stay and booted him out.

Well sure. After all, as Minister of Transport, Baird is not Soudas' boss and would not be able to answer any of the questions the committee was intending to ask Soudas, despite Baird's sinister hand waving about something he called "collective responsibility".

And as Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac of the Bloc pointed out, the last time a minister appeared before the committee on behalf of one of their staffers - that would be Christian Paradis, Minister of Asbestos - his idea of "ministerial responsibility" was to just blame the staffer.

Carole Freeman of the Bloc brought up committees' right to subpoena witnesses :

"[Soudas] is an ordinary citizen and should be treated as such. A house leader does not have the power to change existing rules simply by standing up in the House and making a statement."

But then there was another tie vote that I haven't seen discussed.

What to do about the many named bureaucrats already scheduled to appear in the few weeks remaining before the committee last meets on June 22? And what to do if their ministers wanted to show up in their staffers' place?

Chair Szabo asked for a motion to give him authority to summon the witnesses already scheduled to appear ... if necessary ... even if it meant allowing those witnesses' ministers to come as substitutes in their stead.

A pretty weak motion but as he explained, they were waiting on an expected future ruling by the Speaker on such witness substitutions. And he was only asking for either the scheduled witness or his/her minister to appear if that's what was offered.

OK so it was an astoundingly weak motion to exercise parliamentary committees' right to summon witnesses, but you know what? That vote was tied up 5 to 5 - the Cons vs everyone else - and only passed because the Chair broke it by voting in favour.

Pierre Poilievre suggested what he called "a friendly amendment" to solve the impasse over the next scheduled witness :

"just replace the name of the political staffer in question with the name of the Minister."

Your moment of hideous irony : The work currently before the committee is looking into "allegations of systematic political interference by ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public regarding the operation of government departments".

We don't need another hero

The Skipper has already chastized John Baird, who should never ever wear a turtleneck, for his objectionable conduct and general stupidity related to the Afghan prisoner denial-fest, but this part caught my eye too:

From Macleans:
"Mr. Baird was ready with a response. “Mr. Speaker, let us be very clear. Let us talk about the facts,” he boldly declared. “The then-Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, a decorated war hero, someone who has served our country in uniform for decades..."

(Baird then went on for a while in this vein before excusing himself )

Decorated war hero? In what war? Was Natynczyk at Vimy Ridge? Did he storm Juno Beach? Did he fight in Korea? Did he lead some heroic commando mission in Somalia or withstand the seige of Sarajevo or lead F-18 sorties over Kuwait in the first Iraq war? Has he been out battling the wily Pathan in the Afghan hills? Where was he decorated and for what?

A little checking revealed Gen. Walter Natynczyk does have some medals, some of them are even for serving in a war. In addition to being a Commander of the Order of Military Merit, which is awarded for "Outstanding meritorious service and demonstrated leadership in duties of great responsibility" (in other words longstanding excellence in military service in the same way the Order of Canada is doled out to politicians who manage to stay in office long enough to be considered "statesmen" without getting embroiled in a scandal), in 2006 Natynczyk was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross.

Governor General of Canada; Media release. Jan 24, 2006. "MGen Natynczyk is recognized for his outstanding leadership and professionalism while deployed as Deputy Commanding General of the Multi-National Corps during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. From January 2004 to January 2005, MGen Natynczyk led the Corps' 10 separate brigades, consisting of more than 35,000 soldiers stationed throughout the Iraq Theatre of Operations. He also oversaw planning and execution of all Corps level combat support and combat service support operations. His pivotal role in the development of numerous plans and operations resulted in a tremendous contribution by the Multi-National Corps to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and has brought great credit to the Canadian Forces and to Canada."

So Natynczyk was decorated for his wartime command of forces in a war that Canada was rather pointedly not taking part in. And the award was for his leadership and professionalism, not battlefield valour.

I don't wish to denigrate Gen. Natynczyk's service to this country or to discount the honor done to him and other recipients of these impressive decorations. Nor do I doubt his personal bravery--his record shows that he has served honorably on peacekeeping missions and elsewhere. But none of that makes him a "decorated war hero" to anyone except the kind of mindless uniform fetishists that seem to populate the Conservative benches and form the core of support for the ongoing military adventure in Afghanistan.

Wearing a uniform doesn't make you any more honorable or any smarter or any braver than anyone else and outranking an eyewitness doesn't make you more credible than they are. I think Natynczyk, like most sensible people, realizes this, even if Baird does not.

Baird is an braying brass-kissing ass who loves to wrap himself in the flag and use the Canadian Forces for his own political ends. But this is the Stephen Harper party of Canada and as much as Harper, Baird and Peter McKay love to be photographed playing soldier or sailor, and love to the military as a wedge issue--decrying any opposition to their policy or attempts to hold them responsible as hatred for the sacred troops--as soon as the political bullets start to get too close, somebody is going to be sent to draw fire and that somebody isn't going to one of their own.

Natynczyk seems to understand this and is now making it clear that he isn't going to be falling on his sword for them.

Why won't John Baird and the rest of the Conservative Party of Canada take the word of both our heroic troops in the field and our top soldier? Why won't they hold a full public inquiry?

John Baird, you can kiss my rosy red ass

Sit, John, sit!

Apparently canine commands are the only thing to which you respond.

Escort whatshername - it'll give you some creds. Scream like a stuck pig in parliament - it'll give you some media vapour light. Truck out the "you guys are irresponsible" line - it'll provide covering fire - for us.

