Public's trust has been bruised already

February 11, 2006

JAMES TRAVERS

Hope is the paper money of politics, trust is its gold standard. Prudently managed, hope and trust can buy power back from those caught abusing it and give governments the freedom needed to operate in the public interest.

So, how well off are Stephen Harper and the Conservatives just weeks after an election and days after forming a cabinet? Not as rich as they were before those two seminal events.

First impressions are important and the one imprinted so far is unsettling: Squint at Harper and his party and see Paul Martin and his.

It's not just the obvious parallels between defectors David Emerson and Belinda Stronach. It's not even that Harper broke two promises by appointing Michael Fortier to the Senate and making him the essentially unaccountable minister of public works and government services, historically a patronage hotbed and, of course, the department that wet-nursed the Quebec sponsorship scandal.

No, what's really worrying is the almost instant return of situational ethics. In explaining themselves this week, Conservatives sounded like they were reading from the Liberal manual.

There's precious little to choose between Harper's justification for reversing course to secure two credible ministers as well as strong cabinet voices for Vancouver and Montreal, and Jean Chrétien's defence that he broke a few contracting rules to save the country. Joined at the philosophical hip, both energetically make the case that the ends justify the means.

It's a familiar argument. Down south, George W. Bush is wearing it thin trying to convince his fellow Americans that Big Brother is only being protective when he spies on them or rides roughshod over the rights that define a great nation.

But, like Chrétien, Harper faces a harder sell than Bush. Americans traumatized by 9/11 are far more willing to consider their president's argument than Canadians, appalled by the culture of entitlement, are likely to be appeased by their prime minister's words.

To stretch the comparison to the breaking point, Bush has Osama bin Laden to help him muscle his country into letting the government do what it says is right — even if it's wrong — while Harper has Justice John Gomery reminding this country that faith in politicians is sorely misplaced. The difference is significant.

Canada's parliamentary system functions on two layers of trust.

Ordinary folks elect representatives in the expectation they will do their jobs, to the best of their ability and largely out of mind, while the rest of us get on with daily life. And those in the House of Commons make the similar assumption that a powerful executive will keep its arm out of the cookie jar whether or not anyone is watching.

What Gomery and academic advisers wisely recognized — while some critics have not — is that both trust layers are badly broken. Voters who can't be sure candidates won't instantly defect to greener opportunities have no guarantee of future conduct or, for that matter, any reason to cast another ballot. And parliamentarians who can't rely on prime ministers and their cliques to let ethics occasionally triumph over political or personal advantage have no reason to give complex government machinery the room and flexibility it needs to work.

Trying to restore those broken layers is a tough job. It requires the rigorous discipline abhorred by politicians trying to tighten their grip on power as well as by parties prospecting for a new leader.

The more cheerful news is that the task holds opportunities for Conservatives and Liberals.

To convince Canadians something more has changed than the noses in the public trough, Harper will have to read the riot act to a cabinet with the potential to be, well, ethically accident-prone.

The national capital's cruellest game is guessing the minister who will be forced first to explain a fishy contract. Will it be Fortier, who is connected by capillary to Quebec Conservatives, or Gordon O'Connor, the former general and lobbyist Harper dangerously named defence minister, or some dark horse?

Liberals have a different challenge and a different opportunity. They need to control their power lust long enough to allow some overdue introspection while peering far enough into the future to find a leader not tainted by the past.

If Conservatives succeed, they can put this week's bad impression behind them. If Liberals succeed, they will find someone untainted by the 13 years of corruptive power.

But both will fail if they again forget that it's much easier to withdraw from the hope and trust account than it is to make a deposit.

By STEPHANIE RUBEC, PARLIAMENTARY BUREAU

February 11, 2006

Conservative MP Garth Turner is contemplating leaving his caucus over the backlash from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's officials, angry at his public criticism of Liberal turncoat David Emerson's appointment to cabinet.

In his online blog, Turner says he had a series of "unhappy meetings" with caucus officials Thursday over his comments, including one with Harper, who demanded he publicly support the appointment.

The Halton MP said party officials have made him feel unwelcome, and have caused him to reconsider sitting in the Commons under the Tory banner.

"Right now I do not feel I'm allowed to do what I want and say what I think," Turner said in an interview yesterday, pointing out he'll decide whether to stay in the caucus after talking to party officials this weekend.

Turner said he would continue to sit as an MP and represent Halton if he does decide to bolt to the Tory caucus.

And Turner insisted he'll either table or back a private member's bill forcing politicians like Emerson who want to change their stripes after an election to run in a byelection.

"I'm expecting the Whip will be assigning me a renovated washroom somewhere in a forgotten corner of a vermin-infested dank basement in Ottawa," Turner wrote after meeting with Harper. "That should go well with my seat in the House of Commons that will be visible only during lunar eclipses."

William Stairs, Harper's director of communication, said Turner shouldn't expect to be a part of the team if he doesn't play the political game.

Yesterday, New Democrat MP Peter Julian asked the ethics commissioner to investigate the circumstances surrounding Emerson's decision to join the government. Emerson has said he was approached by the Tories.

Julian said that could place Harper in violation of Parliament's conflict-of-interest code, which prohibits members from acting to further their own or other MPs' private interests.

February 7, 2006

The Harper honeymoon cannot be over. It never started.

Honeymoonis interruptis for the true blue believers. These folks felt like mouldy oldie spinsters, of little interest to any suitors for nearly 13 years. Imagine what it's like to be the bride in the bathroom of the honeymoon suite primping for the new stallion, only to step into the boudoir and find him in bed with a Lady in Red.

Only hours earlier you were the belle of the ball. Now you're the bride of Frankenstein.

Dear Prime Minister Frankenstein,

Remember the good old days when Belinda Stronach saw you as the horse with no game?

Every Conservative agreed when you said her gambit wasn't about principle. Just ambition. You probably wanted to say blond ambition. But you knew that Mrs. Harper would remove the kibble from your bowl.

Because you think of yourself as principled, nobody doubts that you can dress up this pig of a political play as principled. The government needs to have a member from one of Canada's three big cities. The government needs David Emerson's experience in international trade. After all, look at all he has accomplished so far on softwood lumber.

What exactly has he accomplished, Frankenstein?

Oh and one more "principle." The government needs to have a Vancouver MP in cabinet during preparations for the Vancouver Olympics. Now is it just me or are these eggs a bit runny?

The first rule of politics is that if you have to explain it, you're losing. The second rule of politics is that if you are trying to tell the faithful that you are a chess player and they are just checker players, you're losing.

Frankenstein, your messaging monkeys will tell you that you're a strategic thinker and your frustrated troops cannot spell "think." Grant those monkeys the real estate inside your brain and you will surely become the second coming of Joe Clark. Many of your staffers cannot remember those 15 minutes of lame when Joe was sworn in as prime minister and swore to God the Grits were gone for good. He thought Trudeau had hung up the holster just because the former PM said he would. But good ol' Pierre, rogue that he was, still had one more Derringer in his boot.

Fast forward to last fall. Remember how much sympathy you elicited from the true believers when Belinda decided to share the same treehouse with Ol' Man Martin. I mean, you didn't have them sobbing in their hankies the way Potato Patch Peter did. But that was understandable, Frankenstein. You only lost your shot at a coup. Peter lost his coo coo kachoo.

And all this brings us around to your very first act in office. You brought Liberal David Emerson into government. Apparently you didn't even ask him to turn in his Liberal membership card before putting his hand on the Bible.

You took a guy who told everyone in his riding that they should not vote for your guy because you were on the far right. After being sworn in, he told people that his entry into cabinet meant you were tacking left.

By the way, Frankenstein. Did you at least wait until you were elected before you bagged this four-point buck? Hope you had the boys pat him down. Hope he wasn't Grewalled up. Wired for sound? You would never feel cumfy wumfy with the public listening to the tape of you whispering sweet nothings into Liberal ears.

Speaking of nothing, didn't you once believe that Liberals stood for nothing?

Is that what makes David Emerson so comfortable in standing with you?

>> Recall David Emerson
>> Recall Emerson Petition
>> Elect Emerson
>> Joan Tintor's Blog
>> Garth Turner's Blog (The Turner Report)

by Romeo St. Martin

February 9, 2006

OTTAWA — Two Conservative MPs are now publicly urging Trade Minister David Emerson to resign his seat and run as a Conservative in a Vancouver byelection.

Tory MPs Garth Turner and Myron Thompson both made the comments to reporters outside a Tory caucus orientation on Parliament Hill.

"I think being a Member of Parliament is a very important thing and I think being elected is a very important part of that," Turner said.

"So I said during the campaign that I think anyone who crosses the floor ultimately should go back to the people for ratification and I stick by it.

"And hopefully in this case that will happen. Sooner? Later? I don't know when. But the prime minister took a calculated gamble in what he did."

Turner, however, said he wanted to be careful not to contradict Prime Minister Stephen Harper with his decision to name Emerson to cabinet two weeks after he was elected in Vancouver as a Liberal.

"The guy's obviously got a plan, but I'm not privy to it."

Turner said he was going to work within his caucus to get legislation put forward to discourage floor crossing.

He also expressed dismay about the Emerson appointment on his blog.

Other Tories were more tight lipped and walked briskly past reporters or offered up "no comments."

But Alberta MP Myron Thompson, one of the original members of the Reform caucus, said the Emerson decision is not sitting well with him or his constituents.

Thompson said also wants to see legislation in place to prevent people from crossing the floor.

When asked if Emerson should resign his seat and run in a byelection, Thompson said.

"Without the legislation in place to force it, I wouldn't suggest that has to be the case. I would say if he did it it would be the honourable thing to do."

While backbench Tory MPs are now starting to publicly question Emerson's appointment, no cabinet minister has cross that line yet.

"I don't think he's required to run in a byelection," said Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. "It's certainly not legally necessary."

Harper, Emerson and controversial Senate appointee Michael Fortier did not speak with reporters on Thursday.

Emerson was scheduled to hold a teleconference with reporters late in the afternoon. Reporters waited on hold for half an hour before the operator informed them Emerson was "caught in traffic" and would have to reschedule the call at a later date.

February 10 2006

Canadian Press

OTTAWA — It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Given the experienced brain trust on Stephen Harper's Conservative transition team, no one was predicting such a controversial first week for the new prime minister and his rookie cabinet.

The brouhaha began 25 minutes before Harper was even sworn into office Monday morning, when former Liberal industry minister David Emerson arrived at Rideau Hall in front of a gob-smacked national media to be sworn in as Tory trade minister.

By Friday, the array of troubles ranged from the Conservative front bench to its parliamentary secretaries, from federal-provincial relations through the Tory back bench, and even into its beleaguered communications group and the harried departmental staffing team.

"It's sort of like, 'The best laid plans go awry,"' said Jonathan Rose, an expert in political communications at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

"It reminds us that politics is the stuff of individual personalities and people who often are at odds with the leadership of the party."

Just how bad were Harper's first five days in office? Let us count the ways:

* Emerson's stunning defection to Harper's cabinet two weeks after he was elected as a Liberal outraged even many Tory stalwarts, who had supported legislation banning such party-switching. "I expected some of the superficial criticism I've seen," Harper responded to the Vancouver Sun, the rhetorical equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a bull. Since then, Emerson's work on the softwood lumber file has been questioned, he's contemplated quitting politics and his cabinet reward has formally been referred to Parliament's ethics commissioner by the NDP.
* Michael Fortier, the unelected Conservative campaign co-chairman who was elevated to cabinet and given a Senate appointment, told reporters he hadn't run for office because he didn't feel like it.
* Gordon O'Connor, the new defence minister, is being challenged because of his past work as a military procurement lobbyist. His new job will put him in charge of massive spending on military procurement.
* Ted Menzies, the affable Alberta MP, was made parliamentary secretary for the francophonie and official languages, although he speaks no French.
* Ontario MP Garth Turner, a former cabinet minister in the Brian Mulroney government, spoke openly about his disdain for Emerson's floor-crossing and was called on the carpet by Harper -- only to write about the dressing down on his web site. Turner now plans to introduce a private member's bill calling for floor-crossers to face voters in byelections.

There was also the matter of MPs slipping en masse out back doors to avoid reporters after their first national caucus meeting; a cabinet session at Meech Lake that left the national media huddled on a wind-swept highway seeking comment from ministers in limousines that didn't stop; and at least two significant phone calls -- one between Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and another between Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and the U.S. secretary of state -- about which the government provided no information.

Not coincidentally, the party is reportedly having trouble finding experienced people to staff key positions.

"It's staggering that their honeymoon is over before it's begun," said David Docherty, dean of Arts at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

With steady hands including Senator Hugh Segal, a career Tory backroomer, and former Mulroney chief of staff Derek Burney on the transition team, no one foresaw such early chaos.

"It means one of two things," said Montreal Liberal Denis Coderre. "Either the guy (Harper) is a loner, or I missed something."

The Tory communications troubles are nothing new for those familiar with Harper's leadership and his open disdain for the inexact science of media messaging.

But supporters, and even some critics, say Harper has all too often been underestimated.

Party strategist Goldy Hyder dismissed the first week of controversies as a natural consequence of political coverage.

"I don't remember you guys reporting safe landings," he said.

And he hinted there's some kind of method to the madness.

Harper opened the federal election campaign in November by promising to revisit Canada's same-sex marriage law, a statement many commentators considered a profound misstep. It wound up helping inoculate Harper from later criticism.

Hyder hopes the troubled opening week serves the same purpose.

"I can't help but compare it to the launch of the campaign where everybody said, 'Geez, you guys just ended it before it started with the same-sex (marriage) comment.' These things all pass."

By STEPHEN THORNE

February 10, 2006

OTTAWA (CP) - A rebellious Conservative wants to introduce legislation that would deter future David Emersons and Belinda Stronachs from switching political parties.

Ontario MP Garth Turner hopes to push ahead with a private member's bill even after being reprimanded by Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his outspoken stand.

"It's on the public agenda and I think it needs to be addressed. People feel a bit cynical about the system," Turner said in an interview Friday.

"Let's talk about it, let's try and fix it."

He says he doesn't regret his decision to speak out against Emerson's jump to the Tories. But he expects there will be a price to pay.

