Politics-Federal

A Night To Remember

Mulder

Tonight I attended the Senators vs. Capitals hockey game at the Scotiabank Centre here in Kanata. I was surprised to see so many men in military uniforms walking towards the stadium and figured it must be an Armed Forces night, which it was. I was settling in to my company’s season tickets, right on the glass in section 115 and turned around to see almost two whole rows of men in their fatigues and berets. I asked one of our fine soldiers if his boss was attending. He said yes, he’ll be about four or five rows behind us.

Having worked hard on Gordon O’Connor’s campaign, I was quite excited to be able to rib him about having better seats than he got. I turned around every few minutes and then noticed a big group of men in dark suits and coats huddling as they came down the row. I espied our Minister of Defence among the throng, but then realized that he wasn’t the highest ranking official in the place. Beside him was Peter McKay and right there, five rows behind me and 7 seats over was Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his son.

I was awestruck, and joined a few people in snapping some cell phone shots.

Harper At Sens GameAt the first intermission, Mr. Harper walked down and stood in the corner beside the penalty box to get some pictures taken of himself and some of the troops. He was cordial as many well wishers stopped by to shake his hand, me included. I introduced myself and told him I was pleased to help on Gordon’s campaign and that I thought he was doing a bang up job so far and that I was both proud and pleased that he was leading our country in the right direction.

He asked me what my blog was and I told him. He said he is pretty sure he had heard the name from his wife and repeated what many of us know. She is a blog reader. Whether or not he was just being cordial, I appreciated his friendliness and was, especially, pleased to see him sitting in a seat and not tucked up in a box. I also must say that considering the game was a 7-0 blowout at one point, the whole entourage stayed for the whole game which ended with a 7-1 score. Alexander Ovechkin scoring the lone Caps tally.

I mention this last goal because I really respect Ovechkin for his skill, but tonight during the warmup, he saw a youngster sitting a couple of seats over from me and flipped the lad a puck over the glass. With the puck and a quick handshake from Mr. Harper, this will be a game that young man remembers for a long time.

I think I will probably be floating around on cloud 9 for the next few days after meeting our illustrious leader. Ironically, I was wearing my OfficiallyScrewed.com baseball hat tonight (shameless promoting in a throng of 19,000 plus. When I went up to the concourse at the second intermission I gave Gordon a wave. Upon passing him I said hi and shook his hand. Peter McKay gave me a funny look. Maybe it was the hat….maybe it was me in a sweatshirt and jeans and being greeted nicely by our Minister of Defence. In any case, it was nice seeing Peter get a stick from someone in the penalty box and giving it to Ben Harper. A nice touch on a nice evening.

AG Wraps Nunavut On The Knuckles

Mulder

Being tied up in my new job, I must have missed this release by the Auditor General’s Office. On Feb 21st, Sheila Fraser’s office gave Nunavut a wrap on the knuckles with regard to their financial reporting. Three things from the news release stand out quite clearly.

1 – “Financial management is certainly stronger now than when Nunavut was created,” says Ms. Fraser in the report’s preface. “However, overall, financial management is weak and fragile. It has not adequately reduced the risk of error, bad decisions, or fraud.”

2 – Ms. Fraser calls for strong solutions. “The government could continue to try small changes as it has done for the past six years,” she says. “However, this approach has not worked so far, and there is no reason to believe that it will work in the future.”

3 -The report contains three key recommendations to strengthen financial controls and improve Nunavut’s financial management. According to the report, the government needs to

  • close gaps in its accounting systems;
  • review its accounting structures, including the physical location of staff—centralizing accounting functions to deal with the root causes of poor financial management; and
  • develop training programs that will give Land Claims Agreement beneficiaries the opportunity to become professional accountants and prepare for senior financial management positions

If I didn’t know better, Sheila Fraser, with her penny pinching ways, is trying to seduce me through the Auditor Generals office!! (shhh, don’t tell my wife)

Profound Statements Were Not Limited To Rothstein's Dialogue

Mulder

Marshall Rothstein was wonderful on the stand. Maybe it had something to do with the overall feeling of the whole Ad Hoc Committee reviewing him, but I think a lot had to do with the fact that it was Canadians questioning Canadians. I would liken us to the good cop in the infamous “good cop, bad cop” scenario.

One of the most interesting things said was not uttered by the new Marshall in town, but was instead uttered by Rob More, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice.

