His Immenseness will come out of his hole in ... Mill Bay, B.C.

... And then he'll make sure he's securely insulated from anything British Columbia by hiding behind the locked gates of a conservative bastion for the wealthy, Brentwood College School.

Prime Minister Harper visits Cowichan on Tuesday for a private Tory party event at Brentwood College School.
The 1 p.m. gathering, hosted by members and donors of the Conservative Party of Canada, promises to be popular among party faithful wishing to hear the PM's speech.

Wow. One would have to wonder what brings a self-serving bastard like Harper to Cowichan. It's not, you know, in a big, important area code. And one thing is absolutely certain: he wouldn't bother with the place unless it was to his personal advantage.

Ahhh. This.

Harper thinks he has a chance at a Reform Conservative win in a newly drawn riding.

You just knew he wasn't here to see the people.

The "car buyer" metaphor. Killed.

#F35 #Cdnpoli - 

Peter Van Loan told CBC that, we, the people who buy cars worth, oh ... anywhere from $1000 to $50,000 do not work out the life cycle costs of that motor vehicle. I'm not the only one who remembers that line.

Now, when I'm not taking up space on the bridge of a ship, the life cycle costs of which the owners are fully apprised, I'm instructing ships' officers of varying levels from junior watchkeepers to large ship captains.

Today I heard the proof that Peter Van Loan doesn't know what car buyers do.

During a break in training one of my number talked about the cost of travel from his home to the port his ship departed from daily. In the discussion he mentioned that he had given up his totally cool crew-cab truck for a subcompact car.

Reason?

Life cycle costs.

He had calculated the difference between the vehicles with respect to fuel consumption and future operating costs. The truck lost out to a huge increase in fuel economy in the subcompact. Before he purchased the subcompact, he had calculated the cost of fuel, (based on the local average). He had calculated his five year repair cost, based on the length of warranty. He had estimated its life expectancy, based on the average annual use.

Most of us actually do exactly the same thing. We cannot afford to toss money out the window. Only people who feel they have money to burn would buy a car any other way.

Further, we buy a vehicle which meets our needs. Sure, we'd love to have something sexy, hot and impractical. That, however, does not fit the reality of most Canadian lives. What's the point of having a hot car if you can't afford to take the sexy accountant out for dinner?

Do we put hours, days or weeks into the life cycle of a car?

Most of us don't. But that doesn't mean that we don't assess the life cycle costs at our own level of comfort.

Most of us don't do line by line annual budgets either. (Unless your good life cycle management attracts that sexy accountant permanently).

That doesn't mean we don't keep track of the money. And we expect government to put an enormous amount of work into getting it exactly right and telling us exactly how much of our money they plan to spend. On everything.

Van Loan's line is completely and utterly bogus. By his reasoning and his ridiculous metaphor, his government is suggesting that they only have to budget and keep the books the way a spendthrift would manage household finances.

If he is saying that because you don't work out the life cost of a vehicle you buy that the government doesn't have to do it, he is saying that the typical household financial management methods employed by the average Canadian family are now the standard for the Canadian government.

They tell us how they excel as financial managers.

That's just advertising. The reality is more akin to Van Loan's metaphor.

Cleared for unrestricted take off - F35 acquisition

#F35 #Cdnpoli -

We've followed this thing from the 1997 entry into the F-35 development through to the Harper Conservative sign on to the 2006 JSF Production, Sustainment and Follow-on Development project. 

At that point in late 2006 there was something else occupying the minds of many at NDHQ - Afghanistan. As the war in Afghanistan spun up, so did the problems. Canadian troops, usually in the point position in the Panjwai district were sorely in need of a greater level of support. There was a scramble to get Leopard C2 tanks into theatre along with better artillery. There was a line that moved all through the armed services: "If it isn't about Afghanistan, it isn't worth shit."


General Rick Hillier was making loud noises about helicopters. With no heavy lift helicopter capability Canadian troops were vulnerable as they moved over treacherous ground to complete patrols and sweeps, and to provide sufficient protection to provincial reconstruction teams. Another mad scramble took place and an advance contract award notice (ACAN) was issued for 15 Chinook medium/heavy lift helicopters.

