All bark, no bite Baird

"With our action today we're seeking to try and reform the group so that it can be more successful in following its main mandate," Baird said. "What I know won't work, what I know won't be good for this conference, is if countries like Canada re-main quiet and go along to get along."

Uh-huh.  Yeah.  With no other country in agreement with banning nasties from such conferences, the UN is going to tremble and change its mandate for Canada.  Not the old Canada that carried some weight, but the new harper Canada with its pretense at principled stances when its doing nothing more than engaging in domestic politics while on the international stage.

I suppose harper would have banned Russia from the cold war resolution talks.

You have to engage the nasties in talks, or international meetings banning them simply become exercises in planning the next war against them.  It implies that words are useless, reason and diplomacy go nowhere, and only relentless bombing and killing will get the nasties to be nice.

And will the nasties just sit in a corner wearing a dunce hat?  Not likely.

Other concerns among diplomats focus on the potential "precedent" the Canadian boycott sets. While the West considers North Korea to be run by a rogue regime, countries like Cuba and Venezuela - as constant critics of the United States and Western capitalism - may in turn start to boycott U.S. or other Western chairmanships, some at the UN suggest.

harper's  divisive politics:  now international.

Meet the creepy cuckoo bird.

Oh...you already know him.

The cuckoo bird places one of its eggs in the nest of another bird species.  The egg hatches and the chick takes over, tricking the mother into feeding it even when the chick outsizes her and runs her ragged.  The cuckoo chick will also push out all of the mother's own eggs so that it doesn't have to compete with anyone else and gets everything  - food, shelter, protection for itself alone.

Judged by human standards, the cuckoo is not a nice bird.  It wants it all and doesn't give a damn who gets hurt.

Steve reminds me of the cuckoo bird.  Dons a blue sweater vest to try and trick us into thinking he's warm and fuzzy, cuddles stunned looking kittens in photos that only make him look creepy, steals policy ideas from other parties, plagiarizes speeches, engages in photo-op after photo-op in an attempt to suck off some of the goodwill reserved for the main subject of the photo, commandeers the ideas and efforts of others, such as red shirt day, usurps parliamentary and traditional roles as when he gos ahead of the GG to take the military salute due that office...

He hopes the things that Canadians warm to will rub off on the superficial image he presents, tricking us into warming to him.

Most of us are smarter than the mother birds of other species that the cuckoo seeks to trick, and this latest nauseating attempt to steal what isn't his in a bid to pretend he is oh so wonderful won't work either.

In fact, it may bring him trouble.

Eight days ago, in Welland, Ont., Stephen Harper made an apparently innocuous announcement that’s a harbinger of much more to come: He unveiled the creation of the Prime Minister’s Volunteer Awards to recognize 17 people each year from non-profit organizations across Canada.

The GG already has volunteer awards, and they are non-partisan awards.  With Baird co-ordinating this new PR stunt, you can bet the list of volunteers given awards will face an entirely different set of criteria.  It's marketing, folks.

But this is the Harper government, controlling all as none before it, eager to find political advantage in everything the government does. Thus it’s a logical extension of this controlling urge to want the Prime Minister to be associated with the awards and the honours in the minds of the recipients. And so it’s logical, with this objective in mind, to have Mr. Baird, the über-partisan cabinet minister, provide guidance for the internal review.

It’s creepy, if you think about it, that any prime minister would even think about meddling with the non-partisan honours and awards system just so he and his office (and party) might be more closely associated with it.

Creepy indeed.  And sleezy. 

That explains why the CONs do nothing on the environmental files

Cracking down on water pollution from raw sewage is a "morality" issue that must be done in partnership between governments, federal Environment Minister John Baird said Monday..."It is not an environmental issue," he said Monday. "It is a morality question to be dumping ... what essentially is raw sewage into our lakes, rivers, oceans and streams."

So no need to spend money preventing pollution of our water.  Just deliver a good, stern lecture on morality.

Somehow, I don’t think Baird has mastered morality enough to lecture anyone on it.

Because doing nothing takes practice

Mr. Bramley (director of climate change at the Pembina Institute) said, however, that although Mr. Baird's term as environment minister was not as successful as he had hoped, he's happy that Mr. Baird was appointed the interim minister because he already knows the file.

