Is It Time For a Farmer's Revolt?

The Canadian Wheat Board has placed a full page ad in newspapers across the country, condemning the Harper government for dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board.

He first took up this campaign when he was with the National Citizens Coalition, on behalf of Karlheinz Schreiber who was hoping to start a pasta factory in the West.  Since then, the attack on the CWB has been on behalf of multinational corporations.

In the ad, the CWB remind us that 62% of wheat farmers want the board kept intact, since its disappearance will mean that small wheat farmers will have to negotiate directly with giant American food conglomerates, and how easy will that be?  We know that only corporate farms have the resources to effectively handle that.

By ramming this legislation through Parliament without any debate, Harper hopes he can make the final decision to shift the profits and control of wheat farming from Canadian farmers to multinational corporations from the U.S.

This government has no problem exploiting farmers to fulfill the NRA's agenda, but refuses to stand with farmers when they need assistance.

He claims that the Canadian people gave him a mandate to get rid of things like that, but I don't remember seeing any of this on the ballot.

I had an opportunity to work with the local farming community during the Save the Prison Farms campaign, and was so impressed with the lengths they went to, to help the prison community, who learned so much about life by tending to farm animals, growing their own food, and running the daily operations of a farm.

Now that group is taking what they've learned about political activism and applying it to other injustices.  What remarkable people.

We need to take a close look at Harper's agenda.  You could be next.

You can text FARMER to 24680 to have a letter sent to Canada's MPs.

Line 'em Up. Shoot 'em Down

For more than a decade Stephen Harper has had the Canadian Wheat Board in his cross hairs, and it began during his days with the National Citizens Coalition.

In 1996, farmer Andy McMechan of Lyleton, Manitoba, was charged with selling wheat to the United States without a CWB permit. A grassroots group, Canadian Farmers for Justice, took up his cause, and McMechan received a great deal of community support.

From their newsletter: "Late September saw a huge turnout for an old fashioned farm bee on the McMechan farm. Organized by friends of the McMechan family, people turned out from all around to help combine the fields and bring in the harvest. Still others were helping out on the garden, mowing the lawn and trimming trees. Even CTV's W-5 turned out with some cameras to record the event. And to make me wish I was there even more, there was a "huge table of food, baking, sandwiches and pickled preserves."

The National Citizens Coalition was always looking for causes like this to get behind, if it meant they could fundraise, garner media attention and/or discredit the Liberals, and this cause earned the triple crown.

So in July 1997, they started running attack ads against Liberal Ralph Goodale in the West, and beginning September 22, 1997, also in Ottawa. According to David Somerville, then president of the NCC (Stephen Harper his vice-president): "Our plan is to run a radio ad blitz in the West where Goodale lives and in Ottawa where he works. One way or another he will get the message."

And in the process, the campaign also helped Harper's Reform Party.

Goodale had proposed changes to the CWB that allowed it to be run by a board of directors, 10 elected by the prairie farmers themselves, and the other five appointed by the government; so Reform Party MPs joined the chorus, with then MP Jay Hill promising to do what he could to delay the vote on the bill.

The NCC had their well funded political cause and it paid off for Reform. From the July 1997 newsletter of the Canadian Farmers for Justice:

Who Speaks for the Western Farmer? Prairie farmers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are now represented almost entirely by Reform MPs who stand for farmers' choice in grain marketing.

Of course the NCC cared little for the farmers. Their concern was for the corporate sector, and some believe that their expensive campaign may have been funded by Karlheinz Schreiber, Brian Mulroney's former cash machine, who was planning on starting a pasta business.

Ken Larsen, now with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, wrote in February of 2008:

Brian Mulroney's former chief of staff Norman Spector advised the Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. He suggested the committee's most important work was to find where and to whom Karlheinz Schreiber distributed around $10 million in so-called commissions. In December Schreiber told the same committee, "So forget the pasta thing. That came much later." At the time, many thought he was just talking about a machine. However, Mr Schreiber went on to testify that he and Mulroney discussed what to do about pasta in 1994, and he then went on to say "it started somehow in 1996 or 1997." Perhaps it was entirely coincidental, but less than a year later Steven Harper's National Citizens Coalition had generous funds to attack the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

For Mr Harper it seems it was all about the pasta. He justified his attacks on the CWB with help from a couple of small groups, by claiming the CWB was preventing investors from opening pasta plants. For those who understand food processing, and the overbuilt pasta industry, these proposals were about as credible as a kindergarten class announcing they could build a working nuclear reactor if only Federal regulations were removed. However they did serve as a convenient stick for Harper to use on the CWB. Indeed, Harper became infamous for attacking the CWB using lavish electronic and print advertising. (1)

Harper is nothing if not determined to get his way, so with the same glee as his cancelling the Kelowna Accord, the Kyoto Protocol and a National Childcare Plan in 2006, he was kicking up his heels recently, when with the stroke of a pen, he axed the Canadian Wheat Board.

