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The revelation that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has maintained an enemies list isn’t much of a revelation, is it? I mean, if there has ever been a Canadian administration that is positively Nixonian in its style and approach, it is Stephen Harper’s.

Now, that’s not to suggest the PMO has engaged in cover-ups, payoffs and dirty deals, like the disgraced former U.S. president did. Nor should it be taken to mean that the elite crew surrounding the Conservative prime minister has turned a collective blind eye to fraud, theft and breach of trust, as Nixon did.

Oh, wait.

The ongoing Senate scandal. Right. Never mind.

Anyway, the Harper PMO kids — showing up to work every morning buffed and scrubbed, and looking very much like the bad guys in the Matrix movie series, but without the interpersonal charm — are more and more like the Nixon cabal with each passing day.

Just consider the latest count in the indictment: News Harper et al. maintain an enemies list, like Nixon did.

The existence of Harper’s enemies list was revealed last week when an e-mail sent from the PMO to ministerial aides ended up in the wrong inbox. The e-mail cheerfully requested that lists of enemy bureaucrats, as well as lists of “enemy stakeholders,” be developed for incoming ministers and their staffs.

Nixon, as historians will note, did the same thing. His list was concocted by his White House counsel, a subsequently convicted criminal named Chuck Colson.

It was variously referred to as the “Opponents List” or the “Political Enemies List,” and it contained the names of journalists and politicians who Nixon and his orcs disliked — including actor Paul Newman, whose career did not seem to be impeded by the designation.

Enemies lists, as the Harper gang are (hopefully) about to discover, are lots of fun to put together, but not so much fun to defend in the public realm. That’s because, at some point, an enemies list has an actual purpose.

It is supposed to be used. And that’s where it becomes slightly less comedic and arguably illegal.

The Nixon list certainly was. In that case, the enemies list was used to “screw” — the word used by John Dean, another White House lawyer — the president’s enemies with IRS audits, denial of federal contracts, litigation and even prosecution.

And that, of course, is when an innocuous enemies list stops being funny and becomes much more ominous.

It is a crime to use the power of the state to initiate tax audits of one’s political enemies. It is a crime to commence an administrative or legal process with the purpose of “screwing” someone the Conservative Party hates. It is a crime to prosecute a political adversary because they possess different views and priorities.

The Harper PMO, when they finally get around to concocting talking points about their enemies list, will say that (a) it was the fault of a misguided young staffer, (b) it was never acted upon, (c) the Liberals did the same thing, and (d) the sponsorship scandal. Rinse and repeat, etc.

But no one should be fooled: The Harper PMO drew up an enemies list, and they did so because they expected it to be acted upon by ministers and staffers who possess real power. If even one of them has done so — even once — they have committed a crime.

The Nixon-Harper comparisons being made by the opposition and some of us in the media are, at one level, kind of amusing. But when we pause to reflect on this latest controversy — and we should — it all becomes a lot less comical.

If you’ve ever written a letter to the editor criticizing Stephen Harper — if you’ve ever stood for office against one of his allies, or if you have participated in a grassroots campaign against one of his policies — you deserve to know if you are on that list.

And you deserve to know what, if anything, was done to you by Stephen Harper’s Nixonian PMO.

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Been without power and phone for a day – so we’re heading back to TeeDot a day early. Got a lot of meat to get into a freezer!

Oh, and all those extreme weather/climate claims? Can’t possibly be true.

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Ekos here.

I don’t really believe the fed Grits are pulling down the Ontario Libs, or vice-versa. There’s a bit of brand overlap, but not enough to effect big shifts.

I believe in the alternation theory: when the federal party is ascendant, the provincial party generally isn’t.

There are three things possibly at work, here. One, polls aren’t so accurate anymore. Two, it’s Summer – folks are disengaged. Three, what was once new (Trudeau, Wynne) isn’t so new anymore.

Your take?

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Here.

Are we right? Are we wrong? Too harsh? Not harsh enough?

Another question: did my own party do or say anything about Pipsqueak’s promotion? I sure didn’t see anything.

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…perhaps. Quote:

“While it’s Duncan’s seat and not her former riding, there’s still a lingering hostility among voters in the city about the way Pupatello was betrayed during the leadership campaign. She’s a star in Canada’s Motown.

