Good Con, Bad Con

Today's front page photo, Le Droit. Yesterday Harper spoke at a sparsely attended venue in Vanier Ontario for the purpose of announcing changes to the Young Offenders Act, with harsher penalties.

Angela Campbell, who specializes in children and the law at McGill University's law faculty, doubted Harper's proposal will curb youth crime. She called it a "hard-line, law-and-order approach that is very simplistic ,,,, People who believe that young people are committing more acts of violence will say 'that's a great idea.' However, the reality is that crime perpetrated by young people has actually diminished quite consistently in Quebec and across Canada."

There is no evidence that tougher penalties and naming teenage perpetrators has any dissuasive effect on their actions, Campbell said. Montreal lawyer René Binet said this approach is "more emotional than rational because there is no study that shows that tougher sentences lead to a lower crime rate."

Harper is posed with Theresa McCuaig and a picture of her dead grandson.

A Con-ning photo opportunity.

What's next? Gerry Ritz in a Ronald McDonald suit, cozying up to families holding pictures of their elderly parents or infants, killed by listeriosis?

Harper and his Conservatives are making public safety an issue in this election campaign. This may be their strategy for avoiding a debate on the hot-button topic of public health.

In today's Le Devoir, Brian Myles writes about punishment as a weapon of mass dissuasion. He points out that politicians (I would add, of the right-wing, so-con persuasion) are particularly fond of this solution.

Law-and-order statistics seem to indicate that in spite of screaming headlines and sensationalistic news coverage that offer little or no analysis, the increases in violent crimes committed by young offenders may not warrant the draconian measures advanced by the Conservatives.

It would appear this is more of the same-old same-old reactionary mise-en-scène for Harper and his gang-that-shoots-itself-in-the-foot, as a tactic to engineer a holy majority.

Update/September 24: Radio-Canada reports that the Québec Minister for Justice and Public Safety, Jacques Dupuis and Yves Francoeur, president of the police officers' union are opposed to the changes in the Young Offenders Act that were announced yesterday.

We need more cowbell, please.

The lies of Stephen Harper, mouthpiece extraordinaire and chief ideologue for the Not-Your-Parents' Conservatives are tiresome and boring. It is Sunday and this week-long electoral campaign has become a horror-show or, alternatively, bizarre beyond the wildest rantings of a Hunter Thompson, say.

The only solace is more cowbell.

Enjoy and remember that the enactment of Bill C-61 will deprive you of the opportunity to find and play this uplifting bit of zaniness on your computer.

Où sont les rhinocéros d’antan?

Indeed, where are the Rhinos when you need them? As I read blogs posted during the Great Debate Debacle, about the pros and cons of including the Green Party, I began to wonder why this event was a catalyst for the outbreak of hissing, spitting and back-biting amongst progressives, (of whom some would say and did say, ‘so-called’).

My epiphany was this: since the Conservatives are ideologues who can only lay claim to cutting, slashing and burning programs as their record of achievement for their two and a half years of governing, they are attempting to co-opt the tactics of the Rhinoceros Party - to sow confusion and chaos.

Unfortunately they forgot the most important element: style. So far their foray in Rhinoceros territory has been sorely lacking in good humour and wit.

Posting a pooping puffin animation on your website is not amusing, it is petty and crude. Luring mothers and their children to a small Ottawa family-centered store to use them for a photo opportunity is not agit-prop; it is prevarication and exploitation. Calling the grief-stricken father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan a partisan hack is not a media coup; it is crass and cruel. Dressing up your leader in garments taken from Peter Gzowski's wardrobe rejects and providing him with a script that makes him muse aloud about tickling piano keys is not a quaint parody of normal; it is a clumsy travesty.

Here are some examples of merry political pranks played by the Rhinoceros Party.

A candidate named Ted 'not so' Sharp ran in Flora MacDonald's riding with the campaign slogan "Fauna, not flora" .... He also took a stand on capital punishment: "If it was good enough for my grandfather, then it's good enough for me." ... Penny Hoar, a safe sex activist, distributed condoms in Toronto while running under the slogan "Politicians screw you — protect yourself."