And he sure knows how to implement harper’s agenda on climate change.  Make sure Canada does nothing and make sure Canada does what it can to slow international agreements.

So it really helps that Baird knows the file, because this may come up again -

The federal government raised the prospect that northern aboriginals might seek more money if countries signed a climate-change treaty in Copenhagen last year, new documents show.  Officials at Foreign Affairs flagged the issue in a memo to Canada's former climate-change envoy before a major United Nations conference in the Danish capital.

“There is a possible link between an agreement at Copenhagen on international funding for adaptation and an increased demand for funding by indigenous groups in the Arctic,” the document says.       

Have to know ahead of these tiresome summits what exactly is at risk for harper’s Canada.  Have to know what you want to block, after all.

The recurring nightmare that is John Baird

Maybe Taseko will open that gold mine after all.

It's not like we actually have an Environmental Minister.

Those oh so powerful CONs

Those powerful CONs

Changing the meaning of words.

Take the word “elite.”

1 - a small group of people who have a lot of advantages and keep the most power and influence
2 - the best or most skillful people in a group

Now it seems elite has a double-plus-bad, but very nebulous meaning which now allows it to be widely applied without explanation to anyone or anything the CONs feel threatened by:

"I share the disappointment of many of my colleagues that people who had fought so long, so hard, so passionately against the registry are now feeling the pressure from the two Toronto leaders, Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Layton," Baird said.  "We're all accountable. If we make clear and unambiguous promises in our constituencies and then face pressure from Toronto elites, [MPs are] accountable for that."

Remember the labeling by Harper of artists as elites?  Or of Dion and Ignatieff in attack ads?

The word has been tossed about by the CONs in negative context so often, it has joined the pool of other terms generally meaning some vague form of not-good, or even enemy of the people. 

Other words twisted and reduced by the CONs to offer similar vague, negative tone: academic, cosmopolitan.

It’s the dumbing down of language for political control over a population.  Newspeak.


Of course, the Harper edition of Newspeak needs some fine tuning as concerns the word elite.  In some instances, it still holds positive connotations: military elite, elite forces, elite squad.  I guess if you have a gun and are sanctioned by the government to use it, being elite is a good thing.

Trust Rick Mercer to point out Baird’s dishonest use of the word:

"He has a chauffeur! He's beating people up for being elite?"

and:

"You wanna know what elite is? It's John Baird in a tuxedo, going to the National Arts Centre with the Prime Minister's wife on his arm, complaining that the food is not good enough. That's John Baird right there in a nutshell." 

Now does this post make me a bolshevick?

If you gots nothin’ ta hide, why ya worried?

Right, wingnuts?

Or how about: If’n ya didn’t do nuthin’, what’d ya sweatin’ over?

Or how about Steve’s and Johnnie’s own words:
“We promised to stand up for accountability and to change the way government works,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  “Canadians elected this government to deliver on that commitment and today the Federal Accountability Act has received Royal Assent.  From this day on, accountability in government is the law and we can all be proud of that fact.”

John Baird: “The Federal Accountability Act is a significant and substantive step by Canada’s New Government to help restore Canadians’ trust in government and the democratic process.”

Sure, but that was when Canadians were lead to believe that legislation applied to all Canadians.  Stevie has informed us that such is not reality.

That might explain why Baird thumbed his nose at his and his master’s promise of transparency and accountability by refusing the legitimate demand of the Information, Privacy and Ethics committee for the electronic correspondence of a political aide who – can anyone make this shit up? -  blocked the release of an Access to Information request. 

Mr. Baird defended the decision, saying cabinet ministers, and not their staff, are responsible to Parliament (and that) parliamentary and constitution convention dictates that the political communications related to decisions and actions of cabinet ministers are never disclosed.



What a fucking  troll.

Let’s look at that statement in the context of this issue.  The political staffer Sébastien Togneri “unreleased” documents requested by a Globe and Mail reporter when Mr. Paradis headed the Public Works department.

Togneri apparently wrote a series of e-mails relating to this.  Since Paradis as Minister is responsible to Parliament, any e-mails Togneri sent to him as Minister should be available for scrutiny.