In his online blog, Turner writes that he expects to be assigned an office in "a renovated washroom somewhere in a forgotten corner of a vermin-infested dank basement."

He said he had a series of unhappy meetings with caucus officials Thursday over his comments, including one with Harper.

"I think it is now safe to say my career options within the Conservative caucus are seriously limited," writes Turner, a former columnist and Progressive Conservative MP, now representing the Ontario riding of Halton.

"If you would like a course on how not to be popular in Ottawa, then take a seat."

Turner told The Canadian Press that he was asked to "curtail my activities" - but refused.

"I am a member of Parliament," he said. "That's my job. When my constituents are upset about something, it's my job to relay that."

Turner said earlier this week that Emerson, a Vancouver-area Liberal who crossed the floor Monday to take the post of trade minister in Harper's cabinet, should step down.

His proposed legislation would require MPs to face voters in a byelection when they want to switch parties. It's extremely rare for a private member's bill to succeed in the House of Commons.

Even if it were successful, the bill would only apply in the future, not in Emerson's case.

"You couldn't do something like this retroactively. But I think, going forward, we need to improve the system from what it is today," he said in an interview.

On Friday, New Democrat MP Peter Julian asked the ethics commissioner to investigate the circumstances surrounding Emerson's decision to join the government. Emerson has said he was approached by the Tories and offered the cabinet job.

Julian said that could place Harper in violation of Parliament's conflict-of-interest code, which prohibits members from acting to further their own or other MPs' private interests.

"It is our opinion that the considerable increase in salary, augmented potential pension, staff and assorted perks enjoyed by members of the cabinet such as a personal car and driver amount to furthering Mr. Emerson's private interests over what he would have received as an opposition MP," wrote Julian, who represents the B.C. riding of Burnaby-New Westminster.

"Therefore, in our opinion, Mr. Harper may be in breach of Section 8 of the Conflict of Interest Code and I would ask that you investigate this matter."

In what he called a principled position, Turner said all government members - not just cabinet ministers - should be elected as members of the party that forms the government.

"Anybody who switches parties should go back to the people. To do otherwise is to place politicians above the people when, actually, it's the other way around."

Turner said his comments were deemed "not helpful."

Harper has been under fire all week for appointing Emerson and unelected Montrealer Michael Fortier to cabinet.

Fortier, a Tory organizer who was handed Public Works, will be appointed to the Senate until the next federal election, when he plans to seek a seat in the Commons.

The appointments, which Harper says were designed to give two of the country's biggest cities representation in cabinet, rankled many Conservative MPs.

The party had previously contended that floor-crossers like former Conservative Belinda Stronach should have to face the electorate before taking their new seats. And Harper has been a strong advocate of an elected Senate.

Turner said he had "swallowed with gusto" promises of more free votes, more powerful committees of "free-thinking" MPs, a more responsive government, and an elected and responsible Senate.

He said Harper's decision to appoint a floor-crossing Liberal and an unelected party official to cabinet "seemed to fly in the face of everything I had told voters about accountability and democracy."

"It also made me question the whole process."

Turner, who moved into his constituency office Thursday night, said he knew in advance the potential consequences of taking his stand.

"Speaking of offices, after today I'm expecting the Whip will be assigning me a renovated washroom somewhere in a forgotten corner of a vermin-infested dank basement in Ottawa," he said. "That should go well with my seat in the House of Commons that will be visible only during lunar eclipses."

by Romeo St. Martin

February 10, 2006

OTTAWA — "I would like to be Stephen Harper's worst nightmare … I'm going to be in his face."

Trade Minister David Emerson on election night.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to hand a cabinet job to Liberal turncoat David Emerson and a Senate seat and cabinet job to party official Michael Fortier has become not only a public relations disaster but is creating quite a strain on his caucus.

As many as eight MPs have either expressed reservations or openly criticized the new appointees publicly.

And on Thursday, few MPs or cabinet ministers were willing to discuss the new cabinet ministers with reporters, as they rushed past them on their way into a caucus orientation and then snuck out the back at the end of the day.

It is the first time divisions within the normally disciplined Tory caucus have been evident since the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party united in a merger in 2003 that many expected would not be easy.

The reasoning was that the "progressives" in the Tory caucus could not get along with the "populists" and "social conservatives" in the Alliance, previously known as Reform.

But after a leadership convention, a policy convention, a disappointing 2004 election and two years in opposition reporters in Ottawa were disappointed to find that those divisions were not creating the problems from the two factions in the party that had been anticipated.

Harper's leadership style was the subject of some grumbling, but there never was a tipping point and the Tory caucus remained largely united.

While the Liberal caucus was leaking damaging quotes from their caucus meetings, the Tories remained disciplined. Not everyone was happy with Harper, but no one was ever in disagreement enough to the point where they saw the need to make a strategic leak.

That changed this week after Harper made his controversial appointments.

For the first time in recent memory details about the behind-the-scenes happenings in the Conservative caucus meeting since the election were leaked out to the Globe and Mail in a story that was published Wednesday morning.

"The caucus meeting was described as unusually quiet, with Mr. Harper doing most of the talking," the Globe reported.

"Everybody was in shock," a western MP told the Globe.

In two well-kept cabinet moves (that supporters are calling brilliant), Harper has done more to create division in his caucus and - based on the opinions coming out this week from Blogging Tories - the conservative movement as a whole than any differences on abortion, gay marriage, national unity -- you name it -- since the two parties merged in 2003.

The prime minister said his thinking on this issue is to provide representation to people in Vancouver and Montreal, two of the three major metropolises where the Conservatives did not elect MPs in the election.

But critics were quick to point out that Harper did not name anyone to represent Toronto.

Harper says his new finance minister Jim Flaherty, who represents a riding in Oshawa, would be Toronto's voice at the cabinet table.

But then that would seem to kill the argument for the need for Vancouver to have David Emerson in cabinet, as Tory MP James Moore represents a Vancouver area riding that is much closer to Stanley Park than Flaherty's riding office is to the CN Tower.

As for Fortier, there are two Montreal-area Conservatives already in the Senate who Harper could have put in cabinet without breaking a promise to name elected senators to the upper chamber. And Fortier's Senate riding doesn't even include any part of Montreal in its boundaries.

Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert observed this week that Emerson and Fortier were likely not selected to represent constituents in those two major cities, but to represent business elites.

Emerson is a former forestry executive with lumber giant Canfor and Fortier is a Mulroney Tory who was an executive in Montreal's financial community.

By making these two controversial appointments, Harper has now placed a large chunk of his caucus in an untenable situation for what some see as no good reason.

Former Reformers, who have campaigned for over two decades for an elected Senate and criticized virtually every Mulroney, Chretien and Martin Senate appointment, now have to face reporters' questions about Harper's decision.

On Emerson, 40 Tory MPs voted in November in favour of a private members motion to examine forcing floor crossing MPs to sit as independents and run in a byelection.

While Harper is not in favour of such legislation, there is no doubt that he is not a fan of turncoats.

In May of last year on the day Belinda Stronach left the Tory caucus for a cabinet job, an overtly bitter Harper held a press conference on Parliament Hill where he freely took cheap shots at every opening offered.

Maclean's columnist Paul Wells asked Harper how come the Liberals seemed to be the main beneficiaries of turncoats while the Tories always seem to be the one to be on the losing end.

Harper said his party wouldn't go out of its way to "romance" MPs to cross the floor.

"We are trying to create a principled party where people act in a principled way," Harper said.

"We're fairly cautious about encouraging party jumping because I think that's the kind of thing that generates cynicism and frankly when somebody jumps once you're not sure to trust them that they won't jump the next time."

But somehow on Monday, people acting in a principled way and concerns about public cynicism no longer seemed to be a priority once Harper's party got power.

Emerson did not leave the Liberal party because of any fundamental policy difference that he could explain to reporters.

What he made clear is he left the Liberals because they were no longer in power - plain and simple. Emerson sees himself not as a politician, but as a career cabinet minister.

He even said if former prime minister Paul Martin won the election two weeks earlier he would have remained on with the Liberals.

Harper has not taken questions since Monday and Conservative MPs who attended two caucus meetings this week are having a difficult job spinning to reporters a story that would even be hard for the partisan of Liberals to swallow.

On Tuesday, several MPs and cabinet ministers repeated similar talking points in defence of Emerson.

Conservative MP James Moore, who did not make the cabinet cut for B.C. and was one of Stronach's harshest critics post defection, was smirking as he repeated talking points about Emerson.

"All I know is that David Emerson is a very talented guy who will do good things for British Columbia," he said on more than one occasion.

But at least Moore was able to get the talking points out.

MPs gave Emerson and Fortier polite applause when Harper introduced them to caucus, but there was not a whistle, cheer or a "woo hoo" to be heard.

Pressed by reporters after the meeting, MP Ken Epp refused to praise the new cabinet picks.

"I'm not willing to get into the middle of this thing, you guys," he said to reporters. "You're not going to get anything out of me. I'm supportive of my leader and my team."

Tory MP Maurice Vellacott momentarily broke way from the talking points and told reporters "if you want me to be honest, I've got a bit of an uncomfortable feel about it."

Later that same day, the Canadian Press reported MP Bill Casey said he was annoyed with Emerson being in charge of the softwood lumber file because of how he has handled it while industry minister with the Liberals.

"I'm not very happy about that, no," he told a Nova Scotia radio station.

The following day, two anonymous Tory MPs spoke out to the Globe and Mail. One described the moves this way, "This is shocking. It's just unbelievable. Who was Stephen talking to? We campaigned against this kind of stuff."

By the time the Tory caucus met again on Parliament Hill on Thursday for an orientation session, a siege mentality had taken over a number of MPs, who when in opposition always seemed to have time for scrums to take a swipe at the Liberals.

Cabinet ministers like Jay Hill and Rona Ambrose did not break stride as they walked into the meeting room, seemingly unable or unwilling to defend their embattled new colleagues.

Ambrose is one of four Tory cabinet ministers who voted in favour of Bill C-251, a private members motion that would examine prohibiting MPs from crossing the floor.

The others are Bev Oda, Diane Finley and Carol Skelton.

Skelton even introduced her own motion similar to C-251 last year to limit party swapping.

But speaking with reporters Thursday, it seems such a bill was sooo 2005.

"That was last year," Skelton said. "We talked about it and I decided not to proceed with it. It's one of those matters that is debatable."

However, not all MPs are appear willing to reverse positions, stretch their credibility or hide from reporters to defend Harper's decision to embrace Emerson.

And this includes Senate appointee Fortier, who told CanWest that MPs who cross the floor should face voters in a byelection.

MP Myron Thompson suggested he would prefer it if Emerson resigned and ran in a byelection as a Conservative. He called it the honourable thing to do.

Ontario MP Garth Turner was more frank and said while he didn't want to second guess Harper it was his view before Monday that those who cross the floor should resign and run in byelections and that Harper's embracing of Emerson wasn't going to change his view now.

Late Thursday evening, Turner reported on his blog that his frankness with reporters did not sit well in a meeting he had later in the evening with Harper and other conversations with party officials.

"This one MP came face-to-face with the party machine in a series of unhappy meetings including one tonight with the prime minister," he wrote. "I think it is now safe to say my career options within the Conservative caucus are seriously limited."

If Harper is making an example out of Turner, as Turner alleges, then it seems he is willing to butt heads with someone who has been a well-known Conservative for two decades in defence of someone who was making up Tory hidden agenda allegations last month.

Also shocking in this whole episode this week is the incredible arrogance being exuded by Harper and his controversial cabinet ministers.

To paraphrase John Lennon, Emerson appears to believe he is "Bigger than the Liberals."

When asked about his former Liberal riding association wanting back more than $90,000 it spent on his election campaign, Emerson said, "I think these people ought to give their head a shake and ask themselves how much of that money would have even come to the Liberal party if I hadn't been there."

Fortier was asked by reporters if he wanted to serve in cabinet why didn't he run in the federal election. His response sounded like something that could be used in a future Liberal attack ad: "I didn't run in the election because I didn't want to run in the election."

As for Harper, he seems to believe he is smarter than his critics on this matter and has no problem expressing this view publicly even if those critics could include some of his long-time, loyal caucus supporters.

In an interview with the Vancouver Sun this week, Harper called the criticism "superficial."

"But I think once people sit back and reflect, they'll understand that this is in the best interests of not just British Columbia but frankly of good government," Harper added.

For the time being, the good of the government will have to wait.

Right now we have government on the run, with MPs being muzzled, cabinet ministers sneaking out the back door, the entire press gallery sensing fear and cabinet ministers, presumably without cellphones, canceling teleconferences because of traffic tie ups.

Harper and his crew will have to ride this out because as it stands now the only man who can put an immediate end to this situation is David Emerson - and that is certainly Stephen Harper's worst nightmare.

by Greg Felton

February 09 2006

Before the first Throne Speech is delivered, Canada’s new prime minister has managed to destroy his own credibility, infuriate his own MPs, and negate his party’s moral authority to govern.

Near the end of my Jan. 5 column I said that if the Harper Party managed to form the next government, it would spend so much time in damage control mode that it would have no time to govern. At the time, I thought the government benches would at least be warm before the first disaster struck, but I misjudged Stephen Harper’s propensity for self-immolation.

Before the first Throne Speech is delivered, Canada’s new prime minister has managed to destroy his own credibility, infuriate his own MPs, and negate his party’s moral authority to govern. This startling three-fold flame-out is not the result of a simple misjudgment; it represents a fundamental failure of character, and for a man who sanctimoniously prated on about the Liberals’ lack of ethics and how his party was going to revitalize Canadian democracy, this disaster is irreparable.

As recently as Dec. 14, 2005, Harper declared: “We need sweeping reforms to show Canadians that their national government will not tolerate corruption in the future. Cleaning up corruption and restoring accountability is the first step. We also need to vigorously pursue other measures to put Canada back in the forefront of democratic practice.”

Two elements of this plan for democratic reform include establishing a federal process for electing Senators, and requiring that a party’s local candidate has the approval of the constituency association.

Harper is a vigorous detractor of Canada's Senate because it is an appointed body, and he has condemned the Liberal practice of bringing in outside big-name candidates to carry the party banner in ridings where they have no history with the electorate or support among the constituency association. By appointing Michel Fortier and David Emerson to cabinet, Harper deliberately betrayed both principles.