That should have set off alarm bells. The Chinook contract was a mess from the start. Proper planning was sidestepped and statements of requirements were left wanting. Planners ignored the steps required in the DND Project Approval Guide, failed to submit life cycle estimates and, for all intents and purposes, cheated on their homework. Regulations by the dozen were violated. In short, what DND did was go to Boeing and told the supplier, "We'll take fifteen of those. Here, throw on these options", and then fudged the numbers by documenting the basic price of the helicopter without additions. The whole time, there was collusion between DND and PWGS in an attempt to short-circuit the acquisition process. The entire Options Analysis Phase of the project was literally tossed aside.

Earlier the Maritime Shipboard Helicopter project had encountered similar problems. While this was a more mature project and the SOR was reasonably well defined, life cycle costs and in-service support were left undone.

Neither of these projects would surface for the fiascos they were until then-auditor general Shiela Fraser made her report to Parliament in 2010.

The people in the F-35 shop were plugging away well under the radar. However, there was no doubt in the mind of anybody involved that the 2006 MoU was as good as saying the F-35 was a done deal and that would be the next combat aircraft in the RCAF inventory.

In 2008, still without a clear statement of requirements, there was a renewed look at the fighter aircraft on offer. Three were given a solid look: The F-18 Super Hornet; the Typhoon Eurofighter; and the as yet unproven, F-35. All three were compared to a matrix of mandatory performance factors for the next generation fighter. All three met the requirements, even though the F-35 was still under development.

The F-35, untested thought it was, was recommended as the replacement for the F-18s over the other two. The essential reasons given were that it was cheaper, newer, more advanced in the whole and would have a longer service life. None of those reasons were substantiated with any documentation, as the 2012 Auditor General's report lays out.

The RCAF and DND, for their part were convinced that they were in clover as far as the F-35 project went. They, with reasonable confidence, pursued acquisition as though the decision had been made. With the re-election of a Harper minority government in 2008 they felt that, even with the risk of a minority government, they could go for the hardware they wanted and would have little opposition, right up to cabinet level. They felt no need to suddenly start beavering away at a lengthy options analysis when, in their minds anyway, the decision was all but final. True, they had not documented everything required by department regulations, but they had not done it for other projects and these Conservatives didn't seem to mind. It was like Christmas. At least until Shiela Fraser blew the whistle on the two helicopter projects.

Still, as peculiar as the F-35 acquisition appeared, even to those involved in the RCAF, it was thought that the government had approved the way it was going.

On 16 July, 2010, the Harper government announced a soul-source contract with Lockheed Martin to supply 65 F-35A fighters for $16 billion.

That was a lie. There was no contract. But there was pressure from Lockheed Martin.

There was also the same MoU signed in 2006 and updated in December 2009 (considered the 2010 agreement). Despite any other committment, that is the primary document which had Canada tied to the F-35. And while Harper and MacKay were tossing out one set of numbers, the MoU displayed something different.

Canada was still estimating an 80 aircraft acquisition. It was dropped to 65 because of the increasing costs. Further, Canada's contribution to the development had remained the same despite increased development costs. Good deal. But the shrinking acquisition was problematic. A 20 percent slice off the numbers was not supported in any documentation.

And there was still no actual pricetag. At least not one available pubicly. Inside the JSF project office were lodged Canadian participants who had a pretty good reckoning of what the fly-away cost would be.

When Harper refused to provide details of the cost of the F-35 in 2010 there was good reason. The government had substantially low-balled the actual price, left out the life cycle costs and had no material management plan. He faced an election and continued to lie throughout the election campaign. In DND two camps had developed. The larger one was the F-35 adherents; the smaller faction believed a competition would result in competitors to the F-35 offering a much reduced price on the two other possible contenders. MacKay was in possession of that information when he joined in announcing the F-35 as a done deal.

In November 2011 the Standing Committee on Defence heard from another JSF program participant: Norway. Had MPs at that committee been doing anything except collecting a paycheque and building a hefty pension they would have got their calculators out and gone screaming down the corridors. Only one MP knew what questions to ask.

Rear-Admiral Arne Røksund, Head of the Department, Defence Policy and Long-Term Planning, Ministry of Defence of the Kingdom of Norway, offered some interesting information. NDP MP Christine Moore asked him:

I want to discuss the F-35 aircraft. You said your budget was realistic. What is your budget for procuring the F-35s?

He told her $10 billion for 51 or 52 aircraft and then added this:

The life cycle costs will be, I think, about—this is not public yet, so I have to be careful—$40 billion U.S. over 30 years. So that's life cycle costs over 30 years, all included.

