Look like Question Period might be wrapping up…until 2006!

This is for MikeP who asked for a post on the latest status of the Grewal tapes. This CPC press release oughta take some wind out of the Libranos’ sails:

Jason Kenney, MP
Opposition Deputy House Leader
Calgary Southeast

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 9, 2005

News Release

Original Murphy/Dosanjh recordings clean and unaltered: expert

OTTAWA � Conservative Deputy House Leader Jason Kenney today released a letter to Conservative Leader Stephen Harper from Randy Dash, Senior Editor and Manager of Operations of dMAX Media in Ottawa. The letter summarizes Mr. Dash�s analysis of copies of original recordings supplied by Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal.

“Mr. Dash’s analysis of the recordings shows that they are clean and unaltered,” Kenney said. “These recordings speak for themselves. Now, it’s time for Paul Martin, Ujjal Dosanjh and Tim Murphy to begin answering the questions about their involvement in offering rewards to members of parliament in exchange for their votes. To this day, there has been no information produced by any of these individuals to dispute the facts on these recordings.”

Kenney pointed out that Mr. Dash, a professional audio engineer specializing in post-production work, is the only expert thus far to have examined copies of the original recordings, and invited others to do the same. “There has been a lot of conjecture about the authenticity of the recordings,” Kenney said. “None of this speculation is based upon fact, and would indicate that those speculating have not taken the time to listen to or examine the entire recordings, which are publicly available.”

Discussion?

Me: I’m sick of living in a country where being a thief is socially acceptable. Maybe the Saudis are onto something when they lop the hands off the bastards.

Father-in-law: That would never fly here.

Me: Oh? Why not?

Father-in-law: Think about it. There wouldn’t be a single Liberal left who could shake hands with his constituents.

Me: SPLORRRF!! [shooting tea out my nose]

“The not-so-generic ‘Libranos meeting an advertising agency executive in an Italian restaurant somewhere in Montreal’ post” (from SDA’s ‘biting Goldstein’s style’ conceptual series)
Ad executive: “Excuse me fellas, but I’m pinching here. Time for a trip to the little boy’s room!”
(Leaves phat envelope stuffed with unmarked $100 bills on the table.)
First Librano:
Second Librano (with Al Capone pinky ring):
First Librano:
Second Librano (with Al Capone pinky ring):
Third Librano:
Second Librano (with Al Capone pinky ring):
First Librano:
Third Librano:
Second Librano (playing with his Al Capone pinky ring): “…uh, someone’s gotta pick that up before he gets back, y’know.”

Angry in the Great White North watches as the same-sex marriage legislation is now being side-tracked, after promises to get the legislation through quickly before the summer break.
He notes that Irwin Cotler doesn’t seem to have the Prime Minister’s ear, or as Angry puts it:

Perhaps Irwin Cotler should spend more time listening to the echoes reverberating from his boss. Clearly Cotler’s opinions are not “resonating”.

Ouch!

On June 3, there was a motion put forward in the House of Commons by Mr. Richard Marceau, Bloc MP for Haute-Saint-Charles:

That the House denounce the recent remarks made by Mr. Justice Michel Robert stating that it is acceptable to discriminate on the basis of political opinion when appointing candidates to the federal judiciary and that it call on the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to create a special subcommittee with the mandate to examine the process for appointments to the federal judiciary and make recommendations for reform, with the primary goal of eliminating political partisanship from the process, by October 31, 2005.

Mr. Marceau went on to quote the data printed in the Montreal Gazette (and first revealed in this blog over a week earlier) that 60% of Quebec judicial appointments went to key Liberal supporters.
He suggests reducing the number of members of the selection committee appointed by the minister of justice be reduced from three out of the seven members, and that the ability of the minister to select an appointee who is not on the “highly recommended” list be constrained. But that’s just his recommendation — the motion calls for a subcommittee to study the problem.
Justice Minister Irwin Cotler then delivered a speech defending the current process, and I urge you to go and read it. It’s a good speech, but I think there is a blind spot here, in which the government refuses to acknowledge that the process has resulted in politicized appointments, something that Justice Michel Robert thinks is just fine. Mr. Cotler will not be voting in support of the motion:

Accordingly, because of this I will be voting against this motion, which I regard, taken as a whole, as being inappropriate, uninformed, unconstitutional and prejudicial to the independence of the judiciary and the responsibility of Parliament. Indeed, I am very concerned about the trafficking in innuendo in relation to the judiciary over the past few months.

