I’m tempted to write about the Provincial Election but nothing’s happening yet and it’s too early to speculate on outcomes.

I suspect that issues and party positions won’t crystallize until after the Labour Day weekend so let’s deal with matters national or international.

The Harper Government is boasting “majority support” from the softwood lumber industry for its “Softwood Lumber Agreement” with the United States.

Majority support is somewhat less than the 95% it originally demanded for a go-forward agreement. The undetermined “majority support” was obtained by coercion i.e. by Minister Emerson and the Prime Minister who warned the industry that if they didn’t support the Agreement, Government would drop it and leave them on your own. The Agreement will be presented to Parliament for approval later this month with Harper’s promise of an election if it’s defeated.

There is a matter of principle here that is being ignored by the federal government, some Canadian provinces and those in the softwood lumber industry who support the Agreement. The United States has been illegally collecting tariffs on the import of Canadian softwood lumber since 2002, some $5 billion dollars worth. Harper’s Softwood Lumber Agreement provides for a return of about 80% of those payments or $4 billion over a two or three year period.

The Agreement ignores the fact that international courts and trade tribunals have consistently ruled in favour of Canada. It seems that our federal government and some players in the softwood lumber industry are prepared to say we are half pregnant.

In other words, even though Canada is in the right, it is willing to admit a partial wrong by waiving return of a $1 billion in wrongfully collected duties. Further, the Agreement requires the industry to drop its legal challenges to the wrongful collection of duties.

Parties to this Agreement are willing to cede some portion of Canada’s sovereignty to the United States by agreeing to let the U.S. dictate the amount of wood Canadian producers will be allowed to sell to U.S. builders through a mix of quotas and new tariffs that kick in when the market weakens. U.S. economists are already predicting declines in the housing market that will lead to a downturn in lumber demand and lower prices.

In a tumbling market, Canadian lumber producers could end up facing higher tariffs than they pay today and face quotas that would guarantee them a shrinking share of a declining market.

This Agreement is counter to all the principles of free trade.

I suspect that opposition politicians would love to fight an election on this issue because a majority of Canadians would reject the payment of a $1 billion blackmail fee to the United States and reject the notion of U.S. managed trade for Canadian producers.

Speaking of the United States, there is an interesting military prosecution going on in that country.

In June, U.S. Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada refused to be deployed to Iraq on the grounds that the war in Iraq is illegal and that he was upholding his military duty not to obey illegal orders. That didn’t impress U.S. military officials and they promptly charged him with violating Army rules and sent him on a path to likely court martial. In doing so, they set up a collision between the man and a military justice system that will effectively be asked to rule on the legality of the Iraq war.

The Lieutenant’s defense is that the Iraq war is illegal and as a result, he has a right to refuse participation. His defense counsel argues that the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without U.N. sanction and under false premises was fraudulent. It’s a catch twenty two for both prosecutors and defendants.

If the U.S. military sides with the Lieutenant, it will refute the self-proclaimed legality of Bush’s war in Iraq. If the military convicts the Lieutenant, it may give comfort to the U.S. Administration but the process of public trial will magnify the weakness in the Administration’s war premise.

George Bush's disastrous policies in the Middle East and his adamant refusal to change course, suggests the President has become a danger to the security of the United States and the world.

His Iraq invasion was wrapped in the language of "democracy" and the promise of weapons of mass destruction but it proved a fallacy when no weapons were found and the ousting of Saddam Hussein was followed by a stubborn insurgency and a sectarian civil war that has effectively made the country ungovernable. Nearly 3,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result of Bush’s misguided adventure in Iraq.

Americans increasingly see the war in Iraq as unrelated to the fight against terrorism, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News polls. Dah! These guys must be slow learners. The world has known for years that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Americans are finally waking up to the deficiencies in their presidency and their congress.

Bush is despised in the Middle East. Iraq has been transformed into a rallying cry and a training ground for al-Qaeda terrorists. It would appear that the U.S. President has little or no interest in pursuing a conciliatory course toward peace. He seems determined to pursue confrontations in the middle-east with Iran now clearly in his sight.

It has been said that a man is known by the company he keeps. The same could be said for nations.

Does Canada really want to keep company with the current U.S. Administration in a ‘Softwood Lumber Agreement” that fails to meet the test of principle and fairness?

I don’t think so. The Prime Minister could not have chosen a worse time to champion this deal.

Bring on the election.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

The other night, I spent the best part of an hour watching and listening to former President Bill Clinton as he spoke about HIV-AIDS at a Toronto conference. He was adamant that society has the tools to beat this disease.