Rothstein had been asked about his feeling on the Ad Hoc Committee itself and referred to it bringing transparency and education to the masses. Mr. More said in his opening remarks that he would go so far as to say that Canadians already have learned more about Rothstein through the process than they likely have about any other Justice on the highest court in the land through any previous nomination process.

This was why I was excited about the vetting. I, like most Canadians, am a pretty friendly decent person. Canadians play well with others, (in general). So for those who were concerned with the degradation of the process can be happy to know it did not happen.

If you haven’t found a good breakdown of the Ad Hoc committee, OttawaCore has a bulletized version of the vetting online.

Vetting And Sweating: It Should Be Part Of The Supreme Court Justice Nomination

Mulder

I am pleased to see that we are going to vet Marshall Rothstein as part of his nomination for Supreme Court Justice.

If Stephen Harper hopes to move the agenda forward with elected judges, then we, the public, should pay very close attention to things like this. It is our best chance to see and understand what the opinions are so we can better vote for or against certain nominees down the road.

I think personal life questions are not necessary, and should be avoided. But I do believe, as does Phantom Observer, that justices need to speak to their past decisions and to prospective future ones. This is the whole point of them being judges and us electing them. The majority can determine what they feel is best. We won’t always win, but at least we would know where they stand on things like abortion, same sex marriage, etc as far as interpretation in our constitution.

Hopefully, it goes well for Rothstein tomorrow. He, apparently, has good credentials and is well respected in both the Conservatives and the Liberal parties, as well as with the legal community, in general.

Officially Unscrewed?

Mulder

Tonight, I had the priviledge of attending my riding associations annual general meeting. The Board members were elected and the executive was named. I am still not sure it actually happened, but I was nominated and now sit as the Communications Director. What is a communications director you might ask? Well directly from the Association website:

Responsibilities: The Communications Director’s primary responsibilities are: (a) Newsletters: design/write and arrange for printing and mailing; (b) Website: design, write and maintain; (c) Correspondence: email replies and postal communications; and (d) Fundraising letters: write, merge with membership list, and arrange for printing and mailing.

To break this down….

a) Newsletters: I can use mail merge in Word, and I can write with some rudimentary skill, as displayed on this website. I also know how to handle mass printing, envelope stuffing and mailing so that’s not an issue. Ok, so far so good.

b) Website: Ugh. No offence to the original designer, but I think this area is one I can help in. Hopefully, no one saw the trouble I had moving my server and getting WordPress up and running. But I think overall it was pretty smooth for my first effort into PHP and xhtml.

c) Correspondence: email etc. I should be fine here. I am good on the PC, and did a lot of work with mailings when I was in tech support my first year in the high tech industry.

d) Fundraising letters: Ok, so being in sales I think this one is ok. I am more used to providing goods for people giving me money instead of just asking for it, but maybe that means I put some good effort into explaining the benefits for those who are unsure about things.

I must also say that Brent Colbert was there as an independent observer and scrutineer. When I exclaimed my concern over this blog and my position, he said that I should put a disclaimer up. So in light of this, I have edited my old legal disclaimer and would like to reiterate here, that my words on this website are not necessarily those of the Conservative Party of Canada. I choose to express my views here, but seldom differ from those of the Tories. I do believe that there is a time to express your view, and a time to tow the party line. Once views are all presented and a decision is made, I do fully support the decisions which the majority make.

This has been a heck of a week. Previous to this, I have re-entered the land of the working having begun a new job last Monday. Back into strategic technical sales and marketing for me. (If you’re looking for some Memory or Memory modules in Ottawa, let me know!!

Auditor General's Awards Don't Go Far Enough

Mulder

Auditor General Sheila Fraser gave out the awards to the Crown Corporations submitting the best annual reports. The program has been around since 1993 to help promote good reporting.

The AG, with a team of 7 judges, determined that the winners for this year were Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC) and the Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. CDIC won in the larger corporation category.

What I find amazing is that they had reviewed the reports of 46 Crown Corporations yet only select the top two.

The AG could take a lesson from Neilson ratings or the best to worst college lists published annually. They should lay it on the line and rank them 1 to 46. Wouldn’t this put some pressure on the organizations to put accountability into their reporting? Naming 2 while 46 get off easy could be reversed to pegging the worst 2 so they know where they rank and can get their asses in gear.

