BT Calgary Blogs

They were just kids, mostly, in some cases still in their teens or barely out of them.  The odd NCO might have been in his early to mid-20s, but the great majority of 14 thousand Canadian men at Juno were boys, really, with high school not long behind them – and the possibility of instant death just ahead.  There would have been knotted fear in their guts, but they went ashore anyway, straight into the muzzles of German guns. 

Juno was Juno Beach in Normandy, and it was the designated landing area for the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division on D-Day, June 6th, 1944.  The youngsters fought hard and well, but at a cost: 340 of those kids were killed, 574 wounded, and 47 taken prisoner by the Germans.  But Overlord, which was the operational code name for the invasion of Europe by the Canadian troops, together with American and British forces, established the allied toehold in occupied territory.  It would be another eleven months, though, before the allies finally won the war, and forced the unconditional surrender of the Nazis and their jackboots.  The total number of Canadian dead in the European theatre, before the killing finally stopped in May, 1945, was 5002, which was a grim reaping for a nation then so small, and so comparatively young.  After all, it had been by war’s end a mere 78 years since Confederation.

This day – June 6th, 2011 – is the 67th anniversary of D-Day.  It has passed with barely a media word, hardly a phrase, just an occasional paragraph here and there to acknowledge what was surely a pivotal day in Canadian and world history.  “Lest We Forget” seems to have lost meaning for contemporary media editors and commentators, and I think it has unquestionably left the mind and conscience of an entire generation of younger Canadians for good – if in fact it was ever there. 

The Normandy cemeteries, the crosses standing “row and row” seem to be of no consequence to us, any more.  But they are to me – and their apparent irrelevance, now, to nearly everybody in our country is worrisome to me, and sad, and disheartening. 

The D-Day veterans who remain with us are a dwindling corps, well into their 80s and in many cases past 90.   To all of them I say Carry On, Men:  you know what you did, you know the price, you know the memories which have darkened and perhaps fractured your souls for the past 67 years – and you need to know that some of us still care. 

It bothers me, a lot, that most of us seemingly do not.

If you accept the thesis that Stephen Harper does his politics as a chess game, always looking ahead by two or three moves, then there’s some validity to the proposition that immediately after the federal election, he loaded a trio of Tory losers into the senate as the precursor to real and significant reform.  The Prime Minister was plainly unconcerned about what he knew would be a brief flurry of protest against the rapid appointment of his failed candidates, and indeed  the sound and fury has waned already.  So now Harper proceeds to restructuring the Senate, which has been his objective for several years, and which he chose to emphasize by nominating his threesome as one last example of how such appointments should not be undertaken from this point onward. 

I’ll concede the foregoing may be a bit of a stretch – but Harper’s determination to shake up the land of political nod is not, and his government accordingly intends to get cracking with fairly serious change, starting with term limits for current and future senators.  The original plot had been to restrict appointments to eight years, instead of the present and frequently long-lasting rewards for political hacks and hasbeens – but the latest version of Harper’s reform package would extend the allowable time in senate office to ten, or perhaps a dozen years.  Either way, there’ll be no more parking a body, whether slumbering or not, in the upper chamber, and then permitting it to remain amidst the luxurious trappings of senatorial privilege until the current mandatory retirement age of 75.  At $135 thousand a year, it’s a nice job – especially if nomination is bestowed at the age of 35, or 40, or so. 

The new Conservative majority also intends to press for senate elections in individual provinces, in much the same manner as Alberta has voted for a good many years for ”senators in waiting.”  The victors, though, have waited in vain – with two exceptions – for the seal of approval from whomever the Prime Minister of the day happened to be.  In the first of those departures from appointment tradition, Stan Waters was elected in Alberta, and then – shortly before he died –  was officially named to the senate by former prime minister Brian Mulroney.  The second was Bert Brown, also from Alberta, elected twice -  in 1998 and again in 2004, and finally given a key to the chamber in 2007 by….yes indeed, Stephen Harper.

Withal, the Prime Minister will encounter resistance from some, if not a majority of the provinces to his plans for actually having senators elected.  Quebec is at the head of the protesting pack, on the shaky ground that moving to an elected senate would be a dire burden on provincial budgets.   As far as I’m concerned, the notion that democratic reform is somehow an issue of cost effectiveness is an empty argument, especially if senate votes were held within the ambit of a general federal election.  The real issue, of course, is that Quebec and the rest of the complaining provincial governments are worried about losing their own influence in senate choices:   to the extent that they have a hand in senatorial recommendations, the provinces wish to keep the patronage trough fresh and well sluiced.

