In the Toronto Star this morning Senator David Tkachuk lights into Brigette DePape, and those who call her actions heroic.
How dare he?
Mr. Tkachuk represents everything that is wrong with our current Senate. A crony appointment of Brian Mulroney's, who was brought on board to help the fortunes of his government, eventually toppled by corruption.
Not the first time for Tkachuk. He was a personal advisor to Grant Devine, former Premier of Saskatchewan, whose government was so corrupt, several MLAs ended up in prison.
Two senators with ties to both Mulroney and Devine, were eventually led out of the Senate in handcuffs.
Let's take a little stroll down memory lane with this high and mighty senator, shall we? Like the CBC piece: From politics to prison in Saskatchewan, broadcast February 8, 1999.
It discusses the "bad actors" of Devine's neoconservative government, including David Tkachuk, first appearing at the 4:40 mark of the tape. He is described as a "mean drunk" and many MLAs claimed to "hate his guts". It is also said that he once accosted the daughter of a Tory MLA, and ripped the blouse off another young female politician.
You can also check out some of the Hansard records of the Saskatchewan Legislature where they question what he does to earn $350 per day (in 1984), and also raise the alarm over his travel expenses.
But he had been instrumental in getting this gang of thugs elected, so when Mulroney called him to join the Senate, it was because he needed advice on how to get a corrupt government re-elected. Tkachuk failed because they were reduced to two seats.
This man is nothing but a hyperpartisan bully and like the idealistic Jack Wolfe, who got a glimpse of the ugly side of politics, Brigette DePape, no doubt went into her job believing that she would be at the hub of Canadian democracy.
What she saw instead was an unelected senate, overturn bills passed by elected parliamentarians, without so much as a backward glance. And she met two senators who may land in jail because of their involvement with the Conservative election financing scheme.
And she saw Stephen Harper treat both Parliament and the Senate as his own posse, doing the exact opposite of what Canadians wanted or needed, to fill the pockets of the Corporate execs.
So no Mr. Tkachuk, Ms DePape did not dishonour our institutions. You and your cronies are doing that everyday. And she does not have to go to Afghanistan to learn about democracy, because she could teach you more on the subject than you could ever know.
I will forgive his comment about the Senate that "men with all their frailties do all they can to preserve."
It is not his misogyny that this young woman exposed, and it has nothing to do with her defying an oath.
She forced him, and others like him, to look in the mirror.
And they will never forgive her for that.
A bit of background on Grant Devine and the Saskatchewan Government and the Mulroney Connection.
During the election debates of 1984, Brian Mulroney attacked John Turner for not stopping several Trudeau patronage appointments to the senate. He called it "an avowal of failure".
It helped to win the election for him.
But once in office, Mulroney made the chamber his own 'reward miles' program, with Marjorie LeBreton handing out senate seats to those who puckered up the most, paying homage to her boss's derriere.
And these appointments became both a curse and a blessing for Jean Charest when he became party leader. They were broke and broken:
The reality was that there were just two MPs in Parliament and the party was $5 million in debt. ..... The only place the federal Tories had any real bench strength, a significant block of parliamentarians with staff, research money, phone lines, airline passes, and experience, was in the Senate. The roll call of senators so close to the former prime minister must be daunting to Charest: David Angus. Eric Berntson, John Buchanan, Guy Charbonneau, Michel Cogger. Trevor Eyton, Dunc Jessiman, Jim Kelleher, Marjory LeBreton, John Lvnch-Staunton, Michael Meighen, Pierre Claude Nolin, and Fernand Roberge. These are the individuals on whom Charest must depend, the same people who are, to a great extent, responsible for much of the mess the party is in today. Maybe there is just too much baggage for a Tory recovery in the foreseeable future. (1)
Now we find ourselves decades later in a similar situation with senate baggage. Stephen Harper has made the most patronage senate appointments in the history of this country, and most were not qualified to run a lemonade stand, including a former hockey coach who can't even read or write.
And what's worse is that if he remains prime minister to the end of November, he may have control of the Senate.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper will soon lay claim in the unelected Senate to what he does not have in the House of Commons: a majority.
