Who Will Chant "Shame" This Time? Isn't Karma a B*tch

David Akin yesterday spoke of Karma in the case of Jason Kenney distributing his plans to exploit the immigrant communities, to the wrong Duncan.

But there is a much bigger 'Karma' playing out in the Harper government, when it comes to fraud and the Senate.

They are following a script written 20 years ago, and while some of the roles are being played by different actors, Saskandal II, stuck close to the original plot.


Saskandal I: The Saskatchewan Connection

Eric Berston was a patronage appointment senator, one of Marjory LeBreton's, "be nice to me and I'll set you up for life" choices.

But Eric Bernston, who was a crony of Brian Mulroney's, would get caught up in one of the biggest political scandals of the century, eventually spending a year in jail.

According to Robert Shephard (Saskandal, By: Robert Shephard, MacLeans, March 29, 1999)

He was the big fish in the small pond - the deputy premier who, everyone knew, truly ran Grant Devine's Saskatchewan government in the turbulent 1980s. But when now-Senator Eric Berntson was sentenced last week to a year in jail for defrauding taxpayers of $41,735, the ripples extended all the way to Ottawa. Saskatchewan residents - those who have not tuned out the long saga of provincial Tory corruption - were struck by two images of Berntson. One was the jowly, stone-faced power broker they had come to loathe. The other was a broken man, nearly friendless, pleading for compassion, citing the strain of events and his work on behalf of literacy and homeless children.

Except for one day in the Court of Queen's Bench - just before Justice Frank Gerein pronounced the sentence an abuse of trust and "a sad day for Saskatchewan" - Berntson has maintained a public silence. That has left most Canadians with another indelible image: that of another Tory senator led from court in handcuffs - only to return to a Senate seat, pending appeal. Both Berntson, 57, and Senator Michel Cogger*, 60, who was convicted last July of influence peddling, showed up unexpectedly for Senate duties on Wednesday. They sat side by side in an isolated corner of the upper chamber while catcalls of "shame" came from Reformers and New Democrats in the nearby House of Commons.

"... another indelible image: that of another Tory senator led from court in handcuffs - sat side by side in an isolated corner of the upper chamber while catcalls of "shame" came from Reformers ..."

So if two of Harper's Senators become an "indelible image: that of another Tory senator led from court in handcuffs" will Harper's Reformers once again make catcalls of "shame"? Remember, Marjory LeBreton is now Leader of the Government in the Senate, so her fingerprints are all over this thing ... again!

And more Karma may be hitting Harper MP Tom Lukiwski. When an old tape surfaced of him making homophobic remarks, the Conservatives immediately went into major damage control, assuring that the headlines would be about his homophobia. He cried and everything.

Because what they wanted to keep from the public, was the fact that Lukiwski was part of that Saskandal, though never charged (he was the executive director of the party), and one of the people on that tape, was none other than Eric Bernston.

Saskandal II: The "In and Out" Election Fraud Scheme

We again have two patronage appointed "be nice to Marjory LeBreton" senators, caught up in an attempt to defraud taxpayers, and who like Bersnston, could be spending a year in jail.

Only the names of the senators have changed.

Will the sequel be as exciting as the original? It's certainly shaping up to be. And this new round of players are just as immature as the previous cast (see Lukiwski's videos below and judge for yourself)

Anyone refusing to take part in the scheme were labelled 'idiots' and 'turds' by Conservative organizers. Nice.

Workers on the campaign of a Conservative MP who declined to participate in the in-and-out advertising scheme in the 2006 election were denounced as “idiots” and a “bunch of turds” by senior party officials, who wanted to “put the fear of God” into them for not taking part in the contentious TV and radio purchases.

And a bit more:

Aftermath of an 'in and out' election scheme

Ex-Tory MPs say they rejected ‘in-and-out’ financing scheme

Doc Harper's amazing campaign money machine

Doug Finley did a good job on those attack ads, Doug Finley says

Potash Story Reminds us That for Harper Multinationals ALWAYS Come First

There are many stories and op-eds on the potash situation, and while troubling, only further validate that Stephen Harper will always put multinationals before Canadian interests. Always has, always will.

Chantel Hebert believes that it further uncovers problems between the provinces and the federal government. She mentions the National Energy Program that alienated the West, mostly the results of good PR.

Saskatchewan's energy minister has sent a letter to Tony Clement. Even if he could read, he wouldn't care.

The Globe is predicting trouble for Harper in the West over his inability to stop this.

The NDP want the rules with regards to foreign ownership rewritten.

Where will it end?

Call me jaded but I see the corporate sector pouring a lot of money into an ad campaign that will somehow paint Harper as a conquering hero, and the whole thing will just fade away, as Canada loses more of it's soul.

Sigh.

