Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPWHe also offers his thoughtful perspective of Stephen Harper’s last 10 years in his recent eBook, The Harper Decade.

David Johnston, international man of almost nointrigueBy Paul Wells - Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 42 Comments

Patrick Doyle/CP

News that the Governor General will meet with aboriginal leaders (or at least with those aboriginal leaders who are pleased to show up)

after Friday’s meeting with the PM (if it happens) at Rideau Hall (unless the venue changes) offers us our umpteenth opportunity toconsider the autonomy of governors general and lieutenant governors.

They have none.

OK, for the sticklers in the audience, I’m willing to amend that to: they have limitless autonomy which they essentially never exercise.Which is the same as having no autonomy.

The PMO sent out word today that David Johnston will have a “ceremonial” meeting with First Nations leaders, at Stephen Harper’srequest. Then Rideau Hall sent out a communiqué saying the same thing. I would be surprised if the timing of the two communiqués wasnot co-ordinated, so the PM’s staff speaks before the GG’s. This is as it should be, and as it has been since Lord Elgin signed theRebellion Losses Bill.

One of the enduring modern bits of Ottawa lunacy has been the persistent belief that governors general will do something besides whatthe prime minister asks them to do. Continue…

Chief Theresa Spence: On the uses of caution

By Paul Wells - Monday, January 7, 2013 at 10:01 AM - 138 Comments

My last blog post of 2012 made some guesses about politics in 2013 and included a throwaway line about Tom Mulcair: “Notethe lack of photos with hunger-striking Chief Theresa Spence.” Today, following an orchestrated campaign of leaks of anew Deloitte audit showing that it has, for some time, been impossible to tell how federal money is spent in Attawapiskat — andthe reappearance of some damning reporting a year ago by the CBC — let us note again Mulcair’s decision not to show up atSpence’s side.

Others played Chief Spence’s protest differently.

Joe Clark was quick to visit with Chief Spence, which led Keith Beardsley, who has worked for both Clark and Stephen Harper,to make the kind of amazing suggestion that Harper should appoint Clark as his envoy to… to… to “this file.” [UPDATE:Beardsley tells me that's a misreading, and he was suggesting only that Harper ask Clark to brief him on Clark's visit withSpence. Sorry for the confusion - pw] Paul Martin, who presented himself as an improvement over Jean Chrétien in governmentaccountability but who was prime minister during part of the Deloitte Attawapiskat audit period, visited Spence and returned tocall her an inspiration, a term now open to multiple interpretations.

From Mulcair, nothing. Well, nothing visual. He did write an open letter that mentioned Spence, but reading it now what’sstriking is that Mulcair did not call on Harper to meet Spence, only to “act swiftly to avoid a personal tragedy.”

This now looks like becoming prudence on the part of the Leader of the Opposition. My new suspicion is that last year’s slightlyweird Conservative Party “Get to Know Mulcair’s Team” web ads were based partly on Conservative worries that Mulcairwould not serve up as many gaffes as Harper might like, so he should be tied as closely as possible to his less cautious backbench. Mulcair, after all, comes from the province where this ad nearly sunk an opposition leader on the road to power:

Politics 2013: the calmer middle part

By Paul Wells - Monday, December 31, 2012 at 12:24 PM - 66 Comments

I’m with Nascar blogger MadCowRacing: the middle of a long race is underrated. “It seems like today a lot of people don’tknow how to enjoy the middle part of the races, the part where the drivers settle in for a while,” MadCowRacing writes in hisblog post about 500-mile track races, which I adopt as a text for Canadian federal politics in 2013. ”A lot of people think theseguys are ‘riding around,’ but that is never really the case except for the drivers who like to sit in the back until the end of arestrictor plate race.”

Continue…

Art in its place

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 27, 2012 at 9:31 PM - 6 Comments

I hope you’ll indulge a story from home.

Insomniac on Christmas Eve during a visit to Sarnia to spend the holidays with parents and siblings, I prowled my parents’bookcases looking for something to distract me. I found two copies of a paperbound book called The Collection: Sarnia PublicLibrary and Art Gallery from 1981. I knew the library part well: most Saturdays while I was growing up my dad would load theprevious week’s library books into the back of his car, I’d bring my own smaller set of returns, and we’d head downtown for arefill. I’m pleased to see the library is still a going concern, with better opening hours than the two Ottawa Public Librarybranches closest to my house.

The art gallery upstairs was a less frequent destination, but the catalogue, published while I was in high school, confirmed myvague memory: it had a top-drawer collection, 336 pieces by 1981 including works by most of the Group of Seven, Emily Carr,

David Milne, David Blackwood, Jean Paul Lemieux, Tom Thomson, Toni Onley and others. By 1994, the gallery started tooutgrow its home and the Lambton County authorities moved it, in some desperation, down the street to a downtown mall whichwas already tanking commercially, leaving a valuable collection surrounded by dollar stores, boarded storefronts and leaky roofs.And that’s the last I heard about it all.

