The scandal is that the Prime Minister’s Office has allowed this kind of insular control freak operation to exert itself over all aspects of government policy. It has been incremental. I will accept that it is incremental, since the notion of such a thing as the PMO was first put on the agenda back in 1968, but the PMO is not in our Constitution. The PMO, unlike the Senate, would be easy to abolish. It is just a question of how much money the House, this Parliament in charge of the public purse, is prepared to allow an unaccountable partisan operation that bullies and oppresses people throughout the system to be allowed to continue to exist.

Earlier in this debate, my hon. friend from Thunder Bay—Superior North quoted a current Conservative, who describes it as “the Stepford wives” for the PMO throughout the system who no longer have the moral compass to say when something is wrong.

Will the Liberal Party assist us in dismantling PMO?

Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, I remember reading The Stepford Wives. I think it was back in high school that we were required to read it, and I thought it was quite illuminating. It was an excellent book and it made one think about the condition of women in our society, but that is not what the member is talking about today. In particular, she is talking about the situation in the Prime Minister’s Office.

In relation to the question that this has become a very insular Prime Minister’s Office in which there is a determination to have absolute control, that is a reason to be concerned. Does her prescription for it solve the problem, or is it the right answer? I have seen a number of prime ministers’ offices over the years, and they have not all been like this one.

What the resources of the Prime Minister’s Office should be is certainly open to debate. I do not share the member’s view that it should be abolished, but what we need most of all is a Prime Minister who has the confidence in his team and in Canadians not to be a control freak.

The post Opposition Motion – Prime Minister’s Office appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I would like to ask the member for his opinion, as a weather man, if it would not make a lot of sense when we have “mauzy” to allow bright sunlight to occur.

On this file, we need the sunlight of an inquiry to bring to light what we all want to know, which is what on earth was going on within the Prime Minister’s Office. What did the Prime Minister know? What does Mr. Duffy have in his particular skill set or other bits of knowledge that required the vast machinations of the PMO, working in concert with Conservative senators, to pull off a massive “deception”, in the words of the Prime Minister? The question that remains is this. Who was in knowledge of it and who orchestrated it?

Surely we need the sunlight of a full inquiry to get there. Why does the Prime Minister himself not demand this?

Scott Simms: Mr. Speaker, sunlight is the best disinfectant out there. I credit the member for the things she did earlier, the same thing we did, on proactive disclosure and that sort of thing which is buried meteorologically.

Again, I am not a real meteorologist but I played one on television.

The mauzy conditions due to the weather of Newfoundland and Labrador always cleared up to be sunny due to one thing: the passage of time. With the passage of time, we, too, will get better answers, or at least we hope to, which is what this debate is all about.

The post Opposition Motion – Prime Minister’s Office appeared first on Elizabeth May.

We are now debating what is going on in the Prime Minister’s Office. It is in the Conservatives’ interest to say that the Senate is still the problem.

I want to ask my colleague if she agrees with me that questions remain with respect to the possible criminal involvement of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that clarification.

In fact, we are not just facing one problem here; we are facing two.

Basically, some senators made claims for inappropriate expenses, which is one of the issues before us. However, there is another issue that is related but not the same, and that issue is the involvement of the Prime Minister’s Office in a Senate reimbursement and expenses scandal.

Therefore, this is not just a debate about senators who made claims for inappropriate expenses. It is also a debate about this Prime Minister’s involvement and his inability to provide transparent and coherent answers to questions about the situation.

The post Opposition Motion — Instruction to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Mr. Nathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting and maybe fruitful exercise. We could start to look at the way the Conservative government spends its money, which is badly, on gazebos and F-35s. There is $3 billion it cannot actually account for, which I believe was meant for anti-terrorism measures, and $100-plus million for ads Canadians are annoyed by. Those all seem like good places to start to look for the money we need to allow Parliament to function. I think Canadians could actually get behind the idea of allowing democracy to go ahead of all of these wasteful, ridiculous expenditures of the Conservatives, who were supposed to be conservative with taxpayer dollars and have turned out to be anything but. Those would all be great sources.

