Blue Like You

Again we have a missing video clip from Mike Duffy Live… Funny, that.

However, I will transpose the audio as best I can with a disclaimer that I was not able to pick up every word.

The scene - Tonda MacCharles interviewing Scott Reid for the Liberals, and Tim Powers for the Conservatives.

(Heated debate in progress.)

T.P. - “Scott, Scott! You want to talk about forecasts, numbers, facts…?”

S. R. - “How about Mark Carney?”

T.P. “Well yeah. Exactly. What did Mark Carney say yesterday? 1.4% growth this year and 2.4 next year..”

S.R. - “What did you project? Stop, stop!!! You didn’t project 1.4 - You projected 1.8!!!“

T. P. - “Scott, Scott… I don’t know if you understand math, but 1.4 is above 1.8!!!”

S. R. (Looking rather puzzled) - “What do ya mean?”

The hot air surrounding the Brenda Martin case has reached firestorm proportions which the government obviously feels the need to mollify as much as humanly possible.

The Liberals are trying to use this story as a political hammer, but it has been blown all out of proportion - especially by Dan McTeague.

It’s become increasingly difficult to extricate the truth in all of this baseless rhetoric, but my sense is that Canadians are becoming less sympathetic as the story unfolds.

McTeague charges that “the federal government is dragging its feet, preventing Brenda Martin’s quick handover to Canadian authorities.”

Yet, the Gazette reports that it’s actually the terms of the international treaty regarding prisoner transfers that is holding things up.

The Canadian Government is actually taking the unusual step of lending Brenda her get-out-of-jail fine, which makes me wonder what happened to her legion of strong supporters?

Yesterday’s Post contained several letters from readers about this debacle, but this one says it best (excerpt):

My wife and I are non-resident Canadians who have made Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, our home in retirement. We have, therefore, been following the Brenda Martin case with much interest.

While it is impossible not to feel sympathetic toward a woman in such distress, I suspect that at least some her troubles were of her own making. And we understand that the Mexican legal system is much less predictable and transparent than Canada’s.

No Canadian should feel unduly at risk living or vacationing in Mexico. However, in the event of finding yourself tangled up with the legal system, do not expect special treatment; do not denigrate the Mexican legal system; and do not get angry with individual Mexicans. Show contriteness, politeness and patience — and, if the issue is sufficiently serious, get legal assistance via the nearest Canadian consular office…

Brenda Martin, along with her gang of outspoken supporters and the complicit media and Liberals may be their own worst enemies.

Check out the rhetoric that the Sun’s Michael Den Tandt uses to describe the Prime Minister of Canada:

The crows are coming home to roost for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and a mangy bunch of birds they are. Will this provoke an election? Not likely. Not yet.

Harper must wake up some mornings and wonder where it all went wrong. Not long ago he was the Iceman, firmly in control of every teensy strand of his government, and seemingly managing it all with aplomb.

With Harper at the helm there were no mistakes. You didn’t get charm, but you did get efficiency, intelligence and a ruthless instinct for political combat that made him more winner than loser.

Most Canadians were buying that package, when compared with the alternatives. We weren’t warming to the man — the piranha smile and assassin’s eyes make that difficult – but we were getting used to him. Harper and Stephane Dion, mano a mano? Dion was sure to emerge with two black eyes and his glasses fastened together with Scotch tape…

Assassin’s eyes?

Why is it that bloggers need to be so careful, but MSM can say anything they want?

Looks like there may be someone else besides the CPC and Gerry Nicolls that has a difficult time accepting the notion of Elections Canada as some kind of infallible deity.

Licia Corbella describes her own run-ins with ‘that independent government body’ - Chief interpeter can’t even interpret election ad laws (H/T to reader Frmgrl):

…The first three agents at Elections Canada’s head office in Ottawa had never even heard about the advertising law and told me to call a 1-800 number.

When asked if it would be legal for me to pay for such an ad, one agent said: “Sounds fine with me. It’s your money. You should be able to do whatever you want with it.”

I agreed with her wholeheartedly. “So is that your answer?” I asked. “This is kind of important. After all, if I interpret this wrong, I could go to jail and get a criminal record.”

That stumped her. Eventually, after being put on hold and speaking to close to one dozen Elections Canada staff members, most of whom didn’t even know about the law, I was put through to a polite Elections Canada lawyer, who after a long conversation told me that he couldn’t give me legal advice, just “legal information.” His advice, or “information”? To hire a lawyer to figure it out. I’m not making this up!

While giving his evidence in chief, Kingsley said “third-party” individuals or groups had to be limited to spending no more than $3,000 in any given federal riding to a maximum of $150,000 during the election campaign or face criminal charges, large fines and even jail.

But when he was asked to interpret various scenarios — like the one I presented to Elections Canada officials during the 2004 federal election — he was unable or unwilling to interpret the law he says he helped frame and of which he was the self-described chief interpreter and enforcer…

And she gives her opinion of the current brouhaha:

…Just days after the election began, Andrew Kumpf sent an e-mail to Conservative party officials, wondering if the proposal to have Retail Media place ads on behalf of local candidates would violate the Canada Elections Act: “While our thinking is that this option would be legal, we are not certain beyond all reasonable doubt.”

Is anyone? If the Tories sought clarity on election advertising from Elections Canada, like I did and the court did, they very likely got conflicting information, ambiguous information, no information or some “legal information” to call a lawyer.

The New Democrats did virtually the same thing as the Tories during that election campaign — that is, they used national party funds to run national ads with just a local tagline at the end of the ad promoting the local candidate.

