A note on the American Ports Deal

At first blush, I had no problem with the American deal to sell several ports to Dubai Ports World, a company based in the United Arab Emirates. It appeared to me that the uproar in the US over the potential dangers of the deal was based mostly on xenophobic economic protectionism rather than legitimate security concerns. Security, I thought, should not be a problem because, first, no one was suggesting that the Coast Guard would cease to oversee the port operations, and, second, because DP World has a financial stake in its own reputation, and would thus take the utmost care in preserving the company's image of a secure and competent manager of ports. Moreover, mere xenophobia is not a sufficiently good reason to block trade from the United Arab Emirates, which happens to be one of the most pro-Western Arab countries.

Once I had the chance to delve beyond the headlines, my discovery that DP World is wholly owned by the government of Dubai tempered my support for the deal. Indeed, it would be a positive development, both in the U.S. and Canada, if shipping ports are sold to private companies. As I mentioned before, since private companies have a stake in their own success, they are likely to maximize the efficiency of the operations while minimizing the risk of security breaches which would be detrimental to both their own assets and their reputation. However, the same can not always be said of publicly owned companies since their governments will always be willing to bail them out in the event of failure (witness Canadian Crown Corporations or even the likes of Bombardier). This deal, in effect, may just be ceding control of vital infrastructure to a foreign government, which may well be mired by the same inefficiencies as the domestic government, but is less risk-averse.

Several days later, my flip-flop on this issue is complete. Jerusalem Post has now learned that the Dubai ports firm enforces a boycott of Israel. From JP:

"Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced," Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department's Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the Post in a telephone interview.

"If a product contained even some components that were made in Israel, and you wanted to import it to Dubai, it would be a problem," he said.

A-Din noted that while the head office for the anti-Israel boycott sits in Damascus, he and his fellow staff members are paid employees of the Dubai Customs Department, which is a division of the PCZC, the same Dubai government-owned entity that runs Dubai Ports World.

Moreover, the Post found that the website for Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Zone Area, which is also part of the PCZC, advises importers that they will need to comply with the terms of the boycott.

In a section entitled "Frequently Asked Questions", the site lists six documents that are required in order to clear an item through the Dubai Customs Department. One of them, called a "Certificate of Origin," "is used by customs to confirm the country of origin and needs to be seen by the office which ensures any trade boycotts are enforced," according to the website.

A-Din of the Israel boycott office confirmed that his office examines certificates of origin as a means of verifying whether a product originated in the Jewish state.

So there you go. This deal has nothing to do with free and open trade - it is, in fact, antithetical to the concept - and thus I had no reason to deride the American uproar. If this deal goes through, several American ports will be boycotting trade from an American ally with whom they have a free-trade agreement.

For the Americans, cancelling the Dubai ports deal will not be an excersize in xenophobia but, rather, a defense against it. Overturning this one will be a wise decision.

Integrity

Garth Turner (Conservative MP for Halton, Ontario) is awesome. Read his blog - especially entries for the last week.

Did I know the potential consequences of speaking my mind, or sticking with the principles that brought me to this cold hill? Yeah, I did. I have been an MP before, and a leadership candidate and a cabinet minister. I have the hide to prove it. I know the PMO has a song sheet it wants all caucus members to sing from, and I know what happens when an individual chooses to go his or her own way. I was just hoping this time I would not be asked to choose – between party and principle.

I chose principle. My deepest loyalty is to what I believe, what I told the voters and what I want Parliament to become. The Emerson affair may indeed blow over. The minister may decide not to take the heat. David may turn into a cabinet star and a national asset. But he should still have the conviction to get elected a member of the team he chose. The same team that I chose, and fought like a warrior to join, helped by hundreds more and supported by tens of thousands of others. How could any member of caucus not privately feel the same?

A few nights ago, I made some pledges here. I pledged to remember that my job is not to serve the party or the prime minister, but rather the people who sent me here. I pledged to work to enhance the position of MP, because when that happens, the voters win. I pledged to share my MP’s power with you every way I could, and to speak up for middle class Canadians.

That voice may be a little fainter now, coming from that forgotten basement washroom office, but, dammit, it won’t quit.