But this won't be a 'Tory' senate control, as suggested by the media, but a control of what Harper himself refers to as a party "where evangelical Christians and business rule in an unholy alliance" after Red Tories are "jettisoned from the party". (2)
In other words, Republicans.
And what will it mean for Canada?
It means that even if we can get rid of this government before they completely destroy us, we will not be able to overturn their list of horrendous bills, and Parliament will be essentially controlled a gaggle of Reformer fundraisers and party faithfuls. Harper will continue to control us from a distance.
Add to that a Fox News North and we will officially be an American colony.
This is not good.
Sources:
1. On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0, Pg. 486-87
Using the Frank Luntz strategy of running a campaign on the promise of accountability, the Reform-Conservatives hijacked an election on just such a promise.
And in 2006, not long after being elected, they kept their promise by introducing the Accountability Act.
Then later in 2006, they took that Accountability Act, tucked it away in a drawer, and never mentioned it again.
Now I know the talking points on this, provided courtesy of the Conservative Party of Canada; are to imply that they tried but the opposition sabotaged their efforts.
Not true.
At least not when it came to part of the act, that involved the creation of a Public Appointments Commission.
Ironically, the intent of this commission was to prevent cronyism and nepotism, when it came to hiring practices; yet the name they brought forward was none other than Gwyn Morgan, a longtime party fundraiser, even back in the Reform Days.
And the Opposition's concern was not only the fact that he was a party insider, but also that he had made some seemingly racist remarks in the past, that caused concern that hiring practices might be based on discrimination.
Gwyn Morgan seems like a decent guy and has a lot of experience in industry, but he was still not the best candidate based on these two things.
Did Harper know that and actually hope this would happen to give him an out? Knowing how he operates it's more than possible, but probable; so that when he did start appointing cronies all over the place, he would have justification.
In fact, after a whole whack of these appointments was made public, Kady O'Malley asked 'Did he Have a Choice?'
That promise, however, was made before opposition members rejected the Prime Minister's choice to head up the commission: Gwyn Morgan, the former CEO of EnCana. Once that had happened, Harper told reporters that he would be scrapping" the commission and proceeding with appointments "in the traditional manner."
This brings me to Tony Clement, Peter MacKay, and the fast one they appear to have pulled on us.
Yesterday this 2007 story came down the CAPP pipeline. It concerned the hiring of a man who was closely linked to Tony Clement. Mr. Clement knows how to play the game, having spent several years with the Mike Harris government in Ontario.
The federal cabinet has named a Toronto pharmaceutical distributor with close ties to Health Minister Tony Clement and a company division in India to a government agency that promotes trade and business contacts between Asia and Canada.
The appointment -- which a New Democratic MP says fails the "smell test" -- was included in a round of patronage appointments Prime Minister Stephen Harper has approved over the past three months.
Not long after the appointment of Vikram Khurana, it was revealed that Clement actually owned 25% of Khurana's company, Prudential Chem Inc.; a definite conflict of interest. So Tony Clement transferred his shares back to the Toronto drug distributor, and the whole thing was swept under the rug.
But not so fast.
Enter Peter MacKay.
News Release February 3, 2008 GOVERNMENT OF CANADA INVESTS $1 MILLION IN ATLANTIC CANADA MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION INDUSTRY
New Glasgow, Nova Scotia The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), today announced $1 million in funding for Prudential Consulting Inc. to establish an operating division in Atlantic Canada, a move which will help develop a medical transcription industry across the region.
This was partnered with an initiative by the Nova Scotia provincial government:
Prudential Consulting Inc. (PCI), an Ontario-based medical transcription company, is expanding its business in Nova Scotia. The company plans to create up to 70 new jobs over the next five years. The province, through Nova Scotia Business Inc. (NSBI), is supporting the company's expansion with a payroll rebate set at a maximum $590,400. It is an earned incentive tied to the company achieving hiring targets.