Fortier was Harper's campaign chairman, and Harper appointed him to the Senate just so he could make him Minister of Public Works and Government Services. (Oooh, can you spell “cronyism?” Knew you could.) Emerson is/was an elected Liberal from Vancouver–Kingsway whom Harper invited to cross the floor to become Minister of International Trade inter alia.

All things being equal, the Fortier appointment should not be considered an outrage. In 1962, Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appointed Malcolm Wallace McCutcheon to the Senate so he could become Minister of Trade and Commerce. According to tradition, political outsiders must be appointed to the Senate to sit in Cabinet or run in a byelection as soon as possible.

But things aren't equal. McCutcheon was an outsider who had had no political experience. Fortier is a long-time party apparatchik who should have had the courage to stand for election. Second, Diefenbaker didn’t run on a holier-than-thou platform of “democratic reform.” Many people supported Harper because of his contempt for the appointed Senate his pledge to turn it into an elected assembly. Now they see that Harper would rather betray this principle so that he could appoint Fortier rather than select one of his 123 elected MPs.

Harper defended both the Fortier and Emerson appointments claiming that he needed to have government representation in Canada's biggest cities, but that’s a rationalization not an explanation. The lack of big-city MPs is entirely due to the fact that educated, urban voters overwhelmingly rejected Harper’s parochial brand of government.

Second, what does it -say about Harper’s faith in his caucus. Long-serving Harper Party MPs like Diane Ablonczy and Jay Hill were passed over in favour of, um… “parachute” ministers. They and other MPs are justifiably furious that Harper would embrace the very practices the party condemned.

Of the two above-mentioned appointments, Emerson’s is clearly the most hypocritical. Last May, when Belinda Stronach crossed the floor to join the Liberal government, Harper Party MP Tony Abbott said she “whored herself out for power.” Emerson didn’t?! Here is a man who didn’t even wait until Parliament began sitting before accepting Harper’s offer, yet had the gall to say he “absolutely” would have stayed a Liberal if the party held on to power. Seems this political mercenary thinks himself too good to sit on the Opposition benches. Thus, it came to pass that the man who declared in January that he wanted to be Harper’s “worst nightmare” overnight chose to become Harper’s wet dream.

Even if the Emerson/Fortier scandals hadn’t happened, Harper's Cabinet is hardly a model of ethical transparency.

Stockwell Day (Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness)—Day is a delusional Christian zealot and Israel ass-kisser who spent much of his time as foreign affairs critic denouncing the Martin government for not being an echo chamber for Israeli aggression. For Day, Palestinian resistance fighters against Israel’s illegal Occupation are “terrorists,” but not so the Israeli military, which enforces the Occupation and commits daily acts of genocide as defined by Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Count on Day to continue being a gormless cheerleader for the anti-Arab “war on terrorism.”

Also of note: when Day was an Alberta MLA, he was also was found guilty of libel for gratuitously impugning the character of a Red Deer lawyer. He billed the Alberta taxpayers for $750,000 in legal fees to fight a $60,000 judgment.

Vic Toews (Minister of Justice)—Last year, this former Manitoba attorney-general, pleaded guilty to breaking the Manitoba election law by overspending in the 1999 provincial election campaign. Like Harper, he opposes same-sex marriage and wants a free vote in the House to determine if MPs want to revisit the issue, even though overturning this law would be grossly unconstitutional.

Gordon O’Connor (Minister of Defence)—A retired Brigadier-General, O’Connor was a defence industry lobbyist before entering politics. Harper said he is opposed to cabinet ministers becoming lobbyists, but not lobbyists becoming cabinet ministers. A=B, but not B=A.

Canadian voters are a generally forgiving lot, but when they feel their trust has been betrayed they take their anger out on the ballot box; hence, Harper’s Party of the Damned can only mark time until the inevitable non-confidence motion forces the Governor–General to call another election or invites the Liberals to form a government. Given recent events and the fact that the sum of Liberal and NDP seats is greater than the Harper Party’s, this would be the more likely scenario.

I wonder, then, what would happen to Emerson. He can’t run again in Vancouver–Kingsway, which means he’d have to be parachuted—there’s that word again—into a safe Harper Party riding, perhaps over the democratic wishes of the local consituency association. Even if he should win, he’d end up in Opposition because the odds of the Liberal Party taking him back are nil. Ah, the price of hubris!

When all this is over, the Liberals will be back in power and the reign of Stephen Harper will be remembered as nothing more than a fart in Canada’s political winds of change.

Ever wonder about the extent of religious activism within the Conservative Party of Canada?

This site just came to H.O.W's attention. A full report outlines Harper and the CPC's connection to various regious organizations within the U.S.

From the site: "...the Vancouver Sun estimates that “roughly half the current 98 members” of the Conservative caucus “are religious social conservatives,” which is “well over double the national average.”

Read more by visiting: http://www.harperstiestousa.org/

>> Is religious right poised to set Harper's agenda?
>> Candidates offer anti-abortion lobby group a pledge to support abortion ban
>> CPC President hints at back door deal on abortion
>> CPC MP drafting private members bill dealing with the "unborn"

Marie Hooey

An Open Letter to Stephen Harper from the Ghost of Leo Strauss

Dear Stephen,
(Disciple #666000)

I just wanted to write and congratulate you on your campaign for control of the people and government of Canada. You have been a very astute disciple of my philosophy and it looks like it just might payoff. Indeed, you have earned the 'neo-con' moniker, as you truly are a Straussian of the highest order.

Here's a list of the things, that I see from my lofty seat on high, that you have done right.

1. Your campaign slogan, "Stand up for Canada" was priceless. It implies right off the get go, that no one else in government is standing up for Canada. To think that the sheeple fell for it is a knee slapper. Luckily for you Stephen, most people are unaware of your 1997 speech to our American right wing, think tank, the Council for National Policy. They would be appalled at the comments you made about Canadians and your own country. So just where did you get that slogan? Is it pure irony that its almost a deadringer for the title of David Orchard's book, "Fight for Canada?" I bet Peter thought that one up.

2. The continual pounding you have given the Liberals over their sponsorship, corruption scandal has been highly effective, not to mention your Christmas attack ads. You learned well from our American Swift Boat brothers. Now the electorate, even in Quebec are playing right into your hands and will vote for you just to punish the Liberals. Oh, Stephen if they only knew just what you have in store for them eh! As corruption cases go, this one was rather small potatoes compared to brother Bush's platefull. (the Plame affair, NSA spying, Delay's downfall and the blockbuster Abramhoff scandal)

3. You followed my teachings well - especially the one about the elites having the right and even the obligation to manipulate the truth. You have done, as Plato recommended, taking refuge in "pious lies" and in selective use of the truth. Your recent stance on universal health care makes my point. Only a few realize that you were President of the National Citizen's Coalition whose very being was to prevent public health care services in Canada. Well done Stephen. I would predict that you and ole Tommy Flanagan are just going to be content to see it implode from neglect.

The minions will pay!

4. You know Stephen, I don't think you have mentioned religion once in your whole campaign. How did you manage that? Better yet how have you quieted your religious right? I do know that good ole boy Ralph Reed, the former head of the American Christian Coalition and George Bush's senior campaign advisor, has been rallying the troops in Canada as of late. I loved his challenge to the faithful to "get on your work boots and tennis shoes and go out there like it all depends on you, pray like it all depends on God and let's usher in the greatest victory in the history of this country." Yes, Stephen you know religion is useful to maintain the illusions of the masses and that it is the opium of the people. I am delighted to see how my followers have managed to also make it politically
powerful. Good on you all. I must add however, that I feel bad for good ole Ralph though. It does look like his run for the Lt. General of Georgia has come to a resounding end, as he is in it up to his neck, in this Abramhoff corruption scandal. Oh well, sometimes one gets caught out.

5. Speaking of quieting - how have you managed your group so well. They kind of blew it for you last time eh? I mean they have been absolutely muzzled from ranting about their anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, death penalty stuff. Again, well done Stephen.

6. 1% off the GST. Delightful! Hit em with one of the things they hate so much. The Liberals did however, squelch you a bit, when they informed the electorate about your income tax increases. No one will have the time to figure out the fuzzy numbers on this one.

7. Increases to military spending, missile defense and more Canadian, cannon fodder for America's never-ending wars - great. Your success will make Georgie and his pentagon cabal ecstatic. Get em ready for Iraq. Billions to the military industrial complex just as planned.

8. Deep integration and continentalism - splendid. Help King George take care of Cuba and the new, democratically elected, leftist governments in South America and your dreams will come true.

9. "The evolution of Stephen Harper" - masterful. What a few tie-less shirts and soft, cuddly, turtle necks can do. I'm sure the low dose lorazepam helped quell the anxiety/anger too, affording the ability to smile and giving the illusion of calm in the heat of campaign. You also mastered the art of focusing on the bottom of the TV camera while spinning your "pious lies." It really does help when you don't have to look directly at those you are deluding. Evolution? - just wait till they get a load of "intelligent design!"

10. Dumping the Deputy? Goodbye Peter! - the greatest irony of all.

I could go on Stephen but even we, the departed, must utilize constraint. May God be with you on Monday as he is with your southern brother. Let's hope Jack doesn't throw a wrench in the works and for God's sake don't say another thing about "Liberal" judges.

Yours in neo-conservatism,

Dearly departed Brother,

Leo Strauss

Latest National Seat Projections from DemocraticSpace.com
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Projections from Electionforecast.ca

January 20, 2006.

SCOTT SIMMIE
STAFF REPORTER

Assume, as many now do, that Stephen Harper will become the country's next prime minister.

If it's a sweep, he may well have one Ontario MP, Rondo Thomas, who believes the definition of marriage should not be tinkered with because it has been in place since Adam and Eve.

"That's about 6,000 years ago, for those of you who might not be aware," says the Conservative candidate for Ajax-Pickering, in a presentation taped long before the campaign and currently posted at trailervision.com

Harper could have another MP, David Sweet, who used to head the men's Christian organization Promise Keepers Canada, though that affiliation is absent from his political website. Running in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, he's quoted as having once said: "There's a particular reason why Jesus called men only. It's not that women aren't co-participators. It's because Jesus knew women would naturally follow."

And Harper may have a third MP, Harold Albrecht (Kitchener-Conestoga), who once wrote a letter to the editor of his local paper stating "these same-sex marriages would succeed in wiping out an entire society in just one generation." (When reporters tried to question him on those views yesterday, he was hustled away by handlers.)

Though all three have a right to their religious beliefs, statements like those scare some people, especially those concerned a conservative religious agenda could strip away what they regard as hard-fought freedoms.

"Egale Canada is concerned that a Conservative majority is a major threat to equality," says Laurie Arron, the gay and lesbian group's director of advocacy. "There are many Conservative candidates who are hiding their true beliefs and backgrounds. We've identified 34 new candidates with extreme social agendas... many of whom oppose not only equal marriage but also abortion, even when the mother's life is in danger."

At the outset of the campaign, Harper said he would allow a free vote on the issue of same-sex marriage if he took power. When the controversial Civil Marriage Act was passed last year, most Conservative MPs voted against Bill C-38 and a total of 32 Liberal MPs, almost a quarter of Martin's caucus, also voted "No."

A surf around some conservative religious websites gives a sense that Paul Martin and the Liberals have taken Canada down a path of — as one website describes it — "moral decay." The implication, though not always overtly stated, is that Harper and the Conservatives can reverse that trend, and that it's time for those who hold traditional faith-based values to stand up and be counted.

"We will influence policy conferences, We will affect nomination meetings, We will decide elections," states the website for Concerned Christians Canada.

And some of the more prominent players on the Canadian religious scene have waded in.

"For the first time in many years they (voters) have a choice between the radical agenda of the liberal elite, an agenda that will result in legal prostitution, legal brothels and legal drugs — and a leader loyal to common-sense values," writes Charles McVety in the current issue of Evangelical Christian Magazine.

McVety, president of the Canada Christian College, has reason to watch this election closely. For starters, candidate Rondo Thomas is the college's vice-president of student affairs and dean of biblical studies. But McVety is also president of the traditional faith/morals-based Canada Family Action Coalition, whose vision is to see Judeo-Christian moral values restored. It has been urging its 20,000 members to get out and participate in this election. The same-sex marriage issue ("The government invaded the purview of the church," says McVety) was a major catalyst.

"I believe that people of faith have woken up and participated, and I don't just mean vote," he says. "I mean volunteering, putting up signs, making phone calls, stuffing envelopes... If we leave participation to a few extremists, then we'll have an extremist agenda that's front and centre."

Though some might peg McVety's views as right of centre, he says they're widely shared. He also points out there's been Christian support for Liberal MPs who share similar views. And he rejects the suggestion that such views are indicative a religious right exists in Canada.

"Frankly, I don't," he says. "If you attended any of our Defend Marriage rallies, you would have seen thousands of Sikhs. Would you call the Sikhs the religious right? Would you call the Catholics the religious right? Would you call the Chinese the religious right? I don't think so."

Despite a considerable amount of media attention paid to the religious right, those taking the nation's pulse don't see anything out there with the kind of political clout that helped carry the last U.S. election for the Republicans.

"If there is one (religious right), it's small, and it's nowhere near the size compared to the hype and scaremongering," says Andrew Grenville, vice-president of polling/research firm Ipsos Reid. "What is occurring is that people are so affronted by the way things worked out in the U.S. that they fear it's going to occur here. So the fear is certainly larger than the group."

But he also points out, as do others, that there's a flip side to this equation.

"There's a religious left, too, that's pretty strong," says Grenville. "These are people whose religious values are such that they feel they need to express it in supporting parties with strong social programs."

And there's no neat way to predict, based on denomination alone, where someone might land on that spectrum. Though regular church-going Catholics historically tend to favour the Liberals and Protestants tend to lean toward the Conservatives, many other factors also go into decisions at the ballot box. And they're not always black and white.

The Evangelical fellowship, for instance, is urging voters to ask candidates about their stand on issues ranging from the definition of marriage, the legal status of unborn children, steps to make the refugee system more transparent and compassionate, and measures to assist the homeless.

