2020-07

Thursday February 27, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 27, 2020

Jason Kenney’s tantrums do not flatter Alberta

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is good at a lot of things. But when it comes to pointing the finger, he’s an absolute champion. Pointing the finger of blame at his predecessor Rachel Notley. At British Columbia for balking at his pipeline demands. At the rest of Canada (except Saskatchewan) for not sufficiently supporting Alberta’s oilpatch interests.

December 10, 2019

But when the federal government is the target, Kenney is a gold-medal Olympian finger pointer. Take this week’s Teck Frontier oil sands mine decision, for example. Announcing the company’s decision to not move forward with the project (even before the federal cabinet had approved or denied it), Teck CEO Don Lindsay said very clearly the reasons for shelving Frontier are a mix of low investor interest and environmental concerns. He pointedly did not blame the federal or any other government, although he made reference to Canada needing energy policy solutions that satisfy competing interests.

November 21, 2019

But to hear Kenney and his ministers talk, Teck holds Justin Trudeau personally responsible for the pullout. Kenney and friends certainly do. They say the Trudeau government’s lack of enthusiasm for new oil projects has created the national crisis we are now experiencing, and has also discouraged investors like Teck to the extent that they want nothing to do with investments like the $20 billion required for the mine north of Fort McMurray.

It is not hard to imagine that the sort of civil conflict now playing out across Canada over resource development would cause companies like Teck to be squeamish. But are political and societal volatility really enough to derail a project like this? To believe that, as Kenney seems to, would be beyond naive.

December 15, 2015

Lindsay wrote in his letter: “Global capital markets are changing rapidly, and investors and customers are increasingly looking for jurisdictions to have a framework in place that reconciles resource development and climate change.”

Speaking of money, Teck’s stock recently dropped more than 20 per cent in under a week. Like a lot of fossil-based resource companies, it is struggling, most recently with a weak fourth quarter. The simple fact is the global landscape is changing, and those “capital markets” are increasingly skittish about investments that rely on fossil fuels.

Lindsay has also said in the past that if the price of oil doesn’t increase significantly in the coming years, Teck would not be financially viable. There is no indication that will happen.

Bottom line: Teck was an iffy bet at best, and the uncertainty caused by deeply divided public opinion may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

April 11, 2018

But isn’t the Trudeau government responsible for the current lack of consensus over resource policy? It certainly shares some of the responsibility. But leave it to a partisan extremist like Kenney to say with a straight face there isn’t blame all around. So Alberta is only a victim here? Its reluctance to commit to enforceable emission caps isn’t part of the problem? Its refusal to support any sort of price on carbon, even though the majority of Canadians expressed support for just that in the last election? (Parties that support a price on carbon got more electoral support than ones that didn’t, especially Kenney’s ideological roommates the Conservatives.)

Alberta’s problems are real. But they cannot all be laid at the feet of the federal government. The rest of Canada wants a serious plan to address climate change. Kenney may not like that, but unless he can figure out a way to move Alberta someplace else — say, next door to Kentucky — he would be wise to become part of the solution instead of being a champion, foot-stamping finger pointer. (Hamilton Spectator editorial) 

 

Wednesday February 26, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 26, 2020

Indigenous MPP says singing God Save The Queen in legislature ‘a step backwards’

Members of Ontario’s legislature began a new tradition Monday of singing God Save the Queen in the chamber, which an Indigenous politician said is a step backward for reconciliation.

Young Doug Ford: The Series

The legislature recently adopted a host of procedural rule changes, including singing the royal anthem in addition to the Canadian national anthem on the first Monday of each month. It was sung

Monday for the first time since the legislature resumed from the winter break and the new rule went into effect.

Sol Mamakwa, a New Democrat who represents the northern riding of Kiiwetinoong, with a majority Indigenous population, said it was hurtful to hear the anthem.

“As a First Nations person, as a colonized person, it’s a step backwards when we talk about reconciliation,” he said.

Mamakwa, a Kingfisher Lake band member, said he would prefer instead to see some type of acknowledgment to First Nations people in Ontario.

British Monarchy Merch

“I see the revival of God Save the Queen in this house as a step backwards, a shift from modern reconciliation to a past that celebrated the colonialism, that sought the destruction of cultures, languages and communities,” he told the legislature before question period.

“For me, singing God Save the Queen is a celebration of a hurtful and violent colonial past. I cannot be part of it.”

Government house leader Paul Calandra said singing the anthem is a show of respect for the Queen of Canada, who has served for 68 years.

“I believe that Her Majesty … was the first person to show reconciliation to the First Nations,” he said. “Many of our past monarchs didn’t do that. But Her Majesty, over 68 years, has had and continues to have a very special relationship with our First Nations.”

Calandra noted that the NDP didn’t flag it as an issue during debate over the rule changes, though the Liberal and Green members raised it with him in private. (CBC) 

The inking process using the app ProQuest on an iPad
 

Saturday February 22, 2020

February 22, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday February 22, 2020

Déjà vu: Commonwealth Games bid feels awfully familiar

There were two significant obstacles standing in Hamilton’s way back in 2002 when the city was lobbying to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games — New Delhi was pushing hard to get the event and Vancouver was in full-court-press mode for the Winter Olympics.

July 25, 2007

The former was a problem because the Commonwealth Games had never been held in India while Canada had hosted four times. The latter was an issue, many experts said, because two multi-sport Games wouldn’t be given to the same country in the same year. The Commonwealth variety would be massively overshadowed by the Olympics.

