Why no Canadian “Deep Throat”? Why no Investigative Journalism in Canada?

With Watergate back in the news with the revelation that “Deep Throat” was the FBI’s second in command, the question for Canadians is, where are our investigative journalists? Why have our media failed in their journalistic duty to uncover political crimes? Why have they not even attempted to do their job?

Watergate was a scandal about the cover-up of a single minor burglary at a Washington hotel – small potatoes, by Canadian crimino-political standards. The events revealed daily to the Gomery commission are about an incomparably larger, longer-term crime, the ongoing theft of many hundreds of thousands of dollars in a systematic operation within the Liberal party that operated with impunity for many years.

Where were the Canadian journalists when all this was happening? Why did no one in the Canadian media establishment dig into these events? Why was it uncovered finally by a bureaucrat, rather than by investigative journalists?

Why did the media not uncover the earlier HRDC scandal? Why did they not write stories when they saw George Radwanski around Ottawa living it up on your money? When was the last time the media uncovered any political wrongdoings on their own? When did they last blow the whistle on any political misdeeds?

The answer is that in Canada, the media are part of the central establishment. Ottawa is a town of insiders, and the parliamentary press gallery are members of the insider party.

Ottawa is a Liberal town, and the media are by-and-large Liberals, at least socially if not also politically. They go to the same restaurants and send their children to the same schools. They jog on the same pathways and belong to the same gyms. They’re of the same social class and many of them are close friends. Many have spouses employed in various ways by the Liberal political class.

The Ottawa media are political insiders whose number one job is to keep out the outsiders, especially the foreign rubes from the West. They share the barely concealed contempt that Central Canada generally has for the junior partners from the West.

Canadian journalism has sold its soul for the privileges of the Ottawa high-life. They’re of the center, by the center and for the center. They are part of the problem, part of the Canadian centralist disease.

Crystal Meth Producers Are Polluting Environment

Crystal Meth (methamphetamine hydrochloride) has been wreaking havoc among users for sometime. Because it is cheap and widely available, it has become the hard drug of choice among teens. Its spread has become a veritable problem. But now, it is also becoming the problem of environmentalists –whose ranks are populated by a strong youthful contingent.

Police in Alberta say crystal meth producers are polluting ground and water with toxic byproducts.

The charge is in a report released this week by the Criminal Intelligence Service Alberta, an alliance of police agencies that monitors serious crime in the province.

The report says toxic chemicals used in cooking the drug are often dumped with no regard to their negative impact on the environment. (Edmonton Journal, subscription required)

A CBC report from back in March had already made the connection between Crystal Meth and its environment-polluting by-products. In addition, the same report also shows that Crystal Meth is highly used in the gay community.

In recent years, crystal meth has become the drug of choice in the gay men’s party scene. Like the mainstream use of the drug, this trend spread from west to east – San Francisco to New York and Vancouver to Toronto. At “PNP” parties (shorthand for “party and play” – meaning sex and drugs), crystal meth, known as “tina,” increases energy and reduces sexual inhibition. And the superhuman feeling that often comes with a crystal meth high means the sex is often unprotected.

Since in the present social climate, any potential damage to mother earth will likely be seen as a greater affront than the damage caused to users, families, the social fabric, and rising health costs, there may now be a greater chance to bring people to attack the problem with more seriousness. Users themselves who might be green ideologues will be confronted with a moral dilemma.

I look forward to the time when environmentalists will begin picketing crystal meth manufacturing labs and gay bath houses, calling for a worldwide boycott of the polluting drug.

Cross posted from Civitatensis.

Viagra May Blind

Viagra users will have to choose between performance or blindness, reports the Edmonton Journal (subscription required).

Viagra works by increasing blood circulation to the penis. Pomeranz suspects the drug may also affect circulation to the optic nerve, causing damage or injury to the eye.

There are too many things to say about this, but the safest is: Caveat Emptor!

Cross posted from Civitatensis.

Martin Insiders Reported to Offer Bribe to Another MP

After the controversy about whether Paul Martin’s closest advisors covertly offered a bribe to a pair of Conservative MPs in exchange for their support in the House of Commons, now come stories of another bribe by Martin’s team.

Buried (of course) in a story by the Globe and Mail’s Ottawa gossip columnist, Jane Taber, is the revelation of open chatter on the Hill about offers made to Carolyn Parrish. According to Taber’s column on May 28,

Lately, there have been persistent rumours that a Liberal colleague was attempting to set up a call between her and the Prime Minister just before the May 19 confidence vote. And there are even more whispers that Martin strategists are negotiating with her so that she will not run as an independent in the next election, fearing she will beat the Liberal candidate. In return, Ms. Parrish would be rewarded with a diplomatic post before the next election.