So I was surprised and relieved to learn that the collection has moved to a stunning new downtown venue, the Judith andNorman Alix Art Gallery, in a $10.1 million complex behind a heritage-building edifice on the main Christina St. retail drag. Itlooks like this:

My timing was pretty good: it opened in October and I was able to visitthe gallery today before its first three exhibits close in the New Year. Continue…

The NRA: if it’s guns or freedom, we’ll have guns, thank you

By Paul Wells - Friday, December 21, 2012 at 1:38 PM - 36 Comments

The National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre at a press conference on Dec. 21, 2012 in Washington.(Evan Vucci/AP)

It’s hard to know where to begin making sense of the NRA’s news conference this morning, in which the leading U.S. gun lobbycalled for a massive federal program, run by President Barack Obama and his socialist hordes, to finance a constant armed statepresence in every neighbourhood in America. I’d have thought conservatives would be against that sort of thing. How will yourArm-a-Care officer get to your neighbourhood school? In a black helicopter?

There is a kind of logic in Wayne Lapierre’s argument. It’s not as though the nearly half-million armed men and women whowould flood America’s 98,000 public schools — here I figure two shifts of two snipers each for each school — would be the firstfirearms a virginal American public ever saw. To quote Lapierre:

Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, officebuildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security.

We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work inoffices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.

Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children— we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it andexploit it. That must change now!

Lapierre’s logic would be bulletproof, so to speak, if U.S. airports, office buildings, courthouses and Presidents had a spotlessrecord free from armed assault. Or if the correlation between armed protection and safety in any of those venues, worldwide,were clear. But, yes, since America is already armed to the teeth, fully arming the teeth does make a kind of sense, if one is in agenerous mood. Continue…

Franchement: PM Stephen Harper and French Canadians

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 20, 2012 at 6:10 PM - 23 Comments

Four of Jean Chrétien’s six Supreme Court appointees were francophones, including some from outside Quebec; the twoanglophones, Fish and Binnie, were Montreal-born McGill graduates who had no trouble in French. At one point Chrétien’sChief Justice (Antonio Lamer), Clerk of the Privy Council (Jocelyne Bourgon), Chief of Staff (Jean Pelletier), and some largenumber of his cabinet ministers were francophones. Chrétien’s favourite cabinet minister, Stéphane Dion, introduced an ActionPlan for Official Languages in 2003; Paul Martin extended it in 2005.

I belabour all this because Stephen Harper responded to some criticism in a year-end interview with TVA by saying: “As primeminister, I think I’ve given more space to French than any prime minister in the history of the country.” (He began the sentencewith a franchement, frankly, that gave me this post’s headline.) Continue…

I can’t stop looking at this crazy toddler-snatching eagle

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 12:18 AM - 10 Comments

So this happened, unless it’s fake.

(source: Buzzfeed)

UPDATE: Gawker’s pretty sure it’s fake.

Mark Carney: He who is without sin…

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 3:58 PM - 17 Comments

So last night several dozen members of the Media Party joined a smaller cohort from the Conservative Party for a Christmasparty at 24 Sussex Drive. Laureen Harper made little chocolate mice for the dessert tray. The event was strictly off the record, anew formal stipulation in place since Jane Taber surprised us all by writing up chapter and verse of the prime minister’s cocktail-party chat for the Globe a year ago, so I will tell you not a word that Stephen Harper shared with us. I can, however, report thatAndrew MacDougall said not a word.

And it wasn’t for lack of effort on my part. “Answer the Mark Carney question of your choice,” I said to him, attempting to besly.

“No comment,” he said, smiling and staring resolutely into the middle distance.

“Was there anger?” I asked.

Continue…

Belgium to largish French movie idols: Welcome!

By Paul Wells - Monday, December 17, 2012 at 5:39 PM - 13 Comments

Belgium’s foreign minister Didier Reynders seems a jolly fellow. He should be, given that Gérard Depardieu has chosen to livein Belgium and engage in a shouting match with the French government over French income taxes, which are high. TodayReynders gave an interview to the centre-right newspaper Le Figaro, where critics of the socialist president François Hollandeare made to feel comfortable.

