Call girls spice up political stories

OTTAWA-- For the second time in a year, a Conservative with ties to Harper's office has been accused of trying to exploit those ties for business purposes.

In an unrelated but bizarre twist, both stories also include high-priced escorts as leading or supporting players.

Last year when the story broke about former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, the really important question was whether Jaffer had attempted to use his connections to the government and his wife's position as a cabinet minister to further his business interests. But everyone was talking about the "busty hookers" present at a business dinner and employees of an escort agency owned by the fiancé of a Jaffer business associate.

Last week it was Bruce Carson, a former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was on the hot seat for allegedly lobbying the Indian Affairs minister and department on behalf of a company that sells water filtration systems to reserves. Carson never registered as a lobbyist after leaving the Prime Minister's Office in 2008.

Adding to the intrigue is that Carson's fiancée stands to receive 20 per cent of the revenues from the sales. His fiancée also happens to be a former high-priced escort. He is 66. She is 22.

The involvement of call girls has nothing to do with the issues at hand but they certainly make political stories tastier and more memorable for both the public and the media.

Harper's referral to the RCMP for investigating Carson's actions was politically expedient as it helps distance himself and his office from the actions of someone he used to count as a respected adviser.

But it doesn't change the fact for the second time in a year his party has been indirectly linked to high-priced prostitution.

Telling polls

SPEAKING of what gets Canadians' attention, there were two very telling polls released last week.

The first showed 85 per cent of Canadians had heard about the violent hit on Montreal Canadiens player Max Pacioretty. That's an awareness level that is usually reserved for major international disasters.

Another poll showed just 40 per cent of Canadians were aware of the in-and-out scandal plaguing the Conservatives. Or apparently not really plaguing them since most Canadians say they don't know what it is.

Those figures are even more interesting considering in-and-out has been in the news for four years and on numerous front pages in recent weeks. When the Angus Reid poll was taken, the Pacioretty hit wasn't even eight days old.

The poll is bad news for opposition parties that have been trying to use the scandal to gain steam with voters. They might be heartened by knowing 60 per cent of those who had heard about the issue think it's a big deal.

But the poll about it also shows just how partisan Canadians have become. While an almost equal number of Conservatives, Liberals and NDPers have heard of the issue, 75 per cent of the Conservative voters who had heard about it think it is not a big deal compared to eight per cent of Liberal voters who dismissed it as such.

It really goes to show when you believe in one party you are either easily willing to dismiss its indiscretions or easily willing to believe anything other parties do is really bad.

Debt milestone

DO you know where you were shortly after 11 p.m. on March 17?

Downing a pint of green beer at a St. Patrick's Day bash perhaps? Catching the late night news updates or checking in with Jay Leno or David Letterman?

Wherever you were, we witnessed a sad milestone at exactly 11:11 p.m. and 25 seconds, central daylight time.

That's when the $105 million of the national debt we laboured to repay since 1997 was wiped out.

It took us 11 years to pay it down by $105 billion and less than three years to rack it back up.

If that's not depressing enough, you can watch the debt continue to pile up in real time thanks to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation at www.debtclock.ca.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 21, 2011 A6