Jack's Newswatch

Tackling the deficit and clamping down on the growth of government spending will avoid “devastating cuts” in the future, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday in Parliament.

“Bad choices now, unaffordable long-term spending commitments, ill-advised tax hikes, ditherings on deficits and difficult decisions will doom those countries who choose them to years of debt, stagnation and unemployment,” Harper said in the House of Commons.

Harper was elaborating on the throne speech delivered last week by Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean, which laid out the government’s agenda.

Harper said the economy cannot be taxed into prosperity, that the deficit must begin to come down “modestly now but quickly by next year” and that spending growth will have be moderated immediately.

“If we do these things, we will also be able to avoid the absolute levels of reduction and the kinds of devastating cuts to core services like health care, pensions and education that will occur if we delay as past governments did after previous recessions,” the prime minister said.

The government’s plan to get ahead of its $54-billion deficit is built largely on the back of $17.6 billion worth of savings over the next five years that will come from streamlining and reducing the operating and administrative costs of government departments.

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See Also:

Tory triumph: They know where they’re going

Wells: Harper’s rut

Popularity: 5% [?]

Stephen Harper will never be known as the Great Conciliator but people tend to forget that, had he not won the 2006 election, Canada’s relations with the United States would have been at their lowest ebb since Lyndon Johnson accused Lester Pearson of peeing on his rug.

Remember the Liberal election ads that urged voters to back Paul Martin or “elect the most pro-American leader in the Western world”? I’m not making this up.

It was, then, one of the great surreal moments in Canadian politics, when Liberal trade critic Scott Brison stood up to the microphone yesterday to complain about the “pathetic” deal the Conservatives had just struck with the Obama administration on Buy American, the provisions that cut Canadian companies out of the bidding for U.S. infrastructure projects funded by stimulus money.

The Harper government had concentrated on the Bush Republicans and hadn’t developed relations with the Obama Democrats, he said. There were too many “carve-outs,” where states had exempted certain sectors. Too much of the stimulus money has already been spent. Canada should have linked a deal to its status as the U.S.’s preferred energy supplier, to ensure we weren’t taken for granted.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Stephen Harper is warning that some countries are in danger of imposing excessive and arbitrary restrictions on their banking sectors, in a speech which argues that the nations of the world must take on shared responsibility for the world but do it by addressing their own policies at home.

One day after French President Nicolas Sarkozy called not only for tighter financial reforms co-ordinated around the world, but for global bodies to have a more interventionist role in co-ordinating issues ranging from the environment to labour standards, Mr. Harper took a very different tack in a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He argued it is a time for all nations to change their own policies for the global good, from regulating banks to reducing trade restrictions to improving the health of children – calling it “enlightened sovereignty.”

But a week after U.S. President Barack Obama called for restrictions on the trading activities of banks there, Mr. Harper warned safeguards need to be improved without interventionist micro-management.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

I’m beginning to appreciate the serious price to be paid for Stephen Harper’s decison to close down Parliament for two months: an entire division of pundits, robbed of anything else to do, is forced into ruminations on cabinet shuffles, election dates and the threat to democracy represented by MPs having to spend every afternoon in their office instead of insulting one another at Question Period.

This happens during any lengthy break, but what’s unique to this particular suspension is the notion that democracy itself is under threat. It’s not just that MPs have nothing to do, but that Harper made them have nothing to do. They could still be on their feet assailing him about his personal involvement in the torture of innocent young Afghan males if he hadn’t pulled the rug out. Who is the Prime Minister, after all, to decide when and where fellow parliamentarians can accuse him of complicity in torture?

An undercurrent to this argument is the theme of Harper as the power-mad centralizer of executive authority. The PMO, we’ve been told, has sent off mandate letters spelling out to cabinet members what will be expected of them when regular business resumes. These mandate letters are said to be extremely detailed, and restrictive in their contents: They establish priorities and set goals members of cabinet will be expected to meet. They make clear that any freelancing of personal agendas will not be tolerated, and indicate that the bar on unapproved expenditures will be set just above the level of an ant-hill. As in: Don’t ask for money, because you won’t get it.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Less than an hour after a massive earthquake turned Haiti into an unimaginable hell of death and devastation, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an extraordinary call to action, remarkably putting the first Canadian rescue team on the stricken island by the next afternoon.

By all accounts, the launch of Operation Hestia (goddess of the hearth) was vintage Harper: No nonsense; no excuses.

It all started Tuesday evening, minutes after word of the Haitian catastrophe reached Harper’s office.

The PM was briefed aboard his jet as he arrived in Ottawa from a day-trip to Quebec, and immediately issued two clear orders from the plane.

First, the forever hands-on Harper demanded he be kept at the centre of the action and fully informed at all times.

Second, he made it crystal-clear that the Canadian government would do everything possible to come to the aid of the Haitian people – immediately.

One insider says everyone from the military brass to the high-ranking bureaucrats got the PM’s message: “He wanted it done, and he wanted it done two hours ago.” Defence Minister Peter MacKay was also sitting in a government jet, his flight delayed on the tarmac at Halifax airport, when his marching orders arrived from the PM’s plane.

Again, the directive from Harper left no room for interpretation.

As one senior official observed: “It was clear to everyone that by the next morning, the prime minister didn’t want to hear what anyone planned to do, but what we had already done.” Still on the runway in Halifax, MacKay was immediately on the phone to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon.

