Will Mike Duffy's Chickens Come Home to Roost in Harper's Backyard?

“Because my family has no money, I’ve decided to become a prostitute. That’s right, I’m going into politics.
” ― Jarod Kintz, The Merits of Marthaism, and How Being Named Susan Can Benefit You

During the final days of the 2008 Canadian federal election campaign, the Liberals were starting to climb in the polls. Stephen Harper had not done well in the debates and Climate Change was increasing as an election issue.

According to Nik Nanos

The fallout from the French and English debates shows the previous pre-debate 10 point Conservative margin is now four percentage points. Tracking shows incremental movement in favour of the Liberals and Stephane Dion. Dion registered his highest score as the person Canadians think would make the best Prime Minister.

Stephen Harper was in trouble and he knew it. Attacks on the carbon tax were losing traction, and his "bubble campaign" was about to burst.

Enter CTV and Mike Duffy. (Insert drum roll)

In the now infamous interview with Stephane Dion, Steve Murphy, an anchor with CTV Atlantic, presented a question that many linguists have called convoluted at best, and intentionally crafted at worst. I believe the latter to be true.

The French speaking Dion, who is also hearing impaired, struggled to make sense of Murphy's verbal diarrhea, asking several times to start again. Murphy assured the Liberal leader, that he would be afforded the same courtesy as many others who needed restarts, and that the "out takes" would not be broadcast. He lied.

Tripping over themselves for headlines, CTV included them in their nightly news.

Mike Duffy used the incident as a panel topic on his program, mocking Mr. Dion and steering the conversation away from his defense, and toward simply sticking it to him. Days later Stephen Harper won his second minority.

However, the stunt pulled by Duffy, Murphy and CTV had a more dire affect. Not more dire than being stuck with Harper for another term, but Canadian democracy was struck another serious blow. The Liberal votes did not go to the Conservatives, or even the NDP. Instead those voters simply decided to stay home on election night.

The players, Mike Duffy and Steve Murphy, were charged by the CRTC with ethics violations. Yet Murphy was given a rare one-on-one interview with Stephen Harper, and Duffy a Senate seat, along with CTV board member, Pamela Wallin.

Early Warning Signs

Many in the media were aware of how badly Mike Duffy wanted a Senate seat. A once respected journalist, he had become little more than a gossip monger, willing to prostitute himself for the chance to sit in the coveted Chamber. They even nicknamed him The Senator.

So his manipulation of the "news" to worm his way into the good graces of Stephen Harper, came as no surprise to them. They would finally be afforded an opportunity to expose the scam, when just a few months later, Duffy's expense claims would be brought into question.

NDP MP Peter Stoffer, drew attention to the fact that Duffy had racked up $44,000 in travel costs in just three months. Odd, given that much of his travel was for speaking engagements on behalf of the Conservative Party of Canada, for which he charged a fee.

Duffy was livid and called Stoffer a "faker", prompting Don Martin to write a piece, Mike Duffy Jumps the Shark.

It takes considerable effort to become a complete embarrassment. Congratulations Senator Mike Duffy, you've finally done it.

With his wild rant on a CBC national politics show this week, the television icon has accomplished the difficult feat of offending all those in his parliamentary orbit -- his former journalistic occupation, the Conservative party, senators, MPs and even the prime minister who appointed him ....

...Now, Duffy calling someone a faker equals pot calling the kettle black. This is the same Duffy who, as host of his own politics show, presented himself for decades as journalistically neutral, then accepted Harper's $130,000 appointment ten months ago and now devotes his energies to shamelessly shilling for the Conservatives.

That's the definition of fakery for you, particularly given he was appointed after airing that infamous CTV interview with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion, a bumbling performance credited by some as the turning point of the 2008 election campaign for Stephen Harper.

Duffy's on air political views were already becoming increasingly right-wing, perhaps recognizing that hitching his wagon to the Conservative Movement would be better for his career.

In 2004, when there was concern over a coalition attempt by Stephen Harper, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe, that would have made Harper Prime Minister then, Duffy was one of the few to hail this as a good thing.

On the day in October 2004 when Mr. Martin’s government delivered its throne speech, CTV journalist Mike Duffy — later appointed by Mr. Harper as a Conservative senator — reported that some Conservatives saw the Liberals’ troubles as a chance to make Mr. Harper prime minister. “It is possible that you could change prime minister without having an election,” Mr. Duffy said on CTV on Oct. 5, 2004. “If you could put Stephen Harper — and this is some of the thinking of Conservatives — in 24 Sussex Drive, even for five or six months without an election, it would make the Conservative option much more palatable to Canadians because they’d see that they don’t have horns and a tail.”

Unfortunately, it would turn out that he did in fact have horns and tail. In 2004, Canadians were concerned with his threats to Public Healthcare and our Charter of Rights. Touché.

But Duffy was now true blue, hitting the circuit with neocon diatribe against anything remotely liberal, even warning journalism students not to read Noam Chomsky, for fear they might be inflicted with critical thinking. The horror!

When They Fall They Fall Hard

Now Mike Duffy is facing 31 criminal charges of fraud and breach of trust, despite enormous efforts by the PMO and Conservative Party, to sweep this under the rug; including money to pay for his defense.

What were they afraid of? Surely not just the scandal. They were already facing enough scandals to sink their ship.

However, well aware of Duffy's penchant for gossip and need to stay in the limelight, they were probably afraid of what he already knew and what he would share, and indeed, he has promised to do just that.

There is already overwhelming evidence that Harper knew of the Duffy payoff, just as he knew of the Cadman payoff, and Porter's criminal record. A continuation of controlling everything but being accountable for nothing.

Besides dreaming of a Senate seat, however, Duffy also had designs of one day being awarded the Order of Canada. Says former drinking buddy, Linden MacIntyre:

“Mike developed ‘host’s disease,’ ... That's where you start to believe all the flattery, believe you’re bigger than the story. The affliction gets worse, the head swells up and anything that threatens your celebrity becomes a problem.”

Duffy now has a very big problem, and instead of ending his career in glory, he will be remembered as a "faker", a fraud and a cheat.

But he will not be alone.

We Don't Want an Apology From Tony Clement. We Want an Investigation.