Now I'm all for the promotion of businesses that will provide jobs. However, you do have to ask yourself, why is this company, owned by a friend of Tony Clement's; getting all the juicy contracts?
And you also have to ask yourself, based on Clement's background; what this is really about?
We know that in Ontario he pushed strenuously for private health care, earning him the nickname 'Two-tier Tony'.
On the Prudential Consulting deal with the government ... Prudential received $1 million funding from ACOA to train medical transcriptionists and provide transcription services to the medical community across the country. This is a private company who just recently toured our NB and NS hospitals ... It's not a simple coincidence that 350 is the current number of transcriptionists working in our NB & NS healthcare institutions.
... And if there is such a demand for medical transcriptionists today, why isn't this money offered to our own provincially funded Community Colleges in Campbellton & Cape-Breton who currently offer this training but have been struggling to make due. I'm placing my bets that Prudential's hidden true intention is to hire our very own provincial healthcare transcriptionists (coincidentally adds up to the ... numbers Prudential promised to hire).
So the Reform-Conservatives appoint a buddy and business partner of Tony Clement's to head up a government agency responsible for promoting business and lobbying for contracts. They defend this by having Clement turn his 25% share in the business back to his former (?) partner and claiming that the position does not include remuneration.
But as NDP MP Pat Martin claimed "... the real value from such a post comes from business contacts and the prestige associated with the position."
We now know what else comes from the post: One million from the federal government, $590,400 from the Nova Scotia provincial government and $ 800,000 from the New Brunswick provincial government, all going to the Khurana/Clement business Prudential Chemicals (and Consulting) Inc.
And if Countering the Nanny State is correct, this was not about creating new jobs, but simply transferring the public service jobs from the eastern provinces, to a private, for-profit, concern. And another thing to watch for is the outsourcing of these jobs to places like India.
See how smooth that was?
Pat Martin was right. This doesn't pass the smell test.
This is definitely a story worthy of follow up. Did the various governments ask for guarantees that the jobs would be additional and local? Were there other companies better equipped to handle this? Being familiar with the way that Tony Clement, and in fact this entire government acts, I think this may have been just one more step toward private health services.
For a party that came into power, claiming to want to clean things up, they have certainly muddied the waters. In fact, they have officially made more patronage and cronyism appointments than any government before them. They should be so proud.
The Immigration and Refugee Board tailored job competitions to favour former political appointees who sat on its tribunals, a breach of the hiring principles for a non-partisan public service, an audit by the federal staffing watchdog says.
The Public Service Commission audit found eight of nine former political appointees received "preferential treatment" to help them land permanent public service jobs at the board. All had held positions on tribunals that had expired within a year of being hired.
Public Service Commission president Maria Barrados, whose job is to protect the impartiality of the public service, said a political appointment should not be "an entry route" into a non-partisan public service.
She said appointees should apply, compete and demonstrate merit like any other Canadian trying to land a job in the public service.
"They are appointed by ministers and there is no commitment to being non-partisan," said Barrados. "(Job) appointments through the Public Service Commission are merit-based and non-partisan and set up so they are away from the direction and influence of ministers, which is a key part of maintaining a non-partisan public service."
The audit has been turned over to the commission's investigation branch to determine whether it warrants a further probe. The commission has the power to overturn appointments or call new competitions.
The IRB is Canada's largest independent administrative tribunal, making 40,000 decisions a year on immigration and refugee cases. With a $113-million budget, it employs 925 public servants and 118 political or governor-in-council appointees to run its three divisions.
The immigration division is run by public servants, but all decisions at the refugee protection and immigration appeals divisions are made by political appointees.
The commission discovered concerns about "preferential treatment" during a routine audit. All told, it reviewed a sample of 54 appointments and found 33 didn't meet the requirements of the job or records didn't have a paper trail showing they did. In other cases, the competition for the jobs didn't meet the tests of being open, fair and transparent.
The audit, for example, found the IRB decided to recruit applicants who were former political appointees because they had the in-depth knowledge and experience with the tribunal's operations.