Assuming the admiral was using the NATO standard that life cycle includes initial acquisition of the asset, at the higher number of aircraft that puts the cost of each aircraft at $769,230,769.23.

Norway's schedule for acquisition is virtually identical to Canada's. The cost to participants, according to the MoU and US law, is that each F-35 will be delivered at the same price at that Then Year to all participants. Ready?

Pricetag, based on the due diligence of the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, (which had life cycle costs readily available for a realistic 30 years), for 65 aircraft is exactly $50 billion.

So, $25 billion? And that includes life cycle costs? I think not.Try double that.

Fifty Billion, Andrew. Fifty Billion.

MacKay is "Just an optimistic guy"

#F35 #Cdnpoli - 

Sorry, but part 3 of the F-35 fiasco is still in the hopper. And as much as I am not really a Titanic freak, as someone who understands the effects of hydraulics on sinking ships, there is something I really must watch on ... TV. (Now, I just have to figure out how these button festooned thingies work).

In the meantime, you must watch this. MacKay needs to let his wife take him flying. The thinner air might help him with simple arithmetic. 



And, since she closed comments, (to deal with busy things), I will on this occasion only, skip through a place I rarely choose to tread.  

Sandy, you are completely and utterly hilarious. For a while there I thought you were serious. I have to admit, you had me there for a minute.

You see, I was a part of a major naval acquisition. My team was doing the costing of the training centres that would have to be rebuilt, staffed and operated for the projected life cycle of a particular class of ship. When it was completed, my superiors completed a final LCMM on those centres and then it was included in the final price tag for the ships.

Brilliant work though. Keep it up and keep us in stitches.

H/T

Thundering in on the F-35 Boondoggle - foreword

I've been wading through piles of paper. Some of it is recent correspondence received after the Auditor General's report on the unbelievable mess that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has become. Other material has been out there for a while.

Later on today, (hopefully), we'll examine what the costs were known to be for the F-35 JSF, long before Harper and his minions decided to lie and feed the Canadian public a bill of goods.

First though, lets look at a definition you should have planted in your mind: Life Cycle Cost. (LCC)

The Harperites have been pushing a talking point that the figures they were feeding the Canadian public before, during and after the last election did not include full life cycle costs. From a procurement standpoint, that is simply ludicrous. From my own experience, nobody ever procures capital equipment for the military unless a complete life cycle cost analysis is done and a thorough life cycle cost estimate is produced. The following is from a current publication in use for military project personnel working on LCC for aquisitions:

Life-cycle cost (LCC) can be defined as the total cost to the government of a program over its full life, including costs for research and development; testing; production; facilities; operations; maintenance; personnel; environmental compliance; and disposal.

For a better idea of what all that involves, take a look at this from MTain. (Good idea to read the page on that link. Great comparison on buying a car vs buying a military aircraft)

 

Now, if you want to look at something even more graphic, educational and understandable, go here.  That is using an iceberg, most of which is underwater, to show that the acquisition cost is much less than the overall life cycle cost. 

The Harper talking points that their figures did not include wages, fuel and training are nothing more than the desperate flinging of poo. An equipment acquisition always includes those estimates in the total life cycle cost. That's how you manage your defence budget over the life of your equipment. (Any good fiscal manager knows that, but hey! We're talking about Harper here.)

With that information, it's now time to head on over to The Gazetteer. RossK has put up this morning's interview on CBC The House with the Auditor General and then the weaselly Chris Alexander, parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence.

Listen closely because that is your primer for my next post.

Later. 

There it is. They are all a pack of liars

Harper and all his cabinet ministers involved in the F-35 deal are liars.

If Auditor General Michael Ferguson's word is to be believed — and there is no reason to think that it isn't — then the federal cabinet and by extension the prime minister, and not just the anonymous gnomes in the Department of National Defence, are directly on the hook for the F-35 boondoggle, in the most egregious sense.

They knew before the last federal election that the jets would cost billions more than had been stated by DND — at least $10-billion more, around $25.1-billion. They allowed the department to publicly table an estimate of $14.7-billion.

"I can't speak to individuals who knew it, but it was information that was prepared by National Defence," Ferguson told reporters Thursday. "It's certainly my understanding that that would have been information that, yes, the government would have had."

He continued: "That $25-billion number was something I think that at that time was known to government." And, critically: "It would have been primarily members of the executive, yes."

