And so it ends with a whimper… RCMP closes files on Guergis and Jaffer
Now, on to the question burning in the mind of every census benumbed Canadian tonight: is this the last word on the Guergis-Jaffer affair, or a new lease on life for the Fifth Estate?
It’s one of the things I like about Canadian politics – our manufactured controversies come with convenient snooze buttons.
What’s odd about all this is that the CPC ousted Guergis from their party. Will she come back? Or will she file a lawsuit if they do not allow her back?
I just find this whole thing odd. We still don’t really know what it was about.
Allan: Ms Guergis was dropped from caucus, not party. Given the virulence of the attacks from Liberals and NDB (wasn’t it Mr Ignatieff who publicly connected her with organized crime), the PM had very little choice while the issues were under investigation.
There is still the little matter as to whether or not her husband was trying to pull a fast one as in being a lobbyist without registering.
When I review the Liberal and NDP attacks on Ms Guergis, Mr Jaffer, and Mr Harper, I am impressed at how long Mr Harper defended the couple, and how he handled the whole situation.
Given Ms Guergis is pregnant after a miscarriage, I rather think a time repose would be seriously indicated.
I agree, there are still unanswered questions. Perhaps we should start by asking Mr Ignatieff how he got from ‘cocaine in the car’ to ‘connected with organized crime’ – agreed?
Should be ‘NDP’
Frances;
NDB works nicely. Nobody’s Doing Bozo
Come on guys!! I’m a strong supporter of the CPC, and I know that both those bozos are shady! Wake up and check out their records! Possession of cocaine and drunken driving, suddenly the judge says: “I’m sure you can recognize a break when you see one.” As for Helena, she a bozo! End of story.
PS: She married him didn’t she?
NDB
Time for another contest at SDA. Name that Party.
As far as the census thing goes, I’ve never received one of the long ones, but I do think that stats on a whole range of topics can be very useful for a lot of people and organizations. Depends on what they ask, I guess.
All the govt is doing is decriminalizing the completion of the long census form, should you happen to get one. Nobody has ever been charged with failure to complete the census long form. This is nothing but a bit of housekeeping to decriminalize another lieberal paper crime.
In the past those who thought the questions were too intrusive either left them blank or filled in bogus info. The StatsCan folks might get fewer completed forms, but the volunteered data will likely be more accurate than the bogus data filled in as protest.
So I won’t have to tell them I live in a house with 1 bedroom and 99 bathrooms making $100 a year total income as a Jedi-knight shaman.
The opposition is grasping at straws for just another lame excuse for Harper bashing. Such children.
Now that the horror of” Guergisgate”, “Jaffergate”, “Busty-hookergate” or whatever, is over… I’m reminded of where this public smearing originated… The Toronto Red Star… no matter what people may think of Jaffer and Guergis I hope there’s a lawsuit against the Star.
I found this on CTV: Suspected leader among G20 vandals surrenders.
Did a little digging and, oh look, she has facebook!
I’m sure with the RCMP finding nothing untoward with Guergis and Jaffer, there will be a few echos resounding in the heads of the likes of Wayne Easter, Wailing Jennings, Anita Neville and others.
Also tied to the gotcha game horde in the opposition benches is their media rag the Toronto Star which eagerly reported on it.
One stalwart with a forked tongue, Dipper extraordinaire, Pat Martin is now implying Guergis was treated too harshly by the PM.
That’s over, now on to the next bit of nonsense, everybody loves to fill out the long and intrusive census forms. How about we let the entire opposition fill out the long forms, see how they like to disclose their family business.
If Guergis was to join the Liberal Party eventually, maybe somewhere down the line, many many years from now, the Liberals will appoint her to the senate where she can sit next to Art Eggleton.
…Then again, since her significant other didn’t actually receive any gov’t contracts, she may not qualify for such a promotion under the Liberal Party’s rewards-for-bad-behavior patronage system.
Perhaps the CBC’s Solomon or Barton will invite senator Eggleton on Power & Politics today to give his thoughts on this matter… Ummm, but probably not.
If I may share a comment I posted on the Western Standard blog on the census issue:
An aspect of this issue that has not really been addressed is the assumption that the compulsory long-form census is, in fact, accurate. Large numbers of people who receive it do not, in fact, fill it out. In response to such non-compliance, the government hires a small army of those students who didn’t get jobs at Starbucks or didn’t get into a subsidized French program to contact the laggards. Occasionally those they contact go along and fill out the form. More often than not, however, they either tell the student to go away or, being nice, as Canadians tend to be, tell the student to fill it out for them. The current census system is a major make-work project for both permanent employees at StatsCan and a summer jobs program for youth.