In the Grewal story, speculation is raging about whether Martin’s chief of staff, Tim Murphy, offered material inducements in the form of Senate seats or diplomatic postings in exchange for the Grewals’ parliamentary votes and their eventual defection. If so, the RCMP will be expected to consider criminal charges of corruption.

Remember, Parrish is not a member of the Liberal caucus. She was booted for being too open about hating Americans and now sits as an independent. That means, if the stories are true, Martin’s team again appears to have offered a material inducement to a non-Liberal MP in exchange for her support.

Since Parrish is not a sitting Liberal, the situation is identical to that of the Grewals. All we’re missing is the tape – but Taber’s sources suggest exactly the same thing.

If, as Ottawa’s chatterers apparently believe, there’s been an offer by Martin’s team of payment in the form of a tax-funded job in exchange for Parrish’s support, it’s time for another call to the RCMP.

The Sociopathology of Jacques Corriveau

They can smell it; they can see it coming. And Jacques Corriveau showed us yesterday the epitome of the sentiment now populating the top ranks of the crooked Liberals involved in AdScam. They are not ever going to be indicted; they are not ever going to be touched; they will never see the inside of a jail cell. Of these things, they are certain.

The half tentative Jacques Corriveau that we saw back in April, the man who was at least concerned enough to cook a story about his failing memory and his closeness to someone with Alzheimer’s, was not there yesterday.

Yesterday, Corriveau was arrogant and vain; he was defiant in subtle and not so subtle ways. The categorical manner with which he denied and dismissed all allegations against him, except for the ones for which there is a paper trail, exhibited an air of superiority about which we had only seen traces the last time he appeared before the Gomery Commission. They are all lying, he said, they are all wrong, even when admitting that none of those who said implicating things about him had any interests in seeing him hurt. It was as though the first appearance was a dressed rehearsal for yesterday’s performance.

Christie Blatchford picked up a great deal of Corriveau’s disposition in her Globe piece this morning. She found him to be “shameless” (subscription required), which only begins to describe the man. Corriveau described, in turn, his own doings as “noble” and himself as “proud” to be able to help a party in need. Corriveau represents the essence of the Liberal pathology. He places party above ethics and decency, above community and nation, above morality and the rule of law, without so much as a hint of internal conflict. He shows the legendary loyalty among thieves. He is the incarnation of a corrupt party that will impose on the country its own illegal racket as a moral norm, with pride.

“All Mr. Béliveau’s allegations with regard to me are totally false,” he said. Mr. Béliveau was “speaking falsely, totally.”

“I find it’s quite ridiculous and quite unbelievable,” he said of Mr. Béliveau’s evidence at one point. “This is some virtual universe of his own making.”

He didn’t seem at all perturbed, mind you, by any of the outrageous charges being levelled at him.

As, at Mr. Roy’s request, he followed along in the transcripts as the lawyer read aloud the testimony implicating him, Mr. Corriveau smiled; small, bemused smiles, for the most part. I had my little opera glasses on him throughout every bit of this. There was not a trace of tension in his body language, not a fidget, not a wince, not a single nervous lick of lip. His long, elegant fingers flipped the pages of the transcripts to which he was directed: he smiled, he waited for the questions.

Once, after the first long reading of one part of Mr. Béliveau’s evidence, and before Mr. Roy found in his notes the reference for the next chunk, there was a long pause.

Mr. Roy had not yet asked his first key question; he was laying the groundwork. No one knew what Mr. Corriveau was going to say, and the room held its collective breath; it was so still, why, you could have heard an envelope of cash slip onto the carpeted floor.

Mr. Corriveau sat with perfect calm, waiting, expectant but not in the least troubled, his unlined, creamy-skinned face placid.

He managed to display his boundless vanity.

When, speaking of how, although he and Mr. Dezainde were fellow Liberals, Mr. Dezainde had been a John Turner backer and then a Paul Martin backer, while he had always stuck with his friend Jean Chrétien, Mr. Corriveau allowed himself a shot.

“I think,” he said of Mr. Dezainde, “my political instinct was better than his.”

When he acknowledged putting a few of the party boys on the Pluri payroll, he said, “It was a noble gesture, and I was going to do it for the Liberal Party of Canada.”

“You were very magnanimous,” Mr. Roy remarked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Corriveau. “I was.”

