Annamie Paul

Friday July 9, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 9, 2021

Trudeau denies it, but signs point to early election in Canada

Covid-19 cases are down in Canada and some are interpreting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cross-country travel this week as a surefire sign of an imminent election.

September 10, 2019

Trudeau’s whistle stop in Calgary on Wednesday started with a blunt question from RED FM host Rishi Nagar, who noted the prime minister’s back-to-back pit stops in Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan and in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., to make a C$420-million funding announcement to help Algoma Steel phase out coal and create jobs.

“All this shows that you are in an election campaign mode,” Nagar said. Trudeau rejected the characterization.

“Actually, it doesn’t. It shows that we are getting things done,” Trudeau said in this first in-studio interview in 16 months. “I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that our case loads are now lower that people are getting vaccinated, to be able to travel a little bit more and make the announcements on things that we’ve been working on for many, many months.”

Nearly 78 percent of eligible Canadians have so far received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Forty-four percent are fully vaccinated. Growing in parallel to Canada’s vaccination rates is speculation about the timing of a federal election — and anxiety over how it could be as early as late summer.

June 2, 2021

Political watchers have been viewing everything through an election lens: the return of Trudeau’s clean-shaven look, inflation climbing to its highest rate in a decade, the anticipated timing of the Canada-U.S. border reopening, a free one-time check for seniors timed for the week of Aug. 16, an increased number of in-person funding announcements, and, according to former Liberal strategist David Herle, the fact Liberal MPs have been nudged to take their vacations in July.

The country’s attention is split. Many in Canada are focused on securing second doses and family reunions, grief over the discovery of more than 1,000 remains in unmarked graves on the grounds of former Indian residential schools, and the extreme heat that saw hundreds of “sudden and unexpected deaths” in the western province of British Columbia, triggering renewed focus to climate change.

On Thursday, the prime minister’s plane landed in British Columbia where he announced a new C$3.2-billion agreement with the province to cut child care fees in half by the end of 2022.

“We’re making your life easier and more affordable,” Trudeau said in the campaign-style announcement. He said the agreement would see the creation of 30,000 high-quality spaces over the next five years. “This is what it means to be a feminist government.”

April 22, 2021

Trudeau is teasing news about the promise of a national child care and early learning system. It’s an anticipated update to a marquee proposal from this year’s federal budget that will have the attention of parents across the country, especially in vote-rich southern Ontario where there are 45 seats to be won. Annual child care costs in Toronto are the country’s highest, topping C$21,000, according to the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives.

“I’m very much looking forward to making big announcements on child care in the coming weeks,” Trudeau said Wednesday.

Trudeau wields power in a minority government, which means he needs the support of opposition parties to pass legislation. As prime minister, it also means he has the power to call an election.

Recent polls have placed the Liberals in single to double-digit leads, throwing open a window for Trudeau to dissolve Parliament in an attempt to turn his minority government — which has been functioning throughout the pandemic — into a majority.

The next fixed election date is Oct. 16, 2023. But under Canada’s constitutional monarchy system, the prime minister can request to dissolve Parliament at any time to trigger an election. For an incumbent government, that ability to choose a date and prepare is an advantage.

May 30, 2017

“For the Liberals, it’s the question of whether the current trends will hold into the fall,” veteran polls analyst Éric Grenier told POLITICO. Grenier, who recently launched The Writ, said Liberals will have to take stock of the political environment as the pandemic subsides.

The longer the Liberals wait, the more they risk squandering the opportunity to take advantage of the Conservatives’ polling numbers, which Grenier said are lower than those pulled by former leader Andrew Scheer in the lead up to the 2019 federal election.

“There are also some municipal elections in fall, that could complicate things,” Grenier said. “I don’t think that would be enough necessarily to prevent them from calling an election.” (Politico) 

 

Friday June 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday June 18, 2021

Green Party’s Annamie Paul survives emergency meeting over leadership

The leadership of the Green Party’s Annamie Paul is safe — for now — after party brass decided late Tuesday not to kick-start a process that could have ultimately ousted her as leader of the party.

October 7, 2020

The party’s federal council — which is the governing body of the party — held an emergency meeting Tuesday night that lasted more than three-and-a-half hours. Officials were expected to hold a vote on whether to trigger a complex process under the party’s constitution that could have declared no-confidence in Paul’s leadership.

