LEE RICHARDSON AND HIS 'COME FLY WITH ME' DESIGNATED TRAVELER

LEE RICHARDSON MP

His fetching Designated Traveler

Lee Richardson MP for Calgary Center is in deep doo-doo. I feel sorry for the bloke because if there was a Conservative MP that I like it is Richardson. He is from that kinder and gentler ancestor of the Harperites, the now defunct federal Progressive Conservative Party. I’m sure you remember the old federal PCs. You know - the ones that gave us Dief, Joe Clark, Karlheinz Schreiber’s pal Brian Mulroney, and the asterisk Kim Campbell. The old federal PC party had a proud and noble history to be sure, and I still have respect for many of the old red Tories that ran it. They didn’t come any better than Alvin Hamilton, Flora Macdonald and Bob Stanfield. Because Richardson comes from that old red Tory strain and doesn’t hide his pedigree his chances of making the cabinet of Stephen Harper or even getting a decent sinecure for services rendered rate from zero to none.

Now, as a result of recently disclosed information Richardson’s bleak chances of a Harper-inspired reward have become much, much worse. And it’s all over an awe-inspiring blonde and one of the great babes on Canadian television these days – CBC-TV national political reporter Krista Erickson. See:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9015821.html

Richardson, a widower and a warm and cuddly guy, has admitted to being linked to the delectable newshound for a couple of years, and it’s something about which he is justly proud. After all, although he is reasonably well preserved and not quite ready for the glue factory or the Royal Tyrell Museum (for those of you from outside of Alberta, the Royal Tyrell is one of the finest Dinosaur museums in the world), he is several generations older than the dazzling Miss Erickson.

Richardson’s trouble arises as a result of Erickson being registered as the designated traveler for Richardson in his capacity as an MP. This qualifies her to fly on Canada’s airlines courtesy of guess who? Richardson? Nope. The Canadian taxpayer? Yep.

As a result, the pesky Canadian Taxpayers Federation is mightily pissed with Richardson. Not only does it want to find out just how much of the $143,850 worth of travel expenses he charged up during 2008-2009 was for his ravishing gal pal, its spokesman is convinced that this will be a problem for everybody including the Tories. Not surprisingly, both Richardson and his exquisite designated traveler claim they have no knowledge of she being on any tax payer sponsored trip.


While the dashing and debonair Richardson has the sumptuous Erickson as his designated traveler, it should be noted that defence minister Peter McKay – he who was unceremoniously dumped by the equally resplendent Belinda Stronach – has named his mother as his designated traveler. No surprise there.

But if Richardson is in the soup over this one, his gorgeous fellow traveler is in even deeper. The Canadian Association of Journalists is pissed with both Erickson and the CBC. According to the Association’s president Mary Agnes Welch, the Association’s Code of Ethics [the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Code of Ethics, now there’s an oxymoron for you!] says that journalists should not have a personal relationship with the people they report on. What’s even worse, she says, is flying free because of the relationship. Welch puts it this way: “It is one thing to have a personal relationship. It’s another thing entirely to be benefiting from that relationship. Actually being able to fly for free because of that relationship kind of brings it to a new level. A reporter who covers national politics in any way who is in a relationship with an MP is clearly in conflict.”

This is the second time that the ravishing Erickson has been accused of running afoul of the code of ethics. In 2007 during the Commons committee hearings looking into the sordid Mulroney – Schreiber affair she planted a few written questions with some Liberals to ask Mulroney. The Harperites screamed blue murder about the affair to the CBC which resulted in her being banished to the boring gulag of Toronto for almost two years.

What will happen to Erickson next is anybody’s guess. However, if the CBC gives her the pink slip she can always seek employment with the Calgary Herald whose conflict of interest rules for journalists are applied with much less rigor and severity - that is, if they are applied at all. For example, Tom Olsen happily continued writing his Herald column and reporting on the government of Ralph Klein even though his brother Gordon (with whom Tom obviously had a relationship) at the same time held various positions in Klein’s office including executive director of the premier’s south office, executive assistant to the premier, and the premier’s caucus liaison.