The vote happened yesterday, and true to form, the Liberals voted against it, and the Bloc, the NDP, and the Conservatives vote for it, for a final vote of 157 to 124 in favour of the motion.
Of course, the motion is not binding, but as the fellow who first discovered the disturbing trend in judicial appointments, it’s nice to know that I’ve made some sort of impact. Now if we could actually make the government responsive to the wishes of the elected representatives, then the impact would actually matter.
[Cross posted to Angry in the Great White North]

With all the criticism levelled towards his government over Adscam, Toronto Tory notices that Paul Martin has his defenders, too.

If you read this article, you’ll see that he [John Bragg] said..
1) “Mr. Martin could still rise above the issue”
2) “This would not be seen as a national scandal but as a fallout from Quebec’s distinct political scene”
…and a direct quote:
3)”I don’t see how [the testimony] is an election issue … It’s an issue of the former administration.”
Of course you don’t think it’s an election issue, John. After all, the government’s been good to you. So good, in fact, that the government paid you $1,600,000 in 2003 through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency .
The purpose of ACOA, of course, is to provide funding to companies in Atlantic Canada that need funding to engage in research and create jobs. Oxford Frozen Foods was one of those needy companies. So needy, in fact, that they could afford to make significant donations to Paul Martin’s leadership campaign in the same year that they received massive ACOA funding. This article includes them in the “$50,000 club”, but I seem to remember them donating more. Unfortunately, the list of donors seems to have vanished.

The emerging pattern of vanishing government data was discussed here a few days ago. It all rather reminiscent of the way that the Elections Canada contribution search tool was “reconfigured” after bloggers started to publicize the charities and municipalities donating to the Liberals. (Bound By Gravity has an unofficial version available, made possible by the dedicated work of a number of private individuals.)
One can still dig up some of Paul Martin’s leadership campaign discslosures through Google caches and web archivers, and Mr. Bragg’s name shows up here.
Capturing some of this stuff before it’s scrubbed for good sounds like a project for someone who has free time this coming weekend. (Not me, I’m on my way out of town.) To be on the safe side, we should probably grab this data before it goes *poof*, too.

“The truth is not what you say, the truth is what you do,”

Well, finally – an honest Liberal.
Which means he had no choice but to leave the party.

Don Boudria isn’t content with throwing out faxes from critics – he wants them charged.

�Over the last 29 hours, my office has received no fewer than 828 faxes here on Parliament Hill. I have them here. I am willing to table them for the consideration of the Speaker if Mr. Speaker feels that this will help guide him in determining whether or not this is an abuse of what should legitimately be going on. […] In the case of my office, whereby we normally receive 40 to 50 faxes from constituents in a day, we have been able to receive a grand total of five over the last two days. The rest of the time the equipment is completely blocked. A group calling itself Focus on the Family, which has the website www.marriagematters.ca, is making it such that our telephone systems have been rendered inoperative this way.

He also wants parliament to control registration of domain names.
And change his diapers, no doubt.

A reader wrote a few days ago asking what this passage alludes to. On Tape 1 about half way through the 2d conversation between Grewal and Kalia (Monday morning), we find this exchange:

Kalia – You (GG) review, this is their need, why would they (PM and UD) deceive.
GG – Ok I will call you and tell you (my decision) later on,ok.
SK – I don’t think they will, he told me again and again. He (PM) promised Dr. (Gulzar) Cheema (consulate in Chandigarh, India) and he’ll meet that commitment after the legal problems are resolved. Cheema also told me that he can not discuss this more than this, he (Cheema) says every thing is OK with him.

I’ve uploaded a jpg file of a longer exerpt that places this portion in context in the extended entry.
There is this news item from the Tribune (India) on an upcoming appointment of former Liberal provincial MLA and federal candidate Cheema to Consul-General of the Canadian Consulate in Chandigarh. I wonder what he knows about this.
Phantom Observer wonders, too.