I would like to suggest to my friend down the way that the Senate would be the New Democrats’ preferred place to start. Not only are we losing money in the proposition and getting nothing for it, we are probably being defrauded right now. I do not want to pay for Conservative senators to run around raising money for Conservative MPs and the party itself. That is one of the worst uses of taxpayer money I have ever seen.

The post Extension of Sitting Hours appeared first on Elizabeth May.

The problem with most of the questions is that they start a bit later in the scenario than they should.

First up, was Mike Duffy promised a Senate seat if he worked really hard to sabotage the Liberals in the 2008 election?

I had been interviewed by Mike Duffy and known him for years.  I was fond of him.  I never thought he was biased one way or the other – until his coverage of the 2008 campaign.  Some may recall me taking him on in a live interview when his introductory set up for Peter MacKay (interviewed just ahead of me) was so outrageous that I accused him of a lapse in journalistic ethics.  When the interview was over, I remember thinking, “Well, I will never be on Mike Duffy Live ever again.”  And when he was appointed to the Senate right after the election, I knew I was right as the show ceased to exist.  His lapse of ethics was more spectacularly evident in broadcasting out-takes from the Atlantic bureau’s interview with Stéphane Dion.  Opportunities to do “re-asks” are not uncommon and they are never broadcast.  Doing so, when Dion’s team had been told they could ask the questions over again, was outrageous.  It clearly impacted the election results.

The other questions also matter.  Did the Prime Minister promise Duffy he would fix the financial and legal mess created by false claims for a housing allowance?  Why would the Prime Minister do such a thing?  Does Duffy have anything he can hold over the PM, such as proof of the Senate seat for journalistic shilling in an election campaign?  Did the Prime Minister ask his Chief of Staff to write the cheque?  Frankly, I can see no other reason why a smart person like Nigel Wright would do something so obviously wrong, unless he was directed to do so by the Prime Minister.

Normal people are asking questions like “who has $90,000 in their chequing accounts?  Who has $90,000 in their chequing account and they have it to spare in case someone needs it?”

None of these questions matter as much as why is it that no reporter has been able to get a response from anyone in Harper’s administration about the chemistry of the atmosphere now being dangerously altered.  The news that we have hit 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere makes Mike Duffy’s expense account scandal look like the petty criminality it likely is.  And, of course, there are approximately 1% as many words in our press about the 400 ppm news as there is about the Mike Duffy scandal.

The big crime continues to hide in plain sight while Stephen Harper continues his looting of our children’s future.

UPDATE: Just received news that Nigel Wright has fallen on his sword for the PM and become the literal fall guy. All questions still stand.

The post Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright and Stephen Harper appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Canada’s agricultural production is under threat as never before, but the Harper government is deaf, dumb, and blind to the threat. The threat is the climate crisis. Even if global emissions of greenhouse gases were to be stabilized tomorrow, we would face decades of destabilized climate conditions. However, there is no sign of current levels stabilizing, and as carbon emissions ramp up, so too does the threat of increasingly-severe droughts and flooding disrupting agriculture across Canada.

Last summer saw a record-breaking heat wave with widespread severe drought conditions right through the breadbasket of North America. Budgets, year after year, include hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to help farmers who have suffered crop loss due to droughts and floods. And the climate models project this worsening year after year.

Globally, crop failures due to climate change have already created food prices to spike. The 2010 heat wave that hit Russia, as fires ringed Moscow, caused Putin to end wheat exports. The international programs to meet the threat of famine were unable to meet the demand as higher food prices meant their budgets could not extend to buy the needed emergency food. Repeatedly and with increasing frequency, the world has faced food emergencies in the last few decades due to climate change.

All around the world, governments are mobilizing resources to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions while adapting to the climate crisis. Everywhere around the world that is except Canada. In the last few months, the Harper administration has cut programs to confront the threat to agriculture around the world and right here in Canada.

