That elusive Hillier photo

Two days after retiring as head of the Canadian military, Rick Hillier - the only chief of defence staff in Canadian history most Canadians can name - showed up this afternoon at the massive Fourth of July party outside the Ottawa residence of David Wilkins, American ambassador to Canada.

Over at Inside the Queensway, one-stop-source for all of Ottawa’s liveblogging needs, Kady O’Malley pined for a shot of Hillier out of uniform… and in a suit.

To satiate the hunger of those who really, really want to see what he looks like in his early days of civilianhood, here is the photo I snapped of the now-retired Hillier moments after he shook the ambassador’s hand:

Rick Hillier at the residence of the American Ambassador to Canada, July 4, 2008

More on today’s events to follow…

Where have I seen this before?

Does this inevitable Republican Party ad…:

…take its inspiration from these Canadian Conservative Party classics?:

How do you solve a problem like polygamy?

Last month, following an anonymous tip alleging widespread abuse, authorities in Eldorado, Texas raided the compound of a polygamist, fundamentalist Mormon sect and took hundreds of children into custody.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is also active in Canada, most famously in Bountiful, British Columbia, just north of the international border with Idaho.

The Texas raid has put pressure on the B.C. government to take action against that community. B.C.’s attorney-general Wally Oppal says he will crack down soon. But he’s not sure how:

“Something must be done. I personally feel, and our government feels, that it would be inappropriate to do nothing.”

Technically, polygamy has been illegal in Canada since the late 19th century. Here’s section 293 of the criminal code of Canada, which threatens polygamists with up to five years in prison. But it has been 60 years since anyone tried to enforce the law. Bountiful residents have been engaged in the practice for decades without any legal interference.

In her recent book on the topic, The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada’s Polygamous Mormon Sect, Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham explained why:

Polygamy has been illegal in Canada and the United States since 1890. But fundamentalist Mormonism is thriving in Utah, Arizona, Texas and British Columbia. There are dozens of different groups and thousands of so-called independents, which makes it impossible to know how many fundamentalists there are. Estimates range from 37,000 to 1 million across the continent, yet politicians have been loath to do anything about the people who call themselves Saints. Politicians have not just looked the other way, they have in many instances made it easier for the Saints’ leaders to intimidate, control and abuse their followers. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Bountiful, British Columbia, and in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. In 1992, the B.C. government refused to enforce Canada’s law by charging the bishop of Bountiful, Winston Blackmore, with polygamy. Citing studies by several leading legal experts, the B.C. government said the law would not withstand a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedom of religion and association.

Blackmore, the leader of the Bountiful community and the father of many of its kids, is said to keep a framed copy of the Charter of Rights in his office, confident that it protects him from any possible convictions.

The debate over the polygamy law in Canada may become more urgent in coming years as Canada accepts more and more immigrants from countries where the practice is legal. And the debate takes place in a context of changing cultural attitudes toward all kinds of relationships. In fact, one of the most critically acclaimed new TV dramas in the last couple of years is HBO’s Big Love, which is about a polygamous family.

In 2005, the federal government commissioned four legal research studies on polygamy. They were equally divided - two against two - about what to do about the law. Two studies called for authorities to enforce the existing polygamy laws and suggested they were charter-challenge-proof. Implicit in this recommendation is the idea that the practice of polygamy in itself violates the equality rights of women and children.

The other two studies recommended decriminalizing the practice of polygamy. Implicit in this argument is that polygamy itself does not cause domestic or sexual abuse, which are separate crimes that can be dealt with through other sections of the criminal code, and that section 293 may distract from prosecuting actual cases of abuse because it muddies the legal waters.

Witness the inaction on Bountiful.

For a more comprehensive airing of this debate, please tune into a televised discussion I am producing, which is airing tonight and will be available online by tomorrow. Details here.

Dion: New Day Dawns?

It’s not easy being the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

By definition, it’s not a job anyone really seeks out, or hopes to hold onto for very long.