I couldn’t help but be impressed by the difference between this man and the current U.S. President. The former, talks about helping people. The current president talks about hunting and killing people.

A little closer to home, we sit on the precipice of a provincial election call. It’s interesting to speculate on what issues might drive this election?

Energy will be high on the list. Gasoline price regulation, electricity rates and the Orimulsion fiasco should all figure high in voter considerations. Public book-keeping could be a sleeper issue. Hospital waiting times continues to be an issue. Education is more important than ever. Seniors care is an issue. Highway maintenance is a huge issue. The resolution of issues requires leadership.

If we define leadership as the ability to visualize futures and consequences, the ability to influence events and circumstances, the ability to motivate individuals and enable others to contribute to the success of their community, we have a benchmark for measuring the quality of individuals who present themselves as leaders.

In recent times, it seems that New Brunswick’s leaders have been more reactionary than visionary.

Witness this week’s decision by the Premier to lower the price of gasoline and over-ride the Public Utility Board’s regulated price for the fuel. Then he floats the idea that taxes on gasoline might be reduced. The Provincial Gasoline Fuel Tax is 14.5¢ a litre. The Provincial portion of the HST on gasoline is 7% of the wholesale price so on a pump price of $1.15, that’s about 7.5¢ a litre.

For every action, there is a reaction. For every cut in government taxes, there has to be an offsetting reduction in services or a move towards deficit.

The Provincial Government has about 22¢ a litre to play with on gasoline prices (taxes). The rest goes to the cost of oil, refining and distribution. On Wednesday, the Government dropped the price of gasoline by 10¢ a litre (almost half of its tax margin) and accused the Public Utilities Board of dragging its feet.

A few weeks ago, the Government capped an increase in electricity rates at 8%, and then removed the provincial share of the HST. Good politics, maybe! Good economics, I don’t think so. Leadership, nope! The tax reduction on electricity can only be captured six months after payment, if people apply for it. Would reductions in gasoline taxes be subject to the same after-payment application for refund?

On Thursday, the Government announced a $243 million budget surplus for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2006 and attributed the windfall to the performance of NB Power. It’s most interesting when one recalls how the utility asked for a 12% rate increase just a few months ago and then contributes a $131.5 million surplus to government revenues.

It’s interesting that government can sacrifice tax revenue on electricity and still produce a surplus in government revenues. I’m not an accountant but it seems to me that somebody may be robbing Peter to pay Paul.

How is it that a provincial government that for months, if not years has been crying poor to Ottawa can cut taxes and generate a $243 million dollar surplus. Is it good management or sleight of hand?

People seem to have forgotten the Orimulsion fiasco. Remember the $750 million Coleson Cove retrofit to permit the burning of Orimulsion? Remember the $100 million dollar a year increase in fuel costs this province is wearing for the next twenty years because there is no supply of Orimulsion. The Coleson Cove/Orimulsion decision was made by Government, not NB Power.

That is a testament to its leadership.

Leadership has been particularly impressive on the matter of highways. The Shediac to Moncton four-lane was full of pot holes until July. The same highway eastbound has been substantially resurfaced and may last the winter. In Moncton, we have another make-work project in the year-long upgrade of Assumption Boulevard and the extension of Vaughn Harvey to the new Riverview Bridge. The highway north from Shediac to Miramichi and Bathurst continues to be a provincial embarrassment.

New Brunswick has the highest rate of functional illiteracy in Canada. We have to change that. There is no option. People who can’t read have difficulty dealing with the simplest work tasks. The absence of literacy is everyone’s problem because it has a cost. People with low levels of literacy have the highest unemployment rates and are twice as likely to be collecting social assistance or unemployment insurance.

The cost of supporting the under-employed and those on social assistance, the cost of supporting prison populations, the cost of extended healthcare services, the cost of workplace accidents and the cost of lost business opportunities can all be attributed in whole or in part to literacy or the absence thereof. That affects all of us financially.

There will be many issues in this election but in my view, education is the most important. The individual who offers this province a way out of our literacy mess and puts education at the top of his to do list will mark himself as a leader.

We need a literacy plan.

We need an advanced education plan.

New Brunswick’s future depends on it. An educated, literate workforce will lead us to prosperity.