That vote did not end up taking place, multiple sources with knowledge of the meeting told CBC News.

Instead, sources say, the federal council adopted a separate motion asking Paul to publicly repudiate one of Paul’s former senior advisers, Noah Zatzman, who accused many politicians — including unspecified Green MPs — of discrimination and antisemitism in a social media post last month.

The motion also calls for Paul to “explicitly support” the Green Party caucus. If not, the motion says, Paul would face a vote of non-confidence on July 20.

Tuesday night’s decision follows a difficult few weeks for the party, which has been ripped apart by internal disputes over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As violence in the region escalated, Paul issued a statement calling for a ceasefire and condemning both Palestinian rocket attacks and excessive Israeli military force, an apparent attempt to put forward a moderate position close to that of the Trudeau government.

Green MP Jenica Atwin — who has since left the Green caucus to join the Liberals — ripped into Paul’s statement on Twitter. “It is a totally inadequate statement,” Atwin wrote. “Forced evictions must end. I stand with Palestine and condemn the unthinkable airstrikes in Gaza. End Apartheid.”

Green MP Paul Manly also took issue with Paul’s statement, saying the planned removal of Palestinian families from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah “is ethnic cleansing.”

Zatzman responded with a Facebook post stating that Greens “will work to defeat you and bring in progressive climate champions who are antifa and pro LGBT and pro indigenous sovereignty and Zionists!!!!!”

Zatzman is no longer an adviser to the leader. His six-month contract, slated to expire on July 4 and obtained by The Canadian Press, stipulates that the party will pay Zatzman a fee for time worked beyond 100 hours per month.

CBC News reached out to the Green Party, Paul and Zatzman for comment after Tuesday’s meeting. (CBC) 

 

Saturday February 20, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday February 20, 2021

MPs vote to label China’s persecution of Uighurs a genocide

Parliament today accused the Chinese government of carrying out a campaign of genocide against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims.

February 12, 2021

A substantial majority of MPs — including most Liberals who participated — voted in favour of a Conservative motion that says China’s actions in its western Xinjiang region meet the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention.

The final tally was 266 in favour and zero opposed. Two MPs formally abstained.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and almost all of his cabinet colleagues were absent for the vote. Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau was the only cabinet minister present. When it was his turn, he said he abstained “on behalf of the Government of Canada.” 

The motion also calls on the government to lobby the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympic Games out of Beijing.

It was passed over the strenuous objections of Chinese Ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu, who denounced the vote as meddling in China’s internal affairs.

June 3, 2015

Media reports and academic and UN experts have accused China of imprisoning Uighurs in concentration and “deradicalization” camps and targeting them for forced labour, sexual violence, population control methods and sweeping surveillance. China’s foreign ministry has denied the accusations.

The motion calls on the government to officially adopt the position that China is engaged in genocide, and to coordinate a response with the U.S. and other allies.

While it’s not clear what impact — if any — the non-binding resolution will have on the Liberal government’s approach to China, it threatens to inflame relations between the two countries at a time when they’re already tense due to the arrest of Huawei CEO Meng Wanzhou by Canadian authorities over two years ago, and China’s subsequent imprisonment of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

In a statement posted to the Chinese embassy’s website prior to the vote, Cong insisted the reports of Uighur persecution are based on lies.

November 20, 2020

Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, called on the United Nations in November to investigate whether China’s persecution of ethnic Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang constitutes genocide.

Despite these calls, Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet ministers have been reluctant to use the word “genocide” to describe China’s actions against the Uighurs. Last week, Trudeau said the word is an “extremely loaded” one and he is not prepared to use it at this point.

In question period today, Garneau said the government takes allegations against China “very seriously” and has raised its concerns directly with the Chinese government.

Garneau said Canada wants independent investigators to go into China to document abuses and is working with international partners to gain access to the region. (CBC) 

 

Tuesday December 2, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday December 2, 2020

COVID-19 doesn’t care about politics

Remember the Team Canada approach to fighting COVID-19, the one where political parties would put the collective fight above partisan interests? Remember “we’re all in this together?”

October 8, 2020

That was all so yesterday. Today, there is very little non-partisan co-operation between federal parties. And Canadians, too, have become increasingly partisan and divided. 

