Ezra Levant: April 2010 Archives

I saw this disturbing clip over at Small Dead Animals: 

What a creepy nut. He gives off a real Jim Jones vibe, doesn't he?

I wonder what "level of maggot" he would classify himself as now -- an enormously wealthy man with several homes and a jet-set lifestyle. An excerpt from a Western Standard news report in 2007:

But while he railed at others, Suzuki himself was racking up emissions. The Western Standard observed that for the majority of the hour-and-a-half speech, his diesel bus was left idling in downtown Calgary. After the talk, Suzuki and his small entourage rushed into the large bus without taking questions, before driving three blocks to the hotel where they were staying.

The best response to Suzuki -- who has a weekly propaganda hour on the CBC, courtesy of 33-million tax-paying Canadian maggots -- is from the only conservative allowed to host a CBC show, namely Don Cherry.

Don't you absolutely love the sing-song in how he says "left wing kook"?

I don't have a legal opinion on Speaker Peter Milliken's ruling yesterday, over the question of whether the Conservative government has to disclose every single national security document, military document and diplomatic document to MPs who want to see them.

But I do have a political opinion on it: it should spark an election.

Simply put, I do not trust many MPs with information of a sensitive nature, especially when we're in a war.

Gentle reader, do you really trust, say, Liberal MP Gurbax Malhi, who spoke at a rally in support of illegal Tamil terrorists -- right on Parliament Hill, with that terrorist group's flags practically draped right over him?

Do you really think that Malhi should be privy to every secret communication amongst our soldiers, spies and diplomats?

Or how about Borys Wrzesnewskyj, another Liberal MP, who flew to Lebanon with the purpose of meeting with the illegal terrorist organization Hezbollah. I'm not talking about his demand that Jason Kenney come back immediately from his "jaunt" to Auschwitz -- just because Wrzesnewskyj is anti-Semitic doesn't mean he can't be trusted to keep a secret from our enemies.

It's his love affair with the terrorist group Hezbollah that has me worried that he can't be trusted. Wrzesnewskyj has repeatedly called for talks with Hezbollah, demanded that they be de-listed as a terrorist group, and actually flew out to Lebanon to meet them (I don't know if he actually did).

I think Canadians get it. I think if they had the question of Afghanistan and terrorism put to them in those terms -- who do you trust to handle the subject, Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff and his two NDP premiers, Bob Rae and Ujjal Dosanjh -- I'm pretty sure I know whose side they'd come down on.

The media and the opposition, along with the official legal establishment like the Canadian Bar Association, are in love with terrorist and terrorist supporters. Omar Khadr is the CBA's poster child, and the mainstream media thinks that the liar Maher Arar is some sort of folk hero.

So let's have it out. Let's call the question. And let's not let a single Speaker of the House -- however competent -- make the decision. Let's not even put it to the nine Supreme Court judges. Why should just one Canadian vote on it, or just nine? How about all of us?

Let's all vote on whether or not the likes of Ignatieff, Malhi and Wrzesnewskyj -- and, moments later, their friends at the Toronto Star and CBC -- should have access to the most sensitive security information.

Let's all take sides -- the Liberals and NDP can side with their friends Omar Khadr, Maher Arar, and the Taliban, and the Conservatives can side with our Canadian Forces.

Let's put it to a question.

My only regret is that, in such a slam-dunk election, the mainstream media itself wouldn't be on the ballot.

Today the big news in the British election is a comment made by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, caught on tape.

Brown had just spoken with a pensioner who asked him about her taxes. The conversation was polite, if difficult for the tax-and-spend Labour leader.

But when Brown got back into his limousine, he evidently forgot that he was wearing a lapel microphone; complaining to aides, he called her a "bigoted woman".

Got it? Complain about taxes and you're a "bigot".

Has Brown been taking advice from Canada's Bigot-Finder General, Frank Graves?

So a punk rocker named Jimmy Gestapo plays a gig at a Jewish-owned club in Philadelphia.

And a few hard-core fans show up in full Nazi regalia.

While a gay party goes on upstairs, featuring a man in a wedding dress.

All is harmonious, enough, until the Nazis leave the club, at which time they're beaten to a pulp in the street.

But to me the best part of this story is this:

"As a Jew, I am totally offended by them wearing the uniforms," he said. "But, as an American citizen, I totally uphold their right to dress however they want to dress."

Liberal-CBC pollster Frank Graves has become a liability to the CBC, damaging its already dubious reputation when it comes to political bias.

In their lead editorial, the Calgary Herald calls Graves "divisive and disgusting":

The bigger issue is that an influential person like Graves can harbour such cliched and stereotypical views and put them forward as a political strategy. It's divisive and disgusting. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, we hope, is smart enough not to dismiss an entire section of the country as irrelevant and ideologically monochromatic.