January 20, 2006

Conservative leader Stephen Harper has sent a chill down the backs of judges and lawyers with his campaign musings about how some judges appointed by the federal Liberals are activists with their own social agendas who might derail measures implemented by a Tory government.

"I am merely pointing out a fact that courts, for the most part, have been appointed by another political party. But courts are supposed to be independent, regardless of who appoints them and they are an independent check and balance," he told reporters. At the same time, Harper suggested many senior bureaucrats are Liberal lackeys who might not co-operate with a new Conservative government.

Sadly, despite all efforts to portray himself as a changed, more moderate leader, such rhetoric smacks of the old Stephen Harper, one who barely two years ago lashed out at Liberals for allegedly stacking the courts with liberal-minded judges in a move to approve same-sex marriage.

At the time, he also suggested some judges appointed under Conservative governments were liberal-oriented. He said Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, a former Conservative attorney general, was a "conservative" in name only, after McMurtry ruled same-sex marriage is legal.

Harper's comments this week raise questions about whether he intends to start appointing judges based on political leanings. In the past, Harper has talked of changing the way top judges are picked. It is still official Tory party policy that all appointments be ratified by Members of Parliament.

In 2003, Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLaughlin said in a speech "it would be misguided to appoint judges in a manner that gives more weight to partisan politics." She is correct, because Canada is considered to have the best independent judiciary in the world.

Our current system of selecting justices to the Supreme Court has worked well, during both Liberal and Tory governments. The choices over the decades have been knowledgeable, respected and fair-minded. And, yes, the prime minister names each justice when a vacancy arises, but does so only after extensive consultations with senior judges, provincial justice ministers, law school professors and top lawyers.

Harper should not try to change radically a system that works.

And he should squelch any thoughts he might be harbouring of cleaning out the top ranks of the public service, as Brian Mulroney tried to do when he took power in 1984. Most bureaucrats are dedicated, non-partisan. Some of those considered by Mulroney's advisers to be Liberal hacks have subsequently risen to the highest levels in Canada's private sector.

Harper should reconsider his comments against both the judiciary and the public service. If he doesn't, then it will be just another sign that the "new" Stephen Harper isn't really much different than the "old" one.

By BRIAN LAGHI

January 20, 2006

Ottawa — Stephen Harper was supposed to tiptoe his way to a majority this time around.

But, with a controversial final week of campaigning almost in the bag, Mr. Harper may be awakening the sleeping giant.

Polls suggest that Ontario voters, who make and break federal elections, are pulling away a little from the Conservatives, and after a week in which Mr. Harper put them in mind of the controversial ideas that fuelled the Reform Party, they may soon find themselves with even more second thoughts. That, plus Mr. Harper's new campaign focus on solidifying a majority, has meant a spotty week for the Conservative Leader, something he hasn't experienced since the beginning of the campaign.

While the Tories continue to lead the polls by about nine points — and still seem headed to victory — the likelihood of a majority appears to be receding. In a mild repeat of 2004, Ontario voters have begun having misgivings.

Polls there show they are starting to prefer the Liberals over the Tories, albeit by the margin of error.

Eighteen months ago, Mr. Harper saw his chances at governing go up in smoke after he and others began talking about the possibility of a majority government.

It was a mistake that Mr. Harper and his troops pledged not to make again.

But with the election just three days away, a number of late-breaking factors may give Ontarians pause.

Take, for example, Mr. Harper's announcement earlier this week that a Liberal-dominated Senate, Supreme Court and civil service would serve as a check on his government were he to win a majority.

The comments were supposed to ease anxieties.

Instead, they brought a focus on the fact that Mr. Harper might head to Parliament with intentions to change the way the Supreme Court is appointed.

But the concerns are less about judicial activism than they are about the resurrection of Reform grievances over the West's exclusion from power.

While Reform accomplished many worthwhile things during its dozen years of existence — raising alarm bells about fiscal and democratic deficits come to mind — the party rubbed many central Canadians the wrong way by complaining that government has been manipulated against Western interests.

Reformers planned to fix that by ending judicial activism and bringing in a Triple-E Senate, notions that caused suspicion in Ontario.

Mr. Harper's suggestion this week that some judges are social activists opens the door for Liberal Leader Paul Martin to ask what Mr. Harper has in mind.

Would he, for example, pack the court to overturn certain civil rights? Will the civil service be remade?

"It reinforces the idea that a Tory majority is to be feared and gets him back into the chippy old conspiracy-theory frame," said a Tory supporter who asked not to be identified.

"The [notion that] the system and everybody in it is rigged against him."

The second difficulty of the week stems from an unneeded focus that Mr. Harper has put on winning a majority by striding into Liberal-held ridings and commenting on his chances of winning them.

What Mr. Harper almost certainly meant to do was turn the likelihood of victory into inevitability, thereby attracting voters who might want to get on board to ensure their region is represented in a Conservative government.

This attempt was aimed at Quebeckers and at residents of big cities such as Toronto and Montreal. But Canadians probably don't want to give Mr. Harper a blank cheque, and the prospect of a roaring majority may contribute to that feeling.

"It smacks of triumphalism, yet again," said the Conservative supporter. "It's a mild version of what happened last time."

Finally, some Conservatives have begun to notice that while Mr. Harper's party continues to run essentially negative ads, the Liberals have shot one that portrays their leader as calm and prime ministerial.

It's a tack that some Tories hope their man will again pick up before the campaign ends, and forget talking about a majority.

"He should get back to what he was doing so well."

Martin says controversial Conservatives "just in hiding’

By MICHELLE MacAFEE
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Paul Martin twisted the arrow in Stephen Harper’s Achilles heel Friday, hoping his warnings about a Conservative government’s positions on abortion and same-sex marriage will tighten the race in time for Monday’s vote.

Recent polls suggest Martin’s revved up accusations that a Harper-led government would turn back the clock on controversial social issues has taken a bite out of the 10- to 12-point lead Harper had just last week.

But those same polls indicate public opinion is volatile, leaving the main party leaders to embark on one final zig-zag across the country to shore up support.

Harper started the day in Toronto, where he used a stump speech to refocus his campaign on the need for change, accountability and tax cuts after several days spent explaining his position on the judiciary, abortion and same-sex marriage.

Martin spent Friday in Atlantic Canada, where he warned supporters in St. John’s, N.L., that Canadians aren’t getting the full story about the front-running Conservatives.

He singled out Tory hopefuls Cheryl Gallant, Rob Anders, Rob Merrifield and Harold Albrecht as candidates whose comments have landed them in hot water before but who have been conspicuously silent in recent weeks.

"Candidates who (made) Canadians so uncomfortable with the Conservatives in the last election . . . they haven’t gone; they’re still there.

""They’re just in hiding," Martin told a room full of cheering Liberals.

"I don’t know where they are. Maybe they’re all in some kind of a safe house, biding their time, watching Jeopardy."

Martin questioned what will happen after the election.

"Are these social conservatives going to stay in hiding, or are they going to come out for the spring thaw?

"" If they come out, are they going to start pressing their views, advancing their causes?"

Martin said a Liberal government would protect charter rights such as same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to choose, a message pollsters have said resonates in key battlegrounds such as Ontario and among female voters.

After being credited with running a smooth, policy-focused, relatively gaffe-free campaign, Harper has in recent days been sidetracked by questions about biased courts and his party’s position on same-sex marriage and abortion.

Harper, who has insisted his party won’t criminalize abortion, denied his candidates are avoiding the spotlight.

"Our candidates are campaigning in their ridings, they’re going door to door, working very hard, talking to local media and I’m very pleased with their efforts," Harper said following a rally.

Harper noted several Liberal MPs and candidates are also opposed to same-sex marriage, a position supported on Friday by a lobby group that favours the traditional definition of marriage.

Vote Marriage Canada is endorsing 211 candidates, including 10 incumbent Liberal MPs, it says have promised to support changing the definition of marriage in the next Parliament to mean the legal union of one man and one woman.

Harper’s strategy throughout the day was to urge Tory workers to concentrate during one final campaign push through the weekend.

"If the Liberals are re-elected we will not have any kind of direction for this country," said Harper.

"The scandals, the corruption, the investigations will continue.

""We cannot have our country go forward like that."

NDP Leader Jack Layton continued his delicate balancing act of attacking both Martin and Harper while positioning himself as the best check on a new Conservative government.

But at a rally in Vancouver, Layton saved some of his toughest talk for Martin, saying the Liberal leader is misleading voters into thinking his party is the only choice.

"Mr. Martin is trying to perpetrate one more Liberal fraud in this election, hoping you’ll reward him one more time with your vote," Layton said.

Layton went on to say that Martin is desperately campaigning to "save the furniture."

Layton is making a last big push in British Columbia, where the NDP has its eye on a dozen or more ridings.

To help you understand just how radical Stephen Harper may be, GEOFFREY STEVENS recommends some political homework


By GEOFFREY STEVENS

January 21, 2006

Let us be clear about one thing. The Conservative party that Canadians may elect on Monday is unlike any party, Conservative or Liberal, that Canadians have ever entrusted with the keys to the national capital.

The party of Stephen Harper is emphatically not the party of Sir John A. Macdonald, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark or Brian Mulroney. The Old Tories (if I may call them that) were consistently the most interesting party in Canada; for long stretches, they were our only interesting party. Unlike the Liberals, they were not obsessed with power (which they seldom enjoyed); unlike the New Democrats, they were not blinded by doctrine.

Old Tories were adaptable. They could be fiscally conservative and socially progressive, or vice versa. Depending on the proximity of the next election, they could be in favour of less government or more, defenders of the status quo or advocates of change. And they could take religion or leave it.

They could be maddening. Frequently unruly, they preferred scrapping among themselves to uniting against a common enemy. Booze -- scotch, usually -- was their lingua franca. While the Liberals would soberly debate which worthy Grit would get the next Senate seat, the Tories would come to blows over anything from bilingualism to the death penalty. On two occasions (Diefenbaker in the 1960s and Clark in the 1980s), the party demolished its leader. On one (Mulroney in the 1990s), the leader demolished his party. The Old Tories were never dull and often they were a lot of fun. This, alas, cannot be said of the Harper New Tories.

These three books may help to prepare us for the transition from Paul Martin's sloppy liberalism to Harper's scripted conservatism.

Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada (Anansi, 1982), by the late Charles Taylor, is the oldest of the three, but it is still a gem -- a scholarly yet provocative study of the philosophical evolution of an important political movement. For many years a foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail, Taylor was a careful craftsman and an elegant wordsmith. He uses the writings of historians Donald Creighton, W. L. Morton and George Grant, among others, to trace the reformist strain -- compassionate conservatism -- that ran through the Old Tory party from the days of Sir John A. to Stanfield, leader from 1967 to 1976.

"Real Conservatives are never ideologues," Taylor writes. The best Conservative statesmen have been true innovators. And (agreeing with Stanfield) "the true conservative is neither a doctrinaire supporter of private enterprise nor a diehard opponent of necessary reforms."

Taylor was able, in 1982, to view the future of the Conservatives with what he called "a stubbornly residual optimism." Whether he would feel the same optimism in 2006, when radical toryism has given way to the narrower social conservatism of the Harper era, is a question.

That answer may be found in the most recent of these three books: The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper (ECW Press, 2005), by Lloyd Mackey, a Parliamentary Press Gallery veteran who writes about public affairs from the intersection of faith and politics. As Mackey sees it, Harper is very much a faith-based politician, as are many of his "so-cons" from western Canada. He is a devout Christian -- he and his wife Laureen Teskey worship at Centre Street Church, a huge evangelical congregation in Calgary -- and religion plays an important part in their family life.

A sympathetic biographer, Mackey maintains Harper has become more "nuanced" in his views since 2001, when he and several others wrote their famous (or notorious) "firewall" letter to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, urging him to take more constitutional power into Alberta's hands. However, there is no evidence that Harper has modified his core views. For example, he still opposes same-sex marriage, although he has promised not to invoke the notwithstanding clause to cancel that right.

Harper comes across as being intelligent and controlled. But he seems devoid of the fun and love of the game that infuse the pages of my third selection: Life of the Party: The Memoirs of Eddie Goodman (Key Porter, 1988).

It would be hard to imagine two more different Conservatives than Goodman, a Toronto lawyer with a zest for politics, and Harper, an arid intellectual from Alberta. A lifelong Red Tory, Goodman was the happy warrior of the Conservative party. He brought an irrepressible ebullience to the backrooms of his party. Eddie knew everyone and just about everyone loved Eddie.

The press was charmed by him. Goodman tells an anecdote about the 1968 federal election. The Liberals had a charismatic new leader, Pierre Trudeau, and the Tories, trailing badly in the polls, were in danger of being swamped by Trudeaumania. Goodman called a press conference in Ottawa and said he had two announcements, the first one being confidential. "I informed the breathless press gallery that I had it on absolutely impeccable authority that Pierre Trudeau was a lousy lay and that Bob Stanfield went home every day for a nooner."

The 60 reporters laughed. Then he distributed a "poll" that he and another Conservative had fabricated that "showed" the Tories gaining everywhere. The reporters gasped. In the end, they didn't buy it, as Eddie knew they wouldn't, but they had a laugh, they accepted that there was still some life in the Tory campaign and, as Goodman hoped, they started to question the accuracy of other polls.

Memo to Stephen Harper: There is no law (yet) that says politics cannot be fun.

Geoffrey Stevens teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. His most recent book, The Player: The Life and Times of Dalton Camp, won the Drainie-Taylor Prize for best biography of 2003.

By STEPHANIE RUBEC -- Toronto Sun

January 21, 2006

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. -- After presenting himself as a protector of women's rights and slamming Stephen Harper for failing to make his intentions on abortion clear, Paul Martin says he'll let backbenchers vote their conscience on the issue.

This week Martin insisted he would instruct all Liberal MPs and senators to vote against any bill that sought to ban abortion and that his new government would stand firmly in favour of a woman's right to have an abortion.

But yesterday he told reporters in St. John's that he would treat a Commons vote on the issue in the same manner he did last year's decision on same-sex marriage -- by whipping his cabinet but unleashing backbenchers.

