Wednesday July 12, 1997

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Wednesday July 12, 1997 BURNING DESIRE TO WATCH Everyone's an armchair fire chief. As the plastic recycling plant burned to a shell, heaving an Apocalyptic cloud of smoke skyward, it seemed half of Hamilton gathered Wednesday night to gawk -- and offer their firefighting expertise to anyone within earshot. "What nimrod would put a hose right there? The smoke's coming from over there, " said one man, pointing agitatedly to where he felt Hamilton's smoke-eaters should be paying attention. "Why aren't there any hoses along that wall? They should be hosing down the walls near that smokestack, " said another, as he settled into a comfy patch of grass off of Ferguson Avenue North with his family. But along with the complainers came an enthusiastic crowd of onlookers who were treated to one of the biggest and most spectacular fires in the city's history as free entertainment. Children played, families sat on blankets, others brought coolers and lawn chairs to sit and watch along the railway tracks and grassy knolls around the Wellington Street North Plastimet Inc. plant. It seemed more like Victoria Day fireworks than a fire disaster. People Ooooooh'ed and Ahhhhh'ed when walls started to collapse, or when the thick smoke coming from the fire scene temporarily changed from black to light grey and then back to black. Area residents spilled on to their porches and tugged on beer and cola. An enterprising ice cream vendor peddled into the area. Dogs caught Frisbees. People laughed. Some children cried. Driving was a nightmare as rubberneckers spent more time gazing at the plume of smoke than on the road, and the streets and sidewalks were jammed by people following the towering inferno to find the source of the fire. A threesome of young pedestrians, picking their way along Barton Street towards the fire, were excitedly guessing the cause of the blaze. "Maybe it's a bomb! Or a plane crash!" offered

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 12, 1997

BURNING DESIRE TO WATCH

Everyone’s an armchair fire chief. As the plastic recycling plant burned to a shell, heaving an Apocalyptic cloud of smoke skyward, it seemed half of Hamilton gathered Wednesday night to gawk — and offer their firefighting expertise to anyone within earshot.

Hamilton Spectator photo

“What nimrod would put a hose right there? The smoke’s coming from over there, ” said one man, pointing agitatedly to where he felt Hamilton’s smoke-eaters should be paying attention.

“Why aren’t there any hoses along that wall? They should be hosing down the walls near that smokestack, ” said another, as he settled into a comfy patch of grass off of Ferguson Avenue North with his family.

But along with the complainers came an enthusiastic crowd of onlookers who were treated to one of the biggest and most spectacular fires in the city’s history as free entertainment.

Children played, families sat on blankets, others brought coolers and lawn chairs to sit and watch along the railway tracks and grassy knolls around the Wellington Street North Plastimet Inc. plant.

It seemed more like Victoria Day fireworks than a fire disaster.

People Ooooooh’ed and Ahhhhh’ed when walls started to collapse, or when the thick smoke coming from the fire scene temporarily changed from black to light grey and then back to black.

Area residents spilled on to their porches and tugged on beer and cola.

An enterprising ice cream vendor peddled into the area.

Dogs caught Frisbees. People laughed. Some children cried.

Driving was a nightmare as rubberneckers spent more time gazing at the plume of smoke than on the road, and the streets and sidewalks were jammed by people following the towering inferno to find the source of the fire.

A threesome of young pedestrians, picking their way along Barton Street towards the fire, were excitedly guessing the cause of the blaze.

“Maybe it’s a bomb! Or a plane crash!” offered one.

“Maybe the Mars probe crashed!” enthused another.

And with officials keeping mum on what might have sparked the fire causing all this commotion — who can argue with the Mars probe theory?

(Source: By Adrian Humphreys, Reporter Hamilton Spectator)

 

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Saturday May 31, 1997

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 31, 1997

Our hopes for the future

Our election ballot Monday must prepare our country for the challenges ahead. We must position our leaders, such as Jean Charest, where they will preserve Canada.The prospect of Preston Manning’s Reform Party forming the official Opposition after Monday’s federal election is deeply disturbing. Yes, Manning’s stance on separation better reflects the views of average Canadians, compared to the tired rhetoric of appeasement flowing from the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties. But beyond that single issue, Reform offers no viable vision for a strong, unified country.

Yet, largely due to an inept, cynical Liberal election call and campaign, Reform as the official Opposition is a very likely outcome of the vote. That Manning’s party of western discontent is a better alternative than the destructive Bloc Quebecois is cold comfort.

A Progressive Conservative Opposition would be infinitely better for Canada, and for Ontario.

It’s true that the Progressive Conservative and Reform policy platforms are very similar. Both call for tax cuts, which are unproven as a job creation device. Both do little to address environmental concerns. Both propose accelerating government spending cu ts, but the truth is Canadians are happy for the most part with the progress made by Finance Minister Paul Martin in reducing the deficit and getting federal spending under control. Given that Tory and Reform policies are similar in so many ways, why install Jean Charest as Opposition leader?
Leadership.

