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Thursday July 27, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 28, 2023

The Absurd Shadow Cabinet of Pierre Poilievre: A Comedy of Errors

September 1, 2017

In a stunning display of political theatrics, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre unveils his aptly named “Shadow Cabinet” – a motley crew of characters that seems to have jumped straight out of a science fiction sitcom. With the country hurtling towards an inevitable federal election, Poilievre’s desperate attempt at a “great reset” aims to revitalize his party’s chances against the neck-and-neck Liberals. But as the curtains rise on this farce, it becomes apparent that Poilievre’s antics are more likely to raise eyebrows than to win hearts.

Let’s start with the “Shadow Minister of Defunding the CBC.” Poilievre’s pledge to strip the CBC of its funding has earned him cheers from his conservative base. However, the catch is that he still supports Radio-Canada’s French services. It’s like trying to take away the main course while leaving the side dishes intact – a recipe for absurdity.

Next up, we have the “Shadow Minister without Portfolio: Barbaric Cultural Practices Crisis.” Yes, you read that right! Poilievre seems to be stuck in a time warp, defending controversial policies from past campaigns that have alienated immigrant communities. Perhaps he believes it’s an effective strategy to fight for the rights of barbaric cultural practices tip lines while ignoring the reality that times have changed.

August 26, 2022

Let’s not forget the “Shadow Minister of Proud Boys and Traditional Gender Roles.” Poilievre must be hoping to attract voters from the 1950s with this one. Embracing outdated ideas of gender roles and cozying up to extremist groups like the Proud Boys is sure to win the hearts of, well, no one.

And who could overlook the “Shadow Crypto Board President”? With cryptocurrencies facing scandals and plummeting prices, Poilievre’s support for Bitcoin sounds like a punchline. Promoting a “Ponzi scheme” that lost money for investors is hardly a winning policy.

Oh, and let’s not miss the “Shadow Minister of All Lives Matter.” In a country that values diversity and inclusivity, this choice can only be described as tone-deaf and insensitive. Poilievre might as well appoint a “Shadow Minister of Ignorance and Division.”

Moving on, we encounter the “Shadow Trumpism Minister.” Because nothing says “leadership material” like emulating a divisive former U.S. president who is far from popular with a significant portion of the Canadian population.

May 13, 2022

And who could forget the “Shadow Minister of Conspiracies and Pseudo-Science”? Poilievre’s enthusiasm for anti-vaccine sentiments and promoting unfounded conspiracy theories only proves that he has a flair for the absurd.

Lastly, we have the “Shadow Apologies for Past Apologies Minister.” This is the perfect role for someone who seems to be stuck in a never-ending cycle of defending past mistakes and refusing to learn from them.

As the spotlight shines on this ridiculous cast of characters, one has to wonder if Poilievre is serious about winning the hearts of Canadians or if he’s auditioning for a role in a political comedy. It’s clear that his desperate bid for support from fringe elements and conspiracy theorists is leading him down a path of absurdity.

If Poilievre wants to be taken seriously as a leader, he needs to step out of the shadows of extremism and embrace a vision that truly represents the diverse and inclusive Canada we know and love. Until then, the show must go on – a comedy of errors that leaves Canadians shaking their heads and wondering what happened to the once-respectable Conservative Party. (AI)

 

Wednesday December 14, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday December 14, 2022

By-elections don’t matter, except when they do

August 1, 2013

Do by-elections, which usually have notoriously low turnout, matter?

We get told general campaigns do, all the time. But what about by-elections? Should we care — and should we care that no one seems to, you know, care about them?

That legendary political muse, Dan Quayle, had the best take on it all. Said the former U.S. vice-president: “A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.”

Well, yes. Hard to quibble with that one. Good insight, Dan.

Fewer folks went to the polls in this weeks by-election in Mississauga Lakeshore — only around 30%. But, before some political scientist starts writing wordy op-eds about the need for compulsory voting, remember: by-elections are beloved by hacks and flaks, but rarely ever regular folks. And they’re the bosses.