We do wonder, though, if Graves' remarks reflect a CBC hangup. Every time it produces a TV series set in Alberta, it is built around stereotypical themes about ranchers and oilmen. Most Albertans live in cities, drink wine and ponder thread counts in their bedding. Albertans are noted for their volunteer spirit, generosity and friendliness to all.

And lest you think it's only a Western thing, the Montreal Gazette, the newspaper of record for that Liberal-red city, says Graves should be fired:

Michael Ignatieff has not endorsed this approach, and now that Graves has spilled the beans we imagine the Liberals will want to distance themselves from him. But imagine the fuss if some Conservative pollster had been quoted the same way. We can envision the CBC's breathless reports about "secret Conservative plotting to divide Canadians," etc. etc.

The CBC should invite Graves to take his advice south, or anywhere far away.

When the CBC has lost the Montreal Gazette, it's pretty much over.

I think the CBC is looking for some face-saving way to say goodbye to Graves, without looking like they were pushed around politically. They're surely embarrassed and furious with their "neutral" pollster for being such a partisan hack -- not just the $11,000 in donations that he's made to the Liberal Party, but his secret strategy briefings that he gives the Liberals, that we only found out about because Graves boasted about them to the Globe and Mail.

Well, being a man with the public interest at heart, I've got a revelation about Graves cooking the numbers that I'll write about when I have a moment (hopefully tonight). It's one thing for the CBC to abide a partisan hack like Graves; it's another thing for them to abide someone whose advice to a would-be prime minister is to pit one region against another, and to create a national "enemies list".

But it's something altogether different when their partisan hack "pollster" takes the data, and lies about it.

That's right: Frank Graves takes polling data, and lies to the public about what it says -- lies, you won't be surprised, that embarrass the Conservative Party.

Are you shocked? You shouldn't be. When you have a never-say-die partisan donor, who received $61 million in contracts from the last Liberal government, do you really find it surprising that he'd cook the books?

Even if the CBC doesn't mind -- or even agrees -- with Graves' bias, they should have known that to keep on someone with such a conflict of interest would lead to dishonest analysis.

I'll write about it later -- as a public service to the CBC, who are surely looking for some reason to throw their in-house bigot overboard, but look like it was their idea, not the Conservative Party's.

Last week we learned that Frank Graves, the CBC's so-called neutral pollster, is actually a Liberal hack who has personally donated more than $11,000 to the Liberal Party and continues to give the Liberals secret briefings on how to beat the Conservatives.

So, just another day at the CBC.

(The CBC's ethics code forbids such behaviour. But rules are for the other guys, right?)

In one of Graves' private briefings to the Liberals, that he later boasted about to the Globe and Mail, he outlined a strategy to demonize Western Canada, Christians and other Canadian minorities for partisan gain -- to pit Canadians against each other. As the Globe reported:

In his advice, Mr. Graves could hardly have been more blunt. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

What might the Graves Strategy look like in practice?

Well, it might look like this: Michael Ignatieff's visit to one of the places he plans to demonize, Saskatchewan.

Ignatieff hates Saskatchewan for a lot of reasons. Most obviously, it has only a single Liberal MP. But more deeply, it's exactly the kind of place he detests on a personal level: rural; conservative; Christian; gun-owning; Ukrainian. It's not cosmopolitan enough for an elitist like him. It's not the sort of place that would call him "Count".

The Saskatoon Star Phoenix, in an uncharacteristically vigorous interview, asked Ignatieff about his party's support for C-232, a private member's bill that would require all Supreme Court judges to be so perfectly fluent in French that they would be able to work "without the assistance of an interpreter". That level of bilingualism would exclude at least seven of the nine current judges on the court, including the Chief Justice herself.

It would immediately reduce the pool of candidates from the West. To have such a command of both languages so as to abandon the aid of interpreters, would even rule out many Quebeckers whose English is not perfect.

In other words, it would make language skills more important than legal skills.

But from Ignatieff's point of view, that's not a bug in the program, that's a feature. Under the Graves Strategy, it would ensure that the West, the fastest-growing region in Canada, is shut out from yet another national institution. And any Westerner who objected could be called a bigot and a rube and "anti-French", to the delight of those more cosmopolitan ridings where Ignatieff might have a chance.

In other words, pit Toronto against Saskatoon; pit Montreal against Calgary.

That's the Graves Strategy.

Sort of like Keith Davey's Liberal strategy that he articulated for Pierre Trudeau: "Screw the West, we'll take the rest."

Here's the remarkable exchange with the Star Phoenix. I've just got to fisk it for you, line by line:

SP: Your party has advocated for a requirement that Supreme Court justices be bilingual. Wouldn't that leave out a lot of great candidates from Saskatchewan and Alberta, places where bilingualism isn't that strong?

