Tagged: Stephen Harper
Lest we forget Omar Khadr
Canadian-born child soldier and torture victim Omar Khadr, the only citizen of a western democracy still held in the US Government detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, went on trial this week in the first war crimes prosecution of a child soldier in US history.
Under Stephen Harper, Canada is the only western country not to ask for the release of its nationals from the illegal prison camp. The Harper government has flouted court orders requiring it to take action in support of Khadr’s civil rights.
The U.N. Special Representative on Children in Armed Conflict warned Monday that the legality of Khadr’s trial is doubtful, and his prosecution sets a dangerous precedent that endangers child soldiers worldwide. Radhika Coomaraswamy asked the United States to halt the trial.
Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program, sums up the background to Khadr’s prosecution:
Khadr, then 15 years old, was taken to Bagram near death, after being shot twice in the back, blinded by shrapnel, and buried in rubble from a bomb blast. He was interrogated within hours, while sedated and handcuffed to a stretcher. He was threatened with gang rape and death if he didn’t cooperate with interrogators. He was hooded and chained with his arms suspended in a cage-like cell, and his primary interrogator was later court-martialed for detainee abuse leading to the death of a detainee. During his subsequent eight-year (so far) detention at Guantánamo, Khadr was subjected to the “frequent flyer” sleep deprivation program and he says he was used as a human mop after he was forced to urinate on himself.
In closing arguments before the judge’s ruling, Khadr’s sole defense lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, told the judge, “Sir, be a voice today. Tell the world that we actually stand for what we say we stand for.”
The military judge trying Khadr, Col. Patrick Parrish, dismissed the motion without explanation.
It’s the economy, stupid
A column in the UK Guardian by BC writer Douglas Haddow predicts trouble for Canada’s economy if an upcoming referendum in California succeeds in legalizing pot this November.
[Y]ou may have noticed that Canadians have been behaving uncharacteristically uppity of late. This new-found swagger is a result of Canada having the dubious distinction of being the “least-bad-rich-world-economy” – an honour that would be rather unimpressive if the rest of the G8 wasn’t so persistently gloom-stricken….
But beyond the chorus of self-congratulatory backslapping coming from Ottawa, there has emerged a new and immediate threat of economic crisis that is being willfully ignored by Canadian politicians.
This November, in an effort to increase tax revenue, California will hold a referendum on whether or not to legalise the cultivation and use of marijuana. If passed, the change in law would be devastating to the Canadian economy, halting the flow of billions of dollars from the US into Canada and eventually forcing hundreds of thousands into unemployment.
BC Business estimates that province’s marijuana annual marijuana crop alone at $7.5 billion, most of it exported to the US. The magazine puts BC’s pot labor force at 250,000, while Nova Scotia’s entire labour force was less than twice that in July.
Ironically, support for legalisation is stronger in Canada than it is in California. Canada’s most prominent rightwing thinktanks have long supported legalisation, as do the majority of Canadians.
And yet… and yet…
But since the Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, formed a minority government in 2006, drug reform has been wiped off the agenda and the gears have grinded into reverse. In a bizarre twist that defies all rational thought, the Conservatives have decided they want to go in the opposite direction of the Canadian voter and emulate outdated Republican drug war policies that have already proved catastrophic in the US.
The Conservatives have proposed legislation that would introduce mandatory minimum prison sentences for marijuana producers. If passed, the legislation would result in spending billions in order to put more people in prison – the exact scenario that lead California into severe debt and towards legalisation. Even more stupefying, police in Montreal recently raided a “compassion centre” that legally distributes medicinal cannabis, and Conservative politicians have started calling for medicinal centres to be shut down across the country.
Ah, but the Harperites only masquerade as Conservatives. They actually represent the Authoritarian Party.
Vandalizing the census – cont.
Gus Reed really hates the long census questionnaire:
I admit to some disappointment that you have so totally and uncritically capitulated to the Forces of Social Planning on the census issue. Contrarians need to be contrary. Apart from the indisputably careless design of the long form (or the sloppy posting of an unedited version), there are a couple of things that rankle:
Many of the questions are sort of inherently interesting, but that doesn’t mean they should be asked. What government policy hinges on knowing the birthplace of my parents (#25)?
