Quote du Jour: How Not to Spy on People

If you don't want to get caught:

"The way we found these guys out is almost comical. We only had a bunch of grandmothers there and the big 250-pound guy in the middle eating all the cookies was the ex-RCMP cop."

Pay attention, Albertans:

Public money spent to spy on landowners: NDP

Alberta's arms-length energy regulator hired a private investigator to pose as a concerned citizen and infiltrate a group of landowners opposing the construction of a massive power line, new documents show.

The provincial NDP released documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation Thursday that also show investigators gave the Energy and Utilities Board passwords that would allow it to listen in on the landowners' private conference calls.

NDP leader Brian Mason said it is a case of using public money to spy on Albertans.

"This goes far beyond what's necessary to protect the integrity of the hearing," Mason said.

"This was intelligence gathering and it was political intelligence."

The more you learn about Conservative governments, the less you can trust them. Ironic, since their philosophy is supposed to include less government interference in peoples' lives. You'd be hard-pressed to find any of those Conservative creatures in power anywhere in this country these days though. They're quite the paranoid bunch.
 

Steve's Rules of Disorder

Usually, when you chair a committee (as I have numerous times or as the Speaker of the House does when it's in session), your role is simply to be a non-partisan enforcer of the accepted rules of order to ensure fair debate and decision-making - whether they be Robert's Rules or, in the case of parliament, Marleau and Montpetit.

Well, move over guys because Steve Harper has his own rule book.

As Don Martin reports in The National Post after securing a copy of the 200 page secret Tory rules for committee chairs, non-partisanship has been tossed out the window and disorder is the new rule in town:

Running some 200 pages including background material, the document -- given only to Conservative chairmen -- tells them how to favour government agendas, select party-friendly witnesses, coach favourable testimony, set in motion debate-obstructing delays and, if necessary, storm out of meetings to grind parliamentary business to a halt.

No need to wonder anymore why the committee process has suffered tremendously under the so-called leadership of this government. Martin provides specifics:

The manual offers up speeches for a chairman under attack and suggests committee leaders have been whipped into partisan instruments of policy control and agents of the Prime Minister's Office. Among the more heavy-handed recommendations in the document:

- That the Conservative party helps pick committee witnesses. The chairman "should ensure that witnesses suggested by the Conservative Party of Canada are favourable to the government and ministry," the document warns.

- The chairmen should also seek to "include witnesses from Conservative ridings across Canada" and make sure their local MPs take the place of a member at the committee when a constituent appears, to show they listen and care.

- The chairmen should "meet with witnesses so as to review testimony and assist in question preparation."

- Procedural notes tell the chairmen to always recognize a Conservative member just before a motion is put to a vote "and let them speak as long as they wish" --a manoeuvre used to kick-start a filibuster as a stall tactic.

- Chairmen are told to notify all affected ministries prior to a motion being voted upon. "Communicate concerns with the Prime Minister's Office, House leader or whip," the document insists. "Try to anticipate the response of the press and how party could be portrayed."

- The guide says a "disruptive" committee should be adjourned by the chairman on short notice. "Such authority is solely in the discretion of the chair. No debate, no appeal possible." By failing to appoint the vice-chair to run the meeting, the adjournment will last until the chair is ready to reconvene the committee.

Besides the obvious slime tactics, I find it interesting that it took 200 pages to detail how to use them when so many of these behaviours just come naturally to some of these mean-spirited, highly partisan politicians.

And the justification?

Government whip Jay Hill makes no apologies for increased contact with committee chairs to keep tighter control on tactics, but blames a gang-up of opposition parties for the government's recent combative stance.

It's always somebody else's fault when the Conservatives behave badly.

"They're increasingly behaving as though they're a coalition government cooking up deals behind closed doors. We're going to use the tools at our disposal to try and push back," he told me. "Canadians elected a Conservative minority government, not a coalition of opposition parties."

It's a conspiracy!

What's interesting is that these tories wouldn't even be the government anymore if they hadn't formed coalitions (behind those scary closed doors) with opposition parties to do things like getting their budget passed. It's also not surprising though that people like Hill have the "winner take all" mentality of a person who thinks minority=majority. Thus the paranoid need to steamroll and bully at every opportunity. If they can't always get their way in the house, why not manipulate the committees? Their manipulator-in-chief obviously condones the behaviour. Might as well power-grab while you have the chance Steve because, at the rate you and your cronies are going, you're not going to have much longer to play that political game.

Oh ya, and Jay? You might want to order one of these. What the heck. Put in a bulk order for all of the committee chairs. Anything that can make them feel more secure has got to be worth the cost and I'm pretty sure the instruction manual is much less than 200 pages.

(h/t to Lynne in the comments for pointing out Don Martin's story.)
 

O'Connor Lowballed War Costs

Canada's Rumsfeld - Gordon O'Connor. Just exactly what does he have to do before he finally gets fired?

The Globe & Mail reports that O'Connor seemingly forgot to mention that the costs involved in securing additional tanks for Afghanistan are actually double what he reported due to the service contract attached to the purchase.

As he detailed a laundry list of military hardware the Conservative government plans to buy over the next few years, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor surprised the Commons by announcing there will be a 20-year, $650-million service contract attached to the tank deal.

“The capital acquisition is $650 million and the support for 20 years is about $650 million; about the same range,” he said in reply to an opposition question during debate over Defence Department estimates.

Quite the "surprise".

Not only that:

Also on Thursday night, Mr. O'Connor released a revised estimate on the cost of Canada's current mission to Kandahar. From February 2006 to February 2009, when the mission is slated to end, it is estimated that $4.3 billion will have been spent by the Defence Department — an increase of $400 million since the last forecast in November.

The increase is attributed to the additional cost of reinforcements, including tanks, which were dispatched to Kandahar last September by the Conservatives.

September. What that means is that the defence department apparently didn't know how to plan for what it knew was coming down the pike - for the decisions it made. An extra $400 million isn't exactly just an oversight. It's incompetence.

One thing's certain - we're never going to get the truth about this war from this government - whether it's about the detainee abuse, the costs of this war or even the real length of our future commitment, which they refuse to even talk about. They are completely untrustworthy.
 

Tories Filibuster Human Rights Testimony

What are these tories trying to hide?

OTTAWA — A House of Commons committee probe into the events surrounding the release of a highly-censored report on human rights in Afghanistan was held up Thursday by Conservative MPs, who for talked out the clock for hours.

The Tory filibuster finally broke after five hours and the witnesses were allowed to speak around 2 p.m.

The meeting of the House of Commons access to information and ethics committee was the second in a row to feature Tory MPs talking at length about procedural minutia to avoid delving into the committee's scheduled work.

The Conservatives were arguing that the opposition failed to give them enough notice for the study and that such a review raises concerns about revealing official secrets.

The opposition pushed for the probe following a recent Globe and Mail report showing how the government initially denied the existence of a report on Afghan human rights conditions, then released a heavily censored version. The Globe then obtained an uncensored version of the report which showed the government had blacked out sections that could be politically embarrassing to the government.

When confronted by NDP MP Dawn Black during question period about this filibuster - along with the fact that reports from corrections officers in Afghanistan had been completely censored, foreign affairs minister Mackay actually had the audacity to say that his government was the most "transparent, open and forthright government that this country has seen in a long, long time" (go ahead and laugh...I'll wait...). Mackay then resorted to the childish tactic of justifying his government's behaviour by using the handy well, the Liberals did it too excuse. Are there no statesmen among this bunch of tories? (Rhetorical question.)

The 2 witnesses whose testimony was delayed are University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been a very vocal critic of the way this government has mishandled the abuse claims by Afghan detainees, and journalist/researcher Jeff Esau. No wonder the tories tried to delay his testimony:

April 25, 2007

The Globe first asked Foreign Affairs on March 7 if Canadian diplomats compiled and wrote similar reports on Afghan human-rights conditions. "No" was the answer.

On March 22, in response to an Access to Information Act request, Jeff Esau, a journalist and researcher working for The Globe, received the following response to his request for the report:

"Please be advised that Canada does not produce an annual human rights report analogous to the reports produced by, for example, the United States or the United Kingdom. Therefore no such report on human rights performance in other countries exists," wrote Jocelyne Sabourin, Director of the Access to Information division at Foreign Affairs.

An earlier access request, filed Jan. 29 by Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa law professor, asked specifically for the human-rights report on Afghanistan and noted that Foreign Affairs had, in the past, made such reports available to non-governmental organizations. It also noted that the report on Syria had been referenced in the report on the Maher Arar case.

It was only after the 30-day deadline for a response had long passed and Mr. Attaran complained to Information Commissioner Dan Dupuis, that the edited version was delivered this week, eradicating all reporting of torture and abuse beneath the censor's black pen.

Lies, coverups, distortions, censorship and attempts to silence witnesses. Yes, this certainly is the "most transparent" government ever, isn't it?