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Wednesday November 16, 2022

November 16, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 16, 2022

Has the Trudeau government finally got Beijing’s number?

An ancient Chinese proverb: To learn is to come face to face with one’s own ignorance.

December 5, 2017

Seven years ago, full of naive bravado, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government embarked on a quest for tighter ties with the People’s Republic of China. It assumed it was signing up for all sorts of cost-free economic and political rewards. Instead, it got an expensive education.

Another Chinese proverb: Strict teachers produce outstanding students. The Trudeau government has spent the past seven years getting schooled by one of the world’s most unreasonable tutors, the Xi Jinping regime. The lessons are paying off.

On Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly gave a speech introducing her government’s new Indo-Pacific strategy. The full policy won’t be unveiled until next month, but the minister teased its key elements. The most important involves a new approach to China.

The government has evolved from dreaming of ever-closer economic integration with China, to trying to minimize conflict – the better to return to the quest for closer ties – to now, as a cum laude graduate of the Xi Jinping School of Experiential Education, recognizing that China, at least in its current form, is an adversary and a threat.

November 20, 2020

Ms. Joly says that Canada will of course continue to have extensive trade and economic ties with the world’s second-largest economy. Given how much of the world’s industrial capacity has moved there over the past two decades, there is no other option. But the government now recognizes that Beijing’s autocratic regime, its hostility to the rules-based international order, and its eagerness to impose its will on smaller states, is a challenge to Canada’s interests.

What’s more, Ms. Joly says that, to give Canada the heft to stand up to China, we have to bolster our traditional alliances with Washington and Europe, while creating new ones with countries such as Japan, South Korea and India.

It’s a long way from where the Trudeau government started.

In 2016, as we watched the Trudeau government “make like a pretzel while attempting to court the hard men of Beijing,” we asked whether “Canada [was] caving into China’s demands,” and whether the Trudeau government was “clueless as to the brutal nature of the regime it is dealing with.”

December 8, 2017

In 2017, as the government bid for a free-trade accord with China, and China started upping its demands, we wrote that Ottawa “did not appear to be sufficiently aware of the potential dangers and downsides.” And we asked, not for the first or last time: “Does the Trudeau government, and the Prime Minister in particular, appreciate who they are dealing with?”

A few months later, after Mr. Trudeau went to China seeking that free-trade deal but was snubbed by his hosts, we wrote that this failure would “come to be seen as less of an embarrassment, and more of a blessing.”

And that was before Canada arrested a Chinese executive on an American extradition warrant, and China retaliated by turning two Canadians into hostages. “The case of Meng Wanzhou has torpedoed the Trudeau government’s China policy,” we wrote in late 2018. “At the same time, it has also sunk China’s Canada policy. Call it a win-win.”

January 29, 2019

“It’s never pleasant to discover the gap between one’s wishes and objective reality, but it is the beginning of the path to wisdom. The Trudeau government is being forced to wise up about the nature of the People’s Republic of China.”

A year later, in December of 2019, with the Two Michaels still behind bars, we wrote that “Beijing has spent the last year giving Canada a special education in how it sees our not-at-all special relationship. We should be thankful for the lessons. The Trudeau government, and the entire political and business establishment, must study them carefully. It may allow this country to finally get over its China delusions.”

February 20, 2021

The Trudeau government has since made progress on getting over those delusions, and let us give thanks for that. But it’s still a few steps short of the end of its 12-step program.

This week brought news that, according to information obtained by Global News, the PM was given an intelligence report last January – that’s nearly a year ago – detailing extensive Chinese meddling in the 2019 Canadian election. There are also credible reports of Beijing meddling in the 2021 election, in particular targeting China-critical Conservatives. What has the Trudeau government done about that? So far, nothing. (The Globe & Mail) 

 

Posted in: Canada, International Tagged: 2022-38, Canada, China, dance, diplomacy, G20, Hu Jintao, Jean Chretien, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Mao Zedong, Paul Martin, Pierre Trudeau, Xi Jinping

Friday May 17, 2019

May 24, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 17, 2019

Conrad Black says he won’t answer to criticism of his pardon because it’s not ‘worthy of response’

‘On anything like this you’re going to get people saying it’s a back-scratching job and he’s just rewarding me for writing nice things about him, but so what?’

Conrad Black Cartoon Gallery

Media mogul and former rival Rupert Murdoch was among the well-wishers who called Conrad Black after he received a pardon Wednesday from U.S. President Donald Trump that wiped away convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice dating back to 2007.

“I had a very nice phone call from Rupert Murdoch. I hadn’t spoken with him for many years. Most thoughtful of him to call,” Black said in an interview Thursday in the living room of his home in Toronto.

“He congratulated me and he said he’d congratulated the President for doing it.”

Calls have been coming in “from all over the place, from people I knew when I was a guest of the American people (in prison) and from people I went to Grade 2 with, and all stages since then,” said Black.

“And all but one or two were really very gracious, quite affecting many of them.”

Asked how he would respond to people who say he received the pardon because of Trump’s tendency to view only facts that suit him, or due to the past business dealings the two men had, or the flattering articles and book Black has written about Trump, Black said he wouldn’t respond directly to such critics because he doesn’t find their position “worthy of response.”

“Look, on anything like this you’re going to get people saying it’s a back-scratching job and he’s just rewarding me for writing nice things about him, but so what? Some people criticize Santa Claus, some people find fault with everything,” he said.

“The President and the very gracious message the White House issued last night was very clear in saying what the motives were, and that they were an analysis by his legal counsel and their legal team of the facts of the case, analyzing the particular materials submitted on my behalf by (lawyer) Alan Dershowitz and others.”

Black views the pardon as a total exoneration. “It’s a complete final decision of not guilty. That is finally a fully just verdict,” Black told The Canadian Press on Thursday. (Source: National Post) 

 

Posted in: Canada, USA Tagged: 2019-18, adoration, book, Canada, columns, Conrad Black, dance, Donal Trump, love, obsequious, pardon, Presidential, sycophant, USA

Tuesday November 13, 2018

November 20, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

November 13, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 13, 2018

The good, the bad and the ugly of corporate welfare

Federal government investment in private business — disdainfully called “corporate welfare” by critics — can raise the blood pressure of even the most Zen taxpayer. Consider:

April 4, 2017

Last month, Ottawa wrote off a loan and other subsidies granted to Chrysler for $2.6 billion. The interest is also in the wind. Or how about the Ontario government’s $220 million investment in Toyota to create some 450 jobs (which works out to a $488,888 subsidy per job). And then, of course, there is Bombardier, the grandmother of all corporate welfare recipients.

The Quebec-based transportation company got its first government handout in the mid-1960s. By now, depending on who you believe, Bombardier has received something like $3.7 billion from Canadian taxpayers. And just to add insult to injury, the company isn’t exactly prospering.

October 13, 2016

Last week, it announced it was cutting 5,000 jobs, including 500 in Ontario, and it sold off one of its aircraft divisions. It also announced a new contract to provide rail cars to the City of Montreal, but that good news didn’t offset bad news about its stubborn corporate debt. Analysts are again speculating that Bombardier’s turnaround may be wishful thinking, and its share prices took the expected nosedive at that news.

Most galling is the reality that those billions, just like the billions in Chrysler bailout money Ottawa just wrote off, are never coming back to public coffers.

February 18, 2016

What can we do, other than get all red in the face and grind our collective teeth? It’s not like you can vote for a different party to avoid these so-called investments. All parties do them, in Bombardier’s case, pretty much equally.

Or, we can try and do what makes sense but is typically very hard for average taxpayers struggling to get by in this challenging world — look at the big picture, and look at it over time, not in the moment.

First, so-called corporate welfare is far from new. It goes back as far as the days when Canadian railroads were getting royal treatment in the form of prime pieces of real estate. But what if, back in the ’60s, the government of the day had said no to Bombardier and set the tone for the future? (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)  

 

Posted in: Canada, Quebec Tagged: aerospace, Bombardier, Canada, corporate, dance, Editorial Cartoon, sector, welfare

Tuesday May 1, 2018

April 30, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 1, 2018

A Trump Nobel Peace Prize? South Korea’s Leader Likes the Idea

Several months ago, South Koreans considered President Trump as dangerous as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, as the two traded threats of nuclear annihilation.

January 16, 2018

Now, commentators and others in Seoul think Mr. Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for helping start the unexpected peace process  unfolding on the divided Korean Peninsula. On Monday, South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, said he felt the same.

Mr. Moon’s endorsement of a Nobel for Mr. Trump, who has faced one ethical scandal after another at home, came as the South Korean leader presided over a meeting of his senior presidential staff on Monday. During the meeting, Mr. Moon received a telegram from Lee Hee-ho, a former first lady of South Korea, congratulating him for a successful summit meeting with Mr. Kim on Friday and wishing him a Nobel Peace Prize.

“It’s really President Trump who should receive it; we can just take peace,” Mr. Moon was quoted by his office as saying.

April 15, 2013

In recent months, Mr. Moon and his senior aides have repeatedly thanked Mr. Trump for making a rapprochement between the Koreas possible. Mr. Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach of tightening the noose around the North with economic sanctions and military threats was largely responsible for forcing Mr. Kim to the negotiating table, they said.

If they were genuinely grateful to Mr. Trump, they were also seen as stoking the ego of the impulsive American leader so that he would continue to support South Korea’s efforts to resolve the North Korean crisis through dialogue. (Source: NYT) 

 

Posted in: International Tagged: carrot and stick, dance, diplomacy, Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, Korea, Moon-Jae-in, Nobel, peace, prize, USA

Friday December 8, 2017

December 7, 2017 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 8, 2017

Trudeau hails ‘substantial progress’ in China but fails to spark formal trade talks

If little else came of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s trade mission to China this week, you can at least be sure of this: Canada’s cattlemen are excited to sell more cow stomachs.

December 5, 2017

For while Trudeau and his coterie of ministers and officials left the country Thursday without proclaiming the anticipated launch of trade talks, there were a few comparative baby steps towards a deeper economic relationship.

Among them was a deal to export more beef and pork, which got John Masswohl of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association pumped about cashing in on parts of the animal that don’t sell in Canada — including the digestive organs of his bovine commodity.

“We think over the next five years that will be another $125 million in exports for us,” Masswohl said this week, referring not just to the stomachs, but the fresh beef and T-bones he now expects to hit the massive Chinese market.

December 5, 2017

He hastened to add, however, that the government’s broader goal of landing a comprehensive trade deal with the world’s second-largest economy would be even better — for profits, for predictability, for safeguarding against the protectionist impulses of the American president.

Of course, he’s not alone in feeling that way.

Trudeau himself spent much of his time in China extolling the virtues of a trade agreement. In the days before he landed in Beijing, staff from his office framed the trip’s main purpose as a way to ramp up trade and investment with the ever-rising authoritarian powerhouse, and Canada’s industry minister told Global News that the government’s “objective” was to become the first Group of Seven country to launch free trade talks with China. (Continued: Toronto Star) 

 

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Posted in: Canada Tagged: Canada, commerce, dance, diplomacy, free, high school, Justin Trudeau, NAFTA, Progressive, TPP, Trade
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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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