The inexplicable decision to legally withdraw from the UN Convention to Combat Drought and Desertification (UNCDD) makes Canada the only nation on the planet not to be part of the multilateral effort to help farmers deal with drought. The only explanation giventhat the treaty costs Canada too muchis laughable. At roughly $300,000 per year, the convention cost less than half the cost of one G8 gazebo, 109 days worth of care and feeding of one rented panda, one-third of the cost of shipping an armoured car to India, three per cent of the cost of the new Office of Religious Freedom, four per cent of the Prime Minister’s Office budget, or less than two days worth of the government-paid advertising of its own partisan agenda. The idea that Canada cannot afford $300,000 per year to participate in global efforts to confront the threat of drought and expanding deserts is a non-starter. That dog (as they say) won’t hunt. The more plausible explanation is that since drought is connected to climate change, and since the Harperized climate policies will not meet any targets, Canada wants out.

Domestically, the Harper administration has just killed activities to help make our Prairies more drought-resistantsome of which have been in place for over 100 years. The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was created following the Great Depression and the devastating Dust Bowl in the Prairies. The 1935 Act of Parliament to create the PFRA explained its role was to “… secure the rehabilitation of the drought and soil drifting areas in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and to develop and promote within those areas, systems of farm practice, tree culture, water supply, land utilization and land settlement that will afford greater economic security…”

The PFRA took over the Prairie Shelterbelt program, which had been in existence since 1901, to help reduce wind, and thus erosion, through tree planting along the borders of productive fields. Now all of that is being cancelled.

One can search in vain, as I did to research this article, for any federal program to pursue adaptation to climate change for Canadian farmers. I found old references, but then realized the programs described were discontinued and their websites cached. There was a lot of activity on adaptation in the last years of the 1990s and early part of the 2000sbut no more. Even a program described as Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program (sic) does not reference climate change. A $163-million, five-year program running from 2009-2014 has the following objectives: “Facilitate the agriculture, agri-food, and agri-based products sector’s ability to seize opportunities, respond to new and emerging issues and pilot solutions to new and ongoing issues in order to adapt and remain competitive.”

Is “new and ongoing issues” code for the climate crisis? Is this government so hobbled by ideology that its minions are too afraid to even mention the threat of climate change when discussing adaptation? Of course, if the program was focused on adapting to climate change, we would be helping farmers shift to more drought-resistant crops and practices, including those just cancelled in killing the PFRA.

The biggest threat to Canadian agriculture is the climate crisis. Stephen Harper’s personal unwillingness to confront the threat, or to admit its severity, must not be allowed to undermine our agricultural sector.

Originally printed in the Hill Times.

The post Climate crisis threatens Canadian agriculture, we need an agricultural adaptation plan, now appeared first on Elizabeth May.

In her letter, the Green Leader and Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands emphasizes the need to diversify Canada’s energy portfolio while placing a price on carbon: “The key point is that, within the constraints of your own policies, action is needed now on climate and some portion of your budget should speak to the necessity of carbon pricing.  As well, the existing commitment to end subsidies to fossil fuels should be accelerated.”

Ms. May offered her suggestions to increase revenue and curb spending. Suggestions include:

• Fulfill commitments made at the G-20 and eliminate subsidies to fossil fuels. (+$1.2 billion)
• Cut the Prime Minister’s Office budget by 50% to levels of the Chrétien government. (+$5 million)
• Reduce government spending on advertising to 2005 levels. (+$90 million)
• Implement Estate taxes on estates exceeding $5 million. (+$1.5 billion/year)

Investment propositions include:

• Fund and expand the Eco-energy Retrofit programme. Expand it to include hospitals, schools and universities. ($1 billion)
• Invest in renewable energy and mass transit. ($1 billion)
• Invest in First Nations Education, housing, water and health care. ($1 billion)
• Establish a National Affordable Housing Program. ($834 million)
• Replenishment of the Sustainable Technology Development Fund, critical for Clean Tech.

A detailed summary of variations in revenue and spending, as well as deficit reductions, is included in the letter to Mr. Flaherty.

The post Elizabeth May Budget Consultation Letter Made Public appeared first on Elizabeth May.

