Khushwant Toor writes from Toronto

THE leaders are on the TV adds again blaming each other. All parties across Canada have braced themselves for an election that seems increasingly inevitable. Come October, Canada may be heading for its fourth election in the last six years.

Even though there is no real issue at stake other than -current recession, stimulus packages, employment insurance etc. Prime Minster Steven Harper’s Conservative minority government may be brought down by the end of this week. Yet according to the pools there is no likelihood that the elections will give a stable majority government.

A critical vote on a budget bill is likely to be introduced by the Conservatives on September 18, 2009. Usually this type of motion in the parliament is a routine matter, however, this time it may give an excuse to the Liberals to say enough is enough to Conservative government.

The Liberals have said they will no longer support the Conservatives, and the Bloc Quebecois seems ready to run another election campaign. Liberals are being impatient sitting on the side lines for so long and their leader Michael Ignatieff is under party pressure to showdown his worth. NDP is still undecided as NDP leader Jack Layton is feeling shy from the Canadian public as he commented in an interview last week “"I really think that most people across the country are saying to themselves, can't these people talk and get something done on the important issues?"

NDP will ultimately decide the fate of the present Conservative Government, and NDP members are sounding increasingly skeptical about the chances of a compromise with present Conservatives.
Worried about the outcome all parties have prepared their election pitch. Presently NDP is sounding like good guys for the country as Layton has decided to kick things off with a public speech to his caucus on Parliament Hill, outlining why his party is the only one truly interested in addressing the needs of Canadians.

Liberals will be pitching themselves as the best for the Canadian economy.

The Conservatives are maintaining their position that they are focused and are doing the government's work. To counter the Liberals they might introduce some changes to Employment Insurance.

Next week remains crucial for Canadian political, however, if Canada goes for another election the outcome would be yet another minority government.

BACK

America indoctrinating hard work

ON September 8 this year , American  President Obama addressed elementary and high school students across the nation -- the first time a president has spoken directly to America's students since 1991 -- in a back-to-school speech emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility in education. Some conservatives spent last week heavily criticizing the President's plan to speak, saying it was "an attempt at 'indoctrination' of kids," and encouraging parents to keep their children home for the day. But as Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, "[T]he whole message [of the speech] is about personal responsibility and challenging students to take their education very, very seriously."

Indeed, as the Washington Post pointed out, the speech did not mention any political agenda but drew on "Obama's own education experience -- from the predawn tutoring by his mother when his family lived in Indonesia to his acceptance to law school" to make its point about the importance of educational attainment. "At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world -- and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities," Obama said to the students. "Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed."

RACE TO THE TOP: A main thrust of the administration's reform effort included in the stimulus package is Race to the Top, a $4.35 billion fund that "provides competitive grants to encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform." In order to qualify for the funding, states and districts must address four reform areas: adopting internationally benchmarked assessments and standards, rewarding effective teachers and principals, building new data systems and turning around low-performing schools. States are also ineligible for the money "if they have laws on the books prohibiting student performance from affecting teacher assessment." States should adopt these reforms because, as the Center for American Progress pointed out in its report Stimulating Excellence, "the current and potential new entrepreneurs are stifled by several unnecessary and outdated state and district policies, and an education system that remains as a whole insensitive to performance and quality." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) has called a special session of the California legislature in order to take up reforms that would make the state eligible for the funding.

TEACHER ACCOUNTABILITY: The administration's reform agenda also focuses on teacher accountability and the possibility of implementing pay-for-performance for teachers. As Center for American Progress Associate Director for Teacher Quality Robin Chait explained, "there are a number of examples throughout the country that show that this strategy can work. For example, in Chicago, preliminary research findings show that the pay-for-performance program there has increased teacher retention and provided more support for new teachers. In Denver and in Guilford County, the programs there are having a positive impact on student achievement." Plus, the Teacher Advancement Program -- under which trained evaluators visit a teacher's classroom four to six times a year -- "has had a positive impact on student achievement in a number of schools throughout the country." But not only do some states bar student performance from being used in teacher assessments, but most teacher evaluations provide very little in terms of real information. Currently, in school districts that use binary evaluation ratings (satisfactory or unsatisfactory), "more than 99 percent of teachers receive the satisfactory rating." In districts that have a wider array of rating options, "94 percent of teachers receive one of the top two ratings and less than 1 percent are rated unsatisfactory." As Andrew Rotherham at Eduwonk put it, "[D]espite all the rhetoric about how important teachers are and despite the importance of people in a labor-intensive field like education, the lack of systematic attention to teacher effectiveness in education is shocking."
[Courtesy American Progress.org]

