Helena Guergis tries to hold back her emotions while speaking to reporters at her campaign office in Collingwood, Ont., Friday, April 15, 2011. (Canadian Press)

The Toronto media establishment is positively giddy over the announcement that the Hon. Helena Guergis—a former MP and  junior minister in the Harper government—has launched a defamation suit against many former colleagues, including the Prime Minister.  Mrs. Guergis is skilfully playing the tearful victim, and the press—as it always does when there is the potential for blood in the water—is lapping it up.

If the press had a reasonable memory—or was prepared to salivate less at the thought of inflicting damage upon the government—it might recall that Guergis and husband Rahim Jaffer may not have committed any criminal acts warranting prosecution, but in the eyes of Parliament’s ethical watchdogs, they fell afoul of professional codes of conduct.  An editorial by the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin does a good job of summarising the alleged professional misdeeds.

On Jaffer:

In a report released on Monday, [Lobbying Commissioner Karen] Shepherd criticized the actions of Jaffer and his business partner, Patrick Glemaud, who were involved in a political controversy which also snared Jaffer’s wife Guergis, the former Simcoe-Grey MP.

Shepherd said that while Jaffer and Glemaud were unsuccessful in attempts to secure $178 million in federal Green Infrastructure Fund funding, they should have registered as lobbyists.

… This matter has been investigated by the RCMP, which determined there were no grounds for criminal charges.

But Jaffer and Glemaud broke federal rules by failing to register as lobbyists before trying to obtain taxpayers’ money.

– “Jaffer, Guergis still acted contrary to what is ‘right’.”  Editorial, Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, 17 December 2011.

On Guergis:

Last summer, federal Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson determined that Guergis broke Parliament’s conflict of interest code by sending a letter to Simcoe County officials, encouraging them to hear a presentation from a green waste management firm’s owner, who had business links to Jaffer.

According to the conflict of interest code, politicians are prohibited from using their position to further their private interests, or those of their family members.

Guergis responded to Dawson’s findings by saying there was no proof she had done anything wrong. She was also investigated by the RCMP and not charged criminally

… Part of her responsibility as an MP, however, is to know what the conflict of interest guidelines are and adhere to them. Most politicians know enough to steer clear of any potential conflicts of interests.

– “Jaffer, Guergis still acted contrary to what is ‘right’.”  Editorial, Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, 17 December 2011.

Anyone who watches police and lawyer shows on television will know that giving the police no grounds to pursue criminal charges is not the same thing as being spotless and squeaky-clean.  In the eyes of the Lobbying Commissioner and federal Ethics Commissioner, there were violations of professional codes of conduct.  Those details will certainly be relevant to the defence in the defamation suit.

It’s all but certain that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is going to spend the next three years tripping over landmines laid down by his own hyperbole, clumsiness and lack of forethought.  His Worship has done rather a lot to erode the goodwill of his supporters and, according to the Toronto Star, is now alienating the swing voters [1,2] on City Council.

I understand the Star‘s distaste for the current mayor; following his first term as mayor of the amalgamated city, I had an overwhelmingly negative view of Mel Lastman (and what I judged to be his appalling lack of vision and competence).  In the 2000 municipal election, I voted for one of Mel’s opponents; the tranny rather than the troubled hippie, mainly because I judged the hippie to be an unserious fringe candidate—and if one is going to vote for an unserious fringe candidate, that person should at least be entertaining.

As I said, I understand there will be opposition; what is less easy to understand is the Star‘s analysis.  Writing for Openfile.ca, John Michael McGrath looks at the newspaper’s methodology and finds it wanting:

If we go to the Ford Council Scorecard (an always-useful resource for council-watchers), we see just how broad a group these [eight swing-vote] councillors are. Moeser has voted with Rob Ford more than 80 per cent of the time, while Bailão (Ward 18, Davenport) has voted with the mayor only 30 per cent of the time. That’s a huge range, which makes the idea of a “swing” bloc questionable.

– McGrath, John Michael.  ”Ford losing the swing votes on council, but what’s a swing vote anyway?”  Openfile.ca, 21 December 2011.