Jean Charest has demonstrated he has more to offer personally than any of the other party leaders. His youthful energy and intellectual sincerity appeal to Canadians, but he offers more than a good sound-bite and an engaging television presence. Charest is passionate about a united Canada, and that devotion is going to be called upon in the near future. Another divisive, manipulative campaign will be launched by the separatists, probably right after the Supreme Court spells out the rules around secession. Charest has already pledged he will set aside partisan concerns and fight for a united Canada, just as he did last time we went through this frightening, tiresome exercise. He can be most effective in the unity battle if the Conservatives wear the Opposition mantle.

Charest’s Conservatives have a national philosophy, a rich history and a vision of the future that starts with the country being united. Even where Reform and Conservative policies overlap, Reform would go further, faster, with little regard for maintaining a strong federal voice. In the end, Reform is about protest.

Indignant Reformers will insist theirs is a national party. Reformers are anti-separatist, not anti-Quebec, they proclaim. But if Manning’s party is serious about inclusion, why are only 11 Reform candidates running in Quebec’s 75 ridings?
And what of the Liberals? Jean Chretien called an election at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. His party will pay the price. Far from being the last national party, the Liberals could end up being Ontario’s party in a fractured Parliament. But it’s clear they will be returned to power for another term.

If that’s the case, one thing is abundantly clear.

The Liberals must begin to plan for Jean Chretien’s departure. He was the right politician for the time, when Canadians were dealing with the Mulroney government and its legacy of broken promises. Chretien has an uncanny ability to forge a connection and engender empathy if not trust.

But the Chretien era must end. He is not the man to lead us in celebrating the new millennium. He is certainly not the leader to guide this country through another ugly debate over Quebec’s future.

While there is no arguing Chretien’s contribution in the past, the sad fact is he is no longer appealing in Quebec, and so is among the best weapons the separatists have in their meagre arsenal. Chretien must gracefully step aside. Paul Martin, who has engineered the Liberals single biggest legitimate accomplishment by effectively managing the economy and reducing the deficit, is the logical replacement. Martin is respected for his fiscal conservatism, and may even be an asset in Quebec.

On Tuesday morning, the Liberals will govern. The question is, who will be second? If enough of us vote strategically and look seriously at credible Progressive Conservative candidates, perhaps Jean
Charest will be where he’ll do the most good for Canada. And Preston Manning will get the role he deserves, as a regional voice of discontent. (Hamilton Spectator, 5/31/1997, B4)

 

Wednesday May 7, 1997

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 7, 1997

NDP’s ideas may be old, but they’re not stale

The last time I recall my morning paper giving heartfelt advice to Alexa McDonough, the NDP leader, was on the occasion of the federal by-election in Hamilton East. The vacancy in Hamilton East was what is nowadays called a “virtual” vacancy in that it was created by the virtual resignation of the sitting member, Sheila Copps, who is the ritual deputy prime minister, mock minister of t he environment, and the government’s let’s-pretend-friend of the CBC. She was resigning her seat in order to seek official atonement for being unable to persuade, as promised earlier, to eliminate the GST by increasing mothers’ allowances and ridding the Great Lakes of conger eels.

Attired in the most fashionable of sackcloth haut couture, the first female deputy prime minister in Canadian history fell weeping upon the shoulders of the good voters of Hamilton East, beseeching their forgiveness for nothing, after all, more than an excess of zeal. And it was midst this thick mist of Liberal lachrymation that my morning paper proposed that the NDP leader test her voter appeal; kamikaze pilots have had better advice from their chaplains. McDonough chose not to run, but filed instead for the seat in her hometown and native province on the occasion of the next grand assize.

All this came to mind when, after the NDP met in Regina to produce its election manifesto, my morning paper filed an editorial complaint under the heading of “New Democrats, old ideas.” This suggested to me that relations between the NDP leader and the editorial board had further deteriorated since her abandonment of Hamilton East. Once into the text, this indeed proved true.

To begin with, the NDP leader has expressed the opinion her party was unlikely to form the next government. It would, however, like to win enough seats in the coming election to be a presence in the next Parliament – anything from a dozen to 40 would be nice, any more than that unlikely but welcome. Unaccustomed to the lack of puffery, critics of McDonough have come unnerved, my morning paper amon g them: “The problem is as long as the New Democrats aspire to Opposition, the longer they will remain there. . . Opposition demands a different calculation and generates a different expectation than government. It allows a less ambitious, less rigorous view of the world, unchallenged by the discipline of power.”

None of this is so, even in the most rudimentary sense. It is like saying the Liberals, in 1993, promised to eliminate the GST, revise the free trade pact with the Great Neighbor, stabilize the funding for the CBC, and do an incredibly better job of creating jobs for Canadians of all ages, and all this implausible promising which all turned out to be impossible of delivery was made because the Liberals had “a less rigorous view of the world” and secretly hoped to remain in Opposition. The NDP might not be able to do half what they say they would do, if elected to govern, but they would likely try harder than the Liberals to keep their word.