RCMP: The Illegitimacy of Democracy and the Erosion of Public Trust

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

"Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state." Carl Jung

When William Elliot was named as new RCMP Commissioner in July of 2007, it raised more than a few eyebrows. (1)

And it was not simply for the fact that he was a career bureaucrat, with no police experience, but because he was a Conservative insider, an old crony from Brian Mulroney's days. In fact his brother Richard was married to Brian Mulroney's sister. It's hard to get anymore inside than that.

He was around during the days of the Giga Text scandal, that helped to bring down the Saskatchewan government, something I've written about before. Stevie Cameron, in her book On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, identifies Elliot's position and also reports on a real estate deal that she included as part of that scandal.

It was at this point that Montpetit and GigaText entered into an interesting real estate deal. Bill Elliott, the Regina lawyer, was a senior partner at McPherson Elliott and Tyreman, a leading law firm in the city. The firm's offices occupied a two-storey building in a suburb. The wealthy Hill family wanted to build an office tower in downtown Regina and went to Elliott for a large loan because he was chairman of the provincially run Saskatchewan Pension Funds. Elliott helped them win approval for the loan, and as soon as the tower was up, Elliott's law firm leased two floors. Sixty per cent of the building was rented to the provincial government for offices. Then the law firm sold its old two-storey building to the Hill family for $1.75 million, an excellent price for the firm. The Hill family needed tenants for the old building, too, and fortunately GigaText appeared just in time to fill the space. The lease arrangement made everyone happy. (2)

Nothing illegal, but the optics were damaging none the less, and lent itself to an overall distrust.

Stephen Harper appointed him "to clean up the RCMP", after the damaging tenure of Giuliano Zaccardelli, who not only tampered with the 2006 election, but was also named in pension fraud allegations. The Harper government went well beyond the limits of their powers, to protect Zaccardelli, the man who had handed them their election victory.

But it soon became clear that Elliot was not appointed to "clean up" anything. He was there to go after those who blew the whistle, and what he created was chaos. As James Travers reports:

Controversial when announced in 2007, Harper’s choice of a bureaucrat with no policing experience and a Tory background is now an embarrassment with implications stretching beyond Canada. Elliott’s dictatorial management style and the resulting mutiny are focusing unwanted domestic and international attention on the shaky leadership of this country’s security services. (3)

And what was also clear, was that Stephen Harper was politicizing the RCMP and bringing them under his control. A dangerous act in a democracy, as a letter by David Hutton of Ottawa suggests:

Only tinpot Third World countries — and Canada — have their national police force reporting directly to the government of the day. ... Most developed countries ensure that the police have an arms-length relationship with politicians, in order to uphold the law impartially, without political interference or favour. Yet our Mounties report to a minister and brief him regularly on what they are doing — just as if the RCMP were a government department. No doubt the Mounties also receive regular guidance on their priorities — just like a government department does. (4)

And the RCMP has become a political nightmare, as Elliot played the role of a partisan politician, and not as an officer of what should have remained an arms length agency.

There is a shakeup at the top of the RCMP as senior officers who complained about Commissioner William Elliott's style last summer are quitting or being forced out, CBC News has learned. Deputy commissioner Raf Souccar has been asked to leave the force, with trust cited as the reason. And deputy commissioner Tim Killam has given notice that he will retire in December.

Assistant commissioner Mike McDonell, who left the RCMP in August, wrote to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews last week, saying those who came forward last summer "have simply become sacrificial lambs." Senior RCMP officers complained about Elliott to some of the highest levels of the federal government on two occasions in July. They accused Elliott, who became the first civilian to head the Mounties in July 2007, of being verbally abusive, closed-minded, arrogant and insulting. (5)

Which brings us to why Elliot showed up at the G-20. Was it he who instructed the troops to make security a secondary consideration? Were they told that their primary job was to stifle dissent? To attack peaceful protesters?

After all, he works for Stephen Harper, and learned how to play the game as a Mulroney crony.

A senior Mountie commander told the federal government that RCMP Commissioner William Elliott “disrupted” the federal government’s billion-dollar security operation for the G8 and G20 summits – simply by showing up for the events. “Despite being advised not to attend the summit command centres on June 25, 2010, the commissioner chose to attend, and in doing so, completely disrupted operations,” Mike McDonell, then an RCMP assistant commissioner, wrote in a letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. (6)

"There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs." William Orville Douglas

Sources:

1. New RCMP boss vows to rise above lack of police experience, CBC News, July 6, 2007

2. On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0, Pg. 254

3. Failed experiment dooms RCMP boss, By James Travers, Toronto Star, October 21, 2010

4. Politicized RCMP represents danger, Letters to the Editor, By David Hutton, Toronto Star, October 20, 2010

5. Top RCMP officers forced out or quitting: They complained about Commissioner Elliott's leadership style, CBC News, October 18, 2010

6. RCMP boss hurt G20 security efforts: letter from senior Mountie, By Colin Freeze and Daniel LeBlanc, Globe and Mail, October 19, 2010

Stephen Harper Sand Bags His Own Flood Photo-ops

When Stephen Harper toured the Yorkton flood damage, it was business as usual. No empathy for the people just more photo-ops.

