NOThing done about freezing Ben Ali clan assets.

The former dictator lies comatose in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, abandoned by family members who are no doubt scurrying about, secreting whatever's available of the MASSIVE fortune Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his thugs stole from the Tunisian people.

On Monday and Tuesday, BQ MP Jean Dorion tried in vain to secure from Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon a clear and straight answer about the assets held in Canada by the Ben Ali cabal. For two days running, Cannon supplied Con-voluted baffle-gab in response to pointed questions from Dorion.



Then the Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson took up the empty rhetoric refrain: "Our government is prepared to assist the Government of Tunisia in any manner while respecting our laws. We will continue to work with representatives of Tunisia on this file. Obviously, we all have a stake in ensuring that justice is done for the people of Tunisia."

Yesterday BQ leader Gilles Duceppe met the Tunisian ambassador - who says he has NOT received any communication whatsoever from Cannon or Nicholson.

At the end of January, Tunisian officials asked Canada to freeze assets held by the former President Ben Ali and his family, including illegal transfers of funds abroad. Ben Ali's family owns a house in Westmount valued at over $ 2 million.

[...] in an interview with The Associated Press the Ambassador of Tunisia in Ottawa Mouldi Sakri said the minister, Lawrence Cannon, has yet to respond to the request of Tunisia [...]

Belhassen Trabelsi, brother-in-law of the deposed president, fled to Canada following the uprising in Tunisia. He has permanent resident status, but the immigration department has taken steps to withdraw his status.

Cannon has invoked Canadian laws on privacy to justify his silence on this issue while Mr. Sakri has received no communication from Canadian officials.

"The Ben Ali must be frozen before they are squandered. The Ministry of Justice in Tunisia presented two requests to the Canadian government," he said.

[...] Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, who met yesterday with the Ambassador of Tunisia in his office on Parliament Hill, said the Harper government cannot shirk its responsibilities. [...]

"The ambassador hoped for a speedy response to his requests and at the very least a temporary freeze of assets, pending a final decision. Ben Ali family members are experts in fiscal evasion. Now they've been given plenty of time to move money to off-shore havens [...]" said Duceppe.

If the HarperCons had acted efficiently and competently, they would have bragged about it. Their evasive tactics in Question Period means neither Cannon nor Nicholson have done anything except procrastinate and put off Tunisian officials.

As fern hill said yesterday, Stevie and his bullies respect the power of money. In addition, they appear to feel ideologically synchronized with oligarchies that undermine the democratic process.

Cannon and his Teensy Tunisian Obfuscations

This has been quite the week for Con-generated Convolution in the House of Commons, and it's not over yet.


On Monday, BQ MP Jean Dorion presented a clear query regarding the assets held by the Ben Ali family in Canada, here:

Mr Speaker, it took less than 24 hours for Switzerland to freeze Mubarak's assets. Europe and Switzerland also dealt quickly with the assets of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and his entourage. Members of the Ben Ali family have been in Canada for weeks now and we still do not know whether Canada has frozen their assets.

Is anyone in this government able to tell us whether or not Canada has frozen the assets of members of the Ben Ali entourage?

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon uttered the standard HarperCon ring-around-the-rosy reply:

Mr Speaker there is a condition that needs to be met, as I have told my colleague many times: the request has to come from the Tunisian government. For example, in the case of Egypt, the request was made to the various countries my colleague mentioned. However, before we can take action, this request has to come from the Tunisian government. We have worked and continue to work closely with government authorities. My colleague, the Minister of Justice, is weighing all the options, and we will pursue this matter with the same intention I have already identified.

Those sentences contain subjects and verbs and yet offer no concrete information in response to a straight question. This is the Minister who puffed himself up 18 months ago and huffed that he would have some strong words for Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. And last year, he lectured survivors of the Haïtian earthquake about transparence and accountability.

Yes or no. Were the Ben Ali family assets frozen? On Tuesday, this was the exchange in the House. MP Dorion tried again:

Mr. Speaker, here we have another example of misinformation from this government. The Minister of Foreign Affairs led the House to believe that he had not received any requests from the Tunisian authorities for Canada to freeze the assets of former dictator Ben Ali or members of his family. That is not true. How can the minister deny the many requests made to the Canadian government urging it to take the necessary steps to freeze the assets of Ben Ali?

Cannon said:

Mr. Speaker, I have always answered my colleague's question clearly. The Tunisian authorities have taken steps. We have encouraged the Tunisian authorities to take steps to allow us to work with them on developing options to freeze the assets of those who are not welcome in Canada.

