![[small-web-version_harperfree_poster.jpg]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WGczmWu7Wwc/SdCJyy2LN1I/AAAAAAAABWE/ABYCkbJaKaQ/s1600/small-web-version_harperfree_poster.jpg)
Even if CC has sworn off blogging, at least for the immediate future, Ì think we only imagine what he would be thinking or what he would post today.
CC was one of a minority who didn’t praise Speaker Peter Milliken’s decision regarding detainee documents while most of us (including your’s truly for awhile). In fact, he even launched a bet about all of this not ending too well.
And given how stupidly waffly Milliken was, I will bet my left nad that it is exactly that waffling that will be the hook on which the Harpercrats will hang their inevitable argument that they won’t be handing anything over. Because Milliken gave them an out.
Hell, even Craig Oliver said that Milliken’s ruling did provide some comfort to Master Steve, on an episode of Question Period.
I’m sure the chastising of the Liberals is happening about now because they signed on to this new watered down agreement with Master Steve. Noticed the Bloc not getting as much flack though…and that is something worth exploring. I will perhaps blog about the Bloc in another post.
If only Milliken had indeed shut up after the following paragraph and adjurned:
“The Chair must conclude that it is within the powers of the House of Commons to ask for the documents sought in the December 10 order it adopted.”
More than likely, Master Steve wouldn’t be able to get away with keeping the detainee documents hidden. Then again, given that so many seem to be ‘lost’, perhaps not all of them. But, Speaker Milliken would go on further. I think this is the part many who were hopeful seem to have forgotten or never paid careful attention in the first place. The whole ruling can be found here.
Now, it seems to me, that the issue before us is this: is it possible to put into place a mechanism by which these documents could be made available to the House without compromising the security and confidentiality of the information they contain? In other words, is it possible for the two sides, working together in the best interest of the Canadians they serve, to devise a means where both their concerns are met?
It is that little stipulation in Milliken’s ruling that allowed for what transpired today. After all, Steve has been doing all to hide these documents in the name of National Security. Milliken’s ruling left that “national security” thingey open for interpretation. Since it’s the Harpercon camp that has posession of these documents, they, unfortunately get to interpret this. As such, don’t blame the Liberals for this, blame Speaker Milliken for this watered down deal. It is for that reason I ask: why are so many so surprised at this outcome?
All the lamenting in the world isn’t going to help get Steve out of office, in fact, it helps him achieve his majority with numbers in the thirties due to low Liberal numbers. As for the NDP, it doesn’t really matter what they do; they’re numbers remain the same as do those of the Bloc Quebecois. Neither ever has a shot at governing.
And no, I seriously doubt Speaker Milliken would have even forced Steve’s hand for the above reason and the fact that he has seen what happens to people’s jobs when they do anything to make Steve a tad uncomfortable. One only has to ask Linda Keen, Richard Colvin and (rumour still, but …) Greg Weston. Milliken likes his job and even if Steve were to come back with only a minority, you can bet Milliken would be sent to retirement.
Another thing I don’t get: for those lamenting that Steve has too much power with a minority; why are you willing to entertain a Harpercon majority?
Wait a sec. Are you suggesting we reward the Liberals for this, because they are bigger than the NDP? How does that make sense? Milliken is a Liberal and he made this mess by following his own brand of Liberal, kumbaya middle way politics and Iggy is a crappy leader and right wing blue Liberal, who fell face first into this mess by buying into the Conservative claptrap about national security trumping parliamentary supremacy.
ck Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 9:40 AM
I didn’t say reward them; I just said, don’t put the entire blame on them neither.
Also, how about the Bloc? They went along with this too. They have no hope of governing; their numbers remain high in Quebec. Folks in Duceppe’s riding would be wanting to know what is in those documents as well.
I have mentioned in the past that due to the post 9/11 bigotry, the Timmy’s Crowd doesn’t care about Taliban who throw acid on girls’ faces.
Milliken’s ruling really was a comfort for Steve when he talked about not compromising national security. Since Steve holds the papers, he can interpret national security any way he pleases.
I’m afraid the detainee documents are a very bad issue to fight over, simply because the Taliban are such thugs; they are not a sympathetic group. Certainly not in post 9/11 times. As such, many don’t even believe they are afforded protection under the Geneva Conventions. Even if UN were to catch wind of any of this, I would hazard a guess that we would get nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Iggy and the Liberals can’t go too left without the manditory rants of “soshalism!!!” these days; what their problem is is they should shove the Harpercons further right by reminding all about STeve’s true Reform and NCC colours. That’s the Steve we would see in a majority territory.
A reality we must face is that Harpercon media has succeeded in sending the majority centrists rightward and just waiting to give them that final shove to Steve’s far right.
You know, we lambaste them when they vote along with the Harpercons, but we don’t give them any incentive to not do so, given their polling numbers. We also lambaste them with “NO!!!! Not another election!!”: that really sent his poll numbers down last September and hasn’t been able to recover since.
Proof of this is that an NDP/Liberal merger doesn’t add up to a majority.
Again, I don’t get that we lambaste them for being afraid to lose an election to Steve for allowing Steve to run roughshod, yet we’re willing to entertain a Harpercon majority which is sure to be far far worse and how much does anyone want to be that once he gets his majority, that there wouldn’t be any more elections, or at the very least, they would be few and far between. ” De l’action; Pas d’election”
Both Rae and Iggy have to go.
