Fascism And Contemporary Canada. Locating The Present Conservative Government Led By Stephen Harper. ....... Part Seven.
The Prime Minister’s Office - A Criminal Organization?
Written by Robin Mathews
The Prime Minister’s Office is nowhere named in Canadian constitutional documents as a part of Canadian government. It now has close to one hundred employees – political appointments. Nearly a quarter of the people there make $100,000.00 per year… or more.
Thinking about that, a person realizes that several millions of taxpayer dollars are used annually to support a wholly partisan collection of bodies in Ottawa. They are devoted to work outside of Parliamentary authority, to do an end-run on Parliamentary Democracy, and to (in effect) finalize political decisions before they even come before the elected representatives in the House of Commons.
Those nearly one hundred personal employees of the Prime Minister do all they can to force policy and practice upon the appointed Members of the Senate and the elected Members of Parliament. Such a ‘government’ is very clearly moving in the direction of fascist operation – unelected, oppressive, dictatorial,
punitive.
Surprisingly for such a careful participant, Senator Marjory LeBreton gives information – in a few sentences not intended to incriminate anyone – to suggest the Prime Minister’s Office is, in fact, a criminal organization.
The people there are all answerable, finally, to the Prime Minister – no matter what screens and filters and make-believe divisions of power are pretended.
The people in the Prime Minister’s office move more and more towards becoming the real government of Canada. They push his agenda onto Conservative Members of Senate and Conservative Members of Parliament. They give orders – doubtless saying they come from the Prime Minister who will not be pleased if the orders are ignored.
Nothing that the Conservative leader in the Senate does, for instance, can be assumed to be independent. When Marjory LeBreton was Conservative Senate House Leader, that was clear. She was also a member of cabinet. Having botched (in Stephen Harper’s eyes) the Senate Scandal, she “resigned” as Senate leader on July 4, 2013.
To pretend the Conservative Leader in the Senate is not a puppet of the Prime Minister, the new Conservative Senate leader (not elected by Senators of course but appointed by Stephen Harper), Claude Carignan, hasn’t been given a place in the cabinet.
Already, in office only a short time, he has been accused by Senator Patrick Brazeau, of trying to do “a back room deal” that would lessen Brazeau’s punishment for alleged wrongful spending as a Senator. Brazeau continues to claim innocence in the matter, and the police investigation is not completed. One can guess the Prime Minister’s Office is trying to douse the flames shooting from the Senate windows. Senator Carignan’s move may very well have been dictated to him from The Prime Minister’s Office ... if not by the Prime Minister himself.
The people in the Prime Minister’s Office were described as “unelected staffers half my age” by the Conservative MP, Brent Rathgeber (Edmonton/St. Albert) when he resigned from the Conservative caucus in June, 2013. Not only that, but Brent Rathgeber MP said he was “constantly … directed” by those unelected staffers - very confident operators because they are errand boys for the Top Man.
Even fifty-year Conservative operative and seven-year Conservative Senate leader Marjory LeBreton found herself resigning from that job when the PMO didn’t like her leadership on the Senate Expenses Scandal. The fixers in the PMO have a lot of power. Stephen Harper knows what he wants.
On an interview program with CBC’s Rick MacInnes-Rae on October 25 Senator Le Breton made an “everyone knows” comment about the Prime Minister’s Office. Familiarity may not have bred contempt on her part, but it seems to have bred political carelessness. She said much the same thing in a Global News interview with Laura Stone on September 4, 2013.
In her interview with Laura Stone she says: “I’ve worked in the prime minister’s office. I’ve been in that pressure cooker”. That pressure cooker seems to be the place where illegitimate actions are planned and carried out under the overall direction of the Prime Minister – but without him being told exactly how the illegitimate actions are executed. That is rather like the top Mafia boss who tells underlings that person X is in the way and has got to be neutralized. When X is murdered and found in a dumpster somewhere, the Mafia boss can in no way be charged with murder or even of being involved in it.
That is not an exaggerated comparison with the Prime Minister’s Office.
“That’s your job in the prime minister’s office”, says LeBreton. “I was deputy chief of staff, I spent three-quarters of my time putting out fires, keeping things away from the prime minister”. “KEEPING THINGS AWAY FROM THE PRIME MINISTER”.
In her radio interview she was quite unruffled by the fact that Stephen Harper changed his story about Nigel Wright and the $90,000.00 paid to Mike Duffy. LeBreton argues that each time Harper spoke he was saying what he had been told up to that time. Apparently, he was kept in the dark about actions taken.