Barrados said experience gained as a politically-appointed tribunal member gives former appointees an edge no other candidates could match. Three of the political appointees landed jobs in a public competition, which called for specific tribunal experience. That requirement screened out 171 of the 174 people who applied.
When hired at a minister's discretion, these political appointees don't have to comply with any of the hiring rules or requirements expected of those recruited for jobs in the public service under the Public Service Employment Act. The decision to appoint rests totally with the minister or government of the day.
For public service jobs, however, candidates must not only meet the qualifications for the job, but the competition or process to fill the job must be open, fair and transparent.
In other cases, the former governor-in-council appointees either didn't meet the requirements of the job, the positions weren't advertised or records of their appointment were lacking. In one case, the bilingual requirements for the position were changed when the candidate failed language testing. Another was given a two-year appointment, which was extended even though the candidate was going on leave.
One of nine former governor-in-council appointees did qualify and meet requirements for the job.
In her April report, Auditor General Sheila Fraser highlighted the problems at the Immigration and Refugee Board, where high vacancy rates and high turnover of board members led to a growing backlog of cases and long delays in decisions on claims.
During the period of the audit, the IRB was swamped with cases, a workload it couldn't keep up with because the terms of so many political appointees had expired and replacements hadn't been appointed because of a series of changes in government. The audit was conducted on appointments between January 2006 and June 2009.
The IRB said the soaring number of claims coupled with not enough experienced decision-makers created a backlog of 42,300 refugee protection claims cases in 2007 -- more than double the backlog of 2006.
The audit also noted that former experienced appointees could have been hired for short-term stints to help fill gaps or retrain new appointees without breaching the act.
The Harper government made an election promise to create a Public Appointments Commission to ensure these political or GIC appointments went to qualified candidates rather than party faithful or cronies.
The federal Liberals slammed the governing Conservatives on Thursday for handing out government jobs -- some of which pay more than $100,000 a year -- to failed former candidates, party workers and financial supporters.
The Liberals went on the attack in the House of Commons in the wake of a report that Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed five judges with Conservative ties. Harper did so less than a week after slamming the Liberals for appointing "left-wing ideologues" to the courts and to the civil service when they were in power.
Liberals say they've identified 37 appointments Harper and his cabinet approved in the last six weeks, where the appointee had a demonstrated link to the Conservatives.
"It is an orgy of appointments," said Liberal MP David McGuinty. "How many more rewards does the prime minister intend to hand out to his Conservative flock?"
Five of the 37 appointments flagged by the Liberals were the judges referred to in Thursday's reports. Those judges were appointed Sept. 9. The Liberals are also counting seven senators Harper appointed on Aug. 27. The new senators included Harper's second-longest-serving aide, the Conservative party's past president, and the husband of Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, who was also Harper's director of political operations.
In the days between appointing some of his closest political friends to the Senate and making the judicial appointments, Harper gave a speech in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., in which he said the Liberals, had they won the government last fall, would be putting "left-wing ideologues . . . in the courts, federal institutions, agencies, and the Senate."
The Liberals say Harper is saying one thing and doing the opposite.
One of Harper's key campaign promises from 2006 was to create an independent public-appointments commission. But the Tories wanted one of their own biggest financial contributors, former oil and gas executive Gwyn Morgan, to head that commission. Opposition MPs who agreed with the idea of a commission objected to Morgan's appointment to run it.
"Only the government would expect a crony to stamp out cronyism. How ridiculous," McGuinty said in the House of Commons.
Political appointments are handled by senior political staff working within the Prime Minister's Office. More than 3,000 appointments have been made since the Harper government took office.
Further to the story of Winnipeg MP Rod Bruinooge and his relationship with lawyer and businessman Gary Thomas Brazzell; we see that Mr. Brazzell was involved with Brian Mulroney several years before doing business with Bruinooge and his family.
Apparently in 1985, Mulroney fired the board at Via Rail and appointed his own cronies; including one Gary Thomas Brazzell.
In fact he fired the boards of many crown corporations, making it easier to grant contracts to friends and supporters, when it was friends and supporters who would be involved in the process.