June 9, 2022

For instance: Toronto Centre had a byelection in October 2020. More than 80,000 people were entitled to vote. Slightly over 16,000 did. York Centre had a byelection in the same month, with about the same result: more than 70,000 were eligible to cast a ballot. Only 11,000 bothered. Democracy survived.

So, before academia gets its tenured knickers in a knot, remember: by-elections don’t ever attract as much attention ruin as general elections do. That’s normal. And it’s unlikely to change.

Mississauga-Lakeshore therefore had the standard byelection turnout, but a notable result. The result tells us a few things, participation rate notwithstanding. Here they are.

December 18, 2013

One, the Conservative Party got clobbered. The Liberal candidate — a former Kathleen Wynne government minister, and therefore not without blemish — basically massacred his Tory opponent, by thousands of votes. He took 51% to the Conservative’s 37%.

That’s notable, as noted, because that’s a worse showing than what the much-derided Erin O’Toole got when he was running things. In that race, O’Toole’s chosen candidate did better than Pierre Poilievre’s.

Wasn’t Poilievre supposed to sweep the ‘burbs and all that? Wasn’t he supposed to be the thing that cured all that ailed Team Tory?

September 13, 2022

Well, Pierre has represented an Ottawa suburb for years, winning in seven elections. But he didn’t in Mississauga-Lakeshore. How come?

His spinners, all coincidentally anonymous, insist it was because the aforementioned riding is all-Liberal, all the time.

Well, no. That’s false. Sure, Liberal Svend Spengemann represented the riding in the Trudeau era — but before that, Mississauga-Lakeshore was federal Conservative territory for a number of years.

And, oh yes, this: provincially, the riding is still Conservative territory. Just a few months ago, in June, a provincial Conservative candidate won there — by many thousands of votes. And four years before that, same result: the Tories won it, by a lot.

So, that’s all you need to know about the excuse that Mississauga-Lakeshore is a Liberal fortress and Conservatives will never win there: it’s an excuse. It’s bollocks, in fact.

June 24, 2022

What about Team Poilievre’s other excuse — duly reprinted, without attribution in the pages of the Toronto Star, because it serves both their interests — that it’s all Doug Ford’s fault? You know, that the Ontario Premier sank his federal cousins in the by-election because he’s unpopular? Guilt by association and all that.

Except, that one doesn’t wash either. When he’s been running things, in good times and bad, Ford has taken that riding handily. Twice.

Did Ford’s misadventure with the notwithstanding clause, and the general strike it would have caused, hurt Poilievre’s chances?

Again, no. Ford ultimately never used the notwithstanding clause to win a fight with an education union — and there was no general strike, either. And, besides: both those things were controversies many weeks before the by-election even got underway.

So, what was it? Who is to blame for the first real-world test of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership since he became leader?

November 5, 2022

Well, that would be what Poilievre and his caucus see in the bathroom mirror every morning: themselves. The convoy crap, the crypto-currency craziness, the whackadoodle WEF weirdos. All of that, and more, has persuaded many Canadians that, under Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party of Canada has abandoned the political center. And is, you know, chasing the People’s Party vote.

Which, by the by, got 286 votes in Mississauga-Lakeshore.

About which, our muse Dan Quayle might say: “Not winning enough of the popular vote? It means you are not popular.” (Warren Kinsella, Toronto Sun) 

 

Tuesday December 6, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday December 6, 2022

Pierre Poilievre’s self-imposed media vacuum is about to face its first test

October 20, 2022

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre believes the voters whose support he needs to lead his party to government in the next federal election will not be reached via the mainstream media.

His strategy is about to be tested.

On Dec. 12, the voters of the GTA riding of Mississauga-Lakeshore will be going to the polls to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Liberal MP Sven Spengemann last spring.

Tuesday September 13, 2022

September 13, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 13, 2022

Firebrand Poilievre now starts the hard search for wider support as a no-pivot party leader

It’s a daring experiment by the Conservatives – overwhelmingly elect a hard-right fire-breathing leader and expect enough voters to gravitate in his direction to win a federal election.