Dépardieu’s arrival is a good-news story for Belgium, which could use one; Wikipedia’s entry on Belgium’s “2007-2011political crisis” seems to me to have pretty arbitrary start and end dates. Reynders’ interview catches the longtime former finance

minister in an ebullient and cutting mood. On French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault’s use of the word “pathetic” (minable) to describeDépardieu: “These are words we would never use in Belgium, even when we are very angry.” On the French government’sdesire to renegotiate tax collection between the two governments, the gentlest possible No Way: “We’re ready to examine manythings, as long as the superior principle of free circulation of people, goods and services within the EU is respected. But if this isabout recognizing some French power to tax people who live in Belgium, that’s a whole other matter. Every European countrymust accept that its citizens decide to live elsewhere.” Continue…

Saul on a wall: John Ralston Saul’s portrait unveiling

By Paul Wells - Monday, December 17, 2012 at 2:09 PM - 32 Comments

Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson stands with her husband John Ralston Saul after his official portrait was unveiledat a ceremony at Rideau Hall on Dec. 17, 2012. (Adrian Wyld/CP)

David Johnston used the word “tradition” at least three times as he introduced the subject of Rideau Hall’s latest portrait thismorning. The current Governor General is a voracious reader, an early advocate of the internet, and a stickler for propriety; hewill not have been unaware that advance coverage of John Ralston Saul’s portrait unveiling generated not inconsiderable onlineumbrage over the fact that Saul, while he may have his charms, was never the Governor General of Canada, and why are my taxdollars etc., etc., etc.

Johnston said nothing to address the monetary question, but here’s the answer: portraits of former viceregal consorts that hang atRideau Hall, such as this one of Gerda Hnatyshyn, are paid for by the subject. As for the who-does-he-think-he-is bit, theincumbent guarantor of the viceregal office’s propriety was quick to remind the little crowd that his predecessor AdrienneClarkson had worked with Saul in continuation of “a tradition of governors general and their spouses working together for abetter country.” He then mentioned the paintings and photos of previous spouses that line the august joint’s corridors. (GabrielleLéger, who read portions of two Throne Speeches after Jules Léger suffered a stroke in office, stands with him in his officialportrait.) “Today’s portrait unveiling is a continuation of this tradition.”

Populist dudgeon thus banished, Johnston moved on to what we may perhaps call the Clarkson-Saul legacy. Continue…

F-35: Hubris is a Greek word that means ‘what just happened’

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 11:45 PM - 59 Comments

Let’s start with the email Dimitri Soudas, a former press secretary to the Prime Minister, sent from the Prime Minister’s Officeon Aug. 25, 2010:

“On 24 August, two CF-18 Hornet fighter aircraft were launched and visually identified 2 Russian aircraft, theTU-95 Bear, approximately 120 nautical miles north of Inuvik, Northwest Territories. At their closest point, theRussian aircraft were 30 nautical miles from Canadian soil. The CF-18s shadowed the Bear aircraft until theyturned around. The two CF-18s came from 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alberta.

”Thanks to the rapid response of the Canadian Forces, at no time did the Russian aircraft enter sovereignCanadian airspace.

”We are happy to report that CF aircraft returned to their base without incident….

”The CF-18 is an incredible aircraft that enables our Forces to meet Russian challenges in our North. Thatproud tradition will continue after the retirement of the CF-18 fleet as the new, highly capable andtechnologically-advanced F-35 comes into service. It is the best plane our Government could provide our Forces,and when you are a pilot staring down Russian long range bombers, that’s an important fact to remember.”

Never mind that the email contained an industrial quantity of bullshit; on a day like today, if we let that slow us down we willnever get anywhere. Note, instead, the tone — “when you are a pilot staring down Russian long range bombers;” the assumption,too ludicrous to state outright but there all the same, that if our lonely flyboys don’t stare down the Russians they will bedropping their lethal payload on Edmonton any minute now; and most importantly, the casually assumed identification with themen and women in uniform, who actually do face danger whenever they taxi down a runway, hardly ever from an externalenemy, but routinely from altitude, velocity, thin air and the immense hurtling canisters of inflammable liquid upon which theyare perched.

This is serious business, the Harper government has said in one way or another a thousand times. They got at least that muchright. It is so serious that one of the distinguishing characteristics of most professionals in uniform is an elevated degree ofhumility, because if you get too far up your own backside you will miss information that could cost lives. That level of humilityhelps explain why, immediately after Soudas sent his Top Gun email and the Sun papers began a fun week trying to figure outhow to spell “Russki,” NORAD put out a news release stating for the record that the Russians had done nothing untoward. “BothRussia and NORAD routinely exercise their capability to operate in the North,” the people who actually wear uniforms andactually stare at bombers wrote. “These exercises are important to both NORAD and Russia and are not cause for alarm.”

There is a straight line from that day to today, when Peter MacKay should be hanging his head in shame and the Prime Ministerof Canada with him, but instead they put on the kind of asinine spectacle that has my very even-tempered colleague Geddesplainly struggling to contain his temper. That line is drawn along the hard rule of a simplistic assumption that has been pervasivein this government: that because Conservatives like soldiers and pilots and airplanes, and the Liberals don’t, then theConservatives will make correct decisions and any critic, anywhere, must therefore be a Liberal and therefore — what’s theword? — treasonous.

Stéphane Dion used to ask about the treatment of Afghan prisoners who were legally a Canadian responsibility. Stephen Harperused to say Dion cared more about the Taliban than about Canadian troops. The details of the file cost Gordon O’Connor his jobas defence minister, and incidentally, on the ground in Afghanistan, real Canadian troops were scrambling to adjust, day afterday after day, to meet and reconcile two requirements they, at least, took very seriously: the need to keep large numbers ofpotential bad guys out of circulation, and the need to respect those prisoners’ most elementary human rights. Which meantStéphane Dion had a point.

Michael Ignatieff voted to defeat the government in the spring of 2011, and then Ignatieff led his party to historic defeat and helost his own seat and ho-ho, isn’t it fun, but the really funny thing is that what made Ignatieff vote the way he did was graveconcern over the cost of F-35 fighters and the government’s continued snit about even being asked to consider the question. TheCanadian people voted the way they did, and there was probably real insight in their decision that the Liberals should be pushedfurther from power rather than invited closer to it. But if the Conservatives had “pressed the reset button” 20 months ago insteadof today, then real pilots who have to stare down real threats would be 20 months closer to real equipment that might really help.Instead the pilots’ friends at Langevin have done the pilots a real disservice.

Every once in a while the government does listen to an opposition member, or a critic outside politics. It does reconcile its visionof the world with others’. That’s been an important part of Stephen Harper’s political longevity, too rarely recognized. But therewas never any real chance that it would do so on a military procurement file until it was far, far too late, because Conservatives

like soldiers and pilots and airplanes. This is how your strengths become weaknesses. There should be a designated full-timedevil’s advocate in the PMO, somebody the prime minister trusts a lot and fears a little. The person should argue, every day, thatthe government might be wrong. We used to have a civil service to do that, but those days are gone. On odd days, the designatedfull-time devil’s advocate could preface his remarks by saying, “I’m not really the devil’s advocate, you know. I’m the Queen’s,and the Canadian people’s, and yours too, if you’re smart.”

Subdivisions in the Hour of Chaos: Rush and Public Enemy

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 11:17 PM - 12 Comments

When Maclean’s published a list of the best albums of the ’00s at the end of 2009, the most common complaint from readers wasthat we had left Rush out. Since the only two complete studio albums of original music the Toronto band produced in the decadein question were Vapor Trails and Snakes & Arrows, arguably not the finest products of the band’s oeuvre, I had to admire thefans’ loyalty, at least. But then loyalty is one quality Rush’s fans have always delivered, usually in excess. It was the fans’ ardourthat persuaded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to include Rush among its 2013 inductees.

There’s no accounting for taste in these matters, but I think the hall’s honour roll this year is pretty strong. If disco mattered atall, Donna Summer was its best ambassador. Randy Newman was one of the finest piano men and singer-songwriters of the ’70s.The band Heart, I admit, seems an odd fit, but Quincy Jones has earned a place among the hall’s non-performers with fivedecades as a leading record producer.

Tonight I’m going to write about Rush and Public Enemy, intending no disrespect to the other inductees. I’m tickled that the twobands were named in the same year, because it’s hard to imagine two less similar products of North American popular culture. Ifthese two bands fit together in any hall, it must be a big hall. Continue…

FIPA’s worst critics, speaking anonymously for the PM

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 12:24 AM - 11 Comments

John Ivison’s latest column is mostly about the F-35 F-18 replacement F-35, but it includes a bit about the CNOOC-Nexen dealas well.

“The public seems to appreciate that the takeover of a relatively minor player, for a whopping premium, at aparticularly ticklish time in the Canada-China trade relationship was a prudent move. The government will nowuse this as a bargaining chip in the attempt to strike a more reciprocal rapport with the Chinese, as we movetoward exploratory talks on a broader free trade agreement.”

The notion that CNOOxen is a “bargaining chip” is one we’ve seen fairly frequently lately. From the Globe:

“Senior federal government officials told The Globe and Mail that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has beenincreasingly concerned with how Canada might gain more bargaining power to open up markets for Canadiancompanies in China. The Conservatives, they say, feel that the two-way investment relationship isoverwhelmingly in Beijing’s favour right now.”

And from, well the Globe:

“People close to the federal government said the idea of gaining more leverage with foreign governments came tobe a key factor in Mr. Harper’s thinking.”

It’s too bad the government had to use a Chinese takeover of a Canadian energy firm as the long-sought bargaining chip. It’s toobad the government didn’t have some sort of treaty that could protect Canadian investors in China hey waitaminnit —

For indeed the government has spent very nearly all of Calendar Year 2012 proclaiming it has just such a treaty in hand: thenotorious Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement, or FIPA. Continue…

Professor Brubeck

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 12:44 AM - 4 Comments

I did the thing today I sometimes do that baffles my editors. One of them emailed about Dave Brubeck’s death and askedwhether I’d like to write about him. I’m the jazz guy, after all, to the extent we have one, and Brubeck was the rare jazz musicianeveryone loved. But I passed. I have never been a fan of Brubeck’s piano playing. (I’ll get back to that.) I thought that in his lateryears he didn’t surround himself with impressive or even consistently coherent bands. I reviewed him twice for The Gazette inMontreal, not kindly. I was intrigued to be reminded that he had the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan in his band for a bit inthe 1970s. That must have been tense: Mulligan usually insisted on the refinement and closely-calibrated group dynamics I don’tassociate with late-period Brubeck.

