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Wednesday June 28, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 28, 2023

Ford Steps Away from Toronto’s Game Console

June 17, 2023

The recent election of Olivia Chow as Toronto’s mayor-elect marks a significant shift in the dynamics between Queen’s Park and city hall. As Premier Doug Ford steps away from the control console, his influence over Toronto’s affairs is likely to diminish. This change presents both challenges and opportunities for the city as it embarks on a new chapter under Chow’s leadership.

During the election campaign, Ford openly expressed his opposition to Chow’s candidacy, endorsing a rival candidate and warning of dire consequences if she were to be elected. However, now that the election is over, Ford has pledged to work with Chow and find common ground on key issues. 

This willingness to collaborate, regardless of political affiliations, is a positive step towards fostering cooperation between the provincial and municipal governments.

One area where Ford and Chow can potentially find agreement is in addressing the need for affordable housing in Toronto. Chow’s proposal to build 25,000 rent-controlled homes aligns with Ford’s support for affordable and purpose-built rentals. By working together, they can leverage their shared goals to make progress in tackling the pressing housing crisis in the city.

News: Doug Ford calls Olivia Chow a ‘nice person’ and vows to find ‘common ground’  

April 18, 2023

However, challenges loom on the horizon. Toronto faces a significant fiscal shortfall, exacerbated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Ford urges Chow to get the city’s finances in order, it is essential for the provincial government to recognize the unique challenges faced by municipalities and provide necessary support. Finding a balance between fiscal responsibility and ensuring adequate resources for essential services will be crucial for both Ford and Chow.

April 29, 2014

One contentious issue that may strain the relationship between Queen’s Park and city hall is the redevelopment of Ontario Place. Chow opposes Ford’s plans, which include a luxury spa, a waterpark, and relocating the Ontario Science Centre. Ford, on the other hand, sees the redevelopment as an opportunity to transform Ontario Place into a world-class destination. Balancing the preservation of public spaces with the need for economic development will require constructive dialogue and compromise.

September 12, 2014

The success of Chow’s mayoral tenure will depend not only on her ability to navigate these challenges but also on her approach to governance. It is crucial for her to build bridges and maintain open lines of communication with the provincial government. While disagreements are inevitable, it is essential to find common ground and work towards shared goals, such as improving public transit, enhancing infrastructure, and creating opportunities for economic growth.

As Premier Doug Ford relinquishes control over Toronto’s affairs, the dynamics between Queen’s Park and city hall are poised for a change. With Olivia Chow assuming the mayoral role, there is an opportunity for a fresh approach and renewed collaboration. While challenges lie ahead, including fiscal constraints and divergent views on key issues, finding common ground and prioritizing the best interests of Toronto’s residents should be the guiding principle for both Chow and Ford. By working together, they can set a positive precedent for intergovernmental cooperation and pave the way for a prosperous future for the city. (AI)

 

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 …

 

Wednesday July 25, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 25, 2018

Does Canada Have a Gun Control Problem?

July 18, 2012

In the aftermath of the deadly mass shooting in Toronto that left two bystanders and the shooter dead and 12 others injured, a right-wing blogger has questioned whether Canada’s gun control laws actually work.

 
“I thought they had gun control in Canada,” Laura Loomer, tweeted. “What happened?” she asked.
 
That tweet was one of dozens of others posing the same question, with many branding the shooting as evidence that gun control laws do not work. 
 
But others have been quick to point out that the number of shootings should speak for itself. 
 
“This is the first mass shooting in our country in almost two years,” one Canadian tweeted. “How many has the USA had just this year? Gun control DOES work, obviously. Just not 100 percent of the time.”
 
The past year has seen a spate of mass shootings across the U.S., with a total of 154 taking place since June 28 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any that results in four or more individuals shot or killed in the same general time frame or location. 
 
Sunday’s mass shooting in Toronto was the first in Canada since an attack on a mosque in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, which saw a single gunman kill six people and wound 18 others. 
 
