Moonlight Graham

It's not really fair to look at any polling like this during a scandal, especially if the scandal negatively affects the Cons given that Harper can call an election at any time between now and when his limit it up, and guaranteed he'll call it during a politically advantageous time for the CPC (or disadvantageous for the NDP/Liberals).

Does anybody have a link or quote as to how this story initially broke? I'm also unaware (maybe I missed it somewhere when reading articles). Who broke it? How did they find out about the cheque?

During Tuesday's question period, the Harper government is on official record saying this: http://www.canada.com/Stephen+Harper+accused+evasion+Senate+expense+scandal/8413162/story.html#ixzz2U2Ja39Tg

To add to this, the Cons and Harper won the election in 2006 because the country was disgusted by the corruption of the Liberal sponsorship scandal and the growing, long-time arrogance of Chretien and the Liberal gov. Looks like the tables may be turning, and history could be repeating.

If Harper was involved in what his PMO Chief did, the man could be facing criminal charges under the CCC. That's pretty serious. Your partisan stripes are showing loud and clear.

Ah heck, ya it likely was illegal, and Harper likely did at least know about it, given the payment came from the top official in his own office. If proven true, given the (for reason I don't understand) popular Justin Trudeau now head of the Libs, Harper could be done as PM next election. I wonder if such a scandal would be enough to make him resign? Doubtful given his stubbornness, but if legal charges are laid against him...

100% truth.

LOL.

Don't make claims you can't back up. We have no idea about Harper's role in all this, we don't know if it was illegal. We barely know anything about this story yet.

Nothing yet is proven of course, but if Harper was involved in the decision making or even informed of this payoff to Duffy before it happened, it has the potential to destroy him and the CPC in the next election, as well as having him and others face legal action. We all know very little of what Harper or others in the CPC knew or didn't know of this so everything will all depend, of course, on what an investigation of this whole scandal yields.

Thoughts go out to the families. I couldn't imagine how scary it would be, especially for the kids, to be caught in a tornado like that.

Agree 100%. If Harper is smart, he'll gladly use this to get the heck out of the country and away from the media and opposition.

I get what you're trying to say, but your facts are wrong. Al-Qaeda, at least the key members, don't quite adhere to a "literal" interpretation of Islam. They adhere to an interpretation of Islam that is twisted from its meaning, and use this to reinforce their violence and hateful political beliefs. Those who follow the teaching of Qutbism are following the teachings of Sayyid Qutb's interpretations of Islam, and they are violent and dangerous interpretations.

That's a pretty long, and odd, name for a holiday. Why not make a national holiday in June and name it after First Nations or something?

Not going to say there aren't people out there like this, but to generalize "bleeding hearts" (aka people who give a s**t about other people) as the above is ignorant nonsense. Probably the profession that spends the most time working face-to-face to provide services to people with lower incomes are social workers and similar professions. Social Work is far from a useless social science degree, nor is something like psychology, economics etc. As we all know, people who are conservative about issues of poverty of course have far more real-life experience dealing with poor people. They also want poverty to conform to their intellectual theories (sometimes theories that are largely untested/based on limited personal observation or heresay and not on actual evidence).

What exactly do you mean by that?

I never said simply handing out food or money is the answer, that's for sure. So we agree on that. "Solving" poverty is very likely not possible beyond massive economic system transformation etc. But there's a heck of a lot more that can be done to help the poorest people in Canada. The government doesn't have the money (or the time, or the human resources, or the will) to solve/help every problem in the country and/or around the world to the extent needed/wanted, so it has to pick and choose. Back to the original post (not by you), Canada should find a balance between directing resources and policy measures towards helping both the poor in Canada and the absolute poor in the rest of the world.

Excellent article by Andrew Coyne about this whole controversy (though I'd have to read up on the laws/rules quoted because there are a few "..."). Its point: what Duffy and Nigel may be against Senate/Parliamentary rules, and against law under the Criminal Code, punishable by prison sentence: http://www.canada.com/Harper+government+know+payment+senator+crossed+sorts+ethical+lines/8410620/story.html

Poverty, and bad choices by those who are poor, are quite often linked to systematic problems within society, and is a systemic problem in itself. How many aboriginals are malnourished? Or elderly who have little/no income and are unemployable? These are systemic problems. Thus, Canadians, the government, NGO's etc. can do things to help these problems via many means, whether economic, social, political/legislative etc. In drastic cases yes, but taking a kid away from their family is an extremely traumatic experience for the child and family, and foster homes and (especially) group homes can be really crappy places to live. This causes major damage to the child for the rest of their lives, so it has to be a last resort. The government and social services should try to support and help improve "toxic home environments" in every way possible before the child is removed.

That's seriously the first thing that comes to mind when you think of food banks? Probably the first thing you think about welfare also. That's a bit of an ignorant statement. Obviously there's going to be people (of any economic status given free food) who do such things. But people also use that freed up money to pay the rent, cloth their kids etc. We have to understand that poor people as an economic group have very high levels of stress, the highest rates of mental illness, high rates of disability, the highest rates of childhood and current/lifelong levels of sexual/physical/psychological abuse etc. To deal with that many of these people's brains chemically do not naturally produce healthy amounts of "happy" chemicals like endorphins/serotonin, dopamine etc., some people meet these chemical needs by self-medicating using drugs (alcohol, marijuana, meth, nicotine etc.) so not to feel like crap.I don't condone drug use of any kind, but I understand why people use them. We should have more awareness programs, at food banks and for the general public (ie: alcohol & cigarettes are used by all economic classes) teaching how to deal with stress, depression/anxiety etc. in more healthy ways.

Lucky, but also very smart and skilled con artists. Remember that John Edwards guy who had his own tv show? What a phoney.

Maybe the Harper gov and CIDA have done good work in terms of funding for malnutrition, which the OP article claims, but overall the Harper gov hasn't been very good in terms of overall international development. They just eliminated CIDA (now merged with DFAIT), and they have cut a lot of funding to CIDA (when it existed) and overall foreign development. Also, Bev Oda, who oversaw CIDA for years, was an enormous idiot. The article and the think-tank give credit to the Canadian government for high funding in the area of malnutrition, I'll give the Harper gov some credit in this particular area of development funding, but in other areas they fall short, notably maternal health. The OP blog author needs to have a bit of perspective when she wants Canada to give itself a pat on the back.

That's ridiculous. This shouldn't be a partisan or ideological issue.

PIK, just a friendly reminder to quote the article in your post, I thought it was you who had written most of the OP until I read your link.

it's already been explained.