What's interesting about this is that it actually sets the stage for the Sponsorship scandal, referred to as Adscam, that helped bring Stephen Harper to power.
Harper was in Ottawa in 1985, as chief aide to Progressive Conservative MP Jim Hawkes, the man he would later screw over when the National Citizens Coalition spent $ 50,000.00 to politically destroy him.
I'm not suggesting here that he was part of Mulroney's corruption, but no doubt rubbed shoulders with many of the people involved; and Gary Brazzell was given a patronage appointment in Harper's government, through Maxime Bernier.
In the case of the following story, an ad agency, with little experience, Publicité Martin, was granted a lucrative contact to run a campaign for VIA Rail, much to the shock of VIA employees, since there were many better qualified agencies who had submitted tenders.
We can see how Mulroney cronies engaged in a little arm twisting to make that happen, and later this same ad agency and at least one other Mulroney appointee, Marc LeFrançois, would be named in Adsam several years later.
André Verret couldn’t believe his eyes. A friend told him that if he sat in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s Café de Paris at breakfast any weekday morning, he could watch hotel manager Fernand Roberge hold court at a corner table for a stream of interesting individuals.
“Out of pure curiosity,” said Verret, a senior public servant who had moved from Ottawa in 1984 to work in the public affairs office at VIA Rail, “I went to have a look. Every morning around 7 or 7:30 people would spend about fifteen minutes with Mr. Roberge, well-known people, lawyers and the like.” Sometimes a dozen people in all would meet with Roberge over coffee, each person or group of two or three taking no more than twenty minutes.
“It was really like his office,” said Verret, adding that Roberge’s visitors would leave the table “with beautiful; smiles on their faces.”
Like pilgrims searching for the Holy Grail, hungry contract seekers had a number of choices during the Mulroney years. As we’ve seen, some were comfortable cutting their deals with Roch LaSalle over a power breakfast at Nate’s in Ottawa. Many Atlantic Canada businessmen found their way up the back staircase above the New Glasgow pizza parlour to try to humour Big Daddy. A few of the more sophisticated would book a table at Le Mas des Oliviers in Montreal to lobby Guy Charbonneau. And some, as André Verret discovered, preferred the Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s Café de Paris.
Advising on federal advertising contracts in Quebec was among Roberge’s pleasant duties, according to half a dozen well-connected advertising executives based in Montreal and Toronto. At least one senior official in the federal government’s Advertising Management Group, the agency set up to handle the government’s advertising, routinely received calls from Roberge—who was at this time a private citizen with no official authority of any kind. (He was later made a senator by Mulroney)
During the Mulroney years, Montreal’s advertising and public relations community made the Ritz coffee shop something of a hangout in the mornings. Perhaps they were hoping for the chance of a word with Mulroney, who always stayed at the hotel when he was in town, or maybe they were just making sure they had regular contact with Roberge. “There was a real clique there,” said one of the advertising executives. One of the members was Marcel Côté, a partner in Sécor, who later worked in Mulroney’s office as his communication’s advisor.
One morning in March 1985 Verret was just finishing his breakfast when he saw an acquaintance, then a senior manager at a Montreal advertising firm called Publicité Martin, run by Montreal adman Yvon Martin, in an intense conversation with Roberge. A few minutes later the man rose to his feet, shook Roberge’s hand, and left, grinning broadly.
When he saw Verret, he came over. He spoke enthusiastically about landing the VIA Rail advertising account. Verret, who had been at VIA Rail since June 1984, was skeptical. “In that kind of contract there is always a call for a public tender,” explained Verret, and as far as he knew when the Martin official spoke to him, that process was still under way.
“Six or seven or eight firms were invited to tender, and we always tried in the past to be as fair as possible.” Back at VIA, several other people were just as incredulous as Verret. To begin with, although the company had been in business for fifteen years, Publicité Martin had not made the original list of potential agencies drawn up by VIA’s advertising department because the firm was not considered to be equipped to handle large national accounts, certainly not one as significant as VIA’s.