And if Canadians go hungry because of his agenda, he'll shriek "Let them eat pasta".

I've often suggested that if you want to know what Harper's next move will be, check out the Republicans or the Tea Party. But if you want an overview of his agenda, I suggest Gerry Nicholls' book Loyal to the Core: Stephen Harper, Me and the NCC and Murray Dobbin's The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globilization.

Dobbin sums up the agenda nicely, while Nicholls reveals the devious ways they sell it to us.

Sources:

1. Who funded Harper's Wheat Board vendetta? PM has been after Wheat Board since he was at National Citizens' Coalition, By Ken Larsen, Southern Alberta, February 12, 2008

Brian Mulroney Continued: Marjory LeBreton and Entitlement to Taxpayers Purse

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

"They haven't changed since they hanged Riel" Marjory LeBreton on Manitoba after the 1993 election results (1)

According to her bio, the 70-year-old Marjory LeBreton has worked for four leaders of the now defunct, Progressive Conservative Party of Canada - John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney.

That's true, though she should mention that she never liked Joe Clark, and liked his wife even less (2), but I suppose that's water under the bridge.

She was appointed senator by Brian Mulroney in 1993, but before that she was responsible for many patronage appointments, especially to the senate. This job was formerly handled by Peter White, who went back to work for Conrad Black.

Marjory LeBreton took over the unofficial patronage portfolio after Peter White's departure:Leading up to the leadership, people used to say, in the party, "You know, Brian Mulroney would be a great leader, but boy, I am worried about his friends." You would hear that, and I used to say, "Don't be so silly, everybody has liabilities Joe Clark has got a fair sprinkling of them, I don't mind telling you.

LeBreton dealt with dozens of demands and requests, particularly when Senate seats became available. Seven prominent Tories explicitly asked for appointments: I had John Reynolds on the phone lobbying for a Senate seat for himself, and giving me this pitch that it should be someone that could go on the talk shows. I said, "Gee, John, I haven't noticed you being out there."

Gerry St. Germain wrote a letter to the prime minister talking about the sacrifices he's made. I actually felt sorry when I read it. It said something to the effect that he would want to serve in the Senate and then he ended the letter by saying, "If you decide to choose someone else, please know that you will have my absolute loyalty." Jim Doak, who was seventy-four, was actually going to sign a letter saying that he would only stay there for a year, just to be called a senator. Doak was originally the president of the party in Manitoba under Diefenbaker.

Duncan Jessiman was another of the old party bagmen stalwarts, but he had supported the prime minister financially when he ran for leadership. He was seventy years old, and he sent the Prime Minister a kind of "you owe me" letter, and you know the prime minister people have helped him out. He [didn't make him a senator but] put Dunc in the best appointment he could give at the time, which was on the board of Air Canada, and of course we privatized Air Canada and they didn't keep him on the board, but they gave him a lifetime pass.

We had Kate Schellenberg [later Kate Manvell] in BC. She was married to Ted Schellenberg, who was the MP from Nanaimo. She wrote a long letter to the prime minister just before Christmas. As the prime minister was reading it, he said, "There must be some reason she's writing." The last paragraph was, "I'd like to be named to that vacant Senate seat from BC." We made her a citizenship court judge. Pat Carney asked for the Senate seat too, but claims she didn't. (3)

LeBreton is now Leader of the Government in the Canadian Senate, an appointment given her by Stephen Harper as payment for help with his 2006 campaign. I wonder how many letters and requests she fielded for Harper's patronage senate appointments.

Corruption Knew no Bounds

Erik Nielsen*, shown to the right, was the first Deputy Prime Minister under Mulroney, who eventually quit because of the rampant corruption in the Party.

Not that he was immune to making patronage appointments, and in fact developed a system where all party faithfuls had a say:

The way Nielsen envisaged it, the first stream would fill the top jobs at Crown corporations such as Air Canada, Export Development Corporation, the Atomic Energy Control Board and the CBC, as well as slots in bodies like the Parole Board and the Immigration Appeal Board, which required members with genuine expertise.

The party faithful who had raised money and volunteers in campaigns across the country would constitute the second stream, a pool from which candidates would be drawn to fill positions in arts agencies, marketing boards, and citizenship courts. Nielsen expected Tories to be appointed to the major boards as well, but he believed the chairmanships and presidencies should be set aside for people who had more than political credentials. There was a distinction, he insisted, between what was pure patronage and what had to be a selection of highly qualified persons to run government enterprises. (4)

With 3,000 patronage appointments to fill, Nielson established provincial advisory committees, who would bring forward likely candidates for various jobs, and these recommendations then went to a national advisory committee. He had patronage down to a science, but it soon became clear that the final decisions were in the hands of only one person, who more often than not completely disregarded any suggestions by the provincial groups.