McGrath posits that the swing councillors are more properly those whose votes accord with the mayor around 40-60% of the time, rather than the 30-80% range the Star uses.  In which case there are just three swing voters—not the Star’s eight—on a council of forty-four.

It’s a short piece, but well worth the read.

Long before he made his 2008 bid for the presidency, Senator John McCain was the darling of the Washington press corps.  He had cultivated the image of a realist hawk; a raptor who was critical of others of his kind.  The sort of gent who was not afraid to criticise his peers in the Senate (and former peers in uniform) for wanting to shovel barrels of pork at every billion-dollar gewgaw the military-industrial complex could dream up.  Meanwhile, McCain took PAC money from the defense lobby just like everyone else.

None of this will be new to longtime observers of US defence policy, but I still find it entertaining when Senator Maverick gets caught speaking out of both sides of his mouth.  This brief item from the “Verbatim” section of last month’s Air Force magazine was so good it had to be shared:

Sen. Straight Talk, Now …

“Over [about 15 years], Congress has authorized and appropriated funds for 113 F-35 jets. Lockheed has, however, delivered just 11. … Some of us saw this train wreck coming.”—Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), remarks at Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, May 19.

… And Then

“We want to increase funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, an aircraft and weapon system that in the view of many experts—including my view—would be far more capable [than the F-22] of meeting the emerging threats of the future.”—Same senator, Senate floor speech praising the F-35 when his immediate objective was to kill the F-22, July 13, 2009.

Good one, John.  Tell us another one!

It’s called getting fired.  It will happen to virtually all Canadians at some point in their personal and professional development.  Most of your fellow citizens will deal with it on their own, without the benefit of any outreach program.

“It’s as sudden as death,” said one defeated Liberal MP. “The only thing you don’t go through is that you don’t have to walk into a funeral home and peek into the box and say, ‘Well, he was a nice guy.’ ”

When Canadian researchers interviewed 45 former members of Canada’s federal and provincial parliaments within five years of their defeat at the polls and asked how they coped with their “involuntary disengagement”, one in three invoked images of death.

… For a number of defeated candidates, the prospects of finding gainful employment after an election defeat becomes remote, said McMaster’s Shaffir. “Some of them have sacrificed a lot. It’s not as if they can take a 10-year absence from a law firm and then just parade back, saying, ‘I’m back.’ The whole legal world changes, or the technology has shifted.”

Joe Jordan developed a kit for defeated MPs called “Your Life After Politics”. He provides volunteer counselling to assist in the transition from public to private life. “I’m not Dr. Phil,” he said. “It’s just that someone who has been through it can answer their questions. I lived this.”

– Kirkey, Sharon.  “The death of a thousand votes: defeated MPs coping with grief, rejection.”  Postmedia News via the Montréal Gazette, 9 May 2011.

Suggestion: get over yourselves.

Ms. Ruth Ellen Brosseau, Member of Parliament for Berthier-Maskinongé

This is probably my favourite election story from 2011.

A rookie NDP candidate—a former pub manager who was in Vegas for the campaign, and whose command of French leaves something to be desired—got elected by a comfortable 6,000-vote margin in a riding north of Montréal.  Which, if nothing else, demonstrates that in spite of the language laws, it’s entirely possible to be unilingual in Québec and still get government work.

(Via Darcey at MetisOnline)

UPDATE 040332Z MAY 11: it appears that Mme. Brosseau had some irregularities on her nomination papers. Residents who don’t recall signing, misspelled name of a signatory, etc.

Two things come to mind.

First, if the young lady speaks little French, how did she manage to convince 128 people to sign her nomination papers in a riding which is nearly 100% francophone?

Second, it’s nice that the national media is clueing in to these things. It would have been better if they had been a little more rigorous with the NDP before election day.

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”

– Chulov, Martin and Helen Pidd.  “Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war.” Manchester Guardian, 15 February 2011.

(Via the Tiger on Politics.)

There’s no question that Saddam Hussein was brutal tyrant of poor moral fibre—a despot who employed chemical weapons against his own citizens—and every punishment that was finally heaped upon him was undoubtedly deserved.   There is no question that the first Gulf War had been ended only by a temporary ceasefire—whose terms Saddam had repeatedly violated from 1997 onward with malice aforethought.  But I would not blame the policymakers, diplomats and servicemen of the United States for feeling a twinge of resentment at having been misled by a zealot into an essentially avoidable endeavour.