It was probably all inevitable, but it’s unfortunate, nonetheless. 

Partisanship has entirely replaced bilateral co-operation in Ottawa. The government stands accused of flubbing Canada’s vaccine program. Because of that mismanagement we are at “the back of the line,” according to federal Conservatives.

It is true that the government, and especially the prime minister, have been unnecessary vague about vaccine delivery and rollout details. It is not true that we are at the back of the pack. Canada was the fourth country in the world to strike an agreement with Pfizer, one of the vaccine producers. It was one of the first to sign up with Moderna, another producer.

December 1, 2020

Moderna co-founder and chair Noubar Afeyan, who came to Canada as a refugee from Beirut before he moved to the U.S., says this country is in good shape. In an interview with CBC News, he said “Canada’s not at the back of the line,” adding “Each of the contracts we negotiated — and Canada was among the first to enter into a supply arrangement with Moderna — is individual, and of course the people who were willing to move early on, with even less proof of efficacy, have assured the amount of supply they were willing to sign up to. I know in the case of Canada their number is about 20 million doses.”

It is fair to criticize the Liberals for their communication to date around vaccines, but it is not factual to claim Canada is at the back of the line. However, that is a good example of how partisan strategy has replaced the collaboration that was a welcome feature of the pandemic’s early days. 

November 28, 2020

It is also true that Canada will not get vaccines as quickly as countries like the U.S. and U.K., where vaccines were developed and produced. This country doesn’t have that production capacity. It did at one point. There was publicly owned Connaught Labs, which was privatized under the Mulroney Conservative government in the ’80s. Later, the Harper government cut research and development spending and other pharmaceutical companies closed shop and moved elsewhere. Now that capacity is largely gone, and it needs to be replaced, urgently.

A similar partisan divide exists among Canadians overall, according to recent opinion polling data. In general, Liberal and NDP voter respondents in several different polls were more likely to be primarily concerned about the health impact of COVID-19, while those who identified as Conservative were more likely to be concerned about the economic and business impact. According to polling by the Angus Reid Institute, 89 per cent of respondents who voted Liberal, NDP or Bloc reported regularly wearing masks, while 71 per cent of Conservative voters reported doing the same. 

May 8, 2019

Interestingly, one poll by Leger suggests many Canadians are not so concerned about getting the vaccine at the same time as the U.S. or U.K., where vaccines are produced. Forty-eight per cent said that they were “not that concerned” and feel “a few months won’t make much of a difference,” while 37 per cent said they are worried that we won’t get the vaccine at the same time. 

The point that matters most is this: COVID-19 doesn’t care about our political leaning. It is an equal opportunity virus. And that should unite us more than anything else. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Wednesday October 7, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 7, 2020

‘Highly symbolic’: Canada’s Annamie Paul becomes first Black party leader

October 14, 2015

Annamie Paul, the first Black person to head a mainstream Canadian federal party, said on Monday that her victory was a sign that politics could become more inclusive.

Paul, a 47-year-old Toronto lawyer, beat seven other contenders to win the leadership of the country’s Green party late on Saturday.

“It is highly symbolic and highly important that I sit here today,” she told a news conference in Ottawa.

“What I bring is hope to all the people who have not seen themselves represented in politics to this point, hope it’s possible we can have a more inclusive style of politics.“

Paul is the second person of color to head a federal party in Canada after Jagmeet Singh took over the left-leaning New Democrats in 2017.

The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has frequently said there is a need to address what he calls systemic racism in Canada.

Paul faces several challenges. The Greens have only three legislators in the 338-seat House of Commons and she herself is not a member of parliament.

February 3, 2017

Paul will contest a special election in the parliamentary constituency of Toronto Centre later this month but that seat is likely to be retained by the ruling Liberals. She came in a distant fourth in a bid for the same seat in a federal election last year.

The Liberals, who have only a minority of seats in the House of Commons and rely on the support of other parties, look set to govern with the New Democrats and therefore do need the backing of the Greens.

Paul said Canada faced two great challenges: the coronavirus pandemic and global warming.

“The climate emergency is and remains the existential crisis of our times and we cannot forget about it because it has not forgotten about us,” she said. (The Guardian)