The day of the leadership vote, Eric Hoskins and Charles Sousa unexpectedly threw their support behind Wynne when the Pupatello camp believed they had a deal; Windsor isn’t about to forget that slight. They’ll likely sit on their hands and won’t help out candidate Jeewen Gill, the guy who got the nod when Francis refused to take the bait.”

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Landed on a dock chair as Son Two and Son Three and me were trying to figure out how to get cool (there ain’t no AC at the cabin).

Amazing, eh? What a beauty. Unless he’s eating you, that is, in which case he’s a mean looking bastard.

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If I’m not on it, I’ll be fucking pissed off.

Who’s with me?

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That’s been my prediction, and I’m sticking with it.  My friend John is in the one Ontario Liberal byelection contest I feel good about.

This Ottawa Citizen story, here, suggests why that is so.  If you read it, you will see:

• John doesn’t hide the fact that he worked for Dalton McGuinty. At all.
• The deleted email gas plant bullshit didn’t come up once at the doors when the reporter was present.
• Queen’s Park gossip is irrelevant.  All that counts is hard work.

To recap, then: the guy with the best shot at winning is the one who is proud he worked with Dalton McGuinty, who doesn’t lead with his chin by dwelling on faux-scandals, and whose focus is his home, and not the one square kilometre surrounding Queen’s Park?

Interesting, that.

 

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Sometimes, in political life, you get credit for what you do. More commonplace are those occasions where you get none.

Consider, then, Stephen Harper’s newly minted cabinet. Unveiled Monday, the big shuffle brought eight new faces to the cabinet table, many of them women. Considering Harper’s cabinet previously had all the feminist sensibilities of the Mad Men TV series, this was noteworthy.

Among those who were elevated to the big kids’ table were Calgary’s Michelle Rempel, who is one of the most impressive members of this or any Parliament, and Ontario’s Kellie Leitch, who is arguably one of the smartest. Apropos the age, we all found out about Harper’s newfound enthusiasm for gender parity on Twitter, where it was declared the prime minister was “proud to be naming four new strong, capable women” to cabinet.

Welcome to the new century, Mr. Prime Minister! While none of them could be called “new” (they’ve been sitting behind you in the Commons, patiently, for years), they are indeed “women,” and having more women in cabinet can only be a good thing. Men start wars and men commit more crime. So, congratulations.

The other changes you made — with one notable exception — don’t matter so much. As this space has noted previously, cabinet shuffles in the Harper era are irrelevant. All real power resides with the neatly barbered 20-somethings in PMO; the rest of cabinet is mostly there to give the country the illusion that we still have parliamentary democracy.

The one exception to the accolades — the one thing Harper shouldn’t have done, but did — is Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievre. Along with the now-departed Vic Toews, and the yet-to-be departed Dean Del Mastro, Pipsqueak is one of the Conservative Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Like the Biblical Horsemen, everything he says and does is bad. Everything that is good that he touches withers and dies.

Pipsqueak, who Harper actually named minister of state for democratic reform, is in fact one of the most despicable, loathsome politicians to ever grace the national stage. He is a pestilence made flesh.

A refresher: Pipsqueak is the Conservative MP who famously joked about “tar babies” in the House of Commons, a derogatory term to describe blacks. He is the MP who attacked Harper for compensating aboriginal residential schools victims, opining that what those lazy natives needed was “hard work.” He is the MP who told his fellow MPs “f— you guys,” and then later said he would “confiscate” the tape of the occasion.

He is the Conservative MP who can always be counted upon to do the bidding of the adolescents in PMO. He is the MP who even big-C Conservative commentators, like the Ottawa Citizen’s Randy Denley, say is the poster child of “red-necked bigots” in his Nepean-Carleton riding. Ouch.

There is more, much more, but you get the point. Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievre is a disgrace to Parliament. He is a joke. And whatever Harper may have accomplished with his shuffle was unalterably diminished by the promotion of Pipsqueak.

Stephen Harper deserves credit for realizing, very late in his political career, that he had been doing a disservice to the many smart women in his parliamentary caucus.

He deserves no credit at all for letting Pipsqueak into cabinet.

Comments (56)