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Related:

Goldstein: Canada digs deep for Haiti – again

Updates:

2:00 pm EST, January 14th, 2010 — Canada’s disaster response team arrives in Haiti

2:06 pm EST, January 14th, 2010 — Haiti aid delivery faces obstacles

2:09 pm EST, January 14th, 2010 — Ottawa matching Canadians’ Haiti donations

Notes:

Lot’s of aid arriving but the first thing that needs to be sorted out is the question of who is going to be in charge of the rescue. “And No”…not the UN.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Uh oh: It looks like brain trust at the Toronto Star learned about that “Internet” thing from their grandchildren over the Christmas holidays. They even learned about a new fangled web site called “Facebook,” where people meet to exchange photos, gossip, and talk politics. Why, it’s just like the Tuesday bridge club — except you don’t have to put out folding chairs or make sandwiches.

We know about the Star editors’ foray onto the big exciting Interweb because of the newspaper’s front-page headline on Monday: “Grassroots fury greets shuttered Parliament.” The breathless story suggests Canada is on the verge of some kind of violent 1917-style revolution — a “growing public uprising” no less, complete with “protest rallies” from coast to coast, and young activists full of unhinged, wild-eyed rage. The evidence for all this: 20,000 people joined a Facebook page called “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament,” which urges Parliament to “Get back to work.”

As “news stories” go, this is the journalistic equivalent of the doddering old in-law who, upon learning about the Internet from her hair colorist, proceeds to fill everyone’s inbox with lawyer jokes and pictures of cute cats. Anyone who has been on the Internet since … oh, about 1996 … can attest that getting 20,000 people to sign a petition is about as easy as finding a Twilight fan site.

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See Also:

Time to make a meaningless gesture that doesn’t matter, Canada!

Facebook campaign means Ignatieff can stay home and save on emissions

Coyne: Stop, or I’ll tour!

Updates:

6:32 pm EST, January 5th, 2009 — People don’t care about Afghan detainee issue: Harper

Popularity: 7% [?]

Allegations of detainee torture are about a problem in Afghanistan that is beyond Ottawa’s control, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.

Mr. Harper and his cabinet have been taking a beating since a diplomat told a Parliamentary committee that the government ignored warnings that detainees captured by Canadian soldiers were likely tortured after they were handed over to local forces, but Mr. Harper insisted it’s an issue for the Afghans to settle.

“The allegations are not being made – I hope – against Canadian soldiers,” Mr. Harper said in a year-end interview with the French-language television network TVA. “… Our diplomats reformed the transfer system. We are speaking here of a problem among Afghans. It’s not a problem between Canadians and Afghans. We’re speaking of problems between the government of Afghanistan and the situation in Afghanistan. We are trying to do what’s possible to improve that situation, but it’s not in our control.”

Richard Colvin told the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan last month that the government ignored his repeated warnings in 2006 and 2007.

Since then, the government has insisted there was no proof of torture, and moved in May, 2007, to ensure that Canadian officials could monitor detainees in Afghan jails.

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Karzai forced to investigate family blood feud after cousin is murdered

Popularity: 6% [?]

OTTAWA — The Canadian government will not raise taxes to rein in its budget deficit after a stimulus package ends next year but will focus instead on restraining spending to balance its books, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said.

Ottawa, which unveiled a two-year stimulus program in January, predicts the budget deficit this year will be $55.9-billion . Some economists say this can only be eliminated with the help of tax increases.

“We won’t be raising taxes, but we will be constraining growth (in public spending), making sure that growth is very much contained in the future, and that the tax base of the country can gradually recover,” Mr. Harper told CTV television in an interview that was shown to reporters on Tuesday.

“And within four to five years, if we follow that path, we should be back to a balanced budget.”

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Popularity: 4% [?]

The encore for his piano man performance would appear to be a majority in the making for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Even before the rapturous reception for his gala singsong on the weekend, Harper had polled high enough to glimpse the promised land of Conservatives occupying more than half the 308 seats in the House of Commons. Now, after he has become a certified YouTube hit, it’s almost in the bag.

Yet seen through the prism of his western roots, Harper’s final act of contrition to the black-tie-and-gown crowd he so recently ridiculed has crystallized into an obvious conclusion: Harper is now officially Ottawashed.

This is considered a bad thing in some hard-right quarters. Journalists get stuck with the label all the time, disparaged for having bought into some monolithic left-wing agenda perpetuated by the press gallery gang.

But consider the radical reinvention of this Harper and you can almost hear cardiac-clutching from old-school Reformers as their former leader sells out.

Yet, it’s working like a charm. While voters saw right through Harper’s blue sweater vest as basic sheep’s clothing disguising a political wolf, the new act has sold well enough to generate a faint Harper-mania.

The problem confounding the Liberals now is facing a nemesis who defies definition–a prime minister standing for everything he opposed, yet facing no policy pressure from the right as he lays claim to a great swath of the mushy ideological middle.

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Popularity: 22% [?]

Stephen Harper says he’s more concerned about God’s judgment than how history books rate his term in office, telling a Quebec magazine in a markedly personal interview that preserving relationships with family is far more important than worrying about a political legacy.

Driving his point home, the Prime Minister told Quebec City’s Prestige magazine that it would be a “disaster” to win elections but lose one’s family in the process.

The interview, which appears in the Quebec City publication’s September issue, is an attempt to soften Mr. Harper’s hard-edged image in the province, where Conservative fortunes have slid since the 2008 election.

The Tory Leader has long cultivated support in Quebec City, where he has a much more solid base than in Montreal and its suburbs.

In the article, Mr. Harper said it’s too early to consider how history will treat him, adding that a more pressing and ever-present priority is ensuring family comes first.

“The important thing, for me, is to preserve family ties. I can win elections, but if I lose my family, it’s a disaster.”

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Popularity: 26% [?]