Loaded as they were with old Mulroney associates, the provincial committees were being ignored and their recommendation, bypassed within three months of their inauguration. The national committee? It was a joke, "a mere facade," snorts Nielsen ... So I stopped chairing. I just simply stopped going to the meetings. My presence there was totally ineffective and superfluous." The committee's executive committee faded away and the process was taken over by Marjory LeBreton. (4)

A Champagne Taste on a Beer Income

The Mulroneys led an extravagant lifestyle, mostly on what would appear to be tax dollars and influence pedaling:

"He always lived up to the hilt" said one of his oldest friends. Like Mila, Mulroney enjoyed living and working in luxurious surroundings decorated with fine furniture and good paintings ... And he too liked expensive clothes. In the mid-1980s he would buy several $2,000 suits at one time from Bijan in Manhattan, one of the most expensive stores in New York, and of course he has long indulged a weakness for Gucci loafers at about $500 a pair.

One individual who has known Mulroney well since his days at Iron Ore is Conrad Black. In his 1993 autobiography 'A Life in Progress', Black patronizingly described the Mulroney he knew in the 1970s. Even though Mulroney had become successful wrote Black with the confidence of someone to the manner born, "he still felt himself quite keenly to be the underprivileged lad from Baie-Comeau, son of the foreman in the Chicago Tribune's news print mill who identified more with the French than the English,and more with the lower economic echelons than than with the scions of wealthy Westmount . . . He had the attitude to money of someone who didn't have any himself but had seen other scatter lavishly - he appreciated it more in the spending than in the accumulation, the latter a process he tended to oversimplify. And politically he had the attitude to money of someone who came to maturity in last years of Duplessis when the tangible fruits of a long incumbency were being extravagantly dispersed. He had the heart of a working man but the tastes of the rich." (5)

What my mom would call having a champagne taste on a beer income.

Before leaving public office, Brian Mulroney had got himself into a financial mess and was indebted to the Progressive Conservative party to the tune of more than $ 200,000.00 Many of these expenditures had been approved by Marjory LeBreton.

To raise needed funds he tried to sell some of his personal furnishings that were then at 24 Sussex Drive, at inflated prices to the Government of Canada. However, the media got wind of it and the deal was off. So he instead he got himself involved with Karlheinz Schrieber.

And LeBreton has done very well for herself, without apparently no post-secondary education, but referred to as "one of the hard-ass operatives" (6), a left over of the Mulroney years.

Footnotes:

*Brother of actor Leslie Nielsen.

Sources:

1. The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister, By Peter C. Newman, Clandebye Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 10-0-679-31351-6, Pg. 418

2. Newman, 2005, Pg. 248

3. Newman, 2005, Pg. 89-90

4. On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0, Pg. 185-186

5. Cameron, 1994, Pg. 394-395

6. Newman, 2005, Pg. 168

Tory Legacy: A Scandal Within a Scandal Within a Scandal

How much Stephen Harper knew about the Airbus deal after the fact, is still open to speculation, but according to Karlheinz Schreiber, Harper had assured Mulroney that he could make it go away.

Indeed, he certainly put off any inquiry until the last possible moment, but when learning that he was named in court documents, all bets were off.

I suppose we may never learn the extent of the Conservative Party's involvement with the German businessman, but apparently they were into him to the tune of 10 million dollars.

But the chain of events that led to a $300,000.00 cash payment and the resulting cover-up, involves not only Mulroney and Schreiber, but also Conrad Black and the national media.

Scandal Number One:

Before leaving public office, Brian Mulroney had got himself into a financial mess and was indebted to the Progressive Conservative party to the tune of more than $ 200,000.00

To raise needed funds he tried to sell some of his personal furnishings that were then at 24 Sussex Drive, at inflated prices to the Government of Canada. However, the media got wind of it and the deal was off. So now what?

Scandal Number Two:

Enter Karlheinz Schreiber with a fat wallet and poof; problems over. But were they?

Mr. Schreiber is not a stupid man and the $ 300,000.00 he gave to the former Prime Minister, was not a gift. He wanted something in return, and according to him, Mulroney had agreed to aid in the building of a factory to make light armoured vehicles in Quebec; though he never held up his end of the bargain.

Originally, Mulroney denied ever knowing Schreiber and sued us for 1.2 million dollars, which was paid out when Jean Chretien was in office.

Scandal Number Three:

According to Frances Russel of the Winnipeg Free Press, the media was aware of the scandal years before it became public, but were under orders to keep it quiet.

Right-wing media covering up political scandal
Winnipeg Free Press
Frances Russel
December 12, 2007

There's a parallel scandal to Karlheinz Schreiber, Brian Mulroney and envelopes containing $300,000 in cash changing hands in hotel rooms.

