Gerald Caplan, G&M: The Harper government, women’s rights and the cost of speaking out.

The Tories are playing punishment politics with Canada’s progressive NGOs — and eroding civil society in the process.

“Despite the chill on speaking out, this week the Canadian Council for International Co-operation announced its fear that its funding is likely to be cut. CCIC is Canada’s preeminent coalition to end global poverty. Some 90 Canadian non-profit organizations, including most of the well-known ones, come together under the CCIC umbrella to monitor federal policies on foreign affairs, aid, trade and peace-building.”

Betty Plewes, former CEO of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, is not afraid to speak out. She wrote in Embassy Mag in May:

“At Foreign Affairs, the past year has seen the entire division focused on women’s rights and gender equality eliminated.

“In Pakistan and Kenya, two countries where women’s rights violations and violence against women are profound and systemic, CIDA has cut funds that were explicitly dedicated to gender equality. In Canada, Match International, the only international development organization devoted specifically to women’s equality, has lost its funding.

“Within CIDA, there is a noticeable retreat from gender equality work. Staff have recommended to NGOs that they remove the words ‘gender equality’ from their proposal if they want a chance at funding.”

In an interview with Zoe Blunt published at pacificfreepress.com, Canadian human rights activist Kevin Neish reports that he was on board the Gaza aid ship that was stormed by Israeli commandos, and that soldiers began firing from helicopters above the ship as the raid began.

His account is corroborated by an interview with Al Jazeera producer Jamal ElShayyal, who was among reporters filing live from the Mavi Marmara as it was attacked in international waters:

 
ElShayyal reports that the first live fire came from the air. “One of the people who was killed was clearly shot from above. The bullet targeted him at the top of his head. There was also fire coming from the sea as well.

“There is no doubt from what I saw that live ammunition was fired before any Israeli soldier was on deck.”

Israel has asserted that it did not begin firing live weapons until after the guns of two soldiers on board were taken by passengers.

Neish tells the Pacific Free Press that Turkish activists were severely beaten by the soldiers, and that he was “brutalized.” Writes Blunt: “His captors menaced him with assault rifles and attack dogs. and repeatedly threatened to kill him.

“They would not allow Neish or the other prisoners to sleep while they were in custody.”

Al Jazeera’s ElShayyal reports that passengers “weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom or they were kicked around or their arms tied to the extent that you could see the blood pressure really rising.”

Neish denies that passengers were armed or that they attacked the soldiers. However, ElShayyal says that “the passengers took apart some of the railing bars on the side of the the ships and they used them to fend off the Israeli commandos as they tried to get on, and I did see a number of Israeli soldiers being beaten by them.”

Video released by Israel Defense Forces appears to show some passengers on deck attacking soldiers with bars and deck chairs.

The Free Press:

Calling from the Istanbul airport on Wednesday night, Neish said a crowd of 25,000 met the plane carrying the released prisoners and the bodies of the nine Turks killed by the Israelis He said he is considering staying in Turkey to attend the funerals of his former shipmates, and he has not finalized his plans to return to Victoria.

Update: Kevin Neish interviewed by CBC Television

I got to know Kevin Neish, one of three Canadians currently being held by Israel after its attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, last Fall, when a production of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie that I had directed toured to Victoria. Kevin was instrumental in bringing the show to his city, and I slept in his basement office/guest room. It was lined with vintage leftist texts, while Kevin himself bore a striking resemblance to Lenin. For some reason, I thought it might be rude to say so, so I didn’t; I later found out he performs a one-man show about Lenin, when he e-mailed me to ask for some tips on blackening his 53-year old hair.

Kevin, I learned while working with him, was a combination activist, propagandist, and shrewd and good-humoured tactician. On the day I arrived, one of the members of the group sponsoring our visit had received an intimidating phone call from someone who likened its members to Nazis. By the time I got up the next day, Kevin had used reverse search to find an address for the anonymous caller, and visited his small office to leave a note “alerting” him to the fact that someone was using his phone to make harrassing calls. Of course, Kevin knew very well that he was alerting the culprit himself, but he preferred an approach that was both non-confrontational and satirical. He was entertained that it hadn’t occurred to the caller that his number would show up on call display.