I like this statement attached to the race/ethnicity question: “This information is collected to support programs that promote equal opportunity for everyone to share in the social, cultural and economic life of Canada.” It would be good discipline to have such a statement attached to each question, or at least each section. If the statement is not succinct and understandable, then it’s a good indication that someone’s just fishing: “We want to know where your parents were born because your government is considering a system of preferential immigration based on national origin.”
More argument, and Contrarian rebuttal, after the jump – photos included!
Quote of the day
Tom Flanagan, the University of Calgary political scientist who once served as Stephen Harper’s chief of staff and who has a long history in the Reform, Canadian Alliance, and Conservative parties, tells Meagan Fitzpatrick of Postmedia News he is puzzled by the government’s decision on the census:
It’s just never been an issue in the Conservative movement. It just literally comes out of nowhere as far as I can see… I think it was an exercise in bad government to suddenly spring this on the public without any previous discussion, no consultation at all. You don’t deal with the public that way in a democracy….
They are alienating a lot of people who have supported the government and would like to continue supporting the government, people who are fundamentally Conservatives but see this as just bad government,” said Flanagan. “It’s not clear to me what they’re going to pick up from this politically and they’re irritating a lot of people who would like to be their friends.
I would go further. Like the Fall 2008 mini-budget and the savage attacks on diplomat Richard Colvin, the census debacle reinforces quiet doubts among middle-of-the-road Canadians about the course Harper will chart if they are ever imprudent enough to give him a majority.
Or to put it another way, if Frank McKenna were their leader, the Liberals would be over 50% in the polls, not under 24%.
Letter of resignation
The libertarian devotion to individual freedom that led the Harper Government to kill Statistic Canada’s mandatory long form census questionnaire apparently did not extend to the Chief Statistician of Canada’s letter of resignation.
Munir A. Sheikh posted a note about his resignation on the agency’s website late Wednesday night. The Harper Libertarians redacted it Thursday morning, replacing it with an uninformative generic message.
Here, for the record, thanks to Kady O’Malley, is the full text of the Chief Statistician’s censored message to Canadians:
July 21, 2010
OTTAWA — There has been considerable discussion in the media regarding the 2011 Census of Population. There has also been commentary on the advice that Statistics Canada and I gave the government on this subject.
I cannot reveal and comment on this advice because this information is protected under the law. However, the government can make this information public if it so wishes.
I have always honoured my oath and responsibilities as a public servant as well as those specific to the Statistics Act.
I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census.
It can not.
Under the circumstances, I have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister. I want to thank him for giving me the opportunity of serving him as the Chief Statistician of Canada, heading an agency that is a symbol of pride for our country.
To you, the men and women of Statistics Canada – thank you for giving me your full support and your dedication in serving Canadians. Without your contribution, day in and day out, in producing data of the highest quality, Canada would not have this institution that is our pride.
I also want to thank Canadians. We do remember, every single day, that it is because of you providing us with your information, we can function as a statistical agency. I am attaching an earlier message that I sent to Canadians in this regard. In closing, I wish the best to my successor. I promise not to comment on how he/she should do the job. I do sincerely hope that my successor’s professionalism will help run this great organization while defending its reputation.
Munir A. Sheikh
If the Fraser Institute operated park benches
The only voice I’ve heard in support of the Harper government’s census vandalism is that of the libertarian Fraser Institute, which believes data of the kind produced by the mandatory long form should be available only to those who can afford to pay to gather it. Coincidentally, German artist Fabian Brunsing has produced a whimsical video that hints at the dystopic world we might achieve if the Fraserites get their way (or Harper gets a majority):
Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan
What Cameron should not learn from Harper
One hates to discourage any American foray in Canadian political analysis, but Fivethirtyeight.com [bad link fixed], the normally reliable US political blog that draws on the statistical tools of Sabermetrics, badly bollixed one such attempt yesterday.
The website, which is predicting a near Conservative majority in today’s British election, carries an article by research assistant Thomas Dollar, urging Tory Leader David Cameron to follow Stephen Harper’s example and “Go Big or Go Home.” Moneyquote:
Harper’s 2008 budget would have cut Federal funding of parliamentary elections–to the benefit of the Conservatives. All opposition parties formed an ABC coalition–Anyone but Conservative–to defeat this. The defeat of a budget resolution is considered a Motion of No Confidence, which would have triggered new elections only six weeks after the previous ones. Harper resolved this crisis by having Governor General Michaëlle Jean prorogue the parliament — effectively locking it out until late January 2009. In the meantime, Harper was able to secure Liberal backing for procedural votes in exchange for scrapping the budget resolution.
Far from “going big,” Harper has stayed in office mainly by putting water in the Reform wine yearned for by his base. The Fall 2008 budget statement was the only time he tried to govern as if he had a majority—and Parliament promptly smacked him down. Contrary to Dollar’s analysis, a confidence defeat six weeks after the election would not have triggered another election; Precedent would have required Gov. Gen. Michëelle Jean to let the Liberals try to form a government. The opposition motion forced Harper into a frantic retreat, featuring an abuse of prorogation that Jean unwisely acquiesced to in defiance of most Parliamentary experts. The right wing nostrums that triggered the crisis were jettisoned, but gave voters a cautionary taste of how Harper would govern if they ever were unwise enough to give him a real majority.
The Harper government’s bully-boy treatment of Richard Colvin, a career diplomat who raised concerns about Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees, reinforced voter fears, and Harper’s upward march in the polls has stalled—perhaps permanently.
If there is any pedagogy for Cameron in this, it is the opposite of that proposed by Dollar. A minority PM should proceed cautiously, treating the hung election as a voter mandate to “make Parliament work.”
Why this prorogation is different
Defenders of Harper’s three-month prorogation lean heavily on the talking point that Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau both used prorogation without provoking a fuss. Contrarian reader C. Leonhardt thinks the analogy is flawed:
Both these prime ministers had a majority in the House when they prorogued Parliament. If their decisions had been challenged, they would have won the vote in the House. Harper’s party does not hold a majority of the seats in the House. He would have lost the vote. To claim that his actions repesent past practice is false. At this point one man controls this country.
The last line overstates things, but the distinction is important. Both times Harper used prorogation to thwart the will of a Parliament whose majority opposed him and his policies.
Taking dictation from the PMO
An end of year column by the Globe’s John Ibbitson proclaims Harper’s prorogation of Parliament “a travesty… [but] devilishly clever.”
There’s an old maxim that no one ever hears what comes before the “but.” True to form, the thrust of Ibbitson’s column is to promote admiration for Harper’s cleverness, not mild regret at his abasement of transparency, accountability, and parliamentary supremacy – things the right once pretended to care about. Quote:
A senior government official, speaking on background, insisted that calculations concerning the Afghan detainees controversy played no part in the decision.
Rather, said the official, the government wanted to give itself time and breathing room to think through how to manage the economy as it emerges from recession and to put in place a long-term strategy for balancing the budget.
What conceivable reason would Ibbitson have for granting some Harper functionary anonymity from which to launch this risible proposition? The spinner contributes no novel facts or otherwise unobtainable information – merely a partisan talking point. Ibbitson doesn’t even pretend his source’s job would be at risk if his identity were revealed.
A columnist for the national newspaper should not be taking dictation from the PMO.
“Not my department,” says Harper
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s insistence that the torture of prisoners Canada hands over to Afghan authorities is a problem for Afghanistan, not Canada, calls to mind Tom Leher’s lyric about rocket scientist Wernher von Braun’s apparent indifference to the consequences of his work on Germany’s World War II V2 rocket:
Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
‘That’s not my department’, says Wernher von Braun.
In fact, as Bob Rae points out in the same Globe and Mail article, transferring prisoners with the expectation they may be tortured is a violation of the Geneva Conventions – a war crime, in other words.
The blithe indifference to torture shown by both the Harper and Martin governments is a marked departure from the international standards Canadians are accustomed to upholding. But it pales by comparison with the US approach. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald (here) and the New York Times (here) have chilling recapitulations of the US torture and subsequent seven-year imprisonment at Guantanamo, without charge, of Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, during which he was interrogated not about terrorism but about Al Jazeera’s operations.
Says Greenwald:
The due-process-free imprisonment of this journalist by the U.S. government was ignored almost completely by the American media (other than Nicholas Kristof), even as it righteously obsessed on the far shorter imprisonment of journalists by countries such as Iran and North Korea (hey, look over there at those tyrannical countries – they imprison our journalists!!!!!). Aside from al-Hajj, we’ve imprisoned numerous other journalists without charges in Iraq — and continue to this day to do so — including ones who work for Reuters and the Associated Press.