That aside, it’s not as if Stephen Harper has produced this concept of senate restructuring out of thin air.  He’s had a burr under his saddle about it for a good long while, and with his majority government now firmly in place, it seems a good bet he’ll seize his political tweezers and pluck it out, quickly. 

I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t:  Harper’s been the “senate reformer in waiting,” for nearly a decade, and I’m thinking the wait is now over.

I have this political fishbone lodged in my throat, and I’m pretty close to choking on it. 

Gilles Duceppe, the former leader of the defunct Bloc Quebecois, and for 20 years a treasonous member of the Canadian House of Commons, has proclaimed he will now return to his home province and will not rest “until Quebec becomes a country.”  Mr. Duceppe, who lost his seat in the federal election a week ago, will pursue his separatist dream while collecting a publicly funded pension of $140,760 every year from this point forward.  The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which has been strongly opposed for years to the parliamentary pension scheme, figures if Duceppe lives until he’s 80, his total winnings will be just a shade less than $3 million dollars.  And that’s not all:  three other Blocheads consigned to the dustbins of defeat will also be treated to more than $100,000 a year – all paid for by Canadian taxpayers. 

There’s something fundamentally wrong with a system which delivers $4 dollars of our money to pensions for members of parliament, while they themselves contribute only $1.  One measly dollar for every four from the Canadian public.  It’s an obese perk which finds no parallel in the real world of Canadian working folks, who in large majority have no pension plans at all.  But our politicians line up at the slop pail, snorting and grubbing their way to retirement – whether forced or voluntary – which will ensure  reasonably comfortable lifestyles for the rest of their days.  The only requirement is that our MPs serve six years in the Commons in order to qualify:  thereafter, the gravy train rolls.

Here’s the other thing.  Even if a member doesn’t make the six year cut, gets defeated after one term, there’s money to be had.  It’s called a severance payment, which to me is particularly offensive as applied to one-term wonders who get thrown out of office by their constituents.  Failure, though, has its rewards because the severance cheque this year comes to $78,866.  Not bad for hanging around the Hill  for a couple of years, or three, and then getting turfed.  Not bad at all. 

But the worst of it by far is the delivery of our money to the likes of Duceppe and his Blocheads.  They were all phonies, nuzzling  for years on the federal udder and now – with the exception of four who remain in Ottawa – they’re all headed back to Quebec with a firm grip on the teat.  And the Canadian public, with little or no sign of protest, is providing the milking machine.

The Taxpayers Federation website has a petition going to stop this insane nonsense.  You can help dislodge the bone in my gullet by signing it, without delay and in very large numbers.  It’s an easy click:  www.taxpayer.com

There were three striking points, I think, about the English language television debate last night – and one was a blow which landed squarely in Michael Ignatieff’s face and left him with a bloodied political nose. 

You can’t say Ignatieff didn’t walk right into it after rabbiting and hectoring away, ad nauseam, about the Harper government’s disdain for Parliament, its high-handed attitude toward the cherished principles of our Canadian democracy, and of course its dubious standing as the only government of any in the history of electoral politics to have been declared in contempt of  a legislative assembly – in our case, the  House of Commons.  So quoth the Grit, and NDP leader Jack Layton saw the opening and took it. 

In paraphrase, Layton said that was all very interesting, coming as it did from a political leader whose attendance record in that selfsame House of Commons is the worst among the four of them, and further, falls well short of the vast majority of backbench MPs.  Layton added that if Ignatieff was looking to get a job promotion, you’d think he would at least have bothered to show up for work. 

(Based on that shot, combined with several others, I think Layton easily won the debate – within the narrow enclosure of the event itself.  At the very least, he no doubt reinvigorated his tiny but sturdy band of supporters across the country, which is to say the NDP will now most likely return to Parliament with its customary 16 to perhaps 18 percent of the popular vote – and 30 odd seats.  As the old cliche would have it, the New Democrats can win the occasional battle, but never the war).

Ignatieff looked like he’d been whacked with a two by four, and offered no response except to start gibbering and reciting  points already made, criticisms already levelled, and prior accusations hurled while Tory and NDP spin doctors instantly began rubbing their hands with glee.  Ignatieff didn’t go down for the count, but he took a standing eight and from that point forward appeared to be pretty much out of it.  