This scandal involves the decision by all but a handful of journalists and media over the last decade to ignore, dismiss, even squelch, the story.

The scandal continues today in reams of columns and editorials calling for Schreiber's immediate deportation to Germany and the shelving of both the Commons ethics committee investigation and the promised public inquiry.

William Kaplan is a law professor and author. Norman Spector, now apolitical commentator, was Mulroney's chief of staff from 1990 to 1992 and then his ambassador to Israel. Lawrence Martin is a Globe and Mail columnist and author. And Stephen Kimber is Rogers Communications' chair in journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax.

All have commented on the Mulroney-Schreiber affair and what it says about Canadian journalism.

In the opening chapter of his 2004 book, A Secret Trial: Brian Mulroney, Stevie Cameron and the Public Trust, Kaplan writes that he couldn't believe his ears when veteran reporter Philip Mathias read him the story the National Post refused to publish in 2001.

Had it been, Canadians would have learned almost seven years ago that Schreiber paid Mulroney $300,000 in three instalments in 1993 and 1994.

Kaplan was equally shocked when Mathias recounted why his story was"spiked."Mathias gave it to Post editors in early January 2001. Three months later, it still hadn't seen the light of day.

Frustrated, Mathias wrote letters to Conrad Black and the Aspers, the paper's co-owners. At a meeting with senior editors, Mathias was told there was no story. He was repeatedly asked why he kept pursuing it -- and why he went over his editors' heads.

That night, Mathias was phoned at home by Kenneth Whyte, the Post's editor-in-chief, now editor-in-chief of Maclean's magazine. Whyte told Mathias he also backed killing the story. Thus, Canadians didn't hear about the cash payments to Mulroney until the fall of 2003.

Even then, they were only mentioned in passing in paragraph 26 of one of a series of articles written by Kaplan for The Globe.

In a column last month, Norman Spector excoriated the media for allowing Kaplan's 2003 shocking but buried disclosures about Mulroney to "fizzle out." Here's why Spector thinks they did:"

With the National Post having killed what would have been an extraordinary scoop, Mr. Kaplan's book ended up being ignored by most CanWest newspapers. In Quebec, Mr. Mulroney has always enjoyed the benefit of the doubt, as well as the support of influential friends in command of major chunks of the media. In Ottawa, many reporters were looking for reasons not to write about the book..."

Spector went further in a Canadian Press interview, saying theMulroney/Schreiber affair "could be one of the great scandals of Canadian history."

Lawrence Martin has written several articles about the Canadian media's rightward migration. In a January 2003 column headlined It's not Canadians who've gone to the right, just their media, he quoted an unnamed European diplomat saying "You have a bit of a problem here. Your media are not representative of your people, your values."

Too many political commentators are right of centre while the public is in the middle, the diplomat continued. There is a disconnect.

Martin believes the disconnect began when Conrad Black converted the Financial Post into the National Post, hired a stable of conservative commentators like Mark Steyn, David Frum and George Jonas, bought the centrist Southam chain and turned the entire package into a vehicle to unite Canada's right and retool the country's values to U.S.-style conservatism. (Stephen Harper was also a regular contributor during his days with the National Citizens Coalition)

Even further right rests the Quebecor-owned tabloid Sun Media chain. Mulroney was chairman of the board of Sun Media and sits on Quebecor's board. (Conservative Peter Kent is on the board of Canwest Global)

"The country undoubtedly needs its share of right-wing voices," Martin wrote in 2005. "But how many is too many?... Such is the ideological trend in the print media -- broadcast has more balance -- that the largest segment of the population, centre-left Canadians, are at risk of losing their voice.

"Writing in the Halifax Daily News last month, Stephen Kimber asked how and why the Parliamentary press gallery and most major news organizations "managed, for close to a decade, to not only ignore but actively dismiss, what will ultimately be one of the great scandals in Canadian political history.

"Kimber answered his question in a telephone interview late last week. "The Ottawa media is small-c conservative and has been for a long time." He thinks the conversion occurred during the Mulroney era.

"There's a whole group of journalists in Ottawa... who were around during his time but are still powerful... who liked him personally and felt he made them one of the boys.

"Conrad Black's influence on the shift in the media to the right really can't be overstated... Canadians have a right to expect a lot more of their media that what they got in the Mulroney-Schreiber affair."

And yet Harper claims the media is out to get him, so has everyone under a strict gag order.

Harper and the NCC Step Up Their Battle For the Wheat Fields

Early in 1997, Stephen Harper resigned

his seat in the House of Commons, to join the executive of the National Citizens Coalition, a secretive Right-wing attack group.

The NCC were instrumental in getting him elected in the first place, and with the Reform Party's finances low, and clearly not making gains; he would be in a better position to help them without the constraints of party politics.