Saddam’s story is one we might have seen earlier, in an alternate history.  If the French and British had gone to war in 1936, when Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by remilitarising the Rhineland, it’s likely we would have a much sunnier image of the 20th century’s most famous dictator.  Let’s suppose der Führer also managed to survive the 1936 war, clinging to power in an economically crippled Germany (still hobbled by Versailles reparations), only to be deposed by an Allied invasion ten years later when an escaped scientist (an Einstein perhaps, or a von Braun) fabricated details of a Nazi superweapon program.  Without the horrors of a worldwide war and the additional nightmare of the Holocaust to prejudice our judgment, he would probably be a university campus hero today, like Che Guevara; just another hopeless, seedy foreign outlaw snuffed out by the reigning imperialists of the day.

Saddam was not Hitler, of course, though he was demonstrably brutal, tyrannical and anti-Semitic.  But even given all of that, one’s attitude toward the errors and deception underlying our casus belli probably depends on whether one believes Saddam’s greatest evils lay behind or ahead.  It’s a question to which—perhaps fortunately—we won’t ever have a definitive answer.

TRUE LIES UPDATE: A reminder that belief in Saddam’s WMD program was very much a bipartisan affair.

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”

– President William J. Clinton, Statement on Iraq, 17 February 1998.

“Iraq is a long way from Ohio, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”

– Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Town Hall meeting on Iraq, Ohio State University, 18 February 1998.

“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.”

– National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger, Town Hall meeting on Iraq, Ohio State University, 18 February 1998.

“Mr. Speaker, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”

– Representative Nancy Pelosi (D—California), Statement in support of air strikes underway against Iraq, 17 December 1998.

“This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.”

– Congressmen John McCain, Jesse Helms, Henry Hyde, Richard Shelby, Harold Ford Jr., Joseph Lieberman, Trent Lott, Ben Gilman, Sam Brownback. Joint letter to President George W. Bush calling for stepped up action against Iraq, 5 December 2001.

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.”

– Senator Carl Levin (D—Michigan), Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, September 2002.

“As a condition of the truce that ended the gulf war, Saddam Hussein agreed to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and to abandon all efforts to develop or deliver such weapons. That agreement is spelled out in U.N. Security Council Resolution 687. Iraq has never complied with the resolution.”

– Senator Tom Daschle (D—South Dakota), Statement on authorisation of the use of United States armed forces against Iraq, 10 October 2002.

Publius at Gods of the Copybook Headings has two excellent posts on the subject, the first being a lengthy and meticulous précis of the Caledonia affair, and the second delving into former OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino’s failings as both a peace officer and the Conservative “law and order” candidate.

The Ontario government has created a precedent whereby it has tacitly accepted the right of certain ethnocultural groups to take up arms and oppose the Crown, which hardly seems like a long-term recipe for peace and amity in a province whose heterogeneity is steadily increasing.

Toronto mayoral candidates appeared at a debate focused on faith issues on Monday, May 10, 2010. (CTV News)

Some people can watch an event unfold before them and fail to comprehend its import. But to see an event unfold several times, have it explained to you by the municipal affairs columnist for the city’s largest-circulation daily, and still fail to grasp the essentials—that level of obtuseness can only be found in politics and political punditry.

Here, for example, is the Toronto Star‘s Royson James explaining why Rob Ford’s mayoral campaign continues to gain traction:

They call him names. They mock him. They tell anyone with a microphone and a pen that the rambunctious councillor is a buffoon with foot-in-mouth disease, a one-trick pony incapable of competing in the sophisticated world Toronto must navigate.

As if the voters don’t know this already. Ford’s been a councillor for 10 years. His file of verbal indiscretions is thick and well worn.

In fact, with every effort like George Smitherrman’s launch of the FordonFord.com website, intended to showcase the celebrated gaffes of the councillor from Etobicoke North, Ford gains in popularity.

