Frum and Steyn on Canada

June 16 - David Frum's A Scandal So Immense is a concise description of events that lead to the political crisis in Canada. He gives just the facts, as they say, and the accumulative impact is immense when viewed in the whole.

By the way, I didn't realize before I read this item that David Frum was among at least five people who have been served with libel papers:

There is though one warning I'd better immediately deliver to readers: Along with at least four other public commentators, I have recently been served with libel papers by a leading figure in this story. ..

Is this public knowledge? I could well have missed reading about it during the past couple of days, but I thought I had kept abreast of most of the big stories.

So even if I'm only the latest in an entire parade of people who have said so, I think it worthwhile to go on record and state that this is outrageous. These suits may well be nuisance suits, but, if only by their stifling effect, they constitute an explicit threat to press freedoms and freedom of speech.

Back to the main subject, Frum touches on some key points over this recent period. On corruption:

Some of that money ended up in the pockets of influential Liberals, allegedly including the brother of former prime minister Jean Chretien. Some was kicked back to the Liberal party and its campaign workers. The Gomery inquiry has also revealed a disturbing nexus--that's a word to which no lawyer can object--between senior figures in the Liberal party and organized crime.

On the Gomery Inquiry:

Then Judge Gomery took his hearings onto cable TV. Night after night, Canadians heard firsthand stories of tens of thousands of dollars in cash left in envelopes on restaurant tables, of alleged Mafia figures giving orders to party chairmen, of kickbacks, bribes, and fraud. ..

On Paul Martin and how he secured the votes to survive the budget vote:

Paul Martin has always benefited immensely from his reputation as the Mr. Clean of the Liberal party. ..

The first thing he had to do was trample on Canada's constitutional traditions. ..

[...]

And then Canadians learned the reason why: Over the period that the Martin government had been losing vote after vote in the House, it had been secretly negotiating with the disappointed loser of the Conservative party's 2004 leadership contest, Belinda Stronach, the billionaire heiress to an auto-parts and land-development fortune.

I've only quoted bits and it deserves to be read in full, especially the five reasons he offers to explain the public's reluctance for a change in government. (Link via Newsbeat1.)

Mark Steyn tells of reading The Globe and Mail on a recent airplane flight. He's not overly complimentary. Then he spies a video monitor which instructs “To begin, press EXIT.”

From Exit strategy by Mark Steyn:

The Liberal Party of Canada” isn’t the catchiest name for a Quebec biker gang. .. it’s essentially engaged in the same activities as the other biker gangs: the Grits launder money; they enforce a ruthless code of omerta when fainthearted minions threaten to squeal; they threaten to whack their enemies; they keep enough cash on hand in small bills of non-sequential serial numbers to be able to deliver suitcases with a couple hundred grand hither and yon; and they sluice just enough of the folding stuff around law enforcement agencies to be assured of co-operation. The Mounties’ Musical Ride received $3 million from the Adscam funds, but, alas, the RCMP paperwork relating to this generous subsidy has been, in keeping with time-honoured Liberal book-keeping practices, “inadvertently lost.”

After a nice transition to a bit where he reminds us that the Westminster system depends on a certain modesty and circumspection from the political class he suggests an exit strategy.

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