Diminished Hopes for Senate Reform

Despite reassurances that senate reform will proceed - even with Michael Fortier's recent appointment to the upper house - the whole notion of an elected senate is now in jeopardy. The Conservatives were proposing to do this without amending the constitution. Instead, the idea was to establish a process through Elections Canada that would elect a senator, who would then be appointed by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, still, would have no obligation to appoint the senator-elect, but ideally would do so in respect for the new precedent, a new tradition. Stephen Harper was supposed to set this precedent, but with Fortier's appointment, he has instantly and permanently nullified any of his future efforts to reach this end.

It is very possible that by the time Harper's mandate is over, all the current senate vacancies filled by elected officials, including the seat to be vacated by Fortier himself by the next general election. The senatorial election may be a process firmly ingrained in the Elections Canada organization. All this may be accomplished and Harper will still have achieved nothing. The only precedent that will have been set is that even the would-be father of senate reform had no qualms about abusing his power to appoint for the sake of political expediency. Why would anyone expect any subsequent Prime Minister behave any differently?

The funniest thing ever

From Canada.com via Babbling Brooks...

Stronach blasts Emerson's defection to Conservatives

"David Emerson is a fine individual. But I look at what Harper did and said when I left the party and I look at what he did to get David to come over and you have to conclude that's a double standard and hypocritical," said Stronach, a former Tory MP who crossed the floor to join the Liberals last year.

That's almost as funny as when Belinda was named the minister responsible for democratic renewal. Oh, the irony.

...

In somewhat related news, Tony Clement, the new Health Minister, announced in a media scrum today on CTV that he will be taking over Belinda's role as Minister of Complex Files. He did so while referring to the challenges he will be facing in his new post, unwittingly repeating Belinda's famous phrase, It's a complex file.

The Seamless Transition

It's been a more than a day now since Harper revealed his new cabinet, which included David Emerson, an elected Liberal from Vancouver, and Michael Fortier, an unelected Conservative organizer from Montreal who is "temporarily" being appointed to the senate. (See my rants on the former, and the latter.) The official explanation seems to be that the appointments were made to ensure that Vancouver and Montreal - who, along with Toronto, elected no Conservative MPs - had some representation in the cabinet. What a bunch of crap.

First of all, if he was that concerned about Vancouver's representation, he could have appointed James Moore, a young talent whose riding (Port Moody - Westwood - Port Coquitlam) is not downtown, but is still in the Greater Vancouver Area. Second, physical presence at the cabinet table is not what is required in order to placate/woo the three metropolitan areas, especially if the electorate chose not to give you any representatives from there. A perfectly laudable method that could be used instead would be to act to address urban concerns. For example, Harper won praise from Toronto's mayor, David Miller, by appointing a respected and high-ranking Conservative MP, Lawrence Cannon, as Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

No, Harper has not done anything that is particularly out of the ordinary with the two surprise appointments, but that is why it is so galling. Canadians voted for change. Changeons pour vrai. Today's column from the Toronto Sun's Lorrie Goldstein asks, "This is a !!&?@? change?" So far, it looks like the answer is "Apparently not".

Appalling Start

I spoke too hastily when I named my last entry "Bad Start". I wrote it quickly during my lunch break this afternoon in reaction to David Emerson's appointment. In hindsight, the title is exceedingly mild.

Here's something that I glossed over earlier. From CTV:

The appointment of Fortier as public works minister came as another big surprise.

Harper has no MPs in any of the Canada's three biggest cities, and he told reporters he appointed Fortier -- a key business figure, party organizer in Quebec and a former president of the Progressive Conservative party -- because he needs a minister from Montreal in his cabinet.

Fortier is not a Member of Parliament, and is being temporarily appointed to the Senate until a seat opens up in the Commons -- a move which seems to contradict Harper's pledge to reform the Senate by appointing only elected Senators as one of his first steps in the new Parliament.

But Harper said Fortier will run in the next federal election, and that he will step down from his Senate seat once he is elected to Parliament.

"Michael Fortier is leaving a lucrative, private sector job to take this (position) ... but it is only a temporary appointment. He has agreed that he will step down at the next federal election . . . and so this Senate seat will be available for elections, and we'll be proceeding with Senate elections in the not-too-distant future."

