Tag Archives: Elections Canada

Roundup: O’Toole tells challengers to bring it on

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It’s all coming undone. Erin O’Toole’s grip on the leadership of his party is even more tenuous, as a third of the caucus has now signed a letter calling for a vote on a leadership review. While “sources” insisted that Garnett Genuis was one of the ringleaders of this group, in part over anger for the way in which the conversion therapy bill vote was handled, Genuis denies this and says this is an attempt by O’Toole to smear him. Others sources say this is because the party is angry that the Conservatives allowed too many bills to pass unopposed before the end of the year, but we’ll see what other narratives emerge as more MPs start leaking.

https://twitter.com/BobBenzen/status/1488308784703414272

O’Toole responded late in the evening, essentially saying bring on the vote, apparently confident that the other two-thirds of caucus will be with him, but that’s a pretty risky gamble to be making when he’s this weakened, and there is blood in the water. Also, the fact that O’Toole tried to bring up Derek Sloan is very curious considering that he initially protected Sloan when there was a move to expel him from the party after he made racist comments about Dr. Theresa Tam, only to turn against him once O’Toole had secured the leadership thanks to using Sloan’s voters to his advantage. It’s like he doesn’t think anyone can see his blatant opportunism staring them in the face. Oh, and the notion that Andrew Scheer wants to be interim leader is just the chef’s kiss in all of this—one presumes he misses Stornoway and the perquisites that come with it. Scheer is denying it (but it’s not like he’s a paragon of truth either)

Meanwhile, Paul Wells relays more of what he’s hearing from his Conservatives about O’Toole’s likely chances (not good), and fits it into the broader pattern of the party and its predecessor’s leaders going back three-quarters of a century.

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Roundup: The many leaks from the Cumming Report

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The Cumming report on the Conservatives’ election failure was released to caucus behind closed doors yesterday, and lo, leaks appeared in every news outlet in the country, so let’s go through some of them:

  • From Global: O’Toole’s performance got mixed reviews, with a strong finish but was “over-managed” by the end of the campaign. It was determined he needed to spend more time on the road and not in his studio, and they need to completely rebuild their voter-identification database.
  • From The Toronto Star: Party memberships should be free (which is a terrible gods damned idea), and that the party’s reputation is still suffering from the “barbaric cultural practices tip line” promise in 2015.
  • From the National Post: They were hobbled by party infighting, a lack of ethnic outreach, and the soft response to Quebec’s Law 21. As well, it concluded that O’Toole is still the “right person to lead the party.”
  • From CTV: The party needs more diverse candidates.
  • From CBC: The party failed to craft policy on some important issues, and apparently O’Toole didn’t respond well to criticism in the question-and-answer session following Cumming’s presentation. And they went nuts when Global’s leaks hit the wires while Cumming was still speaking.

I did note that while O’Toole told a press conference afterward that he takes responsibility and promises changes, it was remarked upon that O’Toole seemed to change his tune on the use of the studio, which they crowed about through the campaign and insisted it was better than in-person events because they could reach more people through their teleconferences, but changing his tune about something is nothing new (as we all saw during the election, over and over again).

Meanwhile, O’Toole told said press conference that he was going to meet with truckers, but also denounced extremists among them, which is an extremely hard circle to square considering that it’s the extremists who organised the whole bloody grifter convoy, and any legitimate truckers frustrated by vaccine mandates are going to be hapless nitwits in the bunch. The fact that O’Toole remained silent about the fact that the organisers of said grifter convoy are demanding that democracy be overturned in favour of some delusional Jacobin committee comprised of said convoy organisers and senators is also a problem, as is the fact that he wouldn’t address the fact that these same organizers are doxing MPs, and the Sergeant-at-Arms is warning that their Ottawa residences are being targeted. It does show that O’Toole has basically left objective reality behind, as his latest shitpost video essentially demonstrates.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1486849795515953156

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1486850305757167622

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1486755945292124167

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Roundup: The extremists weigh in

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As the grifter convoy 2022 gets closer to Ottawa, it is attracting more online attention from some unsavoury circles. Some of them have been calling for this to be Canada’s January 6th insurrection, which one might think would give some Conservative MPs pause, but nope. No denunciations have yet been forthcoming. Another group associated with the convoy, calling itself “Canadian Unity,” seems to think they can force the government to sign some kind of quasi-legalistic “Memorandum of Understanding” that would essentially force the all governments, federal, provincial and municipal, to rescind all public health measures and dissolve the government so that said group can rule by fiat. Erm, yeah, that’s not going to happen.