Except for the leaders of the Bloc Québécois (which formed the official opposition for a few years back in the ‘90s), every single person who has ever held the position - since 1867 - has coveted the job of the guy who sits two swords’ lengths across the House of Commons.

Unfortunately, when you are the leader of the official opposition, it’s hard to maintain any kind of prime ministerial bearing. The job description involves quite a lot of… opposing. You are required to stand in public daily to complain about, criticize, berate and even hector the government of the day.

It doesn’t leave much opportunity to work on burnishing a statesmanlike image.

Of course, almost everyone who has become the Prime Minister of Canada served for a time as the leader of the official opposition. But some opposition leaders have a much tougher time than others.

It’s very challenging, for instance, when an opposition leader takes the helm of a party that is used to being in power, but has been divided for years by internal power struggles.

Maybe you can think of a recent example.

That challenge is compounded if… say… that leader happens to be from Quebec and is viewed with suspicion… contempt even… by a big chunk of party members from his own native province. If those Quebec party members think you have a tin ear for the concerns of the province, it won’t be long before they try to dump you as party leader.

And the task of holding on to the job of leader becomes especially difficult when someone wins the title following a closely fought, often bitter, leadership race.

In such a case, the runner-up’s supporters may not accept their favored candidate’s loss, may continue for months afterward to undermine the party leader behind his back, may ceaselessly complain to the press about the leader’s unsuitability for the job, and may plot to overthrow and replace him, even on the eve of a possible federal election.

I am not just giving a theoretical example here, of course. In fact, I am talking about the experience of a specific federal leader of the official opposition.

Jean Chrétien.

Sorry… did you think I was talking about someone else?

For all the reasons listed above, Chrétien’s three years as Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, beginning in 1990, frequently flirted with disaster and total Liberal Party meltdown. He bumbled through one crisis after another and, as time went on, many Liberals began to publicly complain about his abilities, called him “Yesterday’s Man”, and – of course – continued to try to replace him with Paul Martin.

Chrétien’s inept tenure as official opposition leader is not as well remembered as it might have been had he not gone on to win three consecutive majority governments.

But of course, a more recent example of a troubled, beleaguered opposition leader does easily spring to mind. You know who I mean:

• A politician whose victory as leader was seen by some party members as a sad compromise, when more charismatic and popular candidates either refused to run, or stumbled during the leadership race.

• A leader whose party languished in the polls following his victory, and proceeded to do quite poorly in a number of subsequent by-elections.

• An opposition leader whose political obituary was drafted by pundits mere weeks into the job.

Of course I am describing…

… Stephen Harper.

Sorry again? You thought it was someone else?

Well, Harper actually served as leader of the official opposition twice, for two different parties: The Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party of Canada. And in neither case did he fail to disappoint.

In fact, he even blew a general election that was his to win, in 2004, due in large part to some bumbling mistakes and misspeaks on the campaign trail.

Two years later, he was the Prime Minister of Canada.

My not-unsubtle point:

When you hear commentary or read articles about the current Leader of the Opposition, Stéphane Dion, that describe his tenure as a disaster and predict his coming political doom, take them with a grain of historical salt.

Even the most hopeless of opposition leaders can go on to win elections and skillfully hold on to power.

Take, for instance, Stockwell Day.

Wait… that’s a bad example…

Programming Note: Quebec Scene

Just over a year ago, Jean Charest’s Quebec Liberals limped out of a provincial election with a narrow minority government, the first in that province since the 19th century.

In the same vote, the Parti Québécois became the third party in Quebec’s National Assembly, and the ADQ party, led by Mario Dumont, won more seats than ever before - almost winning the election - to become Quebec’s Official Opposition.

And for a little while at least, it looked as if Charest’s minority government wouldn’t last too long. By September of last year, they had dropped to 24 per cent in the polls, third place behind the ADQ and the PQ.

Late last month, though, the front-page headline in Montreal’s La Presse read ‘”Charest Revit” - literally, “Charest Lives Again” - as that newspaper’s latest polling had the Quebec Liberal Party back on top of the heap at 34 per cent voting intention, as compared to the PQ’s 30 per cent and the ADQ’s 22 per cent.

