Peas in a pod (XXV)

From a Gary Kean report in the Western Star, February 19, 2005:

Corner Brook - Premier Danny Williams says he takes full responsibility for retaining an advertising firm to stoke the province's pride in the Atlantic Accord deal without publicly tendering the contract for the work.
...
"This is not a self promotion advertising campaign. You will see from the ads put out, there's no pictures of the minister or the premier. This is an ad campaign to try and reaffirm and entrench and solidify pride."

From a Bruce Cheadle CP report that moved today:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is justifying the more than $100 million his government has spent on economic advertising by pointing to Canadians' confidence in the economy.
...
Harper responded that "Canadians understand and are very proud of the fact that Canada's economy has performed so much better than other developed countries during these challenging times."

Pease in a pod (XXIV)

#FormerPremier:

"I can't control traitors. People who betray their province, I have no control over that. All I can continue to do is fight the good fight and I will right up until the federal election..."

#CurrentPMO:

In a sworn affidavit released Tuesday to The Canadian Press, Andrew Frank says he was told by his supervisor at ForestEthics that a PMO official had referred to their organization as an "enemy of the state."

Pease in a pod (XXIII)

Pease in a pod (XXII)

Facebook Police (federal) will get you kicked out. Facebook Police (provincial) will get you kicked off.

Pease in a pod (XXI): the colour purple edition

Harper Government:

Legault's intensive probe of the Togneri case uncovered a so-called "purple file" process at Public Works, by which the minister's political staff reviewed potentially damaging access releases at meetings with the responsible public servants.

"This purple file process creates a high-risk environment for potential influence or interference with ATIA release decisions and timely disclosure under the Act," her report found.

Williams Government:

Our reason for asking? Because the premier's communications director accidentally sent us an e-mail telling another staffer that she "will need purple files" on two reporters who asked for year-end interviews with the premier.

Strange, then, that when we asked for copies of the files through Access to Information, we were told there were no records of any such documents - even though communications director Elizabeth Matthews confirmed to us in another e-mail "Purple files do exist, as I said before."

Pease in a pod (XX)

Toothiness edition:

The Prime Minister stood here to dismiss this. “Mr. Speaker, of course, nothing could be further from the tooth,” he shrugged, quickly correctly himself to say “truth.”

Pease in a pod (XVIII)

The Colour Purple edition.

Wangersky, 2009:

It's been a year since we requested so-called "purple files," and even though the premier himself has admitted such files exist, the official answer from the government is that they don't.

A year has gone by, and the access to information commissioner hasn't even written a report on our appeal of the issue.

Ditchburn, 2010:

Mr. Paradis's office had a system to vet access-to-information requests from the media and political parties. Bureaucrats bundled the “interesting” documents together and put them in a purple folder, waiting for Mr. Togneri to give the green light.

Pease in a pod (XVII)

PM announces changes in the senior ranks of the Public Service
[Friday] 24 September 2010 [at 4:52 p.m.]

Premier Announces Senior Appointments
[Friday] September 24, 2010 [at 3:30 p.m.]

Pease in a pod (XVI)

Strict constructionists will note the absence here of a question mark, but Mr. Baird rose to respond all the same. ”Mr. Speaker,” he moaned, “the leader of the Liberal Party never misses an occasion to run down Canada.”

“Ohh!” the Liberals moaned back.

“You’re not Canada!” contended one opposition voice.

- Question Period in the House of Commons, May 27, 2010

PREMIER WILLIAMS: I can tell the Leader of the Opposition that I am not the one who quotes in the House of Commons. He refers to comments that are made by the Leader of Opposition when he supports positions that are anti-Newfoundland and Labrador. As a matter of fact, I heard him quote you in the House of Commons just over a month ago. So, it would be nice if you were on our side. That would certainly help, for starters.

- Question Period in the Bow-Wow Parliament, May 17, 2007

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, the level of betrayal of the hon. member opposite to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador never ceases to astound me.

She is asking today that we release the legal opinions that could possibly be used, if an action is commenced by CF(L)Co, and give them to Hydro-Quebec so that they can prepare their case against Newfoundland and Labrador and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Absolutely not!

- Question Period in the Bow-Wow Parliament, December 1, 2009

MS JOHNSON: Mr. Speaker, I have explained this several times over and over, and somebody said to me on the weekend, they wonder who the Leader of the Opposition works for: Is it the Quebec government or is it Abitibi? They could not figure it out.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MS JOHNSON: Her question certainly speaks to why that person asked me that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: It is typical of the government opposite, questioning your patriotism in this Province, Mr. Speaker. How dare you speak against us? How dare you challenge us? Well, Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Environment was doing her job no one in this Province would have to ask her a question.