But anyone who had the early career Brubeck had has earned any kind of late career he wants. His great quartet with PaulDesmond, Joe Morello and Gene Wright was as virtuous and influential as any in jazz in the 1950s and 1960s. It rose toprominence at a time when a lot of musicians were wondering what kind of next step jazz could take after the obviouspossibilities of bebop — jetting velocity, rich harmony, accents in odd places — had been explored by hundreds of musicians formore than a decade. Different musicians had different answers. Miles Davis slowed the pace of harmonic change. Art Blakey andHorace Silver heightened the music’s blues and gospel overtones. A few years later, Ornette Coleman would edge toward anemancipation from much of the music’s rule book. The pianist Lennie Tristano and his small circle dove deeper into the rulebook, working obsessively with a small group of standard tunes until they could take them in any direction.

Brubeck’s direction is suggested by the title of one of his early albums, Jazz Goes to College. Continue…

Philippe Couillard, radical federalist

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 2:08 PM - 5 Comments

What an amazing op-ed Philippe Couillard, the physician who is generally regarded as the front-runner to succeed Jean Charestas leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, has published this morning in Le Devoir.

It’s an attempt to define liberalism in a Quebec context, but along the way it establishes Couillard as the most unconditionallypro-Canadian figure among prominent Quebec politicians. More so, at least in Couillard’s choice of rhetoric, than Charest.(Charest sometimes soft-pedaled his federalist convictions to avoid being criticized as an outsider who didn’t get Quebec.) In the

context of Quebec’s Liberal Party, which was led for four decades by strongly nationalist figures — Jean Lesage, RobertBourassa and especially Claude Ryan — Couillard’s position is radical, especially for a man who seems likely to win theleadership with little bother and who will surely have been advised against rocking the boat. Continue…

On the retirement of a journalist from the Senate

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 5:34 PM - 1 Comment

Nothing recent, mind you. On Feb. 26, 1998 senators convened to say farewell to Richard J. Doyle, late of the Globe, one of thefirst senators Brian Mulroney had appointed to the red chamber almost 13 years earlier. I often wonder what Doyle, whom Inever met, would have made of the world that has come into being since he died in 2003. I am not at all sure politics is the onlyfield he would view with dismay, but it’s true that I was thinking of the Senate when I looked him up today. Here is some ofwhat Doyle’s colleagues said on his retirement:

Hon. John Lynch-Staunton (Leader of the Opposition): …Just look at his background. His entire career was involved withjournalism, starting with the Chatham Daily News until 1942, when he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and served overseaswith the RAF in Bomber Command until the end of the war. He then returned to the newspaper business and joined The Globeand Mail in 1951, where he occupied many senior positions, including those of managing editor, editor, editor-in-chief, andEditor Emeritus.

In 1983, when he was made a member of the Order of Canada, the following citation was read:

As managing editor and, since 1979 until recently, editor-in-chief of the Toronto Globe and Mail, Richard Doylehas been the guiding intelligence behind the development of the influential editorial policy and the national andinternational coverage of Canada’s leading English-language newspaper. Largely through his guidance, the paperhas set high standards of writing and ethics in journalism.

Colleagues may be interested to know that since 1967, 3,848 Canadians have been inducted into the order, and fewer than 100are identified as journalists. I will resist a temptation to speculate on why this profession has been given so little recognition bythe selection committee except to comment that it certainly must be nigh impossible to find many in this field who can match theethical standards which Dic Doyle brought to a profession to which he is so deeply attached…. Continue…

Canadian art now, at the National Gallery

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 30, 2012 at 12:25 AM - 8 Comments

On the weekend Marc Mayer, the director of the National Gallery of Canada, was gracious enough to show me and severalfriends through the gallery’s second Canadian Biennial, which goes by the name of Builders. It was the second time he’s shownus around. If we’re lucky it will become a tradition.

It was already the second time I was seeing this exhibition, which began Nov. 2 and will run through Jan. 20. I’m fascinated bythe whole premise of these biennials. As Colleague Geddes has written, Mayer is properly preoccupied with drawing big crowdsto the gallery and drawing new sources of philanthropic funding to go with his taxpayer-funded acquisition budget. But in lateautumn, with the summer blockbuster shows behind him, he has begun doing these biennials.

They feature the best art by living Canadian artists that the gallery has acquired in the last two years. So the gallery actually putsits (that is, yours, audiences’ and donors’) money into what it displays. To me this means it’s the art the gallery’s curators arereally serious about, although Mayer told us that he is sometimes told by art-world colleagues that hauling out your recentacquisitions isn’t “a real biennial.”