So, for Erickson, even if worse comes to worse – hell, it’s not the end of the world.

JACK GRANATSTEIN: TAKING A PAGE OUT OF THE BOOK OF JOE McCARTHY

Jack

For years I have watched the illustrious career of Jack Lawrence Granatstein wend its way through my generation. I have read many of his writings (I admit I have to be up for it), and I have intently watched and listened to him on the tube and radio. Granatstein is a genuine political and military history scholar who has earned many university degrees from good schools including a PhD from Duke University. He served in the Canadian Army for ten years and so possesses much more than academic knowledge of that field. He has taught at universities and written over sixty books including some distinguished prize and medal winners. We see his avuncular personage frequently on our television screens providing mostly trenchant and wise observations of historical and current events. Honours and medals have followed him throughout his adult life. By any standard, he is a great Canadian. For more on Granatstein’s career read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_of_the_Royal_Society_of_Canada.

Alas, he has his blind spots. For example, for some years now he has taken every opportunity to hector Canadians about what he sees as our endemic anti –Americanism, particularly from what he perceives as the Canadian left. He believes Canadian anti-Americanism exists, and he believes it is bad and unfair. He was at it again in a column that appeared in this morning’s Calgary Sun. Unfortunately, as of this writing it has not made it on line. However, I will review it and pass on my comments.

His entrée into the subject is Barack Obama's popularity in Canada. Granatstein asks the question, “How will his presidency sit with the great Canadian anti-American coalition, many Liberals, the New Democratic Party, the Greens, the Bloc Quebecois and all those raging grannies of whatever age who despise the United States and all its works?” His answer was, “Not well, is my guess.” He goes on to say that history leads him to believe that by the summer because of their innate anti-Americanism Canadians will be attacking Obama.

To back up his conclusion, he argues that even though Canadians were largely sympathetic to the U.S. Democratic Party, they denounced even John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton during their terms in office. He writes that Kennedy suffered the wrath of Canadians because of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and for risking nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.

Well, if there were Canadians who felt that way, they were hardly on the radar screen. I was around in those days and paying some attention to the news. I never observed a helluva lot of antipathy from Canada towards Kennedy at any time. The only Canadian I recall as not having cared too much for Kennedy was John Diefenbaker, who was reported to genuinely dislike the man. But let's say there was a bit of it. Was that anti-Americanism or was it anti - American foreign policy on some level - like, say, the Bay of Pigs Invasion or the growing commitment to the folly of Viet Nam? In any event, at the time of the assassination Kennedy was overwhelmingly in the good books of the vast majority of Canadians.

About Bill Clinton, Granatstein says, “those on the left soon complained about NAFTA and his use of American troops around the world, and Prime Minister Chretien tried hard to camouflage his good relations with the Arkansan.”

Well, again, I recall some pockets of criticism in Canada, but it was hardly discernable, even from those on the left. As far as Chretien trying to hide from his buddy – buddy relationship with Clinton, that is pure bullshit and Granatstein surely knows it. And if there were some Canadians who opposed NAFTA or the U.S. led NATO bombing of the Balkans - and there were - does that make them anti-American, or anti - aspects of American trade policy or foreign policy?

Granatstein says, “The Canadian left sees the US. as the great Satan.” I suppose that explains why most Canadians are so hooked on American culture like its movies, pop stars, fast food joints and cities. He predicts that Obama will ask for further troop commitments in Afghanistan beyond 2011, and that “the response from the anti-American Canadian left will be as vehement as if it had been George W. Bush asking.” But whether people are on the Canadian left (as he describes it) or not, if they oppose such a request, does it make them anti-American? Or could they be merely opponents of come components of American foreign policy that is going nowhere and will likely go nowhere unless there is a troop commitment of some three hundred or four hundred thousand strong?