MI: First of all, there's a French fact in Saskatchewan, which is important. It's not the case that French isn't a part of the cultural heritage of the West, just look at the place names.

The French fact? Here's a fact: in the 2001 census, just 1.9% of people in Saskatchewan had French as their mother tongue. It has since fallen to 1.7%.

But that line -- "just look at the place names" -- is classic. So an Anglophone in Saskatchewan should be subjected to forced bilingualism because of the name of his town?

SP: But it's relatively minuscule . . .

MI: But I can't believe that these great law schools in the West can't produce great lawyers, men and women, who have the capacity to serve on a bilingual court. I don't think it's more of a challenge than it is for Ontario or the Maritimes.

Does Ignatieff really believe that? Does he really believe it's not harder to become bilingual in Saskatchewan? Is he that out of touch?

Here's a chart for you from Statistics Canada. Let's take the Saskatchewan city of Yorkton, population 17,150. According to the 2006 census, not one single home in Yorkton speaks French. Not one! Look at the other cities and towns; they're almost as Anglophone.

Ignatieff does not expect fluent French-English bilingualism from Saskatchewan. He cannot be that stupid. But he's not being stupid. He is saying he demands Saskatchewan be bilingual, because he hopes to use their failure, and their negative reaction, as "proof" that the West is "bigoted" -- and as an excuse to politically marginalize the province.

It's the Graves Strategy.

MI: Let's not single out the West as some kind of problem. We've got some great western justices -- Justice Marshall Rothstein is a great guy.

First of all, Justice Rothstein is from Manitoba, not Saskatchewan. But all Westerners look and sound the same, right? But the point is: Rothstein -- oh, what a lucky man to have Ignatieff's approval as a "great guy"! -- would be excluded under Ignatieff's system. Because Rothstein is not bilingual. He's an excellent judge -- universally admired. But because he spent his life learning the law, instead of practicing his French for the day he might be summoned to Ottawa, he would be excluded by Ignatieff. I guess he's not a great enough guy.

MI: The West wants in . . . to these great national institutions, but we are a bilingual country.

I love that: "but". Sure, you Westerners want in. Sure, these are national institutions. But. But you small-minded Western rubes, you don't speak perfect French. And to Ignatieff, running a Supreme Court without interpreters for the judges (of course, the lawyers would still have them!) is more important than letting the West "in".

MI: And this is not a minor matter because a quarter of the cases come from Quebec.

Ah. So you see, operating without interpreters is not a minor matter -- it's so major that the West must be excluded.

Ignatieff fails to explain why interpreters have suddenly failed to work; interpreters who have kept the Supreme Court running fairly for both French and English litigants and lawyers for decades. But that major matter must push the West down the list.

Has there been a single complaint, ever, about the interpreters? There is no witness testimony in the Supreme Court -- it's all lawyers arguing over filed documents and lower court cases. Has there ever, in decades of operation, been a problem? Of course not. The problem is not in the court. The problem is the West itself, and the Graves Strategy has found a way to use the court as a weapon.

MI: This isn't me creating a new obstacle that the West has to overcome.

It's not me. It's you.

If it's not Ignatieff, then who did create this obstacle? Yvon Godin, the NDP nobody who introduced C-232 as a private member's bill, would have seen his bigoted idea evaporate into the ether, as most private members bills do, were it not for Ignatieff's support.

MI: This is our country and I want the West to participate

Nice to finally have Ignatieff call Canada "our country". He's certainly used that appellation enough to describe the UK when he lived there (and voted there) or the U.S. In fact, I'm not sure Ignatieff has stopped calling the U.S. "my country"; as he told the Harvard Crimson newspaper right before he decamped for Canada: “If I am not elected, I imagine that I will ask Harvard to let me back,” Ignatieff said. “I love teaching here, and I hope I’ll be back in some shape or form.”

But back to Saskatchewan:

MI: and I want our law schools to be sending out the message: "You want to get on the Supreme Court? You might want to study a little French."

Did you catch that last part? "Study a little French"?

But studying a "little" French won't do it, will it? Even studying a lot of French won't do it. Everyone in Saskatchewan already has to study French. That hasn't done it for them.

In fact, unless you use French every day, you're pretty much guaranteed not to have enough fluency to be able to work in the demanding, word-perfect environment of the Supreme Court, without the aid of interpreters.

If Ignatieff were speaking honestly to Westerners -- but why would he; they're there to be demonized, not courted, and certainly not treated with respect -- he would have admitted that there probably exists not a single judge in Saskatchewan with the bilingualism skills to be elevated to the Supreme Court under C-232.

Forget judges; what would the entire pool of bilingual lawyers in Saskatchewan look like? There are only 1,500 lawyers in the whole province. If the statistics for the rest of the province apply to lawyers, too, that means only about twenty lawyers in the whole place would ever -- ever! -- have the chance to serve on the Supreme Court.