As for e-mails to public servants within the department, Stevie and Johnnie passed through that nifty accountability act in December, 2006 giving us clear direction on that.

The accounting officer system was put into place in Canada after considerable debate about whether the traditional model of ministerial and public service accountability was satisfactory.  The adoption of the accounting officer system could clarify accountability and improve the dialogue between Parliament and the professional public service by specifying that deputy ministers are indeed accountable for a few select areas, such as ensuring that an effective system of internal control is in place and signing the accounts of their organization.  It may make deputy ministers devote more attention to their management responsibilities, and may provide deputy ministers with an incentive to say no to inappropriate political interference in departmental administration.  It could do this by making them aware that their actions could potentially be the subject of parliamentary inquiry.

And public servants are accountable to their supervisors, so through the deputy minister, are responsible to Parliament as well.

So any e-mails Togneri sent to public servants within the department should be available to the committee as well.

Basic common sense tells us as well that parliamentary staff are responsible to their superior, and ultimately, the elected member they work for.  Because of that, their e-mails sent in course of their job are no longer their own property, but belong to the transaction or issue which is managed by the elected member.  The staffer doesn’t own the e-mails.  So, Baird can dance around all he wants trying to please his portly master, but if he keeps to that line, it isn’t Togneri who is in contempt by refusing, it is Paradis.

By Baird’s account, Togneri is not really responsible for whatever action was taken.  He was simply the post man, and the post man doesn’t own the mail he delivers nor can he grant that mail some vague diplomatic-type immunity.

So Baird, Harper, quit trying to interfere with the legitimate demand of the legitimate Information, Privacy and Ethics committee.  Because -  ‘Such interference would be unprecedented and abusive!’ 

(But hardly unprecedented coming from the Hamper party of Canada)

Has the big beast had enough?

 Why do these lines of Yeats come to me now?

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

When John Baird made an announcement that really should have been made by the President of the Treasury Board, Stock Day, and when that announcement is such a blatant lie contradicting what Day has been saying, you need to ask why, and why now.

“We won’t see the massive cuts to the public service that happened under the last Liberal government,” said Baird. “I don’t envisage anything like that.”...As an example (of how important public servants are), he cited the 300 public servants who work at his former ministry, Infrastructure Canada. “We could not have done the economic action plan without them. They delivered it.”    

Sure.  Baird valued public servants so much when he was head of Infrastructure that he short staffed them while drastically increasing the workload.  They were then blamed for the slow process of loosening up stimulus funds.

The government body that oversees $38 billion in federal infrastructure spending has had its knuckles rapped for being poorly staffed and hiring unqualified employees.  Infrastructure Canada has had either no human resource plan or insufficient plans in the three years audited since the Conservatives came to power, said the report.  "The department has faced and continues to face a significant shortfall of staff," said the audit.

"My understanding of last year is they didn't add a single staff, net," said Kennedy.  "That is a recipe for bad performance. It's also a recipe for political interference. Shortcuts are taken when people aren't there and when people aren't trained."

Baird now claims there will be no cuts to departmental budgets, and spending will increase for defence, airport security, and law and order.  This certainly hasn’t been the case so far under Harper.


Although Demers (PIPS) says politically-driven public service cuts have been going on for many years, the process has accelerated under the Harper Conservatives. The 2007 federal budget mandated across-the-board savings of five percent in every government department.

Nor has the guy who actually is supposed to decide what to cut in the public service sent the same message.

Just days into his new job, Day cut 245 positions from government boards and agencies, principally related to the arts.  On the day he was appointed, he boasted of being the new Dr. No and warned of cuts to come.  The words of CON liars aside, logic tells us the public service has been, and will continue to be under attack.

Since the government has already promised that funding transfers to the provinces are safe and ruled out tax hikes, that leaves government programs as the obvious target to curb spending.

...Day earned a reputation as a zealous cost-cutter when as Alberta labour minister he was caught in a furor over hospital staffing when then-premier Ralph Klein's government attempted to chop public-sector wages. As a candidate for Canadian Alliance leader, he advocated cutting funding for departments like Health Canada.

So why send Baird out to lie on behalf of Day?  Day’s bragging of cuts is too recent for him to do a flip-flop, and he has reduced his feeble credibility to the negative zone over his non-existent criminal comments.

