There is today no more important job to do than cleaning up government and bringing accountability back to Ottawa. Because if we don't clean up government, it will compromise our ability to use government to tackle the challenges we want to get on with: getting taxes down and productivity up; restoring access to health care; Combating the spread of guns, drugs, gangs and criminal activity in our cities; Rebuilding our armed forces and our influence on this continent and in the world; And so much more.
That is why I announced last week that the first piece of legislation I will introduce as prime minister will be the Federal Accountability Act. The Federal Accountability Act will change the way business is done in Ottawa forever.
It will give more power to the Auditor General, the Ethics Commissioner, the Information Commissioner, and the Lobbyists Registrar, to make sure that these independent officers of Parliament can hold the government accountable.
It will give real protection to those who blow the whistle on unethical behaviour. It will open the windows on government with long overdue reforms to access to information laws. It will ensure that appointments to public office are based on merit and qualifications.
Our federal accountability act will also crack down on the revolving door between ministers' offices, the senior public service, and the lobbying industry. We will ban all ministers, ministerial staffers, or senior public officials from lobbying government for five years after they leave office. And we will make sure that there are real teeth and real penalties to enforce the Lobbyists Registration Act. I have told my own MPs and parliamentary staffers that if they have ambitions to use public office to advance their own interests or get rich lobbying a future Conservative government, they had better make different plans, or leave.
I've also said we are going to mandate the Auditor General to do a complete review of billions of dollars in federal grants, contributions and contracts. The Federal Accountability Act will give her the power to "follow the money" and to audit end recipients. Had she had this authority, she might have uncovered the depth of the sponsorship scandal years ago. But most importantly, the Federal Accountability Act will crack down on a big money and lobbying culture that has thrived under Paul Martin.
As prime minister, I will ban all remaining corporate and union donations to federal political parties, period. I will close the loopholes that allow MPs and candidates to create secret personal trust funds.
If Paul Martin is serious about reforming the Liberal Party, let alone government, he would not sell access like this. He would end this way of doing business. He would cancel this meeting on the 14th. These and many more changes are explained in detail in the Federal Accountability Act and I would encourage you to read it. They will change the way that politics and government are done in this country.
Now, you are no doubt all wondering: When will the people of Canada get their chance to vote on this Accountability Act, or any other matter of public policy? As you all know, in the spring, after the testimony of Jean Brault at the Gomery Commission, the Conservative Party withdrew our support of the government.
In the weeks that followed we attempted to defeat the government. We were supported in those attempts by the Bloc Quebecois and initially one, later two, Liberal members of Parliament. Those attempts were, however, ultimately unsuccessful. The Liberals were sustained in office principally by the support they received from Mr. Layton and the NDP.
Yesterday, Mr. Layton spoke here. While he now appears less enthusiastic about his support of the Liberals, he also refuses to rule out any course of action, including continuing to negotiate his support with the Liberal government. Let me be clear. The Conservative Party will not negotiate behind closed doors with a party that has now been named in a judicial inquiry on corruption.
The fate of the government should be decided, not by a backroom deal between the Liberals and NDP or anyone else. It should be decided by the people of Canada.
Unfortunately, our experience in this Parliament suggests we do not have the votes to defeat the government without the support of the NDP. Worse yet, should we again attempt to bring down the government, Mr. Layton would no doubt see our attempt as potential leverage in his negotiations with the Liberals, as he has on other occasions.
I will not allow a Conservative motion to become a bargaining chip in a parliamentary poker game. If Mr. Layton wants now or at any time to bring down the Liberal Party over its corruption and is prepared to initiate measures to do that, I assure you we will co-operate with and support that effort. If he is not, Canadians will have to assess his ambivalence on corruption. When this becomes an issue the voters can actually do something about and it will be an issue in the next election.
Friends, no government is perfect because no people are perfect. Eliot reminded us, we must avoid "dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will have to be good.
When I become prime minister, the Federal Accountability Act will require us to serve the public interest, as best we can determine it, not our personal interests. Now the government claims that it too is committed to reform. It says it will bring in changes to the administration of the public service. It says it will listen to the recommendations in the second Gomery report.
We will also listen to those ideas for reform. But this scandal did not happen because of poor auditors or bad judges. Indeed, former Tory MP Bill Casey — who was thrown out of caucus in after a dispute with Harper — describes Harper as a bully, liberally using four-lettered words to underline his points, and not conferring with caucus.
Probably the most notorious is Helena Guergis, who became secretary of state for foreign affairs and sport, and later minister for the status of women. Guergis was so friendly with Harper and his wife Laureen that she dined and went to the movies with them. Allegations soon emerged that Guergis and her husband were socializing with a businessman of ill repute.
A private detective, Derrick Snowdy, began shopping around a story of lurid allegations of political corruption about Guergis, suggesting she and her husband were being used by the businessman.
Harper quickly removed Guergis from cabinet and threw her out of caucus. He also called in the RCMP to investigate. In the end, the cocaine possession and drunk driving charges against her husband were dropped. After a thorough investigation, the RCMP found no evidence supporting any of the corruption allegations against Guergis or her husband. Guergis in my possession or knowledge. A similar pattern occurred when allegations of expense account abuses were levelled at Tory senators Duffy, Wallin and Patrick Brazeau.
Harper was simply trying to staunch the flood of bad press. Duffy was then charged with 31 counts of fraud, breach of trust and bribery charges — all of which the court found were baseless, acquitting him.
To this day, Del Mastro protests his innocence. Del Mastro says when the PMO was told of the offer, he was informed if he accepted it, there would be no guarantee he would be allowed back into caucus. Del Mastro says Harper and the PMO wanted him to fight the charges as a way to distract the media from the on-going Duffy affair. If he had been allowed to stay in caucus, he says, he would have taken the deal.
Instead, he fought the charges — to disastrous effect. For my family, it was devastating. And in , he was elected chairman of the International Democrat Union IDU , a global alliance of conservative and centre-right parties. He was also carrying grudges. They actually met every day to coordinate their coverage, they would not run any ad I had showing footage depicting my opponent in an unfavourable light… We literally were censored out of the coverage.
Fourteen candidates ran for the leadership in — none of whom were stars. It was also evident that moderates who might appeal to urban voters were out of favour.
When leadership contender Michael Chong came out in support of a carbon tax during one debate in Edmonton, he was vociferously booed. Chong came in fifth. And that became part of the problem. As leader, Scheer regularly consulted with Harper and Kenney before making important decisions.
And the Conservatives essentially ran the same campaign with Andrew Scheer. Many Tories I spoke with say to win the leadership you must woo the base before pivoting toward being more moderate once you win. Michael Chong seems to hold out this hope. Others I spoke with suggest the Harper playbook merely needs to be fine-tuned by a more skillful leader. Others are skeptical. On key issues — energy, climate, indigenous rights — Trudeau is Harper-lite with a smile.
A vote for the Liberals or Conservatives is a vote for Big Oil, petro-politics, democratic erosion, climate disaster, science denial, broken promises, and betrayal. To the outrage of indigenous leaders, the Trudeau Liberals appealed a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling "ordering Ottawa to pay billions of dollars in compensation to First Nations children and their families separated by a chronically underfunded child-welfare system. Recall Trudeau's mockery of indigenous protestors.
Trudeau will succeed where previous Conservative govts failed: building new export pipelines. Acknowledge the science, but ignore its implications. Boast about climate leadership, but push oilsands expansion and pipelines. Sign int'l agreements, but fail to live up to them. The new denialism. Just as delusional as the old kind but more insidious. And far more dangerous. The only scenario in which oilsands expansion makes sense. According to Trudeau, the path to renewable energy and a sustainable future runs through a massive spike in fossil-fuel combustion and emissions.
Complete disconnect from the science. The Liberals have proved far more effective than the Conservatives in delivering on Big Oil's and Corporate Canada's agenda.
Trudeau and Notley moved the ball on the Trans Mountain pipeline down to the ten-yard line. Their signal achievement was to "push country-wide support for pipelines from 40 per cent to 70 per cent. The Liberals effectively act as a kind of shock absorber of discontent and anger towards the elite… "So on climate, Trudeau was presented as this kind of river-paddling environmental Adonis.
But the Liberals create these public spectacles of their bold progressiveness while they quietly assure the corporate elite that their interests will be safeguarded. That was a plan hatched by the Business Council of Canada back in , For 20 years oil companies had resisted any kind of regulation or any kind of carbon tax and fought it seriously.
But they started to realize that it would be a kind of concession that they would have to make in order to assure stability and their bottom line not being harmed. The climate bargain that Trudeau went on to strike with Alberta of a carbon tax plus expanded tarsands production was precisely the deal that Big Oil had wanted. Textbook example of a controlled opposition group. Corporate Canada took over WWF's board of directors and shut anti-oilsands campaigns down. All that remained was for Gerald Butts to exercise his widely-praised skills in reading the tea leaves.
Thanks for adding this commentary. It is spot on, and the willingness to not just create niches of issue voters, but to engage in outright cheating is an important addition to this story. You allude to it throughout, but the fact is that Harper is one of the few ex-PMs to continue to try and recapture his glory by dominating the party and as his remarks to foreign press and his attempts to build up the IDU show being prepared to throw the country under the bus for it.
His persona of boring but effective technocrat and strategist very much concealed a man driven from the beginning by a desire to exorcise demons, and his treatment of Scheer, Charest and MacKay strongly suggest that nothing has changed.
Sara MacIntyre is upset that her party is always run by people who don't share her views or won't publicly admit it to. The solution is obvious: there needs to be more than one party on the right. Yes, that would split the vote, which is why the current Conservative party needs to work with the NDP and GPC in order to bring in proportional representation.
That done, the right would be able to flower into multiple parties that would represent the whole right spectrum and leave no one out. Libertarians would be free to vote Libertarian. PCs would have a party again. Fiscal conservatives could have a separate party from social conservatives. The Liberals would get way fewer seats. Just think how satisfying that would be for all conservatives after having to put up with Trudeau for five years and counting. It will be a voting you-topia, as in: You get a party.
You get a party. You all get parties! So come on, Conservatives. Quit the in-fighting and get 'er done. Both major paerties can be descriped as "death eaters" only different in degree. Where is Harry Potter when we need him? This is an excellent piece of political journalism and the comments are a good extension to the article. They were angry at federal intrusion in areas of provincial responsibility. See also Distribution of Powers.
It also rebranded itself as the Canadian Alliance. Meanwhile, Harper remained the subject of frequent speculation as to a potential return to politics.
In spring of , he was elected leader of the Canadian Alliance, beating incumbent leader Stockwell Day on the first ballot. Since , the Liberals had won a series of majority governments.
This was due in part to the divided political right — the Alliance and the tattered remnants of the Progressive Conservative PC Party. As Alliance leader, Harper set out to mend fences. Harper became leader of the new Conservative Party of Canada. It won 99 seats and reduced the Liberals to a minority government in the election. They also gained an important foothold in Ontario , an accomplishment that had eluded the Reform and Alliance parties. As Leader of the Official Opposition , Harper initially faced doubts as to whether he could win over Canadians in sufficient numbers to become prime minister.
These concerns focused on the questionable mass appeal of his policy wonk persona and his ability to maintain the unity of the Conservative Party. Many also questioned whether some party policies were too right-wing for many voters. But Harper successfully countered those concerns.
He became the first westerner to be elected prime minister since Joe Clark in Harper secured But his victory marked the end of 13 years of Liberal rule. He immediately pared down the federal Cabinet from 33 to 27 ministers. Many of the most prominent Cabinet members were either Albertans or one-time provincial ministers from the former Ontario regime of Mike Harris. Harper is a strict adherent of laissez-faire capitalism and a smaller, decentralized federal government.
However, the Conservatives argued that individual Canadians were better served by keeping more money in their own pockets than by new government programs.
In foreign policy, Harper took a staunchly pro-Israel position in the Middle East that included aggressive criticism of some of its most vociferous opponents. As opposition leader in , Harper argued in favour of participating in the US invasion of Iraq. His first foreign visit as prime minister was to Afghanistan in March This was to allow for more reconstruction and training of Afghan troops and police forces. Combatting crime and terrorism became watchwords of the Harper government.
It toughened the Criminal Code , most notably by imposing higher and mandatory minimum sentences on various crimes. Harper also increased funding for the federal prison system, nearly doubling it during his first five years in office. Harper ran two balanced budgets and a small deficit his first three years in office. This helped him establish a reputation as a sound economic manager. After the worldwide financial crisis in sparked a global recession , he called an early election.
Harper argued that the severity of the crisis and the need for strong economic leadership justified the measure. In the ensuing campaign, his government was returned to power with more seats , but still a minority.
In the wake of this victory, Harper tabled an economic update. In keeping with his commitment to limit government spending, the update lacked any economic stimulus measures. However, it included motions to suspend the right of federal civil servants to strike and to end public funding of political parties. The budget update set off a firestorm in Parliament.
They announced plans to form a coalition to overturn the government. By the time Parliament resumed, the opposition coalition had unravelled amid public disapproval. This resulted in the first federal deficits in a decade. But it also helped Canada emerge from the financial crisis in better shape than most other Western countries.
0コメント