He was also, I learned, deeply engaged with the plight of others, not only in Palestine, but in places like Guatemala and Colombia, where he’d done human rights work too. I mention this because Israel, or at least its army, seems to want us to suppose all these things cannot reside together in one human frame, or humanitarian movement. “The equipment that we found is all equipment that we have regularly allowed into the strip over the past year,” an Israeli commander told The Jerusalem Post after inspecting the flotilla’s cargo. “This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the whole premise of the voyage was for propaganda and provocation and not for humanitarian purpose.

Either/or. Either the mission was strictly a cargo run, or it was propaganda. But of course it was both. (I doubt it was intended as a provocation, though — as we have learned many times, the IDF is not a beast you want to provoke.) To call it propagandistic is not an insult, any more than I was insulting Kevin when I called him a propagandist. Propaganda is (or can be) simply a means to bring attention to a cause, and the flotilla was certainly designed to do that. But that doesn’t cancel out its simple human value, nor the compassion of those involved. To say otherwise is, well, propaganda of a lesser order.

My stay with Kevin wasn’t our first encounter. That had been the year prior, when we first staged My Name is Rachel Corrie on Gabriola Island. Kevin had travelled up from Victoria and was in the opening night audience. Rachel Corrie is the story of the young American activist who was killed by an Israel Defence Forces bulldozer while attempting to protect a Palestinian home. I don’t think Kevin had known Rachel, but he had worked with the same group, the International Solidarity Movement, in Gaza, and back in Canada had received her e-mails.

After the show, he didn’t move from his seat, and I thought that perhaps he was avoiding me because he hadn’t liked it. Then I moved closer to him, and I realized he was weeping. He wept for a long time. Then we began to make plans.

On the same day we are hearing from the three fired members of Rights and Democracy at the Foreign Affairs Committee (see below) comes an op-ed in the National Post by R&D board member Marco Navarro-Genie. And what a gong show stinker it is too.

According to Navarro-Genie, the Foreign Affairs committee is involved in “a kangaroo court” orchestrated by “the coalition-government- wanabees (Bloc-Liberal-NDP)” to “try and then convict good Canadian citizens whose only crime is to do their duty to look out for Canadian taxpayers”:

“They have concocted one fantasy in which Harper government neo-cons sought to destroy the ‘independence’ of Rights and Democracy, and a second fantasy in which pro-Israel foreign policy has been imposed on an innocent staff only interested in human rights. How wonderfully irresistible for Harper Haters and Israel Bashers.”

“There never was an ‘Israel issue’ at Rights and Democracy,” states Navarro-Genie, and then goes on to complain that the Foreign Affairs committee is beginning its hearings into the R&D controversy “starting on the first day of Passover which reflects its attitude toward Jewish Canadians.”

Particularly egregious is his statement that now deceased president Beauregard’s widow is being “dragged before Parliament by ghoulish Opposition members.” This after the Con committee member Jim Abbott filibustered the last meeting for its entire session with the precise intention of preventing her appearance after she had publicly requested permission to appear in a letter to the committee.

Navarro-Génie ends by saying “Only the board, maligned as it is, wants to protect the organization and the taxpayer,” a stirring ring of endorsement for R&D which would have greater credibility had he and the other board members not already written previous editorials in the National Post doubting whether R&D had any right to exist.

So what has put the wind up Navarro-Genie this morning?

Here are two notable moments from witnesses at the committee today:

One. Remember R&D interim Chair Aurel Braun’s “discovery” that $10,000 each had been awarded to “toxic anti-Israel” organisations Al Haq, Al Mezan and B’Tselem by R&D to document human rights violations committed during the invasion of Gaza?

Panoussian testified that he had told Braun of the three one-time grants — which represented .2% of the R&D budget — within the first hour of his first briefing with Braun on Braun’s first day on the job. If true, so much for “The board discovered the information only by diligently pursuing the facts.”.

Two. Secretary of the Board Marie-France Cloutier testified that after Mr. Beauregard informed the Board in a March 2009 meeting that “Rights and Democracy would not participate in any way in the Durban Review Conference even if invited,” Aurel Braun asked her to “change the minutes of the meeting to attribute this decision to himself and the board” instead. She refused, offering to bring his suggestion up at the next meeting for a vote. Yes, she’s been fired.

Kady O’Malley is live-blogging the meeting for the CBC. Or you can listen to it yourself here.

Written evidence from the three fired R&D witnesses here.

In the House on Monday, Liberal trade critic Scott Brison defended Bill C-23, the Canada Colombia free trade agreement thusly:

“If we isolate Colombia in the Andean region and leave Colombia exposed and vulnerable to the ideological attacks of Chavez’s Venezuela, we will be allowing evil to flourish.”

Oooh – two Bush cat’s paw points for you. Chavez appeared to be much on Brison’s mind yesterday and figured several times in his answers, perhaps because the U.S. military has obtained a 10-year lease at seven Colombian bases to help fight drug traffickers and leftists.

He also said the Colombia FTA will provide jobs that will help to turn Colombia away from being a narco-state. Nice try, Scott. Farming accounts for 22% of employment in Colombia. The trade agreement eliminates duties on importing Canadian wheat, peas, lentils and barley. After those farmers go broke trying to compete with Canadian agribiz wheat but before the paramilitaries drive them off their land for the Canadian mining companies, exactly what crop do you think they will be forced to turn to?

The agreement’s Chapter 11 style investor’s rights allows Canadian mining companies to sue the Colombian government should it ever implement labour or environmental legislation that affects their profits.

MP Claude Guimond, Bloc :

“When asked to adopt mandatory social responsibility standards for Canadian mining companies abroad, the government decided to adopt voluntary standards instead. When asked to create an independent ombudsman who could conduct impartial investigations to validate complaints, the government created the Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor, who reports directly to the minister and investigates only if authorized by the mining company.”

Well, what could possibly go wrong with that?

Gerald Keddy, Con Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, amusingly referred to this yesterday as “providing leadership internationally in encouraging free trade and open markets and discouraging protectionism.”

Stockwell Day, who has started slipping the phrase “pathways to prosperity” into his remarks, tried to rustle up some good news on the lamentable increase in kidnappings, disappearances, and farmers and their families being driven off their land this last year :

“Kidnappings. Do they still happen? Yes, they do. They still happen in Canada, too. Are people still being murdered in that country? Yes, they are. They are still being murdered in Canada also. More than 350,000 internally displaced persons [in Colombia] have now received comprehensive protection and access to basic social services.”

Yes, in addition to the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, Colombia has an internal refugee problem second only to Sudan’s.

Chris Charlton, NDP labour critic :

“The shocking reality is that, in the event of the murder of a trade unionist in Colombia, labour protection simply means that the Colombian government would have to pay money into a development fund. Kill a trade unionist, pay a fine. Over 2,200 labour activists have been murdered since 1991.

“The penalty for killing a trade unionist was capped at $15 million in any one year, paid by the Colombian government into a development fund. To put this into perspective, one year’s maximum payment of $15 million equates to $5,628 per trade unionist already killed.”

and then she said something I didn’t know :

“Only 0.15% of Canadian exports actually go to Colombia”

and quotes Glen Hodgson, VP and chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada:

“Our annual trade with Colombia is about the same level as that with South Dakota and is actually smaller than that with Delaware or Rhode Island. Compared to other markets much closer, Colombia is not really a major player. Eighty per cent of Colombia’s imports to Canada are actually duty free already.”

This agreement isn’t about free trade though, remember, it’s about protecting investor’s rights.

Diane Bourgeois, Bloc :

“Colombian investment in Canada amounts to $1 million, while Canadian investment in Colombia totals roughly $1.058 billion, which can essentially be attributed to the extractive industry . . . . Twice during the time I was a member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Development, Canadian companies received funding through CIDA. They used money distributed through CIDA to get paramilitary staff on the company payroll. That money was used to pay hired guns, not to help the people.

“At one point, CIDA disbursed $14,000. That is not a lot of money here, but in Colombia, it might be worth $100,000. TVI used that $14,000 to pay professional soldiers to protect company assets and prevent people from using the only remaining source of drinking water because it had contaminated every other source around the site.”

Lee Richardson, Con, responds by telling us that “Canada is a world leader” in “promoting best practices in environmental stewardship” :

“As a member from Alberta, I can say that this is especially true in the resource sector when it comes to environmental stewardship and environmental impact assessments. We can offer a lot to our Colombian partners in terms of expertise and best practices. Indeed, Canadian companies are leaders in corporate social responsibility in minimizing the impact of their activities on the environment.”

By now you must think I’m making this up or quoting out of context but sadly, you’d be wrong.

Linda Duncan, NDP, speaking to the “side agreements” on environmental and labour protections:

“The side agreement is basically non-existent. It is simply paper. There is nothing to it. There are vague references to corporate social responsibility. There is absolutely no recourse. There are no penalties in the side agreement of the Colombia-Canada agreement. I do not think it appropriate that the Government of Canada pass over that responsibility simply to a Canadian investor. Were I a Canadian investor I would not want to have to be fulfilling that complete role.”

Paul Szabo was the only Lib to recommend that there might be something wrong here and perhaps the bill ought to go back to committee. Aside from two pleas for further reassurances, the rest of them kept quiet. I’d like to think they were ashamed.

Bob Rae has said : “The Liberal Party will be supportive of the bill proceeding to committee,”

Nothing from former human rights activist Michael Ignatieff.

When Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan complained about young boys being kidnapped and sodomized by Afghan soldiers and interpreters inside Canadian Forward Operating Base Wilson in Kandahar, they were informed by their superiors to look the other way because it was a “cultural difference.” One reported incident of “cultural difference” left a young boy with “his bowel and lower intestines falling out of his body,” but according to the Canadian Forces National Investigation Servies report this May, it was apparently none of our business.

When Obama rushed through confirmation of Rumsfeld’s black ops General to head up the new surge in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal’s involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal at Camp Nama, the detention centre he commanded in Baghdad, was questioned but it was apparently none of our business :

“Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. ‘Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?’ And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there’s no way that the Red Cross could get in: they won’t have access and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators.”

It was eventually broken open from the inside by brave men like Captain Ian Fishback, Marc Garlasco, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and now with Human Rights Watch, and Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba :

“Yasser tearfully described that when he reached the top of the steps ‘the party began . . . . They started to put the [muzzle] of the rifle [and] the wood from the broom into [my anus]. They entered my privates from behind.’ . . . Yasser estimated that he was penetrated five or six times during this initial sodomy incident and saw blood ‘all over my feet’ through a small hole in the hood covering his eyes.” – by Physicians for Human Rights’ “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” a report containing firsthand accounts of men who endured torture by U.S. personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

In Sodomized to Protect Our Freedoms, Allan Uthman at Alternet questions the motive behind our new obsession with waterboarding:

Would we really need debate on the torture question if we discussed the numerous acts of sodomy instead of the nuances of waterboarding?

Just once, I’d like to hear one of these American Enterprise Institute psychos, the ones that always trot out to defend the neocons’ freakish obsessions, have to defend shoving a flashlight up a guy’s ass. I want to hear Frank Gaffney or Jonah Goldberg tell me why I shouldn’t be fucking mortified that raping prisoners was considered within tolerable interrogation practices by my country. I want Glenn Beck to justify butt-raping a suspect.

What’s so sick about it is that the sexual nature of the torture seems so unnecessary. I mean, even if we were going to torture them, we could have stuck to waterboarding, pulling some fingernails or just beating the shit out of them.
But menstrual blood smeared on their faces? Rape? What kind of people do that?

The upshot is this: America is the country that rapes its prisoners. We’re sex criminals. That’s our thing now. And Obama’s refusal to “look back,” i.e. prosecute these incredibly serious crimes, ensures that it’s our permanent legacy. No national reputation can survive this simply by shrugging it off.

And when we talk about torture, we stick to waterboarding, because nobody, not even the “liberals,” are willing to face what we’ve done.

NYT :

“NATO approved a reorganization of its command structure in Afghanistan on Tuesday to better coordinate the war. The Obama administration wanted the change to improve command efficiency over the NATO forces there, known as the International Security Assistance Force.

“NATO agreed to establish a new Intermediate Joint Headquarters in Kabul under an American Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, to manage the day-to-day war. General Rodriguez will continue to report to the top American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.”

Ass-raping and the torture of children for freedom and prosperity. Is it our business yet?

In February, Bernie Farber, CEO of the CJC, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and 10 other Lib and Con MPs attended the London Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced in Question Period Friday that the government will comply with, rather than appeal, the Federal Court decision ordering it to repatriate Abousfian Abdelrazik, stranded in Sudan since 2003.

Good.

As Chris Selley writes: “It’s all over but the thousands of unanswered questions”

Here’s one.

How much did this July 2006 US Embassy memo figure in extending Abdelrazik’s exile?

“US Embassy DCM John Dickson made a demarche this afternoon re Abdelrazik . . . . He had been asked to deliver a message from the White House, specifically from senior levels of the Homeland Security Council. [US] Ambassador Wilkins might be calling Ministers Toves [sic] and Day tomorrow. Frances Townsend might also be calling.

“Dickson’s main message was that the US would like Canada’s assistance in putting together a criminal case against Abdelrazik so that he could be charged in the US. The US had information on Abdelrazik but at this point, it was not enough to charge him; the same might be true for Canada. If Canadian police or security agencies shared what they had, it might prove to be enough for the US to proceed, as the threshold for prosecution there was lower than here.”

Days later the US added Abdelrazik to the UN Security Council terrorist blacklist, despite not having sufficient evidence to charge him under their “lower threshold.”

And just so we’re clear here — the threshold for action was spectacularly lower. Recall that Maher Arar was renditioned to Syria the day after a wounded 14 year old Omar Khadr in Bagram prison was shown photos of Arar and coached into saying that “he looked familiar,” and the US evidence against Abdelrazik appears to be the unfortunate spinoff derived from waterboarding a schizophrenic halfwit 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

Here’s a question:

We don’t know what correspondence transpired after the memo above, written three years after Arar returned to Canada and during the time we were hearing advance notice of the O’Connor report which would clear him of all terrorism allegations two months later. Was Abdelrazik kept in exile at the Canadian Embassy in Sudan to avoid a similar debacle by someone who decided he was safer left there than he would be back in Canada?

I have been very interested in listening to Green Party candidates and I believe that they ought to have a voice in parliament. So if I lived in a riding with a very strong Green Party candidate, I would vote Green.

I might also vote NDP if the local candidate was strong. That is because I know Jack Layton will never become Prime Minister. To tell the truth, even as I adopt more and more socialist tools, I remain a staunch liberal. This is a small “l” liberal because I believe that the Liberal Party of Canada is still in disarray. I prefer Liberal polices over other policies but Dion hasn’t come out swinging enough to win me over.

But I am a liberal. As much as I believe in democracy with all my heart, I believe in inalienable human rights even more. I know this because democracies make huge mistakes all the time. Sometimes self-government flips into mob rule — governed by ignorance, stupidity, or plain old depravity — particularly when the electorate is threatened, or simply feels threatened. If I had to choose between living in a democracy where my inalienable human rights were not respected and an autocracy where they were, I’d take the autocracy every time because I absolutely believe in the liberal idea of inalienable human rights limiting the power of mob rule. George Bush was elected (at least once and maybe twice). Hitler was also elected. And, while this is probably a lesser disaster, the morons in my riding are going to vote Conservative. Oh, that someone could save me from the mob rule of my neighbours.

Incidentally, that’s why I am not completely socialist. The last thing I want is for a bunch of addled-brained zealots tromping all over my rights because they have an idea. Some socialists can talk themselves into some pretty heinous behaviour. I am particularly frightened by people who seek to improve me, or do me good.

Anyway, nobody in my Alberta riding has a hope of beating the Conservative incumbent but, if I lived in a riding where somebody (dear god anybody) had a chance, I’d vote for them. Generally, I don’t like to vote strategically. I like to vote for the party and the person who most closely embodies my values and preferences. But let’s face it: the only reason Harper is in office today is because the Progressive Conservative and Alliance parties got over themselves and merged. I think we’re in rough enough shape financially and environmentally that we can’t take the chance of a Conservative majority.