So, this is no longer a matter of "it happened on their watch." It's a matter of whether there was outright deception, deliberate and premeditated, during an election campaign, on an issue of great national import, by the prime minister and members of the cabinet.

I knew that. I said it yesterday. As I pointed out, it would have been near impossible for the military to have produced a set of numbers so totally skewed as to be unbelievable. The information available through a myriad of public sources before the last election provided estimates on purchase cost alone that put the figures Harper was offering to the lie. Of course, there's more.

Ferguson's remarks do not occur in a vacuum: to anyone familiar with the inner workings of DND, they will ring true. DND Deputy Minister Robert Fonberg and assistant deputy minister (materiel) Dan Ross typically handled matters related to the F-35 procurement. It was standard practice for all information on major procurements, including costing, to be passed on to the inner cabinet. It is highly unlikely, on its face, that anything as important as these numbers would have been withheld from the PMO.

And more. (Emphasis mine)

The initial estimate of $75-million (U.S.) per plane did not include the cost of drag chutes for landing on short runways, or modifications to the refuelling system that DND knew would be necessary. But more important, the estimates of life-cycle costs — including the higher and real number of $25.1 billion, which DND and apparently the cabinet withheld — were for 20 years only. 

"This practice understates operating, personnel, and sustainment costs, as well as some capital costs, because the time period is shorter than the aircraft's estimated life expectancy. The JSF Program Office provided National Defence with projected sustainment costs over 36 years."

Got that? The JSF Program Office is the fact clearing house to all countries involved in the F-35 development project. Undiddled numbers that got diddled somewhere up the line. And those numbers would only be projected maintenance and sustainability costs. In a procurement, such as a US FMS case, it is up to the end-user country to ADD operating, personnel and unique modification costs.

Top all of this off with the shucking and jiving of Rona Ambrose. She too, is a liar.

Bob Rae not only noticed, he handed the government a bomb with a short, burning fuse.

And now, I have to digest some information I have acquired. Some past comrades-in-arms are furious and before they let themselves get hit by an oncoming bus, they intend to stop it before it gets to them.

Before I get to that though, I would like you to consider this. Remember when Ibbitson wrote this about Harper and others in relation to electoral fraud in the last federal election?

As a general rule, politicians never openly lie, because the consequences of being caught in one just aren’t worth it. (Think Watergate, Monica Lewinsky.) Neither of these men would take that risk.

We have absolutely no further reason to accept that premise in any way. Harper is a liar; his minister of national defence is a liar; his associate minister of national defence is a liar; and his minister of public works is a liar. 

Hands up if you think Harper didn't know about the voter suppression effort in May 2011. Because he says he didn't?

Right. Thought so.

Later.

Finally ... they drop the gloves

The Disaffected Lib wants the Governor General to intervene. He links to the latest offerings by Andrew Coyne and Brian Stewart who lay out exhibits which should horrify any Canadian.

Coyne:

This was, until last year's shipbuilding contract, the largest single purchase in the country's history. And yet it was carried out, as we now learn, without proper documentation, without accurate data, and without any of the normal procurement rules being followed. Defence officials simply decided in advance which aircraft they wanted, and that was that. Guidelines were evaded, Parliament was lied to, and in the end the people of Canada were set to purchase planes that may or may not be able to do the job set out for them, years after they were supposed to be delivered, at twice the promised cost.

But of course it's much worse than that. If department officials played two successive ministers of defence, Gordon O'Connor and Peter MacKay, for fools, the evidence shows they did not have to exert themselves much; if they did not offer evidence to back their claims, whether on performance, costs, or risks, it is because ministers did not think to ask for any. Nor was this negligence confined to the Department of National Defence.

And he concludes with ...

So this is also what comes of Parliament's prerogatives, its powers to hold ministers to account, being ignored or overridden. These aren't procedural niceties, of concern only to constitutional law professors — "process issues," as more than one member of the press gallery sneered at the time. They're the vital bulwarks of self-government, the only means we have of ensuring our wishes are obeyed and our money isn't wasted. Parliament having long ago lost control of the public purse, it was only a matter of time before the government did as well.

It's good of Coyne to finally recognize the clear and present danger to this country's parliamentary democracy. We have been filling these pages with warnings of such impending events for years.

Be careful, Andrew. Someone will accuse you of being "reactionary" or "hyperbolic". And I might point out that the people who accused the writers here of those things have not returned to call us what we actually were: right all along.