Embezzlement - To take (money, for example) for one's own use in violation of a trust.

Fraud - deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.

I watched the news coverage last night on the G-8 spending in Tony Clement's riding. John Wiersema, the acting auditor general, who has worked in the department for 33 years, claimed that he had never seen anything like this.

The Conservatives misappropriated funds and used those funds on cosmetic surgery.

Bike racks, carvings and lighthouses on stumps. All going into one of the wealthiest ridings in the country, without receipts or oversight.

I then watched as NDP Charlie Angus, asked Tony Clement to apologize.

Are you kidding me? Apologize for the theft of almost $50 million dollars? If this had been in the private sector, Clement would not only lose his job, but could also be facing jail time.

What happens if the government steals $100 million? Will they have to write lines?

I will not get caught, I will not get caught, I will not get caught ...

This is fraud boys and girls and demands an investigation. Who got what and how did they spend it? I looked at the crap sprinkled around his riding, and there's no way they can account for $50 million. No way on earth.

This is not just about pork barrelling. This is about missing funds. Our funds. We demand more than a damned apology.

It was nice that in the debate, Thomas Mulcair brought up the Sponsorship scandal. I see the NDP are picking up where they left off, allowing the Conservatives explain away every misdeed, because apparently the Liberals did it first.

Grow up.

I've been doing a lot of research into the sponsorship scandal, that involved no elected officials, unlike this one. I think I'm going to have to publish some of it, because that scandal started with Conservative Brian Mulroney.

However, Mulcair is only further turning people off politics. What must the young people in his caucus think? This is a lot of money and it must be taken seriously.

And yet what do we get from the Conservatives?

John Baird accusing the opposition of engaging in uncivil behaviour, and Stephen Harper arrogantly claiming that they used more misappropriated funds, if Bob Rae had only done his homework.

Openly admitting to being crooked, knowing that they were going to get away with it.

Unbelievable.

Where is the right-wing noise machine? In 1995 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation were all over the sprucing up of Nova Scotia for the impending G-7 summit.

The federal government was wrong to put next month's G-7 summit in Halifax because the city needs too many government-funded fixups, says a national taxpayers' lobby group. The heads of the leading industrialized nations meet in the Nova Scotia capital June 15-17 and the federal, provincial and local governments are spending $8.1 million to spruce it up.

The federal government "should have chosen a location which wouldn't cost that kind of money ... There are conference facilities available, I'm sure, in that part of the world as well as across Canada that could have hosted an event like this without spending several million dollars to upgrade them." (Halifax wrong choice for G-7, By Steve Lambert, Canadian Press Newswire, April 30 1995)

And who was this tax dollar watchdog, quoted in the article?

...said Jason Kenney, spokesman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a watchdog group promoting cuts in taxes and government spending.

Conservative Charged With Mortgage Fraud Still Won His Seat

Devinder Shory, the man charged with mortgae fraud, who is being sued by the Bank of Montreal, still managed to hold onto his seat.

And he campaigned on getting tough on crime.

MP Shory accused in giant mortgage fraud

PM won't punish Shory over fraud investigation

Calgary MP Devinder Shory caught up BMO mortgage uproar

MP Devinder Shory among hundreds sued by bank over alleged fraud

Fraser Institute Paper Reveals That Stephen Harper is Not a Tory

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Throughout history there are a great many myths, and of course those myths then become facts and those facts become history. But for our time, one of the biggest myths is the labelling of Stephen Harper as a Tory, and his party as conservatives.

Anyone who has ever voted Progressive Conservative in the past, must know in their gut that this party is absolutely nothing like the Progressive Conservative Party that we are familiar with.

Can you imagine the wonderful Dalton Camp, former conservative strategist, ever working with someone like Stephen Harper? When he first learned that there was a movement to unite the Alliance Party (formerly Reform Party) with his conservatives, he was adamantly opposed, suggesting that the two parties had no common ground and that then leader of the Alliance Party, Stockwell Day, was "viewed by most Tories as embedded in the lunatic fringe." (1)

Lawrence Martin recently asked: Is there an old-style Tory in the House?

Is there a moderate Tory left in this land? There are many, of course. It’s just that they have no voice. They might as well be in cement shoes at the bottom of Lake Nipigon. This year, in particular, it has become evident just how much the old Tories of Robert Stanfield and Dalton Camp and Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark have been vanquished.

During their first years of governance, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives paid heed to the views of that progressive breed. But the party’s hard right now appears, with a few policy exceptions, to have assumed control of the agenda. And that agenda is about keeping out boat people, letting in Fox News, building new jails, reviewing affirmative action, killing the gun registry, playing down climate change, revamping the census and giving more voice to social conservatives.

However, I came across a decade old article published for the Fraser Institute, that lays it all out succinctly. Written by Laurence Putnam, it was entitled: An Analysis On The Differences Between the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada & The Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance.

I was a bit confused at first, because the Fraser Institute, with people like Jason Kenney, David Frum and Ezra Levant, worked very hard to unite these parties, and yet clearly this report detailed why such a union was wrong.

This analysis has been prepared in answer to pleas from various political personalities in Canada to unite the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance. It is the goal of this paper to illustrate, with evidence of past elections, voter migration patterns, an examination of each party's culture and historical evidence to prove that any such unity between these two parties would alienate the moderate support base the Progressive Conservative Party enjoys and which must be captured to form a government.

It is the intention of this paper to successfully show how the Reform Party rose to prominence ... and how the Conservatives can work to ensure that movements such as the Canadian Alliance are not allowed to grow in the future.

What Putnam showed was that this would not be about "uniting the right", because the PC Party was not a right-wing party. I had mentioned this before, that in most ways there was little difference between the Liberals and PCs on policy, so elections were always about platform and personality. But the divide between the Reform/Alliance and the PC was a veritable chasm.

And they knew that.

So why did they do it, and why was it so successful?

I remember years ago reading an article in a May, 1939 issue of Liberty Magazine: Why Germany Will Not Go to War. In it the columnist laid out all the reasons why Adolf Hitler would not declare war in Europe. And what I found interesting was that everything predicted came true, and they lost as a result. And that's because what wasn't factored into the prediction was profiteering.

