Ex-Tory MPs book offers a glimpse into the tightly controlled caucus – The Globe and Mail

2014/09/09 2 Comments

Two contrasting views of the Harper government approach, starting with Brent Rathgaber, the former Tory backbencher who became an independent MP over the degree of control exercised by the PM and PMO:

The book raises questions of backbench independence that have simmered over the past year and comes as one Conservative MP, Michael Chong, pushes through a bill that would rein in the power of party leaders. Mr. Rathgeber supports the bill but, in the book, predicts it won’t pass.

The book makes specific recommendations for improving the function of the House of Commons, including disallowing backbench softballs; breaking up omnibus bills; bringing in MP recall rights, allowing voters to turf a representative between elections; and giving the Speaker, not government, say over when to limit debate on a bill.

The final straw for Mr. Rathgeber was the gutting of his own private member’s bill last spring – one that would have required government to disclose the salaries of senior bureaucrats. In the book, he said the PMO saw too many “landmines” in the notion, and eventually derailed the bill. Mr. Rathgeber quit caucus that day.

He expects the book to have few fans within government. Opposition MPs may like it, he said. “But if and when they become the government they will summarily dismiss all those concepts,” he said in an interview, saying there’s no silver-bullet for reversing the long, steady decline of Canada’s democratic institutions. “This is about the long game. This is about contributing to the debate to try to fix things.”

Ex-Tory MPs book offers a glimpse into the tightly controlled caucus – The Globe and Mail.

Michael den Tandt on why the PM’s tight control will not change in the context of his relationship with the media:

Harper personally, meantime, is simply not comfortable in informal engagements with reporters, both because he’s afraid of having an idle remark blow up in his face and because casual banter is not his forte. His recent Arctic tour was  a case in point; the informal portion of the agenda was restricted to five minutes on the aft deck of a Canadian navy ship, on one day. Had Harper felt able to do more, without risk, one has to believe he would have.

With respect to the environment, as I wrote during the tour, the Harper Tories are  behaving in the Arctic as a government would if it believed carbon emissions were warming the planet. But they may not be in a position politically to say so out of deference to their donor base, which is sharply right-of-centre and, probably, climate-skeptical. By the same token, every seemingly pointless battle between Conservatives and the media, or academics, or democratic institutions, is fodder for a fundraising mail-out. Populist politics, or more precisely populist, small-sum, broad-based fundraising such as we now have in Canada, feeds on partisan brush wars.

The upshot? Observers, including pundits, editorial boards and former Conservative prime ministers, can say all they like that Harper should change his ways. Did Mulroney change, in year nine? Did Jean Chretien, or Pierre Trudeau? There are reasons why they don’t. The most important may be that they can’t.

Den Tandt: Harper’s relationship with the media won’t change

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Intergenerational Circular Migration

2014/09/09 Leave a comment

Victoria Ferauge on David Cook-Martin’s book on circular migration:

All of these things are described and documented in David Cook-Martin’s book, The Scramble for Citizens: Dual Nationality and State Competition for Immigrants 2013.

He uses the case of Argentina – a country that experienced mass immigration from two European countries of emigration, Spain and Italy.  His point is that this process of welcoming and assimilating immigration is not uni-directional;  it can be reversed in a process that he calls “dis-assimilation.”

“I argue that the citizenship link can be reconfigured because competitive dynamics have produced particular membership patterns that under propitious institutional and structural conditions affect individuals relation to states, the nation, and the resources they monopolize.  People assumed to have been culturally integrated and embraced by a nationalizing state are becoming differentiated along specific and significant dimensions.”

Interesting argument and, if true, easy to see how this might be a bit disconcerting for countries of immigration and downright destructive of a democratic nation-states ambitions to make and keep citizens.  Why?

The first my point is how it skews citizen equality in a particular nation-state that has traditionally been a country of immigration.  A US citizen who is born with the potential for another citizenship is in a much better position to emigrate then his fellow citizens who don’t have that possibility.   The former will find it easier to be globally mobile, while the latter must stand in line and apply often in vain for the right to enter another country.

An individual who wishes to emigrate back to his parents or grandparents country will find that the move is facilitated though that country’s citizenship law and he will arrive in that country, not as a migrant, but as a full citizen.  That is a pretty powerful incentive provided that there are other positive factors in that decision like good employment prospects.  Furthermore, since this emigration is facilitated by blood ties it:

  1. Favors the children of more recent immigration those whose families are “native” for many generations wont have this option and
  2. It’s not strictly about class or money  – a working class person can, at least in theory, take advantage of it just as easily as those Highly Qualified Migrants provided that an individual has the right parents or grandparents. However, Cook-Martin says that it is mostly the struggling middle-classes that take the opportunity.