Platform promises included: instituting English, French and illiteracy as Canada's three official languages, tearing down the Rocky Mountains so that Albertans could see the Pacific sunset, making Montreal the Venice of North America by damming the St. Lawrence River, abolishing the environment because it's too hard to keep clean and it takes up so much space, adopting the British system of driving on the left; this was to be gradually phased in over five years with large trucks and tractors first, then buses, eventually including small cars and bicycles last, declaring war on Belgium because a Belgian cartoon character, Tintin, killed a rhinoceros in one of the books, offering to call off the proposed Belgium-Canada war if Belgium delivered a case of mussels and a case of Belgian beer to Rhinoceros "Hindquarters" in Montréal (the Belgian Embassy in Ottawa did, in fact, do this), Painting Canada's coastal sea limits in watercolour so that Canadian fish would know where they were at all times, building a bridge spanning the country, from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, making the Trans-Canada Highway one way only.

Now that is clever, sly, and provocative. Where is the Rhinoceros Party when this negative and shallow election campaign so desperately needs it?

As that great French comédienne Simone Signoret said: "La nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était."

The Conservative culture of obscurantism

Though it's likely that few of the CPC faithful would be familiar with the term, it seems that obscurantism is woven deeply into that party's culture.

An article in yesterday's Le Devoir offers up evidence of many instances where the Conservatives' New Government has reined in the release of information and willfully promoted a culture of obscurantism.

A brief look at the succinct entry for obscurantism in Wikipedia takes you from the familiar ("the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known") to the hermetic (Derrida, Lacan et al). Ever pragmatic, Le Devoir provides examples of the Conservatives practices of obscuring information from the public by making it unavailable. Two major scientific studies commissioned by the federal government, the first about global warming and its effect upon public health and the second, a rigorous analysis of the social costs of our current transportation systems, were released in the dead of summer.

The article also mentions that immediately after the Conservatives came to power in 2006, all information and links regarding the Kyoto accord were removed from the Environment Canada website. An allusion to the SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) tactic for silencing critics did not reference the Chuck Cadman affair, but I will.

"Though often associated with religious fundamentalism, obscurantism is a distinct strain of thought: Fundamentalism presupposes a sincere belief in religion, while obscurantism rests on the deliberate manipulation of faith by an enlightened few."

Which segues perfectly to a rather arcane species of obcurantists: Opus Dei members. Thanks to La Presse and its diligent reporters, a Con candidate in a riding south of Montréal has been outed as an adherent of that extremist orthodox sect within the Catholic Church.

Fortunately, black hole production is not yet available to the Cons' overactive web designer geeks otherwise there might be more major 'unsanctioned' obscurantism.

CPC kids - don't play with the anti-matter machine at Conservative Party Headquarters without adult supervision, okay?

Line! Overheard during the 2008 federal election.

Gilles Duceppe is the leader of the Bloc Québecois. While many in the so-called RoC - rest of Canada - wonder what role (or political game) the BQ plays in Ottawa and in federal politics, Duceppe reminded me today how refreshing it can be to hear an outsider's perspective.

The so-called "In-and-Out" accounting practices of the Conservative Party during the last federal election, also known as Adscam, were in the process of being scrutinized by the House of Commons Ethics Committee during August. The behaviour of the Con MPs who attended this committe proceedings were observed and live-blogged by Kady O'Malley, a reporter for MacLean's. This issue is important for the BQ because it may involve high-profile Con candidates that Duceppe's party wants to defeat at the polls on October 14th and so Gilles raised it today, when he spoke in Trois-Rivières.

The 'money quote' (pun intended) was Duceppe's response to the Cons grumbling about keeping their eyes on Elections Canada this time. He likened that tactic to criminals who threaten to watch the police for illegal activity.

Meanwhile, in news that remain relevant to the election campaign even though released before the writ was dropped, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation calculated the cost of pre-election spending announcements made by Stephen Harper’s New™ government. Total amount of promised spending as of September 5, 2008: "$8.8-billion, roughly $94-million a day or about $3.9-million every hour ..."

Updated to add: Oh, I forgot to mention this other important money fact. When byelections are cancelled, all the candidates' expenses not covered by donations have to be reimbursed by Elections Canada. So taxpayers will be stuck with a bill for close to $3.5 million. Additionally this election will cost us about $300 million. Just saying.