Conservatives have been talking about senate reform for more than a decade. They rightly argued that the senate lacks legitimacy because it is an unelected body. Now they are finally in power and their first act is to appoint someone to the senate. Does this mean that they now accept the legitimacy of the senate, now that they are in the position to make the patronage appointments? I don't care if the appointment is "temporary"; I'm stupefied.

Allow me to echo Coyne's call. Harper needs to avoid Martin's major pitfall, which was to stand behind bad decisions until the problems that result fester and become unmanageable. Harper needs to get approval from the people for these decisions. Neither Emerson nor Fortier should be allowed into cabinet until they are duly elected by the people that they are meant to represent. The new Prime Minister needs to act immediately to rectify the situation by announcing a by-election in David Emerson's Vancouver riding and a senatorial election for Michael Fortier.

The whole farce does not impress me in the least. Next time I might end up voting Green.

Bad Start

Last week in Canadian politics was a week of speculation and hypotheticals. One by one, prominent Liberals were announcing that they would not be running in the party's leadership race. Still, many potential contenders remain, and none has yet to officially announce candidacy. One such person was David Emerson, who served as Industry Minister under Paul Martin. As of this morning, the suspense surrounding Mr. Emerson was no more.

Emerson was among those sworn in today as cabinet ministers in Stephen Harper's Conservative government. The man who the voters of Vancouver Kingsway elected as their Liberal member of parliament just two weeks ago is now the Conservative Minister of International Trade.

It's a reverse-Belinda, minus the confidence crisis. So much for the hoped-for end to surreptitious backroom deals.

Both the NDP and the Conservative emphasized ethics and accountability in their election platforms. It is one of the few issues of common ground between the two parties and one that they were widely expected to cooperate on. Yet there is one major difference between the two ethics packages. The NDP proposed that MPs who wanted to cross the floor to another party would have to submit first to a by-election. The Conservatives oppose this proposal on the grounds that it gives too much power to parties instead of individual MPs.

This goes back to the question of voter intentions. Do voters vote for candidates based on party affiliation or based on the individual merit? If the vote is based on party affiliation, it implies that it is immoral to cross the floor. If it is based on individual merit, then the constituents have expressed faith in their MP to make the right decisions, regardless of partisan affiliation. In our electoral system, however, there is no way to distinguish between the two options. Each voter makes up his or her own mind based on many factors and it is impossible to determine which factors overwhelmingly prevail in any given riding. This is why the NDP is right. A by-election is the only way to determine the voters' intentions, and is the only way to determine whether an MP has the moral right to cross the floor.

That's right, I'm agreeing with socialists. I think I just saw a pig floating by the window.

Holy shit, they're still flying in those things?

From CTV:

Five crew members have been rescued safely after a Canadian Forces Sea King helicopter went down Thursday afternoon.

The helicopter was ditched about 50 kilometres off the east coast of Denmark at about 1:34 p.m., according to a press release from the Canadian Forces.

Good thing the crew is ok. I can't believe that Canada still lets its soldiers fly around in those rust buckets.

Full Circle

Dig deep into the archives of this blog and you might happen upon my first ever post, "Ontario gets the shaft?". My inaugural entry, which dates back to May of last year, decried the Liberal government's unnecessary and counter-productive interventions into the economy with specific reference to subsidies given to Bombardier for the development of its C-Series jets. Allow me to quote myself.

Canada is purportedly a competitive market economy, and yet the Liberals continue to arm-wrestle with the invisible hand... If this latest CSeries Jet project was actually a wise investment, it could have easily been financed privately. Meanwhile, businesses around the country that are actually profitable are saddled with high taxes, restricting their growth prospects.

Guess what? It turns out it really wasn't such a wise investment. From CBC via Andrew Coyne:

MONTREAL (CP) - Bombardier Inc. (TSX:BBD.SV.B) has put its proposed transcontinental CSeries jet project on the shelf, blaming poor market conditions.

The company said Tuesday it has not scrapped the program but has put off indefinitely its launch after failing to get enough orders to proceed.

As Coyne so eloquently puts it.

Coyne's Fork on this is remorseless and absolute: If the project is uneconomic, it shouldn't get a subsidy. If it's economic, it doesn't need one.

Amen.