Whatever. Geddes has already written about visiting the show’s press preview with the eminent Michael Snow, so I won’t gointo great detail about what’s in it. I’ll note only that I was particularly struck by a madly audacious new sculpture from DavidAltmejd; that I enjoyed contemplating the debate over whether this towering Evan Penny nude is a big deal or just a big nakedstatue; that this Marcel Dzama video was hilarious, weirdly touching and captured about a century’s worth of cultural allusions;and that this painting by 30-year-old Ottawan Melanie Authier suggests there’s still something fresh to be done with pureabstraction.

What’s most striking is that the 2012 biennial is so different in intent and structure from its 2010 predecessor. Continue…

Robert Ghiz on Maritime union: ‘Preposterous’

By Paul Wells - Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 1:47 PM - 16 Comments

The premier of Prince Edward Island is two days away from shaving his Movember moustache, but in the meantime he’s got apretty good growth on his top lip and is, like all newly hirsute men, a bit self-conscious about it. His finger kept straying to hisMo as we chatted, as if to hide his whiskers or make sure they are really there. Until the weekend he looks like this:

Robert Ghiz is in Ottawa to visit the Prime Minister. “I see him about twice a year, and then if he gets out to the Island, we getanother meeting,” he said. Like all the other premiers, Ghiz had apparently genuine hopes of seeing Stephen Harper drop by lastweek’s premiers’ conference in Halifax. Murmurs out of Ottawa suggested that, for a while there anyway, it might happen. But itdidn’t, so they had to content themselves with trying to figure Pauline Marois out. “Gave us a chance to practise our French,” hesaid.

At 38, elected in 2007, Ghiz will be, once Dalton McGuinty steps down as Ontario premier, the longest-serving premier inCanada. Much of his attention these days is on containing health-care costs. He’s pretty sure he can’t, very much: the baby-boomer cohort is entering old age, and caring for them cannot be made much cheaper.

But today he is preoccupied with something else: the attempt by three Conservative senators to put a union of the Maritimeprovinces on the national political agenda. Stephen Greene of Nova Scotia, John Wallace of New Brunswick and Mike Duffy ofPrince Edward Island have begun raising the notion that a United Province of New Edward Scotia (I just made the name up)would have more clout than three provinces suffering by themselves would have.

Rob Ghiz is totally the premier of one of the provinces in question, so I put the idea to him. “It’s preposterous,” he said. “It’s justnot a good idea. And if you want me to be a little mean about it, I think it’s a very simplistic view.” Continue…

Canada-EU trade: risk-al imbalance

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 9:28 AM - 24 Comments

Sorry about the headline. You try making this stuff interesting. I was struck last night to read this blog post by intellectual-property smart guy Michael Geist, based on the same leaked European Union memo that led me to write this blog post on ourown website on Sunday.

Geist has been following the Canada-EU trade talks very closely, and he has superb sources, so when I ran into him several daysago I couldn’t help asking whether my recent skepticism about the likelihood of a final Canada-EU trade deal is justified.“Probably not,” he said. And fair enough. It’s hard to imagine Canada engaging the EU in five years of talks, and three years ofhard negotiations, on what would be the most ambitious trade deal either has undertaken, only to walk away in the home stretch.

But lookie here. Geist now writes that a Canada-EU agreement “is no longer a certainty.” Why? “The EU recognizes the deal isunbalanced as there are far more demands for Canadian changes than European ones,” Geist writes. Continue…

Carney to England: Maybe just visiting is a good idea

By Paul Wells - Monday, November 26, 2012 at 2:12 PM - 35 Comments

Mark Carney’s departure for England will be keenly felt by a certain segment of Ottawa society, disproportionately based in thetoney enclave of Rockcliffe Park and the would-be-toney neighbourhood of New Edinburgh, who believed Carney’s presenceamong us — He jogged the canal! His kids used to go to RPPS! — somehow validated Ottawa as a serious town.

The reaction when he walked through certain oak-panelled rooms — the dewey-eyed gaze of the steering committee members,the way Burberry-clad hearts would go pitty-pat — was Pavlovian. I’ve attended more than one dinner party where conversationturned, in the bank governor’s absence, to a perennial topic: “I don’t know how Mark puts up with this shitty little town.”

Now that he’s leaving, there’ll be an undercurrent of bitterness at Fraser Café tonight. The ADMs will be muttering into theiraioli. “This is just another hopped-up lumber town,” they’ll say. “Always was.”

“Can’t keep serious talent,” the visiting fellows will grumble. “Now I’ll never get to ask him where he bought his cufflinks.”