Indeed, the rap on the NDP platform is that it promises to make good on some broken Liberal promises. Old stuff, according to my morning paper, and its boardroom constituents. What’s new – as compared to what’s old – in the world of ideas is “reduced unemployment benefits, however imperfect” and reduced “abuses.” This latter is a reference to reform of benefits for the poor, which has been a new idea for the privileged since the Poor Law Amendments of 1834.

Back then – 163 years ago – public assistance to the poor was made conditional on their being put to work. Strong argument was made, by the intellectual forbears of today’s neo-conservatives, against the provision of meals for hungry school children. In the words of one of the neo-cons of that day, “To feed a child is to give relief to its parents – to undermine their independence and self-reliance.”

The difference between the Bleak House of Charles Dickens and the Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris is that the latter has the endorsement of my morning paper, and three of the four principal political parties running candidates in the federal election to come. The Liberals, from fiscal 1996 to 1999, will cut almost $28 billion from the Canada Assistance Plan. As a result, the poor will be poorer still and their children at greater risk.

The NDP begins its campaign by admitting it is not likely to win it. This must be compared to the predictions of Preston Manning who has promised to win a majority of the seats, including a good handful in Quebec. Manning is my morning paper’s kind of politician, the familiar windbag. But he is as likely to become the next prime minister of Canada as, well, the Reverend Al Sharpton.

It seems to me the NDP’s value to the debate is that the party represents ideas about politics and government that have been absent since the electoral aberrations of 1993 and have been sorely missed. Some of the ideas are old, but as the Conservatives once believed, such was a good part of their virtue. Even so, for those who like their ideas old – as in cheese – some of those being retailed by other parties in today’s contest predate the Industrial Revolution and the invention of income tax. (F3, 4/20/1997, Toronto Star by Dalton Camp, political commentator and broadcaster.)

 

Thursday April 24, 1997

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 24, 1997

Deal with national unity now: Mulroney

Brian Mulroney, who twice failed to enshrine distinct society status for Quebec in the Constitution, is warning Canada’s political leaders that they must try again or risk the breakup of the country.And the former Tory prime minister says time is running out — a constitutional deal must be concluded before the next referendum on Quebec independence, likely within three years.

Mulroney issued the wakeup call in a speech to the Canadian Club yesterday, less than two weeks before Jean Chretien is expected to call a vote, in which national unity could become the sleeper issue, despite the best efforts of the prime minister, most premiers and other party leaders to downplay it.

Although he called on federalist politicians to put aside partisanship to resolve the constitutional question, Mulroney repeatedly took veiled shots at Chretien for failing to show leadership on the issue and for lulling Canadians into a false sense of security before and after the 1995 referendum.

“In the eyes of many, constitutional reform is a tar baby and nobody wants to touch it. To do so is both unfashionable and unpopular.”

Mulroney’s call to arms was greeted by a standing ovation from the almost 1,000 well-heeled guests at the nearly soldout luncheon, who included a host of former Mulroney cabinet ministers, other prominent Tories and the cream of Toronto’s business elite.

A number of Mulroney’s allies from past constitutional fights were present, including former Grit prime minister John Turner and ex-Ontario premiers — Tory Bill Davis, Liberal David Peterson and New Democrat Bob Rae.

While Mulroney’s barbs were aimed at Chretien, he may have inadvertently hurt his successor, Tory leader Jean Charest, as well as Tory premiers Ralph Klein and Mike Harris. Both have resisted any attempt to reopen constitutional talks. Harris, in particular, has called the distinct society concept outdated and unnecessary.

Charest personally supports distinct society status for Quebec, but has had trouble getting his candidates to agree. In deference to them, Charest’s platform avoids promising to entrench distinct society in the Constitution.

Several senior Tories said privately that Mulroney was not doing Charest any favours by making such a high-profile speech just before an election, reminding Canadians of his despised past. Mulroney insisted the timing of his speech was coincidental.

Ironically, given Mulroney’s primary target, Chretien’s Liberals are likely to make the strongest commitment of any party to distinct society. Party insiders say the Liberal platform, to be unveiled during the campaign, will specifically promise to enshrine distinct society in the Constitution.

Mulroney also slammed Chretien’s so-called Plan B — spelling out the consequences of and the rules for independence through such mechanisms as seeking a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of unilateral separation.

He said it only allows for an orderly transfer of powers.

The only way to unite the country, Mulroney asserted, is to get Quebec to finally sign the Constitution.

Mulroney did not have any advice as to how constitutional recognition of Quebec can be achieved without the legally required support of Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, whose premier, Lucien Bouchard, refuses to discuss constitutional issues. (Hamilton Spectator, A1, 4/15/1997)