That's not a pool of talent. That's a puddle.

But those are the only Saskatchewan people that Ignatieff thinks are good enough.

Michael Ignatieff doesn't understand Canada. He was away for 34 years. A crash course of reading, combined with visiting some airports and hotels on tightly-controlled Liberal junkets, can't make up for that. Being an American or a Brit for his whole life can't be unlearned; he just doesn't know us, other than he knows he wants to rule us.

He understands this, which is why he has allowed himself to be so malleable in the hands of different advisors. When Warren Kinsella worked for him, Ignatieff followed the Fraternity Strategy. It didn't work, but Ignatieff didn't know any better.

Now Ignatieff is following the Graves Strategy: instead of trying to court groups of Canadians who disagree with him, he's demonizing them.

It's ugly to watch, but I find solace in my certain belief that it will backfire on Ignatieff badly -- and he'll be back to his true home, Harvard, by next year.

Just hours -- minutes? -- after posting his non-apology apology, in which he professes deep, deep regret for calling Conservatives bigots, Liberal-CBC pollster Frank Graves called up the Globe and Mail to take it all back.

He really does think the Conservatives are the party of bigots.

Here's his Globe un-apology:

But in an interview today with The Globe and Mail to explain his apology, Mr. Graves went on to say that polling data shows the Conservative Party “does seem to provide a haven” for people with xenophobic or homophobic views.

I think this is 100% acceptable for a Liberal partisan to say. In fact, it's pretty much been the standard Liberal line for twenty years.

The only reason this is remarkable news is that:

1. It proves my point that Frank Graves is a shifty-eyed liar;

2. It confirms that his advice to the Liberals (that they seem to be taking) is that pitting the country against itself is their operating strategy; and, most importantly

3. That for the CBC to call this Liberal activist a "neutral pollster" is a joke -- but they're the butt of it.

Graves has every right to hate the Tories and call them names. He has every right to give advice to Michael Ignatieff, even the most toxic advice. Ignatieff has every right to follow that advice.

But for the CBC to pretend none of this is happening, to pretend that their Liberal pollster isn't a Liberal, and to continue to act in defiance of their own ethical code of conduct -- that's not Grave's problem, it's the CBC's problem.

And it's a problem they don't seem to give a damn about.

I don't think anyone would dispute that. The only room for debate is: who did he lie to -- Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail, or you and me?

Yesterday, Martin wrote a column in the Globe about the Graves Strategy for Michael Ignatieff. Key excerpts:

Frank Graves of Ekos Research, in agreement with the analysis, has told the Grits that the wedge politics of the Conservatives provide them with an opportunity to stake out a stark alternative. Stop worrying about the West, he’s told them. No need to fear polarizing the debate. It’s what worked for Mr. Chrétien against Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.

In his advice, Mr. Graves could hardly have been more blunt. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

The Grits haven’t told him whether they favour this approach or not. But they are keen on projecting a more activist agenda for the party.

So, in case those four explicit mentions aren't clear enough, let's just say it in plain English: Graves gives advice to the Liberals. He tells them things.

Today, probably under some pressure from CBC brass who realize their house pollster is in violation of their ethical code of conduct, Graves issued a statement claiming:

This is a classic non-apology apology -- or what the Chinese call an "ironic" apology.

I'm sorry... that you are too stupid to understand what I meant.

I'm sorry... that I have to explain myself to you knuckle-draggers out there who like Sarah Palin.

I'm sorry... not that I'm unethical, but that I've been caught.

So now he's claiming he didn't give that strategic advice to the Liberals.

Do you really believe his latest line?

In a tough-talking interview with a sympathetic columnist, he boasts four times about how he advises the Liberals. In his TV appearance yesterday, he even admits he's called by partisans all the time -- just not Conservatives. (Gee, who does that leave?)

But now, that he's embarrassed himself and the CBC (but, apparently, not Michael Ignatieff who is following his advice), he claims it was all a misunderstanding.

Frank. Graves. Is. A. Liar.

But let's pretend -- just for fun -- that we're the stupid rubes he talked about, and he's the smart cosmopolitan elite that he talked about, and so we have fallen under his spell, like a Jedi mind trick.

Pretend along with me: yes, Graves, we believe that you, who donated $11,000 to the Liberals, got $61 million in Liberal contracts, we believe that you didn't say what you say you said. We now believe that you said what you say you meant.

Okay, I'll play along.

There are still a few questions he hasn't answered.

1. He says he now regrets those particular words -- his attack on the West, Christians, etc. -- because they were offensive. Putting aside the choice of words (they'll be perfected later by the Liberal TV ad team), does he still believe in the divide-and-conquer strategy of pitting different Canadians from different provinces, classes, races and religions against each other?