Simply announcing intentions to rank the Crown Corporations reports would whip them all into line in a year or two.

Pictures Depicting Mohammad Are Not New, So Why The Kerfuffle?

Mulder

Listening to Lowell Green this morning, he mentioned hearing that images of Mohammad were not new. So I quickly did some googling and came up with this gem from the Washington Post.

While rare in the 1,400 years of Islamic art, depictions of Muhammad are found in the collections of such institutions as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris and the Edinburgh University library. Muhammad has been portrayed in the work of revered Muslim artists and of such Western figures as William Blake, Auguste Rodin and Salvador Dali — as well as the creators of the cable-TV cartoon series “South Park.”

In addition, we have the the website Answering-Islam.org.uk siting the Qu’ran with the following support.

Numerous passages in the Qur’an prohibit idolatry, and worshipping statues or pictures, but there is not even single verse in the Qur’an that explicitly says not to have any pictures of Muhammad. This bears repeating: There is not a single verse in the Qur’an that prohibits making or having pictures of Muhammad or people or animals or trees. In fact, there are some verses in the Qur’an which mention images in a positive context and which therefore presuppose that some statues or images were approved by God, see the article Muhammad and Images.

But the article continues with a very critical point that must be made. This MUST be read.

It is clear that making pictures is a horrible sin in Islam. There are dozens of narrations that emphasize and reiterate this point. However, it is always said that Allah will punish those people on the Day of Judgment. There is no command for Muslims to go out now and punish those painters themselves. This is particularly relevant since Muhammad was not shy in this regard.

I am not sure about this source, but if this is the case, then the rioting and uproar over this whole issue is, again, invalid. The Day of Judgment is where those who portray images will get their just due. In addition, there is continued growth of support that the whole concept of no images is to prevent idol worship. Which, again, supports what I said here. I think that portraying images of anyone, including Mohammad, is actually within the guidelines of the Qu’ran because images in a newspaper, cartoons, educational imagery, are fine, as long as you don’t idolize the photo or painting by putting up on the wall in a place of honour. I can understand the disdain for the disrespect of certain cartoons, but again, why are people rioting? Are people afraid of images in general? I am not sure, but I think the reason may have something to do with this or this. You can read more from other bloggers on this subject here, and here, and here

Will Jack Backtrack On Ontario NDP Decision?

Mulder

In a divisive turn of events, the Federal NDP is looking to reverse the decision to eject Buzz Hargrove from the party as a member. The Ontario branch had removed Buzz on constitutional grounds, and because of the way the party is structured, this effectively booted Buzz from the national party too.

Jack Layton called Buzz Hargrove last Friday, leaving a positive voice mail which indicated Jack was looking forward to working things out with Buzz to ensure he is on board with the NDP fully next election. They are even meeting today. The party is now looking at ways to reinstate Buzz nationally.

This begs the question: With Toronto being such a core support location for the NDP, does the decision to boot Buzz create a division between Ontario Dippers and the rest of the leftist group in Canada?

I don’t know. But I will say this. A large group within the party wants him out (including Judy Wasylycia-Leis). The leader sounds like he likes Buzz and wants him in. Sound familiar? It should. It parallels the Emerson/Fortier appointments.

Jack’s next move will be watched closely. How sweet would the irony be if he reversed the Ontario Dipper decision.

Harper's Cabinet More Bilingual Than Martin's

Mulder

Today, Jack Aubry of the Ottawa Citizen, reports on the bilingualism within our new federal Cabinet.  The results are surprising, but again, show that the Tories are working hard to ensure Quebec feels like part of Canada.

The Tory Cabinet has 15 of 27 ministers who fall into the bilingual category (55.5%), whereas, the Liberal Cabinet under Paul Martin had 19 of 39 bilingual ministers (48.7%).

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

This supports my recent post about the diversity within the Tory ranks.

Iran Backpedals on Non Proliferation Treaty Stance

Mulder

Well, in a sudden twist to their threat to pull out of the NPT, Iranian officials are turning their view around.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi urged a peaceful solution to the dispute over his country’s nuclear program.

“We are still committed to the provisions of the NPT. But we can’t accept its use as a (political) instrument. We will co-operate in the treaty and the safeguards’ framework,” Asefi said at a weekly news conference.

A day earlier, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had hinted at a pull out.