But Mulroney had just fired the old VIA Rail board and appointed a new one packed with cronies and party bagmen. It was a crew that was feeling its oats, and one of the recently arrived board members saw to it that Martin’s firm was added to the short list. The final forming bidding process began in March 1985, just before Verret encountered his friend at the Ritz. About nine firms were invited to present their pitches over a two-day period to a committee of three new VIA board members, Gary Brazell (sic) from Winnipeg, Paul Norris from Edmonton, and Marc LeFrançois from Quebec City, and five executives from VIA’s advertising and marketing departments, vice-president Michael Kieran, Jim Warrington, Christina Sirsley, Preston Beaumont, and Nicole Alyot.
By the end, three firms had been dropped from the roster, and two of the nine firms needn’t have bothered to show up. One was MacLaren Advertising, the firm that had enjoyed a near-monopoly on advertising under the Liberals; a second was McKim, which was known to have backed Joe Clark’s failed bid to hang onto the Tory leadership the year before.
“They were treated like shit by the board members,” said a witness to the proceedings. “It was very embarrassing.”After the first day of proceedings, the VIA board members and staff went off to dinner at Montreal’s Atlantic Pavilion, courtesy of VIA, and feasted on seafood, everyone trying to guess what was in the minds of their companions concerning the day’s events.
Some members continued the evening’s festivities at the Ritz-Carlton’s bar where they quaffed champagne, again at VIA’s expense, until the small hours of morning. Others retired to their hotel rooms to prepare for day two of the presentations. This would be the day on which Martin would make his presentation, and Paul Norris and Gary Brazell (sic) had already made it clear they were strong supporters of the firm.
When Martin’s firm formally made its pitch, it seemed to overwhelm the board members and underwhelm the VIA staffers. “At best it was mediocre,” said one staff person who was there. Another former VIA official agreed. “The pitch was not very good, it was not strong,” the official said.
“If they had been innovative and understood the problems of VIA they would have done a better job, but they did not do their homework and gave a presentation that was somewhat silly, that was not up to the task. They did not understand what trains are about in Canada, they did not do the research to understand it.”
The next day, a Saturday morning, the eight committee members met at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel for a final review. The board members stated their admiration for Martin’s presentation but agreed that the one done by Cosette Communication-Marketing Publicité had also been excellent. The VIA staffers were of a different view. Kieran vehemently opposed Martin and said so, while his colleagues mouthed perfunctory platitudes about Martin’s pitch and then stated their preferences for some of the other agencies that had competed.
After hearing their remarks, Paul Norris looked surprised. “I don’t think we were all at the same party,” he commented. Kieran did not give up without a fight. He was relentless and persisted against the obvious will of the board members. “It was extraordinary that the board would involve itself with such matters,” says Kieran today. “It was not illegal, mind you, but it was extraordinary.”
About two weeks later the official decision was made at VIA’s head office and the committee members were duly notified. There were two winners, Martin and Cossette. Cossette had been high on everyone’s list and it won 50 per cent of the total contract, or $4.5 million. Known to spend lavish sums on its creative talent, Cossette was to handle VIA’s national advertising—everything outside the Windsor-Quebec City corridor.
Now an industry giant, in 1985 Cossette was still a small regional advertising agency, explained one advertising executive, “but it was known to be extremely tight with Roberge.” (1) Martin, an outfit that was reputed to place a higher value on its accounting department, was given the corridor and $4.5 million to do the job. Yvon Martin was disappointed with the results; he had hoped to land the entire package. But he didn’t need to worry, especially after the firm went on to win other excellent contracts.
To celebrate his good fortune, Martin, who had started the company in his own home and was still the sole owner, bought himself a new $70,000 Jaguar.
Another former VIA employee, a senior manager who was familiar with the contracts, agreed with Verret’s version of events and remembers what happened after the first ad campaign ran. “We did reviews of his [Martin’s] firm: how successful they were with our campaigns. The presentation the agency made to us was the pits. They really ignored VIA. They took the contract for granted. They never assigned the right account executive to it and their ads were shitty.” The executive would complain to the VIA manager who deal with Martin and the manager agreed but could say only, “I can’t do anything. My hands are tied.” Martin still has the VIA Rail account, and he has it all: Cossette no longer has half.