– Elizabeth

Yesterday, Doctor Warren Bell at Kelowna JRP

Dr. Bell spoke yesterday before the Kelowna Joint Review Panel hearings on Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, outlining “four diseased elements” that put the pipeline proposal in a social and political context and he condemned as dangerous Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s concentration of power and the apparent depth of his associations with corporate interests.  When Bell finished speaking, he was surrounded by reporters.  Here’s what he said:

I am a family physician, in clinical practice for just over 36 years in rural BC. As a professional reflex, I have a sensitivity towards the behaviour of others, and towards the impact of my own conduct.

While still in medical school, I learned that many of the most important influences on a person’s health derive not just from what doctors do, or even from the choices made by patients themselves, but from broad trends in the community – from the immediate neighbourhood right up to the planetary environment.

When I began my practice, however, the term “ecosystem” was unknown, and the term “environment” referred almost exclusively to a person’s immediate social or physical situation.

Today, thanks to global telecommunications and transportation, and especially the Internet and social media, our worldview has expanded greatly. As we humans have multiplied exponentially, we have learned that we can degrade the functional capacity of our planetary home, which in turn affects our survival.

In 1995, I helped to found the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment or CAPE. Our purpose was to scientifically examine the intimate inter-relationship between human and ecosystem health, and improve the former by addressing the latter. With 5,500 members, CAPE has become the environmental voice of the medical profession.

Today, however, I am here not as representative of CAPE or any other organization. I am speaking as just one person, and as a physician.

I want to address what one might call “structural pathology” in the governance system in Canada, which has led to the contention surrounding the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project – which I have followed closely since its inception.

Your work as members of the Joint Review Panel is taking place in a social context. As a medical professional – with, I might add, extra training in psychotherapy – I would like to examine four diseased elements in this social context, and suggest remedies for them.

The first pathological element is historical.

Up until about 400 years ago, the land base subsumed within Canada was home to various peoples, originally from Asian roots, broadly connected by culture and race. They lived, like all our forebearers once did, seeking survival in an unforgiving but also bountiful natural world. Through a combination of force of arms, disease, mass immigration and various legalistic arrangements – including a genocidal strategy called the residential school system – the land base occupied by the original inhabitants of this country was progressively reduced, and their role in society was relentlessly marginalized. The small land base and the few prerogatives left to them thus have become critically important to their well being.

In Salmon Arm, I have patients, neighbours and friends who are aboriginal, who embody the experiences I’ve just referred to, both in their physiology and in their psyches. Many First Nations communities, with similar individual and collective experiences, are in the path of the proposed pipeline.

The second element in this structural pathology is the electoral system.

Elections to the House of Commons are based on the “first past the post” system. The elected candidate just has to get one vote more than any other candidate – even if only a minority of citizens actually vote in the first place.

This kind of selection procedure, in a community with many disparate parts, is psychologically grossly inefficient. Especially in complex or conflictual situations, it generates a mixture of cynicism, despair and anger.

The third element in this structural pathology is the nature of the Prime Minister’s Office, or PMO.

In Britain, the PMO is surrounded by powerful committees and advisory bodies whose comments and decisions have a major influence on government decision-making and cannot be readily ignored.

In Canada, the PMO has vastly more political power. It has, in fact, absolute veto power over several hundred different government bodies.

Political power in the Canadian system is profoundly more centralized than it is in Britain, and far more than it is in the United States, with its system of “checks and balances”.

Frankly, if Stephen Harper doesn’t like your report, he can, and by every indication he will, shelve it.

This concentration of power in one element of Canada’s political structure, for whatever murky historical reason, is an invitation to social disaster. The illusion of “efficiency” in political decision-making is subverted by the opportunity for hard-line autocracy.

In the 21^st century, when my patients are being encouraged to take increasing responsibility for their lives, such a concentration of power is anachronistic and backward.

The final element in Canada’s structural pathology is the expansion of the influence of the “corporation”, a business model that uncouples personal responsibility from profit, and places dollar gains above all others.

It is significant that as I sit talking to you here the Enbridge consortium is applying to expand its Kitimat terminal from 11 to 16 oil tanks. What clearer demonstration of absolute confidence in an eventual approval could there possibly be?