BACK

Pushing for accountability on torture

LAST week, the U.S Justice Department declassified a 2004 Inspector General's report on the CIA's interrogation program. According to the Washington Post, the report "describes the early implementation of the agency's interrogation program in 2002 and 2003 as ad hoc and poorly supervised, leading to the use of 'unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented' techniques." These techniques included threats of execution against detainees and their families, threats to rape a detainee's female relatives, and instances of waterboarding that went far beyond anything previously authorized. Attorney General Eric Holder also announced that he would conduct a "preliminary review" into those interrogations to determine "whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations." Holder assigned prosecutor John Durham to look into 10 cases in which CIA interrogators went beyond the already permissive guidelines laid down by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2002 (documents that have become known as "the torture memos"), resulting in at least one case of homicide (a detainee beaten to death with a flashlight.) At present, only the CIA interrogators are being investigated -- not the Bush administration officials most closely associated with the creation of the interrogation program: former OLC lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo, Vice President Cheney, and Cheney's legal counsel and chief of staff, David Addington.

Conservatives have responded angrily to the new investigation. In an interview on Fox News, Cheney insisted that the declassified report vindicated the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (journalist Spencer Ackerman and others have challenged this claim) and accused the Obama administration of launching a politically motivated investigation, calling it "an outrageous political act." Noting that the Bush Justice Department had previously declined to prosecute the cases in question, former House speaker Newt Gingrich wrote that "Obama should do the right thing and fire" Holder. The Washington Post editorial board disagreed, however, stating "the politicization of the Justice Department during the Bush years is to blame for the need for further investigation to ensure that the decision not to prosecute was justified."  The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has also recommended reexamining "previous decisions to decline prosecution in several cases related to the interrogation of certain detainees." Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was himself deeply involved in developing the torture program, is one of the few conservatives who have come out in support of Durham's investigation.

 Some progressives think that the parameters of Holder’s investigation are too narrow, and any investigation into torture should examine the high Bush administration officials who authorized the techniques. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said that Holder "should not limit the investigation to people in the field who may have committed the torture, but to people who may have ordered it, such as the Vice President." Calling for a wide-ranging investigation, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote in the National Law Journal that "in America, high office does not put one outside the law. Indeed, it borders on unethical for a prosecutor to refuse to investigate the corpus delicti of a crime because of concern as to where the evidence may lead." Some have called for a truth commission modeled on South Africa's, to uncover wrongdoing but not bring criminal charges. The Center for American Progress' Ken Gude advocates "a non-adversarial, non-partisan commission to investigate thoroughly the actions of the last administration related to interrogation and detention." CAP's Jonathan Moreno suggested that such an investigation could be scheduled to be held after the next presidential election, to remove it "from the acute political context." Navy veteran Rob Diamond recently wrote that a wider investigation is necessary "find out what really happened, and decide, as a collective republic, once and for all, where our values stand."

Many leading voices in the American national security debate believe the use of abusive techniques is both unnecessary and counterproductive. Recognizing adherence to the rule of law under international agreements outlawing torture as a major American asset in the fight against extremism, CENTCOM head Gen. David Petraeus has said "it is important to again live our values to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those." Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he thinks "the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture," and the "interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit." In a recent critique of strategic communications, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen noted that deeds matter more than words, saying that "we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate." Given the prominent role torture (and U.S. support for regimes that employ it) has played in the radicalization of extremists from Ayman al-Zawahiri on down, America's willingness to investigate and hold accountable those who tortured would send a strong positive signal about how a free and democratic country deals with official abuse. [Courtesy American Progress.org]

BACK