During the election campaign that year, he used $ 200,000.00 of NCC money to launch attack ads against the Liberals in the west, ultimately resulting in the Reform claiming 60 of the 88 seats available there.

At the same time they launched attacks on the Canadian Wheat Board, but once the election was over, stepped it up a notch, throwing massive time and money into a campaign to either get rid of the board entirely, or at least make membership optional.

But first a bit of background on the Canadian Wheat Board:

Before 1912, the grain growers of western Canada , most separated from easy access to transportation, vital to move their product to market; were often at the mercy of middlemen; who put profit ahead of everything else.

During the First World War, grain became a valuable commodity so the government established the Board of Grain Supervisors (BGS) to keep the product moving. After the war the BGS became the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

Their mandate was to sell the grain at world prices, while guaranteeing the base selling price of the crop to the farmers. In other words, if the selling price of the crop went up from the base established by the CWB the farmers would receive more money. But if the price dropped as it did in 1929, the government would absorb the losses.

This worked very well for the prairie farmers, until the American based National Association of Wheat Growers, decided that in order to be competitive and boost their own profits, the Canadian Wheat Board would have to go.

The NAWG launched no less than 14 lawsuits against the CWB in 1997, alleging that they were an unfair trader.

Speculation is that they provided at least some of the funding so that the NCC could carry out their costly campaign, which would help to bolster their own claims. Others believe the money may have come from Karlheinz Schreiber, but since the NCC never lists their donors, it could have come from anywhere.

When Ralph Goodale decided to change the way the way the board operated, by having a 15 member board of directors, with 10 elected from the farmers themselves, and five from the government; the NCC tried, through third party attack ads, to affect the elections of those Directors.

Harper has described the CWB as a "draconian wheat monopoly that for years has relied on force and fear to exist" and he has never changed his opinion, or curbed his hatred. He really can't stand losing.

What he did gain then, however, was unprecedented support for the Reform Party by the advocacy group Canadian Farmers for Justice, who through their own media let their membership know that the party was on their side: "Who Speaks for the Western Farmer? Prairie farmers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are now represented almost entirely by Reform MPs who stand for farmers' choice in grain marketing".

Throughout 1998 and 1999, both the CFFJ and the NCC accelerated their efforts.

However, they did not stop at just influencing federal politics, or trying to influence Wheat Board appointments; but also worked behind the scenes to elect provincial candidates sympathetic to their cause.

In Saskatchewan, where the corrupt party of Grant Devine (which included Tom Lukiwski and Garry Breitkreuz) had sullied the Conservative brand, a new party emerged in 1997 to take on the ruling NDP. Calling themselves the Saskatchewan Party, they were headed by Elwin Hermanson, a former Reform Party MP and close friend of Stephen Harper. (When Harper won the election in 2006 he made Hermanson head of the Canadian Wheat Board in yet another patronage appointment).

While they didn't win the 1999 provincial election, they made great strides, capitalizing on a poor growing season and a scandal involving SaskPower. Soon after, the NCC posted this in, not surprisingly, the newsletter of the Canadian Farmers for Justice.

Dizzy yet?

To recap - Harper resigns as Reform MP in 1997 - hooks up with Farmers for Justice - helps Reform win 60 seats in the west, and fellow Reform MP Elwin Hermanson, who loses his seat, instead creates a provincial party - which is also promoted by the Farmers for Justice and the National Citizens Coalition. Whew!

But they all come together in this neat little notice to members:

Farmers for economic freedom
Canadian Farmers for Justice

September 20, 1999

Saskatchewan election a blow against wheat monopoly: NCC

The National Citizens' Coalition says the September 16 vote in Saskatchewan was a blow against the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly.

"Yesterday farmers sent out a clear message," says NCC president Stephen Harper. "They are fed up with the status quo, they want an end to the wheat monopoly, and they want the right to sell their own wheat."

Harper says he hopes the NDP government, which has been a staunch supporter of the monopoly, gets the message.

"When Eric Upshall, the NDP's pro-wheat board monopoly Agriculture Minister, goes down to such a surprising electoral defeat it should send the Premier a strong signal," says Harper. "Farmers are tired of Wheat Board bureaucrats and politicians who don't listen."

Harper says he is also encouraged by the Saskatchewan Party's support for dual marketing option throughout the campaign and the success it enjoyed among rural voters."We hope the Saskatchewan Party continues to hammer this issue home in the legislature," says Harper. "Someone has to point out how the Wheat Board monopoly is killing opportunities for farmers, like those in the Weyburn area who have been prevented from establishing a pasta manufacturing plant."

The NCC has long supported pro-free enterprise farmers who are opposing the wheat board monopoly. In recent weeks it ran a radio ad campaign across the Prairies to argue that "selling wheat should not be a crime." (see how they manipulated this election as well?)