The second (his point) is that it is the very act of seeking to claim that citizenship in another country changes people.  As they document and it is much easier to find that documentation with good 20th century record keeping the history of their families and the original move to another country, what started out as a purely practical exercise a “just in case” second passport becomes something else.   They create an emotional tie to the ancestral country.

He talks about this in the long chapter “The Quest for Grandmas Passport.”  As much as some of his contacts talked about how the second passport was “just a piece of paper,” a kind of hedge against the devaluation of their own nationality, they were going to a lot of trouble to get it.  Days, weeks, months of digging through archives to find documentation.  “Clients are emotionally overcome when a search is successful” and they are “thrilled” to have the proof in their hands.  Clearly, that second citizenship is “meaningful” to them, though their attachment is going to be very different from that of a citizen actually born and raised in the ancestral country.

Combine this with concerns over “citizens of convenience” and economic opportunities, we have further variants of instrumental views of citizenship.

Intergenerational Circular Migration

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Jonathan Kay: Thirteen years after 9/11, the debate about Islam is still dominated, on both sides, by hysteria

2014/09/09 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Jon Kay on the difficulty in having a rational, balanced conversation:

The larger problem here is that, 13 years after 9/11, we still can’t seem to manage to have an adult conversation about Islam. Express any sort of compassion or nuance about the faith, and you’re accused of universal prostration before the Mohammedan hordes. Speak up about the religious and cultural traditions that cause someone to cut a journalist’s head off, and you’re an Islamophobe. Sometimes, it feels like the conversation hasn’t progressed much since the Twin Towers were still standing.

Thirteen years after 9/11, the debate about Islam is still dominated, on both sides, by hysteria

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The secret to great presentations: its not about the software | Macworld

2014/09/09 Leave a comment

Good presenter advice for users of presentation software – remember the message, focus on the audience, and keep it simple:

All things being equal, simple text and images are the way to go. Text-heavy slides, complex images, cutesy animations, flashy transitions, and other such embellishments are more of a distraction than an aid. You don’t want your audience to say, “Wow, what great Keynote skills that presenter had!” You want them to remember what you said.

So I recommend choosing an uncluttered, high-contrast theme such as Gradient or Showroom in Keynote, or Twilight or Clarity in PowerPoint and, where practical, limiting each slide to a single element such as an image, graph, quote, or question. Select visuals that support, explain, or clarify what you say. They’re on the screen to help your audience understand and remember your talk, not to serve as cues or reminders of what you want to say—that’s what Presenter Notes are for in Keynote or PowerPoint. In Keynote, you may need to choose View > Show Presenter Notes to see the area at the bottom of the window where you can enter them. In either app, these notes appear on your Mac’s screen during a presentation only when your presentation is on a secondary display.

I use the Gradient theme (if it was good enough for Steve Jobs….) but find for some policy messaging hard to boil it down to three bullets (five more doable, ideally single line in large font.

The secret to great presentations: it’s not about the software | Macworld.

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Douglas Todd: Ameri-Canadians point fury at Uncle Sam

2014/09/08 Leave a comment

Good column by Douglas Todd on American Canadians and the impact of FATCA:

But, except for writing this column, I basically never think of myself as having American origins. If someone asks about my ethnic background, I tend to emphasize my roots in England, Ireland and Wales. As a result of all these cultural forces downplaying what The Canadian Encyclopedia calls “overt displays of American consciousness,” many don’t realize some of the most influential Canadians were born in the United States.

They include economist C.D. Howe, CP Rail tycoon William Van Horne, White Spot founder Nat Bailey, fiction writers William Gibson, Robert Munsch and Jane Rule, journalists Barbara Frum, Jack Todd and Jeffrey Simpson, politicians Diane Ablonczy, Jim Green, Stanley Knowles and Elizabeth May, political commentator Tom Flanagan, scholar Jane Jacobs, athletes Donald Brashear and Jarome Iginla and actors Lauren Holly, Robin Thicke, Matt Frewer and Colm Feore.

Now — with FATCA causing investigators to scour the globe to hunt down more than seven million broadly defined “U.S. persons” it claims should be paying taxes to Uncle Sam — even more people in Canada with U.S. connections are finding another reason to bury their American identities.

Instead of just trying to be sensitive to fellow Canadians’ “vague hostility” towards the U.S., many Ameri-Canadians are experiencing an increase in their fury toward Uncle Sam.

Douglas Todd: Ameri-Canadians point fury at Uncle Sam.

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Baird’s ‘one voice’ in Iraq with Liberals and NDP a notable non-partisan change in tone for the Tories

2014/09/08 Leave a comment

Welcome change in tone and not overly playing to diaspora politics.