Granatstein continues his rant saying that when Obama does ask for the troop commitment, “The shouts won’t initially include the same sneers hurled at Bush, but Canadian critics, I suspect, will attack the U.S. and the Obama administration with equal fury. Over time, as Obama fails to live up to expectations - no one could meet the high hopes he has created – new personalist slurs will emerge.”

That is highly doubtful. Canadians whether on the left or right, recognize honesty and competence as paramount values in leadership. Obama has both in spades. Granatstein’s pal Bush, had neither.

After a little more haranguing and whining which makes him sound more like Rush Limbaugh rather than the scholar we take him for, Granatstein concludes, “Obama is on his Canadian honeymoon today, but tomorrow he is almost certain to become merely another target for those who reject America’s world view. Canadian attitudes almost demand this.”

That there will be Canadian critics of Obama’s policies there is no doubt. But they will certainly not be critics of the American people and probably not personal critics of the President himself, unless he is perceived to have done something dastardly wrong - like having lied about a war, or condoned torture.

To criticize U. S. policies is not being anti-American. It is to have an opinion about policies. Those who demonstrated in Canada against say, the war in Viet Nam or those who demonstrate today in Canada at the presence of Dick Cheney or G.W. Bush within their environs are not anti-American. They are demonstrating against American foreign policy, or rogues and charlatans who lied to the world. In fact, to paint such demonstrators or opponents of policy as anti-American is akin to Joe McCarthy calling all those on the left or moderate left, or merely those who got in his way, communists. Jack Granatstein, a Canadian icon, scholar, feted author, and so on should be so much better than this.

RANDOM HOUSE ANNOUNCES NEWMAN'S NEW BOOK ON IGNATIEFF

See. What did I tell you three days ago? You can say you read it here first.


"Peter C. Newman to write Michael Ignatieff biography"

TORONTO, May 6 /CNW/ - Random House Canada is proud to announce that it has signed veteran journalist and author Peter C. Newman to write the firstfull-length biography of Liberal leader, prime ministerial contender and public intellectual Michael Ignatieff.

Newman, with more than fifty years of thinking and writing about Canada's business and political leaders behind him, is delighted with the opportunity the new book will give him to stop and think about what the torrent of news and views breaking around Ignatieff really means, what all the tumult and promise of his life and times adds up to, and how to place him in the Canadian political landscape. "I want to write about Ignatieff because he's the most interesting political figure in Canada today, and while he has written many books himself, including a family memoir and autobiographical novels, nobody has written a full biography of him," Newman says. "We haven't had a political leader whose intellect is his defining characteristic since Trudeau, and it's fascinating to watch the ways in which a man like Ignatieff reaches out to rebuild theparty and create relationships with voters. He has a real shot at becoming ournext prime minister. If he makes it, he'll be in a position to affect this country's destiny, and I feel it's important to have a creative look at him."

Anne Collins, Newman's Editor and the Publisher of Random House Canada, is delighted at the pairing of author and subject. "As June Callwood once pointed out, Peter C. Newman invented 'realism in political writing in Canada' with his book Renegade in Power. Almost five decades on from that ground-breaking book on Diefenbaker, he's about to apply the full Newman treatment to a man with one of the most unusual trajectories in Canadian politics, a true public intellectual suddenly vying in that most brutal courtof public opinion - electoral and party politics - and vying well. I can't wait to see what Newman makes of Ignatieff. I can guarantee it will be an account that will surprise and captivate us all."

Peter C. Newman has been writing about Canadian politics for nearly a half a century, including books on Prime Ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester B.Pearson, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Brian Mulroney. The author of twenty-four books that have sold more than two million copies, Newman has won a half-dozenof the country's most illustrious literary awards. In addition, he has received two Orders of Canada and has been promoted to Companion from Officer. A former editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star and Maclean's, Newman has been honoured with a National Newspaper Award and has been elected to the News Hall of Fame.

Peter C. Newman's biography of Michael Ignatieff, as yet untitled, will be published in Fall 2010.