A lot of people stood to become very rich off that war, and they in fact did, including many American corporations. (George Bush's grandfather made his fortune financing the Nazis)

And this union of the right, as erroneously as it was labelled, was poised to make a lot of wealthy people wealthier. That's what neoconservatism is all about. And it's why they plucked Stephen Harper from the National Citizens Coalition, a group financed and run by multi-national corporations.

Stephen Harper himself has said that he got back into politics because he felt that the NCC no longer had any allies in government, with Brian Mulroney gone. And the NCC held his job open for four years, before naming another president. He was now working for them on the inside.

I'm going to break down Putnam's paper into several posts, because there are many startling revelations. I then intend to edit it down for a chapter in my E-Book, but for now the important thing is that Stephen Harper and his people deliberately perpetrated a fraud on Canadians, when they engineered a hostile takeover of the PC Party.

It puts so many past quotes and stories into perspective.

What was revealed to the Fraser Institute was that there were no grounds for a union. So instead they changed their strategy. And for that they went to Tom Flanagan, the Calgary School and founding member of both the Reform Party and Civitas Society, Ted Byfield.

Ted Byfield, the unabashed voice of the West since the Calgary School’s professors were pups, sees it another way – in terms Leo Strauss might have approved. “All these positions which Harper cherishes are there because of a group of people in Calgary – Flanagan most prominent among them,” Byfield says. “I don’t think he knows how to compromise. It’s not in his genes. The issue now is: how do we fool the world into thinking we’re moving to the left when we’re not?” (2)

I guess "you can fool some of the people some of the time", but who are they really fooling now? Harper's base has been reduced to those who know and relish in the fact that he is not a Tory.

The Reform Movement Was Populism, Not Conservatism

Sources:

1. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 381

2. The Man Behind Stephen Harper, by Marci McDonald, From the October 2004 issue of The Walrus

Breaking News! Guy Giorno's Cardboard Cutout has Been Kidnapped

So while the cutout was lounging around fake lake, and the one billion dollar security team were protecting the "vandals" and beating up citizens, something horrible happened.

A thief nabbed Guy Giorno's cardboard cutout.

He thought it was safe, so has spent the last few days hanging by his ankles in his favourite cave. Then he got the news. What is he going to use now as a stand in to lead this country? His Mike Harris cardboard cutout has been worn out, and the 'Stevie' is who knows where? He may just have to step out of the shadows himself.

C'mon Giorno. You're the one spending all our money. The least you could do is treat us to a smile now and then.

I did hear that there was a ransom demand of seven trillion dollars, but the Canadian people are clear. That is simply not enough money to take him back. They'll have to come up with more.

In the meantime there is a petition:

How long will Canadians be prepared for the sake of avoiding an election to allow an unethical government which has engaged in fraudulent practices, and evasive techniques, and unscrupulous actions, govern?How much longer will a compliant Governor General support such practices, techniques and action? The Governor General erred twice in dissolving and proroguing Parliament, (Under Article VI) of her letters patent. Now she must correctly use her residual powers under Article V - remove Harper from office ... No other country, other than established dictatorships, would tolerate Harper's abuse of power.

I know of a Toronto Transit worker who would like to see him gone, after falling victim to Harper's Police State.

A TTC fare collector spent a “terrifying” 36 hours in custody after being arrested in uniform on his way to work during Saturday’s G20 summit protests. Benjamin Elroy Yau, 37, said he was walking along College St. to the Queen’s Park subway station before his 6 p.m. shift when two police officers “tackled” him to the ground and yelled at him to stop resisting arrest.

But he's not the only Torontonian upset with the Harper dictatorship. The list is growing:

Last weekend, when our federal government put Canada’s largest city in harm’s way, the list of victims went way beyond the people who were needlessly arrested and the owners of the shops whose windows were smashed.

Last heard, Giorno was cutting out an image of Jason Kenney, but he can't his head through the door.

More On Flaherty's Gambling Addiction and Harper's Fraud

As I posted a few days ago, on how Jim Flaherty had gambled away our future, many others are sounding the alarm about the financial mess that he and his enabler Stephen Harper (aka: Guy Giorno) have gotten us into.

It's too bad God deserted Jim Flaherty's friend, Charles McVety years ago, because clearly that man is going to need a prayer soon.

As for Canada, I doubt we even have a prayer at all that can now save us.

Frances Russel for the Winnipeg Free Press calls it all smoke and mirrors.

That $57,000 Muskoka "lake" in the $1.9 million "Experience Canada" media centre isn't all that's fake about Canada's image as host country for the G8 and G20 summits. The real charade is Canada's preaching to the world about the strengths of Canada's banking system -- and using that "strength" to lead the opposition to an international bank tax -- while giving Canada's banks a massive bailout.

The financial media have virtually ignored Ottawa's $200-billion low-interest line of credit to help Canada's banks weather the recession and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.'s $125-billion purchase of questionable mortgages and other rotten paper held by the banks when the crash came in the fall of 2008. Both were part of the 2009 federal budget.

Neither has stopped Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty from touring world capitals to boast that Canada, alone, never had to loan or guarantee one red cent for its banks and would mount the barricades to protect Canada's solid and prudent financial institutions from being gouged to save the "reckless" banking systems and taxpayers of other countries.

She calls it smoke and mirrors. I call it lying.

Of course I lived in Ontario when Jim Flaherty was our provincial finance minister, and lying was actually part of their party platform.

Ralph Surette for the Chronicle Herald is also well aware of the fraud that has not only been played on the Canadian people but all members of the G20 Nations:

The banks were actually "bailed out" to the tune of $125 billion just before and after the 2008 election — in the form of a massive purchase of questionable mortgages and other "rotten paper," in the words of one economist, held by them. This was done through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal agency. The taxpayer is now on the hook for these mortgages, 40 per cent of which are considered at risk, with more to come if interest rates rise and the economy dips again.

But the kicker is this: Hardly anybody noticed. It wasn’t an issue in the election, and the financial press said nothing. A few tried, and are still trying, to raise the alarm. Michel Chossudovsky, a retired University of Ottawa economist and head of the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalization, pointed out that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had announced a $2.3-billion surplus in the offing before the election, then quickly changed it to a $64-billion deficit. He argues that the entire deficit was for the first installments of the bailout, which the prime minister described as "not a bailout" but a "market transaction."