The same-sex marriage vote saw 32 Liberal MPs vote against changing the definition of marriage and, if they are re-elected, it's expected that a similar number of members would vote against abortion.

"Harper hasn't said what his government will do if an MP wants to bring this forward," Martin insisted.

Martin issued a challenge to Harper to use the dying days of the election campaign to lay out exactly what a Conservative government's position would be on a possible private members' bill to ban abortion.

POLICY DISCUSSION

"It reminds me of Kim Campbell saying during an election that this is no time for a serious discussion on policy. Well, I disagree with Harper," Martin said, insisting that the "overwhelming majority" of Conservative candidates oppose a woman's right to an abortion.

Harper has said his government would neither support nor encourage a move to ban abortion and that he would use "whatever influence" he had to ensure the matter doesn't come to a vote.

Canadian Press

January 21, 2006

TORONTO -- Stephen Harper, anxious to protect his party's lead heading into Monday's vote, has cut off news conferences with the national media.

The Conservative leader brushed aside questions from reporters as he campaigned in the Liberal stronghold of Toronto.

His spokeswoman, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, says Harper no longer has time for formal question-and-answer periods.

''We're moving fast today,'' she said of the Tory leader's Saturday sprint through southwestern Ontario's vote-laden heartland between Toronto and Windsor.

Harper says open, accountable government will be one of his top priorities if he becomes prime minister.

But Conservative workers have repeatedly blocked reporters from asking questions of local candidates - especially those who are on the record as opposing gay marriage and abortion.

There was another incident on Saturday, this one caught by TV crews.

Television reporter Lina Dib was grabbed by Conservative security as she tried to ask a question of Tory hopeful John Carmichael.

''Don't you hold me, is that clear?'' she yelled, spinning around and jabbing her index finger at the suddenly sheepish young man.

''Okay,'' he mumbled, backing away. A spokesman for Harper later apologized to Dib.

Harper has been accused of shielding several candidates from media scrutiny.

Conservative incumbents Cheryl Gallant in eastern Ontario and Rob Merrifield in Alberta, who both made uncomfortable headlines during the last campaign, have either turned down or ignored requests for interviews.

Other candidates have been spirited away by handlers at public rallies before they can be interviewed by reporters.

Polls suggest the Conservatives and Liberals are in close fight for support in the province that shunned Harper in 2004.

He has spent most of his last campaign days in areas where the Tories are expected to make gains, and even where they're not.

Harper heads to British Columbia on Sunday before returning to the Conservative heartland and his riding in Alberta.

By JOHN WARD

January 21, 2006

OTTAWA (CP) - Stephen Harper, who seems poised to become the country's 22nd prime minister, is viewed by some as a western hero, by others as the Dark Lord personifed and by many as an enigma.

There's a journalistic cottage industry in stories asking: Who is Stephen Harper?

Where many of his predecessors could be summed up in a phrase or two - Pierre Trudeau: the charismatic intellectual; Brian Mulroney: the rags-to-riches boy from Baie Comeau - Harper defies easy pigeonholing.

But he has been writing and speaking on his ideas and philosophy for 20 years and his core values seem little changed.

The boy who grew up in middle-class Toronto has matured into an Albertan. The high school athlete who turned to the loneliness of long-distance running has become a leader who keeps counsel only with close friends and advisers. The bright star of the economics department at the University of Calgary has become the policy wonk of today.

His views are clear in key areas.

He stresses economic conservativism, abhors big government and big programs and believes the West has been milked by central and eastern Canada since the days of Sir John A. Macdonald and his national policy. He supports a looser federation that pays more than lip service to provincial demands.

He sees family, community and church as keystones of society. His wife Laureen and their children, Ben and Rachel, are a tight-knit family, kept away from the political glare as much as possible.

Born in Toronto, Harper was a Trudeau Liberal who moved west and grew disenchanted with a 'just society' that, when viewed from an Alberta vantage point, seemed less than just.

He goes against the mainstream in many ways.

He's a transplanted Albertan in a country which hasn't seen a western prime minister since Joe Clark's ill-starred and short-lived government a generation ago,

He's a rock-ribbed conservative in a country where many pride themselves on being liberal and progressive. Where others may embrace the Charter of Rights as the fount of Canadian values, he is a doubter, even a heretic.

He sees the welfare state as "not the politician's 'sacred trust,' but the taxpayer's burden." Government should collect what taxes it needs, no more.

"Government is not a profit-earning business," he said in a campaign interview. "That's not the purpose of government, to turn a huge profit."

He's a social conservative at a time when that philosophy is viewed with deep suspicion by many voters who see it as a northern version of the American religious right.

He is a Protestant - from a Presbyterian background who now favours Christian and Missionary Alliance congregations in Calgary and Ottawa - in a city where prime ministers have, for decades, generally been Roman Catholics.

He comes out of the Calgary School, a movement of conservative political scientists such as Tom Flanagan, who question conventional wisdom on issues such as the Charter and aboriginal self-government and who are well to the right of their colleagues at the University of Toronto or McGill.

He is a politician who prefers policy to process and who clearly dislikes the gladhanding and hoopla of politics.

He is a thoughtful man with a circle of advisers he keeps close.

Belinda Stronach, who abandoned Harper and the Conservatives for the Liberals last year, sees that as a mark against him:

"He surrounds himself with like-minded people and doesn't want input from others who have a different viewpoint."

He is an intellectual who clearly sees political journalists as a biased, unruly and lazy tribe, but who has gone out of his way in this campaign to deal with reporters.

He's a well-built, healthy-looking man who still suffers from the asthma which plagued his childhood.

He's supposedly the dull policy guy, but he's writing a history of hockey even as he campaigns.

More than 20 years ago, in one of his first speeches to what would become the Reform party, the boy wonder of the University of Calgary called for renewal:

"In the stale air of politics, what Canada really requires is the sweeping winds of change."

Harper was born in Toronto in 1959, son of an accountant. He finished high school at the top of his class, then went to the University of Toronto. Biographer William Johnson says the young Harper wanted to be a diplomat.

But he dropped out of class and moved to Edmonton where he worked in the oil patch.

He enrolled at the University of Calgary and studied economics.

In 1984, he went to Ottawa as an assistant to Calgary Tory MP Jim Hawkes. But the Mulroney Conservatives struck him as too liberal and he quit after a year to go home and get involved in the movement that would eventually blossom into the Reform party.

In 1993, Harper defeated his old boss, Hawkes, in the election that first propelled Reform into prominence in the Commons.

He spent one term in the Commons with Preston Manning's Reformers, but quit that, too, and went back to Calgary and a job with the right-wing National Citizen's Coalition.

His occasional forays onto the national scene in those days raised suspicions about his agenda, especially in his 2001 newspaper article, in which he called on Alberta to erect a firewall against the federal government; collect its own taxes, run its own health-care system and establish its own pension plan.

Some say it was the Stockwell Day debacle that drew him back to federal politics and the gasping Reform party. With Day becoming a figure of ridicule, with MPs abandoning the leader to sit as a rump in Commons, Harper concluded that without a united right, conservative values would go nowhere.

Back in Ottawa, he won the leadership of the re-named Canadian Alliance, then brokered a shotgun marriage with the remnants of the old Progressive Conservative party.

In the 2004 federal election, his first as leader, Harper found himself demonized by the Liberals, who pulled out all the stops and resurrected every right-wing quote they could find to paint him as the enemy of liberal Canadian values and a threat to abortion rights, women's rights, the poor and the federation. It worked enough to preserve a Liberal majority.

But it also prompted Harper to re-think matters.

In an interview in this campaign, he said he has evolved.

To some, the evolution is only skin deep.

"I think what has evolved tremendously are simply his political skills," says Greg Inwood, a political scientist at Ryerson University:

"I think he still has his core belief system, but his political acumen has improved and his political antenna are more sensitive.

"That's demonstrated through his behaviour in this campaign where he's run almost a letter-perfect campaign."

Steve Paten, who teaches political science at the University of Alberta, agrees that Harper's basic ideas are unchanged, but that he has become more pragmatic.

"He's more willing to run on a campaign platform that not very long ago he wouldn't have been very comfortable with," Paten said.

That said, Inwood added, the platform is built mainly around tax cuts with a lot of other promises that are very vague and malleable.

Inwood said that willingness to embrace a wider platform may signal that Harper is prepared to govern the same way should he win Monday's election.

"Once he gets into power he may well realize that he can't just go storming the barricades with right-wing policies; that his tenure will be awfully short if he does."

The demonization of Stephen Harper continues, on blogs, in increasingly frantic e-mails among opponents, on op-ed pages and on the hustings.

Labour leader Buzz Hargrove of the CAW accuses him of separatist leanings and urges Quebecers to do anything - even vote Bloc - to stop the Tories.

Paul Martin has accused him of planning to stack the courts with like-minded judges and hints Harper plans a coup against abortion rights and same-sex marriage with the most radical right-wing agenda to ever get close to power in Canada.

Harper has said he'd allow a free vote in Parliament on the same-sex issue, but adds that it isn't among his top five priorities.

As for abortion, he was clear in a recent interview: "I've never campaigned on restricting abortion, and a Conservative government will not be supporting abortion restrictions."

His style, too, has changed.

He shed the white shirts and tightly cinched ties for open collars and turtlenecks. His stiff delivery has loosened. He'll crack jokes at the back of the campaign plane with the journalists he used to shun.

The shy, crooked smile that used to play around his lips without ever touching his eyes has often been replaced by a broad grin.

Evolution? Camouflage? Biographer Johnson suggests not.

"He's not good at acting or pretending," Johnson wrote.

January 21 2006

Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Who knew it would come to this?

As the federal election campaign winds down and voting day looms, there's one question being asked in every backroom in Ottawa: if the Conservatives win, will it be a minority or a majority?

A lot depends on the answer.

If Stephen Harper ekes out a majority, no matter how slim, he has a chance to be his own man as prime minister. With a minority, everything depends on whether he can tailor his legislative agenda to meet the demands of others.

The differences between those scenarios could be enormous -- affecting how much and what kind of taxes Canadians pay, who gets to marry whom, how long people wait for medical care, and whether there is fiscal peace or war between Ottawa and the provinces.

Start with the dollars-and-cents issues.

Harper's first priority if he forms a government would almost surely be his economic platform, highlighted by promises to slash the GST and offer families with young children a child-care tax credit.

It certainly wouldn't be same-sex marriage -- an issue on which he has promised an eventual free vote, but which could also revive fears that Harper has a hidden far-right agenda on social issues.

"If he gets elected as prime minister, it won't be because the No. 1 pressing issue is same-sex marriage," said a Tory insider speaking on condition of anonymity.

"You want to get some early wins on the board to show you're making progress, and those wins will come through the economic items."

Harper's GST and child tax credit promises are not without a potential downside.

The price of cutting the GST would be cancelling Liberal income tax cuts for low- and middle-income brackets. Financing the child credit would mean abandoning some Liberal transfers to the provinces that help fund day care.

The new measures would sail through with a Tory majority. In a minority Parliament, however, they could spark endless haggling -- particularly with the Grits and NDP.

"It would enable (Harper) to make all the changes he has promised on taxing and spending," said Heather MacIvor, a political science professor at the University of Windsor.

"Money bills are crucial, and with a majority you can get those suckers through."

A majority would also solve one of Harper's greatest dilemmas -- the prospect that, in the face of Liberal and NDP hostility, he might have to turn to the Bloc Quebecois for support in the Commons.

Almost by definition, the Conservatives would have to win seats in Quebec to form a majority government. Having Quebec Tories at the cabinet table would eliminate the perception that they have to pander to the Bloc to stay in power.

"It would essentially sideline the separatists," said Faron Ellis, a political scientist at Lethbridge Community College and onetime activist in the old Reform party, which never managed to expand beyond its western base.

"Just four or five seats coming out of Quebec could be huge (for the Tories). It would fundamentally change the character of the government and of Parliament."

It could also strengthen Harper's hand in his promised negotiations with all the provinces on the so-called fiscal imbalance, a euphemism for provincial demands for ever-greater tax transfers from Ottawa.

Harper would also face delicate talks with the provinces on another topic, his pledge to reduce wait times for health care. Again, his hand would be stronger with a majority.

The situation isn't as clear-cut for the issue that could be Harper's biggest political headache -- same-sex marriage.

His promise of a free vote on rolling back the rights of gays and lesbians would likely be a formality in a minority House, given the opposition to the move among NDP, Bloc and most Liberal MPs.

A Tory majority, however, could change everything -- not least the mindset of Christian evangelicals and others in the party's social conservative wing.

"Harper would have a better shot at keeping his party in line if they're on a tight leash in a minority government," said David Docherty, a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

"If they've got a majority you'll have some folks out there who think it's open season. They'll say, 'We can do whatever we want.'"

Some moderate Tories dispute that claim, arguing that electing a majority government -- or even a strong and stable minority -- would necessarily mean broadening the base of the party.

"The backbone would not be people who champion the traditional definition of marriage," insisted one strategist. "We'd have more fiscal conservatives and social liberals in the pack."

Others are far less certain.

Lethbridge's Ellis, for one, said he thinks Harper's handling of the issue will be crucial for his newly minted image as a political moderate.

"It will be one of the litmus tests of whether the more rabid social conservative forces within the party are in check," he said.

"How much of the Liberal fear-mongering was true, and how much wasn't?"

Canadian Press

January 21, 2006

TORONTO — Fearing that a Stephen Harper-led government will turn back the clock on women's rights, pre-eminent abortion rights activist Dr. Henry Morgentaler made a blunt appeal to Canadians on Friday: Don't vote Conservative.

"Our rights that have been fought for and won with so much sacrifice over the years are now being threatened," Morgentaler told a news conference in Toronto.

"I want them to know when they go to the ballot box that they have to remember that they cannot vote Conservative if they're concerned about the health and welfare and dignity of women."

While Harper has repeatedly promised that, if elected, he will not criminalize abortion, Morgentaler and other abortion rights activists said Friday there are other measures the Conservative leader could implement to restrict women's access to the procedure.

Those include the introduction of a private member's bill pushing for anti-abortion legislation, and stacking the Supreme Court with socially conservative judges, they said.

Such moves may not immediately mark the return of hazardous back-alley abortions in the country, but they would gradually diminish access to the procedure, they said.