That still leaves us to wonder why Baird was sent by the master to make any comment on this at all.

The rough beast, perhaps, has been vexed to nightmare and is waking up.  Public servants are generally passive, grumbling from time to time about the little things, putting up with the partisan nature of their Ministers, adjusting after each election.  But push them too hard, from too many directions, and they will kick up more than a fuss.

In the past year, Flaherty has openly stated that their pensions and benefits are very generous and considering the context, there is little doubt these will be under attack.  Public servants are being forced to violate their own commitment to non-partisan service through pressure and instruments such as MEPs.  They are being muzzled.  They are being used as scapegoats while the political bosses who forced them despite their best advice walk away unscathed.    The list of public servants served up as fodder simply because they were doing their job and doing it well is lengthy.

Then, Colvin came along.  The moment I saw him on video, I knew he would be a catalyst for change.  Linda Keen was admirable, but so wonderfully tough she was viewed by some as abrasive.  Not so with Colvin.  He clearly didn’t want to be in front of cameras, he was obviously pained by the whole process, and he came across as very sincere.  His actions cost him.  Seeing Colvin take a beating day after day without quitting on his role as a public servant was not only inspiring to public servants, it also tweaked a little guilt each time their political bosses asked them to cross a line.

Then, along come Munir Sheikh.  Well, well, well.  Resign a gem of a job on principle.  A principle held dear by any decent public servant.

Public servants have to be wondering who is next, and what will be asked of them by this government.   They have to be waking up to the reality that they are nothing but a resource to be kicked around by this government, then tossed aside for political reasons.

Bad enough if your pay, pension, and benefits are threatened.  But when you are asked to toss aside your integrity by someone who doesn’t even give a damn about you, when you are used as the kicking boy, then you cannot go home each night feeling good about that eight or so hours of your life, day after day.

I’m guessing there are rumbling coming from the beast that is the public service, and Harper is realizing that this particular beast need only roll over to crush him.  Public servants have learned under this government the importance of saving e-mails and memos.

Harper’s Face of Diplomacy

Okaaaaayyyy....

The House Leader’s role is to attempt to secure Opposition’s support for the government’s legislative agenda.  That requires negotiating skills and the ability to compromise.   

I never thought Stevie was all that smart, more cunning, without the hampering nature of a conscience to get in his way, but this appointment seems beyond stupid.  Unless, of course, it’s that lack of conscience and respect for Parliament kicking in:

However, by putting such a divisive politician into the job, the Prime Minister may be signalling he wants to push full-steam ahead on his agenda this sitting.

Goodale, who will have to work with him since he’s Opposition Leader is keeping an open mind.  He says it depends what persona Baird brings to the table.

That, I think, will be chosen by Harper, not Baird.  My guess is we are in for more CON bullying.

Holy South Park, Batman!

Like a really, really annoying Cartman episode -

Seriously.  How many pictures of Harper on the phone do we have to pay for to stay informed?  How many staged shots of Stevie must come out of our tax dollars in his endless quest for a majority so that he can completely destroy our democracy and force his narrow, atavistic ideology into all aspects of our lives.

How many more.  How, how many more?

Meanwhile, as Steve is gettin' the job dun doing real important shit and making sure we see him in all his glory and many variations of The Phone Call, news average Canadians don't give a shit about -

Transport Canada says no new incidents or intelligence information prompted its security branch to send a "vigilance" notice to airlines, airports and the federal agency in charge of airport screening a week ago—contradicting statements by Transport Minister John Baird and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan. 

So, as I said a few days ago, these terrorist scares are bull shit, most likely spewed out by Baird and The Mouth Van Loan at Steve's orders to divert attention from what monumentally, undemocratic, lying fuck-ups they and their entire party are, and to shove through appalling changes to security that violate our rights and freedoms.

And just in case any of you are about to scream about those Liberal appointed public servants at Transport Canada just trying to give those poor Conservatives a hard time by making this story up -

The statements from the two ministers, claiming the government was of aware of new information about potential terrorist activity, appear also to have diverged from security assessments at the time by the Transportation Security Administration in the United States.