Before that, Canada had not had a mass shooting since January 22, 2016, when a 17-year-old student shot and killed two people at a residence in La Loche, Saskatchewan, before continuing his rampage at La Loche Community School, killing a teacher and an assistant, and wounding several others.
 
A firearm is nearly seven times less likely to be used in a homicide in Canada than in the U.S., according to Statistics Canada. (More Stats: Newsweek) 
 

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Friday November 27, 2015

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Friday November 27, 2015 The LCBO wants to sell you pot Stocking weed alongside wine at the LCBO is the best way to protect public health, say addiction experts. But for marijuana advocates it's more of the same prohibition. In a statement released Monday, the union representing LCBO workers said the provincially owned stores are the ideal place to sell marijuana, should the federal government legalize it. "If they do legalize it, then it's a drug," Warren (Smokey) Thomas told the Star. "So we think that, like alcohol, it should be controlled." Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said secure warehouses and staff trained to check ages are some of the reasons the LCBO should be the sole source of legal pot in the province, as it is with most alcohol. The scheme would also generate revenue for the government to combat the potential social costs. But marijuana advocates say those social costs and the spectre of public danger are overblown, and government-run sales would continue a prohibitionist regulatory approach. "Our view of course has always been that marijuana is one of the safest drugs. It's not any worse, slightly better, than coffee," said Blair Longley, the leader of the federal Marijuana Party. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals won this fall's election with an campaign platform promising to "legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana." However, Longley maintains the drug should be proportionately restricted based on its danger. So ideally, he said, anyone should be free to grow and use the plant how she wishes with the informed consent as to any danger. Hugo St-Onge, leader of Quebec's Bloc Pot party agrees that government stores are not the way forward. "We need to stop comparing marijuana to alcohol," he said. "Marijuana should have its own model, its own system." He prefers a food-model regulatory system, with sales done in a similar fa

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 27, 2015

The LCBO wants to sell you pot

Stocking weed alongside wine at the LCBO is the best way to protect public health, say addiction experts. But for marijuana advocates it’s more of the same prohibition.

Wednesday March 4, 2015In a statement released Monday, the union representing LCBO workers said the provincially owned stores are the ideal place to sell marijuana, should the federal government legalize it.

“If they do legalize it, then it’s a drug,” Warren (Smokey) Thomas told the Star. “So we think that, like alcohol, it should be controlled.”

Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said secure warehouses and staff trained to check ages are some of the reasons the LCBO should be the sole source of legal pot in the province, as it is with most alcohol.

The scheme would also generate revenue for the government to combat the potential social costs. But marijuana advocates say those social costs and the spectre of public danger are overblown, and government-run sales would continue a prohibitionist regulatory approach.

“Our view of course has always been that marijuana is one of the safest drugs. It’s not any worse, slightly better, than coffee,” said Blair Longley, the leader of the federal Marijuana Party.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won this fall’s election with an campaign platform promising to “legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.” However, Longley maintains the drug should be proportionately restricted based on its danger. So ideally, he said, anyone should be free to grow and use the plant how she wishes with the informed consent as to any danger.

Hugo St-Onge, leader of Quebec’s Bloc Pot party agrees that government stores are not the way forward.

“We need to stop comparing marijuana to alcohol,” he said. “Marijuana should have its own model, its own system.”

He prefers a food-model regulatory system, with sales done in a similar fashion to Amsterdam’s cafés. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Saturday July 25, 2015

Saturday July 25, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday July 25, 2015

Gun safety laws biggest unfinished business of my presidency, says Obama

Barack Obama is “distressed” he has been unable to strengthen gun-safety laws in America, acknowledging it will be the unfinished business of his presidency.

Obama’s comment went to air on the BBC a few hours before the latest shooting in America which left three people dead, including the gunman, at the Grand Theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.

“The issue of guns, that is an area where if you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I’ve been most frustrated and most stymied it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws,” he told the BBC.

“Even in the face of repeated mass killings.”

Obama said the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism was less than 100 while tens of thousands had been killed by gun violence.

“For us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing. But it is not something that I intend to stop working on in the remaining 18 months,” he said. (Source: The Guardian)