Footnote 1Cossette was also supposed to get the Air Canada advertising contract, then split evenly between an English firm and a Quebec firm. “My marching orders are that it’s to go to Cossette,” said one senior Tory on the board of the PC Canada Fund to a friend. Only the intervention of Air Canada’s president, Claude Taylor, prevented the move. Cameron, pp. 316-320 ( Toronto: McFarlane Walter and Ross, 1994 WPL 971.064)
Rod Bruinooge is the Conservative MP for Winnipeg South. His bio claims that he is a businessman, an amateur film maker and computer games designer. All true.
He is also a Metis and the Harper government loves to hold him up as an example of how enlightened they are. Drawing in aboriginal candidates helps them to shed their old image of being harsh toward Canada's First Nations.
Unfortunately, Bruinooge is not an aboriginal member of Parliament, but a Member of Parliament who happens to be of aboriginal descent. In fact the Native community has never endorsed him.
During the 2004 election, Bruinooge and party leader Stephen Harper were the targets of a protest by aboriginal activists, including David Chartrand of the Manitoba Métis Federation.
In 2006, though Bruinooge was a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, that organization endorsed his Liberal opponent, Reg Alcock. He beat Alcock by just 111 votes.
At the First Nations General Assembly in Nova Scotia in July 2007, Bruinooge described the Paul Martin government's Kelowna Accord on aboriginal investment as nothing more than an "expensive press release". This statement was strongly criticized by Assembly of First Nations leader Phil Fontaine. The deal had been hammered out over five years, and one of Harper's first acts as prime minister was to scrap it.
Fontaine argued that the accord "was designed to eradicate poverty in First Nations communities and make Canada a better place."
William Davison of the Indian Métis Christian Fellowship, who works with urban aboriginals in Regina, said he wasn't surprised that the Tories chopped the funds. But he said the billions promised in the Kelowna Accord would have gone a long way to helping improve the lives of aboriginals in Canada.
"I work with a lot of hopelessness and despair within the aboriginal urban community dealing with traditions and cultures and dealing with those trapped in the streets," Davison told CBC News.
Hardly a simple "press release".
Instead, as a member of Canada's Religious Right, Rod Bruinooge has focused most of his attention on re-criminalizing abortion, validating feminist Gloria Steinem's claim, that the neoconservatives believe that "life begins at conception but ends at birth".
Child poverty rates are on the rise in Canada. In November of 2009, Vipal Jain wrote in the Toronto Star:
One in nine Canadian children, more than a million, live below the poverty line according to the 2008 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada ... “For many families, it’s very difficult to get out of poverty. There isn’t enough money to feed the children, clothe them properly, or even enough money to pay for the bus fare or to look for a job,” says Grant Wilson, President of Canadian Children’s Rights Council. It’s even harder for new Canadian children and aboriginal families as they are at a greater risk of living in poverty. (1)
UNICEF confirms the plight of many First Nations children. From their 2009 annual report:
Aboriginal children are among the most marginalized children in Canadian society. Despite some advances, in almost any measure of health and well-being, Aboriginal children – including First Nations, Inuit and Métis -- are at least two or three times worse off than other Canadian children. As children, they are less likely to see a doctor. As teens, they are more likely to become pregnant. And in many communities, they are more likely to commit suicide.
This disparity is the greatest children's rights challenge facing our nation.
The Canadian Press reported that:
... infant mortality rate for native babies in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand is up to four times that of non-native newborns, says a groundbreaking new study ... Dr. Janet Smylie, a researcher who works through St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto, says the international replication of startling native health gaps among such diverse populations suggests social deprivation – not genetics – is to blame.(2)
The Native Women's Association of Canada, post that "our infants are challenged right from the start, and that our infant mortality rates are equal to developing countries such as Chile, Sri Lanka and Fiji, and higher than Latvia and Lithuania."