"For pro-choice Canadians, we see here a wolf in sheep's clothing trying to hide an anti-choice agenda from public view that the vast majority of its candidates are committed to," said Carolyn Egan, spokeswoman for the Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics.

But Morgentaler and his supporters stopped short of endorsing a specific party, despite concerns their plea could split votes between supporters of the Liberals and the NDP.

"We know that there's a lot of disaffection in the Liberal party," Egan said.

"If you are a disaffected Liberal supporter, then the only thing to do is to vote for the New Democratic Party."

Abortion was decriminalized on Jan. 28, 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada declared abortion laws under the Criminal Code unconstitutional.

"Since that time, women in this country have been able to avail of themselves of the opportunity to have abortions which are legal and safe," Morgentaler said.

He singled out New Brunswick, a province that doesn't compensate women for abortions in private clinics, as an example Canadians can look to if the Conservatives win Monday.

"This is a foretaste of what we can expect from a Conservative government, which is chock full in its front ranks with anti-abortion people," he said.

Author June Callwood joined in the anti-Conservative chorus, saying it will take generations to regain women's rights if the Tories are elected.

"It takes a decade, it takes two decades, to repair the damage done by one right-wing government of this radical kind," Callwood said.

January 21, 2006

OTTAWA (CP) - Stephen Harper was trying to run out the clock Saturday and withstand another barrage of Liberal attacks designed to slow the front-running Conservatives in the final days of the election campaign.

But the Tory leader's plan to avoid any questions in the campaign's final hours - particularly those focused on the social issues that are the party's weak flank - was abandoned after a scuffle between a party worker and a television reporter from Quebec.

Tory staffers said Harper wouldn't have time for any more formal news conferences, preferring instead to deliver stump speeches and protect a lead that new polls suggest has narrowed to just seven percentage points.

But that was before Lina Dib, a reporter for the French-language television network TVA, was grabbed from behind by a campaign staffer as she pursued one of the party's local candidates during a swing through Toronto.

That brought an abrupt end to Harper's brief media blackout - and gave Martin fresh ammunition in the dying days of what may prove to be his last election campaign as prime minister.

Martin has been hammering the Conservatives for what he calls a deliberate attempt to keep candidates with controversial views on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion out of the public spotlight.

"Stephen Harper says he wants members of Parliament to play a greater role in Parliament," a jubilant Martin said during a final sprint through London, Ont., before heading to Winnipeg.

"He says he wants them to have a greater say, a greater voice. All the time, that is, except during an election campaign."

The suddenly talkative Harper merely shrugged off the Toronto incident as an issue of jurisdiction and who should field what questions.

"I'm the leader," Harper said as his campaign blitzed vote-rich southwestern Ontario.

"It's my job to answer questions from the national media. The candidates run their campaigns in their ridings. And I think they're doing a good job."

Martin's last-ditch attempts to paint Harper as a scary figure with a hidden agenda appear to have had an impact in the days before Monday's federal vote, eroding what remains a comfortable Conservative lead.

At 36.2 per cent, the Conservatives were still ahead of the Liberals at 29.4 per cent, the NDP at 17.3 per cent and the Bloc Quebecois at 11 per cent, according to a new SES survey commissioned by CPAC, the public-affairs channel.

But the lead has narrowed since earlier in the week, when polls were giving Harper a lead of more than 10 points on the Liberals.

The national random telephone survey of 1,200 Canadians was conducted from Jan. 18 to Jan. 20 and is considered accurate to within 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Harper said he was feeling confident - but not taking anything for granted.

"Well, we're optimistic. I've said it all along: I think we can win. I still think we can win," he said.

"But I won't believe the polls until I see the numbers on election night."

Harper's hopes for a Quebec breakthrough may have suffered a blow, however, when French networks showed footage of TVA's Dib raging at the party worker who tried to stay her pursuit of local candidate John Carmichael.

"Don't hold me - is that clear?" Dib fumed at the sheepish-looking fellow.

New Democrat Leader Jack Layton, on a cross-country blitz Saturday that began in Vancouver, called Harper's initial refusal to talk to reporters "odd and surprising when you're in the middle of a democratic process."

Layton later took to the skies in what the NDP dubbed a "tarmac tour," with campaign stops at airports in Saskatchewan and Ontario.

Critics say voters have been taking a long second look at Harper since he suggested earlier this week that Liberal-dominated courts, the Senate and even the federal bureaucracy would all serve to reign in his party.

Martin said Harper espouses an ultra-conservative agenda that's completely at odds with the progressive policies and leaders of the Tories of old, a party Martin said is as "dead as disco."

The Tories have been trying hard to keep reporters from talking to candidates that are believed to hold controversial views on social issues.

One week earlier, Harper paid a visit to controversial Ontario Tory MP Cheryl Gallant while the media bus travelled on, its occupants oblivious to where the Conservative leader was headed.

The outspoken Gallant helped sink Harper's hopes in the 2004 campaign when she likened abortion to the beheadings by Islamic terrorists in Iraq.

By ALEXANDER PANETTA

January 21, 2006



LONDON, Ont. (CP) - Paul Martin launched a last-minute sprint across the country painting his opponents as extreme right-wingers who bear no resemblance to the Conservative party of old.

The coast-to-coast dash pitted Martin against an electoral clock that appears to be ticking on his Liberal government, and racing against a Tory opponent to whom polls suggest Canadians have warmed up.

Asked to name one far-right element in the Tory platform, Martin cited their plans to roll back the Liberals' proposed national day-care plan, Canada's commitment to the Kyoto protocol as well as a recent federal-provincial aboriginal deal.

"You asked for one example. I've given you three," Martin shot back.

His warnings of a right-wing agenda have so far only managed to dent the Tory lead in the polls, but Martin remained determined Saturday to end his final weekend on the hustings with the same stark message.

"People will have to choose between the ultra-conservative, extreme right-wing agenda of Stephen Harper and the progressive, ambitious plan we're offering Canadians," he told a partisan rally.

It was much the same message in Brampton, Ont., when Martin said a Tory government would imperil abortion rights. He delivered the warning - aimed squarely at women voters - flanked by eight of his Toronto-area female candidates.

Conspicuous by their absence were local Liberal candidates who share the anti-abortion leanings of many Conservatives.

Martin has been dogged by questions about the diverse views of his own caucus every time he has raised the abortion issue during the campaign.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has repeatedly said he would not introduce abortion legislation and would use his influence to keep the issue from ever arriving for a free vote in the House of Commons.

As for the Liberals' proposed day-care plan, Harper has promised to replace it with a $1,200-per-child annual subsidy.

He also says he would replace the Kyoto commitment - which Canada is already far from reaching - with his own clean-air act, and would revisit parts of the aboriginal deal while heeding most of its principles.

But to Martin, those announcements have been reason enough to travel the country using words like "ultraconservative," "extreme," and "far right" to describe his opponents.

He said modern-day Conservatives have nothing in common with the old Progressive Conservative party that disappeared in the 2003 merger with the Canadian Alliance.

"They used to call them the Tories," Martin said.

"But that party - the party of Bob Stanfield, the party of Joe Clark, the party of mainstream and moderate leaders, the party that was proud to call itself progressive, is no more - it's as dead as disco."

He described the current incarnation of the Conservatives as a "rehashed version of Preston Manning's Reform party" and a "dolled-up variation of Stockwell Day's Canadian Alliance."

Martin accused Conservative Leader Stephen Harper of keeping his candidates in hiding because he doesn't want Canadians to hear what they believe.

"Stephen Harper says he wants members of Parliament to play a greater role in Parliament. He says he wants them to have a greater say, a greater voice. All the time, that is, except during an election campaign."

With Tory Leader straying from script, poll shows support for his party waning

By STEVEN CHASE and GLORIA GALLOWAY AND CAMPBELL CLARK

January 20, 2006

From Friday's Globe and Mail

The Conservative Party's lead in the polls has narrowed to nine percentage points as voters in Ontario and Quebec have second thoughts about a Stephen Harper government.

The latest poll for The Globe and Mail and CTV by the Strategic Counsel shows national support for the Conservatives has dropped to 37 per cent from 41 per cent, while support for the Liberals has risen to 28 per cent from 25 per cent. Backing for the New Democratic Party dipped one percentage point to 16 per cent.

The race has tightened in the face of a Liberal advertising attack on Mr. Harper and an anti-Tory offensive in Quebec by the Bloc Québécois and Liberals, which have warned of the front-running party's social-conservative leanings, said Allan Gregg, chairman of the Strategic Counsel.

"And we know that in no region of the country are conservative social agendas more repugnant than in the province of Quebec."

The percentage of Quebeckers who told Strategic Counsel pollsters a Conservative majority would be good for Canada has dropped to 55 per cent in Jan. 17-18 polling from 64 per cent in Jan. 14-15 surveys.

The race is tightening in a week in which Mr. Harper has strayed from his carefully scripted campaign, responded to questions about same-sex marriage and raised old Reform Party concerns about a biased judiciary, civil service and Liberal-dominated Senate.

Liberal Leader Paul Martin accused the Conservative Leader yesterday of planning to stack the Supreme Court with politicized judges who would allow for a social-conservative agenda drawn from the "extreme right" in the United States. He insisted that Mr. Harper's remarks show he wants to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to ban same-sex marriage and possibly abortion.

"Are we going to find ourselves in the same situation that they are in the United States, where in fact it is not only the competence of a judge that governs, but in fact it is a judge's social views?" Mr. Martin asked.

The national poll of 1,000 people was conducted Jan. 17-18, although some regional surveys took place over a longer period. The margin of error for the national poll is 3.1 percentage points, but higher for the smaller regional samples.

The decline in Tory support dampens chances of a Conservative majority government.

"It looks far less possible today than it even did a few days ago, given the numbers as they stand right now," Mr. Gregg said.

The Tory Leader began the long winter election campaign by saying he would ask Parliament if it wanted to reopen the controversial issue of same-sex marriage. He said he would respect existing homosexual unions if the House of Commons decided to restore the traditional definition of marriage.

But Mr. Harper said yesterday at a news conference in Waterdown, near Hamilton, Ont., that this would not be one of the first acts of a Conservative government.

"I'm not going to want to leave it forever, but it's not one of the top-five priorities [of the party] so I suspect we won't deal with it right away," Mr. Harper said. "But we will ask Parliament's opinion in due course."

Mr. Harper was asked if he feared that the Liberal-dominated Senate would try to block a ban on same-sex marriage passed by the House of Commons. Earlier in the week, he said a Conservative majority government would be kept in check by the judges, senators and Liberals who owe their jobs to the Liberals.

"I prefer that a non-elected chamber respects the decisions of the chamber elected by the population," he said yesterday. "I think an abuse of power by the Senate strengthens my argument that there should be an elected Senate."

Mr. Harper was introduced at the news conference by David Sweet, the Tory candidate in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale. Mr. Sweet is a former president of Promise Keepers Canada, an evangelical Christian organization that believes homosexuality is a sin.

In a November, 2001, edition of Christian Week magazine, he wrote: "[M]en are natural influencers, whether we like it or not. There's a particular reason why Jesus called men only. It's not that women aren't co-participators. It's because Jesus knew women would naturally follow."

Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Harper shared the stage with Harold Albrecht, the Conservative candidate in Kitchener-Conestoga, at a rally attended by about 800 enthusiastic supporters.

Mr. Albrecht is pastor and founder of the Pathway Community Church. In June of 2004, he wrote in a letter to a Kitchener newspaper: "If one is truly committed to the marriage vows of fidelity, these same-sex marriages would succeed in wiping out an entire society in just one generation."

When reporters tried to question Mr. Albrecht about his views after the rally, Conservative handlers blocked them from getting close. Mr. Albrecht was hustled into a kitchen where he stood alone as the news media were told he was too busy to speak with them.

Egale, a gay-rights organization, says it has examined the websites of 34 new Conservative candidates who are known to oppose same-sex marriage and found that only three posted their views about the issue. Mr. Albrecht and Mr. Sweet did not.

At the Waterdown news conference, Mr. Harper demanded that Mr. Martin and labour leader Buzz Hargrove distance themselves from Mr. Hargrove's suggestion at a Liberal campaign stop Wednesday that Quebeckers should vote for a separatist candidate if that is the best way to defeat a Conservative government.

"I don't care how much the Liberal Party wants to stay in power," Mr. Harper said. "It is absolutely unacceptable, in any way, shape or form, to suggest that people should vote for the breakup of this country in order for the Liberal Party to maintain its entitlements to power."

Mr. Martin, who was campaigning in Toronto, rejected suggestions that Mr. Hargrove's comments indicate he will allow his allies to say anything -- even call for a vote for separatists -- to win.

"I'm very clear that I think that the strongest federalist voice in this election campaign is the Liberals, and I think that Quebeckers ought to vote for the strongest federalist voice," he said.

Allan Woods
CanWest News Service

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

QUEBEC -- Elections Canada has been asked to investigate the Conservatives after allegations that the party is overseeing a group that operates partisan on-line web logs.

Canada's election watchdog received a complaint Tuesday morning from a disaffected party member who claims the Tories tried to sway political opinion in cyberspace in the leadup to, and during, the election by setting up the popular "Blogging Tories" website.

The site appears to be a coalition of like-minded individuals who have met in cyberspace to share their political opinions and express their frustrations with Paul Martin's Liberals.

But a Victoria, man, Eugene Parks, and Toronto Tory dissident Carole Jamieson allege the venture may be in contravention of the Elections Act and third-party financing laws. They say it may have "unduly influenced the election coverage and potentially the outcome of this campaign."

"They're using a third-party agency to get elected," said Parks, a former Conservative supporter who now says he is an opponent. "It's pure hypocrisy."

Parks said in an interview Tuesday he was approached by senior Conservative MP Diane Ablonczy in December 2005 after a Tory caucus retreat in British Columbia and asked to head what he described as a pre-election initiative on behalf of the party.

"At the time I was somewhat willing, but my loyalty to the Conservative party was somewhat shaky," he said.

A Conservative party campaign official said Tuesday that there is "no connection" between the federal party and the website and chalked the complaint up to a party member who is still upset about the merger of the Progressive Conservative party and the Canadian Alliance in 2003.

