In his game effort to wish away the cheque-writing scandal, Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor posts a telling email from an anonymous Harper MP: When we formed govt the crats stopped bringing cheques to announcements & we were FORCED to cough up the $ to buy our own. Specifically, at [a government department I was involved with] the crats used to like to be in the photo ops giving out chqs, as though it was coming from them. They detested Conservatives being photographed handing out chqs, so they stopped bringing the chqs – when they even bothered to show up for announcements....

20 October, 2009

[UPDATES appended at end] Contrarian reader SL shares our ink-stained correspondent's distaste for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal's malodorous apology to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She wonders why departing Harper Communications Director Kory Teneycke included the precise timing of his decision to resign so prominently in his resignation talking points. The second paragraph of the CBC story reads: Teneycke said he told Harper just after Canada Day and before the G8 meeting in Italy earlier this month that he was going to step down. That would be, uh, just before the Prime Minister did or did not consume the sacramental Host at Romeo LeBlanc's...

30 July, 2009
An ink-stained wretch (and contrarian reader) offers a few tart observations on the Telegraph-Journal's strangely unelaborated apology.
I find something stinking with the Telegraph-Journal's wafer story. They bent over backwards to apologize and apparently the editor and publisher paid the price. But I haven't seen any reporting that took this any further. Did the Catholic officials cited in the original stories who apparently were so mightily offended by Harper's alleged act change their tunes? Who got the quotes from the church people? What contact was there between the PMO and the TJ? Did higher ups in the church get involved? God (literally) knows.
29 July, 2009
SJ Tele-Journal logoThe Saint John paper that broke the Wafergate scandal now says there is "no credible basis" for its story. Moneyquote:
The story stated that a senior Roman Catholic priest in New Brunswick had demanded that the Prime Minister's Office explain what happened to the communion wafer which was handed to Prime Minister Harper during the celebration of communion at the funeral mass. The story also said that during the communion celebration, the Prime Minister "slipped the thin wafer that Catholics call 'the host' into his jacket pocket." There was no credible support for these statements of fact at the time this article was published, nor is the Telegraph-Journal aware of any credible support for these statements now.
28 July, 2009

[caption id="attachment_1459" align="alignleft" width="615" caption="Screenshot: coincidental tweets."][/caption] Contrarian has fully recovered from the fleeting (and uncharacteristic) sympathy we felt for Prime Minister Harper over the Case of the (Allegedly) Missing Host. We hereby revert to our customary stance: a plague on all their holier-than-thou houses. Let's review: A  Catholic vicar general complained that the Prime Minister has committed not just sin but scandal by failing to consume the host during holy communion at Romeo LeBlanc's funeral. When the press dutifully reported this, PM spokesman Dimitri Soudas (he of the misattributed Ignatieff non-quote) insisted Harper had indeed consumed the host, whereupon more protectors...

11 July, 2009

Is Peter MacKay channelling John Buchanan? Is Stephen Harper keen to cultivate a second Danny Williams in Atlantic Canada? Those are two possible explanations of the Harper Government's mean-spirited, post-election reversal of its commitment to help fund the $40-million, four-rink arena planned for Bedford. The Conservative about-face presents an early test for Darrell Dexter's Government. Last month, the feds assured HRM officials that the project was on track to receive $15 million in infrastructure funding from Ottawa's stimulus program. The NDP Government likewise committed $15 million, and HRM was to finance the remainder. Last Friday, Ottawa abruptly informed city hall it no longer...

09 July, 2009

Contrarian reader Jocelyne Marchand makes a nice distinction: The bishop should not be talking to the press about this; he should be talking to the priest who handed Harper the host, knowing full well  he was a Protestant heretic.  But then again, Catholic bishops seem to let their priests do any thing they want—even if they might get caught . When push comes to shove, does any of it really matter ? Are we that hard up for scandal ?...

08 July, 2009

On the rare occasions when circumstances force contrarian to participate in religious rites, our unfamiliarity with the rules often begets panic. Thus contrarian sympathizes with Prime Minister Harper's apparent befuddlement when Monsignor André Richard, Bishop of the Diocese of Moncton, offered him the communion wafer during Romeo LeBlanc's funeral. What's a Protestant pol to do? As a non-Catholic, Harper is ineligible to receive communion. But having taken the wafer, which, upon consecration for the Eucharist, becomes the body and blood of Christ, he can't just ditch it. A YouTube video appears to show Harper slipping the host into his suit jacket...

08 July, 2009
Talk to almost anyone in the federal civil service, and before long, they'll bemoan the way Harper has  concentrated power in the Prime Minister's office. If Pierre Trudeau viewed backbenchers as "nobodies," Harper appears to lump cabinet ministers and senior civil servants in the same contemptible category. The Toronto Star's James Travers recently called for "a saint to roll back all the power hoarded in the PMO." In today's Hill Times, W.T. Stanbury, retired professor of Commerce and Business Administration at UBC, proposes seven steps for doing so. Quotes after the jump.
06 July, 2009
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