Tuesday digest

- Is this racism, or just prudence?

- By telling Canada how to vote on an anti-Israel UN resolution, Jimmy Carter continues to solidify his status as the worst ex-president in recent memory. Instead of blaming Israel, how about targetting suicide bombers as the reason for violence in the Middle East? If they were neutralized, Israel would be more easily able to leave the West Bank and Gaza.

I am also looking forward to Jack Layton and Bill Graham screaming in Question Period about this egregious American interference in Canadian foreign policy.

- What's this all about?

- Thomas Sowell points out that based on charitable donations, conservatives are more generous than liberals.

- Ottawa's new mayor has appointed the former head of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, Walter Robinson, as his Chief of Staff.

Thumbs up.

- Finally, a lot of folks are blaming Michael Ignatieff for igniting the latest national unity firestorm. I don't. Instead, I put the blame foursquare on the shoulders of a former Progressive Conservative prime minister, as much as I like to poke fun at Trudeaupia on this blog.

Imagine how great Canada would be today if Brian Mulroney would have left well enough alone in the 1984 campaign instead of letting Lucien Bouchard write his speeches, promising Quebecers that they'd be responded to with "honour and enthusiasm" by the federal government, despite the fact that nearly all Quebec MPs in the federal Parliament supported the 1982 constitutional deal even if the separatist government of Rene Levesque did not (and thereby validating the complaints of the malcontents in Quebec's political class)?

This latest mess has Mulroney's fingerprints all over it. He's the godfather of the idea of special status, codified in law, for Quebec, based on what essentially amounts to race. Harper even trotted out Red Tory relic Marjory LeBreton and former Bourassa cab min Lawrence Cannon to try and downplay it yesterday.

It's absolutely appalling to see so-called leaders "roll the dice" for the promise of electoral gain, which, as Andrew Coyne has pointed out, never ends up materializing over the long term.

Whenever Canada stands up for itself, support for sovereignty goes down. Whenever we capitulate to the demands of fairweather federalists, nationalists and soft separatists, who decide how much they want from the rest of Canada depending on the mood they're in when they get up in the morning, support for separation goes up.

Even though the motion as adopted has no legal impact, it's ambiguous enough to signal to Quebec governments that the door to the constitutional cupboard is open, if only slightly. (Why else would the Bloc have supported it?) Instead of dangerously creating such expectations, Harper should have just voted the original Bloc motion down, period, and if he lost Jean-Pierre Blackburn or whoever this mystery Quebec Cabinet minister is that Chantal Hebert keeps referring to, so be it. (Josée Verner's roots in the party are too deep to quit over this. Same goes for Cannon, and I can't see the libertarian Maxime Bernier, who also sits on the Priorities and Planning committee of Cabinet, jumping ship to sit as an Independent.)

I'm no Liberal, but I hope Stephane Dion wins on Saturday, and I predict he will on the third ballot.

ADDENDUM: Stephen Harper used the word "reconciliation" to describe the vote last night. To me, that term describes the making of amends after one party was wronged by another.

To what could the former policy chief of the Reform party, which was itself a byproduct of the Meech and Charlottetown fiascos, be referring?