Third-party election financing laws state that it is illegal for a group to spend more than $150,000 during an election period related to a general election. It can also spend no more than $3,000 of that money "to promote or oppose the election of one or more candidates in a given electoral district."

The law also says that the third party cannot bypass the spending restrictions by "splitting itself into two or more third parties."

The Blogging Tories website does not hide its political preference, and even includes some Conservative MPs, including finance critic Monte Solberg, among its members.

But Parks' allegation that the group was set up as a concerted effort by senior Conservatives to win the election casts the website in a controversial light.

"They're trying to make it look like these are individuals rather than a party effort," Parks said.

Parks said he split with the party in June because he was uncomfortable with what he said was a hostile tone among some party members toward French-Canada and aboriginals.

Parks passed on his information, which included e-mail exchanges, to Jamieson, a notorious former aide to former Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark. Jamieson called for Harper's resignation last September, saying that he did not have a chance of seizing power in an election.

Jamieson confirmed Tuesday that she had forwarded all the information to the chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley on Tuesday morning.

By BRIAN LAGHI

January 19, 2006

OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

Conservatives say they may have difficulty cashing in on their new-found popularity in Quebec because they don't know who many of the voters are and they face problems getting some of them to the polls.

The lack of organization will force the party to focus hard on 10 to 12 seats it thinks it can win, but it will have to rely on momentum to take a second tier of seats where it has little or no organization.

An individual familiar with the campaign acknowledged yesterday the party may "leave votes on the floor" because of an inability to identify and deliver supporters to polling stations Monday.

Recent opinion polls have the Tories hovering around 30 per cent in popular support in Quebec, but capturing that level of the vote will be difficult because the spadework required to deliver it has not been done. The Conservatives have been in decline in the province since 1993, save for electing a handful of members in 1997 under then-Tory-leader Jean Charest.

Sources told The Globe and Mail that traditional voter-identification that takes place between and during election campaigns was essentially not done in the province because the Tories ran so far behind the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois in 2004 they didn't think it was worth the investment.

The Tories received just 9 per cent of the vote in Quebec last time around and won no seats there.

According to sources, only those ridings in which the Tories came close were marked for voter identification, a process in which workers phone people in certain ridings to see which ones might support them. Without such identification, organizers don't know who to usher to the polls on voting day.

The Tories also expect difficulty in attracting scrutineers, workers who observe voting procedure to ensure its fairness.

"It's hard to get out the vote, if you don't do your homework," said one Conservative who asked to remain unidentified.

Party officials also had difficulty building lists of supporters because there is no provincial Conservative Party from which to draw information.

The Tories have been co-operating with members of Mario Dumont's Action Démocratique du Québec, but have strong crews only in the dozen or so ridings they feel they can win. Those include constituencies in Quebec City, the Eastern Townships and on the Ottawa-Quebec boundary.

In part to compensate for the organizational shortfalls, party officials have redoubled efforts to buy substantial television, radio and newspaper advertising in Quebec.

The party has recently increased its advertising on the western portion of the Island of Montreal and also spent a substantial amount in the 418 area code around Quebec City.

The Conservatives have some strong prospects for victories in the Quebec City area, but very little in Montreal, sources say, even though they now lead the Liberals in Montreal in the polls.

One source said he expects the party might try to increase its radio ads in Quebec in an effort to get individuals to the polls.

One of the few organizational positives for the Conservatives was left them by former Tory Belinda Stronach, who called on the services of a group of former Progressive Conservatives in Quebec to help her leadership campaign against Stephen Harper.

One of those former PCs said yesterday that the lack of organization would probably have a more significant effect on a provincial campaign, where riding populations are smaller.

However, in a federal battle, a party's message tends to have a greater effect on the outcome, the worker said.

Tory leader says some appointed to bench by Liberals promote social agendas


By GLORIA GALLOWAY

January 19, 2006

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

Montreal — Stephen Harper says some judges appointed by the federal Liberals are activists working to promote their own social agendas, statements that drew heavily from his tenure in the old Reform and Canadian Alliance parties.

The assertions by the Conservative Leader, whose party leads the public opinion polls, mark one of the few times during a tightly scripted election campaign that he has strayed far from the centre of the political highway.

They came a day after he said a Conservative majority government would be kept in check by the judges, senators and federal bureaucrats who owe their jobs to the Liberals.

"The courts are supposed to be independent," Mr. Harper said yesterday when questioned repeatedly by reporters in Toronto about his attempts to reassure those voters who still fear his party may change the Canadian social fabric.

"I am merely pointing out a fact that courts, for the most part, have been appointed by another political party. But courts are supposed to be independent regardless of who appoints them and they are an independent check and balance," he said.

When one reporter asked if he believed judges are activists with their own social agenda, Mr. Harper replied: "Some are, some aren't."

But later, in French, he softened any suggestion that he believes judges are politically partial, "The judges are independent, there is no doubt," he said. "Their independence is well protected by the law."

Mr. Harper's former Reform and Canadian Alliance allies have cried loudly about judicial activism, with many complaining that liberal judges have imposed such things as same-sex marriage upon an unwilling populace.

Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler responded with a scathing attack on Mr. Harper, arguing that his opinions are unfit for a man who aspires to lead the country.

"To me, [it] is irresponsible for a political leader to be impugning the independence and the integrity of the very institutions he should be protecting," he said.

"We need someone who will respect the rule of law, who will respect the independence of the judiciary."

Mr. Cotler said that the suggestion judges are Liberal-biased demeans and insults the judicial system. And he defended his own judicial appointments, saying they have been scrupulously apolitical.

In 2003, after courts in British Columbia and Ontario recognized the legality of same-sex unions, Mr. Harper, who was then the leader of the Canadian Alliance, accused former prime minister Jean Chrétien of stacking the courts with sympathetic judges for that very purpose.

"They didn't want to come to Parliament, they didn't want to go to the Canadian people and be honest that this is what they wanted," he said at that time of the Liberals. "They had the courts do it for them; they put the judges in they wanted, then they failed to appeal, failed to fight the case in court."

While the Conservatives have not promised any changes to the method of appointing judges to superior, appellate and federal courts as well as the Supreme Court of Canada, Mr. Harper says there is a particular type of person who would get those jobs if he were prime minister.

"What we will be looking for is what I call the judicial temperament," he told reporters. "And that is the ability to competently and shrewdly and wisely apply the laws that are passed by the Parliament of Canada."

But Mr. Harper's political foes said they remained concerned about his underlying beliefs and what he might do as prime minister.

In Ontario, Liberal Health Minister George Smitherman, who is gay, said that if the Conservatives emerge victorious after the votes are counted on Monday he will move up his wedding date with his partner.

When asked the about potential interference by a Liberal-dominated Senate into parliamentary affairs, Mr. Harper said he is concerned that the Senate would stymie Conservative government business as it has done in the past.

A controversial Mulroney-era bill on abortion was once blocked by the Senate, causing the government to abandon the legislation.

"The Liberal Senate in the past was extremely unco-operative when their party wasn't in power so it's a worry," Mr. Harper said.

"I hope that better judgment will prevail and the unelected Senate will play the role that historically it has played, which has been a useful technical role, but will not try to interfere with the democratic will of the elected House."

But, even as Mr. Harper was urging the Senate to co-operate with Parliament, Liberal Leader Paul Martin was saying his party's senators would block any attempt by the Conservatives to ban abortion, insisting that attacking abortion rights is what the Tories "have in mind."

The Liberals can expect to have a majority in the Senate for five more years, with 67 of the 105 seats now held by the Grits, compared to just 23 Conservatives.

"It's a position of the Liberal government, that's very clear. And certainly it's the way we would ask all Liberals to vote, senators and MPs," he told reporters at a campaign news conference in London, Ont.

Mr. Harper took his campaign to Liberal-dominated Toronto and Montreal yesterday to convince voters in Canada's largest cities that it is in their interests to be at the cabinet table of a Conservative-led government.

The Tory Leader told a tightly packed rally in a pub in the riding of St. Paul's, where news anchor Peter Kent is trying to upset popular Liberal Carolyn Bennett, that he is paying attention to their issues, including transit, urban violence and problems facing immigrants.

Flanked by former Mulroney cabinet ministers on a stage where Mr. Kent received the endorsement of CanWest vice-president David Asper, Mr. Harper urged Torontonians to take a look at his party.

Some fear he'll once again shoot from the lip

Kelly Cryderman, The Edmonton Journal

January 19, 2006

EDMONTON - The fact that Albertans haven't seen hide nor hair of Premier Ralph Klein in the last days of the federal election campaign is no accident.

Klein's director of communications, Marisa Etmanski, said the premier has been busy preparing for the upcoming legislature session. But she admitted that she and her staff are also keeping him hidden from reporters until the federal election is over.

"It is not that big of a deal. Are we trying to stay out of it (the federal election)? Yes," Etmanski said Wednesday.

"But it's six more sleeps, you know, then everyone can have him again.

"We think that the federal parties are the ones that should be in the spotlight. They're the ones that should be talking about their platforms and their plans for Canadians."

In most circumstances, Klein can barely contain himself when asked to express his opinion on the political issues of the day. He shocked Tory sensibilities early in the campaign when he said he would bet on another Liberal minority. In turn, Conservative Deputy Leader Peter MacKay suggested that duct tape might be a good way of dealing with Klein.

In the 2004 federal election, Klein's ongoing talk of reconfiguring Alberta's health-care system was used by Liberal Leader Paul Martin to suggest that only his party could stand up to provincial leaders like the premier who would try to dismantle Canada's public system.

Klein last spoke to the media in Calgary on Jan. 9, when he mused about federal Conservative Leader Stephen Harper reopening the issue of same-sex marriage if he becomes prime minister -- another dangerous issue for Conservatives.

Shortly after that, Klein headed off for a short ice-fishing holiday in Northern Alberta.

He attended a cabinet meeting Tuesday this week and, unusually for him, did not talk to reporters. He has private meetings in Edmonton and Calgary for the rest of the week, his staff say.

One federal Alberta Tory said perhaps Klein and his staff have finally got the message that the premier is annoying "the federal people, so knock it off.

"It's his people bowing to what he's hearing from the feds outside, but our party is not telling Premier Klein to do anything. I can guarantee you that."

Etmanski said the premier will be "thrilled" if the Conservatives win Monday's election.

"He said they've run just an excellent campaign," she said.

"He said it's one bet that he wanted to lose."

January 19, 2006


TORONTO (Reuters) - Stephen Harper's Conservatives have made sharp gains in the polls in the run-up to the January 23 election and now look set to challenge the traditional Liberal dominance of Toronto, home to nearly one-sixth of the country's voters.

The Conservatives have been gaining ground steadily outside their Western Canada power base since the start of the year, grabbing support in Liberal-dominated Ontario and also in Quebec, which typically splits votes between the Liberals, who have been in power for 12 years, and the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

But with nearly 50 of the 308 parliamentary seats to be decided by the 4.6 million people in the Greater Toronto Area, Conservative leader Stephen Harper will likely need a breakthrough in the region if he wants the 155 seats necessary for a majority government.

Toronto has typically been a tough sell for federal right-wing parties, due partly to a high proportion of immigrant voters who typically turn to the Liberals or the left-leaning New Democratic Party.

But pollsters say the Conservatives are well ahead in the wealthy suburban areas that surround Canada's largest city, the so-called "905" region, -- named for its telephone area code -- and are making up ground in the core "416" area, whose 23 seats have been either Liberal or NDP since 1993.

Perhaps sensing he's close to a breakthrough, Harper was campaigning in central Toronto on Wednesday in the dying days of the campaign.

"I want Toronto, and I want the great spirit of this city, to be part of the truly national government we are asking Canadians to give us," he told cheering supporters in the affluent riding of St. Paul's, which has been Liberal since 1993, but which is hotly contested this election.

Conservative supporters note that some electoral districts in Toronto embraced a provincial right-wing government as recently as 1999, but observers say that on a federal level, the Conservatives could still be tough sell in the city's core.

"The Liberals have massive leads in these constituencies," said Nelson Wiseman, political science professor at the University of Toronto.

"The Liberal vote in 416 is going to shrink dramatically. The issue is, will it be enough?"

Another issue, he says, is that a lot of the Liberal votes from the last election could go to the NDP, which was hurt in 2004 from soft support bleeding off to the Liberals to keep the Conservatives out of office.

In 2004, Harper suffered from voter concerns that he harbored a hidden right-wing social agenda, prompting Canadians to give the Liberals a minority government despite a government spending scandal that severely eroded their popularity.

This time, Harper has softened both his image and rhetoric, while the Liberals still have the reek of scandal, this time from a federal police investigation into whether the government leaked sensitive tax policy information to market players ahead of a crucial announcement in November.

Also of concern to Toronto voters has been an alarming rise in gun-related deaths over the past year, including a downtown shootout on Boxing Day that left a 15-year-old girl dead and pushed the issue temporarily to the top of the campaign agenda.

All three national parties have come out with competing tough-on-crime platforms.

But some doubt that Toronto voters are ready follow the lead of other regions that have embraced Harper, particularly as the Conservatives appear to edge closer to majority government status.

EKOS Research President Frank Graves said polls showed the Conservatives were running about even with the Liberals in Toronto last week, but that more recent numbers suggest the Conservatives may be falling back a bit.

"The stuff we're seeing early in the week here suggests that... the concept of a Conservative majority, the increasing plausibility of that, is having a chilling effect," he said.

January 19 2006

CBC News

A dispute has erupted between Saskatchewan and New Brunswick over a financial promise Conservative Leader Stephen Harper may – or may not – have made during the election campaign.

Premier Lorne Calvert said this week that Harper promised to change Canada's equalization formula to a system that's friendlier to Saskatchewan. Conservative candidates in the province are also repeating the pledge for a new approach to equalization that would benefit wealthy provinces.


But New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord opposes that change, and doubts Saskatchewan has been promised anything of the sort by the Conservative leader.

Lord has been an excited backer of Harper through the entire election campaign. He's embraced Harper at rallies and endorsed his program of change for Canada.