Taken together:

1. the relentless marginalization of First Nations, with their intimate connection to the ecosystem;
2. the electoral system, which readily generates non-representative governments;
3. the huge concentration of political power in the Prime Minister’s office; and
4. the rise of corporate influence.

These elements create the pathological state that leads directly to us being here today.

The planet is overcrowded, heating up, and steadily depleted of its natural capital. But now we have a Prime Minister who is forcefully using the overwhelming dominance afforded his office, to try and reshape this country to his dated views.

Stephen Harper, according to recorded evidence, has longed to be able to exercise such intense power, and identifies with doing so now (several years ago he formally changed the phrase “federal government” to “the government of Stephen Harper”).

His own religious background suggests reasons for his overall orientation, but his willingness to mask his own renowned intensity behind a rigidly bland “persona” is a truer indication of his deep commitment to power.

This approach to governance, exercised by a Prime Minister and government elected by a minority of Canadians, has deepened the already strong alliance between the corporate sector and the government. The former, fixated on immediate- and short-term financial profitability, is drawn to the latter, intent on maintaining its ascendancy, and vice versa.

The result, in a situation like the one we are addressing today, is growing social pathology. Frustration, anger, cynicism, depression and distrust of leadership are on the ascendancy, as noted in the Edelman Trust Barometer, released just before the World Economic Forum in Davos.

A patient of mine in his mid-twenties came to my office recently to say that he was deeply depressed and anxious, not about his love life, or his financial situation, but about the overheated, depleted future he was heading towards. He felt that the government in this country was acting now to make it worse for him and his young children later.

So what is the cure for this disease?

It is four-fold, in my opinion.

1. First, we must, as a nation, work out a respectful, mutually satisfactory relationship with Canada’s First Peoples – not destroy their culture by stealth.
2. Second, we must reform the electoral system to make it radically more representative.
3. Third, we must alter the power balance in the federal governance system so that one person cannot pre-empt democratic processes as Stephen Harper is now doing.
4. And fourth, we must rein in the overwhelming power and influence of the corporate sector.

Until we do these four things, our country is vulnerable to political, social and ecological upheaval that will retard our development as a nation, and likely offer ruin to the lives of future generations.

And it’s going to make my personal and professional life more difficult, as I minister to the anxiety and physical suffering of particularly the young people in my community.

I therefore personally pledge my energies and experience – here, today – to bringing about these changes, by whatever means possible.

I hope you will too.

And I also hope you will reject this flawed and destructive project, the inevitable result of such a flawed and destructive – and pathological – process.

The post Dr. Warren Bell on the Northern Gateway Pipeline appeared first on Elizabeth May.

How do you re-make a country?  How do you transform values and a culture without asking permission?

It may seem a strange parallel, but what Stephen Harper is doing to Canada reminds me of what Roman Emperor Constantine did to Christianity.  He might have said “You won’t recognize Christianity when I am through with it,” although he certainly did not.  He took a clandestine and illegal religious practice and made it the official religion of the Roman Empire. (So, not so much what Harper is doing.)  Set all that aside for the bits that I find reminiscent of what is happening to Canada under Harper.

Constantine understood the importance of symbols.  The persecuted Christians celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday, and they shunned such pagan trappings of sun worship as candles, incense, processions, cloaks, and hierarchical priesthoods.  To allow Christianity to be accepted among the pagans, a few adjustments were needed.  Worship moved to Sunday (a nice nod to the sun worshippers who were said to be able from the steps of most churches to make their usual bow to their sun god on the way in to church). And all those pagan trappings – candles, incense, robes and so on moved to the heart of the Roman church.  As a practicing Christian I love all those elements of liturgy, but I grew up with them.  Imagine the shock of those previously thrown to the lions to discover that the bargain that allowed open worship was to accept wholesale the icons of another faith.