I think we know the answer: he still stands by the Graves Strategy -- he's just embarrassed that it sounded so awful, and that it exposed the lie of him being a "non-partisan" CBC house pollster.

2. In his statement today, Graves says he gave his advice to the Liberals through the media. Yes, we know that he did. But he does not deny that he also gave it privately and directly, as implied in Martin's original column yesterday. Will Graves disclose who in the Liberal Party or government he has been giving his advice to as well, in manners that are not publicly known? How often does he give advice to the Liberals? What other advice has he given them?

3. As you can see in the video, Graves is a shifty-eyed dodger. So we have to read his letter like a lawyer would. Look at this sentence:

Frank Graves is the president of a polling company called Ekos Research.

Graves is a partisan Liberal, having personally donated more than $11,000 to that party over the past decade.

But it has paid off handsomely for Graves. When the Liberals were last in power, they steered more than $61 million in government contracts to Ekos -- literally 1,600 contracts.

For every dollar Graves gave the Liberals, they gave $6,000 to his company.

That would probably be enough to make me a Liberal, too.

And by the way, there's nothing wrong with being a Liberal partisan (although, of course, there was something terribly wrong with the way the Liberals handed out their public opinion contracts under the Liberals -- it was positively criminal, in fact.)

But the Liberals aren't in power any more and their bureaucrat who doled out the polling contracts, Chuck Guite, went to jail. I'd bet that Ekos's government contracts have fallen precipitously.

So Graves keeps busy by, amongst other things, being CBC's pollster of record.

I guess the CBC is where left-wingers go for a soft landing when they're down on their luck. I mean, they actually gave a whole show to radical environmental lobbyist David Suzuki.

So we've got another Liberal working at the CBC -- that's hardly news. But today the Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin carried a stunning interview with Graves, about his continuing role as an advisor to the Liberal Party. Here's an excerpt:

In his advice, Mr. Graves could hardly have been more blunt. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

Let's take this one step at a time.

The CBC's pollster of record is major Liberal donor. He plots out strategies to beat the Conservatives. And he gives that strategic advice to the Liberals in private -- a fact that we only learn about because he blabbed about it to Martin.

Yet Graves appears on the CBC not as a "Liberal pollster" or "Liberal strategist" or "Liberal donor" or "Liberal", but as the CBC's trustworthy, neutral, reliable, independent analyst, who cares only about enlightening viewers.

What a scandal.

Could you imagine if the CBC were to hire a Tory strategist as their chief Parliamentary correspondent -- while secretly allowing him to continue to work for the Conservatives, and donate thousands upon thousands of dollars to them?

It's too absurd to even ask the question.

I mean, the media positively had a freak-out when it was revealed that a CBC reporter who is dating a Tory MP was given spousal travel benefits.

Graves's case would be like the Tory MP himself working for the CBC -- and not disclosing it.

I say again, it is fine for partisan hacks to be on TV. But it's not fine when their hackery is kept secret from the viewers.

Don't take my word for it -- take a page out of the CBC's own code of ethics.

Here's a paragraph from their rulebook regarding political partisans:

The hiring of persons identified with political parties or pressure groups may only be authorized if the person concerned has resigned his or her functions within the political party or pressure group and has refrained from public activity in the party or group or in a related capacity for at least two years.

This policy is not designed to prevent the participation of public figures invited to comment on current events provided that, on the air, there is no ambiguity regarding their status.

So Frank Graves can continue to be a top Liberal -- a top donor, a top strategist, a top advisor -- as long as he doesn't hide that from viewers. But he does hide it -- his partisan links are not disclosed.

That's unethical.

But you'll notice, dear reader, that I haven't even yet discussed the substance of Graves' advice to his boss.

And by boss, of course, I don't mean the CBC, I mean Michael Ignatieff.

Just what did the CBC's "neutral" pollster tell Ignatieff to do?

He told Ignatieff to pit Canadians against each other.

Region against region, class against class, province against province, race against race, and even sexual orientation against sexual orientation.

He actually called it a "war" amongst Canadians. As in, Ignatieff should try to start one.

It's insane advice: a strategy of attacking national unity, instead of building it.

Treating some Canadians with respect but others with contempt.

Provoking dischord and sowing seeds of dissent, for raw political gain.

My, how the Liberal Party has fallen.

This was once the party that owned the brand of national unity and national pride. It was the party of the flag, the party of section 15 of the Charter -- the equality provision. Now it's the party of dividing Canadians to conquer them.

And the horrific thing is that Michael Ignatieff has clearly been listening to his man in the CBC.

Just look at Ignatieff's two signature issues over the past few months: forcing abortion onto the national agenda; and vowing to enforce the gun registry over the objections of rural Canadians.

He's doing it. Ignatieff is actually implementing the Graves Strategy: divide Canadians against each other, to conquer them politically.

It's the kind of machination that must appeal to a Russian Count.