The NCC is also financially supporting the Canadian Farm Enterprise Network (CFEN) and Saskatchewan farmer Dave Bryan who are challenging the wheat monopoly in the courts.

Harper's Mean Streak Was a Perfect Fit for the NCC

It would be difficult to sum up Stephen Harper in a word, though 'mean' would definitely come to mind.

Sure he has his good points, which sadly are almost immediately overshadowed by his bad.

He loves his family, but is not above exploiting them in the same way that Brian Mulroney did.

He has a profound admiration for our military, but seems stuck at Vimy Ridge, not really understanding actual warfare. (I suppose some of that comes from the fact that his father was an avid military memorabilia collector, who would view war from a turbo-charged patriotism perspective, and not see the human suffering involved in armed conflict).

He believes passionately in the things he believes in, but that passion often overrides common sense and common decency.

However, it's his mean streak that really defines him, guides him, and makes him vindictive, petty and down right cruel.

Preston Manning describes several incidents involving Harper, that paint a picture of an ambitious young man, who is not above poking his friends in the eye. If he didn't get his own way, he'd withdraw and plan his revenge, but it is the horrendous personal manner in which he exacted that revenge that would turn your stomach.

For instance, when he butted heads with Mr. Manning over the direction the party was going, instead of calling a meeting to clear the air, he aired their dirty laundry in the press.

When there was some question over expenses claimed by the Reform Party leader, Harper went right to the media, not settling for simply slamming his boss, but also disgraced Preston's wife, causing a temporary rift in the Manning marriage. Harper did this without proof, and made no apologies. Another personality flaw that would follow him throughout his career.

So when he took a hiatus from federal politics to join the NCC executive, what were personality flaws became assets to this attack group. It also gave him an opportunity to promote his agenda through the Reform Party, by working behind the scenes at the NCC, without the constraints of party politics.

This gave him important ties to some very influential people and groups, who would become instrumental in his rise to the PMO, including Conrad Black, who had already made several sizable donations to the Reform Party. (He may have also been introduced to Karlheinz Schreiber at that time, though that is still speculative)

In 1996 Black had purchased the Southam chain of newspapers and two years later created the National Post, determined to replace what he referred to as a 'soft left bias', with a right wing hammering of his own ideology. Harper already had a reputation as an ideologue so he was always given a platform at the Post.

This was the period when he began his infamous and long running assault on the Canadian Wheat Board; but not before using his new office to influence the 1997 election.

Through the NCC, Stephen Harper spent $ 200,000.00 in attack ads that ran on radio stations, coinciding with print ads and massive billboard visuals, in what he dubbed "Operation Pork Chop".

The theme was the 'gold plated' pension plans that MPs enjoyed, and since Preston Manning had declared that his Party would opt out of the plan (they didn't), it provided fodder for career destroying personal assaults. Harper's VP at the NCC, Gerry Nicholls, described it as guerrilla warfare.

In Edmonton where Liberal candidates Judy Bethel and Anne McLellan were running for re-election, he ran a newspaper ad featuring two pigs drinking champagne, while frolicking in a trough filled with cash. The pig's heads were replaced by those of the two women, and the caption read "On June 2, Chop the Pork. Re-electing these two MPs will cost you 1.7 million."

The ads worked, and though McLellan did squeak out a victory, Bethel was pummelled and never returned to politics.

What does that say about a man who would put a woman's head on a pig's body in an almost sensual depiction of lust?

However, Operation Pork Chop, that didn't stop at these two women, but went after all Liberal MPs in the West; was a resounding success.

Polls at the outset had the Liberals at 40%, and the Reform at 25%, but on election day the latter took 60 of the West's 88 seats. The NCC had secured Harper's victory in 1993, and had now managed to steal an election for his clan, giving him an opportunity to return later as a conquering hero. As an in your face to Preston Manning, he had accomplished what the current leader could not. Political success and all he had to do was play dirty.

And of course we know that nothing's changed. The Conservative attack ads are always personal. We're seeing it with Michael Ignatieff and we saw it with Stephane Dion.

It's not enough to run heel grinding, 'kick 'em when their down' campaigns, but they must be 'kick 'em 'til they're dead', before Harper will call it quits.

Ironically, in his book, Preston Manning never mentions the influence of the NCC, despite the fact that they were so instrumental in his own rise to power. In fact, his father was on the advisory board of the NCC and it was he who suggested that they register as a non-profit organization, to take advantage of the tax breaks.

Harper never mentions the NCC, either. Enough said.

More Postings on Harper and the NCC:

1. Harper and the NCC Step Up Their Battle For the Wheat Fields

2. Harper, the NCC and the Initial Assault on the Canadian Wheat Board.

Harper, the NCC and the Initial Assault on the Canadian Wheat Board.

