Tag: maxime bernier

Liberal boulevard lined by glass houses

while a boy named Iggy throws stones.

CTV (May 25th, 2008):

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has embarrassed this country and it should be for the last time, says Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

The House of Commons resumes Monday after a week-long break. The official opposition is expected to ask Bernier to resign from his cabinet post after the minister made an empty-handed promise to an aid agency.

How soon Michael Ignatieff forgets.

National Post (October 11th, 2006):

MONTREAL – Michael Ignatieff, the front-runner in the race for the federal Liberal leadership, has accused Israel of committing “a war crime” during its conflict with Hezbollah last summer.In an interview on a widely watched Quebec talk show, Mr. Ignatieff apologized for comments in August when he told a newspaper he was “not losing sleep” over an Israeli bombing that killed dozens of civilians in the Lebanese village of Qana.

“It was a mistake. I showed a lack of compassion. It was a mistake and when you make a mistake like that, you have to admit it,” he told the French-language Radio-Canada program Tout le monde en parle.

On the topic of Maxime Bernier’s ex

Scandal period in Ottawa continued today as the Liberal Party, rather than ask questions about policy, grilled the government on their latest tangential interest: Minister Bernier’s ex-girlfriend.

The minister, who was to be shuffled from Industry to Foreign Affairs on a sunny August day last year brought a date when he was sworn in at the usually prim and proper residence of the Governor General, Rideau Hall. Julie Couillard then made headlines for her risqué outfit rather than the headlines she’s making now as the ex-girlfriend of a murdered biker-turned-informant.

Conservative partisans have been quick to dismiss this latest attack by Liberals as none of the nation’s concern, especially as it relates to governance. On the matter of private issues and personal relationships, I would agree. Some Liberals/BQ note that in the nightmare scenario this could have represented a significant security breach. On matters of security, we should always be mindful of such worst-case, though unlikely, hypotheticals. Not that the minister would reveal state secrets, but Bernier – knowingly or not – as some of the more imaginative observers have suggested, may have put himself in a position where he could have been blackmailed. Though, the unaware minister should not be faulted for letting his guard down as he tried to proceed to do what most of us try to do – have a personal life.

Despite this age of Google and Facebook, is one really expected to do this sort of negative vetting of all of their relationships (both potential and actual)? Call me old-fashioned, but any vetting that needs to be done is done during the dating process before two people tie the knot and such vetting is not related matters of national security. Is the minister responsible for the security screening of his dates, or is this the responsibility of those that protect cabinet? PCO has stated that they do not vet family members and spouses let alone romantic interests of cabinet ministers. Therefore, if Canada’s security services would not presume to screen a love interest, what’s the story here beyond politically-motivated hysteria induced by past hypotheticals?

Liberal partisans will latch onto this and show their grave concern for Canada’s national security, but on more broader and existential matters of Canada’s security, they fall silent, or worse, they advocate absurd ideas such as bringing Taliban/al Queda prisoners to Canada to be detained. When you ask Canadians which party is the party they associate with national security, defense and being tough on crime, it is in fact the most overwhelming of answers in focus groups; Canadians by and large choose Conservatives over Liberals on these issues. This is not a winning story for Liberals as Canadians aren’t particularly interested in the secret (private) lives of cabmins.

However, the national media, which is usually loathe to report on the personal lives of Ottawa politicos, is currently experiencing a catharsis of staid Canadian journalistic repression long ago released by their shameless UK counterparts that stain politicians by the barrelful of ink in that country’s tabloids. Therefore, as one seasoned political reporter told me this evening, after this initial brouhaha, the media will focus on other things. According to my journalist friend, this is the ‘one day story’.

Summary questions:
1) Can we reasonably expect our cabinet ministers to negatively vet their personal relationships to the degree that the Liberals demand?

2) How relevant is the past of a personal short-term relationship to the business of government, especially now that it has passed without incident?

3) Any personal relationship can potentially provide loose and exploitable ends at any number of degrees of separation. Does an MPs father have a gambling problem? Did a Minister’s foster brother have connections to a Toronto street gang? Are Denis Coderre and Paul Martin friends of Claude Boulay?

4) If Canada’s security services do not screen or do background checks on all of the past and present relationships of senior cabinet ministers, should they? If it is necessary, cabinet ministers ought to be afforded this level of protection due to their offices, not be liable for the lack of it.

5) Will the opposition start asking the government questions concerning governance?

6) Can we go back to respecting the private lives of politicos? This story hardly merited the breach of what was and should still be an Ottawa news media tradition.

UPDATE: Chantal Hébert writes,

Julie Couillard has no criminal record. She has never been charged with criminal activity and some of Quebec’s crack investigative reporters failed to find evidence that she has had links with bikers since a 1999 divorce.