... As for the banks, here’s the rest of the story. Bank profits have boomed after the "not a bailout." The Big Six have made some $5 billion in each of the last two quarters. Last year, the banks gave their top dudes over $8 billion in bonuses. This year, they’ve put away $5 billion so far for this exercise in legalized theft. Meanwhile, the Harper tax cuts — which will have Canada with the lowest corporate tax rates in the G7 by 2012 — is giving the banks a gift of some $200 million per quarter at present rates of profit. Voices in the wilderness call for banks to be regulated like a public utility, which is what they are, in order to stop this "wealth by stealth" operation. Others call on the federal government to resume borrowing, on its own behalf and that of the provinces and municipalities, from the Bank of Canada, bypassing commercial rates — as it did before 1974. With Harper in power and nobody noticing anything, good luck with that.

Wake up media, or this country is going to be in serious trouble, since Harper has made our economy almost completely contingent on the Americans.

Signs are mounting that the U.S. economic recovery is losing steam as stimulus measures fade and companies remain reluctant to hire. A collection of readings Thursday from diverse areas of the economy – housing, manufacturing, employment and construction – all reinforced the sense that the expansion of the world’s largest economy is decelerating in the face of considerable headwinds.

And with Flaherty touting derivatives, a high octane, high risk form of trading, we're hanging by our fingernails. Germany is smartening up. I'd be happy if this government just did something smart.

German lawmakers on Friday approved a government bill that would cement in law and extend curbs on speculative trading practices following the country's abrupt imposition of restrictions in May. The bill — which the government said is aimed at speeding agreement on stronger European rules, but the opposition denounced as ineffective — passed parliament's lower house with the votes of Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition.

Wake up people and start demanding some answers. This is your money and your children's future that they are blowing.

Canada Economic Inaction Plan Exposed. Warning: Not For the Faint of Heart!

"The Economic Action Plan is just as much about stimulating the Conservative party's reelection chances... This is an abuse of tax dollars. Canadians should not be forced, through their taxes, to subsidize a political party's agenda." (Gerry Nicholls, National Post, Friday, October 16, 2009)

There is a story today in the Vancouver Sun that confirms Nicholls assessment of the abuse of tax dollars, under the so-called Canada Economic Action Plan. It neatly lays out how this government turned what should have been a legitimate attempt at stimulating the economy, into a multi-million dollar ad campaign for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Senior bureaucrats told the Harper government shortly after the last election that its infrastructure plan could be used as a "strategically important" communications tool that would provide "excellent visibility" for local ministers and MPs, Canwest News Service has learned.

The advice was included in briefing notes released through Access to Information legislation. They were prepared for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Baird in the fall of 2008, shortly before opposition MPs started questioning whether the government was using its economic stimulus spending to raise its profile and boost its popularity.

From the beginning, the backroom of Harper's House of Haunts, was busy funnelling money to ridings that needed it most, not based on which ones were hit the hardest by the economic downturn, but those that would benefit the Reformers chances of winning the next election.

There is a website called Fake Action Plan, that goes into this in some depth.

Acton Plan Heavy on Advertising Short on Action

"The partisan handouts are just the latest game played with your tax dollars by a government that promised to do things differently. It has blanketed the airwaves with government-promotion ads at a pace six times the rate of any H1N1 public education blitz." (Don Martin, National Post, October 16, 2009)

Every announcement made by Stephen Harper along the way, was meticulously choreographed, but pretty much pure bunk.

Signs and television ads became more important than getting money out the door. In Kingston I found several large signs on projects that were .. well ... absent of any project. In fact the only action appearing to have been taken, was sticking up the damn sign.

One was in a church courtyard, where I often sit when I'm downtown. A huge sign blocked my view with the announcement that the Government of Canada was committed to restoring government buildings, or something to that effect.

But the nearest government building was at least a half a block away. So I walked down to it, and there just happened to be a maintenance guy outside, so I asked him if he knew of any restoration going on inside. He answered 'no, but I'm just about to mow the lawn'.

I found another at the base of a creek, with the claim that the Government of Canada was committed to preserving Canada's waterways. Waterways? It was a bloody creek. You could actually jump over it.

And all of this was paid for not only with my federal tax dollars, but provincial and municipal as well, since they found a way to bilk us at all levels.

Big Cardboard Cheques

"There really is sort of layer upon layer of scandal here. You've got not just the use of the logos but the use of individual MPs handing out this money." ( Andrew Coyne, CBC The National, October 15, 2009)

Canadians also learned of the abuse of the Government of Canada, trying to make it appear that the money was coming from the Conservative Party of Canada, and not the Canadian taxpayer.

The uproar was immediate with cries of whose money is it anyway. Not only were MPs handing out big cardboard cheques, signed by them or Stephen Harper, but they were also leaving out the local MPs, if they weren't from their party. One NDP MP complained that the project being funded was a result of her work, and yet she learned that it had been approved by reading it in her local paper. And guess who was handing out the cheque? The Conservative candidate for the next election.

Pork Barrelling

"Beyond the shameful chequebook politics, there's an apparent tendency to concentrate stimulus funding in government-held ridings." (Don Martin, National Post, October 16, 2009)

Instead of targeting the stimulus money to areas that most needed it and were closer to actually putting shovels in the ground, the ref-Cons targeted the spending on ridings that were either vulnerable for them, or the ridings of cabinet ministers.

Pork-barrelling is nothing new, but the economic crisis called for urgent action, not politicking. Many of the projects that sported their 'Actions' signs were ones already in progress or for simple maintenance. Few new jobs.

******************

My Postings on Fraudulent Economic Action Plan

For All Their Pork-Barrelling Infrastructure Spending Missed it's Mark

Harper Government Involved in E-Health Scandal. What Will Hudak do Now?

Conservative Candidate Dumped for Honesty Over Abuse of Stimulus Money

New Poll Suggests Canadians Knew Harper Was Lying About Stimulus

Is the Harper Government Too Unethical to Pinpoint a Law?