Let’s see if applied consistently or partisan temptations too great:

The face of Baird that Iraqis saw just before he left Iraq was not the one politicians and the public are used to seeing in Canada.

Off the top of his closing press conference in Irbil, Baird said a round of thank yous.“I’m also very pleased to be joined by representatives of both the other political parties in Canada,” the minister added.

“I think we speak with one voice: we abhor the barbaric terrorist activity we see in the region and we really want to come and personally stand with you and the people of this great country.”

Baird’s ‘one voice’ in Iraq with Liberals and NDP a notable non-partisan change in tone for the Tories

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Canadian Race Relations Foundation | Awards of Excellence Call for Nominations

2014/09/08 Leave a comment

Call for nominations for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation Awards of Excellence:

Nominations are open for this years Canadian Race Relations Foundation Awards of Excellence for Best Practices in promoting harmonious race relations – but the deadline is fast approaching!

Canadian organizations from the voluntary, private or public sector may nominate themselves, or be nominated by others, and submit their applications no later than 9 a.m. on Mon., Sept. 22, 2014 via the CRRF website at www.crrf-fcrr.ca.

The prestigious Awards of Excellence recognize initiatives that build an awareness and understanding of Canadian values and identity that are reflective of Canadian diversity and respectful race relations.

“Our award winners represent organizations that have taken the ideals of harmonious race relations and social cohesion, and transformed them into successful, sustainable programs that can be reproduced,” said Albert Lo, chairperson, Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

“Winning this prestigious award, and being published by the CRRF, shines a spotlight on these thought-leaders, elevates their public profile and raises awareness of their important initiatives.  These exceptional organizations and agencies become part of a pantheon of other forward thinkers whose work has contributed to our international knowledge base of cutting-edge anti-racism research and practice.”

One award will be given for Best Practices in each of the following six categories: Aboriginal Peoples, community, corporate, education, government/public sector and youth initiatives.

Canadian Race Relations Foundation | Canadian Race Relations Foundation Awards of Excellence.

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Isils Western converts are not motivated by Islam. They are motivated by boredom – Telegraph Blogs

2014/09/08 1 Comment

Tim Stanley’s  take on radicalization from a conservative perspective, noting the similarities to Islamic-inspired radicalization to the European young terrorists of the Baader Meinhoff and Red Army in the 1970s:

To this collage of conservative thought, I’d add two observations. First, alienation from Western materialism being expressed through revolution is far from new. It demands comparison with the urban guerilla movements of the 1970s – all of which were predominantly drawn from middle-class kids who saw their parents’ success as a form of collaboration with capitalism and fascism.

Is there any real difference between, on the one hand, Mahmood allegedly abandoning professional achievement and the life of a liberated Western woman for Jihad, and, on the other hand, Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction abandoning her children and sparkling literary career for a life of assassinations and bombings in the 1970s German terrorist underground? None, except the contrasting ideological manifestations of their malaise.

And, aside from bourgeois angst, Seventies Marxism and contemporary Jihad are linked by a an obsession with America/Israel as a nexus of capital and military power that is responsible for everything wrong with the world and b an unrealistic sense of their ability to do anything about it. They are, in reality, grubby little criminals poking at the system with a blunt dagger. But they believe they are heralds of a New Order. They all suffer from the arrogance of youth.

….I’m not convinced. Aside from the terrible idea of turning history classes into propaganda about how wonderful the Whigs were, I also don’t believe that alienation is generally reduced by attempts at indoctrination. And while theocracy is a wretched idea, it’s pretty self-evident that the undoubted appeal of Anglosphere freedom is limited. That would be – to return to Michael Brendan Dougherty’s observations – because it offers material rewards but little in the way of spiritual sustenance. Mahmood was perfectly aware of the benefits of Anglosphere liberty (Magna Carta, kangaroos and apple pie?) because she had the privilege of growing up in the midst of its wealth and freedom. Yet, still, her family say that she has rejected it. Perhaps because it was not enough. And that’s the challenge that the West faces when fighting for the souls of narcissistic revolutionaries. What we have to offer as an alternative is, for many of them, not enough.

Isils Western converts are not motivated by Islam. They are motivated by boredom – Telegraph Blogs.

From the National Post, a profile on Aqsa Mahmood, the woman mentioned in Stanley’s piece:

Inside the life of a 20-year-old Scottish woman who ran away to become a hardline supporter of ISIS  

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The Myth of the Invisible Jetsetting Jihadi | TIME

2014/09/08 Leave a comment

Good series of articles putting the risks – they are real – of returning ISIS and other extremists to the West.

Starting with the Globe’s Doug Saunders, who notes:

In other words, there is a good chance that at least one Canadian will return to attempt an attack here. While returning terrorist fighters are nowhere near Canada’s top terrorist threat in terms of numbers, they should certainly be watched very closely by intelligence agencies.

