Prime Minister

Kevin Gaudet and Maureen Bader: Show leadership — reject Copenhagen

Full Comment (Free subscription) | 15 hours ago

What do Uganda, Burundi, Sudan and Djibouti have in common? They are on the list of 49 countries that would receive billions of dollars every year from Canadian families as part of a new global-warming agreement proposed by the United Nations. The UN also wants to impose new taxes on industry that would increase energy costs and kill jobs. Stephen Harper should demonstrate global leadership by rejecting...

Credibility: It's a context thing, I guess.

Canadian Cynic (Free subscription) | 16 hours ago

Shorter Canadian wingnuts: "As drooling yokels who immediately embraced every ridiculous fable and fairy tale from a low-level Canadian consulate peon regarding Suaad Hagi Mohamud, it's obvious that intelligence officer and ex-diplomat Richard Colvin is full of shit . I mean, really, what a liar." CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE : Over at the Li'l Rascals Cardboard Tree Fort and No-Girls-Allowed...

Sell AECL to India

Full Comment (Free subscription) | yesterday

Canada wants to sell CANDU nuclear reactors to India. A better idea is to sell India the whole company By Ron Banerjee W ith Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent trip to India, a lot of attention has been focused on the possibility of saving AECL, a federally owned crown corporation, by selling CANDU nuclear reactors to India. Considerable evidence suggests that this scenario is unlikely....

Don Martin: Conservatives shoot the messenger over torture allegations

Full Comment (Free subscription) | yesterday

OTTAWA — In an organized smackdown rarely seen in Ottawa, the government turned inward on Thursday to attack a new enemy in its Afghanistan conflict — senior Washington embassy intelligence officer Richard Colvin. After 15 years of steadily rising through the foreign service ranks, Mr. Colvin now stands accused of being a Taliban stooge, someone so easily duped by torture complaints that...

• Conservatives shoot the messenger over torture allegations - Morton's Musings

Canadian Conservatives Woo the Jews

Jewschool (Free subscription) | yesterday

Canada might have a federal election soon. How soon remains to be seen, though that hasn’t stopped the Conservatives, who are currently running their second consecutive minority government, under leadership of Stephen Harper, to start planning for a win. And they want to form a majority government this next time around. It seems their early tactics [...]

Canada Would Not Take Calls From International Red Cross Warning That Detainees We Gave To Afghan Authorities Were Being Tortured

Buckdog (Free subscription) | yesterday

"According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured," said Colvin, the former political director of the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar city. "For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure." He also said that when the Red Cross wanted to look into the treatment of detainees turned over by the Canadian...

British Columbia's salmon: Socked

The Economist (Free subscription) | yesterday

Another inquiry into vanishing stocks A MYSTERIOUS decline in the numbers of spawning salmon has become one of the rites of autumn in British Columbia, bringing worries of financial and job losses, threats of extinction and a perplexing lack of answers. This season only 1.7m of the 10.4m sockeye salmon that were forecast to return to the Fraser river in fact made it—a 50-year low. That prompted...

N-deal with India within weeks: Canada PM

rediff News (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has expressed confidence about concluding a civil nuclear deal with India within weeks, asserting that prejudices of the past would not be allowed to come in the way. "We were anxious to conclude the agreement. But there is still some amount of work to be done," Harper, who held talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday, told television channel...

Transcript excerpt of Colvin testimony

Impolitical (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009

On why Canadians should care about these allegations that Afghan detainees turned over by Canadian military were tortured by Afghans : According to a very authoritative source, many of the Afghans we detained had no connection to the insurgency whatsoever. From an intelligence point of view, they had little or no value. Frankly, the NDS (Afghan intelligence service) did not want them. Some of these...

Just when you think Conservatives couldn't go any lower...

Impolitical (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009

They do with advertising on our dollar that pursues a vile form of politics, accusing Liberals of anti-Semitism. Part of the Conservatives' ongoing effort to corner the Jewish vote, some of the most offensive ten percenter flyers to date have been sent out : The "scandalous" flyers, endorsed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and which target ridings with large Jewish communities, accuse the...

Badal meets Harper, eyes tech tie-up in agri, power

Indian Express (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009

Punjab deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal on Wednesday met Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada to explore the possibility of transfer of technical know-how from...

G7 ministers to meet in Arctic, kick sand in face of G20 wimps

Full Comment (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009

G7 finance ministers are gung-ho enough to weather a meeting in Nunavut in February, where the temperature is reliably reported to average 7 zillion below zero. OTTAWA (Reuters) - Top finance officials from the G7 countries will meet in the remote Arctic town of Iqaluit on Feb 5-6 but may not issue a communique [editors note: because it's too frickin cold], Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Wednesday....

Nasty politics

Morton's Musings (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009

Very nasty. And dangerous -- an attempt to set intra-national groups apart. All the Parties oppose anti-Semitism. This is not a wedge issue: Liberals say Tory leaflets suggest the Grits are anti Semitic Source: The Canadian Press OTTAWA_ The Liberals say Conservative MPs have distributed taxpayer-funded leaflets which suggest the Grits are anti-Semitic. They say the pamphlets, which were mailed to...

Joint statement by India-Canada on the occasion of the visit to India of Mr. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

Conservative Party of Canada (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009

The Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Stephen Harper, paid an official visit to India from November 15-18, 2009, at the invitation of the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh. During his visit, Prime Minister Harper called on the President of India, Smt. Pratibha Patil, and the Vice President of India, Shri Mohammad Hamid Ansari. The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani, and the External Affairs...

PM announces increased economic collaboration between Canada and India

Conservative Party of Canada (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced that Canada and India have signed two agreements, fostering a closer partnership based on mutual trade and investment interests.