Now, I observed there were three points at issue for me, so having dispensed with the first, allow me to introduce the second, thusly:   affirmation, as if we didn’t expect it hereabouts, that western Canada is of no interest to these four characters, and furthermore, is wholly irrelevant to the tall foreheads in charge of the broadcast consortium.  In their wisdom, the media planners for the debate decided the questions for the leaders would come from ordinary Canadians, and so it was that canvassing began to find worthy citizens in all corners of the nation.  Except, of course, the prairies.  Of the six voters chosen to pose their questions, not one was from Alberta, or Saskatchewan, or Manitoba.  Not one.  One suspects that would in part, or perhaps in whole explain why no mention was made of western Canadian concerns, in particular with respect to the oilsands, and Ignatieff’s contention they should be subject to  cap and trade emission controls.  And there was nothing about continental energy policy, whose future is somewhat in doubt because of the Obama administration’s hesitancy about it, but which in the long-range view is nothing short of critical to our national economic future.   Not a word about any of it, not a breath about agriculture, which simply confirms we have at best a marginal influence and role in Canadian politics, or possibly even no influence at all. 

(Tara Slone, here at Breakfast Television, had an astute comment about this brushoff against western Canada:  the time slot for the English language debate, 5:00 to 7:00 PM in Alberta and Saskatchewan (6:00 to 8:00 in Manitoba), was as inconvenient as it could possibly be for folks out here, close to six million of us, who were on the commute, at home fixing dinner, tending to the kids, out with the kids, preoccupied with Lord knows what…except politics.  But this, too, was of no concern to the eastern media establishment, and plainly rang no bells in any of the four leader camps  – including that of the emotionless and stolid Stephen Harper.  I’d have thought the PM would at least remember where his riding is located, and perhaps acknowledge the fact, but no:  he’s as indifferent to it, and to us, as the opposing trio within the quartet).

And that takes me to the third bone of contention, which is joined at the hip to the second:  the mere presence of the Blochead, Gilles Duceppe, in a debate purporting to be concerned with all of Canada.   His endless commands that we kneel at the altar of Quebec interests, and no others, inflame me well beyond irritation to deep and sustained anger that my Parliament, my House of Commons has been populated, and will be again, by four to five dozen avowed separatists who in truth are no such thing.  They are simply remoras attached to the hide of Canadian democracy, determined to bleed as much money as possible from the rest of us – and not incidentally gathering in fulsome wallets for themselves in federal salaries, and federal pensions.  It makes me ill, all this talk about how the Blocheads have to be acknowledged because we must understand and we have to agree that their participation in Ottawa affairs  is essential to the maintenance of one Canada, when for 20 years they’ve actually been a second, but totally fake Canada hanging around the Hill.  

Did I say it makes me ill?  Yes, I did.

When word surfaced this past Friday that Ralph Klein, at 68 years old, now confronts a disease which will surely take his life somewhat sooner rather than later, my instinct was to immediately post some reflections about the man who was indeed King Ralph, for a very long time.  But the very word “reflections” speaks to taking a bit of time for marshalling  thoughts, and so with a considerably troubled mind, I did that over the weekend.  And I decided brevity, in this case, would be the soul of my observations.

Frontal temporal dementia is a savage affliction, not dissmilar to other diseases of the brain – including Alzheimer’s – and it means Ralph will quite rapidly lose his awareness of self, friends, memories – and Colleen.  And all of us will lose a great deal, as well, because with this long goodbye now in play, we can be certain there  probably will be no other politician like Ralph, ever. 

He was not without fault:  the drinking, the lifestyle, the occasional flares of temper were all well-documented, but they’re incidental to the plain truth that by his governance, policies, and undeniable longevity in politics, Ralph was larger than life and in fact was the personfication of Alberta for almost 20 years.  And before that, he was the political portrait of  Calgary, the mayor frequently described as a “chubby” former TV reporter, not that that had anything to do with his shrewd political instincts. 

Ralph has always said his legacy to Alberta was the retirement of the provincial debt, which of course the Stelmach crowd has reversed, but that’s another story.  The fact is the debt was paid off, which left Alberta the only province in Canada owing nothing to anybody.  Political historians will now begin to assess whether the slaying of the debt was in fact the greatest chapter of Ralph’s tenure, and perhaps some of them will decide it was not. 

