Tag Archives: Populism

Roundup: The “good parts” of populism?

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I will confess that the eleventy different appearances on every conceivable political show over the past week by Preston Manning to coincide with his eponymous institute’s networking conference over the weekend has had me a bit preoccupied. Everyone is eager to talk about the rise in populism, and whether Trumpism will make its way to Canada in a more visible form (not that we haven’t seen in here before already, with Rob Ford as the most obvious example), but what gets me is when Manning starts waxing about harnessing the “good parts” of populism rather than the ugly side that has led to things like Brexit and the Trumpocalypse, and he goes on at length about history of prairie populism and how he perceives that to be a positive thing. Granted, his particular perspective on that is more than a little biased, considering that his father’s brand of prairie populism made him premier of Alberta for a number of years, and Manning’s crafting that into the Reform Party got him to Ottawa for several more years. But reading some of the accounts of some of that prairie populism years later – in particular this account of the rise of the CCF in Saskatchewan and how they became another craven political party by the time of Tommy Douglas’ provincial demise – makes me think of growing up gay in Alberta, where that “prairie populism” left its mark in a province that was far less socially progressive and with parties that were less willing to be so, being dragged kicking and screaming to the Supreme Court of Canada. I didn’t grow up seeing the “good” side of prairie populism, which is why I struggle to reconcile with Manning trying to find the good parts of populist sentiment to embrace. I am having a hard time trying to find the “good parts” of breeding cynical distrust in institutions, and this narrative of “pure” people versus “corrupt elites,” and in waging wars against the media that follows that narrative’s lead. You wouldn’t think that politicians would want to play with the fire that is distrust, and yet they keep reaching for the lighter. I think Manning may be playing things a bit too optimistically, and may be a bit too naively, for my comfort level.

Chris Selley looks at the Manning Conference and some Conservative behaviour in recent weeks, and wonders if the party no longer stands for anything other than a series of shared grievances as opposed to some actual policy or ideology. (One could argue that they ditched ideology a while ago and have simply become right-flavoured populists, made most especially manifest when they went ahead with the GST cut that every single economist told them not to do). Kady O’Malley leaves us with a warning about drawing too many conclusions based on the Manning Conference’s schedule alone rather than the discussions that people were having on the floor of the event, which not only saw some of its biggest draw ever, but also seemed to be very much more about the leadership race than it was about those panels about “radical Islamic terrorism” and so on.

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Roundup: Manning and the Populists

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It’s the Manning Centre conference here in Ottawa, which is the “conservative Woodstock,” as they say, and is pretty much were all of the small-c conservatives come to network, only this year, in the midst of the Trumpocalypse happening south of the border, the flavour of this year’s conference has changed, with much more pandering to the fringe elements, catering to overblown fears of Islamic terrorism and the kinds of populist demagoguery that are suddenly in vogue. Oh, and all fourteen Conservative leadership candidates are also there, and hey, they had a little debate, which allowed them a bit more freedom to actually debate in small groups, but most of it was still their canned talking points, so take it for what it’s worth.

As for conference programming, here’s Kady O’Malley’s recap of the first half including Preston Manning’s speech, and her assessment that fears of a Trumpist takeover appear to be more overblown, as many of the demagogic panels have had less than spectacular attendance. John Geddes recaps the moments of the leadership debate that had the biggest sparks. Geddes also has a conversation with Manning about populism and how it’s shaping debates right now.

Andrew Coyne warns Conservatives at the Manning Conference about the siren song of populist demagoguery. Chris Selley looks at that demagoguery up close in the panel on the “Islamist extremist menace” at the Conference, calling it bonkers. John Ivison looks at the dynamic Kevin O’Leary is bringing to the Conference and the race, and the outsized role he is starting to play, building an “Anyone but O’Leary” vibe. Paul Wells notes the changes in the Conference’s tenor over the years as a result of the political culture of followership, eager to imitate the perceived leaders of their pack.