This is where you’ll find one small silver lining in this otherwise dark development: By going abroad to fight, such Canadians become very easy for intelligence agencies to notice, track and monitor. “We’re going to know who these guys are and we’re going to watch them closely as they transit home,” Brookings counterterrorism scholar Will McCants told an interviewer this week. The fact that these fighters aggressively use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as propaganda tools makes them even easier to find.

Plus, their mortality rate is very high, and rising. So viewed from another angle, by going abroad to fight, our extremists – already very few in number – are self-culling dramatically and rendering themselves far more visible to authorities.

They are a genuine threat, but not the largest or most ominous one facing us. We should be afraid, but we should not be very afraid.

Homegrown terror – be afraid, sort of afraid

From Time’s David Sternam, a similar message:

Three years into the Syrian civil war, there has been only one lethal attack in the West – the murder of four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels by Mehdi Nemmouche, a veteran of the Syrian jihad. In the United States, no one returning from or seeking to join a Syrian jihadist group has even been charged with plotting an attack inside the United States. In comparison, there have been two deadly incidents in the United States committed by individuals motivated by far right ideology in the past six months. If thousands of extremists were only a plane ride away from American cities, one would hardly expect such a limited record of Syria related violence in the West.

None of this is to say that Jihadist groups in Syria should be allowed to fester and develop the capability to conduct attacks in the United States, or that it is impossible that a returning Syrian foreign fighter will evade the layered defenses that protect the American homeland. That Abu Salha was able to return undetected to the United States after participating in Jihadist training should concern law enforcement. The layered defense system may need reinforcement to deal with new challenges, but the constraints it imposes upon jihadist activity ought not be obscured, particularly when making the case that the threat posed by foreign fighters calls for military action. Doing so does a great disservice to the admirable efforts of Muslim communities, local and federal law enforcement, and American citizens in confronting Jihadist extremism at home.

The Myth of the Invisible Jetsetting Jihadi | TIME.

Calls for parliamentary testimony on radicalization and the implications for Canada:

Liberals want hearings on Islamic radicals who have returned to Canada

Lastly, a good overview and profile of ISIS in the Globe:

 How a former U.S. prisoner of war created an Islamic state 

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , ,

RCMP looking at ways to identify young people at risk of becoming radicalized

2014/09/06 Leave a comment

Good overview by Douglas Quan on the various approaches being taken to reduce the numbers of those drawn to extremism:

For those who show signs of becoming involved in violent extremism but who have not yet crossed that threshold, the RCMP is developing an intervention program — set to roll out by the end of the year — designed to link those individuals with community mentors for “advice, support and counselling.”

Dash confirmed that public safety officials have been studying different intervention models, such as the Berlin-based EXIT program, which provides help to Germans trying to leave the neo-Nazi movement. A few years ago, the group created an offshoot program to support families of radicalized Muslims.

Dash declined to say what criteria the RCMP have developed to decide who merits intervention. She did say that someone who expresses extremist views is not necessarily going to be radicalized to violence. “It could be just someone who is being curious. We don’t want to stigmatize anybody.  There’s no one-size-fits-all indicator,” Dash said.

Experts say various “diagnostic tools” have been developed around the world to assess where someone falls on the “spectrum of dangerousness,” but no consensus has been reached on which one is best.

In the U.K., a police-led early-intervention program called Channel saw in its early days referrals of young people simply for wearing what were deemed to be “radical” clothes, according to a 2012 report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. “People were not sure what to look for and so they erred on the side of caution,” a Channel coordinator was quoted as saying.

The program has since developed a “vulnerability assessment” framework consisting of 22 behaviours to look out for. They include spending time in the company of extremists, changing style or appearance to accord with the group, loss of interest in friends, and condoning violence or harm towards others.

RCMP looking at ways to identify young people at risk of becoming radicalized | canada.com.

And Wesley Wark, as usual, pointed in his criticism for the lack of serious discussion by the Government:

The 2014 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada sums all this up. Whether you agree with the government statement or not (and maybe there are other things we should be worrying about, such as cyber threats, climate change impacts, pandemics, a new Cold War, etc…) the report moves our thinking into the present and nudges us out of a frame of reference dominated by legacy fears of Al Qaeda.

So why the whisper? Maybe the government can’t find the headline in its own report. Maybe it feels uneasy because it can’t say with certainty what the exact threat to Canada from terrorism is in the post-Al Qaeda age. Maybe it feels the public doesn’t really need an education on the new terrorism threats or is not interested. Maybe it thinks there are no votes here. Whatever the answer, it’s simply not right. We need a little less megaphone on the world stage and a little more at home.

Wesley Wark: Where’s the megaphone on the threat to Canada?

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