The CBC must fire Graves: he cannot be their "neutral" pollster of record. He should be invited on every week as a Liberal strategist -- he clearly has great influence in the party. But he cannot continue to pretend to CBC viewers that he is non-partisan. It's not only dishonest, it's against the CBC's rules.

But Ignatieff must fire Graves, too. He must renounce the Graves Strategy of scorched earth. He must publicly distance himself from the idea of a national enemies list, with whole provinces and religions and races on it.

It's one thing for Graves to hold such cynical, corrosive views. At the end of the day, he's just a talking head.

But it's quite something else for the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to be guided by such a mean-spirited, bitter strategy.

Let Frank Graves continue to make his five-figure Liberal donations. Good for him.

But the CBC must fire him -- their code of ethics demands it.

And Michael Ignatieff must renounce his advice -- his civic responsibility to Canadians requires it.

Update: Kory Teneycke slaughters a sweaty, shifty, no-eye-contact Graves on the CBC. That's a good start. But will the CBC continue to keep this partisan as their "neutral" pollster?

Favourite lines from the video:

Graves said "I'm entitled" to give secret strategic advice to the Liberal Party if he damned well pleases. So far, the CBC brass seem to agree with him, code of ethics be damned.

Teneycke keeps reading Graves' words back to him, and finally the Liberal panics and says "I haven't presented this to Michael Ignatieff or the Liberals". Is he calling Lawrence Martin a liar? Or is he saying that he himself lied when he told Martin that he had presented his strategic advice to the Liberals?

What a professional meltdown.

But again, who cares about Graves? It's the CBC's reputation that is being murdered -- and Michael Ignatieff's judgement that is now under scrutiny.

95% of the time, Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh drives me crazy.

Just to name one example, the former Communist organizer has been on a six-month campaign to smear our Canadian Forces in Afghanistan as war criminals. It really is gross to watch.

But then, every once in a while, Dosanjh speaks out against Sikh radicalism in a way that is so honest and so personally courageous, it makes me realize that he can be more than just a partisan leftist -- he can be a very brave man.

Here's an item from today's Globe and Mail; here are some excerpts:

Ujjal Dosanjh, a former Liberal cabinet minister and onetime B.C. premier, says Sikh extremism is on the rise in some parts of the country, and blamed, in part, “politically correct” Canadians who let it happen in the name of diversity.

Mr. Dosanjh, who was savagely beaten in Vancouver in 1985 after speaking out against religious violence, said Canadian multiculturalism has allowed extremism to take root in Sikh and other ethnic communities.

...Mr. Dosanjh’s comments shocked some Sikh organizations, including the influential World Sikh Organization of Canada.

...Meanwhile, Mr. Dosanjh blamed what he described as Canada’s polite brand of multiculturalism for giving extremists the space to nurture old grudges brought from their homelands. At the same time, Canada has failed to instill its own values on new immigrants.

“I think what we are doing to this country is that this idea of multiculturalism has been completely distorted, turned on its head to essentially claim that anything anyone believes – no matter how ridiculous and outrageous it might be – is okay and acceptable in the name of diversity.

“Where we have gone wrong in this pursuit of multiculturalism is that there is no adherence to core values, the core Canadian values, which [are]: That you don’t threaten people who differ with you; you don’t go attack them personally; you don’t terrorize the populace.”

...“I think Canadians need to engage in this cultural diversity debate,” he said. “And we actually have to say to each other: ‘Hey what you’re doing is wrong. What you’re doing here is right.’ We should stop being politically correct and have a debate.” 

As an Albertan and a sympathizer of Alberta's oil patch, I am scared about President Barack Obama's plans for a carbon tax. Right now, literally 100% of Canadian oil exports go to the U.S. Why not build a pipe to the West coast to hedge our bets? Contrary to mythology, it's Japan, not China, that is the second largest importer of oil in the world after the U.S. And India and Korea are big importers, too -- and they buy from the nastiest places, like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Why not from us instead?

I'm not for trade sanctions against China, so I wouldn't be averse to selling oil to them, too. But I think we could treat our allies like India more favourably than we do our -- what's a nice way of putting it? -- strategic competitors like China.

Of course, the Americans are our best friends of all. But with Obama turning a lean and hungry look towards our oil patch, I think it's just good risk management to have other options.

Here's my Op-Ed to this effect in today's National Post (at left is how it looked on the page):

A pipeline to Asia

The Chinese government, through a corporate front called Sinopec, has announced plans to invest another $4.5-billion in Canada's oil sands. China's going to buy ConocoPhillips' 9% stake in the giant Syncrude project.

The Sinopec deal brings to $10-billion the Chinese investment in the oil sands in recent years. Is it a hostile takeover?

No, for several reasons.

