I commented on this on Twitter but that Harper quote that was printed in the Globe in 2010 is actually a 1997 quote. Funny.

Ironically, these people are almost certainly not the people who will be helped by the Passport to Education.

Yeah, but that's not really my point. My point is that it's also standard procedure to accuse them of not reading it.

This is a bit of a Canadian form of debate, no? If you go back and look, there are tons of examples of both Liberals and Conservatives accusing the other parties of not having read the budget.

Hedy Fry in 1994:

"Yesterday in a typical knee-jerk reaction to the speech by the Minister of Finance, the Leader of the Opposition and his finance critic stated that the budget was merely another confirmation of status quo federalism. It is clear that the Leader of the Opposition did not read the document, or if he did he did not understand it."

David Collonette in 1999:

"Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to speak but after hearing the outrageous comments of my friend from Kings—Hants I felt compelled to do so. Transport is my game but I have a night job, trying to look after some of the interests of the government in Canada's largest city. There are 4.6 million people in the greater Toronto area. We are particularly sensitive to the plight of the homeless in that city and in other cities across the country. I take umbrage at my friend for saying there is nothing in this budget to deal with homelessness. He obviously has not read the budget."

Roy Cullen in 2000 (this actually seems to be a bit of a speaking tic of his; it would not surprise if he prefaces most of what he says with accusations that the person to whom he's speaking hasn't read the budget):

"If he actually read the budget, he would discover that the capital gains tax inclusion rate has been reduced from three-quarters to two-thirds.

If he read the budget, he would understand that it puts close to $2.4 billion into defence.

I could go on and on but I think the member should read the budget before he comes to the House. Normally he is most informed on these issues. I was surprised today. Has the member read the budget?"

Does anyone believe Harper when he says that the Liberal, NDP and Bloc haven't read the budget? Like the opposition in the 1990's, it'd be in their interest to do so, if only to find issues on which to criticize the government.

Pretty lame debunking. I look forward to the Delacourt/Smith piece on whether or not there are ACTUALLY red and blue doors that we will have to choose.

(I didn't actually put in the Tory examples, but trust me, there are lots of them. I figure this will be taken as a pro-Tory comment so I don't need to show my work as far as criticizing them - they're equal offenders.)

You know how the Reform Party came to be, right? Grievances that the West was being excluded from decision making and that its interests weren't being represented? This isn't exactly a new problem.

Right - and in this case, no such contribution agreement was ever created, right? Because funding was refused?

Well I acknowledge I might be nitpicking here, but I have a hard time describing something as a "legal document" when it's not creating or defining any legal rights or created in order to comply with the requirements of some law.

Well, that's not entirely clear either. Is there some sort of prima facie entitlement to the money once the CIDA bureaucrats agree? I mean, I would think, without really knowing, that some entitlement maybe arises once she says yes. If she says no, the document confers no rights or privileges. It's a memo.

In all honesty, I don't think that this is a super important point. I just think that the document needs to be put into a little context for what it actually was - it reflected a decision that belonged to the minister and that she made. Or at least there's no evidence that that wasn't the case.

Obviously, I disagree with your point about whether or not the explanations are fair but I think your point about what the unwillingness to explain their decisions says about the government is fair. The current crop of bastards is a secretive one. It's their default setting and (to me anyway) it seems to result in some self-inflicted wounds.

"...that such alteration of a signed legal document was improper at best"

What, exactly, is a "signed legal document"? This was an inter-office memo, was it not?

I'm with you that this is a hell of a way to go about doing business, particularly if we want to have records of what the bureaucrats recommended and what the government did. It creates confusion in that regard. This document though, as I understand things, had zero force until the Minister exercised whatever power she has to rain money on organizations. In what sense is it a "signed legal document"? It had no force of law.

It's not at all clear that she did that. I was initially onside with those who thought that what she'd done was outrageous. My (mistaken) understanding was that this form was somehow produced to the committee as evidence that the CIDA bureaucracy supported her decision. If that was the case, it would have been outrageous.

As Colby points out though, the form came up through an FOI request - it wasn't presented by Oda to anyone as evidence of anything. It was, in effect, an internal memo presented to her for a rubber stamp and then produced in response to an FOI request. She decided not to accept the recommendation. The memo had no method for her to indicate her disagreement with the proposal. She came up with one by writing "NOT" on the thing.

As Colby concedes, this is probably foolish. That doesn't make it a forgery though.