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Roundup: Obama and his populist rant

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So, that speech by Barack Obama was quite something. Canada tends not to be a country of lofty rhetoric or grand and eloquent speechmaking, so it’s nice when we get to borrow it for a bit, but it is a bit of novelty. For all of his complementary rhetoric about Canadians and our progressivity, it was interesting to note the places where people in the Commons weren’t all unanimous with the applause (mentions of climate change and LGBT rights certainly didn’t endear the Conservatives), and he was very clever in the way he couched his criticism of Canada needing to do more to pull its weight with NATO, by timing it so that the applause had already started with is line about the great job that the Canadian Forces do when he finished the thought that the world wants them to do more. Clever that.

What was perhaps even more interesting and less rehearsed was the rant that Obama went off at the conclusion of the Three Amigos summit press conference, where he pushed back against the use of “populism” when it comes to the likes of Trump, Sanders, and the Brexit vote. While Obama was quick to paint Trump in particular with the terms of nativism and xenophobia, I’m not sure that he really addressed the core of the issue with the rise in populist sentiment that gets hijacked by those nativist and xenophobic elements. Why? Because he was quick to try and associate populism with only the positive benefits of helping the working classes to better themselves, and on the face of it, “populism” is about appealing to ordinary people. The problem is that it has a dangerous flipside about making that appeal in contravention to expert opinion and evidence, which is painted as elitist – something that Obama steered clear of. Meanwhile, populism has already overtaken the political discourse in Canada, when our one-time ideological parties on both the left and the right have abandoned their ideologies in favour of left and right-flavoured populism, eschewing that evidence or clear-eyed policy in favour of selling it to ordinary people, never mind that it would actually disproportionately benefit the wealthy (and yes, that applies equally to Conservative and NDP policy in Canada). When that ethos of casting off evidence and expert opinion reaches dangerous levels, you get the kinds of rhetoric you heard in the Brexit campaign, and with Trump and his supporters, but it’s on the same populist road. So you will forgive me if I don’t subscribe to Obama’s embrace of populism as solely a force for good. It has a dark side that needs to be acknowledged, lest it get as out of control as it clearly has been doing of late.

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Roundup: The cheapest ploy

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If there is one last bastion of desperation for political parties trying to play the populist card, it’s the “too many politicians” line. We’ve seen it before, with Ontario eliminating seats under the Mike Harris years (eventually aligning provincial and federal ridings with the exception of splitting the Northern Ontario mega-riding in two provincially). We saw the Alberta Party trying to play this card in the last Alberta election. In the previous parliament, we saw the federal Liberals trying to play this card as they argued against increasing the number of MPs as part of seat redistribution. Now, we’re seeing this again courtesy of the Saskatchewan NDP, promising that if they win the election, they’ll reduce the number of provincial seats from 61 to 55. It’s a stupid policy idea, and it’s one that fits into the kinds of populist noise that gives us “tough on crime” policies that generally only exacerbate problems. Why is it stupid? Aside from being desperate, it generally is a signal that you have no other practical ideas for improving any aspect of governance, but rather falls into the narrative trap of “politicians are the problem.” The problem is, is that you can wind up with too few politicians to do what is required of them – particularly in smaller provinces. One of the biggest problems is that when you start reducing the number of backbenchers, you have fewer members to hold the government to account. We’ve seen a few places where the government has tried to go with a smaller cabinet (Alberta, for example), only to wind up having to appoint more ministers to share the workload better. If you reduce the number of total seats, it means that you tend to wind up with a government that has the majority of its seats in cabinet, which is terrible for both governance and for allowing backbenchers to voice dissent – especially if it means that they’re one scandal or screw-up away from a substantial promotion. It means there are fewer bodies for committee work, for dealing with constituents’ issues, and when you’ve got a lot of rural ridings – particularly in places like Saskatchewan – making those ridings bigger to accommodate fewer members becomes impractical, as does the idea of reducing the number of urban members so that they have more population within them so as not to drown of the rural seats (which explains part of the gerrymandering that places like Alberta were terribly adept at for years provincially, and Saskatchewan federally, with no urban seats until this last election). Politicians have important work to do, and having more of them spreads the work around and can make them more effective as they do the job that they were elected to do. Trying to claim that there are too many of them is cheap populism, and in the end, everyone loses as a result of it.