But what if this whole international-mandarin-class thing is a good idea? Continue…

Canada-Europe Trade: State of play

By Paul Wells - Sunday, November 25, 2012 at 5:13 PM - 41 Comments

Somebody in the European Union was kind enough to leak a detailed briefing memo on Canada-Europe trade talks to Quebec’sCAQ party. Here it is. I’ve never seen such a detailed account of the negotiations. Here is what stands out after a preliminaryread.

• The memo is from the beginning of this month, so it predates Trade Minister Ed Fast’s meeting with his European counterpartKarel De Gucht this past Thursday. But note that the memo says, in its first paragraph, that for a deal to be reached before theend of 2012, either “a full deal” or “the options for such a full deal” would have to be presented to the EU Foreign AffairsCouncil by this Thursday. None of the news reports out of last week’s meeting suggest that deadline can be met. Of courseschedules can be changed. Looks like they’ll have to be.

Continue…

VIDEO SERIES: MPs school Paul Wells on the work that gets done

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 6:39 AM - 1 Comment

CP/Adrian Wyld

The sixth annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards were handed out Wednesday night the Château Laurier in Ottawa.

The awards recognize that away from the antics of Question Period, good and important work gets done on Parliament Hill.

In the days leading to the 2012 awards, Maclean’s Political Editor Paul Wells sat down with past winners to talk about whatreally happens in Ottawa. Not surprisingly, they had a lot to say about all that being an MP entails.

Ralph Goodale on troubles in the House: (Son of omnibus, come on down)“There is concern about the House’s inability to perform up to the quality standards that Canadians would expect, but it’s still aplace that is the central focus — the central crucible — of Canadian democracy and I think that people hope for the best.”

Michael Chong on thinking local while in Ottawa“Being a good constituency MP involves two things. The first is that you’ve got to help constituents out with access andgovernment services, with listening to their concerns, with being in touch with them and having a sense of what’s going on onthe ground … with being local, with understanding local issues — even if they’re not necessarily federal issues. The secondthing a good constituency MP does is that in each and every decision they take up here on Parliament Hill, that they’re alwaysthinking about what the voters back home would think and what they would want you to do.”

Megan Leslie on the importance of flipping burgers and doing groceries“Flipping burgers, how is that political work? It’s quite amazing. This summer, I fully realized the value of overhearingconversations at home — not in a creepy way. But even just being in a cafe and hearing what people are talking about, or beingin the grocery store and hearing a family talk about the next time peanut butter is going to go on sale. That is important politicalwork to understanding what is happening in your riding. And you can’t replicate that unless you’re at home.”

John Baird on playing the bulldog and reaching out “What gets media attention is the discord and disagreement. Whenever something is hot, it leads on the news, but there’s a goodnumber of folks you can work across the aisle with … you can work collegially with. There are some people though that are a lottougher to work with, so sometimes personal and political differences get in the way. But that doesn’t happen as often as youmight expect.”

Bob Rae on the evolution of QP (more scripted and partisan)“The House is much more partisan, scripted place and I don’t think it’s an improvement. I think it’s a deterioration in the quality

of parliamentary life. I really do. I think things are getting worse.”

Joe Comartin on QP, rules and decorum (or lack thereof)“There’s ways of making Parliament function for you if you know how the rules function — what the dynamics are in there,including the personalities that you are dealing with. Building that close relationship with other people is important — whetherthey’re in your party or others.”

Justin Trudeau’s Pacific overture

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at 8:16 AM - 64 Comments

(Paul Chiasson/CP)

As a rule of thumb, any position that gets a politician called “brave,” “courageous” and full of “guts” in a single column is goingto be awfully attractive to most politicians. Say hello to Justin Trudeau, who wants the CNOOC-Nexen deal approved and, as heheads back to Calgary this week, is eager to say so.

Readers are encouraged to debate the wisdom of the policy choice among themselves. I’m here to offer a little furtherinformation.

First, if we’re going to start whistling slowly and exclaiming that this Trudeau sure isn’t much like his father, it’ll be handy to gethis father right from time to time. Pierre Trudeau was (a) the most China-friendly prime minister in history before Jean Chrétienand, well, Stephen Harper and (b) despite his carefully tended reputation as a haughty ascetic, highly prone to compromise in theinterest of furthering long-term goals. Let’s take those in order. Continue…

Harper’s secret Asia policy: much like his public Asia policy

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at 12:20 AM - 8 Comments

The CBC has its hands on a late draft of the super-secret foreign-policy master plan the government has been mulling for morethan a year. The CBC story is fascinating. And oddly familiar.

“We need to be frank with ourselves — our influence and credibility with some of these new and emerging powers is not asstrong as it needs to be and could be,” the document says. ”Canada’s record over past decades has been to arrive late in some keyemerging markets. We cannot do so in the future.”

And while the document uses similar language to announce the discovery that Asian countries are growing (“The situation isstark: Canada’s trade and investment relations with new economies, leading with Asia, must deepen, and as a country we mustbecome more relevant to our new partners”), it also notes that some African countries are in the early stages of growth curvesthat could end up resembling India’s and China’s.