Stephen Harper is remaking Canada, one brick at a time.  The legislative fabric of the country is being decimated through omnibus bills and legislation designed, not as good public policy, but as messages suited for a focus group.  He is re-making our civil service into an arm of his PMO, filled with terrorized and demoralized men and women who hope that someday they will be permitted to do their job once again. And he has rallied Canadians to any number of Roman-like circuses to keep our minds off the activity behind the Coliseum.  In 2012, we saw $28 million splashed around for the celebration of the Bicentenary of the War of 1812.  The 60th anniversary of her Majesty’s reign cost $8 million and $5 million each for the centenaries of the Grey Cup and the Calgary Stampede.  Clearly, Stephen Harper likes whipping us up into a fervor about anniversaries of milestones in Canadian history  —  but only certain milestones….  The 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms went uncelebrated.

Which brings me to our new $20 bill.  It is repulsive to the touch.  A new shiny, polymer; gone is the texture of linen.  The claim is that it will deter counterfeits. According to the fellows with whom I chat at BC Ferries, the bills are a headache.  They stick together and they tear easily.  They are rumoured to melt near flame.  Some media coverage has lamented that the maple leaf on the new bill is an invasive species.  Gone is the Canadian sugar maple, replaced with the Norway maple.  (You’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all). Bank of Canada spokespeople defend the new leaf as a “stylized blend” of various Canadian maples.  Botanists are not impressed.

The loss of an indigenous tree is a perfect metaphor for the rest of the bill.  The changes are as invasive as a Norway maple.  We have lost the most iconic and inspiring piece of monetized Canadian art.  Haida artist Bill Reid’s masterpieces adorned the old bills.  Raven discovering mankind in a clam shell (a Creation myth that occurred on the beach at Masset), the “Spirit of Haida Gwaii” canoe, with its spiritual and mythical creatures, the face of the moon, the killer whale – all superimposed on the back of the twenty.  In very fine print, the words (in English and French), a quote from Quebec writer, Gabrielle Roy:

“Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?”
« Nous connaîtrions-nous seulement un peu nous-mêmes, sans les arts? »

I loved that bill, not least because I had the great privilege of knowing Bill Reid, and of visiting his warehouse on False Creek, Vancouver while Spirit Canoe was being carved.  Bill Reid’s hands shook too much from Parkinson’s at that point for him to do the carving, so an apprentice helped him.  The apprentice was brilliant Haida leader, Guujaaw, now President of the Council of the Haida Nation.  Bill had pointed out to me the symbolism of that mythical craft.  The trickster Raven held the tiller, with a dozen other spirit creatures  — Bear, Bear Mother,  Dogfish-woman, Eagle, Frog, Wolf, a Haida Watchman, and others all crammed into the canoe.  The largest of the sculptures was cast in bronze and sits in front of our embassy in Washington, DC. A Jade Spirit Canoe is in the Vancouver airport (as you go toward international departures – or for most of us — the bus connection to the ferry), while a much smaller plaster cast is in prominent position at the Ottawa-Gatineau Museum of  Civilization (now re-named the Museum of Canadian History).

And what art has replaced Bill Reid’s powerful sculptures?  The monument to Canadian death in battle in the First World War.  The Vimy Ridge Monument in France commemorates the emergence of a unified Canadian fighting force from four different divisions.  Over 7,000 Canadians were wounded in that spring 1917 assault and over 3,500 were killed.  The loss of life and the historical significance are undisputed – but why this monument (in a particularly ugly rendition)?

Stephen Harper understands symbols and icons.  In the same way that John Baird had his business cards re-made without the name of the building in which his department resides (the Lester B. Pearson Building), Stephen Harper wants us to hard-wire our patriotism to battle, blood and glory.

What more iconic statement can there be of the effort to remake our values than by taking away our mythological and spiritual symbols and replacing them with a slippery bill featuring a war monument and a non-Canadian maple?

Hang on to your old twenty dollar bills.  The new version of Canada does not fit our reality.  It’s the real counterfeit.

The post How to re-make a country appeared first on Elizabeth May.

The basics go back to the line between what is political (elected people) and what is non-partisan (the civil service.) I could go back to discussions of the role of the Prime Minister, who in the early days was a Cabinet member with a portfolio like everyone else (usually Justice Minister and doubling as Prime Minister). The Prime Minister is, in theory, “first among equals.”