And if the Americans are saying that Baird and Van Loan are lying sacks of shit, it must be so.

In  case Johnny and Petey try to say they simply both, through sheer coincidence miss-spoke, take noote that during interviews held days later, both confirmed what they had said earlier.

Dewar and Holland had a few words to say, explaining that the government needs to be honest about security risks, they owe it to Canadians, and that by exaggerating risks for political reasons, people won't know what to believe when a real security risk is announced.

Really.  Considering the many, many cases of misinformation and outright falsehoods Steve & Co. have prompted, we should just assume everything they tell us is a lie.

Harper and Co. doing more real important shit.

So good of Steve to keep us up-to-date on what Canadians really care about: more pictures of Steve.

                      
An’ check eet out, mang!  A 13 second video, with no sound! (just creeeepy) (original, without sound)



How fucking cool is that?

We can set the video on a loop, sit back, and just imagine what VERY IMPORTANT words the Big Man is sharing with his VERY IMPORTANT Ministers of VERY IMPORTANT shit.

Might as well imagine what’s being said since this is obviously a staged shot of a fake meeting meant to deceive what the CONs think of as a very stupid public into thinking Steve & Co. are hard at work.

Canadians don’t really care about what is actually said in meetings so why not just hold fake ones?  Why bother telling Canadians tiresome little details about changes in security measures that could affect us in our travels, in our daily lives?  Why even bother making information reasonably available to those radical few who might actually want to be informed? 

We just want those shiny photos of Steve doing...stuff.

This photo and video, like most from the PMO, do provide us simple-minded, average Canadians with a little direction.  Just a nudge in the right-wing direction.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper receives a national security briefing from Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, National Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Rob Nicholson. 

And golly-gee!  What a coincidence that we are fed this sudden bull shit diversion security alert.

So here we see Steve receiving a briefing by making the others shut the fuck up and listen, because...well, get real, guys.  We have MacKay thinking, “Man!  I can’t believe I let this S.O.B. screw me out of the leadership.”  Nicholson is wondering if he should use his position as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada to have Steve declared legally insane or if he should just go down with the sinking ship.  Cannon is thinking his French is better than Harper’s and his hair more natural looking, so if he keeps his mouth shut, lets MacKay and Steve talk, he can let them drown in their own idiocy and snap up the leadership.  The Mouth Van Loan is waiting in his bus-boy suit to see if Harper actually wants coffee in his prop cup - note the cashing in on the Beatles thing.  (h/t BCL) 

‘Cause even when our PM is hard at werk protectin’ avrige Canajuns, the chattering classes,  and the elite  who aren’t that interested in Parliament or what it does, he is just the coolest dude evah!  Why, he’s so cool he can make Canada more stable without a Parliament!

For you idiots out there who have been commenting on articles relating to this VERY IMPORTANT meeting and saying things like “good to see our PM hard at work!” “Finally, a PM we can be proud of!”  and “We are so lucky to have a PM who gets things done instead of wasting time in Parliament debating,” rub your two brain cells together, wait for that tiny flash, and think - fast - before the light goes out: if it’s a briefing on security, where are the folks who actually, in real life that is, do such briefings with Ministers?  That would be the specialists from various departments: Deputy Ministers and reps from DFAIT, the RCMP, DND, and Transport. (more on this here with The Jurist)

Speaking of which, where is John Baird, how dumb is he, and why, oh why does he hate Canadians?  As Minister of Transport, shouldn’t he be at a national security briefing that came up as a result of concerns over transportation security?

Oh, I see...he’s busy shaking down elderly women and keeping Canada safe from grannies.

Meanwhile, in news that average Canadians don’t give a shit about:


The country's budget watchdog and some of Canada's leading economists are contradicting Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, saying he cannot balance the books without raising taxes or slashing spending.  Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page warned Monday Canada could be headed back to the financial bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s when the country was crippled by public debt. 

Who needs Second Life to escape to when we have Steve Harper creating an imaginary environment for us?

Susan Riley has a question about Bob Rae

The more we see of Bob Rae -- and we seem to be seeing the Toronto MP a lot lately -- the larger the question looms: Why isn't he the Liberal leader?

No kidding.