- Question Period in the Bow-Wow Parliament, May 4, 2010

Pease in a pod (XV)

VOCM, March 30, 2010:

Blue Windows Revealed at Confederation Buildings

Confederation Building is getting a face lift...and it's Tory blue. A portion of the Allandale Road side of the East Block has been under renovation for some time now, obscured by a huge tarp and now that it has been completed, the familar green coloured windows have been replaced with blue ones. It's one of many blue changes by government, including the license plate and highway signage.

Editorial, The Telegram, October 5, 2006:

As editorial topics go, the province's new branding strategy is a sitting duck. The province's new $1-million logo, a stylized pitcher plant, features the same provincial plant that has been used as a logo before, raising the issue of why it cost so much and took so long to develop this latest idea.

[...]

Then there's the super-syllabic "Newfoundland Labrador," a six- syllable mouthful that has dropped the easy linguistic "and" that used to appear between the names of the two parts of this province. The letters of the name are Tory-blue, a subliminal push for the current government.

James Travers, Toronto Star, June 29, 2007:

They're painting the town blue for Canada Day in the nation's capital this year.

Though the red and white of Canada's flag is usually the dominant colour scheme for the big party in Ottawa on July 1, blue seems to be all the rage this year – a good, solid Conservative blue, to match the government in power.

Workers have been erecting the main stage for festivities this week on Parliament Hill. By yesterday, it was evident the favoured hue seems to have definitely shifted from red – which also happens to be the colour of the Liberal party, the Conservatives' arch-rivals.

The huge stage, similar to the kind seen at big outdoor rock concerts, is solid blue, as is the large overhang.

Bruce Cheadle, Canadian Press, September 21, 2009:

The Conservative government is spending more than five times as many taxpayer dollars on promoting its economic plan as it is on raising public awareness about the flu pandemic.

[...]

All the ads direct viewers to a Tory-blue government web site that includes more than 40 different photos of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and refers repeatedly to "the Harper government" -- apparently in direct contravention of Treasury Board communications policy.

Pease in a pod (XIV)

Steven Chase of The Globe and Mail reports:

An apparent slipup in the federal government’s censoring of Afghan detainee documents shows Ottawa is using its black marker to hide potentially embarrassing information, a military and information law expert says.

[...]

The sentences in question describe how detainees began testing and challenging their Canadian captors in early 2008. Prisoners are held in a short-term Forces detention facility before being transferred to Afghan authorities.

[...]

Michel Drapeau, a former Forces colonel and a professor of military law, said there’s no justification for withholding this information from Canadians – as one of the censors processing the documents had apparently done.

“If a Taliban intelligence officer reads this, I would be hard-pressed to suggest what he could do with this information,” Mr. Drapeau said. “Is this about national security or potential embarrassment to the government?”

The fall before last witnessed this eerily similar and all-foreshadowy provincial slipuppable episode. CBC's account:

Marshall also said privacy and security issues prevented discussion of passages of the report that had been blacked out.

However, when the government posted the report online, the redacted sections could be read by users with basic computer tools.

Among other things, the passages show that the panel investigating the prisons found that Scoville — who became superintendent of prisons in 2000 — did not have enough experience to have taken on the job.

The report, though, noted that Scoville had trouble getting the support he needed from the provincial government, and found that Scoville was left with the "seemingly insurmountable challenge of trying to move the provincial prison system into the new century."

This corner weighed in at the time, publishing some of the eventually-censored, and not-terribly security-oriented passages in extenso.

Pease in a pod (XIII)

Danny Williams, quoted in Maclean's, 2004:

A 25-year career in business and law as absolute ruler of his own fiefdoms qualified [Danny] Williams for politics, but it didn't prepare him. He still bristles at the "wasted time" in the House, and the daily distractions that take him away from the real work of governing.

Stephen Harper, on BNN, January 11, 2010:

The games begin when Parliament returns. The government can take our time now to do the important work to prepare the economic agenda ahead.

Pease in a pod (XII)

December 29, 2009

Stop shuffling deputy ministers: study
Rapid changes take toll on efficiency of PS, expert charges

By Kathryn May, The Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — The Harper government should stop the "mad merry-go-round" of deputy ministers bouncing from department to department and keep them in the same job for a minimum of five years, says a new study on the public service.