Reform-Conservatives Guilty of the Largest Propaganda Campaign in Our History. And the Good News Is - We Are Paying For It!

More Young People Speak Out Against Harper's Abuse of THEIR Money

Could the Reform-Conservatives Latest Scandal Cost Harper His Job?

Warning. Stack of Ref-Cons Scandals Has Fallen Over and Threatens the Entire Nation. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

While Scandals Mount Public Outcry Becomes Deafening

The Devil Went Down to Nova Scotia and Leaves Them in Black Rage

Well This Spin Was Worth Sixty Million Dollars and Counting

Reform Conservatives Launch Art Show: "Taking Corruption to New Heights"

Canada to Undergo Name Change to Reform Republic of North America Inc.

Reform-Conservatives Now Using Party Logo on Government Cheques!!!!

Reform-Conservatives Say 'As Long As There is a Dollar Left to Steal .. It is Ours!!!!'

Was the Canada Action Plan a Complete Fraud?

Taxpayers Billed For Harper Campaign Blitz

We Were Warned in April That the Harper Government Was Playing Games With Stimulus

Brian Mulroney Must Feel Pretty Good with the Reform Conservative Scandal Boiling Over Stimulus

Our Property Taxes Must Now Go to Support Stephen Harper's Campaign

Anyone Else Sick to Friggen' Death of Conservative Signs? It Gets Better (or Worse)

Unbelievable. Municipalities Must Now Have to Pay for Ref Con Advertising

Conservatives Find Way to Cheat Taxpayers at All Three Levels

So Where's the Stimulation?

Stephen Harper's Ship is Sinking With Ref-Con Backdraft

Jim Prentice and John Baird Team up to Create a Possible Nightmare

I posted before about two environmental groups who were taking the government to court because they decided without consent from Parliament to forgo environmental assessments on new projects.

As I stated then, '... many people will say that they were being forced to get the money out the door as soon as possible, so didn't have time for any studies. However, they spent a great deal of time studying how they could direct the stimulus money into improving their political fortunes, while ignoring any notion that the money should go to communities who suffered a greater impact from the downturn.'

Now we learn that the environmental assessment panel has not even met since 2008, and even then conducted no business, so it's pretty clear that that this government has no intention of doing any assessments at all.

And since it would appear that the Canada Action Plan was little more than a PR campaign, by leaving the study to the provinces, if projects get turned down, they will have someone to blame.

They produced the big cardboard cheques and demanded the provinces and municipalities erect huge and expensive signs in their honour. Their job was done.

Tories have ignored environmental assessment panel, member says
By Mike De Souza,
Canwest News Service
January 3, 2010

OTTAWA - A federal panel that advises the government on the environmental impact of new economic development has been left on the sidelines for nearly two years, Canwest News Service has learned. Throughout this time, sweeping changes to regulations have been passed, effectively exempting thousands of projects from mandatory evaluations. `We haven't had any notice that the minister has dissolved the committee, but it's kind of awkward to have a committee that doesn't meet,'' said Gary Schneider, who sits on the panel.

Schneider, the co-chairman of the Environmental Coalition of Prince Edward Island, said the last meeting of the Regulatory Advisory Committee was in the spring of 2008. But, he said, no consultations were held with the panel in 2009, as the government introduced a series of exemptions for new infrastructure projects ...

Canada Action Plan Was Nothing More Than a PR Stunt

I posted early last month that there were many people who believed that the Canada Action Plan was a complete fraud - nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Well, turns out they were right. 100 million for Reform Party advertising, 45 million for Reform Party signs, and despite the fact that Harper announced recently that 90% of the funding was out the door, we learn today that a mere 7% has been invested in Canada.

7%. That's it. All that bluster was nothing more than empty rhetoric. So where in hell did our money go? We are now a half a trillion dollars in debt, with nothing to show for it. Billions of dollars of worthless paper thanks to Jim Flaherty.

A year ago the Reform Conservatives announced 1.9 billion for social housing. So far 1% has been spent. Yet homelessness is on the rise and food banks are being used more than any other time in our history

But do you think Stephen Harper is losing any sleep over this? No way. The National Citizens Coalition has won. Neo-conservatism has won and the Canadian people are still in trance, lulled into a deep sleep by a Beatles song. I am so ashamed.

Impolitical wrote a great piece on the subject with a lot of detail.

No steam in stimulus
Only 7 per cent of infrastructure projects begun across country
By STEPHEN MAHER
The Chronicle Herald and
GLEN McGREGOR The Ottawa Citizen
December 1, 2009

Shovels were in the ground on only seven per cent of the projects funded by the Harper government’s largest infrastructure stimulus program by late September, newly released data show.

The revelation from the government’s own numbers is likely to add weight to opposition claims that the bulk of the unprecedented wave of government spending won’t hit the street until the construction season of 2010, when the worst of the global economic downturn may have passed.

The database detailing spending under the $4-billion Infrastructure Stimulus Fund shows that construction has started on only 201 of 3,034 projects – building, water, road and sewer ventures across the country.

The figures were compiled on Sept. 22, a week before Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a carefully choreographed event in Saint John, N.B., at which he trumpeted that 90 per cent of the money in his economic stimulus package had been committed.

At the time, opposition critics scoffed that he was refusing to announce the number of projects actually started, emphasizing the high percentage of projects approved.

But the database detailing the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund spending includes only $2.8 billion of federal spending commitments, which is about 70 per cent of the $4-billion two-year fund, a figure substantially lower than Mr. Harper’s assertion that 90 per cent of infrastructure spending had been committed.

However, there are several other funds in the federal government’s two-year $12-billion infrastructure investment program, meant to inject some gas into the economy struggling to cope with a global recession.

It is possible that shovels had hit the ground in more projects than the database shows, because the federal government’s reporting regime lags significantly behind actual construction starts. The database shows that 66 per cent of projects were scheduled to start by the time the database was assembled.

Other projects have begun since then. For instance, a $38-million tunnel between Algonquin College and the Baseline Road transit station in Ottawa broke ground Oct. 16 with Infrastructure Minister John Baird on hand.