I am not happy with Ignatieff, never wanted him as Liberal party leader, and care for him even less for his waffeling and soft stance on human rights issues.  Words are ok, but we need action.  Watching Rae over the past few weeks has given me some hope, though.

By contrast, Rae is funny, self-deprecating, knowledgeable and spontaneous. His criticisms of the Harper government tend not to be shrill, predictable or personal. But they can be heartfelt -- as when he recently denounced those infamous Conservative flyers that imply the Liberals are, at least, sanguine about anti-Semitism. Rae, whose wife and adult children are Jewish, called them "a new kind of gutter politics."

...Rae is also a better performer than Ignatieff in scrums and informal encounters -- more fluent, manifestly more at ease with a range of issues, sure of where he stands, able to acknowledge complexity without looking wishy-washy.

It isn't simply that I think Rae has greater voter appeal but rather that he embodies what a decent politician should be.  Smart, compassionate, honest, and courageous enough to question his own party and its actions.

The Liberal party doesn't tolerate one-person rule, not to the extend the Harper party does, at the very least.  What is often seen as in-fighting (and yes, true in-fighting does occur among the Grits), is sometimes healthy - if somewhat too-public debate.  This is why I find it very encouraging not only to see that the Liberal party has such people within it as Rae, but that he is being given such a high profile lately.  Must be a little scary for Ignatieff.

It is, however, good for the party and will likely draw back people who have been so turned off by the lack of honesty displayed by top politicians and their failure to connect with voters because they simply do not grasp that what most of us want is simply honest, transparent government where the concerns of those politicians are elected to represent are the real driving force behind shaping legislation.

We need to see more of this in practice.  MPs such as Rae and Kennedy not only speaking on behalf of the party, but clear assurances that the Liberal party is not a one man show and is truly made up of the many voices constituents elect.  Voices that are not muzzled, votes that are not forced.

Place these (and there are other good ones in the Liberal party as well) against Harper's usual suspects:

 - 'nuff said!

  - intelligent speaker, unflapable, ouzes integrity.






- intelligent, passionate, lots of integrity, too clean to be a target, calm

- still needs experience, especially in word-crafting to avoid statements that can easily be twisted, but he offers a fresh face representing renewal; intelligent, decent enough speaker, lots of appeal, plenty of well directed passion, oozes integrity


Intelligence opposing CON smirking, taunting, and childish diversions

Integrity opposing CON foot-in-mouth disease

Honesty opposing CON lies and channel changing

And let's not forget the cute factor:

Hiding behind our military: it’s what the Conservatives do...

...when they aren’t attempting to assassinate their character.

Several instances yesterday in the House (highlights mine throughout):

(Hansard, Dec. 1, 2009)
Peter MacKay: what again is so irresponsible, so inflammatory and so false is for the hon. member to try to parse her words and suggest somehow that the Canadian military was complicit in torture, suggesting that those hard-working, honest officials and military on the ground would deliberately transfer detainees, Taliban prisoners, to Afghan authorities knowing they would be tortured. That is a backhanded way to cast aspersions on the good work being done by our military and our professional public service. That is what those members are doing.

And what words was Jennings trying to parse?  This is the exact question that drew Baird’s response:

Hon. Marlene Jennings: this is yet another new version of events from the Minister of National Defence. His version changes every day.  The Conservatives deliberately hid the fact that, for 18 months, they regularly turned Afghan detainees over even though there was a real and serious risk that they would be tortured.

    How can the Prime Minister go to China and defend human rights, particularly with respect to Tibet, when his own government is guilty of violating those same human rights?

No mention of the military or public servants.

How dumb is John Baird?

No one really knows, but he showed us again yesterday how monumentally dishonest he is and how he also draws attention to the military in respect to torture as a means of dodging the real issue.

Baird: it is interesting that the leader of the Liberal Party stands in his place and characterizes remarks made by General Gauthier.  It was his own defence critic, the member for Vancouver South, who called General Gauthier's comments before the committee morally weak and legally flimsy.

    The general is a Canadian hero. He is a Canadian hero who spent 36 years in uniform, and that is the kind of respect he gets from the Liberal Party and the official spokesman for the Leader of the Opposition. It is shameful.

 Thus implying that Canadian military heroes should not be doubted since it is disrespectful.  Remember that for what comes later.