When investigating Stephen Harper's political career with the Conservative/Reform/Alliance Party (C.R.A.P.), all roads ultimately lead to the National Citizens Coalition, and his decades long battles with the Canadian Wheat Board, are no exception.

It started when the NCC launched a heavily financed campaign against the board, supposedly on the behalf of Western farmers.

Straight Goods believe that the campaign may have been funded in part by Karlheinz Schreiber, because of a reference he made to pasta machines (pasta, wheat?), but it seems more likely that the American based National Association of Wheat Growers, were the driving force. They were the ones who would benefit the most, and indeed even today are praising Harper's initiatives.

Clearly somebody was providing a lot of money for Stephen Harper and the NCC to fight the government agency tooth and nail.

When trying to uncover the truth, it helps to know their MO. First they choose a cause, usually on behalf of some industry, who no doubt provide a lot of the funding, (though it doesn't stop the NCC from soliciting contributions. In fact they are still milking it today), then start up 'grassroots' groups to simultaneously launch their own campaigns, which are also professionally run and well funded. These groups then back up the Conservative/Reform/Alliance, who naturally take the side of the 'little guy'.

We've seen this recently with Ridley Terminals Inc. and the 'grassroots' groups that sprang up overnight, all represented by the same lobby group, to maintain the heavily government subsidized operation, on behalf of the coal industry. In fact a staffer immediately left John Baird's office to lobby for the largest beneficiary of the subsidies.

Now back to the Canadian Wheat Board, the National Citizen's Coalition and Stephen Harper.

In 1987 the president of the NCC, David Sommerville, while attending a policy meeting of the Reform Party, asked those at the table, including Harper, if any of them belonged to the National Citizens Coalition. Everyone raised their hand, (Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada Pg. 76) so we know that our current PM has been involved with the organization for more than two decades.

Harper had drafted policy for the Reform Party, and Somerville says that most of it was cribbed from the NCC handbook.

In 1993, when Stephen Harper was running against his former boss, Jim Hawkes, the NCC spent $ 50,000.00 to run attack ads against Hawkes, over his Bill C-114, the amendment to the Elections Canada Act to limit the amount of money spent by third parties during an election campaign; dubbing it the "election gag bill".

It worked and Stephen Harper became the Reform Member of Parliament for Calgary West.

Then four years later, he stunned the media when he announced that he would be resigning and joining the National Citizen's Coalition as Vice-President. Seen as the heir apparent to Preston Manning, many people wondered why he would instead work for a contentious right-wing advocacy group.

When asked if he was just stepping aside until Manning retired, he made it known that he had no interest in running for the party leadership (certainly not his last lie).

He would soon get his feet wet in the first of many attacks on the Canadian Wheat Board.

At the time there was a strong sentiment coming from the West about what they deemed to be the arbitrary nature of the CWB. The recent trial of prairie farmer Andy McMechan, who was jailed for 'border jumping', (unlawfully selling his grain in the U.S. for more money than he could here), had people hopping mad.

A new legitimate grassroots group, Canadian Farmers for Justice, had taken up his cause, and Mr. McMechan received a great deal of community support.

From the Canadian Farmer's newsletter: "Late September saw a huge turnout for an old fashioned farm bee on the McMechan farm. Organized by friends of the McMechan family, people turned out from all around to help combine the fields and bring in the harvest. Still others were helping out on the garden, mowing the lawn and trimming trees. Even CTV's W-5 turned out with some cameras to record the event. And to make me wish I was there even more, there was a "huge table of food, baking, sandwiches and pickled preserves."

I love that story.

The resulting media attention peaked the interest of the National Citizen's Coalition, and obviously one Stephen Harper, because it wasn't long before they got involved. With the emotional backing of the Canadian Farmers for Justice and a victim, Andy McMechan, they were good to go.

In July 1997, the NCC started running attack ads against Ralph Goodale in Saskatchewan, and beginning September 22, 1997, also in Ottawa. According to Somerville: "Our plan is to run a radio ad blitz in the West where Goodale lives and in Ottawa where he works. One way or another he will get the message."

Goodale had proposed changes to the CWB that allowed it to be run by a board of directors, 10 elected by the prairie farmers themselves, and the other five appointed by the government; but the Reform Party MPs would have none of it. They wanted the Wheat Board gone and Jay Hill promised that they would try to delay the vote on the bill, though it did pass.

The July 1997 newsletter of the Canadian Farmers for Justice let their supporters know: 'Who Speaks for the Western Farmer? Prairie farmers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are now represented almost entirely by Reform MPs who stand for farmers' choice in grain marketing.'

The stage was set.

Was Stephen Harper an Early Beneficiary of Karlheinz Schreiber's Generosity?