Something I think people forget (or worse never understood to begin with) is what the role of the Speaker is in our system. What Milliken did was exactly correct, the Speaker not only enforces the will and rules of Parliament but he is also supposed to act as a moderator between the various parties within a Parliament with the goal of making Parliament work as smoothly as possible. I said at the time at CC’s that I was happy for this ruling and that it was exactly correct, but that I also expected that CC’s reading on how the Harper CPC would respond was also correct. I was happy because it limited the damage Harper was doing by setting down in the clearest manner yet a precedent ruling that stated that Parliament is supreme over government and that government derives its authority in our system from Parliament and not the other way around as Harper has been asserting and acting like across many fronts ever since he came to power.
While yes, I would really like to see these documents (I can’t believe Harper has gone this far unless there is something he knows is seriously damaging to him and his government/party with the wider public/electorate) I agree with ck about how hard fighting an election over this would be given how poorly the Taliban are seen by the average voter in this nation. While I wish it were otherwise most voters pay little attention to these issues, those of us that blog about politics are a sliver of a tiny percentage of those that vote and not representative of the majority of voters in engagement and even in basic awareness and understanding of both policy issues and especially process issues. This is why Harper gets away with as much as he does, well at least one of the main reasons, the media and inability of the NDP to stop attacking the Libs as much as the CPC also play a role (something I have commented about before here and elsewhere including my own blog) as complicating factors among others and why we still have to worry about his retaining power in the next election or even worse finally getting that majority he has lusted for all these years.
The problem is not with Milliken for respecting the rules of Parliamentary procedure and precedent, it is with Harper for his naked contempt of them and the inability to date of all the Opposition parties to unite and hold him and his government in contempt via the rules of the system. Milliken can only act within the parameters of his position (at least if he is actually trying to defend it and act honourably which I would say he does), to actually sanction this government takes an action of the majority of MPs in the HoC, this is the way our system works. I always opposed Harper from way back because I knew from his words and actions in the past that he would show this level of contempt to the system when it got in his way, that he had no respect for the rule of law when it got in his way, and that he would commit the worst abuse of power acts in our history and set horrendous precedents that would be very damaging to the health of our system of government. This should be the focus of EVERYONE that claims to care about progressive values, social justice, and even mainstream Canadian centrist pragmatism, and it infuriates me to watch the willingness of the NDP to sell out their values of electoral dreams, the Libs for not getting their own act together and acting like an opposition party with a spine, and that it is the BQ which has ironically enough has been the most effective at calling out Harper for his abuses of power of the three parties from what I’ve watched since Harper came to power given their avowed goal of separation which would destroy this nation.
We live in a historic period of Canadian history with the first PM that holds the majority of Canadians in contempt holding power, who holds our history in contempt as a progressive nation and voice internationally, and who is out to undermine and discredit our system of government and its institutions built up over many decades. Why this is so hard for so many to see and understand even now and to understand the importance of putting all other lesser concerns and issues aside until his removal and defeat is something I cannot understand nor forgive. It is not Milliken that is to blame, it is the partisans of the various opposition parties that cannot place the good of the nation ahead of their own narrow selfish interests.
Bitter you say? Oh yes, very much so, I have never felt ashamed to be a Canadian before I watched the past four years, and not just for the actions of the Harper CPC but also those of the opposition parties (and their partisans across the country also) too in not seeing what has always been obvious to me about Harper and his true intentions and feelings about Canada, Canadian values and the way by which we have chosen to govern ourselves. If I, a disabled man in his 40s living well below the poverty line in Halifax NS can see all this and have seen this coming simply by having watched Harper develop since the late 80s there is no excuse in my mind for why those that actually make their living dealing in the political sphere have not (by this I don’t just mean political members and staffers but also those that report on them, indeed everyone that has a financial connection to the realm of federal politics). What Harper is doing and has done already is more harmful than any money scandal in our history, indeed totaling up his actions may indeed make for the worst scandal ridden government in our history even when COMBINING all other money scandals in our history.
CC could rarely go wrong where the Harper government is concerned, they are by far and away the most cynical abusers of power I have ever seen in our system of government throughout its history at any level, and that is truly the most ugly part of all of this for me. Harper wants dysfunctional government, he wants the system to tear itself apart, the man hates what Canada represents and what decades of Canadians of all political persuasions spent their lives building and in some cases dying for both in times of war and other. He has never hidden this for most of his adult life, only since 2004 when he finally realized he could never win power by being honest about this hatred of Canada and Canadian values as embraced by the vast majority of Canadians from coast to coast to coast has he claimed to be a centrist/moderate conservative. That he was able to sanitize his history and get away with it is one of the most unforgivable acts of failure and cowardice by our political media/journalists to do their jobs if not the most unforgivable.
Sorry ck, I know I went a bit beyond the topic, but I simply cannot ignore what the reality is, and years of being Cassandra about Harper and power has left me more than a little bitter, especially when I see the level of ignorance I do about how our system of government actually works from those that claim to be politically educated from all sides of the spectrum. It really gets to me at times. It is so hard to have seen all of this coming and to have been dismissed as a hysteric, a partisan operator for the Libs, and/or over the top crazy, to have tried time and again to get people to see the obvious, and to fail and watch my worst fears (well short of what a majority Harper government would have brought us, what he has done with the minorities has been bad enough) come true and to feel a sense of futility for trying to warn of the destruction that he would bring has taken its toll.