Meanwhile, what was really said, and by who:

This is what Mr. Dosanjh said on (CTV’s Question Period Sunday): “I believe the situation now is the issue is not about who knew what and when. I think they all admit that they knew and the generals’ defence, as someone said, was morally weak and legally flimsy.”

The “someone” Mr. Dosanjh is referring to is Toronto Star columnist James Travers, who wrote in a column on Saturday: “For all its sound and fury, the counter-attack that politicians, bureaucrats and generals mounted this week was morally weak and legally flimsy.”

Mr. Baird used the column by Mr. Travers, which Mr. Dosanjh quoted from, to accuse the Liberals of being anti-military, anti-soldier, anti-war hero and by extension, anti-Canadian.

Back in the House, Ignatieff tries to get Baird to focus on the issue.  Which is pointless, since in addition to Johnny being dumber than anyone can say, he’s a partisan hyena.

Mr. Michael Ignatieff: our side of the House did no such thing. We hold General Gauthier in the highest respect.  The issue here is that all of the evidence in this affair, including that handed over to the Military Police Complaints Commission, was so heavily redacted as to be useless....We need to get to the bottom of this. Why will the government not accept that we need a judge, an independent inquiry, and full access to the documents so that we can finally get to the bottom of this affair?

Not content with falsely accusing Dosanjh of making certain statements, Baird, in his very next comment, adjusts his wingnut, ignores the question and further distorts his first lies to imply a direct attack against Gauthier -

Baird:  the leader of the Liberal Party says one thing but the facts suggest something else.   His defence critic said that this general, this Canadian war hero, was weak and flimsy.    


 What does that remind me of?...Oh yeah...The 13th Warrior -
"You dig like a dog.
"You are calling me a dog?"
"No, I said you dig like one.  Like an animal."
"So now I'm an animal?"

Lets go back to May, 2008 and see how well Baird defended a “Canadian hero who spent (30+) years in uniform.”  One of Canada’s most decorated officers, at that.  

John Baird, the environment minister, tried to shout down Liberal MP Marlene Jennings who came to Dallaire's defence and loudly applauded when 29-year-old Tory MP Pierre Poilievre suggested that Dallaire sounded like a member of the Khadr family, an insult so stupid and infantile that Anders' slur against Nelson Mandela immediately came to mind.

Incidentally, Dallaire’s words in reference to international rights of child soldiers apply to this case as well:

"If you want black and white, and I'm only prepared to give it to you," (Dallaire) responded. "You're either with the law or not with the law. You are not allowed to go against (international) conventions and if you do, you're going down the same road as those who absolutely don't believe (in the law)."

So...what are you saying, guys?  Looking into allegations of wrongdoing is taboo if it can be in anyway connected to the military, even if they were not the ones covering things up?  And retired generals are god-like beings whose word must never, ever be questioned because to do so is un-Canadian?

Unless, of course, the retired general happens to be a Liberal Senator who is very much interested in uncovering the truth and applying international rights - even to those some Canadians may not like.  

In what has been an increasingly testy parliamentary debate season, Tory MPs Jason Kenney, Pierre Poilievre and John Baird spent last week attacking Liberal Senator Dallaire over his strongly worded criticism of the government's handling of Canadian child-soldier and Guantanamo-prisoner Omar Khadr.

...Kenney compared the most decorated Canadian soldier of his generation to a "mob of wacky protesters." A day later, John Baird, the environment minister, tried to shout down Liberal MP Marlene Jennings who came to Dallaire's defence and loudly applauded when 29-year-old Tory MP Pierre Poilievre suggested that Dallaire sounded like a member of the Khadr family, an insult so stupid and infantile that Anders' slur against Nelson Mandela immediately came to mind.

Harper's bunch are scum.  Every last one of them, even those who keep silent throughout this when they cannot help but be aware of the use of the troops as a diversion.  Hell, they all get the speaking notes.  Anyone of them could stand up, do what's right and support an inquiry, but cowardly and politically ambitious as they are, they sulk home to their families with their hyena slink and pretend they are virtuous people who care about honesty, transparency, and human rights.

Yeah, sure.  You just go ahead and tell your families that.