It is just about unprecedented for a Quebec party to venture into the private life of a political opponent in this fashion. The Bloc, under Lucien Bouchard or even under previous incarnations of a more serene Duceppe, would not have touched a story that so barely passes the test of public interest. Nor, for that matter, would a Liberal party that had not lost its opposition rudder.

But desperate times, it seems, call for desperate moves.

UPDATE: Though it is topical, comments describing or speculating on the unpublished details of the private/social lives of other politicians will not be approved.

CPC keeps pressure up on CBC, shifts focus to Liberals

Conservative Party is keeping up the pressure on the state-funded broadcaster and asks some tough questions for the Liberals:

LIBERALS MUST COME CLEAN ON CBC COLLUSION ALLEGATIONS

December 17, 2007

CBC must also explain disturbing pattern of anti-Conservative bias

OTTAWA – The Liberal Party of Canada must reveal the scope of the party’s alleged collusion with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on House of Commons committee business, and explain the party’s denials of collusion given contradictory statements from senior members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the CBC itself.

“The Liberal Party must reveal the full extent of its cooperation with the taxpayer-financed CBC,” said Conservative M.P. Dean Del Mastro. “And Liberals must explain why they�re the only organization denying the collusion allegations.”

According to former Liberal Cabinet Minister Jean Lapierre, now a political reporter with the TVA network questions asked by Liberal members of the House ethics committee on December 13th were “written by the CBC” (CTV Newsnet, December 13, 2007). CTV’s Mike Duffy later added that Liberal researcher Jay Ephard admitted that the CBC and Liberals worked together on the Liberals’ committee questions (Mike Duffy Live, December 13, 2007). And now, according to Canadian Press, the CBC has launched its own internal investigation into what it described as “inappropriate” practices (Canadian Press, December 14, 2007).

Yet the Liberal Party’s has denied that there was collusion between his party and the CBC and called the allegations a “total fabrication” (National Post, December 15, 2007).

“Are the Liberals saying that Jean Lapierre, Mike Duffy and the CBC itself are fabricating their stories?” asked Del Mastro. “More importantly do Liberals believe that it is appropriate for their party to actively collude with the country’s public broadcaster?”

While Conservatives welcomed the launch of an internal CBC investigation into the alleged Liberal-CBC collusion, the party remains concerned about a disturbing pattern of anti-Conservative bias from the public broadcaster. During the 2004 election, the network was caught soliciting anti-Conservative participants for a town hall-style meeting. And the network admitted “regret” in 2006 after airing a report that negatively portrayed Stephen Harper by using out-of-context footage.

“The CBC receives over a billion dollars a year from taxpayers and is there to serve all Canadians,” said Del Mastro. “Canadians who want fair and balanced reporting are going to be asking some tough questions about why the CBC was working with the Liberal Party on parliamentary business.”

Some people have been saying, “but reporters suggest questions with committees all the time”.

The most striking problem with this instance is that the questions under Conservative complaint here are questions that go beyond the scope of the committee’s scope, which is actually defined as: “Study of the Mulroney Airbus Settlement”. Suddenly questions about Maxime Bernier and the wireless spectrum auction came up.

The Prime Minister instructed his caucus to put a freeze on communications with Mulroney so that the opposition could not suggest or imply that the former Prime Minister, who continues to be under fire, is linked to the current crop of Conservatives.

It is interesting that it was not the opposition that was the genesis of the attempt to link Mulroney to Harper, but allegedly it was the CBC.

The Liberals, however, are ultimately to blame if this report of “collusion” is true. That party and their MP Pablo Rodriguez were the ones to channel the CBC’s request(s) into the committee. To the CBC (and the reporter following the wireless spectrum story), the sole opportunity to question the former Prime Minister may have proved too tempting to pass up, even if it meant inappropriate influence of a committee far beyond “the airbus settlement” to “Mulroney and everything Conservative”. Conservative committee members termed Rodriguez’s line of questioning as “a fishing expedition”. The Chair (also a Liberal) was quite liberal himself in his ruling in allowing the unrelated questions to continue.

What is the extent of influence of the CBC on the Liberal Party? How high does Trudeau’s party jump when the public broadcaster tells it to?

Frankly, this wouldn’t be a scandal in the eyes of the CPC if the Liberals had laughed at the CBC’s request/demand and had proceeded by staying within the mandate of the parliamentary committee on access to information, privacy and ethics. The Liberals were ultimately the precipitators of this scandal by showing that they could be influenced to brutally stretch the committee’s scope. It is also troubling to know that the CBC itself is party to the political process on the Hill.

Here are the questions from CBC that Jean Lapierre alleged (and Jay Ephard, a Liberal researcher confirmed) were given to the Liberals to ask: