21 December 2005

Maude Barlow: CPC foreign policy braintrust


(Left Right: Conservative Party foreign policy advisor Maude Barlow)

First Stephen Harper pledged to start a trade war with the United States over softwood lumber. He even mused about making some other country our major trading partner.

Now Gordon O'Connor is foaming about the possibility an American nuclear powered submarine may (note the conditional language) have passed through Canadian waters on its way to the North Pole. (Gordo never heard of right of innocent passage apparently.)

There's even a badly written news release from the Connie campaign bunker ranting about protecting Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.

Of course, there's a hidden reason Harper and his party are talking tough toward the Americans. It's just part of their efforts to cover the close ties between the Canadian Conservatives and their American brethren. Harper wants people to think he is just an ordinary, middle class Canadian guy. They'd like you to think he will stand up for canada against Americans, separatists and anyone else. The truth on those is out there.

Heck the Connies even have a website - pierretrudeau.ca - that links directly to the Connie campaign site all in an effort to appear more Liberal than Liberal.

But this latest rant by O'Connor had me thinking.

And no, it wasn't that Gordo hit his head on the cupola one too many times.

Since the Connies had local talk radio maven Sue Kelland Dyer on the Harper advance bus and she's been turning up on local talk radio defending Harper but without disclosing her connections to the campaign, maybe, just maybe something bigger is at play here. Maybe they've found the national version of Sue to help out too.

Maybe Maude Barlow is actually the Connie foreign policy brain trust. Maybe Barlow is slipping talking points to Harper behind the scenes.

One can only ponder on the true conspiracies at play in this election.

The evidence is mounting.