June 9, 2009:

Shuffle-up-a-gus

Over on the public service side, the relative numbers are even more dramatic.

Liberals: 24 appointments over eight years.

Progressive Conservatives: 37 in five and a half years or so.

Now some of these announcements were onesies and twosies, that is one appointment at a time.

In other cases, like the one made today, the changes have involved seven or eight people in different departments.

Pease in a pod (XI)

Tories dodging detainee debate to slurp eggnog?

Public execution delayed for Speaker’s Christmas Party

Pease in a pod (X)

Buddies in Big Oil edition:

September 8, 2006:

"The fact that the prime minister is not supporting me on the whole fallow field exercise and legislation, the only explanation I can see is obviously he's a supporter of big oil," Williams said Thursday.

"And if he wants to be a big buddy to big oil, that's for him to decide."

December 3, 2009:

Premier defends Prairie oil
CALGARY
SHAUN POLCZER
Canwest News Service

Alberta and Saskatchewan shouldn't have to bear the brunt of Canada's emissions reductions, Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams told a Calgary audience Thursday.

Pease in a pod (VIII)

And yes, the numbering in this series was out of sequence.

By way of Jason W, posting on the Telegram site:

Jason W from Toronto/Channel, ON/NL writes: Great. Now Danny is taking pointers from the federal conservatives. You ask a legitimate question and Dany wraps himself in the Newfoundland flag and accuses others of spying for Hydro-Quebec. Ask Harper a question, he warps himself in the Canadian Flag and calls you a Taliban lover. I guess ABC is dead?
Posted 01/12/2009 at 11:01 AM Link to comment

Pease in a pod (VI)

Danny Williams-Government:

The provincial Department of Education is withholding engineering reports on the state of two St. John's high schools, claiming the reports are still in draft form - even though the local school authority made decisions four months ago based in part on the reports' findings.

And again:

Someone’s got a bit of explaining to do. After the province’s minister of health, Ross Wiseman, slipped up on Wednesday and revealed the existence of inspection reports on hospitals in the St. John’s area, he had to know that the questions would come fast and furious.

…

Questions like: given this written commitment from the Williams campaign in the 2003 election campaign that “A Progressive Conservative government will ... release to the public every government-commissioned report within 30 days of receiving it, indicate the action government will take on a report’s recommendations within 60 days, and ensure prompt public access to all government reports in hard copy and on the Internet,” why is it these reports have spent three years or so hidden from view?

And "Steve", via Kady O'Malley:

Question: So how long have you had it?

Hon. Peter Van Loan: --- to last year when it was 2.4 percent. So what the information -

Question: How long have you had it?

Hon. Peter Van Loan: --- what this report demonstrates is exactly what we have been saying.

Question: How long have you had the Commissioner of Firearms report?

Hon. Peter Van Loan: If I could finish -

Question: No, sir, you haven't answered the question that I asked you. You're answering a completely different question.

Hon. Peter Van Loan: What the report demonstrates is what we have been saying all along -

Question: How long have you had the Firearms Commissioner's report, sir?

Hon. Peter Van Loan: --- that the registry - the long-gun registry is not used by police to prevent crime. It's thoroughly ineffective and that when we eliminate the long-gun registry, 97 percent - over 97 percent of the occasions -

Question: This isn't a news conference, these are questions. How long have you had the Firearms report?

Hon. Peter Van Loan: --- over 97 percent of the occasions that -

Pease in a pod (V) (bis)

Blue Sweater Sweater-vest edition:

Pease in a pod (V)

Blue Sweater edition:

Pease in a pod (V)

Rob Antle, The Telegram, January 10, 2009:

[T]he Department of Transportation and Works would only provide the audit team with a printout of highway contract work, not a computer file. Government officials contended the information “does not exist in electronic form within this department” –even though the record released was a computer printout that included a “print date.” The law allows public access to paper and electronic files.

Canadian Press, today:

The Harper government has dumped three boxloads of information about its efforts to stimulate Canada’s sputtering economy on Parliament’s independent budget watchdog.

Kevin Page had asked for more information, complaining that the sketchy data provided up to now made it impossible to tell whether $12 billion in stimulus spending is having any impact on the economy.

But rather than provide an easy-to-analyse spreadsheet listing infrastructure projects and how much money has been spent on each of them to date, the government flooded Page Thursday with 4,476 pages of documents.

“The parliamentary budget officer has asked for a significant amount of information. We’ve given him a significant amount of information,” Baird said.