The Sixth Estate

I’ve been watching the Canadian lobbyist registry for about a month now, as part of my ongoing Lobbyist Tracker project. So far, I’ve highlighted the hypocrisy of the Harper regime in complaining about “foreign environmentalists” at the pipeline inquiry while tolerating legions of foreign influence-purchasers in Ottawa, and the entirely unsurprising fact that corporations and trade groups, not environmentalists or trade unions or any other supposed “socialists,” account for the overwhelming share of lobbying activity.

Today I thought it would be useful to break down those categories a little more and see what industries are most active in our national capital. Between January 1-24 (my database is delayed by a week to allow time for registrations to get processed by the Commissioner’s office), there were more than 240 new registrations. Taking out some duplicates and some occasional oddities, they fell along the following lines:

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There comes a point when you’ve moved past trying to stay optimistic in the face of bad news into the realm of the simply deluded — or, no better, into that of the propagandist. Few of my readers will be surprised to learn that I think the Globe & Mail has crossed into this dark and tragic realm, but I still thought I should not allow them to take their most recent step without being called out for their unmitigated bullshit:

People are continuing to take on debt past age 45… But there are positive sides, too. With all that debt, they will need to find continued sources of income... Need drives innovation, and Canada will see an unleashing of creativity from older people. It’s risky to be punch-drunk, and many people are courting more than a bit of risk; but in risk is the possibility of growth.

Here’s a hint for the editors of the Globe & Mail: when you find yourself arguing that it is good for the country to have a large number of seniors heavily in debt, or for that matter any large class that is heavily in debt, you need to recheck your moral compass. Assuming you still have one. Arguably you should also check said compass if you find yourself arguing that debt is good because it makes people work hard.

It is increasingly clear that Canada is careening towards the same death spiral the Americans entered in 2008. When that happens, the Harper regime will claim it is an unexpected travesty caused by out-of-control public spending, even though it is entirely the result of lax economic management on his part, and tax rates cut so low that the public services Canadians expect from their government, like healthcare and Old Age Security, cannot be “sustained.” And when we hit that point, the yes-men pretending to be journalists at propaganda outlets like the Globe will nod along, no doubt, and agree that nobody saw it coming and that reducing the population to impoverishment is the best thing to do, because, after all, poverty inspires people to work hard and innovate.

The Globe & Mail eagerly looks forward to millions of people nearing retirement while heavily in debt because it thinks that desperate seniors will somehow “innovate” masses of new jobs. It seems to me that the opposite possibility is much greater — that we will have a wave of seniors desperate to eke out a living and unable to enjoy the twilight of their lives as this country has guaranteed them for almost their entire lives.

Well, not really. Actually Newt Gingrich is a corrupt, overly ambitious, unexpectedly arrogant candidate. The fact that he is still seriously in the running for the Republican ticket is evidence of how pathetic a spectacle American corporatist politics has become. But I cannot stress how much more pathethic has been the public response to Newt’s surprise proposal to establish a permanent moon base within the next ten years.

The response has been uniformly negative, not just in the United States but here in Canada as well, where the media is for some reason paying unusual attention — this piece in the Windsor Star is typical, both of the generally derisive tone taken by the sage pundits who tell us what to think as well as of their appalling ignorance. The author, Karen Hall, tries valiantly to impress us with her ability to recite facts about the Moon from Wikipedia or some similar online source. I’m not impressed, Karen, but nice try.

The thing of it is, Newt’s right. Humanity has to establish a permanent base on the Moon. If we don’t, we will certainly go extinct. Not because the Moon is particularly special. It’s not. But it’s the first step, and sooner or later, we do have to find ways to live on other rocks. Earth’s lifespan is limited, and getting progressively more so the longer we keep our climate change policy in the hands of religious fundamentalists and uninformed athlete-celebrities like Nancy Greene Rain, an ignorant dunce whose alleged skiing prowess apparently supercedes her appalling stupidity when it comes to qualifying her for the Senate.

