Why Stephen Harper may waltz through the Senate scandal

Locutus

Locutus

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Jun 18, 2007
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If attention remains focused on whether three Senate fat cats are being treated fairly, then Stephen Harper has won.



Prime Minister Stephen Harper is betting that most Canadians don’t care who knew what when about the Senate spending scandal. He’s also betting that voters will be pleased to see three senators widely viewed as fat cats cast out in the cold.

These are cynical calculations. They may also be correct.

If Harper is wrong on the first bet, he’s in deep trouble. His insistence that he knew nothing about the complex web of arrangements surrounding his government’s attempts, first to first protect Mike Duffy from scrutiny and then to throw the embattled senator overboard, defy belief.

They defy belief because so many people close to the prime minister are known to have been involved.


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Why Stephen Harper may waltz through the Senate scandal: Walkom | Toronto Star
 
Kreskin

Kreskin

Doctor of Thinkology
Feb 23, 2006
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I won't hold it against him. I doubt he picked these idiots to rip off Canada.
 
T

tay

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In 2008, when Stephen Harper cut public funding for political parties, the opposition rose and threatened to take down his nascent government. He prorogued Parliament and bellowed that the other parties were engaged in a conspiracy to deny Canadians the minority government of their choice.

In 2011, after being found in contempt of Parliament, he declared that "contempt" merely meant being outvoted, then raged rabidly about "separatist coalitions." Now, when the political threat comes from within his own ranks, he rages at those he appointed.

The pattern is pretty clear: Stephen Harper assigns blame, but he accepts none. And that, Andrew Coyne writes, is the problem:

As diverting as these tales of petty vendettas and double-crosses and he saids-she saids may be, it is important not to lose the thread. We can marvel at how much this or that senator claimed on his or her expense account, we can debate whether it was smart tactics to threaten so and so with such and such. But what’s essential is to ensure that the integrity of public office is upheld. That’s what makes this such a big story. That’s why it matters.

Harper is working very hard to make sure that Canadians lose the real thread -- because it winds its way back to him:

This is what makes the prime minister’s interventions in the House this week so problematic, in hindsight. Granted, he has been suspected from the start of having directed the secret payment to Duffy, and the subsequent whitewashing of his misdeeds.

And indeed Duffy’s peculiarly blinkered sense of outrage, that the prime minister should have demanded he repay expenses he had falsely claimed, gave him the opportunity, as I wrote last time, to turn the situation to his advantage. No, he had no knowledge of Wright’s activities. But had he ordered Duffy to repay? “Darn right I did!” Was he in support of the Senate motion to suspend all three senators without pay? “Unequivocally.”

But in so doing the prime minister, more than anyone has to date, made himself the issue. By boasting of how he had been the one to bring Duffy to account, he was in effect saying: I am the standard. I am the enforcer. The rules are what I say they are, and I will decide in any given case what punishment should be given out.

The prime minister has always insisted that he makes the rules -- parliamentary conventions and the law be damned. The result is that he has thoroughly corrupted the Canadian political system. The late Gore Vidal claimed that modern Republicans possessed a Reverse Midas Touch. "Everything they touch," he said, "turns to poo."

The same can be said of Stephen Harper.




 
Walter

Walter

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Jan 28, 2007
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The booming economy in the West and the idiot Lib gubmint in ON will keep Harper in power. The senate scandal is costing a few hundred thousand and the rep of 4 dumb senators, the energy scandal alone in ON is costing a billion dollars and there are many more scandals in Lib ON costing billions more.
 
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Retired_Can_Soldier

Retired_Can_Soldier

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Mar 19, 2006
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Walter said:
The booming economy in the West and the idiot Lib gubmint in ON will keep Harper in power. The senate scandal is costing a few hundred thousand and the rep of 4 dumb senators, the energy scandal alone in ON is costing a billion dollars and there are many more scandals in Lib ON costing billions more.
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Wow Walter we actually agree.
 
Zipperfish

Zipperfish

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Apr 12, 2013
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He hasn't waltzed through it to date.. It's just one of those periodic scandals that governments of all stripes endure. Then there is the predictable battle while the oppostion tries to stick it to the Top Man, and the goverbnment tties to find a putz to throw under the bus.

One of the problems Harper has here is that his Conservative senators, with their fight in the Senate, are actually going out of their way to keep this in the papers. The longer it stays on the front page, the easier it will be recalled come election time, which is really the only time that matters.
 
Durry

Durry

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May 18, 2010
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This is all just a bunch of noise coming out of the useless Senate !!!

It's all blah blah blah.
What a bunch of useless tits crying about everything under the sun. These guys can't even run their own shop.

Give this thing another week and it will be all history!!

And as for you Libs, regroup and go find that $40M of taxpayer money you hid/lost during the sponsorship scandal ..eh !!
 
IdRatherBeSkiing

IdRatherBeSkiing

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May 28, 2007
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mentalfloss said:
As Senate scandal grows, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives falling far behind Justin Trudeau’s Liberals: poll
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Isn't this just like the polls which put poor Iggy with a commanding lead before the last election? The only poll that counts is on election day and this scandal is mis-timed from a Liberal point of view and will be long forgotten by election day. Of course, if it isn't that means there is more corruption discovered and they will deserve to be voted out although I personally would view the bearded one as my prefered alternative to the pretty boy (not that I consider either to be good alternatives).
 
L Gilbert

L Gilbert

Winterized
Nov 30, 2006
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B00Mer said:
Harper Rules... you peasants.



The ONLY reason the country has been able to survive the World Recession is because of the WEST, so it's fitting the country be ruled by a leader from the west..
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We had one from VanIsle (Port Alberni) for a few moments.

Harper was born and raised in ON, worked in AB for a while, and now he's back to ON. Not much westerner in him, IMO.
 
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