Even more encouraging for the Quebec Premier, the poll showed that 61 per cent of Quebec residents were satisfied with his government, the highest level of satisfaction for any government in the province in two decades, and almost double its rating of six months ago.

Quebec has a history of producing popular, charismatic politicians – think Trudeau, Lévesque and Bouchard. But Charest has seldom been thought of in that league. His more remote personality, his previous career in federal politics (he came within 187 votes of becoming Prime Minister of Canada in the 1993 Progressive Conservative Convention, losing to Kim Campbell), and … yes… the fact that his mother was an anglophone, all contributed to the wariness with which francophone Quebec voters approached Charest since his entry into provincial politics one decade ago this month.

So what accounts for his party’s amazing political turnaround in such a short period of time? Some of it certainly stems from the failure of Mario Dumont to appear as a Premier-in-waiting over the past year. And the PQ has been going through its own leadership issues, replacing André Boisclair with Pauline Marois.

Some commentators suggest that Charest has taken some posthumous lessons from one of his predecessors - Robert Bourassa - and become “…a button-down premier who appeals to Quebec’s sense of order, if not its heartstrings…“

The Premier’s recent success comes at a time when politics in Quebec seems to be changing. Most dramatically, the PQ recently abandoned its longstanding policy of promising a referendum on sovereignty as soon as possible after an election victory. And on the federal scene, the Bloc Québécois’ decline in popularity and the Conservatives’ growing credibility among Quebec voters had prominent Quebec journalist Chantal Hébert writing about a “full-fledged federalist revival” in the province.

What does that mean for the rest of Canada? Well, according to Hébert, it certainly doesn’t mean the Question of Quebec will cease to be central to politics in this country.

Here’s what she told an audience in New Brunswick last fall, in a speech that was recently broadcast on CBC Radio:

“Keeping Quebec in the federation has been the dominating challenge of the second half of the 20th century in Canadian politics. But I would predict that living productively with a Quebec that’s not going anywhere may be one of the more transforming experiences of the first decades of the 21st century. And you may find it sometimes just as hard.”

For more on recent developments in Quebec politics, please tune into a televised panel discussion I am producing that will air tonight and be available online later this week.

The Habs, the Sens, and a House Divided

In a few days, it could be a moot point. But as I write, there is trouble brewing on the home front. Discontent around the Dining Room Table. My house is a house divided. And a house divided against itself… well, you get the picture.

It’s a potential problem without precedent, and nothing I can do will offset it. You know what I’m talking about, right?

Exactly: The distinct possibility that the Ottawa Senators will face the Montreal Canadiens in the upcoming NHL playoffs.

Maybe you face the same problem in your own home. Maybe I’m not alone.

It’s true that here in Ottawa, many of us live in blended families: The kids born here, the parents immigrants from… well… other NHL cities.

And Ottawa itself was very recently a blended city. I’ve lived here long enough to remember a time when there was no hometown NHL team at all - when Scotiabank Place wasn’t even the Palladium yet, much less the Corel Centre.

Back then, this town found itself in the same kind of no-man’s land you still see in places like Connecticut, whose citizens are caught halfway between Red Sox Nation and the Evil Yankee Empire.

In the pre-Sens era, Ottawans were cleanly divided between Habs fans (i.e. Those Who Made The Right Choice) and Leafs fans (i.e. Those Who Made The Wrong Choice). You knew whose side you were on and you were comfortable about it (and, in the case of Leafs fans, sadly misguided).

The arrival of NHL hockey here muddied the water. Or the ice.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m very fond of the Ottawa Senators. Have been since day one. Except, of course, when they play the Habs.

Likewise, my young Ottawa-bred offspring will cheer on les Canadiens with gusto. As long as they aren’t playing the Sens.

But the regular season is one thing. A game here, a game there. We can agree to disagree for a night, and everything is okay the next morning.

The playoffs, though?