The Toronto electorate, circa 2010, is not looking for a silver-tongued prophet with a vision of an ascendant Toronto. They had one for seven years and are decidedly unhappy with the result. That’s the reality. And any reasonably skilled candidate for mayor, especially an outsider or someone looking to change direction at city hall, should have been able to capitalize on this gift.

– James, Royson. “Despite attacks, Rob Ford’s simple message takes hold.” Toronto Star, 18 August 2010.

It’s not rocket science, in other words. James is giving Smitherman, Rossi et al a freebie here. The voters are indicating that they hear Ford’s message and like it. One can tear down the messenger, but if the competing message isn’t particularly appealing, people aren’t going to get on board with it. Ford’s congenital oafishness isn’t news to the electorate; spending one’s time and money pointing it out, yet again, doesn’t deflect voters who have already decided it doesn’t matter to them.

The truly, epically stupid thing about this mayoral election is that there is no mystery to Ford’s supposedly inexplicable rise. If his prospective opponents were taking notice, Rob Ford’s modus operandi was laid bare four years ago by Eye Weekly writer Edward Keenan.

This, he says, is his favourite part of his job: “I love my constituents. They are second only to my family in my heart.” By that standard, there’s been a lot of loving in his day so far: 8:30am at a roach-infested apartment on Kipling to mediate a landlord-tenant dispute; 9am and 9:30am at two places on Bergamot to deal with more tenant complaints; 10:30am on Golfwood Heights to help a guy whose backyard is being flooded by a city-owned drainage ditch; 11am down the street on View Green to meet a woman upset that the crossing guard has moved down the street from the end of her block. Later, he’ll chat with a man who wants Urdu language books at the local library and meet staff from three different city departments at the home of a man with multiple complaints about the state of his neighbour’s property.

Sometimes Ford can get his constituents’ complaints resolved and sometimes not. Either way, he feels this — not the blustering at city hall — is his job. “I always tell my constituents, ‘Call my office first; I will find the right people,’” he says, “They’re hard-working people, so I try to go to bat for everyone.”

He returns every call to his office personally, often within hours, and usually he’ll make a trip out to see anyone with a complaint, bringing city staffers with him.

…Rob Ford may be a raving lunatic, but he’s a raving lunatic who will come to your home and stand in the rain to ensure you get 15 minutes with the city staffer who can help you. And that, as anyone who’s tried to navigate the city hall bureaucracy will know, is no small thing.

…A deep thinker he is not, and that could be a problem for his opponents. Rob Ford only has two priorities: saving money and serving constituents. Crazy as he appears, those happen to be popular priorities. Besides, he doesn’t need to think; he’s out impressing the voters every day with his actions.

The people who want to beat him might want to start thinking about that.

– Keenan, Edward. “The Rob Ford problem.” Eye Weekly, 27 July 2006.

Rob Ford may be, as James says, a buffoon—but as Keenan makes clear, he is a buffoon that helps the Ordinary Joes in his ward get things done. And that is a legacy that his mayoral opponents may find hard to match, much less beat. It’s something they should have been working on for themselves at least four years ago.

Surviving wing tips of the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, Storage Wing, Canadian Aviation Museum, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Flickr: DSC_4420, originally uploaded by GRB_Ott.

We have all heard the Avro Arrow mythology promulgated for the public.  That the Canadian division of UK-owned A.V. Roe and Company was contracted to provide a supersonic delta-winged interceptor; that an interceptor of unprecedented capabilities was built, and flight tests begun; but then the American military-industrial complex and unconscionable perfidy from the Prime Minister of the day (John Diefenbaker) conspired to kill the wonder jet so that money would be made, political ambitions furthered, et cetera.  The power of the mythos is such that a 1997 made-for-television movie featuring Dan Akroyd was crafted with this storyline.

Problem is, the tragic fable is almost entirely false.

In the Spring 2010 edition of Airforce magazine, Colonel Layne Larsen, CD (Ret.) has penned a thorough takedown of the Arrow mythology.  The colonel goes to no small pains to debunk the three main myths of the Arrow legend:

• That PM Diefenbaker’s short-sightedness or incompetence killed the Arrow program
• That Diefenbaker ordered the destruction of all program materials to prevent it from ever being resurrected.
• That the Arrow was so far ahead of its time, we would still be flying them today; also that we would not have bothered to buy four other fleets of foreign-designed aircraft (CF-101 Voodoo, CF-116 Freedom Fighter, CF-104 Starfighter, CF-188 Hornet).