Of course, there is something to be said for not rushing into a trillion-dollar venture, and into solving some of our problems here at home. But it’s worth pointing out that in just fifty years, we’ve gone from imagining a future in space for humanity in the wake of successful moon landings, to hooting in derision at the very idea of going to the Moon at all. This rapid shrinking of vision does not bode well for humanity.

The Sixth Estate Flack Awards are a regular series created last December to recognize ministers and their subhuman mouthpieces for going below and beyond the call of duty in crafting the very worst in government press releases. Communications incompetence is actually a specialty of the current regime. Since creating the awards, I have recognized ministers for incompetence in math, rambling conspiracy theories, and forgetting to write the press release altogether (but publishing the title anyways).

One of the most common problems is an inability to grasp basic concepts of time, like how long ago 1870 was or whether it’s entirely appropriate to get visibly excited about the fact that the government is providing emergency aid for a storm… that happened four years before the announcement. That’s the category into which this week’s winner fits:

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Let’s suppose that it was publicly revealed that a communications officer in the Prime Minister’s Office — Sara MacIntyre — was the wife of a senior Russian diplomat at the embassy — again, let’s suppose, Sergei Zhukov. When this is revealed, there is some public criticism. But it’s all right. The Russian embassy and the Prime Minister’s Office both agree that Zhukov and MacIntyre’s professional and personal lives don’t overlap, because they’re professionals after all, and so there’s nothing to worry about. What’s wrong with this picture?

I was going to refrain from commenting on the Scott-Smart scandal until after the CBC made a formal response, but since it seems that it isn’t going to make any response at all, and since other media organizations have absurdly closed ranks around them, I guess it’s time to break silence. For my non-B.C. readers, Stephen Smart is the bureau chief in Victoria, and wife Rebecca Scott is now a press secretary for “Liberal” premier (but federal Conservative ally) Christie Clark. CBC’s Ombudsman just gave a failing grade to this obvious conflict of interest, but only is CBC refusing to do anything about it, other members of the press gallery are siding with Smart!

This is, of course, beyond preposterous. This is not a matter of leaving professional secrets at the office. Smart’s job is to find information that his wife does not want him to know. Scott’s job is to prevent her husband from finding information that she wants to keep secret. The blatant conflict of interest here is large enough that the people who claim not to see it are being willfully negligent in their own duties as journalists. Yes, I’m talking to you, Craig McInnes and Keith Baldrey. Real journalists would realize there’s a problem here. Sadly, you don’t appear to fit in that category.

Interestingly, so far nobody is mentioning the other party that doesn’t appear to see a problem here: Premier Clark and her team. That should tell you all you need to know about whether CBC reporting is compromised. This sort of conflict is one that can only have one winner, and you can be sure that if Christie Clark thought she was going to be the loser, her newly wedded press secretary would be out on her butt by the end of the day.

Alternative title: how many degrees of separation are there between Ontario anti-wind activists and fringe medicine?

Most of my trawling through the federal disclosure records and databases is simply menial drudgery. But there are occasional bright glimmers of something interesting. One of those is Trueman Tuck, lobbyist extraordinaire, of Belleville, Ontario. Tuck only has a couple of dozen active registrations right now, but he has registered 263 times since 2007. He’s self-employed, and he’s a very busy, busy man. Oh, and did I also mention that “Trueman of the Tuck clan,” as he also calls himself, is

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Predictably, the Fraser Institute is not happy that the Albertan government is moving to abolish elementary school provincial achievement tests (PATs), which it uses as fodder for its dubious and worthless “Report Cards” — studies which are almost invariably used to cast doubt on public schools, promote “independent” private schools, and downplay the obvious fact that the most important factors in student success in our schools are the stability and socioeconomic status of their family. Last year, in its infinite wisdom, the Institute proclaimed Bountiful’s school one of the best in the province. It was a rare meeting of the free-market libertarians and the ultra-conservative polygamists, which impressed nobody.