The playoffs are another matter entirely. How can you agree to disagree during the playoffs? Can’t be done. The playoffs are a winner-take-all, loser-hits-the-golf-course enterprise.

So, it has been a small blessing – a serendipitous boost to family harmony – that the two teams have never before faced each other in a single playoff game.

At first, the Sens never made the playoffs. Then, when the Sens started making the playoffs, the Canadiens started to regularly miss post-season play.

In those rare seasons when both teams got in, potential Ottawa-Montreal encounters were derailed by the Habs’ tendency to lose in the early rounds and the Sens’ tendency to find themselves on the receiving end of humiliating post-season upsets at the hands of the Maple Leafs.

Last season, of course, both the Habs and Leafs sat out the playoffs, and the Sens made it all the way to the Stanley Cup finals before being humiliated by the Anaheim Ducks.

But as I write, with mere days left to play in the regular season, the nightmare scenario haunts us again. The Habs… Habllelujah… have clinched their first division title in 16 years and are flirting with first place in the Eastern Conference.

Did I remember to say Habllelujah?

For their part, the Sens - who had the best start to a season in NHL history - have collapsed dramatically, and are flirting with missing the playoffs entirely. If they pull it together in their remaining two games, there’s a good chance of them earning the seventh or eighth playoff spot in the conference.

With the Habs looking to grab first or second place, the two teams could face each other in the first round of the playoffs.

The result? Friction in the Family Room.

And the adults in our family room – both of us faithful to Bleu, Blanc, Rouge – are outnumbered by Ottawa-born ankle-biters.

Well, maybe not.

The eleven-year-old and the seven-year-old are lost causes, sleeping - as they do - with posters of Alfredsson and Spartacat hovering above their heads.

But the four-year-old has hit a very important milestone in her cognitive development. She has discovered the key to bugging the hell out of her older brothers:

Cheer AGAINST the Senators.

She even wore a Canadiens sweater to her Ottawa preschool the morning after les Glorieux pounded the Sens in a recent game. And she will happily comply when I tell her to cheer “go, Habs, go!”.

Actually, she will happily comply when anyone tells her to cheer anything, as long as it results in hers being the loudest voice in the room.
Unfortunately, when she really wants to torture her brothers, she will push the boundaries and cheer “go, Leafs, go!”

I’ve done what most parenting experts would recommend and told her that kind of language is not allowed under my roof.

Her brothers tell her it is possible to be arrested for cheering for Toronto.

This will all come to a head in a few days. After this crucial final week of the regular season, all of the potential playoff permutations will be sorted out. We will soon be seated together as a family watching second-season hockey.

And if the Sens are playing the Habs in the first round?

Tension by the TV Set.

UPDATE: The regular season is now over, and we narrowly avoided a first-round matchup of the Sens and Habs. But we’re not out of the woods yet: If both teams win their first round series, they will automatically face each other in the next round. Uh-oh…

UPDATE # 2 (April 16): A note of thanks to the Ottawa Senators for so quickly and decisively ending all worries about my house dividing against itself. Safe for another year. Go Habs Go.

…but would you want your sister to marry a Canadian?

Programming note: Limits of Censorship

Back in January, I produced a televised discussion on “free speech, hate speech and human rights commission” (and blogged about the issue here. The show (and the blog entry) dealt with a couple of cases of magazines being brought before human rights commissions for publishing material found offensive by some.

The program included an interview with Ezra Levant, one of the publishers facing charges before such a commission. He complained on the program that his case had not received a fair share of attention from the mainstream Canadian media.

Tonight I am co-producing something of a follow-up discussion. Whether or not the media was slow to notice the story of free speech and human rights commissions, it did not take too long for the issue to appear in the House of Commons.

On the last day of January, Liberal MP Keith Martin filed a private member’s motion designed to strip human rights commissions of the ability to investigate alleged hate speeech (Martin’s motion would have no affect on the ability of the police to launch criminal investigations into such speech).

The motion was praised by Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who was instrumental in helping to set up such commissions 30 years ago to protect minorities against discrimination, but now feels they have overstepped their boundaries in investigating speech.