Anyone following the Karlheinz Schreiber saga knows that there has to be more to the story than what has been revealed so far.

Apparently his 'kind hearted' benevolence was to the tune of some ten million dollars, and since Brian Mulroney only received a small portion of that, where did the rest go?

Did he pay off Peter MacKay's half million dollar debt so that he wouldn't challenge Stephen Harper's leadership bid for the new party? He was tight with Mackay's dad.

Stephen Harper only agreed to an inquiry when he learned that he was mentioned in court documents, so what was he afraid would be revealed? Was it simply the allegations that he agreed to help Mulroney cover up the mess, or was there something more damaging?

Straight Goods, believes that the Harper/Schreiber relationship may have started much earlier than that, back in the days when our current Prime Minister was an attack dog for the National Citizens Coalition.

But first a bit of background on Harper and the NCC, from Wikipedia:

The NCC claims a membership of between 40,000 to 45,000 individuals, but has not released members' names. Stephen Harper, the current Prime Minister of Canada, served as President of the organization from 1998 to 2002.

The NCC holds no annual general membership meetings and provides no financial statements to its members. The organization's constitution distinguishes between 'voting' and 'public' members. Public members pay dues but do not have formal mechanisms for influencing the organization's policies or priorities. Public members are not entitled to be notified of or to attend any meetings, and they are not entitled to vote at any such meetings.

Harper NCC Timeline:

1993 – The NCC successfully supports Stephen Harper's bid to become a Reform Party Member of Parliament for Calgary West.

1997 – Harper resigns as Member of Parliament to join the NCC. (he had been a member for at least a decade before that, but was now an actual employee)

1997 – Stephen Harper becomes Vice-President of the NCC.

1998 – Stephen Harper becomes President of the NCC, Gerry Nicholls becomes Vice-President.

2002 – Stephen Harper resigns as President of the NCC to seek the leadership of the Canadian Alliance.

But did he resign? When U.S. Republican pollster John McLaughlin posted a congratulatory letter to Stephen Harper after winning the 2006 election, he stated that he had worked with Harper and the NCC for many years. On his resume he boasts that he was responsible for our PM's rise to the top and on the McLaughlin & Associates website, they still list the NCC as one of their clients.

I think he just saw a better way of advancing the NCC's agenda from the inside, and his battles against the same institutions he fought when he was with the group, including Elections Canada and the Wheat Board, certainly suggest that.

Now to the Straight Goods' story involving pasta, the NCC and the Canadian Wheat Board. (I know there's a joke in there somewhere ... pasta, the NCC and CWB were in a bar see ... nah, never mind)

Who funded Harper's Wheat Board vendetta?
PM has been after Wheat Board since he was at National Citizens' Coalition
Ken Larsen , Southern Alberta
February 12, 2008

"Follow the money"

Brian Mulroney's former chief of staff Norman Spector advised the Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. He suggested the committee's most important work was to find where and to whom Karlheinz Schreiber distributed around $10 million in so-called commissions.

In December Schreiber told the same committee, "So forget the pasta thing. That came much later." At the time, many thought he was just talking about a machine. However, Mr Schreiber went on to testify that he and Mulroney discussed what to do about pasta in 1994, and he then went on to say "it started somehow in 1996 or 1997." Perhaps it was entirely coincidental, but less than a year later Steven Harper's National Citizens Coalition had generous funds to attack the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

For Mr Harper it seems it was all about the pasta. He justified his attacks on the CWB with help from a couple of small groups, by claiming the CWB was preventing investors from opening pasta plants. For those who understand food processing, and the overbuilt pasta industry, these proposals were about as credible as a kindergarten class announcing they could build a working nuclear reactor if only Federal regulations were removed. However they did serve as a convenient stick for Harper to use on the CWB.

Indeed, Harper became infamous for attacking the CWB using lavish electronic and print advertising. In spite of repeated demands from farmers, Mr Harper is not interested in transparency and accountability when it applies to divulging the source of this anti-CWB funding.

Urban Canadians have only recently become aware of Prime Minister Harper's methods of sabotaging important Canadian institutions like the Nuclear Safety Commission. However farmers have been subjected to Harper's obsession with the CWB and pasta for years.

Mr Szabo, the chair of the Ethics Committee, said they are looking for more documentation from Mr Mulroney about his consulting business and reports of business he conducted for Mr Schreiber. When will Mr Harper explain his long and expensive fixation with the Canadian Wheat Board and pasta?

Although the Commons Committee has unearthed some information, many knowlegeable people have stated it does not have the structure and resources suited for the task. A full public inquiry with all the resources and power to subpoena documents and witnesses is required. Only then will Canadians be able to follow the Schreiber-Mulroney money trail and learn if it includes the pasta thing that Mr Harper was so obsessed with when he was spending big dollars on CWB attack ads.