But Elections Canada hasn’t raided the NDP’s headquarters or the Liberals, who have engaged in the same practice in the past…

Wherever the truth may lie, the opposition parties will pursue this one as long as they can. However, I hardly think it has the impact of the sponsorship scandal on Joe Blow Canadian.

He’s more concerned about his gas and food prices going up while his job disappears.

Hunter has a great post up contrasting the opinions of Dan McTeague vs. Bill Graham on the matter of Brenda Martin. I highly recommend reading it if you have any interest at all in this matter.

CanWest publishing seems to be particularly championing Brenda’s cause. See today’s editorial in the Edmonton Journal and also this report by Charles Rusnell in today’s Ottawa Citizen.

The Journal laments:

Still, it’s impossible to not be touched by the images of ravaged Brenda Martin we’re presented with daily. Through the diligent reporting of the Journal’s Charles Rusnell, we’ve gotten to know the woman better than most Canadians.

Charles Rusnell reports in the Citizen:

“I can’t believe that my government would stand by and let them railroad me,” Ms. Martin said.

I think it would help all concerned if Bill Graham could make a quick trip to Mexico and give Brenda Martin a reality check in person. She does seem to listen to Liberals, after all.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has ruled that Christian Horizons has violated the rights of a previous employee who had revealed that she was gay - Christians Horizons Rebuked (Record):

…The tribunal has ordered Kitchener-based Christian Horizons to compensate Connie Heintz, 39, and to end a prohibitive code-of-conduct contract for its 2,500 employees.

The contract, which all staff must sign, forbids workers from cheating on their spouses, having pre-marital sex or homosexual relationships, using pornography and “endorsing” alcohol or tobacco, among other things…

So Christian Horizons must now pay Heintz $23,000, plus interest.

That includes $5,000 for “the wilful and reckless infliction of mental anguish.”

The charitable organization must also undergo “basic human-rights training for all employees and adopt an anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy.”

Personally, I’m on the fence on this one. If this was a case of a Catholic parish hiring a staff member who turned out to be gay, would they have the right to ask that person to resign?

Would they be forced to hire an openly gay person even if it conflicts with the church dogma?

It certainly indicative of the ongoing dichotomy between freedom of religion vs. the state.

There are a plethora of topics out there today, so I think I’ll launch a series of short posts to address them and readers can weigh in as they like.

The first one is this morning’s editorial in the Record which shocked me to the core. Why? Because they said everything I was thinking about Felix’s proposed Ontario pesticide ban - and then some.

The editorial (Pesticide ban is unwarranted) explains that this isn’t about the environment. It’s about politics and pandering to very vocal special-interest groups:

…It will, come next spring, be illegal for residents of Kitchener’s Rockway neighbourhood to use pesticides in their yards. But why will Rockway Golf Course in the same neighbourhood be allowed to spray pesticides on their greens and fairways? And why will golf courses beside residential neighbourhoods from one end of the region to the other — in Elmira, Conestogo, Waterloo’s Grey Silo Golf Course, Westmount, Kitchener’s Doon, Cambridge’s Galt Country Club — all be exempt from the chemical ban McGuinty argues is so essential? Are these chemicals dangerous or not?

The answer is obvious. This ban is about politics, not science. And it is driven by political desire and public fear, not reason…

Peter Kormos said it all:

…”The Baltovich story has a very Mexican ring to it, if you will,” Kormos said.

Bentley was evasive when asked about a news report that the Crown had earlier offered Baltovich a one-day jail sentence in return for revealing the location of Bain’s body…

Meanwhile, Deb Tielman seems to have finally learned that you catch more flies with honey than with caustic rhetoric:

“I do believe this is good for Brenda,” she added. “I think to have Jason (Kenney) come and be able to give Brenda some kind of assurance from the government that this is going to be expedited and they can have her home in a couple of weeks will give Brenda something to hold on to.

I could actually get back on board the Brenda bandwagon if this keeps up.

Kudos to Graeme MacKay for this one!

Gee, I wonder if the natives could look into a sideline of selling pesticides the way they do cigarettes…

The Star’s Jim Coyle compares Dalton to one half of the “Odd Couple” (Less John Robarts than Felix Unger):

…To his great good fortune, McGuinty has escaped the unforgiving demands of nation-building. As such, he governs less as a latter-day Father of Confederation than a political version of Felix Unger, the clean freak from The Odd Couple.

If ever an Ontario premier had the luxury of sweating the small stuff, he’s it.

In McGuinty’s Ontario, clean living is the ethos of the day, so much so it sometimes feels as if the province is governed by a combination old-time school marm and cleaning lady.

Not lawns, not laundry, not young lungs, not even school lunches have escaped the government’s fastidious eye.

Yesterday, the premier celebrated Earth Day by announcing a ban on the use of cosmetic pesticides on lawns in residential areas.

Recently, he liberated Ontarians labouring under the yoke of oppressive local regulation and freed them to use clotheslines to dry their laundry.

His government is banning cigarette displays in convenience stores. Not long ago, it nixed smoking in automobiles in which children were passengers.

In recent months, Ontario has given thumbs down to trans-fats in schools, banning them from cafeterias, vending machines and tuck shops where impressionable taste buds reside…

Christina Blizzard isn’t impressed either - Pesticide ban hardly dandy. However, the Ontario Lemmings who voted for Felix presumably love being told how to live their lives.

My better half recently asked me (tongue in cheek), if the next decree will come in the form of how many squares of toilet tissue we’re allowed to use each morning?

Well, I hope this is one area where Felix might allow us a little latitude.

CTV reports that Brenda Martin has been found guilty and gets five years. Her mother is being shown live on Newsnet right now. I feel sorry for her.

Star - No parole.

Update: Martin expected to be moved to Canadian prison soon. (Globe)