First, 100% of Canada's oil exports go to the U.S. -- that's the only place the pipelines lead. China isn't buying oil sands companies for the oil. It's buying them as a place to put its money in long-term, strategic investments, as it backs away slowly from increasingly wobbly U.S. treasury bills. China's not buying our oil; it's buying the reliable flow of Canadian corporate profits and our stable economic outlook.

Is it a national security risk to Canada?

No, again. It is true that, according to CSIS, the Chinese government represents the largest espionage threat to Canada, stealing the equivalent of $1-billion a month from our country in industrial secrets. (That's more than our annual exports to China.)

But that espionage is done illegally by Chinese students, expats and other sympathizers, not through the legal ownership of share certificates. No doubt our high-tech energy secrets are being stolen and will continue to be stolen, but that is not happening because of a Wall Street deal. The central strategic value of the oil sands is not at risk.

And there is little room for corporate mischief, even if that were the Chinese strategy. For one thing, all of the Chinese ownership so far is fractional, with other shareholders involved in each of the companies. Canadian business law protects the fiduciary interests of those other shareholders. The Chinese, even if they had a majority stake in any company, couldn't operate in any manner other than to maximize profits -- which means operating normally and exporting oil to the U.S.

So a Chinese shutdown of the oil sands is not a legal possibility. Even if China were to buy, outright, a large number of oil sands companies, and in a moment of crisis took some concerted action against Canada's national interests, the companies could simply be expropriated. Even American customers are protected, through our free trade agreement that ensures the U.S. has market access to Canadian oil.

So there's no risk of China simply taking our oil, or stopping us from selling it to anyone else. But that raises the question: If countries like China can't buy our oil now, is it in our interest to be able to sell it to them?

The answer is yes.

It's an economic blessing living next to the world's greatest economy. And it was investors from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, not from Ontario or Quebec, who first took a chance on Alberta's oil patch. After nearly a century working together, the cross-border cultural and economic ties are strong. The fact that both president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney were oilmen only made the relationship closer.

But President Barack Obama is a community organizer from Chicago, as culturally distant from the oil patch as possible. And Obama has said that, after health care reform, his carbon tax proposal (called "cap and trade") is his highest priority.

In 2004, oil sands production vaulted Canada ahead of the Saudis to become the largest source of U.S. oil imports, so he's talking about us. All of a sudden having the U.S. as our sole customer for oil exports is a lot less reassuring. Canada's Conservative government has admitted the obvious: We will have to follow the U.S. lead on a continent-wide energy policy, which means we might yet see Stephane Dion's disastrous Green Shift enacted.

Which brings us back to China -- and Japan and Korea, which also have oil sands stakes, and India, which has announced it's in the market to buy oil sands too.

Those four countries together import more oil than the U.S. does. So at what point does it make sense to build a pipeline from Fort McMurray to the West Coast, and offer our bounty to Asia, too?

Pipeline operator Enbridge thinks the time is now. They've proposed a 525,000 barrel per day pipeline from Bruderheim, just northeast of Edmonton, to Kitimat, on British Columbia's northern coast. The project, dubbed Northern Gateway, would be almost completely buried underground, minimizing its environmental impact.

Needless to say, it is being opposed by the usual environmental groups, a handful of aboriginal bands and Kitimat's NDP MP, Nathan Cullen. But the pipeline would create 4,000 construction jobs, and hundreds more on a permanent basis. Like the oil sands itself, its employment would disproportionately favour aboriginal bands -- not to mention Kitimat itself, reeling from the recent closure of a major pulp mill. And then there's the value of the oil: Even if prices stayed at the current $85 a barrel, the pipeline would ship $16-billion a year.

If the Northern Gateway receives regulatory approval, it wouldn't be operating until 2018 -- likely too late to save Canada's oil patch from any U.S. carbon taxes. But the mere prospect that the U.S. would have to compete for Canadian oil would be salutary in itself -- and it might make Congress think twice before designing taxation policies to apply to Canadian industry.

Few international relationships in history have been as close as that of Canada and the United States. At first glance, shipping oil to Asia might seem like an anti-American slight. But if opening up a small pipeline to Asia causes Washington to rethink its plans to foist another National Energy Policy on us, it's actually the best guarantor of a healthy Canada-U. S. relationship for decades to come.

- Ezra Levant is the author of Ethical Oil: The case for Canada's oil sands, to be published this summer by McClelland & Stewart.

By the way, I'm really excited about Ethical Oil. I don't have the exact dates for the book tour, but I'll let you know when I do.

The other day, the National Post's John Ivison wrote about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's appalling view, as expressed under oath by "hate speech" investigator Dean Steacy, that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value".

Seriously, Steacy said that -- look it up for yourself in the transcript of the hearing, here, at page 4793.

Ivison asked the CHRC to explain themselves, and they told him:

(a commission spokesperson said this quote has been taken out of context and that if the question had been about freedom of expression, one of the freedoms guaranteed in the Charter, the answer would have been different).

