Maclean’s disses carnival mascot, wounds Quebec pride

It has been a very long time since any magazine has caused much of a stir. So the Oct. 4 edition of Maclean’s really is a trip back to when magazines, or any other printed medium, mattered to most people.

The Quebec government is demanding a retraction. Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe says it is Quebec baiting. Quebec City says Maclean’s has horribly libeled Bonhomme, the carnival mascot because of the cover. (The cartoon icon is carrying a suitcase overflowing with cash.)

For the rest of the country to understand the reaction in Quebec, imagine a Maclean’s cover with Tim Horton’s donuts laced with heroin.

At Maclean’s offices, I’m sure there hasn’t been this much excitement since religious fundamentalists pressured the magazine’s management into firing Pierre Berton in 1963 for daring to write about sex education.

For someone who was born before the world had IPods and cable news, it was like a long-lost guilty pleasure to read a full-length article that dared to be controversial.

Was it good journalism? I would say yes for a number of reasons.

The lead story, by Martin Patriquin, cites a litany of scandal after scandal in Quebec since the days of Maurice Duplessis, the dictator-premier who ran the province for almost 20 years until 1959 like a personal fiefdom. The article reprises a quote from historian Samuel Huntington, who said in 1968 that Quebec was ``perhaps the most corrupt area in Australia, Great Britain, United States and Canada.’’

For the sake of fairness, Maclean’s pointed out Quebec doesn’t have a monopoly on bad behavior. Atlantic Canada is notorious for patronage. B.C. has punted three premiers out of office in recent years amid scandal. And there was quite a stench from Saskatchewan in the early 1990s when 12 members of Premier Grant Devine’s government faced criminal charges for expense account fraud.

The author might have mentioned that Quebec was the first jurisdiction in the country to outlaw political donations from corporations and unions. Because of this, the government of Rene Levesque was able to clean up provincial politics, at least briefly.

But for the most part it is solid journalism that asks what we all have been asking ourselves for years: What is it about Quebec and scandal?

Some answers are offered. Chief among them is that perhaps that Quebec has been so preoccupied over the years about referendums, good government hasn’t been much of an issue.

Perhaps Maclean’s has now done Quebec a favour.

It's not the scandal that does you in, it's how you manage it

Quick now, what do Tiger Woods and Stephen Harper have in common? (No it is not serial adultery.)

Both men must now deal with unnecessary damage caused by poor scandal management.

Tiger's mistake in not owning up to his "transgressions" soon after his early morning car accident have been well publicized and there is no point repeating them here. Harper's mistakes are a little more complicated.

The Afghan detainee scandal, which has put the government and opposition on a collision course toward a parliamentary crisis in the New Year, broke when Harper was out of the country. Perhaps Harper's major mistake in this affair was leaving Defence Minister Peter MacKay in charge on this file.

In previous scandals like the Chuck Cadmen affair, the Tories have been able to bully and bulldoze their way through them until media interest died. MacKay likely thought he could do the same by claiming there has been no tangible proof any Afghans detained by Canadian forces have been tortured. He also said senior diplomat Richard Colvin had become a Taliban dupe by even suggesting such a thing in testimony before a special Commons committee.

The problem with the bulldoze-and-bully technique is that the Opposition gets a little smarter every time you kick sand in its face. The Opposition-controlled committee led by Liberal Ujjal Dosangh and New Democrat Paul Dewar were able to keep the narrative moving despite a blitzkrieg of government stonewall tactics.

Last week the Opposition got two very lucky breaks. First, several dozen retired ambassadors rebuked (quite rightly) MacKay for trying to demonize and destroy a civil servant who could not fight back. Then Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk corrected himself and acknowledged prisoners detained by Canadians had indeed been tortured after they were turned over to Afghan authorities.

At the moment it is a matter of speculation whether Natynczyk simply decided to do the right thing or roll over on the government before it decides to pin the blame on someone for the mess it is now in.

Regardless of motive, the Opposition clearly has the upper hand in this affair.

MacKay so far is the major casualty. His initial claim of there being no proof of torture was risky at best since there have been numerous published reports of such a thing coming out of Afghanistan for two years.

Trying to demonize a civil servant in public is regarded by Ottawa insiders as something akin to shooting Bambi. And if you must take the risk of shooting Bambi make bloody sure you score a kill shot.

Harper won't dump MacKay from cabinet simply because the public won't demand it. However, MacKay has made some serious career limiting mistakes and may have to be moved from Defence in a cabinet shuffle.

Things are now oh-so-different from the end of October when the Tories were heading to majority territory in the polls and Canadians were actually starting to like the Prime Minister.

The torture scandal may not put the Liberals ahead in the polls. But it will most certainly rob the government of the momentum it had been enjoying.

If the government continues to be embarrassed by contradictory disclosures on this file, watch for it to prorogue Parliament for the second time in a year. Only this time it won't have to go groveling to the Governor General.

The Prime Minister can simply decide there will be a Throne Speech, a new Parliament and possibly a reconfigured cabinet after Christmas -- all to give things a fresh start and of course to change an increasingly ugly channel.