Stewart:

The who-knew-what about the real costs of the F-35 fighter jet Canada wants to purchase is worrisome enough. But at the heart of the fiasco is a far more serious concern about what public honesty means to this government.

It's a sad state that few Canadians appear surprised by the auditor general's findings that Parliament was kept in the dark over the real costs of this program and what looks to be a $10-billion overrun.
Many seem to assume that misleading and denying whenever it suits is a government's normal default position. After all, this government seems to have done it for years on Afghanistan and with its other problems in national defence.

In my own attempts to unravel the F-35's real costs I never once met a single soul outside government and knowledgeable about defence purchases who believed the prime minister's promise that the planes could be delivered for a bargain-rate $75 million each.

I never met anyone inside the Canadian military who thought so either.

I'm sure thousands in the aviation industry who follow these programs, especially in the U.S. and Europe, simply assumed Ottawa was dealing in fairy tales for public consumption, from which it refused to budge.

This is why we need to see if this current mess is part of a pattern of official "misstatements" on defence matters. If so, we've got a serious national problem.

Brian Stewart has been on the beat for longer than I can remember. His article should be read in its entirety because he goes on to describe the obsessive secrecy in which the Harperites surround themselves on all things. But the highlight was the continued attempt to suppress information on the Afghanistan adventure.

Unlike Coyne, Stewart never offered us Harper as a "good thing". He just kept chipping away at things that seemed to exist in the strange shadows of the Harper government.

This trend towards denial makes everything about the misstated F-35 billions a deeply serious affair.

We really need to know how deep the deception went in this case. And we ought to be much more curious about what is being carried out in our names under the cloak of secrecy.

Yes, we do.

And we need to know who knew what when back in May of 2011, when thousands of calls went out misdirecting voters to bogus polling stations. 

Partisan to the core

I suppose it was all in the spirit of "giving".

The political machine behind the man who is now Speaker of the House of Commons opened its wallet for the Guelph Conservative campaign currently under scrutiny by Election Canada’s robo-calls probe, records at the watchdog agency show. 

Less than two weeks before the 2011 election, Andrew Scheer’s Regina-Qu’Appelle riding association in Saskatchewan transferred $3,000 to the Guelph Conservative campaign for candidate Marty Burke. 

Elections Canada records suggest this was the only Conservative riding association outside Guelph to transfer cash to Mr. Burke’s campaign during the writ period.  

The smell is starting to permeate the robes.

Want to chew up their war chest?

Make them pay.

Harebell dissects the PIPED Act.

All you have to do is find the name of the Conservative Party of Canada data compliance officer.

The question is, can you do it?

Of course you can. You're Canadian!

And the attempt to repair the break

As RossK points out, there is a serious attempt on the part of Conservative party operatives (and their selected tame journalists) to contain the election fraud issue to Guelph. In short, the theory that it was a "rogue" caller and nothing else happened. From comments in this post Alison reminds us of this from CBC reporter Terry Milewski:

"We now have, thanks to John [Iveson], the list of numbers called by Pierre Poutine. Now where did those come from? Well, the Conservative Party, according to John's story, is likely to use this to show that it was more limited than many people thought - it was kind of Guelph plus extra.That raises the question where did they get this list of numbers? Where did the Conservatives get it? Why did the Conservatives have it?"

On CBC's The House, Milewski was having none of Iveson's attempt to limit. As he points out there were robocalls that went well beyond the "Guelph +" fallout area. He also reiterated the point that there were plenty of live calls which used similar tactics.

I'll repeat the big question, which Terry Milewski above has put on the national table, and which The Sixth Estate asks:

These phone records, if they’re legit, are evidence of election fraud. The proper place for these records is in the hands of Elections Canada investigators. The fact that the Conservatives have them can only mean one of three things:

The Conservatives got the records directly from Racknine. I’m not sure how that squares with Racknine’s previous claims that they are a non-partisan organization and that the call order in question didn’t come from the Conservative Party (which would mean, presumably, that they shouldn’t be sharing the records with an unconnected third party).

The Conservatives got the records from Elections Canada. This would suggest either that the Conservatives have a mole on the investigation team, or that Elections Canada is under political control by the very party that it’s currently supposed to be investigating.

The Conservatives got the records internally. This would suggest they already know who the perpetrator is — and may have known all along.