Thursday's flying visit to the flood-ravaged Yorkton area was a classic Harper "photo op", with handlers steering newspaper and TV cameras into prime
positions while deftly keeping reporters and their pesky questions well away from the PM. After his plane landed at Yorkton Municipal Airport, Harper took
a helicopter tour over the area with Premier Brad Wall, met with a farm family and then was whisked back to his plane for a flight to the Calgary Stampede. The
whole thing was over in little more than two hours.

Harper didn't make a public statement or take questions and the event was so poorly managed that there wasn't even an opportunity to take a photo of Harper actually looking at a flooded field.

... And it's not just reporters Harper seems to loathe. It's anyone who appears to question him. In Parliament, when Harper tires of opposition parties asking awkward questions and demanding accountability, he shuts the place down by proroguing. There are those who think Harper is just doing his job as he sees fit and has no obligation to talk to the media. These are the same supporters who wonder why Harper often gets poor press.

Being prime minister entails communicating with Canadians -- and not just via photo ops and sterile news releases. Yorkton was yet another lost opportunity.

Same old, same old. The "image" of a prime minister without the substance. Karl Rove would be so proud.

Tom Lukiwski and the Real Saskatchewan Scandal

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

In 2008 a seventeen-year-old tape of Harper MP, Tom Lukiwski surfaced, in which he was heard to say: "There's A's and there's B's. The A's are guys like me, the B's are homosexual faggots with dirt under their fingernails that transmit diseases." *

It immediately made headlines everywhere and he couldn't be more apologetic. Practically in tears, he begged for forgiveness and a little over the top, stated that he would spend the rest of his life making it up to the Gay Community (he's done nothing since).

However the drama was needed to deflect attention from the real issue: the fact that they were made when he was the Executive director of the Saskatchewan Tories of Grant Devine, the premier whose government was so corrupt that criminal charges had to be laid, and several of his ministers, went to jail; including John Scraba and Eric Bernston, who were also seen and heard on the tape.

Eric Bernston

He was the big fish in the small pond - the deputy premier who, everyone knew, truly ran Grant Devine's Saskatchewan government in the turbulent 1980s. But when now-Senator Eric Berntson was sentenced last week to a year in jail for defrauding taxpayers of $41,735, the ripples extended all the way to Ottawa. Saskatchewan residents - those who have not tuned out the long saga of provincial Tory corruption - were struck by two images of Berntson. One was the jowly, stone-faced power broker they had come to loathe. The other was a broken man, nearly friendless, pleading for compassion, citing the strain of events and his work on behalf of literacy and homeless children.

Except for one day in the Court of Queen's Bench - just before Justice Frank Gerein pronounced the sentence an abuse of trust and "a sad day for Saskatchewan" - Berntson has maintained a public silence. That has left most Canadians with another indelible image: that of another Tory senator led from court in handcuffs - only to return to a Senate seat, pending appeal. Both Berntson, 57, and Senator Michel Cogger*, 60, who was convicted last July of influence peddling, showed up unexpectedly for Senate duties on Wednesday. They sat side by side in an isolated corner of the upper chamber while catcalls of "shame" came from Reformers and New Democrats in the nearby House of Commons. (1)

"Shame" indeed, but this would not be the first time Bernston had brought shame to his Tory party. And defrauding taxpayers of $41,735, wasn't even his biggest crime. One of Canada's first neoconservative politicians, as deputy premier of Alberta, he became involved in one of the most progressive privatization schemes in Canada's history. (2)

And he was also involved in another political scandal, that came to light before the scheme that eventually sent him to jail. And while at the time of his being led out in handcuffs he was reportedly friendless, he had lots of friends back in the day when he was in the Saskatchewan legislature: "George Hill is my friend, and Dennis Ball is my friend. Al Woods is my friend; Wally Nelson is my friend; Cliff Wright is my friend; Wally Nelson is my friend; Herb Pinder is my friend ... I don't apologize for hiring our friends.(3)

The Giga Text Scandal

In 1989 the Saskatchewan government was required to have some of their laws printed in French and English, which promised to be an enormous undertaking. Enter Guy Montpetit, a business associate of Michael Cogger, who was a close friend of, and campaign chairman for, Brian Mulroney. (Cogger would later be appointed to the senate, as mentioned above).