If Rod Bruinooge was really pro-life and an "aboriginal" MP, he would be doing something for these children, instead of exploiting his heritage for political gain.
Fortunately, the honour remained, and Morgantaler was rewarded for his work in offering safe abortions.
Most of the Conservatives didn't see it that way, but Rod Bruinooge went above and beyond. He was behind a poll that appeared on Lifesitenews, suggesting that "56% of Canadians Oppose Morgentaler Order of Canada".
The poll was commissioned by Lifesitenews, and conducted by KLRVU polling. But what they don't mention, is the fact that KLRVU polling is run by Allan and Katherine Bruinooge. Rod's brother and his wife.
Prophet or Profit?
Canadian dominionist, Faytene Kryskow, has called Rod Bruinooge, a 'Prophet for the Lord', because of his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Her organization, 4MY Canada, threw their support behind his election campaign, and continue to endorse his political career. (3)
But just how righteous a man is he?
In an alleged shady deal with a former Brian Mulroney crony, Gary Thomas Brazzell, Bruinooge showed that he could play the game.
It began with a patronage appointment in 2007. According to WaverleyWest:
There was a recent Tory appointment that the WFP [Winnipeg Free Press] missed, as they always seem to miss it. That man is the one Manitoban who got plum appointments from both Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper. That man is Ladco Board Member and former Rod Bruinooge lawyer Gary Brazzell. (4)
Ladco is one of the primary owners of Waverley West development (35%). Bruinooge lobbied hard for the Waverley underpass, which would be beneficial to Waverley West.
Less than two years after the Kenaston underpass finally ended traffic mayhem on one major south Winnipeg artery, the area's MP says it's time to do the same thing on Waverley ... (Waverley West is a project of ladco) And Winnipeg South MP Rod Bruinooge says his government is prepared to pony up its share of the cash." (Senior Manitoba minister Vic Toews has signalled to me that should the province come on board, the federal government will be there," Bruinooge said.
"My interest now is in convincing the premier they should also come to the table." Bruinooge said the additional 30,000 homes in the Waverley West subdivision makes the underpass at Waverley a desperate need."A lot of people don't use Waverley because they can't count on it," Bruinooge said. "It's been a constant burden." (5)
But was Bruinooge really concerned with congestion, or something else?
Seems that the MP owed Brazzell a favour. A Waverley West watchdog group provides a bit of background:
December 2, 1998 Lawyer Gary Thomas Brazzell is made a director of Abject Modernity Internet Creations. Its president is Rodney Bruinooge (now the MP for Winnipeg South.)
December 23, 1998 Brazzell buys 25,000 shares of Abject stock.
December 23, 1998 Brazzell provides share certificates to Bruinooges’s step-brother’s co-worker.
February 1999 Brazzell provides share certificates to an uncle of Chantale Marion (Bruinooge’s wife). They had been backdated to December 23, 1998.
Brazzel had actually once been removed from the Ladco board for questionable business practices.
C1. BRAZZELL acknowledges and agrees that he acted contrary to the public interest in that he: (a) traded in securities without having been registered and without prospectus in contravention of sections 6 and 37 of the Act; (b) facilitated or permitted the purchase of shares by a number of investors under the sole name of one investor, so as to minimize the number of apparent investors in an effort to purportedly rely upon the private company exemption under section 19(2)(i) of the Act; (c) failed to ascertain whether the company in question was in fact a private company as defined in the Act, thereby causing shares to be traded in reliance upon such exemption, when the exemption was not so available; (d) facilitated or permitted the purchase and sale of securities in ABJECT in the name of one investor, when he knew or ought to have known that the shares were intended to be purchased by a number of other investors in addition to the investor so named. Brazzell will pay the Manitoba Securities Commission $3,000 plus costs for his actions.
Is Rod Bruinooge really a "prophet for the Lord"?
I'd say he's just another self serving Conservative politician.
Sources:
1. Rich Nation, Poor Children, by Vipal Jain, The Toronto Star, November 20th, 2009
In the Toronto Star this morning Senator David Tkachuk lights into Brigette DePape, and those who call her actions heroic.
