Voices

Shades of Nixon: The PM’s media suspicions

Here’s a prime minister coming off a triumphant election, one in which he received editorial endorsement from 90 per cent of the country’s newspapers. He has the country’s major media chains in his corner. For an official opposition, he has a party, the New Democrats, with barely a single major media backer in the land.
Yet one of Stephen Harper’s first post-election moves is to mount a vituperative campaign against journalists.

Intelligence officer and ex-diplomat Richard Colvin

Five years after Parliament ordered federal departments to protect whistle-blowers “as soon as possible,” soldiers and spies still lack crucial protections that would allow them to highlight wrongdoing without risk to their careers. When Canada’s security agencies were broadly exempted from a 2006 law to protect whistle-blowers within the federal bureaucracy, they were directed to come up with parallel systems.

Should telecom network companies and Internet service providers function as arms of law enforcement and national security? Yes, according to the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act (Bill C-51), a bill that was introduced in the last Parliament and set to be reintroduced in the new Government omnibus crime bill soon. The bill would make it mandatory for telecom providers, ISPs and search engines to monitor, store, retain and not disclose e-mail, Internet and telephone communications at the request of law and security officials. No warrant necessary.

Newly exposed internal documents from Indian Affairs and the RCMP show that shortly after forming government in January of 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the federal government step up intelligence gathering on First Nations to anticipate and manage First Nations political action across Canada.
Information obtained by the First Nations Strategic Bulletin through Access to Information requests reveals that almost immediately upon Harper’s taking power in 2006, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) was given the lead role to spy on First Nations.

Harper didn’t tell us at the time, but he had to be aware of the draft copies of the auditor general’s report that surfaced briefly during the election. The draft cast serious doubt about the validity of a lot of spending in Muskoka around the G-8 a year ago.
At the time, no one saw the details of that draft, or of the final report, because Parliament wasn’t in session because of the election.

Peter MacKay, one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party, reacted with anger to the suggestion by Tory senator Doug Finley that the current system of choosing a leader can result in “sheer downright cheating”, rejecting the characterization as “torqued and inflammatory”.
The suggestion that the leadership voting system has been abused in the past, sparked an angry reaction from Mr. MacKay.

Stephen Harper tours future grouds of G8 summit

The Conservatives hid their true intentions from Parliament when they funneled $50-million in discretionary spending in the riding of Treasury Board President Tony Clement and shielded the spending from normal checks and balances.
In her final report to Parliament, Auditor-General Sheila Fraser comes down hard on the so-called G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund, saying the “government was not being transparent about its purpose” as its obtained approval for the funding.