Continue reading →

I’ve been out of the house most of today, with my only news source Rawlco radio (generally worse than useless), so the one bona fide development I caught upon arriving back comes by way of Angry. The Ethics Commissioner has launched an official investigation into the Grewal tapes. Maybe there is hope that his own discomfort at being used as a bargaining chip in the very tapes he’s investigating will provide an incentive to break from his pattern in acting as an official Liberal party rubber stamp of approval.
A number of people have talked about “tipping points” for the Liberals. Well, I think that’s a pipe dream. You don’t “tip” a leech. But there may be a tipping point for Paul Martin, the final push by those intent on cutting loose the head so the body can slither away to survive.
This is a party that never got a chance to bury their dead from the Chretien-Martin wars. The wounds hadn’t begun to heal before the heavens opened up to pour Adscam on them. And while there may be glee and hope in some quarters that the accusations of tape tampering will save them to fight another day – these people aren’t idiots. They know as well as the rest of us what is on those tapes, and that the Prime Minister has been caught in a public lie. There are now signs of breaks in the ranks.
At a personal level, extended contraversy and dissent is hard enough on a leader – for a micro-manager like Paul Martin, having matters spiraling out of control on a weekly basis has got to be excrutiating and exhausting. He certainly appears out of sorts at times. Then, there’s a longtime habit of deflecting questions (“Did you have lunch with that man?”) directed at him in Question Period to other ministers.
This sometimes works at a tactical level, but as a general strategy, it’s a loser. At some point, a general understands the importance of rallying his troops and leading by example – of stepping into the fray and facing down the enemy come hell or high water, of taking his share of hits like a man.
Instead, Paul Martin uses his ministers as cannon fodder. They have to be tiring of it.
There seems to be more at work than mere lack of moral fibre or personal stubborness – I think there’s genuine fear. I don’t think it’s fear of the opposition, or fear of the media or the public. It’s the fear of a man who hears the unsheathing of a knives – at his rear. The dithering has always been coupled with stammering, and a strong tendency to avoid eye contact when pressed to answer questions. These days the stammering seems more pronounced, the eyes evade a little more wildly. To me – admittedly just a lowly Canadian who sees the PM only in brief television clips – Paul Martin sometimes looks downright spooked.
Then, there’s this Chantal H�bert Star piece on “whispers of rebellion” and a curious passage buried further down the page;

Never in the modern history of the province has a Quebec government been as unpopular as Premier Jean Charest’s; never in living memory have the federal Liberals enjoyed so little support.
Those are the kind of numbers that have government insiders and Parliament Hill observers alike cringing at the notion that Martin’s mettle could one day soon be tested in a real-life crisis involving the future of the country.
Those concerns were compounded by the performance of the Prime Minister in front of senior managers of the civil service earlier this week. Martin’s speech moved part of the audience but its emotional undertones left others uneasily wondering about his frailty

Emphasis mine.
Maybe it’s not my imagination.

This handy primer courtesy of the Blue Maple Leaf;

When Gurmant Grewal first notified the public that he had been offered a cabinet post, the liberal party, including the Prime Minister, denied that anyone had ever talked to Gurmant.
When Gurmant said that he had been recorded his conversations with liberal party members, the Prime Minister changed his story and said that liberal party members were negotiating with Gurmant, but that Gurmant initiated the negotiations. Paul Martin added that at no time did he ever agree to meet with the Conservative MP.
However, the audio tapes clearly show that the chief of staff for Prime Minister Paul Martin said, “The Prime Minister is prepared to talk to you directly both by phone and in person.”
During question period in the House of Commons Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper asked the Prime Minister why he said he was unwilling to meet with the Conservative MP when clearly he was.
Paul Martin answered by repeating his previous lie, that Gurmant initiated discussions with the liberal party. The Prime Minister also said that he gave specific instructions to senior party members that no offer could be given to entice a defection and at no time was the Prime Minister prepared to meet with the Conservative MP. Then Paul Martin ended his answer by saying, “obviously anyone would meet with somebody that was interested in crossing the floor.”
[…]
Paul Martin again changed his story by saying that he would not be willing to meet with the Conservative MP unless he joined the liberal party with no preconditions or offers from the liberals.

Now, go back to the beginning and review the first sentence;

When Gurmant Grewal first notified the public that he had been offered a cabinet post, the liberal party, including the Prime Minister, denied that anyone had ever talked to Gurmant.

There’s a problem that arises when you parse your words carefully to avoid saying what you’re saying…

“You have to be able to say that I did not make a deal. That’s very important. That’s why these kinds of deals are not made in that fashion.” – Ujjal Dosanjh

… you often end up saying it anyway.

A spirited debate in the comments of the “Wells post” from earlier today. Good points made on all sides, with Mr. Wells serving up a little fact-checking on the Sponsorship shutdown timeline at the expense of readers, in response to criticisms of media sloppiness in reporting. Fair enough.
The discussion reminded me of something I read elsewhere, though – a post at Conservative Life from last Friday, in response to Ralph Goodale’s testimony;

One week after Groupaction had it’s sponsorship program contracts frozen by the PWGS; and after the company had been referred to the RCMP for fraud investigation; Mr. Goodale’s department awarded Groupaction more than a million dollars in contracts to do recruitment ads for the Department of Defence.
And they say there isn’t an open competition. Why exclude a company from Department of Defence advertising dollars just because it was featured in the Auditor General’s Report, centered out in Question Period, and under investigation by the RCMP for fraud in sponsorship contracts?