On The House, Iveson, after almost slipping, stops short of stating that Matt Meier of Racknine provided the list of the numbers called to the Conservative Party insiders.

So, Iveson's theory, (and you can bet this will be the regurgitated Conservative line), is that it's just Guelph with a little bit of fallout drift, it's just one "rogue" person and the central campaign had nothing to do with it.

Terry Milewski's reporting provides evidence that it is much, much wider than that.

As RossK points out in the bottom of his post:

Have you noted the new meme....That if it wasn't a call wherein the caller, Robo or otherwise, identified him or herself as being from Elections Canada, it was not illegal....Again, it would appear that folks are trying to limit and circumscribe the hangout as much as possible to he or she who soon will be, we imagine, scapegoated...

There seems to be further rumbling that any calls that went out from ridings were the work of riding workers and there was no central effort.

So why then, do you need this?

The Shattering

You could make book that there are a lot of phones busy and nobody is sending anybody to a non-existent voting place. But that's what's being discussed.

Ian Brodie, Harpers chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, had this to add to the voter suppression file:

Something seems to have gone on, on a scale I’ve never seen before

Hard to disagree with that. Brodie, a Harper insider, is now contradicting Harper and Del Mastro who have both been denying anything and everything.

Over at The Sixth Estate the big question. The Conservatives apparently have access to campaign phone records and, since they are the subject of an investigation, it is only proper that we know how it is anybody under investigation came to be in possession of them.

A few days in May

There was a bright shining light on the morning of Tuesday, 3 May, 2011. Unfortunately it was shrouded by the gloom felt by most people who had headed to the polls the day before.

A majority of Canadians who voted had cast their ballots for someone other than the candidate running under the Harper banner yet, owing to an electoral process which recognizes plurality, Harper had achieved his dream of personal power with a parliamentary majority.

That upset created a whirlwind of media activity, speculation and (for some) loud rejoicing. There were three BIG stories that dominated the morning of May 3rd: The Harper majority; the crushing defeat of the Liberal party; and, the rise of the NDP as the new Official Opposition. You could shuffle the order of those stories any way you liked, but that was pretty much it.

Which meant the bright shining light, which had been ignited the day before, was now stuffed behind a closed closet door. Almost nobody noticed.

As Alison points out, however, it was there the whole time, staring us in the face. In those early days of May evidence of election wrongdoing was readily apparent and, by the morning of Tuesday, 3 May, 2011, there was every indication that it was deliberate, calculated and expansive.

It was washed over almost immediately. In ridings with close races 2nd place finishers who complained about voter-suppression tactics were dismissed as sore losers. Voters who complained were drowned-out by the celebratory noises of the likes of Rex Murphy and a narcissistic media punditry performing an electoral postmortem which focused on little more than their own navels.

Canadians, who had come to believe that elections in this country were scrupulously clean and well managed, (despite attack ads and irritating invasions of the telephone system by all parties), were, for the most part, glad just to have the damn thing done and over with. Execrable acts of election fraud would only prolong the agony of the previous 36 days (which Harper had managed to turn into years with the endless campaign)

The perpetrators of the strategy to suppress opposition votes were counting on exactly that.

I don't know of any organization the size of a national political party which does not perform a post-event analysis. It is how they stay efficient. In the case of a federal election all political parties would have carried out a detailed dissection of the operations of their campaigns to determine what worked and what didn't. That would include this unit of the Harper campaign.

It is also well-known that large organizations, whether they be corporations, churches, government departments or national political parties, watch media items related to their activities like a hawk. Message management, (something the Harperites treat as a religious item), requires never allowing a potentially damaging item to drift around without at least some prepared tactical response.

And that means that the same items which Alison has shown to have been in public view in those early days of May 2011 were a part of the scrutiny that most assuredly was carried out by the Harper campaign immediately after the election. They knew then that there was a bright shining light and they would have prepared for any exposure. From May 2011 to February 2012 they were trying to cover up.

Any competent party leader would also have been aware. In May, 2011.

That would mean that Harper knew, chose not to know, or is just plain stupid.

Talking point: It's Elections Canada's fault

This was almost inevitable.

In today's Ottawa Citizen a letter appeared in which the author suggests that Elections Canada and flawed voting lists are to blame for the entire mess surrounding the misdirection of voters to far distant or non-existent polling places.

So, to clarify that theory a trip to The Sixth Estate identifies the author of the letter, a former Ontario provincial returning officer, as a federal Conservative Party contributor.