Your post, however, makes a key point: just consider the groups most “outraged” by the decision, and you know in your heart that Mr Clement has made the right decision.
Sean M… speaking of hookers, it’s funny to see how the politically correct MSM uses the term “sex trade workers” for most other stories related to (shhhh!) prostitution, but not in the Jaffer affair. Aside from quoting the Toronto Star directly, MSM collectively decided that “Jaffer dining with sex trade workers” didn’t quite pack the same punch in their attempts at smearing the Conservative Party in the minds of Canadians.
Sex Trade Workers, prostitutes, or what they really are – whores, and Liberal whores at that.
What puzzles me is the uncritiqued assumption that if something is mandatory, then, it is also right.
If the govt says that filling out a long census form is mandatory, and threatens its citizens over this issue, then, can they be sure that the data collected is accurate? What’s to stop that same citizen from filling in pure nonsense?
A voluntary form is far more likely to produce accurate information.
Then, relying on only one source for your data is extremely risky. You have to collect data from multiple sources, i.e., health cards, school registrations, driver’s licence etc.
I’ve got a barff-bag ready for Guergis’s inevitable next interview.
She reminds me of a haughty schoolgirl, who denies getting felt up. Blames the other party….
Louise. Here is a copy of the 2006 long form. When I received the long form I found it to be angling to be a social engineering endeavour. Not in my best interest nor I felt for my country. I did not play along like I’m supposed to under government threat. I found it offensive. I am not a delicate little snowflake but as I worked for the Feds. I saw engineering all the time. Didn’t want more.
http://www12.statcan.ca/IRC/english/ccr03_005_e.htm
What is the big deal about the Consenus form? Who? really gives a shit, Other then the big brothers of Canada, cause i dont.
the media, liberals/socialist are blowing this way out of proportion.
*on the Guergis deal I fear that the riding could swing liberal in the next election.
This riding has been a liberal target for some time now Even before the guergis screw up.
The liberals have been showcasing some liberal heavyweights there over the yrs, The reason is that grey/bruce/simcoe Owen Sound, Collingwood, Bruce Penninsula, Sauble Beach have over the past few yrs had many elitist Torontoites selling out and moving here and they also bring their Toronto Bullshit attitude here too.
*this alittle off the topic, But i dont think i have ever given so many directions to Sauble Beach this yr. then in past & the highway 6 north that runs past the store is jammed bumper to bumper starting Friday afternoons. And rude! just interupt me when iam dealing with my customer.
Is this the rd to Sable Beach?, No its not! its called Sauble Beach. Dont get me wrong iam all for tourism/business but it is just BS what the locals at the beach are putting up with these past few yrs. Garage left behind on the beach, using these little 2×4 changeroom tents For the shitter, No wonder the water contamination has been up out there. And trying to get out onto the highway to go home at the end of the day, They are just Ignoramis’s they will Not let you out.
OK Enough said, sorry for the rant.
“I found this on CTV: Suspected leader among G20 vandals surrenders.
Did a little digging and, oh look, she has facebook!”
That Facebook page could well be the undoing of many of her partners in crime.
Since nobody knows why Harper made the decision he made, it would be good to reserve jugement.
Jaffer got away with nothing. Likely a political decision on the part of the RCMP, they know who to please.
Guergis was in way over her head, something like a hillbilly getting in a position of power, that is usually a bad combination.
This here person Citizen at July 22, 2010 2:32 AM is on to something and is writing the known facts.
Thanks for the long form, speedy.
I suspect that the length of the questionnaire and the time required to complete it would result, inevitably, in a high percentage of false answers where you just mark anything to get through it. Most people wouldn’t have the data readily available and few are going to bother searching their files for ‘how much do I pay on hydro per year’.
Who knows when their house was built, and the Survey’s suggestion of ‘best estimate’ is statistically useless. You can ‘best estimate’ the entire questionnaire that way.
I’m afraid I don’t see the function of this long survey. It can’t be about accurate data. People will hide their income, won’t know about repairs to homes, are indifferent to title of occupation..and so on.
Re:the long form census
Isn’t it strange that opponents of the voluntary long form refuse to allow actual results to prove/disprove their assumptions. They assume that Canadians have to be forced to do what they consider the right thing -allow the government to snoop into their personal lives to benefit bureaucrats, activists and private business. The answer to the voluntary vs. mandatory question can only be tested by direct comparison of one method to the other. This lack of curiosity and reasoning is a given for opposition parties searching for political advantage and the MSM who often seem a bit dim but what is the statisticians excuse. Aren’t they kind of considered a branch of science?