[Point of clarification: There are two similarly named publications; Air Force magazine—often mentioned in this space—is the journal of the US Air Force Association, while Airforce magazine is the journal of the Air Force Association of Canada.]

I’ll try and summarise Colonel Larsen’s article here, but you’d be well-advised to pick up the magazine and read it, if you want the facts in greater detail.

Myth 1: Diefenbaker’s short-sightedness or incompetence killed the Arrow program

Although PM Diefenbaker made the official announcement on February 20th, 1959, the federal Cabinet made the decision, and it came after five months of deliberation—which was in fact initiated by a recommendation from the service chiefs of the Canadian military.  The minutes of that August 1958 Cabinet meeting are available at DFAIT’s website, and they clearly indicate that the program costs had escalated to the point where “the Chiefs of Staff felt that, to meet the modest requirement of manned aircraft presently considered advisable, it would be more economical to procure a fully developed interceptor of comparable performance in the U.S.”  In other words, the RCAF didn’t want the Arrow, and had already determined that its support and logistics costs outweighed its potential military value.

For what it’s worth, I have read elsewhere that the previous St. Laurent government had also decided it would kill the Arrow, had it been returned to office in the 1957 federal election.

Myth 2: Diefenbaker ordered the destruction of program materials to prevent it from being resurrected

Documents declassified in 1990 indicate that the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshall Hugh Campbell, was the source of this direction.  Normally the Department of Defence Production (DDP) had six months to dispose of program materials to other government departments, research centres, and scrap.  A memo from G/C Ray Footit (signing for CAS) to DDP ordered that everything was to be cut up before being sold as scrap, and that no major components were to be sold as intact entities.

Myth 3: The Arrow was extremely advanced for its time, we’d still be flying them, and would not have bothered to buy other fighters.

The best way to answer this is to use Col. Larsen’s chart that accompanies the article.  It compares performance data from several aircraft designs of the time.

(click to enlarge)

The Arrow doesn’t lead the pack.  It has good top speed and an acceptable service ceiling, but a thoroughly mediocre radius of action.  Radius of action being the distance an aircraft can travel from its base and return, without refueling (this figure also includes a measly five minutes of combat engagement).  The Arrow would have been the last to achieve IOC—whereas the very similar Convair F-106 had comparable speed, a slightly higher service ceiling, almost twice the radius of action, was available four years earlier, and was several times cheaper ($2 million per F-106 versus $8-10 million per CF-105.)

The F-106, incidentally, remained the backbone of USAF’s interceptor fleet until replaced by the F-15 Eagle.

As Col. Larsen makes clear, the Arrow died because of multiple factors.  The RCAF had already accrued some bad experiences with the Avro-built CF-100, and they didn’t like the support they were getting from the company on that product.  The RCAF’s senior brass very much doubted whether Avro could build an even more complex aircraft and still make it reliable and easy to maintain.

Unfortunately, Avro’s CF-105 prototypes were not built with ease of maintenance in mind; in one case it would take 70 hours to inspect a part whose inspection interval was only 50 hours.  In other words, every two days’ flying time you had to ground the plane for three days in order to inspect the part.  And that’s for a brand-new airplane, where most things should not be breaking too often.  Imagine what would happen once that airframe had been in service for 10, 15 or 20 years.  The Arrow would have been a ramp queen par excellence.

Worst of all, in just four years the Arrow’s program budget nearly doubled (going from $261 million to $400 million) while completing only five percent of the scheduled flight tests, and the radar/fire control system had yet to be installed, let alone tested.  In 11 months the Arrow racked up only 80 hours of flight test time, while the F-106 managed to conduct 1,000 hours of flight testing in a year.

All our national myth-making aside, when you add up all the things that went wrong, the Arrow was a weapon system doomed from the start.

Thanks to Colonel Larsen for his bracing deconstruction of the Arrow mythos; if this is a subject that interests you, you ought to pick up the magazine and give it a read.