Now, refresh my memory, people. Can any of you recall the scrum with reporters cornering Goodale on this? Were there blaring headlines across the front page of the Globe and Mail? Mike Duffy pontificating on how a government could justify awarding contracts to companies under police investigation?
Me, either. But they listened in rapture to his tale of refusing Chretien’s paltry little request.

I needed a p-word. Get over it. Via Dust My Broom; this quote from NDP aboriginal critic, Pat Martin from the Globe and Mail;

“I’ve gotten a very clear message from first nations leadership and from Liberal cabinet ministers that the money that was intended to be announced May 31 has been redirected to form part of the NDP budget. The government intends to pay for its commitments to the NDP with money that they had already committed to first nations,” he said. “If that’s the case, it’s even sleazier than I had ever imagined.”

I don’t know which is the bigger story here – the daily machinations of the Librano $pending $pree or Pat Martin’s undiagnosed attention deficit disorder.

“…we are a welcoming party we will do everything we can, obviously for us continuing to expend our base in B.C. and in prominent communities in this country is a political priority for us. It is a welcoming mat that has a lot of nice Comfy fur on it…”

– Tim Murphy, Chief of Staff for Prime Minister Paul Martin, from The Grewal Tapes

Regular reader Rusty Smith emails;

“After watching Paul Martin making denials in the House over the last two days, and then reading the Grewal transcripts today, I have come to the conclusion, crude as it might be, that the only difference between Martin and Chretien is that Martin has the ability to LIE out of BOTH sides of his mouth.”

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair.
I think that what we lack is the ability to properly translate the Librano dialect heard in the House of Commons into English. To rectify this problem, I have taken the liberty of creating an online translator: Simply enter any quote of Prime Minister Paul Martin that appears to deny Liberal attempts at bribery, as suggested by the Grewal tapes (ie:“No offer was made”) and click “TRANSLATE”.
(Max 60 characters)

TRANSLATE!

Over in this time zone, CTV News hasn’t been on yet, but commentors have been chattering all evening that Paul Martin was in the loop on the offers to tempt Grewal over to the Liberals.

Exclusive photo of Warren reacting to the news that he won’t have the Gomery Commission to kick around anymore.

If Kinsella’s hinting that the Chretien lawsuit may have legs, it’s probably the best thing that could happen for Conservative fortunes. A premature halt to proceedings would “rob” the large percentage of misinformed Canadians of the Martin-fueled false expectation that, at the end of the process, names would be named, blame laid and charges pursued.
After personally floating that misconception in his address to the nation, it would be delicious irony to watch Paul Martin struggle with his choices – to play “outraged victim” or “incompetent fool”, outsmarted by Chretien again?
My guess is that the electorate would settle on the latter.
In the meanwhile, though, moves are afoot to extend the authority of Gomery past the tight restrictions of paragraph K.

As of last Friday, it didn’t look as if the Conservatives were preparing to try to bring down the government again. On Thursday, it gave notice that the topic for tomorrow’s debate will be on a technical matter related to the terms of reference for the Gomery Inquiry.
The motion reads in full: “That this House call on the Government to amend section (k) of the Gomery Commission’s terms of reference to allow the Commissioner to name names and assign responsibility.”
Tory MP Diane Ablonczy has been hammering away at the government over this for weeks. She is upset that “clause k” in the terms of reference only allows Justice John Gomery to make recommendations aimed at preventing mismanagement of future advertising activities, but not say who is guilty.
According to Ms. Ablonczy, “Gomery can watch the surveillance camera and he can confirm the bank was robbed but he cannot disclose who grabbed the cash or who drove the getaway car.”
The Conservatives have until 6 p.m. Monday evening to place more motions on the Notice Paper. It must then decide which one it will use by 10 a.m. the day of the debate.

Stay tuned….
update In the comments, WK accuses me of seeing Black Helicopters – to which I can only reply, “get your own comments section, you pussy” – and now there is news today is that Chretien is dropping his legal challenge, which means he probably reads my blog and realized how his tactics would play into the hands of The Scary Stephen Harper Reform Alliance KKK Konservatives!
I really need to keep fingers off the keyboard sometimes.

One member turned out to be a dog that had been dead for five years. But he, too, was welcomed to the Liberal party.

Very interesting. So, the more recent appointment of a bitch to cabinet wasn’t a break from party policy, after all.