September 14, 2021

That wasn’t the case with post-Harper leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, who shifted right-wing positions toward the mainstream in what became a futile effort to find broader voter support.

But there’ll be no waffling in the political winds by steamrolled-to-victory Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre; no pivoting to a kinder, gentler, mushy middle to win over voters. That’s just not in Poilievre’s DNA.

This makes Saturday’s commanding leadership win (with 68 per cent of the ballots) the easy part of Poilievre’s ultimate goal to become prime minister.

The baby-faced 43-year-old partisan pit-bull faces an even tougher test now to reposition himself as leading a viable government-in-waiting.

His next quest has bedevilled Conservatives and indeed majority-seeking Liberals for the last two decades: Where to find the crucial five per cent bump in voting support that it takes to win a federal election?

It’s not a simple search. His oratorical assault on elites, gatekeepers and the ArriveCAN app easily fires up those fed-up and frustrated with Justin Trudeau’s preachiness and his open-the-vault response to every politically correct cause.

But to corral votes further left politically and further east geographically would seem a mission impossible, particularly given that the issues he’s attacking are now losing some of their traction.

May 13, 2022

Poilievre’s preoccupied with “Justinflation” that’s easing slightly courtesy of a Bank of Governor he wants to fire. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrencies Poilievre advocated as a safe monetary alternative are in the dumpster and the illegal “Freedom Convoy” he supported for protesting vaccine mandates he opposed are a repressed memory and unlikely to be revived.

And then there’s his party unity problem.

While he delivered a classy outreach to rival camps on Saturday night, lasting damage has been done to the progressive wing of the party after his campaign trash-talked rivals as unworthy Conservatives from the opening bell of this seven-month leadership brawl. You can bet distant-second-place-finisher Jean Charest and his pathetic 16 per cent of voting party members will not lift a finger to help a Poilievre-led party. Ever.

That suggests we’ll see an Official Opposition that’s a Reform reincarnation – and that will be a tough sell in urban Ontario and B.C., a seat expansion challenge in Quebec and register at best modest support growth in Atlantic Canada.

All is not lost, of course.

August 5, 2022

The Liberal government is failing to deliver basic services on multiple fronts, has unleashed inflation-fuelling budgets and is led by a Prime Minister whose popularity is at a personal low. This government seems hell-bent to defeat itself.

Poilievre, for his part, is going to be a masterful Opposition leader, slicing and dicing the Trudeau Liberal cabinet with devastating quips and clips on the government’s economic failures and working-class letdowns, many of which were nicely previewed in his feisty victory speech.

Anyone watching Question Period starting next week will see his exquisitely entertaining eviscerations of Justin Trudeau, which will stand in favorable contrast to a Prime Minister who pretends not to hear his questions while reading staff-scripted responses.

And with two-thirds of the Conservative caucus behind him and that massive convention victory, Pierre Poilievre will undoubtedly get something Scheer and O’Toole didn’t – two election campaigns before the party does its usual dump-the-loser-leader routine.

December 3, 2015

But his longer-term success depends on swaying the undefined, unpredictable and risk-adverse voters in Central Canada and B.C. who usually christen the election winner and do it while sticking to his controversial positions.

If those voters don’t pivot to firebrand Pierre Poilievre, well, congratulations Conservatives — you’ve just voted yourself four more years or longer in Official Opposition. (Don Martin – CTV) 

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro …

 

Tuesday June 21, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 21, 2022

Freeland defends budget after Scotiabank accuses feds of ‘doing nothing’ on inflation

A cut in planned government spending could help tame rampant inflation and reduce pressure on the Bank of Canada to hike interest rates, according to a report from Scotiabank.

June 17, 2022

The report from the bank’s chief economist Jean-Francois Perrault and modelling director René Lalonde claims that Canadian fiscal policymakers are “doing nothing of any significance to slow inflation at the moment.”

The authors argue that cutting government spending will take some of the burden to cool inflation off of the Bank of Canada and the private sector.

Scotiabank’s analysis came as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland is met with the head of the U.S. Treasury Janet Yellen in Toronto on Monday to discuss cooperation between the nations and the global inflation concerns.