Cogger sought the services of Ken Waschuk, a Conservative party pollster in Saskatchewan, who introduced Montpetit to Deputy Premier Eric Berntson. Montpetit assured him that he could provide the government with computer equipment and software that would do all the translations for them.

The Devine government quickly invested $4 million in GigaText for 25 percent of the shares. Montpetit and his business partner, Douglas Young, a Winnipeg university professor, invested no money, but received 75 percent of the shares. GigaText used the money to purchase twenty computers from another Montpetit-owned company, Lisp, which in turn had obtained the computers from GigaMos Systems,Inc., yet another Montpetit company. GigaMos had obtained the computers from a bankrupt U.S. computer company a few months earlier. They were part of the U.S. company's inventory and, according to an independent court-appointed auditor, had a value of $39,000. " However, GigaMos billed Lisp $1.5 million for the computers; an invoice was sent, but no money changed hands.

In other words, Lisp didn't pay anything for the computers. For these same computers, GigaText (that is, the government of Saskatchewan, the sole financial
backer of GigaText) paid $2.9 million. (4)

In other words, the Saskatchewan government paid almost three million dollars for thirty-nine thousand dollars worth of computers. When Bernston, who struck the deal was asked about this, he shrugged it off, claiming they got value for the money spent. They would fork over another million dollars, while Montpetit lived the high life, though he did share the wealth:

He also flew Eric Berntson, Berntson's chief political aide Terry Leier, and Ken Waschuk to various destinations. Leier, as a GigaText board member, received a $5,000 cash advance, while Waschuk was given a $150,000 interest-free loan. (4)

And despite the four million dollar expenditure, the computers never worked. The first time they tried to do a demonstration, they coughed and died. All of this is a matter of public record.

Going back to the studies, the question I just previously asked you, you’ve talked about other studies where you brought experts in once you realized you were in big trouble with GigaText. I’m asking about what kind of evaluations you did prior to investing the $4 million into GigaText for a 25 per cent share. There’s some independent evaluations of the GigaText system that refer to it as having coughed, sputtered, and died when it was fed independent information. Could you tell us how many studies were done - one would be even adequate - how many studies were done prior to the investment of $4 million in GigaText. Who did the study, and what was the conclusion of the study? And would you table that study with us here this evening to show us that you had at least some evaluation of GigaText, and it wasn’t just an arrangement made between Senator Cogger and Ken Waschuk and yourself and the Premier in the province to take us for $4 million. Tell us about at least one study before the $4 million investment, please. (5)

"Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Justice, and it concerns the GigaText scandal. Minister, on June 2 in this House we raised the question of a no-interest loan of $150,000 paid by Mr. Guy Montpetit to your PC government's pollster and friend, Ken Waschuk. At the time, your colleague, the minister responsible for SEDCO, said that this money was not GigaText money and that it did not come from Saskatchewan taxpayers. Is that also your contention, Mr. Minister?

... Mr. Speaker, that question has been raised in that form before, and the response I gave at that time is that that matter is subject to the investigation by the RCMP, and that report is to be coming down very shortly. And let's leave it to that investigation to determine that question ... What we are asking you about is your government's knowledge, or a lack thereof, about the spending of taxpayers' dollars ... Minister, my question is this: are you familiar with the report compiled by the court-appointed inspector of Mr. Montpetit's companies, presented in the Montreal court case, which clearly shows that the $150,000 loan received by your pollster, Ken Waschuk, came directly from GigaText money, channelled through the Montpetit controlled or operated companies, Lisp, Edubi, and Koyama? Are you familiar with that report, and when did you become aware of both that loan and its sources? (6)

Scandals and incompetence would come to define the Devine government, but the Saskatchewan experiment in neoconservatism, would also come to define the Harper government, as key players have moved back and forth between the two.

So catcalls of "shame" may have come from the Reformers when Bernston was being led out, but he is on that tape calling himself 'F'in A', in a league with Tom Lukiwski.

Footnotes:

* You can watch the entire video and read the transcripts at Giant Political Mouse.

Sources:

1. Saskandal, By: Robert Shephard, MacLeans, March 29, 1999

2. Privatizing a Province: The New Right in Saskatchewan, By: James M. Pitsula and Ken Rasmussen, New Star Books, 1990, ISBN: 0-921586-10-8

3. Eric Bernston, Hansard, November 22, 1983, Pg. 90

4. Pitsula/Rasmussen, 1990, Pg. 276-279

5. EVENING SITTING COMMITTEE OF FINANCE: Consolidated Fund Loans, Advances and Investments Crown Investments Corporation of Saskatchewan, Hansard, August 23, 1989

6. ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS, ORAL QUESTIONS: Loan to Ken Waschuk, June 14, 1989