But there will be no debate about two things:  first, that Ralph had an enormous impact on Alberta, and second, that he deserved a fate better and more rewarding than the one now awaiting him.  Politics, they say, can be a cruel mistress – but in some cases, life is worse.

If the major elements of legislative democracy are a Premier and cabinet ministers who in the first instance will govern openly and candidly, with the presumed objective of a better life for citizens  (to say nothing of their votes), and in the second will confront opposition critics who might suggest the Premier and ministers aren’t doing a very good job of it, then what we have in Alberta at the moment is nothing less than abdication of responsibility.

Premier Stelmach is the invisible man these days, out of sight, out of touch, and unwilling it seems to tackle a series of  difficult issues which press against his government from all sides.  In fact, his sole line of defence has been to declare that the forthcoming session of the legislature will be delayed until February – in a province where there are already fewer sitting days than in any other legislature in Canada. 

Given the circumstances facing the Premier and his ministers, it’s perhaps not to wonder that Stelmach has no desire to face off against the opposition members across the aisle.  They would be all over the Stelmachians about the continuing morass in Alberta health care:  they would doubtless wonder why the federal government has seen fit to assume ownership of environmental monitoring in the oilsands:  they would wonder what gloom in the budget numbers would cause Stelmach to retreat from his prior assurance that the current $5 billion dollar deficit will be in balance by 2012-13. 

Stelmach has internal headaches as well, with a ministry and caucus sharply divided on the composition of the next provincial budget, this spring.  One side of the debate, which apparently includes finance minister Ted Morton,  argues for seriously reduced spending, the other for staying the course and letting the deficit linger.  If wagers were placed, they would favor Morton, who has significant influence and power – but that doesn’t alter the fact that internal fighting is in play.

But the most daunting issue staring Stelmach in the face is the sense, the impression among Alberta voters that his government has no steerage, wallows aimlessly in the political swells.  That would explain for us why the foundering ship Tory  is rapidly being overtaken by a much faster and more agile vessel known as the Wildrose Alliance Party.  The Tories and WRA are in a statistical deadlock, now, in one opinion poll after another – and Stelmach’s popularity rating is plummeting downward even as that of Wildrose leader Danielle Smith ascends. 

It doesn’t help either that Stelmach, after treating himself to a 30% salary increase about three years ago, is the highest paid premier in Canada at slightly less than $230 thousand dollars a year.  And his cabinet ministers happily dove into the treasure chest, too, so that a good many of them now rank as the most handsomely paid of their kind in the country.  Alberta folks are wondering where’s the value for money;  where’s the Premier;  and what’s he doing? 

The answers to those questions would be, in order, there isn’t much value for our tax money at all;  the Premier isn’t anywhere except out of sight;  and….nothing.

Three card Monte is an illegal scam, with an upturned fruit or vegetable box and a grinning dealer, which used to pervade the streets of New York City and every so often  still does.  In some ways, it’s not dissimilar to the old county fair con which invited suckers to find the pea under the thimble – which of course it was not.  Monte on the other hand involves an invitation  to the unwary to pick one card of three atop the box, and then after the dealer does a sort of whirlygig shuffle, to triumphantly point out the chosen card.  Of course it’s never there:  up a sleeve, probably, or maybe squirreled away under the wooden box, or most likely slipped under one of the original three.   

So it is with the salaries paid to Alberta politicians:  you think you see what they get, know what they get, only to discover you don’t because a lot of the compensation is hidden away – just like the pea or the Monte card.  In fact, the political payment racket in Alberta is composed of several add-on bits and pieces.  Stipends for the Premier and cabinet ministers, for example, are spooned into the mix; there are further dollops of cash for committee work; there are contributions to ministerial and MLA RRSP accounts.   But at the root of the scheme is something called a “tax free” allowance.

These various add-ons explain why Premier Ed Stelmach was paid a base of slightly more than $78,000 last year but in total collected $227,284.  Only in the byzantine realm of political compensation can you find such sleight of hand, although actually, the worst of these sweet little deals – the tax-free payment game – is now extant in only two provinces.  Alberta and Quebec play on with the public purse, but every other province, and the feds, got rid of the tax perk years ago because it was not transparent, and was seen to be unfair to ordinary Canadian mortals who are obliged to answer in full the annual call of Revenue Canada.