John, you must understand, does nothing without a command or permission - period. That's why this is so impeachable.

"I can tell you the very last thing this country needs is an unnecessary election, less than a year before we had the last one," Baird said.

So... Harper sends the loud obnoxious kid out to fire off the smoke. And Baird, dumber than most, seems only more than willing to do so, since it's clearly obvious that his position of prominence is something he could only have achieved under an incompetent and self-aggrandizing leader.

You're quite right, Baird. There are times when federal general elections are totally unnecessary. Your homeboy knows that. He knew it well before the last election, even though he lied through his teeth - just before he foisted one on the voters.

Baird:

"It would be irresponsible to interrupt our important work on the economy with an unnecessary election."

That would be the all-important recession war you guys are in. Something, I might add, that you consistently deny is actually happening.

Point: (My fucking emphasis)

... Baird said following the release of Statistic Canada's latest figures, which showed Canada's gross domestic product grew for the first time since July 2008.

Yeah, well this is your poseur of an economist leader before he called the last election for no reason other than he thought he could mobilize his callous-kneed base while the rest of us stayed home. This is what the "economist" Stephen Harper was telling us:

"While it has slowed down considerably, and while there remains this considerable instability, the American economy has not crashed, has not itself entered into recession," he told reporters in Ottawa.

"My own belief is if we were going to have some sort of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now."

StatsCan is reporting ugly things in July; the rest of the world sees the boot on the move for the global genitals in August and Harper, the great Harper, in mid-September, tells us that it isn't happening.

And in October, he tells us parliament is dysfunctional. With no vote of non-confidence, calls a snap election. Never mind that he didn't make it past December without suspending the democracy to save his own ass.

Where has this happened before, John?

I could hang such a label off you, you fucking martinet.

You just gained a new aura, John, and when the writ next gets drawn up, the gloves get dropped.

I promise.

RepubliCon shenanigans

In his post "Conservative coup d'état?", Dr. Dawg relates that Gerry Chipeur, "the Alberta lawyer who drafted a power-sharing proposal between Stockwell Day, Gilles Duceppe and Joe Clark in 2000 is now suggesting that the Conservatives should defy the Governor-General if she were to ask the Liberal-NDP coalition to form a new government if the Conservative administration falls on January 27.

"CanWest : "Chipeur's argument foreshadows a possibly drastic response from the Conservatives should they be turfed from power. He suggests that Conservatives may not readily accept the governor-general's decision should she refuse the prime minister's request for an election."

Just five days ago we heard this same dismissal of the Governor General from John Baird in an interview with Don Newman when he said - twice! - "We're going over the heads of the politicians and the governor general directly to the Canadian people."

Several commenters have taken Dawg to task for either fear-mongering or taking Chipeur too seriously but so-con Chipeur has a history of laying groundwork for the Cons through his Republican contacts, some of which follows :

New York Observer : (additional bracketed info - mine)

"From: Paul Weyrich[co-founder of the Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation]

Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:38 AM
To: Bob Thompson[a staffer at Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation]
Subject: Message from Canada
Importance: High

Please get this message to the Stanton, Family Forum and Wednesday lunch groups:I received a call last night from Gerald Chipeur, an important figure in Canada’s Conservative Party. He told me that Conservatives are with-in striking distance of electing an outright majority in Parliamentary elections Monday.

He said the Canadian media, which is trying to save the current Liberal government, has a strategy of calling conservatives in the USA in the hopes that someone will inadvertently say something that can be hung around the Conservatives.

Canadian voters have been led to believe that American conservatives are scary and if the Conservative party can be linked with us, they perhaps can diminish a Conservative victory. Chipeur asks that if Canadian media calls, please do not be interviewed until Monday evening at which point hopefully there will be reason to celebrate.

Many thanks."

When contacted by Canadian Press about the email, Weyrich denied any personal involvement but later on his website, he bragged about his "small victory" in the Canadian elections.

This August, Chipeur, past Alberta chair of Republicans Abroad, teamed up with the American Chamber of Commerce to hold a $1000-a-plate fund-raising campaign for John McCain for the 80,000 Americans who live and work in Calgary.

Canadian citizens' proceeds went to Friends of Science, Tim Ball's oil industry-funded anti-Kyoto "charity", whose funding was laundered through the University of Calgary by Harper's buddy, Prof. Barry Cooper, before the U of C put a stop to it.

When Friends of Science ran ads which attacked the previous Liberal government's support for the Kyoto Protocol, pledging "to have a major impact on the next election," Chipeur acted as their lawyer in the ensuing investigation by Elections Canada.


Chipeur is also credited with introducing Republican Frank Sensenbrenner to Canadian embassy officials at the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004, attended by Stockwell Day, Chipeur's choice for coalition PM in 2000. Sensenbrenner had previously attended Reform Party conventions and Stockwell Day insisted he be hired by the Canadian Embassy over their objections.
Sensenbrenner was subsequently accused of the Naftagate leak. which sought to damage Barack Obama's credibility during the Democratic primaries, but an internal investigation by Harper's deputy minister failed to provide any evidence.

The Star : "In failing to plumb the leak, the report effectively protects the ruling party from awkward questions. With an election not far in the future, voters might reasonably ask if Conservatives put this country's seminal relationship [with Obama] at risk to give Republicans a helping hand."


One might also reasonably ask if the Cons' continuing ties to the Republican Party through Gerald Chipeur put the rest of us at risk.


Cross-posted, more or less, at Creekside