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QP: Senate reform questions from the past

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Even thought it was Thursday, half of the desks in the House of Commons were empty, and not one leader was present. Even the Speaker was absent, if that tells you anything. Peter Julian led off pointing to Brian Mulroney’s comments on Senate reform, apparently forgetting the years of drama that led up to the Supreme Court reference on the matter. Paul Calandra reminded him of said reference, and there was another round of the same in English, where Calandra more forcefully reminded him of a thing called the Consititution. Julian tried to wedge in a Duffy reference, at which point Paul Calandra brought up the NDP satellite offices. Niki Aston then got up to demand a national inquiry on missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and Kellie Leitch gave her standard reply of the action they are taking. Ashton demanded action by the government on First Nations files, to which Mark Strahl read a statement about action the government took with residential school survivors. Carolyn Bennett was up for the Liberals, and wanted a commitment to acting on all of the recommendations in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, to which Strahl gave the talking points about thanking the TRC for their work. Emmanuel Dubourg asked the same in French, got the same answer in English. To close the round, Dubourg asked about the slow GDP growth, at which points Pierre Poilievre got up to decry supposed Liberal tax increases.

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Roundup: More responsibility from failure

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The OPP report on the October 22nd shooting is out, and highlights a number of lapses that happened on that day, but among them all, it should probably be highlighted that a lot of the problem seems to be with the RCMP who are patrolling the exterior of the buildings on the Hill, and that they had a minute-and-a-half to do something about the shooter and didn’t. (Some of what people saw during the shooting is described here). Not that there weren’t problems inside, as some of the bullets that flew were from security personnel and not the shooter, including the one that lodged itself in to the door of the Railway Room, where the NDP were having their caucus meeting. It was also raised in the report that the RCMP were dealing with budget cuts, so it does raise the question as to whether their limited resources played a factor in what happened, be it in resourcing or equipment. It also raises a lot of questions moving forward because the government made a particularly top-down move to have the RCMP take over the oversight of all Hill security from its previous silos (remember that Commons and Senate security forces are separate because of privilege issues). If the RCMP couldn’t manage the situation outside of the buildings, how will they be any better overseeing and coordinating things inside? As well, it needs to be stressed that this new system, under RCMP management, has been imposed hastily and without enough discussion and consultation – the government put the motion under closure, and its implementation is in the omnibudget bill with not enough time for proper scrutiny, particularly as many of the questions about what it all means still haven’t been answered yet, like what the role for the Sergeant-at-Arms will be under this new regime. Speaker Scheer did acknowledge that parliamentarians are complaining, but he seems to think that everything will work out fine. How can we be sure of that if we’re rushing this through and not thinking clearly enough about it, or consulting enough with all of the stakeholders and taking this report into consideration, which hadn’t been completed when the motion was passed and the implementation put into the budget bill. Meanwhile, the fact that RCMP are now carrying submachine guns on the Hill has a lot of its denizens unsettled.