Tax cuts, regulated price caps and paper surpluses are little more than temporary diversions from reality.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

A few days ago, on Tuesday to be exact, Democrats in the State of Connecticut elected Ned Lamont in a “primary” as their candidate in the fall ‘mid-term’ elections for the U.S. Senate (In the U.S. system, parties elect their candidates through a “primary” vote which is open to registered party members.

In this election, some 28,000 new members, about 10% of the total Connecticut vote registered for the Democrats and voted for Lamont). Lamont is a wealthy Greenwich businessman whose great-grandfather Thomas W. Lamont was chairman of J.P. Morgan & Co. He made his personal fortune in the telecommunications industry.

Lamont defeated a long standing incumbent, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988. Before that, he served as Connecticut’s Attorney General.

In his three terms in the Senate, he became one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent hawks on military matters and an advocate of ‘bi-partisanship’. He was also a supporter of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

The three term incumbent lost his bid for re-nomination exactly six years after he was chosen as Al Gore’s Vice-Presidential running mate in 2000. Lieberman is only the fourth U.S. Senate incumbent to be defeated in a primary vote since 1980.

Why should Canadians care and what’s the significance of his defeat?

We should care because it marks the first time in six years that a majority of U.S. voters (albeit in a tightly defined circumstance) have voted against the war in Iraq and the first time they have voted against a significant candidate who supported George W. Bush. Opposition to the war was the main issue in this campaign and it proved to be a winning issue.

We should also care because ‘internet bloggers’ played a role in the outcome of this primary and that represents a new media influence in elections.

The implications for the U.S. mid-term elections this fall are ominous. Voter turnout was high.

Lamont won 52% of the votes on an anti-war (Iraq) platform. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Tuesday found that 53% of respondents were inclined to vote incumbents out of office this November and more than half of Democrats, 54% said they were likely to oppose a candidate who backed George Bush’s war in Iraq.

• This matters to Canadians because our Prime Minister supports George Bush and his invasion of Iraq.
• This matters to Canadians because our Prime Minister supports Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
• This matters to Canadians because war in the Middle-East threatens peace in the world and because conflict between countries and ethnic groups in the Middle-East who enjoy citizenship in Canada threaten relationships in this country.

Events of the last few days underline the hypocrisy of Bush’s Iraq war.

The real war is with terrorism as witnessed by the British roundup of prospective aircraft bombers. By invading Iraq, Bush fueled the causes of terrorism and defused efforts to combat terrorism. We now have peoples around the world who feel justified in attacking the Americans and their allies because they illegally invaded Iraq and because they tacitly support Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

Some 80% of Democrats in Connecticut strongly oppose the occupation of Iraq. It was probably impossible for them to forget the manner in which Lieberman stapled himself to George W. Bush. Lieberman was a Democratic Senator and he was also the guy who warned Americans that criticizing Republican President George W. Bush was dangerous for his country.

The U.S. Congress (House of Representatives and Senate) is Republican. The current group is largely conservative, neo-conservative and Christian. It is also beholden to corporate America.

The U.S. system of government operates on the principle that each branch of government acts as a check on the others. It’s not working. Republican members of Congress have largely viewed themselves as promoters and defenders of the Bush Administration and its policies. The President himself signs into law, bills that have supporting “statements” that absolve him of responsibility for obeying U.S. laws.

The significance of Lieberman’s defeat is the fact that everyday, working Americans in Connecticut rose up and crushed the political establishment in that state. That offers hope to a world that had become pessimistic about America’s ability to right itself. That offers hope to anyone who falls prey to the notion that an entrenched politician or an entrenched political party cannot be defeated in a free and democratic country.

When the people care, they have power.

When they don’t care, politicians have power.

Prime Minister Harper’s honeymoon with Canadians is clearly over if we acknowledge the results of recent polls. One of the factors deflating the PM’s poll results is his unqualified support for Israel’s moves on Lebanon. Taking sides in this conflict goes against everything Canada has stood for internationally for the last 40 or 50 years.

Closer to home, it appears that we will have a provincial election in New Brunswick in mid-September.

Candidates and leaders who understand the new world and who understand the challenges and complexities of New Brunswick’s economy will do well. Those who rely on traditional formulae for election and re-election may find themselves in a time-warp.

The Lieberman defeat may be the first step towards resolution of the war in Iraq if it leads to a significant makeover of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate in the fall mid-term elections.

The lesson in his defeat and it was a defeat is multifold:

• principles ultimately matter in public life;
• people care about what their politicians do and say;
• television may soon be replaced by internet bloggers as the mass medium of communication in politics and perhaps most significantly,
• people judge the record and credentials of prospective leaders when it matters to their life and livelihood.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

Some people are wondering why the Liberals’ federal leadership campaign has become such a bore.