Then, we have one from Chris Vander Doelen at the Windsor Star. Now, I don't know Vander Doelen from the drain-plug in a seaboat, but this got my receptors going: (My emphasis)

Some voters, the Opposition says with outrage, were even sent to the wrong polling stations, or to wrong locations with no polling stations!

This is news?

This happens every election. People move, and Elections Canada doesn't know.

Or Elections Canada simply makes a mistake - as they did with my household, which hasn't moved in six elections.

Out of the blue last spring they sent us 25 km out of our way to a non-existent polling station.

We haven't claimed to be the victims of dirty tricks yet, but we might if everyone else who got a bum steer climbs on the bandwagon.

No explanation as to how that misdirection came about, just ... See! It happened to me and I'm OK with it.


Far be it from me to question why a seasoned reporter (and presumably a seasoned voter) would simply accept being sent on a trip to nowhere without thoroughly researching and documenting the reason, but a little history might be in order here.

Vander Doelen did a "drive-by" article on Elizabeth May in January on an event in the Windsor area which he did not bother to attend. He also misled his readers with inaccurate information and some demonstrably sloppy research.

And, for an older talking point, The Ottawa Citizen provides Harper apologist, Michael Taube. Which means it will be repeated in the presence of Ezra Levant or Krista Erickson on Fox News North.

Target Seat Management Unit sounds so ... special forces, doesn't it?

In effect, that's what it is. It is an election campaign action squad of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Their job?

Concentrate efforts to win swing ridings for the Conservatives.

From the Hill Times in Dec 2008

Crestview Public Affairs Co-founder Mark Spiro
Mr. Spiro is a "brilliant mind" who was a key adviser and top organizer on the federal Conservatives' recent electoral successes. He focused on helping the Conservative Party win several of the swing ridings in the last election to increase their seat count in the House of Commons by 20 seats.

In charge of the Target Seat Management Unit. (I absolutely love that name!)

From the Hill Times Sept 2009

Mark Spiro, a senior Conservative who in the past campaigns was in charge of target seat management, is returning to the same role.

From the Hill Times April 2011

One Tory said Mark Spiro, founder of Crestview Public Affairs who was a federally-registered lobbyist in 2006 and 2007, is once again helping the Conservative war room's target seat management unit, as he was in the 2006 and 2008 campaigns.

So, when RossK and I noticed a line in Lawrence Martin's column on the Conservative shenanigans in Saanich-Gulf Islands during the 2008 federal election ...

Mr. Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, was categorical: “Nobody has ever asked me to do dirty tricks.” But it’s conceivable they were done without his knowledge. The party had a separate team, he said, that worked on swing ridings.

It forced us all to look a little deeper. Is Mr. Giraud pointing a finger? Certainly he wasn't pointing at himself and we can easily marry up his description with the Conservative Target Seat Management Unit.

(You just can't know how much I actually love that name. They should all have little unit patches on their left shoulder. Something like a cell phone with a thunderbolt through it. And a motto! They should have a motto. I'd suggest an informal one from my old unit but I'm pretty certain we're still using it. You fight dirty; We fight dirty).

Over to The Gazeteer!


Hat tip to Beijing York in comments.

Rats chewing at their own tails to get out of the trap

The theatre provided by the Harperites yesterday was more than a little entertaining. It also smacks of desperation. Dr. Dawg provides a comprehensive walk through the sewage.

I found this rather interesting:

And later this week, these little latter-day Joe McCarthys want to drag Adam Carroll, the kid involved, in front of the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee—my God, the sheer irony of that choice!—to give him the third degree.

The problem is that he hasn’t done anything illegal, and what he has done, he’s already ‘fessed up to. Taxpayers’ dollars are going to be spent on this fatuous witch-hunt, no doubt intended to generate enough fog to help get them out of the robocon jam they’re in. Will the corporate media be sucked in? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Agreed ... but that ain't all. This is a first-class act of "railroading" by Del Mastro. "Staffers" can't be held to account by the Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee. 

As Kady, Canada's self-admitted parliamentary committee-junkie, points out, this, if it ever warranted going further than it already has, belongs at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

As far as I can tell, the Del Mastro motion doesn't even try to squeeze itself within the broad but not unlimited mandate of the ethics committee, which includes, among other matters, the Access to Information and Privacy Acts, as well as the Conflict of Interest Act, which deals the conduct of designated public office holders. 