Whether these folks were prescient or simply guessed well, they turned out to be correct. Vancouver won the right to host the Olympics and Commonwealth voters awarded their Games to India shortly thereafter.

Fast forward 18 years.

From “You Might Be From Hamilton If…”

An organizing group called Hamilton100 is now pushing forward with a pitch to host the 2030 Games on the one-century anniversary of our hosting the British Empire Games, the precursor to the modern Commonwealth Games. Meanwhile, in a crazy twist, New Delhi says it’s interested in hosting again that year (or 2026). And the guy who ran Vancouver’s wildly successful Olympics told that city’s Board of Trade on Thursday that it should launch a bid to host again in 2030 since it already has most of the infrastructure in place.

In a flash, 2020 has become 2002 all over again.

Sort of. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Friday February 21, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 21, 2020

Despite His Billions, Bloomberg Busts

You can buy ads and saturate the airwaves with them. You can buy allies, especially with the right budget.

February 7, 2020

But you can’t buy a debate performance, and that’s why Mike Bloomberg’s on Wednesday night mattered so much. This was the man talking, not the money.

And the man needed rescue — from his bloodthirsty rivals and even more so from himself.

Making his first appearance alongside other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg knew that he would be under furious attack and had clearly resolved not to show any negative emotion. But that meant that he often showed no emotion at all. Or he looked vaguely bemused, and that didn’t communicate the coolness that he intended. It signaled an aloofness that he very much needed to avoid.

He made a groaner of a joke about his wealth, saying that he could hardly use a plebeian instrument like TurboTax to ready his tax returns for public consumption. He made light of past harassment-related complaints from female employees: “None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.”

February 11, 2020

He repeatedly — and laughably — suggested that he wouldn’t tear up nondisclosure agreements with women who have sued him or his company because they wanted the silence as much as he did. Elizabeth Warren hammered and hammered him on this point, but he wouldn’t budge, and that left the impression that he couldn’t budge. The truth would be too ugly.

My first sketch of Michael Bloomberg. Kinda’ resembles actor Christopher Plummer in this depiction. More work needed? Or, why bother? Maybe he’s washed up?*

Ugly: That’s the word for this ninth debate of the Democratic primary season. It had the fewest candidates — six — but the most nastiness, because those candidates clearly felt an urgency to diminish their competitors and elevate themselves before it was too late. A meager haul of votes in the Nevada caucuses this coming Saturday could effectively undo one or more of them; a poor showing on Super Tuesday less than two weeks from now would definitely be the end of the road.

It’s no wonder they wanted a bite of him. It was the first time since Bloomberg announced his run for the presidency that he was within reach. For three high-spending, high-flying months, he campaigned essentially as a phantasm, ubiquitous in television commercials but averse to interviews, a supposed paragon of electability who had yet to put himself before voters, more idea than actuality, able to be seen but not touched.

But on Wednesday night, that changed abruptly. The apparition became flesh. And it was bruised from the get-go and bloodied soon after. (Continued…NYT)

 * It was my second time drawing him, actually. The first time I sketched Michael Bloomberg was while watching him on TV as he spoke to delegates at the 2016 Democratic Party convention.

Thursday February 20, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 20, 2020

Force won’t fix Canada’s blockade problem — but that won’t let Trudeau off the hook

The most evocative image coming out of this week’s protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline was that of a Canadian flag hanging upside-down outside the provincial legislature in Victoria, with the words “Reconciliation is dead” scrawled across it.

February 13, 2020

Because it’s 2020, that phrase was a hashtag, too.

Between the declaration of reconciliation’s demise and competing claims that Canada has fallen into “chaos” or “mob” rule, there is a yawning vacuum that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might need to fill — to make the case again for a reconciliation project he embraced of his own volition.

There is more here than can be conveyed in a sound bite or tweet.

“Contemporary events have two-hundred-year-old tails,” Harry Swain, a former deputy minister with Indian and Northern Affairs (as the department was then known), wrote a decade ago in his book Oka: A Political Crisis and Its Legacy.

July 14, 2005

“Flashpoints like Oka occur when Indian people believe that governments have violated treaties or their own laws, when a long struggle to right the wrong has been unavailing, and when a government crystallizes matters by licensing a further insult or alienation,” he added. “Land is always at the heart of the broken promises.”

On those terms, historians might file the Wet’suwet’en protests against the Coastal Gas Link project alongside events like Oka, Ipperwash, Caledonia and Gustafsen Lake.

But those examples also point to the great danger involved in attempting to resolve such disputes with force. In Oka and Ipperwash, people died. Wherever there is violence, there is lasting trauma. And the last thing the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples needs now is more trauma.

September 1, 2006

Even if calls for Trudeau to immediately intervene seem either to understate the difficulty of doing so, or to promote a potentially dangerous course of action (one commentator this week invoked Margaret Thatcher’s handling of the miners strike in the United Kingdom, a violent year-long conflict, as a laudable example of leadership), Trudeau’s government can’t be absolved of its duty to safely end this standoff as quickly as possible.

On Friday, Trudeau said that the government’s focus was on “dialogue” and “constructive outcomes.” A day earlier, his government announced that Carolyn Bennett, the minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, was being dispatched to British Columbia, while Marc Miller, the minister of Indigenous services, will get involved in trying to resolve the blockade in Ontario.

But in the post-conflict analysis, there will be questions about whether the Liberals should have intervened directly sooner. (CBC)