In part, it’s because summer is upon us and Canadians mellow out in warm weather, replacing their politics with the pleasures of beach and grass.

Others have suggested that there are too many candidates and blame the multi-player, equal-time debate format for making things boring. The format permits little in the way of spontaneous, intelligent or heated contact between the candidates. No one talks much about the sponsorship scandal anymore but because of the scandal, some Liberals have abandoned the possibility of their Party regaining office any time soon.

Still others are searching for a Trudeauesque leader among the pack, someone who could excite and charm them like a John F. Kennedy or a Bill Clinton. Judged against these characters or even a Rene Levesque or a Lucien Bouchard in their separatist heydays, the leadership candidates look pretty tame in comparison. That does not mean that they lack intelligence or charisma. It simply means they have yet to put much of it on the public table.

Frankly, I think there is another issue lurking in the background that better explains the lack of energy in the Liberal campaign.

It is a political truism that oppositions are not elected, governments are defeated.

The same can be said for leadership campaigns. Sometimes, parties elect a leader because he or she represents a set of values or a set of principles shared by a majority of its members. More often they elect somebody who they believe can win an election and keep them in office or help them regain office.

When people perceive their party as being without a chance to win, they’re not much interested in a leadership campaign. On the other hand when there is the perception that their party could win because the other guys are stumbling, interest in leadership campaigns rises exponentially.

Watch for this interest to begin rising in the fall. Consider the circumstances that will facilitate that climb.

It begins with a Strategic Counsel poll released this week.

• According to the poll, only 32% of Canadians support Stephen Harper’s decision to back Israel in its bombing of Lebanon.
• In Quebec that number drops to 17%.
• Again, according to the poll 77% of Canadians say Canada should be neutral in the conflict.
• Perhaps more telling is response to a related question, 53% of Canadians believe Harper backed Israel because the position is in line with President Bush.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Harper characterized Israeli bombings in Lebanon as a “measured response” to Hezbollah guerillas who kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Harper’s characterization echoed comments by Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

So far, Mr. Harper’s ‘measured response’ has produced more than 500 Lebanese dead and hundreds more who are injured and maimed. Israel has moved thousands of troops into Lebanon. It’s reported that Israel is killing about 40 Lebanese civilians for every Israeli civilian killed. Is that a measured response?

A cynic might suggest that the Americans are stage-managing the Israeli invasion of Lebanon for profit. Last Friday, the Bush Administration announced that it plans to sell $4.6 billion of arms to friendly Arab states, including tanks, helicopters gunships, missiles and aviation fuel, even as they sell jet fuel and missiles to Israel.

That in itself is nothing new. The United States has been selling hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons to the world for decades. Sales went up dramatically after 9/11.

In 2003, the Bush administration delivered arms to 18 of 25 nations now engaged in active conflicts. 13 of those nations have been defined as "undemocratic" by the U.S. State Department but still received $2.7 billion in American weaponry. Whenever you see George W. Bush talking about winning the "War on Terror," you are looking at the biggest arms dealer on the planet.

This is the man Stephen Harper chooses to follow.

The Israeli war is just one example of Harper’s mirror relationship with Bush. They hang together on Kyoto. Bush refuses to support the international Kyoto Accord on climate change so Mr. Harper pulls Canada out of it.

In the meantime, the UK’s Tony Blair has joined with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sidestep Bush and launch a fight against global warming by creating a joint market for greenhouse gases. Former President Bill Clinton has joined with a half dozen of the world’s major cities to combat climate change by increasing energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.

The Bush Administration refuses to recognize Court rulings on softwood lumber that favour Canada so Harper agrees to a softwood lumber agreement that would allow the United States to keep about $1 billion of the $5 billion in penalties on Canadian softwood lumber, illegally collected by the U.S. since 2002.

Every one of the Liberal candidates will be measured against the incumbent Prime Minister and the President of the United States. They will also be measured against their positions on such issues as climate change, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon and cross-border issues such as softwood lumber and passports.

The world is grappling with some very serious issues in the Middle East but the dangers inherent in significant climate change may even be greater.

If that’s not enough, the rising cost of healthcare and the serious financial crisis faced by the United States as a result of tax cutting and war mongering will touch us all. Canadians, regardless of their political persuasion should pay close attention to who the Liberals are courting for leadership.

The current government may defeat itself sooner than later.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com