Federal government spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests Tuesday to explain the low number of construction starts. Opposition critics have complained that the government has tried to hide the number of construction starts, because it shows the Harper government hasn’t been acting quickly enough.

The database was prepared for MPs on the government operations committee and obtained by The Halifax Chronicle Herald and Ottawa Citizen.

The results show that in most provinces no projects have been started. Only projects in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan are underway.

Most of the projects actually underway – 169 of them - were in Quebec, all but one were water main projects under the province’s PRECO program. The federal government announced a $350-million contribution to the program in April.

The approval process for projects in Quebec - where the federal government is forbidden by law from dealing directly with municipalities – is different from those in other provinces, where municipalities file applications, which must be approved by civil servants, then politicians.

The database gives some indication of the difficulties that the federal civil service faces as it struggles to get projects approved quickly without violating regulations designed to safeguard taxpayer dollars. There are 30 fields of information for each project, with boxes to be checked off for permits from three levels of government, environmental approval and aboriginal consultation.

One civil servant familiar with the approval process who requested anonymity said it was not surprising that so few projects had actually been started.

“These things take a long time because there are multiple levels of intermediaries, thanks to provinces and municipalities,” the civil servant said.

“So by the time the negotiations go through and a contribution agreement is signed it normally takes a year and a half.” More than 1000 projects are still waiting for the necessary permits or environmental approvals to begin work, the data show, even though the government acted to streamline environmental approvals in the 2009 budget.

More Postings on the Economy:

1. "I like to Pay Taxes. With Them I Buy Civilization"

2. Stevie and Jimbo Would be More Convincing if They Just Stopped Talking

3. Will Bailing Out Sinking Auto Industry Keep it Afloat?

4. Loonie Slips as ...No wait. Harper Just Stepped on a Banana Peel

5. Ring Around the Rosy, Harper's Full of Baloney

6. A Little Trip Down Memory Lane with Andrew Coyne

7. Harper Afraid of Election Tells Us Worst is Over

8. Dumb Da Dumb Dumb. A Little Music to Walk the Plank By

9. Where Are the Shovels, the Jobs, the Stimulus?

10. Good News, Bad News, and Worse News on the Economy

11. Why Stephen Harper's Economic Plans Will Fail

12. Canadian Government Focus of Unsolved Mysteries Episode

13. Conservative Road to Recovery is Paved With Lies

14. For All Their Bluster Canada May be Last of G7 to Exit Recession

15. Canada Not as Financially Sound as We'd Like to Think

16. Parliamentary Budget Officer Says Harper's Economic Update Was a Work of Fiction

17. The Reform-Conservatives Get Undue Credit While Harper Gets Caught in Another Lie

18. Stephen Harper and the Big Lie About Deficits

19. Parliamentary Budget Officer to Prepare Report on the Impact of an Aging Population

Jack Layton Contradicts Harper's Rosy Announcements

After Stephen Harper's Smoke and Mirrors announcement that 80% of stimulus money was out the door and he was going to fix EI, people in the know, have called it a load of horse doo doo.

Because this government has lied to us so much, I rarely, if ever, believe anything they tell me, and was pleased that Jack Layton went public with his doubts that this time was any different.

I've always liked Jack Layton and really hope that the NDP and Liberals will seek some kind of spirit of co-operation next election, so that vote-splitting doesn't put this corrupt and inept Conservative crew back in power.

We really need to get rid of them before it's too late and they totally destroy this country.

'Virtually nothing coming' from Tory stimulus fund

Little cash has flowed for big-ticket projects, latest figures show
Jun 14, 2009
Bruce Campion-Smith
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
Toronto Star

OTTAWA – Despite public pledges to accelerate infrastructure spending, the federal Conservatives have spent just a quarter of their $15 billion infrastructure fund, new figures show.

And the numbers reveal that very little cash has so far flowed for some big-ticket announcements.

For example, Ottawa has so far spent just $1.9 million out of a promised $622 million for the extension of Toronto's subway into Vaughan. A promised $100 million expansion of the Trans-Canada Highway near Banff has received just $5 million, and a $34.5 million road-widening in Calgary has only received $478,923, federal figures confirm.

"There's virtually nothing coming," NDP Leader Jack Layton said.

"There are billions of dollars of stimulus that should have been flowing already," he said. "Some of the people being laid off across the country could have moved into those construction jobs."

In fact, the funds are flowing even slower than forecast in the 2007 budget, before the financial crisis hit. According to that timetable, programs under the Building Canada Plan should have pumped more than $5 billion into projects by this fiscal year. Yet the amount spent so far is $1.3 billion less than forecast, calling into question whether pledges to boost spending are sincere, Layton said in an interview.

"I've always suspected that when Stephen Harper announces big sums of money to be spent, he so fundamentally doesn't believe in it ... the money is very unlikely to flow at all," Layton said.

The Conservatives have made repeated pledges to accelerate the pace of infrastructure funding to help get municipal projects underway and people to work, dating back to last fall's throne speech and the Jan. 27 budget.

Yet a tally of infrastructure projects nationwide provided to NDP MP Dennis Bevington (Western Arctic) by the federal transport department, which is responsible for the infrastructure file, appears to paint a different picture. According to an NDP analysis of those numbers, the government has spent:

- just 27 per cent or $2.4 billion of the $8.8 billion earmarked for major infrastructure and small communities.
- nothing out of its $1.25 billion budget for public-private partnership fund.
- 36 per cent or $760 million of the $2.1 billion budget for gateways and border crossings.
- 13 per cent or $130 million of the $1 billion for Asia-Pacific gateway and corridor initiatives.
- 20 per cent or $471 million out of a $2.28 billion budget for provincial and territorial base funding.

Yet, while mayors and councillors from across the country have been griping about the slow pace of funding, the tide appears to have turned and projects are now getting the green light, said Basil Stewart, the mayor of Summerside, P.E.I., and president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

"Things are starting to move fairly quickly. We're pleased about that," Stewart said. That was echoed by federal Transport Minister John Baird, who said in the Commons Friday, "Shovels are going in the ground as we speak." Under federal policy, funding starts only once construction gets underway.

The threat of an election has got the Conservatives moving, hoping to run a photo-op marathon this summer. Too little too late?