There wasn’t such a thing as a powerful Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) until Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister, but since 1940 there has been an office to coordinate the civil service, the Privy Council Office (PCO).

The role of the Privy Council Office is to provide non-partisan advice, over-see the civil service and provide a sound basis for public policy. It must maintain a complete distance from partisan control. I recall Alex Himelfarb, when he was Clerk of Privy Council (the title for the head of the civil service, essentially Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister’s Office) referring to the critical division between the PMO and PCO as a “Chinese firewall.” Messages could pass in between PMO and PCO, but the Privy Council Office could never be allowed to become a tool of the political arm (PMO).

It is a tricky relationship. Obviously, civil servants must take instructions and implement policy under different political masters. So when a civil service is under Progressive Conservative instructions from Brian Mulroney, for example, (or more accurately, Kim Campbell) one day and then under Liberal Jean Chretien the next, the civil service must pull together the appropriate advice and fulfill the direction based on instructions from the political masters.

What is not acceptable is for the PCO to “cook the books” to help buttress a political argument. The PCO has to stick to the facts, not invent them for the government in power. Which is exactly what I think is now happening.

The firewall between PMO and PCO is down.

Public policy making is now only a shadow of good government. The outward appearance of a functional Cabinet government supported by a non-partisan civil service is being maintained, but the reality is that nothing is normal.

What makes me think this? Some examples come to mind.

• The Environment Canada report on Greenhouse gas emissions, claiming that we are half-way to our target, is essentially an exercise in public relations. It is out of whack with what the Commissioner for Environment and Sustainable Development calculated, as well as contradicting the National Round Table on Environment and Economy (which has been terminated). It says things like by 2020 our emissions will have declined to 720 MT a year, when 720 MT is higher than levels in 2010.
• The report from Transport Canada to the Joint Review Panel on the Enbridge Project was proclaimed in a Transport Canada press release as saying that super tankers can safely carry bitumen crude from Kitimat BC to Asia. But the report never mentions any of the navigational risks, or includes the amount of time and distance it takes for a tanker to stop, or comments on any one of a few dozen key considerations. In fact, the report does not say oil can be safely transported. It merely says there are no “regulatory difficulties.” It reads like a report from people told what they must report, not a department that actually did a good faith review.
• The claim that no one in Statistics Canada objected to elimination of the Long-form Census even when it was very clear the department had pushed back.
• Recently, a colleague mentioned a friend at Justice Canada who nearly quit. The lawyer was asked for a legal opinion, but was told in advance what the opinion should say.

Other things that make me think the government is not functioning as it should come from many conversations I have had with Ministers in Cabinet. Without betraying personal conversations, it has been clear to me over and over again, that they do not know what is going on in their departments. When I worked for Tom McMillan, Minister of Environment in Mulroney’s government, no branch would have been laid off or key roles re-assigned, that the Minister had not weighed all the options and made a decision after long discussion with his senior civil servants. He would have known what was going on. The current role of Ministers appears to have been reduced to the role of “chief spokesperson” for their portfolio. Hand them the cue cards to deliver the approved message and off they go. But I do not think most Ministers in Mr. Harper’s Cabinet are actually involved in the decision-making. I think the exceptions to the rule make a short list — Rona Ambrose (who is doing a very credible job cleaning up various messes), Jason Kenney, James Moore, and Jim Flaherty, but even they can be over-ruled by the PM. True Cabinet decision-making appears to be a thing of the past.

My sense is that decisions are made by Stephen Harper alone. He dispatches orders directly to the Clerk of Privy Council, who sends instructions to the Deputy Ministers. The Ministers are handed the talking points to explain decisions they didn’t make.

What this means is that the civil service is completely corrupted by political pressure. The first phase of this process was the muzzling of scientists, then the massive lay-offs, ensuring that morale is at an all time low. The next step was to ask for reports that make a certain point, instead of asking for an objective assessment of the evidence. Government reports are no longer non-partisan. If I am right, the situation is very dangerous. And it is even more dangerous because it is invisible – in plain sight.

The post The most damaging things happening to Canada are the things you cannot see appeared first on Elizabeth May.