That's a lie, of course. Here's my letter to the editor in today's Post pointing out that lie:

CHRC 'bullies' don't believe in free speech

Re: Laws Can't Assure We'll Never Be Offended, John Ivison, April 3.

John Ivison is right to focus on the stunning testimony of the Canadian Human Rights Commission's "hate speech" investigator, Dean Steacy, who declared that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

What's even more amazing is that when Mr. Ivison asked the CHRC about this shocking statement, the commission actually tried to defend it.

First the CHRC's spin doctors told Mr. Ivison that the quote was taken out of context. But it wasn't -- it was a one-sentence answer to a one-sentence question: "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?"

Then the CHRC tried to argue that our Charter of Rights only protects "freedom of expression," so it's OK that its censors don't give any value to "freedom of speech" because that's "different." But that's just stupid: speech is a kind of expression, the most common kind.

Despite what the CHRC says, freedom of speech is guaranteed under Canadian law: the 1960 Bill of Rights brought in by John Diefenbaker lists "freedom of speech" right in section 1. And the phrase "freedom of speech" has been used in no less than 243 rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Canada's censorship laws are being enforced by bullies who don't give a damn about our freedoms and don't even know the law.

Ezra Levant, Calgary.

That's Kathy Shaidle's catch-phrase when a Jew takes it upon himself to single-handedly undo the Hebrew people's most positive stereotype, namely that we're smart.

But why don't you judge for yourself?

Two young students at Carleton University, one Jewish and one not, were attacked the other night by Muslims wielding a machete and shouting at them for being "Zionists".

So we don't have a "hate speech" moment here. We don't have a fake "right not to be offended" moment. We have an assault with a weapon. It's in the Criminal Code, not some politically correct speech code.

And what does Len Rudner, an Official Jew at the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie "Burny" Farber's mini-me, have to say about it?

“Maybe we should consider the impact that words can have in accelerating the argument to the point where people feel that this kind of behaviour is acceptable."

What?

So we have an actual crime with an actual weapon. And Rudner is calling for not the enforcement of the criminal code, but more censorship?

But look at the mealy-mouthed coward. He can't even say that. He says "maybe" "we" "should consider" "the impact words can have" in "accelerating the argument".

WTF?

Maybe?

We?

Should consider?

We didn't do anything. Ten thugs did.

Words didn't have an impact. A machete did -- or almost did.

Accelerating the argument? A machete isn't an argument. It isn't speech, even offensive or "hateful" speech. It is a tool of violence.

And Rudner thinks that -- what? more human rights commissions prosecuting more Zionists like Mark Steyn and me? -- would make these thugs "feel" their behaviour was not "acceptable"?

We already have a Criminal Code that tells them this behaviour is not acceptable.

I'm a Jew, and I love being Jewish. But I remember listening to Rudner on CHQR radio in Calgary once, when he was declaring -- on behalf of all Jews -- that Canada's freedom of speech needs to be infringed.

It was the most condescending lecture I have ever heard -- on southern Alberta's biggest radio station.

And -- if you've ever heard Rudner speak -- you know it was delivered with his trademark Elmer Fudd lisp.

I have nothing against people with a speech impediment. Hell, Moses himself had one.

But when you are sending out a spokesman, fraudulently in the name of all Canadian Jews, to tell the massive listenership of CHQR that "the Jews" are against free speech, and "the Jews" are for censorship, why the hell would you choose the most annoying, irritating, grating spokesman around?

Maybe we could call down to central casting and get Fyvush Finkel to do the censorship circuit, perhaps while conspicuously counting some money. That ought to endear the Jews to the general public.

I swear, if I were not a Jew myself, Rudner's appearance on the radio that day could have turned me into an anti-Semite.

I can only imagine how many people listened to him and blamed the whole of the Jews for that one moron's comments.

And now he's at it again.

It's Rudner's human right to be stupid, and I'm all for his freedom of speech through which he advertises his stupidity.

But he does so falsely in my name, and in the name of the rest of our tribe.

Gentle reader, just so you know: Len Rudner and the other buffoons at the Canadian Jewish Congress don't speak for me.

They don't speak for any of the Jews I know.

They don't speak for the Jewish interest.

And they certainly don't speak for the Canadian interest.

I can't even detect what possible interest they're serving, by making utterances such as Rudner's today.

Rudner's boss, Burny, once mused that human rights commissions are the "dumping ground" for failed political hacks.

It's the one thing I can think of where I have ever agreed with Burny.

Well, if the HRCs are a dumping ground for politicians who can't hack it, the CJC is surely a dumping ground for Jewish men like Rudner and Farber who couldn't cut it as doctors or lawyers or accountants or start a business.

They're a shanda for the goyim.