One of the organizers (who has the GoFundMe in her name) says she won’t tolerate extremist rhetoric associated with said grifter convoy, but yeah, good luck with that. And if things do turn violent, well, that could trigger anti-terrorism financing laws to everyone who donated to those GoFundMe accounts.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1486064285361086469

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1485976603918315525

Oh, and the federal government isn’t budging on the vaccine mandate, and if they think a convoy like this will change the Americans’ minds for their own mandate, well, good luck with that delusion.

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Roundup: Casting doubt as a smoke bomb

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As I was just saying about Canadian political leaders focusing on American issues and culture wars, we are seeing yet another instance in this country – this time over the upcoming riding redistribution hearings. The Conservatives have decided that they want to go all-in on American culture wars and are fundraising to fight these redistributions, citing that they don’t trust the Liberals to run the process fairly – never mind that the process is arm’s length, and the fact that the Speaker of the House is involved in the process is supposed to ensure neutrality. The fact that he was elected as a Liberals should not be a factor – and it’s especially rich from the Conservatives, seeing as it was their votes that ensured that Rota got into the post during Tuesday’s election (and I know enough about where votes were going for certain candidates that the maths work out that the Conservatives were voting for Rota).

We really, really do not want to go down this path of making a partisan issue of riding redistribution, because only madness lies this way. Aside from outright partisan lunacy in thinking that this is an effective way of fundraising never mind the corrosive effect that this has on our political system, it’s also a simple admission of sore loserism. If they think they’ve been losing because of riding redistribution (with “rurban” seats largely being split up into actual rural and urban seats), the most recent redistribution happened under their watch, and frankly, “rurban” seats were pure gerrymandering because they didn’t make sense and were trying to use rural votes to outweigh urban ones and never made sense in terms of “communities” like they are so concerned that ridings encompass. If they think that they won’t get a fair shake this time around, it’s pure projection.

Of course, this isn’t actually about riding redistribution – it’s about throwing another smoke bomb into the mix in order to distract from the party’s internal problems and the challenges to Erin O’Toole’s leadership. The fact that they are trying to discredit a process that is meant to be removed from political considerations and partisan gamesmanship is pretty gross, especially because that is meant to be a pure distraction (and fundraising grab). This process is important to our democracy, and for them to cast doubt for selfish reasons is a sign of the party’s continued moral decline.

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Roundup: A headache over added and subtracted seats

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The question of seat redistribution and the allocation – and subtraction – of seats has been simmering, and the premier of Quebec is demanding that the prime minister step in and guarantee that Quebec not only retain the seat it is slated to lose, but also to guarantee that because of the notion that Quebec constitutes a nation within Canada, that they must be guaranteed that their share of seats never drops even if their population grows at a much slower pace than other provinces. The problem with that? It would require a constitutional amendment to do, using the 7/50 formula (seven provinces representing 50 percent of the population). And that could be the tricky part.

Of course, the obvious solution is to tinker with the seat distribution formula, which the Conservatives introduced (fully intending to screw over Ontario for new seats along the way). But as I stated in my column a couple of weeks ago, we would probably be better served adding far more than just four seats – something more like 40 would be better for everyone, especially because it would mean better populating committees and keeping parliamentary secretaries from voting positions on them. Mike Moffatt and I discussed this over Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456558821942431744

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456560023383969796

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456590475985571840

Furthermore, if we stay at the current redistribution formula, that sole new seat in Ontario is going to cause a lot of problems with redrawing boundaries (which will then have provincial reverberations, because Ontario provincial ridings mirror their federal counterparts, with the exception of an additional seat in Northern Ontario for better representation. Once this reality starts to sink in, perhaps the government would start considering boosting that formula to avoid these kinds of headaches.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456593608648298498

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Roundup: Breakaway caucuses are more headaches for O’Toole

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Things in the Conservative caucus seem to be getting increasingly precarious, as a “small number” of MPs continue to remain unvaccinated, and others refuse to disclose even if they are vaccinated, which is going to be a problem for Erin O’Toole in two weeks when they need to show proof of vaccination to enter the parliamentary precinct, their offices, or reach the House of Commons.

As if this weren’t enough, you have more unofficial “breakaway” caucus groups forming – one of them calling themselves the “civil liberties caucus,” apparently headed by Marilyn Gladu, who are concerned with the loss of “medical privacy” over vaccine status; the other is allegedly rallying around fiscal and deficit issues (and I would be tremendously surprised if this isn’t a faction led by Pierre Poilievre). And for context, particular “caucus” groups are fairly normal, but they tend to be around things like friendship groups with other countries, or other soft parliamentary diplomacy. This is not it, and while Gladu insists that this isn’t about O’Toole’s leadership, but it’s hard not to see it that way – especially as he should have been clamping down on the anti-vax contingent in his caucus and party more broadly because there is still a pandemic going on, and pandering to a group that is heavily influenced by conspiracy theories is frankly insane.

Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves. O’Toole continues to try and play both sides of the fence, saying he’s encouraging vaccination but won’t enforce it when people refuse for no good reason at all. The fact that the party has made itself beholden to its social conservative and more fringe base because they’re the ones who both fundraise and volunteer is a problem for the party over the long term, as the need to keep appeasing this base isn’t going away. That makes it harder for the rational, moderate Conservatives from having influence (witness the savaging they gave to Michael Chong in 2017, and Peter MacKay last year, even though MacKay wasn’t even a real Red Tory). So long as O’Toole refuses to put his foot down in the face of a global pandemic, he’s enabling more of the decline and that bodes very poorly for the future of the party, and Canadian political discourse.

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Roundup: The House of Commons’ vaccine mandate

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The expected happened in a way that was a little unexpected – and perhaps a bit improper. The Board of Internal Economy apparently met (possibly virtually), and decided that as of November 22nd, there is a vaccine mandate for the parliamentary precinct, and that includes MPs, staffers, and contractors. It’s a bit of a cute way of imposing a vaccine mandate on MPs themselves, but it may not fly regarding the Chamber itself because of parliamentary privilege.

Mind you, a privilege argument won’t last long. While the decision to go the route of BoIE seems to be a bit of a dare – and Yves-François Blanchet seems to indicate that he’s of the opinion that this is a legitimate use of its powers (I wouldn’t be so sure), this could easily be challenged in the Chamber, but even if the Speaker determines that there is a prima facie case of privileges being infringed, the rest of the House can vote instead to dismiss it rather than send it to committee, or even if they do send it to committee, vote it down afterward. And they likely will, because all of the parties except for the Conservatives are in favour of the vaccine mandate, so it’ll pass one way or the other. Now the government can head off any challenge by introducing a motion in the Chamber on the first or second day to declare that MPs need to be fully vaccinated in order to be in the Chamber, and they can then vote it through and it’ll be fully legit, so if they’re smart, they’ll ensure that happens once there is a Speaker in place. (This will also likely happen in the Senate, but they are still in discussion in that Chamber, but one can likely assume a similar vaccine mandate will be in place with their own precinct areas and Chamber in a similar manner).

This leaves the question of hybrid sittings. The Conservatives and Bloc have been in favour of ending them, while the NDP have supported keeping it going. The Liberals haven’t officially said, but they have been pushing for this since before the pandemic, so you can bet that they’ll be fine with some form of hybrid ability going forward, which shouldn’t be allowed – the human cost of hybrid sittings when it comes to the toll it takes on the interpreters is frankly immoral to continue with. That will nevertheless by an ongoing conversation between the parties before any order to resume said sittings goes ahead in the first few days of the new parliament – but a rule should also be made that unvaccinated MPs shouldn’t be allowed to simply join by hybrid sitting instead. Parliament, whether in the Commons or the Senate, is an in-person job, and it’s an essential function of this country. The hybrid measures should only ever have been temporary and for the duration of that pandemic emergency, and now that we have vaccines, there is no longer a need for them.

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Roundup: A delayed return

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We have a date – well, two of them. Justin Trudeau announced yesterday morning that Cabinet would be shuffled on October 26th, and that the House of Commons would return on November 22nd, which is ridiculous. After an election where Trudeau kept punctuating the “urgency” of a number of files, some of them COVID-related, and with a list of priorities to take care of in his first 100 days of the new parliament (apparently that clock doesn’t start ticking until Cabinet is sworn in), the decision to delay the return of Parliament for two months after the election is egregious – especially because this is a hung parliament where the confidence of the Chamber should be tested at its earliest opportunity, and two months later is not that.

I am generally pretty forgiving of the fact that it can take our government longer to get its act together post-election – as compared to the UK, where they have nearly twice as many MPs – but they can get a new government sworn in and a new Parliament started within three weeks of an election. But it should not have taken Trudeau this long to deal with this shuffle as it has, even if one or two Cabinet contenders had to deal with recounts. And yes, the government dispatched the Governor General on her first state visit abroad this week, but that again was his choice, and he could have either delayed that trip, or announced the Cabinet before she left the country.

More to the point, this reduces the fall sitting of the House of Commons to a maximum of four weeks, but you can bet that in practice, it’ll be less than three. Committees won’t really get up and running, and sure, he may introduce a number of priority bills, but they will see precious little debate in that time. What we will get are the Address in Reply to the Speech From the Throne, and probably the Fall Economic Update, plus a number of Estimates votes, which will be rushed through without any actual scrutiny (they may get some modicum of scrutiny on the Senate side), but I’m not sure we’ll even see the Budget Implementation Bill for said economic update making it past second reading unless it is bullied through at all stages under the threat that emergency rent and wage subsidies will expire without passage. It’s undermining democratic norms for the sake of expediency, and that is the last thing we want to be encouraging any government in engaging in, regardless of stripe.