Alberta politicians, though, happily swarm to the trough so that most of Stelmach’s cabinet ministers are now pulling in upwards of $200,00 a year.  And do not turn to Liberal opposition leader David Swann for redress, because he’s in on it, too.  Notwithstanding the resounding ineptitude of his leadership in the past couple of years (MLA and administration defections, and becalmed if not at slow astern in the polls) Dr. Swann has offered no suggestion that he would have the tax-free compensation bauble examined and perhaps eliminated.  Not at $203,000 into the old bank account last year.

(There was a time, many long years ago, when politicians were miserably paid, but were also forced to carry – without expense accounts and/or allowances - all  the costs of office administration, travel, maintaining a constituency shingle, entertainment, postage. Hence the “tax free” allowance which back in those days was justified because it relieved otherwise impossible financial burdens for members of parliament, and the provincial legislatures).

Eddie, Davy, all the rest of you in Edmonton.  It’s 2011 and you’re now covered for those expenses, entertainment, constituency offices, travel, and postage.  You don’t need the tax perk, but it sure looks to me as if you bloody well want it and won’t let it go. 

It would be nice, really nice, if all the rest of us in Alberta could have it, too.  But we can’t because we’re just regular working folks, well removed from the rarified and artificial world which you seem to think makes you better than us.

You’re not.

She was a woman of enormous courage and determination, was Elizabeth Edwards, bent upon defeating the breast cancer which first appeared six years ago.  She was also a woman enduring not only the relentless intrusion of a disease which would in the end take her life, but also marriage to a wretched excuse of a husband named John Edwards.

He’s the pretty boy U.S. Senator so enamoured of himself that he attempted to attain the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States not once, but twice.  He is also the man who embarked on a flaming affair with a 40-something tart, with whom he fathered a baby girl even as his wife bravely fought for her life. 

John Edwards is a man with no conscience, no shame, no morals, no values.  But in the end,  if there’s any story combining tragedy and triumph both, we have it in the long physical suffering and emotional anguish of  Elizabeth Edwards:   tragedy in that she died one month ago today, but also triumph because she got him.  She neatly put the shiv into her philandering and useless husband. 

Ms. Edwards, by way of a distinguished law career, and then as a best-selling author, arrived at her death bed as a woman of very considerable and independent wealth.  Six days before she died, she rewrote her will – and removed from it any mention of John Edwards.  She cut him out, left her fortune to her children, and in so doing left John-boy a man of modest means at best, free now to marry the mistress with whom he cavorted during most of his wife’s six-year struggle against the cancer.

What’s the saying?  What goes around comes around?  Indeed.  It may be that John Edwards will actually go on and do something productive with his life, whether married or not to his strumpet.  I doubt it somehow, but I also don’t care because I’m content with the delicious knowledge that Elizabeth Edwards, the woman scorned, got him but good.

Seems to me there could have been no better outcome for a loser like Johnny.

Years ago, it was Brigitte Bardot – the French sex kitten - cuddling a Newfoundland seal pup.   She was  Star Power in the relentless campaign to end the offshore  Atlantic seal hunt, even though for a century and more it had been the primary, and in some cases only income source for hundreds of Newfoundland residents and their families.

Farah Fawcett was enlisted, too, as a celebrity poster girl for anti-seal activists – although I suspect that before venturing onto the floes, neither she nor Bardot had the slightest notion of Newfoundland’s whereabouts, its history, its desperate economic struggles.  No matter:  they were more than happy to join the fortissimo chorus of denunciation and abuse against a large group of Canadian citizens who were guilty of nothing more than trying to make a living.

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I’ve no doubt that nearly 20 years beyond the fact, Kent Hehr still endures the occasional long night with no sleep, wondering why it had to be him?  Why a random bullet from a drive-by shooting left him a quadraplegic, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life?  Why urban violence struck him because he was merely a victim of the terrible confluence of  ”wrong time, wrong place?”

Hehr has borne the consequences of that dreadful evening, in October 1991, with a great deal of determination and fortitude.  He  graduated from university in the highest ranks, became a well-known Calgary lawyer, and then latterly, the Liberal MLA for Calgary Buffalo in the Alberta legislature.  His biography would not be out of place in John F. Kennedy’s book titled “Profiles in Courage,” because that’s exactly what Hehr’s profile has been, and in many respects still is.

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