After all, as he explained a few minutes later, “When you’ve been active in a political party for 40 years, as I was for the Liberals, you’re proud and you want to do things.”

Well, there it is.

When asked if he thought he was doing something wrong when he was doing it, Chuck Guite said that he now knew that it was wrong. A minimum of contrition requires an ability to contemplate the morally obvious in retrospect; it requires a fundamental connection with the common sense world that most of us inhabit; it demands an able conscience. Like a sociopath, Corriveau showed none of these yesterday. He feels nothing for he fears nothing. He knows that nothing will touch him; he knows that Canadians are asleep, or, at best, sleepwalking.

Note: Arthur Koestler illustrates the similar pathology of a party man turning away from reality in Darkness at Noon. Not quite light summer reading, but well worth it.

Cross posted from Civitatensis.

Pathetic and Disturbing

A video game that allows you to have virtual sex with a pornstar, as featured on the front page of Canoe.ca.

And the Globe and Mail worries about Christians in the public square.

A Society of Pensioners

Via Sara MacIntyre at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Vancouver Sun reports that 3 million Canadians work for government (either federal, provincial, or municipal), which is the highest ever:

“In total, close to 2.67 million people were working in the three levels of government — the highest level since 1994,” Statistics Canada said. However, it noted that was still slightly below the peak of 2.73 million in 1992, prior to the start of deep cuts in public-sector jobs by deficit-ridden provincial and federal governments.

Just more than half of all government workers were provincial or territorial civil servants, nearly a third were local government employees and 14 per cent were federal public servants, it said, adding that those proportions have remained relatively stable.

Government employment, which excludes those working for government business enterprises, has been increasing steadily since hitting a low of just over 2.5 million in 1999, with all three levels of government contributing to the 160,000 increase.

The provincial and territorial governments combined had nearly 1.4 million employees in 2004, up by 98,000 from 1999, while federal employment rose by 38,000 to 367,000, and local employment by 23,000 to 908,000.

…

The federal government, which underwent sharper percentage decreases in employment during the 1990s, has also posted steeper increases since 2000, although in total numbers the greatest increases have been at the provincial and local government levels.

Just over half of all provincial and territorial employees work for a health and social service institution, one-quarter are employed by the provincial and territorial general governments, and the remainder work for colleges and universities.

…

A criticism of Canadian job growth this year is that it has all been in either public service jobs, up by 45,000, or in self-employment. “In contrast, the number of private-sector employees has declined by 39,000 over the first four months of the year,” Statistics Canada said in its latest monthly jobs report.

Two dangers can be identified here:

1) governments can only pay its employees through tax revenues, which must be raised by taxing private enterprises, which is taking up a smaller and smaller part of the economy;

2) it’s bad for democracy when such a large percentage of “citizens” depend for their livelihoods on government’s policies and decisions. Edmund Burke called such people “pensioners.” Considered more closely, this dependence undermines the ability for citizens to speak out against government policies because they must constantly weigh whether their superiors will take revenge by denying them employment, promotion, a raise, or perhaps vengeance will be taken against their friend or their spouse. Consider the case of a Quesnel, BC, teacher/councillor who got fired over letters he wrote to a local newspaper critical of the school board’s policy toward sexual orientation. Moreover, how many people who work in private enterprise are married to or are otherwise very close to someone who does work for government? To what extent does fear of what might happen to a loved one hinder their criticisms of governmental policy?

Labrador Bye-Election: Conservative Gains

Toronto Star’s Chantal Hebert makes some insightful observations regarding the Labrador bye-election. Despite winning, things don’t look that good for the Liberals because the bye-election shows that an engaged or interested electorate is against the Liberals’ interests. In short, Liberal voters are more likely to stay home, and supporters for the other parties are more likely to get out the vote:

One of the reasons by-elections have a reputation for quirky results is their traditionally low turnouts. But in Labrador this week voters bucked the trend: 54 per cent cast a ballot, a 10-point increase from last June.

Matching the increase to the results, most of those extra people came out to support the Conservatives. Out of a bigger pool of actual votes, the Liberals ended up with a smaller catch than last year. Meanwhile, the Conservative vote more than doubled.

She points out that had the Liberals lost last week’s confidence motion (after having lost the previous week – and then ignored it), Martin would’ve preferred a July election date as a way to drag out the campaign and to keep turnout for Opposition parties lower.

US Conservative Philanthropists: Lessons for Canada

With the establishment of the socially conservative Institute for Canadian Values, it’s worthwhile to consider how conservative ideas have been successfully developed and communicated in the United States, where these things are further developed.