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Roundup: Not pushing back on referendum disinfo

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Because this is occasionally a media criticism blog, I’m going to call out Power & Politics once again for completely dropping the ball, this time on the bullshit “referendum” happing in Alberta. They hosted Bill Bewick, who heads a group in favour of the referendum, and gave him a pretty uncritical interview, with only the barest hints of pushback. Because both-sidesing.

Host David Common pushed back on a mere couple of points – that the referendum won’t actually do anything because it doesn’t obligate the federal government to negotiate anything; and the fact that without equalisation, PEI would need a 30 percent HST to make up the same funding. He even went so far as to egg on Bewick about how much equalisation Ontario pays, as if it was relevant, because no province actually pays equalisation, which is a pretty big thing that Bewick and his bullshit ever got called on. Equalisation is simply federal taxes that come off everyone’s paycheque – that a fraction of those funds get redistributed to some provinces who need help in offering comparable levels of service when they don’t have adequate fiscal capacity. And the key thing to remember is that Alberta may pay more federal taxes because they have the highest salaries in the country – by far – even during the pandemic. Crying that the province has a deficit has nothing to do with equalisation and everything to do with the fact that the provincial government refuses to raise their own revenues by means of a modest sales tax like other provinces have, and the fact that they chose to rely on resource revenues instead. Their deficit is a choice.

I am forced to wonder whether Bewick didn’t get any pushback because the host and/or the producers simply don’t have a clue about the truth, or because they feel bound by the need to both-sides everything and plan to have someone credible on to refute the points in a separate interview later today – because heaven forbid that the host actually push back lest he or she be called out as being biased or partisan. But calling bullshit and pointing out fact shouldn’t be considered bias or partisanship – it should be simple fact-checking, which they can’t seem to be arsed to do at the best of times, let alone in a referendum that is fuelled by misinformation and disinformation coming from official sources trying to make a political wedge out of this. In a case like this, it’s especially incumbent upon the media to play their role in pushing back against a government that is lying to its citizens, but this timidity to do so is a very real problem for our media.

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Roundup: Alberta is broken, part eleventy-seven

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Things are increasingly broken in Alberta, and I’m not referring to the province’s horrific case rates, collapsing ICUs, and Jason Kenney’s continued refusal to take appropriate public health measures in the face of this. No, I’m referring to the fact that a group of MLAs including the gods damned Speaker and deputy Speaker came out as quasi-separatists yesterday with a looney-tunes “Free Alberta Strategy” which is 100 percent handwaving and pretending that they can simply opt-out of federally-imposed laws by sheer force of political will, and the mistaken notion that Quebec did it and they can too. (Spoiler: Quebec didn’t actually do it, and what few things it did do pretty much devastated their economy). This thread helps to clarify a lot of what they’re asking for and why it’s eye-rollingly ludicrous.

There are a few things to unpack here. Much of this stems from Kenney’s farcical referendums that will take place next month, the central of which is to demand a renegotiation of equalisation, which is where these quasi-separatist loons are drawing their inspiration from. It encouraged this kind of magical thinking that somehow Alberta could just stamp its feet and hold its breath and the federal government would somehow surrender its jurisdiction over things. That’s not how this works. But it’s also about Kenney’s entire attitude toward governing, and how he was building anger toward Trudeau in particular so that it would distract the population from his own failings. I have tended to liken Kenney to an arsonist who would set fires and get far enough ahead of them to put them out so that he can look like a hero – but he hasn’t put them out. He poured a glass of water on them and demanded a medal, while the very fires he set are spreading. Everything that is happening in this province all started with a match that has his name and fingerprints all over it. It’s not just trying to pretend that there’s a “good parts only” version of populism that he’s cherry-picking, or that he is somehow “tapping a relief well” to keep it from blowing up in his face. It blew up. The province is in a crisis, and he keeps lighting more fires because he can’t help himself. Things are going to get even worse in the coming weeks, and try as he might, Kenney has nobody to blame but himself.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1442925906679320582

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1442932249666621441

And then there’s the whole issue with the Speaker and his deputy. This is the second time now that said Speaker has compromised the avowed neutrality of his position, and he needs to be removed by the Legislature at once, as well as his deputy. It is unacceptable that they remain in their positions any longer, as they cannot be trusted to be neutral presiding officers in the Legislature.

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