Equalization is New Brunswick's most important federal government program. The program helps Canada's 'have not' provinces pay for basic services like health and education. More than 20 per cent of New Brunswick's entire revenue comes from equalization and any change in payments would have a dramatic effect on the province's ability to serve its citizens.

The Canada Election Act prohibits radio, TV and internet from distributing election results into an area where people are still able to vote. The polls across the country will all be closed by 9 p.m. CT.

The equalization formula is under presently under review in Ottawa, and this week, Calvert and Conservative candidates said a Conservative government would change equalization to exempt provinces' non-renewable natural resource revenues when calculating payments to provinces.

"The Conservative party and its leader have made a very clear commitment to the province that if they form government, non-renewable resources will be excluded from the equalization calculation and that in essence solves our long term problem," Calvert told CBC News.

Exempting resources such as oil and gas from the equalization formula makes resource-rich provinces like Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Newfoundland appear poorer than they are and eligible for more equalization payments, at the expense of provinces without oil and gas like New Brunswick.

Bernard Lord is stiffly opposed to that kind of formula. Last year, New Brunswick Finance Minister Jeannot Volpé outlined the province's opposition in this official presentation on equalization to the federal government. "The removal of resource revenues from the program," Volpe told federal officials, "would have considerable adverse consequences on New Brunswick."

Thursday, Lord said he doesn't believe Stephen Harper has promised Saskatchewan anything on equalization. "These words come from Lorne Calvert, who I respect, he's a friend of mine, he's the NDP premier of Saskatchewan, and not from Mr. Harper. What Mr. Harper has said is these things will have to be negotiated after the fact."

But Saskatchewan Conservative incumbent MP Tom Lukiwski says just the opposite. "We've consistently stated that if we are elected into government we will be revising the equalization formula to remove the non-renewable natural resources which would result of course in Saskatchewan retaining 100 per cent of its oil and gas revenues among other things," said Lukiwski. "I think it's fair to say if we make those changes under current circumstances with current prices Saskatchewan would be $2 to $2.5 billion wealthier each and every year, so its a very significant program for Saskatchewan."

But the New Brunswick premier is adamant. Lord doesn't believe equalization promises have been made by Conservatives in Saskatchewan – even though clearly voters and politicians in that province do.

January 19, 2006
Debora Kelly

What's changed?

If you were to judge by the polls and national media, only the chore of the vote Jan. 23 stands between the shiny new Stephen Harper and his stick-to-the-script Conservatives and their majority throne on Parliament Hill.

Of course, you'll recall just prior to the June 2004 election, the story was similar. We were then well aware of the Liberals' entrenched patronage, shameless arrogance, unrestrained waste and utter disregard of what matters to ordinary Canadians.

Nothing's changed.

At that time, supposedly outraged Ontarians showed just how low we can go by returning the Liberal government to power.

When it came to putting pencil to ballot, voters here -- York Region elected five Liberals -- saw little alternative or hope in a Conservative government led by "scary" Mr. Harper.

What's changed? Mr. Harper?

This time around, he is successfully managing the message that was meticulously strategized in the last year; calmly championing moderate policies and muzzling loose-cannon candidates -- the anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion Reform/Alliance crew still populating the ranks -- so as not to spook voters.

Gone are the plans to cut immigration, support two-tier health care and reject multiculturalism and bilingualism.

Are we buying the make-over? (Please don't tell me you fell for that silly paste-on smile during the leaders debates.) A lot of voters I talk to, particularly women, are not.

Myself, I am still troubled by the revealing chauvinistic reaction to Belinda Stronach's defection.

Mr. Harper remains who he was, albeit a craftier campaigner. And while Mr. Harper is no hockey dad, by any means, he isn't Darth Vadar.

The Conservatives remain a party of disparate elements, yet there is merit in some of their carefully crafted policies.

What has changed?

This time around, more voters see the Liberals' rabid attacks for what they are; desperate attempts by a decrepit party to fight off inevitable change.

Their arrogance led them to gravely underestimate not only the Tories, but voters.

Like last time, there is willingness to give the Tories a chance -- as a minority government, anyway.

Like last time, the desire for change is palpable -- the Liberals need time to heal, to rebuild, to seek a leader who doesn't dither on vision, is a strong message.

Like last time, there are many undecided voters -- plenty of whom are embarrassed Liberals -- knowing we need change, not yet convinced by the Tories and loath to cast a "strategic" NDP vote.

Like last time, a Conservative sweep in York Region isn't a given.

On a final note, I urge you to do what you can to learn about your local candidates, rather than blindly cast a partisan vote.

Pierre Trudeau said MPs are nobodies 50 yards away from Parliament Hill; our reality today is most MPs are nobodies on the Hill, but with an important role in the constituency as ombudsman and lobbyist.

We need a government, by the way, that will do more than simply promise to fix the "democracy deficit".

If I may be blunt, based on what our reporters and editors have seen in this campaign, there are some candidates who are decidedly undeserving of the job, party ticket aside -- don't send another unmitigated idiot to Ottawa, please.

This political saga must be played out -- if Mr. Harper doesn't win a majority, his own future as leader will be questionable -- if Canadians are to have someone, something, to vote for, rather than against.

Canadian Press

January 19, 2006

OTTAWA — Concerned about a lack of experience within their own ranks, Conservatives are quietly approaching some Liberal aides about working for a Stephen Harper government.

Glenn Bradbury, executive assistant to Liberal MP Dan McTeague, said he's been approached twice in the past week by Conservative MPs who've asked him to consider switching sides should Harper emerge victorious from Monday's election.

Bradbury wouldn't disclose the names of the Tory MPs but said they aren't the only Conservatives putting out feelers to Liberal aides. He said he knows of one other political aide in the Foreign Affairs department who has also been approached by a Conservative operative.

"They were very discreet, no pressure, just would I give consideration because they don't have many people who've had experience. I've been on the Hill for 18 years,'' said Bradbury.

"I was quite touched by it but I don't forsee it happening I'm afraid.''

Whether or not the Liberals lose power, Bradbury said he'll probably continue working for McTeague, currently parliamentary secretary to the Foreign Affairs minister with special responsibility for Canadians abroad, assuming the Toronto-area MP wins re-election.

Harper has studiously refused to talk openly about a transition team or the possible make-up of a Tory cabinet. Premature speculation about such things in the 2004 election was deemed presumptuous and contributed to a last-minute decline in Tory fortunes.

Tory campaign spokesman Yaroslav Baran adamantly denied anyone on the Harper team is making overtures to Liberal staffers.

"Nobody wants to get their hopes up yet,'' he said. "Maybe it's being talked about but not by the people that matter.''

But Goldy Hyder, one of the Conservative campaign spin doctors, said he too has heard that some Liberal aides have been approached. And he said it makes perfect sense. "Whoever forms the government needs good staff ... Personally, my own view on these things is it would be a good signal to send,'' he said.

Hyder said informal overtures to Liberals are "driven by a systemic reality'' that the current crop of Tory staffers is neither large enough nor experienced enough to fill all the positions that will be required should the Conservatives form the government.

"Part of it is driven by necessity. You've got to fill a lot of staff positions quickly.''

Those with experience from the Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark eras, including Hyder himself, are probably too old or too settled in private sector jobs to want to go back to an insecure, high-pressure government job, he said.

Hyder noted it will be particularly hard to lure people away from their current jobs if the Tories manage to win only a minority government, which could last only a matter of months.

Moreover, Harper's promised Accountability Act will likely make staff recruitment even more difficult.

Harper has promised to introduce legislation that would prohibit ministers and their staffs, as well as senior public servants, from lobbying the government for five years after leaving their posts.

A number of Harper's top strategists and spin doctors, including Baran, Hyder, Geoff Norquay, Ken Boessenkool and Tim Powers, are registered lobbyists. They would not be precluded from taking posts in a Harper government but once they left government, they wouldn't be able to return to their old jobs or any other job that involved lobbying the government for five years.

Hyder said there are lots of Liberal ministerial aides who've been involved in office administration, policy or communications but are not particularly partisan. Those would be the kind of staffers the Tories might try to persuade to work for them.

From the Liberal perspective, Bradbury said there are plenty of aides who have families to feed and mortgages to pay who may be tempted to cross over. He observed, however, that there would be "no return'' for any Liberal who crossed to "the other side.''

Bill Doskoch, CTV.ca News

January 19, 2006

Imagine a Canadian political party that proposes radical change: stop regional development; cancel universality for social programs (including old age security); restrict immigration; and hold binding national referendums on issues such as capital punishment and abortion …

In Canada, there was such a party in our recent history -- the Reform Party. And Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party's leader, was once its policy chief.

Harper cut his political teeth in Ottawa working for a Progressive Conservative MP. But believing then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney wasn't doing enough to move Canada in a truly conservative direction, he left the Tories.

After a chance meeting with Reform leader Preston Manning, Harper became active in his Western-based, grassroots movement. But by 1997 he once again left over differences with Manning.

After a break from politics, Harper returned in 2002 to head Reform's successor, the Canadian Alliance, and was instrumental in merging that party with the Progressive Conservatives.

The new Conservative Party of Canada lost the federal election in 2004 when the Liberals successfully painted Harper and his MPs as scary extremists. In response, Harper has now remade himself as a Conservative moderate. Today he's even taking advice from Mulroney, and some of the former PM's key associates have joined him on the campaign trail.

During the 2006 election campaign, Harper's Conservatives announced some major centre-right policies that appear to be quite mainstream. However, others, including the Liberal Party, warn the hard-right policies of the Reform and Canadian Alliance Parties still lie beneath the surface.

"I don't believe Stephen Harper's changed as much as the party tries to suggest he's changed," Steve Patten, a University of Alberta political scientist who's studied the Reform Party, told CTV.ca.

"He still drifts off into Reform Party territory some days, as he did when he suggested the courts may become opposition to a government he forms, like an American Republican who's always complaining of Democrats stacking the Supreme Court," Craig Oliver, CTV's chief political correspondent, adds.

Patten said the core values held by the founding Reform-Alliance members still dominate the party.

"It's a matured version of the Reform-Alliance strain of the party," he said. "Harper, although he has the same core values he had back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, doesn't approach politics or the political world in the same way."

While the Conservative leader still opposes same-sex marriage, Harper has softened official policy, saying government should extend civil union benefits to gays and lesbian couples. Harper also said indirectly on Jan. 14 that he would extend his proposed childcare benefit to children of gay and lesbian couples.

During the second English-language leaders' debate, Harper said a Conservative government would enshrine property rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Patten explained it's an idea Canadian conservatives of various stripes have long dreamed of. For Reformers, "that was even more central to their notion of how rights should be defined and protected," he said.

Here are some other examples of Conservative policies proposed in their platform that are similar to policies of the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties.

Law and order: The Conservatives want mandatory sentences for gun-related crimes and would try 14-year-olds as adults for violent crimes or repeat offences. That's somewhat more moderate than the Reform Party, which would have seen 10-year-olds tried as adults. The Tories also want to toughen up parole eligibility and scrap the gun registry. As well, the Tories say they would "enact effective deportation laws," which was an important part of Reform justice policy.

Regional Development: Unlike the Reform Party, the current Conservatives would continue regional development agencies (Harper has apologized over the course of this campaign for saying in 2002 that Atlantic Canada had a "culture of defeat").

Senate reform: The Conservatives have said they would appoint elected senators as a first step. A cornerstone of the old Reform Party was the Triple-E Senate -- equal, effective and elected.

Medicare: The Tories stand behind the principles of the Canada Health Act. The Reform Party would have made medicare a spending priority, but would have cut any strings on the money and allowed provinces to pursue private care.

Quebec: Harper has said he'll address the fiscal imbalance, respect provincial jurisdiction and give Quebec a slightly bigger presence on the world stage. Reform, which had a decentralized vision of Canada, saw all provinces as equal. It would have given them all powers to protect their linguistic and cultural uniqueness.

Fiscal conservatism: Reform was aggressive in making deficits a political issue, but felt deficits should be dealt with through spending cut. The Alliance pushed for tax cuts. Targeted tax cuts are a key part of the Conservative platform in 2006.

While the Reform Party had a strong social conservative streak, William Johnson, author of Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, said Harper personally is not a social conservative.

"He wants to appeal to social Conservatives because he said, again consistently, that for the Conservatives to come to power they have to have a coalition between the economic Conservatives and Libertarians -- which he is -- and the social Conservatives."

Harper also believes moral issues should be a matter of individual conscience, not party policy, he said.

Patten said that while Harper has sidelined some of the more extremist people in his caucus, "the party has maintained its hard ideological commitment to the kinds of things people like Stephen Harper have always believed in."

Johnson concurs, saying that because Harper did not make same-sex marriage and abortion a party issue he has in effect marginalized the social conservatives.

"Because the vote will be a free vote, and he will vote one way, yes, but the Bloc, and most of the Liberals and NDP almost to a person would oppose anything that limited abortion or same-sex marriage, it's not going to go anywhere."

"So his position has been consistent, and there's no hidden agenda. He's a very upfront, what-you-see-is-what-you-get man."

But Patten said what Red Tories saw in the wake of the merger drove many to abandon the party.

For example, Keith Martin (originally elected as a Reform MP) and Scott Brison (originally elected as a Progressive Conservative), both joined the Liberal ranks. Prominent Progressive Conservatives such as Andre Bachand, Rick Borotsik and Joe Clark left politics altogether.

However, others like former Mulroney aide Hugh Segal, who had been highly critical of Reform, are now advising the Conservative leader.

Harper has described his current party as having four main pillars: Red Tories, social conservatives, economic conservatives and reformers.

But, what kind of government will be created by such a mix?

"You'd need a crystal ball!" laughed Patten.

That being said, he adds that while Harper has promised he has no hidden agenda and doesn't want radical change, he may have no choice.

"There'll be all sorts of pressures for him to do something radical. There are members of his party who have been waiting a long time to undo Liberal and Progressive Conservative policies they disagree with," Patten said.

And while Harper assures Canadians there are a number of factors that would keep his government in check, including a Liberal senate, Liberal courts and a civil service appointed by the Liberals that may not deter him.

"I believe Stephen Harper is the kind of person who would rather leave his mark on Canada than win two terms in a row," Patten said.

"If there's a majority, people should expect real change."