I’m tickled by the language. “We need to be frank,” and “The situation is stark,” and dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer.The prime minister’s remarks on foreign affairs often have a similar why-does-nothing-get-done-until-I-show-up tone. Whoeverheld the pen on this policy document is adept at writing what the boss likes to read. In fact, as Greg Weston points out, thepotential in Asia and the potential for potential in Africa is not a well-kept secret to this government, nor was it unnoticed by itspredecessors. Continue…

A Canada-EU trade deal? ‘Hmm …’

By Paul Wells - Thursday, November 15, 2012 at 5:50 AM - 16 Comments

One of the longest-lasting stories in Stephen Harper’s tenure as Prime Minister will end this month. Unless it doesn’t end. Buteveryone’s going to give it a college try.

While the current issue of Maclean’s is on newsstands, Ed Fast, Canada’s trade minister, will travel to Brussels to meet hisapproximate counterpart, European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht. The subject is an ambitious trade deal Canada is tryingto reach with the European Union. Bureaucrats and negotiators from both sides have been meeting regularly for 3! years. Theyleft all the hard decisions to the end. This is the end. Fast’s meeting with de Gucht will be the first negotiation among politiciansinstead of civil servants. It comes six weeks before the New Year, the date Stephen Harper named during the 2011 campaign asthe deadline for a deal.

Everybody connected to the negotiations assures me there will be a deal. Every public sign I see makes me think there won’t.

At the end of October, De Gucht, a former Belgian foreign minister, sat down for a webcast interview with an EU journalistabout the negotiations. His body language was comical. “I hope that we can finish these negotiations by the end of the year,” hesaid. “That’s the day after tomorrow, hmm?” Translation: that deadline is really freaking close.

So, he said, Fast would come to Brussels. “But we should have no illusions. There are still a number of difficult issues to tackle.So I’m not promising anything. But we will make a major effort to close the deal before the end of the year. That’s what we aregoing to do. But there are a number of issues I believe that you can only resolve at the political level. That’s why . . . we willhave a ministerial [meeting] to, yeah, to close the deal, I mean to sort it out and do the necessary political arbitration.”

Pro tip: if an automobile salesman describes his product to you in similar halting terms, don’t buy the car.

Two weeks later, De Gucht was sounding far more chipper. “I expect to conclude a comprehensive agreement with Canada verysoon,” he told a business audience in Mexico. “Even more crucially, it is possible that we will start talks for a deep free tradeagreement with the United States, if our leaders agree on this in the new year.”

But now it was Harper’s turn to sound less than bullish. “There’s a lot of roadblocks out there in all these relationships, China,India, the negotiations with the European Union, the Americas strategy,” he told the Toronto Star. “Frankly, because of all theimpediments, my judgment is that we have to go hard on all fronts and see what actually progresses.”

Why does it matter? Because the so-called Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe is the biggestand oldest trade file on the government docket. Jean Charest started pushing European contacts to take the idea seriously duringhis first term as Quebec premier, in 2006. Harper came on board in early 2007. Negotiations began in 2009, after a preliminarystudy suggested an agreement could be worth $12 billion a year to Canada. Back then, Stockwell Day was the trade minister andhe said he’d like to see negotiations conclude by the end of 2010. They slipped, and slipped again, and slipped some more, andnow it’s two years later.

Why is it so hard? A Canada-EU CETA would be much more ambitious in opening markets in services, investment andgovernment procurement than the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. A broad range of domestic interests on both sides wouldrather keep those markets closed. And the opponents of CETA have been far more effective at mobilizing opposition than itsproponents have been at mobilizing support.

The nationalist Council of Canadians lists more than 70 municipalities and municipal organizations that have debated localresolutions demanding that they be exempted from CETA’s procurement provisions. They want the right to prefer localcontractors instead of letting European firms bid. Then there are CETA negotiators’ proposals to extend patent protection onCanadian pharmaceuticals to match European protections, which would tend to drive up the cost of prescription medication.Finally, farmers whose products are supply-managed don’t want to open the Canadian market to an avalanche of European dairyand other products.

I’ve talked to a succession of Harper trade ministers who didn’t buy any of those arguments. Harper devoted several days topitching CETA on the campaign trail last year because he sees his support for trade as a key contrast with the NDP and otheropposition parties.

But Harper has tried to play this file differently from the way Brian Mulroney played the Canada-U.S. free trade wars. Hethought he could low-bridge CETA, keep the whole process low-key, avoid ratcheting up the tension. Now the deal’s opponentshave outflanked him on every side. He can still storm ahead, reach a deal and pass it with nobody else’s approval.

But Harper has had a rough several weeks over far more obscure trade files than CETA. Something, or a bunch of somethings,

has made this negotiation drag on twice as long as the government first hoped. All those somethings remain. It’ll be aninteresting end to a long year for this Prime Minister.

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