Dorion:

Mr. Speaker, how could the minister, yesterday, still maintain his story that he did not receive any request, when a press release from the Tunisian embassy, dated January 26, confirmed that: “the Embassy has taken the necessary steps with the Canadian authorities...to freeze and protect assets...that might be held by ousted President Ben Ali, his wife, and members of their families”? What more is the minister waiting for to freeze the assets of the Ben Ali family?

Cannon:

Mr. Speaker, if my hon. colleague reviews yesterday's transcript, he will see that he began his question by talking about Egypt. With regard to Egypt, I told him that we still had not received such a request. However, I continued by specifying once again that we are fully prepared to work with the Tunisian authorities on freezing the assets of those who are not welcome in Canada.

So you have it. Cannon was confused because Dorion mentioned Egypt. The fact is, Mubarak has no family in Canada, and it is the Tunisian embassy that issued a formal request, not Egypt. Cannon is doing what all the other PMO-coached Ministers do: leading the opposition up the garden path.

On Wednesday, the Tunisian ambassador issued a statement:

Canada must be on the side of the Tunisian people and not on the side of criminals, "said Ambassador Mouldi Sakri, in an interview with The Associated Press.

He claims not to have received a formal response from Ottawa despite a request from the end of January of the freezing of assets to countries of the former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family, including accused of illegal transfers of funds abroad. [...]

"Our hope is that the Canadian government to take urgent measures to safeguard the property until justice is done," pleaded Mr. Sakr.

And if the former Tunisian president and members of his family are not found guilty, their property will be returned, he explains.

Two other requests were made to the Canadian government formally by the Ministry of Justice in Tunisia," he said. One is an international arrest warrant against Belhassen Trabelsi - the brother of former president - now on Canadian soil.

Despite claims that date back more than three weeks, Cannon - when pressed for action - simply answers questions from MPs in the House of Commons that the Canadian government is "evaluating options" with Tunisia.

HarperCon ministers are so well trained in the tactics of NOT giving direct answers. They fill the air with volumes of truthy gabble-fab. They don't appear to answer their mail, either.

Who Da Scarediest Cabinet Minister?

CBC's The Current has a list of cabinet ministers who have declined and accepted requests to participate.

Here are the top four refusniks. Which is the refusiest?

Guess first, check the link after.

Vic (The Adulterer) Toews

Jim (I'm Outta Here) Prentice

Lawrence (The Loose) Cannon

Peter (Crybaby but in a Macho Uniform-Wearing Kinda Way) MacKay

Follow-up question: Are they more scared of Anna Maria Tremonti or The Voice? I've met The Voice. Definitely scarier.

You are not entitled to your own facts

Calling the can of whup-ass Hillary Clinton opened on their TheoCon butts 'a tempest in a teapot', Lawrence Loose Cannon went into the spin-and-lie cycle.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was expressing her personal opinion when she criticized Canada's maternal health initiative, not the policy of the Obama administration, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Sunday.

"Mrs. Clinton expressed not her government's position; she expressed her personal point of view … her personal opinion," Cannon told CTV's Question Period.

That is a lie. Barack Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, or Global Gag Rule, on his second day in office. Pretty high priority, eh?

But with all that sciencey-facty stuff about yes indeedy, abortion does save women's lives whipping around, he was forced to veer into the backtrack cycle.

But in the wake of Clinton's criticism of the Canadian initiative, a key foreign policy program for the Conservative government going into this summer's G8 summit, Cannon acknowledged that the Canadian plan may have to be amended.

OOOO! AMENDED!!!! CANADIANS ARE GOING TO FUND ABORTIONS IN THE THIRD WORLD!

Hear that, so-cons? The Harper Conservatives are all 'no freakin' way are we opening the abortion debate here in Canada where we've been stringing those fundy fetus fetishists along for years, but yeah sure if it gets us a seat on the UN Security Council we'll go along with funding family planning and abortion'.

Got that? No abortion debate in Canada. But okey-dokey to abortion when it suits their purposes.

Oh. Wait. That's the same thing, isn't it?

ReformaTory Minister Lectures Haiti about transparence and accountability.

Un-frakking-believable.

Larry "Loose" Cannon deigned to patronize Haiti and other countries within hearing of his droning sanctimonious little lecture about transparence and accountability.

Rule of law will be the key to rebuilding an earthquake-devastated Haiti, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told an international donors conference Tuesday. "While Haiti has been weakened, it is not stateless," Cannon told the meeting of more than 100 countries at the UN headquarters in New York. "Strengthening governance and rule-of-law institutions, as well as facilitating decentralization, will be critical elements of a holistic and comprehensive reconstruction plan."