It was under those statutes -- ATI and CoIA, specfiically, that ministerial staffers Sebastien Tognieri and Kaz Nejatian were called to testify on their activities as ministerial staffers by the previous iteration of ETHI. Employees of party research bureaus, like MPs' staff,  are not covered by that particular law, which is why issues related to the conduct of non-ministerial Hill staff -- including the alleged use of House of Commons resources -- fall under the aegis of Procedure and House Affairs. 

Which suggests that the odious Del Mastro is doing this purely for the theatrics, which, as Dawg points out, will almost assuredly see the Harper tactic of cloaking committee activities in secrecy lifted.

They're acting like they have something to hide.

They are scared.

Keep them that way.

How many ways can you say "Rust-Out"?

Perhaps the concept of the Joint Support Ship was one task too many. It was, in one sense at least, something of a desperation move to satisfy many demands on a navy that urgently wanted one real thing - replacements for the old, steam-driven, fleet replenishment ships. That was number one on the design item list - the ability to keep a naval task group refuelled and resupplied at sea. Without them the sovereign global mobility of the Canadian Navy would become impossible.

The Defence Department has spent $44 million so far on office and support costs and consulting contracts for its program to purchase a new fleet of supply ships, but government officials are now examining whether to start afresh on the troubled project. [...] The program, known as the Joint Support Ship or JSS, was derailed in August after the bids from two consortiums were rejected by the government.

In fact, the Navy has already been staring at that cold boiler. The refits of HMC ships Protecteur and Preserver have seen those ships removed from service for over 18 months each, leaving either the Atlantic or Pacific task group without Canadian provided underway replenishment.

The Canadian Navy had never been in the business of transporting the Canadian Army in any significant numbers. (The exception is the 2nd World War when three Canadian Pacific passenger liners were taken into service, converted to armed-merchant cruisers and were employed as infantry landing ships). However, the GTS Katie episode, wherein the American owner of the ship refused to deliver the load of armoured vehicles, weapons and ammunition returning from the Kosovo mission until more money was paid, folded another role into the yet-to-be-designed replenishment ship replacement - that of military sealift.

Still another role was developing. The ships, aside from being able to keep frigates and destroyers replenished, and taking into account the roll-on-roll-off requirement would also be expected to perform a role in the littoral zones, acting as support and safe off-the-beach area for troops over the beach.

To anybody familiar with any one of those roles, the thought of kneading those three significantly different functions into one hull was not simply daunting; it was mind-boggling. Another thing was obvious: In order to get what everybody wanted, it was going to be expensive.

And everybody wanted everything. As much as the funds would come from the naval envelope, all three services wanted these ships for their own specific purposes.

The Joint Support Ship project was given the go-ahead by the Paul Martin Liberal government. The original plan called for four ships. Even those of us standing on grey plate never believed that would happen. Three was more likely the case, particularly since most of us were viewing the fleet replenishment role as primary and rationalization of that function meant three; not four. The current situation of two fleet replenishment ships had already highlighted the fact that the Navy was one ship shy of its needs.

Then something strange happened. The Harper government, in its effort to demonstrate a much stronger committment to national defence than anybody on the planet, took total ownership of the Navy's JSS project. They went to great lengths to ensure that it looked like their idea. Anything related to defence procurement got a "Harper" label.

No one was complaining, save for the fact that had the project proceeded unimpeded, it might have made it under the funding wire as a viable three ship procurment. Add a lengthy procurement review by the Harperites which stalled everything except the unplanned pet Conservative projects arising from election campaign promises and the Harper Accountability Act which has added a strong dose of cold molasses to the flow of information* in the public service and there was little chance that an increasingly expensive project would go forward anywhere near as planned.

The Navy is more than a little reluctant to accept a two ship option. That's what they're working with now in ships that are 40 years old and only performing one-third of what the JSS was supposed to do. That leaves scrapping the project altogether, writing off the money spent to date and respawning a new ship, (one far less capable, but perhaps more rational).

There is more. Much more.

In truth, the Canadian Navy is in tatters. The JSS project is effectively dead, the frigate mid-life extension project is in serious jeapordy and replacement shipborne helicopter delivery is now a date pulled from the air with no attachment to reality.

Worse though, is the manpower situation. The Navy is hemmorhaging skilled personnel.

That and more in future posts.