It was also praised, more dubiously, by members of a neo-Nazi website, amazed that their anti-hate-speech-law stand was being championed by a member of a visible minority (Martin) and a Jew (Levant).

Maybe because of this, Martin’s motion has caused divisions within his own party. The spokesperson for Liberal leader Stéphane Dion said the party “will not entertain changes” to the Human Rights Act, such as the one Martin proposed.

Meanwhile, another issue involving freedom of expression is now before the Canadian Parliament. Bill C-10, an omnibus tax bill now before the senate, would give the government the right to deny tax credits to film and TV shows it considers offensive.

Critics have decried the bill as censorship.

Is the debate over free speech vs. hate speech analagous to the debate over art vs. smut?

In the Globe and Mail last weekend, columnist Margaret Wente argued it was:

“Section 13.1 (of the Human Rights Act) is pretty much like Bill C-10. It’s a way for people to justify censoring something they don’t like by claiming it’s immoral or illegal… Wickedness and immorality still rule the world. But exactly what is wicked is in the eye of the beholder”.

For more on this debate, tune in tonight or online after tonight here.

The debate over the limits of free speech – always bubbling under the surface in any democratic country – seems to have grown much more prominent in this country lately.

Weekend Tune: Cover Songs For My Valentine

I Want You…

(Apple does Costello)

***

I Need You…

(The Heartbreakers do the Beatles)

***

Baby, I Love You…

(The Ramones do the Ronettes)

Heroin for Political Junkies

For raw political spectacle, nothing beats a good old-fashioned brokered leadership convention. Here in Canada, it is the traditional way our political parties have selected their leaders.

Delegates come from across the country to a hockey arena or convention centre in a major city and, over a couple of days of speechifying and balloting and convincing and cajoling and backrooming, they figure out who will be the next leader of their party. Often enough, the final result is unpredictable and the process to achieve that result is drama-laden.

In 24 hours and four ballots, Stéphane Dion climbed from fourth place to first and became the unexpected leader of the Liberal Party at their last convention 14 months back (a convention I attended as a journalist and blogger.) In 1976, Joe Clark rode a similar path to victory as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. And then there was the famous written agreement that ended the very last convention of the PC Party in 2003 and made Peter MacKay the very last leader of that party - a job he held onto long enough to break the agreement and dissolve the party.

A dramatic brokered political convention picked Canada’s longest-serving post-War Prime Minister. Another one picked Canada’s first-ever female Prime Minister. And another one set off the feud that would dominate Liberal Party politics for 15 years.

Whether these conventions pick the best leader, or are sufficiently democratic, are open questions… and beside the point, which is - again - that they are like heroin for political junkies.

In recent years, some political parties have opted for different methods of picking leaders. The current governing party, for instance, used a byzantine system of point allocations and preferential ballots to elect Stephen Harper as leader in 2004. He won on the first ballot, the results of which were announced at a glorified press conference.

Yawn.

American politics play out on a bigger stage than those of Canada. The leadership conventions of the two major U.S. parties are big, glitzy, expensive affairs, with massive media coverage. But in modern times, they are also scripted events with predetermined outcomes. Adlai Stevenson won the last brokered convention in the U.S. more than half a century ago.

The convention results are predetermined because it usually doesn’t take too long into the winter primary season for the major party front-runners to be sorted out and guaranteed first-ballot victories months before the summer conventions begin.

This year, of course, offers the best chance in a long time for a brokered convention on the Democratic side. Or at least a more interesting one.

Most likely, the Democratic Party nominee will get sorted out before it comes to that, but in a way the drawn-out, uncertain, exciting primary season itself has served as an extended brokered convention, offering thrill-a-minute jolts to political junkies - no jolt bigger than last night’s Extra Super Duper Tuesday fight-to-a-draw.

Warning: If you are a Canadian political junkie, standing too close to the U.S. border may give you a contact high.

(Programming Note: I am co-producing an hour long televised discussion on Super Tuesday and the American Presidential race, which will air tonight and be available for online viewing here within a day or two )