James Piereson writes a little history of conservative philanthropy in today’s Wall Street Journal as a way of measuring its successes in assisting conservative intellectuals and politicians over the past 30 years, and considers what the future might hold. The article is worth reading in its own right, but I want to highlight some points that are relevant for Canadians.

The first is that philanthropists are incredibly important in funding studies and intellectuals. This is true of foundations like the Liberty Fund and the now defunct Olin Foundation on the conservative side. However, it’s also important on the liberal side, as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations – which are considerably larger and more influential – have been instrumental in funding various activist organizations.

Second, philanthropists don’t act on their own. They need intellectuals and leaders informing them what needs to be done. Piereson notes that one of Friedrich Hayek’s great accomplishments was to teach businessmen that ideas matter, and that they needed to confront socialists in the area of ideas. Businessmen are largely pragmatic, so they need extra prodding to understand that bad ideas need to be countered with good ideas. True, bad ideas have a way of demonstrating their impracticality, but let’s not forget that socialism wasn’t really discredited until the mid-1970s. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom in 1945.

Third, not just little ideas, but big ideas too. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom provided a governing political theory that provided a coherent alternative to socialism. Piereson points out that today’s neocons tend to focus on policy issues, showing how this or that policy won’t work and suggesting alternatives. Focusing on policy is useful, but it’s focusing on individual trees when tending to the forest is also needed. This is one of my criticisms of think tanks like the Fraser Institute. They provide decent studies on various minutiae of policy, but their narrow scope means that they’ll forever remain parochial. They need to adopt a strategy like that of the American Enterprise Institute, which, in addition to publishing various studies on policy issues, also have in-house philosophers and theologians like Walter Berns, Michael Novak Leon Kass, and Christina Hoff Sommers, who are capable of addressing broader cultural issues. The Centre for Cultural Renewal partially fills this gap in Canada, but they’re mandate is less that of a think tank and more of an organization that facilitates communication and networking of scholars and activists.

I wish the Institute for Canadian Values well. But I also wish the other think tanks in Canada would shed their parochial, policy-wonkish ways.

NDP-Liberal Coalition and the Vulnerable Auto Industry

It appears that the NDP is poised to promise stronger support to the Liberals to help prop them up. Jack Layton stopped short of demanding cabinet posts for NDP members, but says he wants to use NDP clout to extract further concessions from the Liberals, especially on issues like electoral reform, pensions, and the environment.

Even so, their clout may only take them so far. The Globe and Mail reports that the auto industry in Ontario is hurting because of its diminishing competiveness with the US. Higher labor costs, compounded by a 81 cent Canadian dollar, give American auto manufacturing plants a huge competitive edge:

DaimlerChrysler Canada’s assembly plants are operating at a disadvantage of $8.81 (U.S.) an hour, compared with U.S. plants operated by the three largest Japan-based auto makers, company data show. Labour costs are $51.05 an hour in U.S. dollars at Canadian plants versus an estimated $42.24 at Honda, Nissan and Toyota plants and compare with an advantage Canada held from 1998 to 2002.

“Our Canadian labour costs, including time off, health care and wages have been rising 5.8 per cent annually for a decade,” DaimlerChrysler Canada spokesman Stuart Schorr said yesterday.

“For Canada to maintain or grow its auto export industry, the manufacturers and CAW have a shared responsibility to keep labour costs from growing even more uncompetitive.”

…

The average wage for CAW members assembling minivans in Windsor was $51.05 (U.S.) last year and it took 27.43 hours on average to put one vehicle together, DaimlerChrysler data show. That gave the Windsor plant a labour cost of $1,400 for each minivan.

Honda, by contrast, paid $42.24 an hour to workers at its minivan plant in Lincoln, Ala., and it used 22 hours to assemble one vehicle. That put Honda’s labour cost at $929 for each minivan, a $471 advantage over Chrysler.

The amount of time off that workers get in Canada virtually wipes out the advantage of taxpayer-financed health care, said industry analyst Felix Pilorusso.

The Liberal government then has 2 options: 1) send more of Alberta’s money to Ontario to subsidize tax breaks for car manufacturers, or 2) find ways to convince auto labor unions to accept decreasing labor costs.

Option 1 is attractive in the short run, but even the most dim-witted and Ontario-centric federal policy maker must realize that such band-aid solutions only slow the momentum of jobs going south.

The NDP-Liberal coalition will be inclined to take Option 1, but that won’t prevent them from feeling the crunch in their own backyard when Ontarians still suffer job losses.

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