More Postings on Jack Layton:

1. Down in the Polls Layton Doesn't Want an Election

2. With Jack Layton in the Shadows is it the Time to Unite the Left?

3. I Think it Will Take More Than a Name Change to Revitalize the NDP

4. The Name Game: Talk About the Pot Calling the Kettle Black

5. Are Jack Layton and the NDP Headed in the Right Direction?

6. I Am So Damn Mad at Jack Layton and the NDP NOW flogging the Carbon Tax!

7. The NDP and Conservatives Have Formed an Alliance

8. I have to Share This Video of Jack Layton. It Cracked Me Up!

9. Jack Layton Says No Backroom Deals and Jason Kenney Agrees

10. Were Jack Layton and the NDP Behind the "Flash Mob" Protests?

11. So Maybe Jack Layton Can Tell us Where the Money Went

12. Jack Layton With Egg on His Face Joins the Reform-Conservatives

13. Before You Lambast Jack Layton Remember This is a Democracy

14. Jack Layton Thinks Harper's HST Could Hurt Conservatives Election Chances

How George Bush Stole the 2000 Election and Why It's Important to Us.

When Michael Moore wrote his tongue in cheek book, Stupid White Men, it was before 9/11 and the Iraq War, when the biggest concern was how George Bush and his operatives stole the 2000 election.

How he got away with it is mind boggling, when the deceit was so apparent. A fraudulent president and eight years of a fraudulent government.

Al Gore Should Have Been President

Al Gore received 539,898 more votes than George W. Bush. So how did George W. Bush, become what Moore called the Thief-in-Chief?

Somebody pass me the uni­versal remote! I need to switch back to the fairy tale that I was a citizen in a democracy with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happy Meals. The story I was told as a child said that I mattered, that I was equal to every one of my fellow citizens—and that not a single one of us was to be treated differently or unfairly, that no one was to wield power over others without their consent. The will of the people .... (1)

Because though it was clear that Gore had won the election, it would be George W Bush who sat in the oval office for eight years. But there were a lot of people behind the scenes who made this deception possible.

Katherine Harris and Database Technologies

In the summer of 1999 Katherine Harris, who was both George W. Bush's presidential campaign co chairwoman and the Florida secretary of state in charge of elections, paid $4 million to Database Technologies to go through Florida's voter rolls and remove anyone "suspected" of being a former felon. She did so with the blessing of the gover­nor of Florida, George Ws brother Jeb Bush—whose own wife was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak $19,000 worth of jewelry into the country without declaring and paying tax on it ... a felony in its own right.

Florida law states that ex-felons cannot vote in Florida. And sadly (though I'm confident that Florida's justice system was always unimpeachably fair), that means 31 percent of all black men in Florida are prohibited from voting because they have a felony on their record. Harris and Bush knew that removing the names of ex-felons from the voter rolls would keep thousands of black citi­zens out of the voting booth. Black Floridians, overwhelmingly, are Democrats—and sure enough, Al Gore received the votes of more than 90 percent of them on November 7, 2000. That is, 90 percent of those who were allowed to vote.

In what appears to be a mass fraud committed by the state of Florida, Bush, Harris, and company not only removed thousands of black felons from the rolls, they also removed thousands of black citizens who had never committed a crime in their lives—along with thousands of eligible voters who had committed only misde­meanors.

Harris's office told Database—a firm with strong Republican ties—to cast as wide a net as possible to get rid of these voters. Her minions instructed the company to include even people with "similar" names to those of the actual felons. They insisted Database check people with the same birth dates as known felons, or similar Social Security numbers; an 80 percent match of relevant information was sufficient for Database to add a voter to the ineligible list.

These orders were shocking, even to Bush-friendly Database. They would mean that thousands of legitimate voters might be barred from voting on Election Day just because they had a name that sounded like someone else's, or shared a birthday with some unknown bank robber. Marlene Thorogood, the Database proj­ect manager, sent an E-mail to Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell, a lawyer for Katherine Harris's election division, warning him that "Unfortunately, programming in this fashion may supply you with false positives," or misidentifications.

Never mind that, said ol' Bucky. His response: "Obviously, we want to capture more names that possibly aren't matches and let [county election] supervisors make a final determination rather than exclude certain matches altogether."

Database did as they were told. And before long 173,000 reg­istered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls. In Miami-Dade, Florida's largest county, 66 percent of the voters who were removed were black. In Tampa's county, 54 per­cent of those who would be denied the right to vote on Novem­ber 7, 2000, were black.

The Harper government also began playing with the voting rules in Canada, making it harder for the disenfranchised to exercise their democratic rights, by demanding specific identification:

Asked who likely benefitted from the new rule, one of the case's plaintiffs, Victoria activist Rose Henry, said, "The people who have their identification. The people who would have been voting in favour of the current government in power." People who are housed and in well paying jobs, she added.

People who are struggling in the current system, the people with the most to gain from a change in government, were likely left out, she said, if not scared off by the new rules. "I think a lot of people just didn't bother voting," she said. "It disenfranchised a lot of people who normally would go out and vote. . . Was this the government's way of ensuring the party they wanted to get in got in?"

The Republicans, during the 2000 campaign, to assist Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, also had another state confirm claims against felons, moving even more black people from the voter lists. That state of course was Texas:

This entire incident stunk to the high heavens, but the Amer­ican media ignored it. It took the British Broadcasting Corpora­tion to dig deep into this story, running fifteen-minute segments on its prime-time news program revealing all the sordid details and laying responsibility for the scam right at the doorstep of Governor Jeb Bush. It's a sad day when we have to look to a coun­try 5,000 miles away to find out the truth about our own elec­tions. (Eventually the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post picked up the story, but it received little attention.)

This assault on the voting rights of minorities was so wide­spread in Florida that it even affected people like Linda Howell. Linda received a letter informing her that she was a felon—and therefore advising her not to bother showing up on Election Day, because she would be barred from voting. The only problem was, Linda Howell wasn't a felon—in fact, she was the elections super­visor of Madison County, Florida! She and other local election officials tried to get the state to rectify the problem, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. They were told that everyone who complained about being prevented from voting should submit themselves for fingerprinting—and then let the state determine whether or not they were felons.