Of course, this decision by the Albertan government will save a great deal of time for students and teachers, and eliminate a serious ethical problem (should students be subjected to what amounts to an extended social research exercise, without compensation and without consent?). But it will also deprive the Fraser Institute of its precious data, and so they’re throwing a temper tantrum.

It’s interesting, I think, that an institute supposedly so dedicated to free market principles gets into such a snit when a government threatens to withhold its supply of “free” data paid for out of the public purse. I’m sure if the Institute offered to compensate the government for collecting their data, something could be arranged.

In response to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s recent temper tantrum about “foreign billionaire socialists hijacking” the pipeline hearings, I reactivated my Lobbyist Watch project, which tracks the burgeoning lobbying sector in Ottawa. Ottawa has a love-hate relationship with this sector. Harper claims to hate it, but they still manage to get invited to all the good parties. During the first week of the New Year, when the federal government was ranting about foreign radicals influencing the pipeline hearings, about 40% of new lobbying registrations came from foreigners, and Harper didn’t make a peep of protest about it. That number now stands around 25%.

The second factor worth highlighting is that, despite following Vivian Krause down the conspiracy theory trail and claiming that foreign environmentalists and other NGOs are busy destroying the Canadian economy by buying influence in our political sphere, an overwhelming proportion of lobbyists sell their mouths and their minds to corporations which, almost without exception, are interested in less environmental regulations, less taxes, and less regulation.

During the first two weeks of this year, over 80% of new lobbyist registrations were by corporations and corporate trade groups, including all but two of the foreign influencers the government claims to despise. The nonprofit side of the balance sheet is dominated by universities and health groups. There were exactly 2 unions registered.

The Lobbyist Watch page also lists people who worked for the present government and subsequently became lobbyists, where the pay is presumably better, despite the fact that they worked for (and supposedly agreed with) a government that publicly insists that “politics will no longer be a stepping stone to a lucrative career in lobbying the government.” This week I have made additions to the list. DFH Public Affairs’s new senior consultant, Matthew Henley, was working as an assistant to Conservative MPs as recently as December 2010. Now he represents a Luxembourg mining outfit (more foreign varmints!) and a Montreal tech company.

This essay is cross-posted at Rev. Dave’s Bible Study, Sixth Estate’s adjunct blog on religion.

Let’s suppose that an NGO was about to distribute a booklet in your child’s grade 5 class. The book contains admonitions that gay people should be stoned to death, that teenage girls who have sex with their boyfriends should be burned to death, and that while engaging in genocidal warfare against the next town over, you should feel free to abduct any attractive girls you find and make them your sex slaves. In fact, this booklet advocates that people be murdered for several dozen offences, ranging from masturbation to witchcraft to disrespecting one’s parents. Are you disturbed that this book is being distributed in your child’s class? Would it make you feel any more comfortable if the school sent home a permission form first, saying that if you wanted to, you could ask them not to give your child this book?

If you answered yes to the first question, or no to the second, then you are the sort of “dinner party ruining atheist” that National Post columnist Jonathan Kay thinks should just shut up and read the Bible like a good little Christian lad. If not, then you may feel some sympathy for PEI father Michael Arsenault, who is upset that his province allows the Gideons to distribute Bibles in elementary school classrooms.

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This week, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed with the Harper regime that several Canadian citizens detained and tortured in developing countries based on advice passed to the Americans from the Canadian secret police services have very limited rights to seek restitution from the government for the abuse they suffered. Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin, and Ahmed El-Maati suffered in circumstances roughly similar to those of the better-known Maher Arar, and were subsequently cleared of any links to terrorism by an official inquiry.

Reference to this inquiry, by retired judge Frank Iacobucci, is made in the news coverage. What is not mentioned is that it is now virtually impossible to find this report anymore. If you go to its former domain name, IacobucciInquiry.ca, you are instead bombarded by advertisements for a male sex toy product called the Fleshlight. Presumably this reflects the work of an opportunistic vulture with no ties to the Conservative Party, though of course one can never be sure about these things.

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