Why on earth would he be kept in the dark? He wanted the Expenses Scandal cleared up … quickly. And, apparently gave orders to have it done? Why would he want to be kept in the dark about it? One can only believe he would be kept in the dark so that he couldn’t be accused of being a part of criminal actions. (The payment of $90,000.00 by Nigel Wright to Mike Duffy, just for instance, might well turn out to be a criminal payment.) *
If Harper ordered action and ordered that he NOT be kept informed, reasonable Canadians might very well conclude he knew that criminal actions would probably be involved in the “solution” of the problem.
If that is the case, and if some of the nearly one hundred people in the Prime Minister’s Office willingly use criminal actions to achieve ends sought by the Prime Minister (as may be the case in the Senate Expenses Scandal), then Canadians would be perfectly correct to believe the Prime Minister’s Office is a criminal organization.
The whole, larger story of the appointment of “activist” Senators drags at Stephen Harper’s credibility. There is strong suspicion in some quarters that he appointed Senators to be full-time Party operatives – as well as careful reviewers of Commons legislation, giving it “sober second thought”. There is suspicion, too, that he didn’t care what or how much those Senators spent in the process as Party operatives. And then when the message came that the grassroots were outraged at the spending, it is suggested Stephen Harper turned on his own appointees.
We must remember Conservative Senators were implicated in the 2006 Election Violations in-and-out Scandal that the Conservative Party admitted guilt to and paid a fine for. Senators Doug Finley and Irving Gerstein were originally accused of submitting ‘false or misleading’ election expenses documents, and faced fines or jail terms. Charges against them were dropped in the final plea deal in which the Conservative Party admitted guilt and paid a fine. (The two Senators were never asked to leave the Senate until the matter was finished, let alone without pay.)
Let’s suppose that criminal actions are engaged in – as a result of orders given by the Prime Minister. Marjory Lebreton says – as I understand her words – that one of the major tasks in the PMO is not letting the Prime Minister be contaminated by them. One of the major jobs – is “KEEPING THINGS AWAY FROM THE PRIME MINISTER”.
There is much talk about the very, very difficult task of changing or abolishing the Senate of Canada. It is constitutionally housed in government, and it is protected by all the blocks set up to prevent careless or ill-intended changes in the constitution. As it should be. There is every reason to believe honest men and women can make the Canadian Senate a successful and effective arm of government … as it is intended to be.
The Prime Minister’s Office is not a part of the government of Canada in Canada’s constitutional make-up. It is a dangerous, perhaps criminal creation of avaricious people seeking unlimited power. It can be abolished. It can be reigned in. Legislation in Parliament could say, for instance, that the Prime Minister’s Office may have no more than ten employees, that they may not be paid more than a certain amount, and that they may not advise, direct, or in any way seek to influence elected MPs, or Senators.
It’s that simple. Don’t abolish the Canadian Senate. Abolish the present Prime Minister’s Office and reconstruct it to be contained, visible, answerable to the Commons and in no way a competitor with that body.
* In 2006, then Commissioner of the RCMP Guiliano Zaccardelli was responsible for what was deemed an attack on the Liberal Party in the last days of the election by announcing a criminal investigation of the Liberal Minister of Finance. With the in-and-out Conservative Election Scandal involving 67 constituencies, Zaccardelli’s action is alleged to have significantly helped the Conservatives win a minority in the election. Zaccardelli was later forced to resign in disgrace for his behaviour in the Maher Arar matter.
William Elliott, Zaccardelli’s successor as top RCMP cop, was appointed directly from the office of Stockwell Day, then Conservative Minister of Public Safety. Elliott was openly criticized by top Mounties as being incapable (in effect) of filling the post, and only when their actions became persistent and embarrassing was Elliott removed.
His replacement as RCMP Commissioner, Bob Paulson, apparently had no role in the removal of William Elliott or in efforts to clean up the faltering and increasingly criticized Force. Quiet to the point of near-invisibility on major issues, Paulson has made no public comment as his independence has been reduced by the Stephen Harper cabinet. In the case taken by women officers for sexual harassment in the RCMP, lawyers from the federal Justice Department are acting for the Defence … not RCMP lawyers.
Where does the Conservative Party end … and the RCMP begin?
Robin Mathews
____________________
The Straight Goods
Cheers Eyes Wide Open
3 comments:
"When you confer benefits (he says, following Aristotle); do so yourself, but if dirty work is to be done, let others do it, for then they, not the prince, will be blamed and the prince can gain favour by duly cutting off their heads: for men prefer vengeance and security to liberty. Do what you must do in any case, but try to represent it as a special favour to the people."
- Machiavelli's THE PRINCE on The Art of Power, the corrupt politician's handbook
Grant, I cannot wait until the next federal election, when the conservation piece of shit comes onto my property.
Great post and as usual the only thing the corrupt corporate mainstream media picks up on is always a side show, while the corrupt Pee Em is busy destroying Canada.
Jean
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