And in the same way that 450,000 Canadian voters were turned awayon election day in Canada in 2008, on November 7, 2000, black Floridians flocked to the polls in record numbers, many were met at the ballot boxes with a blunt rebuke: "You cannot vote."

In a number of precincts in Florida's inner cities, the polling locations were heavily fortified with police to block anyone on Katherine and Deb's "felons list" from voting. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens looking to exercise their constitutional right to vote, mostly in black and Hispanic communities, were sent away—and threatened with arrest if they protested.

Fox News Joins in With the Deception

On election night, after the polls closed, there was a lot of con­fusion over what was happening with the counting of the votes in Florida. Finally a decision was made by the man in charge of the election night desk for the Fox News Channel. He decided that Fox should go on the air and declare that Bush had won Florida and thus the election. And that's what happened. Fox formally declared Bush the winner.

But down in Tallahassee, the counting of the votes had not yet been completed; in fact, the Associated Press insisted it was still too close to call, and refused to follow Fox's lead. Not so the other networks. They ran like lemmings after Fox made the call, afraid that they would be seen as slow or out of the loop—even though their own news reporters on the ground were insisting that it was too early to call the election. But who needs reporters when you're playing follow the leader—the leader, in this case, being John Ellis, the man in charge of Fox's election coverage.

Who is John Ellis? He's a first cousin of George W and Jeb Bush. (1)

Once Ellis made the call and everyone followed suit, there was no going back making it difficult for Al Gore to challenge the premature election results He was being petty asking for recounts. A sore loser.

But in the meantime the Bush team was going after the holy grail—the overseas absentee votes.

Many of these bal­lots would come from the military, which typically votes Republi­can, and would finally give Bush the lead that denying the vote to thousands of blacks and Jewish grandmothers hadn't. Gore knew this, and tried to make sure the ballots underwent maximum scrutiny before they could be counted. Florida law ... is pretty clear about this ... It states that overseas absentee ballots can only be counted if they were cast and signed on or before election day, and mailed and postmarked from another country by election day.

A July 2001 investigation by the New York Times showed that of the 2,490 overseas ballots that ended up being included in the certified election results, 680 were considered flawed and questionable. Bush got the overseas vote by a ratio of 4 to 5. By that percentage, 544 of the votes that went to Bush should have been thrown out. Got the math? Suddenly Bush's "winning margin" of 537 votes is down to a chilly negative 7.

Another fraud. But they weren't done yet. They launched a PR campaign suggesting tath Al Gore was against th troops, simply because he was trying to follow election laws. "If they catch a bullet, or fragment from a terrorist bomb, that fragment does not have any postmark or registration of any kind."

And when the Supreme Court recount tarted to turn in Gore's favour:

On the morning of Saturday, December 9, 2000, the Supreme Court got word that the recounts in Florida, in spite of everything the Bush camp had done to fix the elections, were going in favor of Al Gore. By 2 P.m., the unofficial tally showed that Gore was catching up to Bush—"only 66 votes down, and gaining!" as one breathless newscaster put it. It was critical to Bush that the words "Al Gore is in the lead" never be heard on American television: With only moments to spare, they did what they had to do. At 2:45 that afternoon, the Supreme Court stopped the recount.

On the Court sat Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor and Nixon appointee Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Both in their seventies, they were hoping to retire under a Republican adminis­tration so that their replacements would share their onservative
ideology. On election night, O'Connor was heard lamenting at a party in Georgetown that she couldn't hold out another four—or eight—years. Junior Bush was their only hope for securing a con­tented retirement in their home state of Arizona.

Meanwhile, two other justices with extremist right-wing view­points found themselves with a conflict of interest. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, worked at the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank in D.C.; now, she has just been hired by George W. Bush to help recruit people to serve in his impending administration. And Eugene Scalia, the son of Justice Antonin Scalia, was a lawyer with the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher—the very law firm represent­ing Bush before the Supreme Court!

But neither Thomas nor Scalia saw any conflict of interest, and they refused to remove themselves from the case. In fact, when the Court convened later, it was Scalia who issued the now-infamous explanation of why the ballot-counting had to be halted: "The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does, in my view, threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election." In other words, if we let all the votes be counted and they come out in Gore's favor, and Gore wins, well, that will impair Bush's ability to govern once we install him as "President."

One of the worst frauds in American history. And whn Geoge Bush claimed his unearned right to sit in the Oval Office there was no honour amoung thieves.

...20,000 protesters jeered Bush every inch of the way. Holding signs denouncing Bush for stealing the election, the rain-soaked demonstrators were the conscience of the nation. Bush's limousine could not avoid them. Instead of cheering crowds of supporters, he was greeted by good people moved to remind this illegitimate ruler that he did not win the election—and that the people would never forget.

At the traditional point where Presidents since Jimmy Carter have stopped their limos and emerged to walk the last four blocks (as a reminder that we are a nation ruled not by kings but by, uh, equals), Bush's triple-armored black car with its dark-tinted windows—favored by mobsters everywhere—came to an abrupt halt. The crowd grew louder—"HAIL TO THE THIEF!"

You could see the Secret Service and Bush's advisers huddling in the freezing rain, trying to figure out what to do. If Bush got out and walked, he would be booed, shouted down, and pelted with eggs the rest of the way. The limousine sat there for what must have been five minutes. The rain poured. Eggs and tomatoes hit the car. The protesters dared Bush to step out and face them.

Then, suddenly, the President's car bolted and tore down the street. The decision had been made—hit the gas and get past this rabble as quickly as possible. The Secret Service agents running beside the limo were left behind, the car's tires splashing dirty rain from the street onto the men who were there to protect its passenger. It might have been the finest thing I have ever witnessed in Washington, D.C.—a pretender to the American throne forced to turn tail and run from thousands of American citizens armed only with the Truth and the ingredients of a decent omelet. (1)

Fitting.

Sources:

1 . Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Union, By: Michael Moore, Regan Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-06-039245-2, Pg. 1-15

2. New Rules Stopped 450,000 Canadians from Voting: Upped ID requirements may have affected some close federal races, By Andrew MacLeod, The Tyee, February 9 2009