Cannon did not say in his remarks how much Canada will donate to earthquake reconstruction, pledging to make an announcement later.

Well, that explains why none of the money pledged by thousands of citizens, in support of infrastructure reconstruction, held in trust by Harper's Government (the condition for securing CIDA matching funds) has been given to Haitian organizations. Those of us who donated to the Red Cross and Médecins sans frontières provided swift humanitarian and medical support.

What's your next lecture, Larry? The legal obligations of governing parties to respect and uphold Parliamentary procedures?

While we're on the topic of Con Speaking Points, who knew that Canadian senators are now receiving them from Mark Steyn? It appears that a squad of ReformaTory Attack Parrots™© cloaked themselves in self-righteousness, in defense of US stand-up performer Ann Coulter's right to flout our laws regarding hate speech - and comparing her plight to that of the behaviour-challenged Guy Earle. Go read Dr Dawg to get accurate facts - which would be those that Harper's bullies distorted in the Upper Chamber.

That other collateral damage.

Last Monday there was a discussion on Radio-Canada regarding Michelle Lang's presence on a mission which turned deadly. The journalist Michèle Ouimet - who has reported three times from Afghanistan - opined that Lang's assignment did not obligate her to travel on recce.

Perhaps Lang hoped her commitment to getting the story would encourage members of the Armed Forces to entrust her with information which might allow her to do justice to the extreme conditions that besiege them in Kandahar province. And to write scrupulously researched articles about circumstances observed in close proximity with an integrity that others such as Stephanie Nolen have demonstrated.

Critically injured in the explosion that killed Lang and four Canadian Armed Forces personnel was Bushra Amjad Saeed, a DFAIT political officer working for the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team. Was she directed by her superiors to monitor information shared between Lang and the troops?

The fatal December 30th recce mission was a routine sortie in a LAV III. Ouimet has traveled with Canadian troops inside one of these armoured vehicles; she said that from her vantage position all she could observe were soldiers doing their jobs.

Lang's specialty was health issues; in volunteering for this dangerous assignment she may have hoped to deepen our knowledge of the range of sacrifices required of soldiers.

Saeed's role on that mission only makes sense when one takes into consideration how Stevie Spiteful and his ReformaTory bullies urgently needed to control every shred of information about Afghanistan.

Unlike Lang, Saeed did not have a choice about her presence in that LAV III. Following what has become for the Conservative minority government a shameful exposure of their loathsome tactics, Lawrence Cannon may have told his staff to keep a lid on reports from Afghanistan. No matter what the collateral damage.

Where's Larry?

That Lawrence "Larry" Cannon is just full of surprises. From CC at Canadian Cynic we hear that he's planning to give Gadhafi a piece of his mind when the Lybian leader's plane lands in Newfoundland next week to re-fuel.

The ReformaTories have a bizarre approach to international politics. There was Maxime "Unzipped" Bernier who handled confidential documents with the same grace and sense he used in conducting his personal affairs. Larry was MIA during the Abousfian Abdelrazik situation which seemingly was resolved in spite of his desultory neglect of the case.

And Harper held a press conference at an Oakville Tim Hortons while world leaders spoke at the United Nations assembly. I think that was engineered in the hopes Ignatieff might label him as some Western Canada hayseed with no international creds. And the Cons could have pulled a gotcha! and leveraged that response to their advantage.

That didn't happen because the media and most Canadians are on to the Con; Stevie grew up in Toronto and acquired his Alberta neocon identity as a young adult. He's a Con-vert with serious self-confidence issues, needing galleries and Harper government websites jammed with his photographs to bolster his fragile ego.

Update: I predict that Larry will call this a great victory and an achievement. It seems Gadhafi's advance team has changed the original plan that called for a stop in Newfoundland and rerouted his flight.

Stevie's Harpocrites: "Noblesse Oblige" Make-Over.

LuLu writes about the ever-so aloof and pristine Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon, Canadian Cynic: Busy, busy, busy.

Cannon has been either intentionally keeping a low profile or been missing in action while Harper fielded questions on Mohamud's ordeal.

An interview request sent yesterday to the minister's office was turned down. Calls to two of his three constituency offices yielded no clues as to his whereabouts.

Memo to Stevie the First and his merry band of Harpocrites: the notion of "Noblesse Oblige" doesn't mean what you think it does.