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Roundup: Last-minute legislation

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With less than three sitting weeks left, the government has announced that they will introduce yet another bill, this time to give the Minister of Transport enhanced powers when it comes to ordering vehicle recalls. The bill won’t be tabled until later in the week, and there’s no timeline for its passage, but Lisa Raitt is confident she’ll get all-party support for the bill to expedite it. Of course, it’s not guaranteed, and in the light of the recent Takata airbag recall, it does start to smack a little bit of desperation, that the government is doing one last push to show that they’re on top of things, even though they knew this deadline was coming, and this recall issue has been going on for weeks now. As well, they have nearly twenty more bills that they want to pass before the Commons rises, and as it stands, it looks like some of their showcase bills, like the “life means life” parole bill, aren’t going to make it, and Peter MacKay is admitting as much. This speaks to a couple of different issues – one is that there are doubtlessly bills that they’re going to allow to die so that they can campaign on them, both as unfinished business and under the falsehood that the opposition held them up (which really, they can’t do given that this government has the time allocation hammer and aren’t afraid to use it) so they need another majority in order to get these kinds of measures through. Of course, it also showcases that this government – and Peter Van Loan as House Leader – has been spectacularly terrible when it comes to the basic management of getting bills through (not that it’s all Van Loan’s fault – the NDP haven’t exactly played ball when it comes to any routine House management either, and it has been said several times that Peter Julian has managed to make Van Loan look downright reasonable). Suffice to say, good luck to Raitt, because she’s probably going to need it if she wants to get this bill through.

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Roundup: Flaherty funeral draws out Harper’s human side

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Jim Flaherty’s state funeral yesterday attracted some of the biggest names in politics, current and former leaders on both sides of the aisles both provincially and federally (video here). Everyone wore something green, be it a tie or a scarf, to give a nod to Flaherty’s particular sartorial trademark. Harper’s eulogy was largely lauded, especially for the humour he showed that almost never appears in his public persona here in Ottawa, which is really too bad. There are stories about his self-depricating jokes at Press Gallery Dinners past, before he became Prime Minister and made it a personal policy to not only not attend, but also remove any trace of humanity from any speech he gives. That certain other party leaders plan to use their knack for human engagement as a wedge against Harper makes one wonder about its use as a strategic decision all along.

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Roundup: Useless polls make populist noise

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A CTV-commissioned poll shows that 69 percent of Canadians don’t think the Senate is useful. (Broken down, the numbers are 34 percent “strongly disagree” and 35 percent “somewhat disagree” with the statement of whether “The Senate of Canada performs a necessary and useful political function.”) The problem with that is that it goes back to the very same issue of asking people a question that they’re not taught anything about. Sure, people have heard about the Senate, but most of what they hear is either a) scandal; or b) distortion, largely arising from scandal as it affects a very small percentage of its membership. Most Canadians, if we’re honest, don’t really know the first thing about the Senate and what it does, and the media hasn’t done a stellar job in covering their good work either, which makes this kind of poll particularly fraught from the get-go. But hey, now we can use a big number to say that populist sentiment doesn’t agree with the constitutionally bound makeup of parliament! One has to wonder if the same kinds of numbers would arise if we asked whether people agreed that their pancreas serves a useful and necessary function in their bodies, or if we’d get the same kind of facile comment of “I don’t know what it does, therefore let’s just get rid of it” that this kind of ridiculous Senate polling results in.

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Roundup: Supreme Court refines what constitutes hate speech

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The Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Whatcott case, which basically refined the definition of what constitutes hate speech in the country. They also said that the “love the sinner, hate the sin” argument is not acceptable either when it comes to hate speech against gays, for what it’s worth. Emmett Macfarlane notes the issues around defining what a ‘”reasonable person” would constitute as hate, as the decision seems to indicate. Charlie Gillis laments the lost opportunity to affirm free speech, no matter the content, because human rights legislation is being abused as a blunt tool in the country. Jonathan Kay sees the decision as privileging anti-Christian censorship because they believe in the fire-and-brimstone retribution for gays, especially because the “love the sinner, hate the sin” argument holds value for Christians.  Andrew Coyne laments that the judgement didn’t spend enough time prefacing the value of free speech. And Bill Whatcott himself? Plans to keep up his anti-gay pamphleting because apparently Christ has nothing better to do than ensure that Whatcott denounces the gays.

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