I found out how my neighbours are likely to vote at a nifty page that allowed me to search by postal code (www.voteforenvironment.ca). If you’re interested in how they arrived at their prediction, check out their “advanced prediction model” at http://advanced.voteforenvironment.ca/poll_list.php.

I’ll be voting Liberal, without hope. And I will be joining the Liberal Party and the NDP and start advocating for a merge. Frankly, both parties could do each other a lot of good.

Happy thanksgiving.

- Eleanor Claire

“The similarities with Mr. Arar’s case are compelling. In both instances, a Canadian citizen is fingered by CSIS as a terrorist suspect. In both cases, no charges are laid in Canada. In both, the person is arrested and imprisoned abroad. In both, Canadian officials say there is little that they can do because the person is in the country of their other citizenship.”

The above is from The Globe and Mail’s front page story in April about Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian-Sudanese imprisoned and allegedly tortured in Sudan for two years at Canada’s request. Frequently visited by CSIS officials, he was eventually cleared by Sudan of all allegations that he was a terrorist or a member of al-Qaeda and released. Sudan offered to fly him home to Montreal but Canada obstructed the deal.

Since then he has been “sheltering” and living on handouts at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, except for that five months when he was reincarcerated after threatening to make his case to Prime Minister Martin on the PM’s visit to Sudan. Canada has refused to renew his passport or to transport him back to Canada on any of the subsequent government flights between Canada and Sudan.

The G&M; returned to Abdelrazik’s plight recently (italics mine):

“In a telephone interview Monday, Mr. Abdelrazik said he told a Canadian diplomat he was being repeatedly beaten by Sudanese interrogators in 2004 or 2005. ‘He didn’t care,’ Mr. Abdelrazik said.

Mr. Abdelrazik, who was to submit a sworn affidavit about his torture in Sudan to Federal Court in Ottawa Monday, confirmed all of the details in the draft document, including that he was interrogated by CSIS agents while in a Sudanese jail. However, the document remained unsigned because Canadian diplomats refused to deliver the faxed draft to Mr. Abdelrazik to sign.”

What?!

“Canadian government documents, which came to light in April, revealed he had been imprisoned in Sudan ‘at our request,’ meaning at the request of Canadian agents. In its response, delivered Monday, the Justice Department opted not to dispute the assertion that Mr. Abdelrazik had been imprisoned at Canada’s request, in effect conceding the fact before the court.

“The documents presented in court, coupled with Mr. Abdelrazik’s accounts of torture, suggest Canada secretly arranged for Sudan to arrest and imprison him, then sent Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents to interrogate him in a Sudanese prison while diplomats knew that he was being tortured but ignored that fact.

“Canadian diplomats in Khartoum refused Monday, for the second day in a row, to permit Mr. Abdelrazik to sign the affidavit; his signature would have made it a sworn affidavit.

“‘The matter is under litigation and we cannot comment,’ said Anne Howland, spokeswoman for current Foreign Minister David Emerson. Other senior officials said the file is actually being handled in the Prime Minister’s Office.”

I’ll just fucking bet it is. To read the anguished but impotent and self-serving hand-wringing by Foreign Affairs officials, go here:

“‘I wish I had a magic wand and make this case go away . . . I find it unethical to hold him like this in limbo with no future, no hope and all because . . . Obviously I cannot address the issue of the no-fly list . . .

“Mr. Abdelrazik ‘has reached the end of his rope, he has no money, no future, very little freedom and no hope. Should this case break wide open in the media, we may have a lot to explaining to do.’”

Well, it’s broken open now, so deal. Just send a fucking plane already.

If you can do it for Brenda Martin, you can do it for Abousfian Abdelrazik.

**

Bloggers, readers, start your engines.

Write a letter, make a call, send a fax to:

David Emerson, Foreign Affairs
Telephone: (613) 943-0267 or Fax: (613) 943-0219
e-mail: Emerson.D@parl.gc.ca
2148 Kingsway, Vancouver, British Columbia, V5N 2T5
B.C. phones: (604) 775-6263 or Fax: (604) 775-6284

Stephen Harper:
e-mail : pm@pm.gc.ca or Fax: 613-941-6900

h/t to Roger in Comments at the Beav for the reminder to post this access info.

Bees, honey, vinegar, no crayon — you know the drill.