Month: September 2005

Justice John Gomery has said today that his final report will be delayed by six weeks due to the number of briefs received. The second report is expected in late February with the preliminary report expected November 1st.

The first report will detail who’s at fault and the second report will detail suggestions for the future prevention of corruption.

In my opinion, this may translate into good luck for the Liberals as an early April election would be more temperate for uneasy Liberals to go vote for Paul Martin’s embattled party. If the election had been held in late February instead, Liberal voters would have been less likely to make the trek to the polls, while Conservatives should be able to count on their determined base no matter the season.

I envision three scenarios: the government could fall before or after the report to straddle possible election dates around November 1st or the election will happen when Paul Martin calls it in late February after Gomery’s second report. Of course, the Liberals would prefer an apparent Tory/Bloc collapse of the government for an election before the first Gomery report is released. The Conservative’s ideal election date is about three weeks after November 1st (time enough for the Gomery details to sink in).

While the parties are sure to detail their plans for implementing Gomery’s recommendations if an election is called for early April, a building issue will be energy no matter when the election is called. One major fight will be whether tax cuts on fuel (Conservative plan), or nationalization of the oil/gas industry (Liberal plan) is more appropriate for providing relief to the Canadian energy consumer. This will add to the acerbic nature of what is sure to be an intensely vicious election campaign. Of course, nationalization is merely conjecture at this point but we’ve already seen evidence of Liberal trial balloons (with the Leger Leger poll for example).

However, the Gomery report is going to be the central issue, whenever the election is called. The Liberals and Conservatives will try to sell themselves to the public as the best equipped to implement change. However, even if I try to form a non-partisan view, I cannot imagine how the Liberals will appear better suited for the task.

One thing is for sure as a result of today’s announcement. Gomery’s delay will have Liberal and Tory strategists adjusting their long- and short-term plans.

As for the NDP, their decision will come down to whether they want to be Liberal liters or whether they want to increase their seat total in the 39th Parliament.

Dr. Mark Mullins is the executive director of the Fraser Institute and he showed up to give a great speech at Peter Jaworski’s Liberty Summer Seminar. Mullins speaks about the independence of the institute and its importance on advancing the research that the Fraser institute provides for the Canadian public.

The Institute measures a myriad of topics that are important in the current national discussion from healthcare to school report cards to trade and globalization. The Fraser Institute website itself is full of valuable information as many of the thinktank’s studies are available free online.

The Institute is an unequivocal cornerstone of the conservative movement in Canada and if you want to get a good idea about what makes your fellow conservatives (or your ideological opponents) tick, then give this podcast a listen.

Remember, you don’t need an iPod to listen to the Blogging Tories podcasts. Just turn up your computer speakers and download the MP3 using podcast aggregator software (can be download here).

This podcast is available on the Blogging Tories podcasting feed (podcasting instructions are here)

Or, you can download the MP3 directly.

A Blogging Tories programming note: Be sure to check out the podcast feed for interviews with three Conservative Party of Canada MPs that I added to the feed yesterday. The interviews were conducted by CPC Energy. The three MPs are Bradley Trost, Michael Chong and James Moore.

Late last week I made a mistake denying that Carol Jamieson was a member of the Conservative Party of Canada. However, there was no mistake that the Globe and Mail was intellectually dishonest for labeling Ms. Jamieson as a “party organizer” implying that she had the consent of the Conservative Party to organize.

Specifically, it seems that Globe scribe Gloria Galloway has been depending on a certain type of CPC “party organizer” for a while now. Funny, whenever Ms. Galloway writes a story about Stephen Harper, the knives comes out along with the anonymous “party organizer”.

First, remember how the Jamieson quote was framed by Galloway in the “shakeup” story last week (Sept. 7):

Those who have been fired “are either people who are dissenting about what Harper is doing or they are former Progressive Conservatives,” said Carol Jamieson, a party organizer in Toronto.

“It looks to me right now that within four weeks, the entire structure will be Canadian Alliance.”

Now, let’s look at some other stories that Galloway has been printing. This one even depends on the anonymous tipster for the headline “Tory insiders upset with party leadership”

“There is a lot of discontent with the turn of things. People are saying it’s time to replace the leader,” said one key Conservative organizer in Toronto who, like many others, asked not to be named because it could hurt his status in the party.

Dissatisfaction with Mr. Harper’s leadership “started expanding with the Belinda [Stronach] defection and then it continued to expand when we didn’t get our [confidence] vote passed [on May 19] and a lot of people in the party are tired of waiting,” said one organizer, who also asked to remain anonymous.

Now consider this quote from an article from Galloway on May 7, 2005:

“What I see is that the general electorate does not like Harper. And they look for things for him to do or say that justify their gut feeling that they have about him,” one high-placed Tory organizer says.

“This is a guy whose entire life in politics has been based on negativity so far,” the organizer says. He’s “cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. He doesn’t seem to like people, he doesn’t seem to like to go out and talk to people. He’s so weird how he approaches things.”

We have already established that Carol Jamieson is not a “party organizer” as Gloria Galloway portrays her in the September 7th article. However, whenever Ms. Galloway writes an article questioning the leadership of Stephen Harper, she bases her entire argument upon anonymous quotes from (one or more) “party organizers” sometimes labeled “from Toronto” (like Ms. Jamieson).

I wonder how many times Galloway has used Ms. Jamieson in the past (labeling her an anonymous party organizer from Toronto).

At worst, Galloway is using the same non-credible (as a party organizer) source to make a continuous argument to millions of non-decided voters against the leadership of Stephen Harper.

At best, Galloway bases party criticism of Stephen Harper on a number of anonymous sources, the validities of which are called into question because a) they are anonymous and b) Galloway lists Jamieson as a “party organizer”.