Absolutely agree that the long form is no more accurate for being mandatory. Had one of these once and by half way through I was just filling in anything to get through it. The number of Jedi Knights is a dead give away. They should be looking at return rates. I’d bet that if they made it voluntary as a trial and compared it with the return rate on the mandatory one they would see if anything higher returns with answers that weren’t a result of resentment.
I think the uproar over the voluntary long form gives us an EXCELLENT enemies list. The names of all the people who secretly believe personal freedom is something to be doled out in small doses to the deserving few by a government department.
On the list, Norman Spector.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/spector-vision/the-inconvenient-truth-in-mr-sheikhs-resignation/article1648067/
Of course we already knew that, but it is nice to see these people signing on to the semi-benevolent tyranny team -voluntarily-.
Ww, your point is well taken. Not only do we see that these StatsCan people are petty tyrants, we also see they are rubbish at statistics.
Shockah!
Good article on census taking ( or not) elsewhere in the world and why they are no longer necessary.
“If statisticians in Britain get their way, for instance, the census planned for next year could be the country’s last. Instead, they are considering gathering information from the vast, centralised databases held by government, such as tax records, benefit databases, electoral lists and school rolls, as well as periodic polling of a sample of the population. It is a global trend, pioneered, inevitably, in Scandinavia. Denmark has been keeping track of its citizens without a traditional census for decades; Sweden, Norway, Finland and Slovenia, among others, have similar systems. Germany will adopt the approach for its next count, also due in 2011.
There are two reasons for the change. The first is that computerisation allows statisticians to interrogate databases in a way that was not possible when information was stored on cards in filing cabinets.”
http://www.economist.com/node/16590962
I am against the long form because I know that most of the information the government collects will be used against me, especially if a liberal is in power.
So the fact that the Conservatives want to scrap the long form is a good idea, and I hope they stay the course.
zzzzz (gack, snork) huh? Jaffer who? Census what?, huh? (snork) wake me up when the news comes on.zzzzzz
Lev: “Since nobody knows why Harper made the decision he made [re Guergis], it would be good to reserve jugement.”
I think we DO know, and that’s that there were allegations made of criminality about Guergis, or at least her possible involvement in criminality, so what was PMSH supposed to do? If he’d kept her in the caucus, the Opposition jackals would have howled like hyenas.
As it is, they howled like hyenas when Guergis was asked to leave caucus, but PMSH was obviously “erring” (if that’s the word) on the side of caution — and Guergis should have understood that and kept her perky little — well, big, actually — mouth shut.
I have absolutely no respect left for her or her sleazy husband. I hope she is able to carry her baby to term and then chill out for a while. This woman needs some perspective: Maybe taking care of a baby will have a salutary effect on her.
Only in Canada as Kate says. But what would we do without our manufactured crisis?
Alain:
1) Look for signs of life in Loyd Robertson?
2) Watch endless re-runs of SCTV?
3) Bring back “Pig & Whistle” Music?
4) Continue to watch the Saga of our game called the NHL begin to collapse Professional Hockey in all Canadian Cities.
5) Watch Barbra Hall with her cohorts of censors the Chrc ruin more lives. Make bad law, than shake down more people who have become bad people by dint of ideology.
6) Rember when watching a Canadian film, that we make the best Lesbian pictures in the World.
7) Slowly watching as the French go extinct in Canada because they breed like Panda’s.
8) Participaction in the Islamifacation of Canada, with its subsequent rights of Women waning by the year
9) In the years to come, of the normal life of the trailer trash boys.
10) Enjoy the spectacle as our rights as free people dribble away by stroke upon stroke of the bureaucrats keyboard.
JMO
Munir Sheikh, Head Honcho for Stats Can petulantly announces his resignation. Well, if you feel you can’t obey your political masters, then that is the right thing to do. So long, was nice knowing ya, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.
The Liberals and the socialists cry about Harper’s plan to make the long census voluntary, and of his plans to enforce justice on criminals. But THEY would force law abiding citizens to fore go their right to own (never mind bear) arms, raise their children as they see fit, own private property, sell their own grain, teach their children about reproduction and married life or to speak their minds openly and freely.
Tony Clement has stated that Stats Can “likes to think” they are an independent agency, but report to him as minister. Same could be said of the CBC.
Guergis should have done the ethical thing and step down of her own accord. She does not deserve to be let back in. She put here career above her Party and above the best interests of her constituency.