drama

Thursday October 22, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 22, 2020

Canadians don’t need election melodrama

If not for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP and the three members of the Green caucus, Canada would be heading into a federal election today. We are not, and we should be thankful for that.

November 12, 2018

An election campaign, with the federal Parliament adjourned for campaigning, is the last thing the country wants, or needs. The second wave of this pandemic is sweeping across the nation. We need all hands on deck to manage the crisis, and no one needs to be distracted by an election campaign and everything that goes along with that.

But how did we get here? How did we end up on the brink of an election no one wants? 

There’s blame to be apportioned across the board, but the majority of it falls on the governing Liberals and Opposition Conservatives. They joined in a high stakes game of chicken that was not driven by anything other than partisan advantage. 

First, the Conservatives. They launched a motion on Opposition Day that called for establishing a new super-committee to investigate corruption, specifically the WE scandal. It would have had unprecedented power to call not only members of the government and civil service, but people such as friends and relatives. It could have compelled the release of private citizens’ financial records over a 12-year period. That is probably not even legal.

October 23, 2019

It was a massive overreach, especially considering Parliament already has multiple committees that can do that work. And given that this is a minority government, those committees are often dominated by opposition MPs, so the government doesn’t always get its way. 

Further, there is a central hypocrisy in what the Conservatives are saying. They want a committee specifically focused on government corruption, and they publicly declare they do not have confidence in the government. But they also say they don’t want an election. You cannot square that circle.

But the Liberals delivered a surprise — they chose a nuclear response to the Conservatives overreach, saying the motion amounted to a loss of confidence in the government, and therefore would trigger an election. They drew a line in the sand, and they dared opposition parties to cross.

October 28, 2016

There’s no doubt, from a political strategy perspective, that the government outplayed its opponents. But beyond that strategic victory, this brinksmanship isn’t a good look for anyone involved. The government is acting like it has a majority when it doesn’t. The Conservatives wanted to weaponize the committee process for partisan gain. Both were willing to force Canadians to endure an election campaign in a very dangerous time. For that, they should be ashamed.

Thankfully, Singh’s NDP sought middle ground. They proposed a committee that would oversee and investigate all spending and management during the pandemic, including in the WE affair. That is a reasonable mandate for a new committee. We don’t know what the Liberals agreed to in exchange for the NDP’s support against the Conservatives, but don’t be surprised if the end result of this drama fest is something like what the NDP proposed. 

So for now, this melodrama is over. Don’t be surprised when the next game of chicken breaks out, as happened frequently when Stephen Harper’s minority government was challenged repeatedly and dared opposition parties to trigger an election. 

That said, there was ample cynical political gamesmanship on display here. It’s wasn’t pretty. The Liberals and Conservatives should take a long look in the mirror and try to remember what Canadians are dealing with. That’s what matters, not an unnecessary election campaign. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday March 5, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 5, 2020

I’m An Ontario Teacher But I Chose To Go Where Teachers Are Respected

February 4, 2020

“One of my kids threw a chair today.”

“My kid locked himself in the classroom at lunch and then threatened to run away.”

“A parent told me I should have noticed the signs of her daughter wanting to self-harm.”

It was 2018, and my college classmates and I were swapping horror stories as the final year of our teacher’s program came to a close. Tales like ours were the norm — 70 per cent of educators see or experience similar situations  in their classroom — so I would often think of the teachers I’d admired in my youth and wonder, “Were we this difficult for them?”

May 6, 2015

I always hoped I’d be like those teachers, one day: kind, fun and respected by all. But, I realized that I would not be able to start my mission to be that kind, fun and respected teacher if the drama outside the classroom continued to escalate in Ontario’s education system, year after year.

For all its prestige, I knew I couldn’t root my career in Ontario.

A job there didn’t always seem undesirable. I’d accepted my offer to a concurrent teacher’s college program straight out of high school in 2013, with the intent of graduating and immediately securing a job teaching French in Ontario. It was an easy decision: I loved working with kids, I wanted to use my French at work. I even dreamed that I’d teach at my old elementary school.

May 26, 2015

Yet, over the course of teacher’s college, I saw the reality facing Ontario teachers.

My mentors were burnt out from dealing with a lack of funding, administrative miscommunication, overly demanding parents, and governments that didn’t value the students’ opinion in their education. They arrived at school in the morning dreading the day ahead, tired from the work they took home the night before.

They often said that their work outside of the classroom detracted from their job inside of it. Even as a student teacher, I felt the same — and I didn’t even have to take the lead in all of it. It affected my mood  and the atmosphere in the classroom, and I knew that was no good. I would not be able to teach my students well like this.

Despite the challenges, the public expects teachers to be complacent when the government wants to make cuts that hurt the kids more than they do us.

August 20, 2012

Teacher contract negotiations always blow up into a province-wide scandal. It happened when teachers went on strike in 2003, and again in 2012 and 2015. Each time, I had to hear my family members and the public voice their discontent.

Naysayers drag the profession through the mud and harp on the pay, benefits, retirement packages and vacation time that teachers earn. What isn’t considered as often is how much of their own money teachers all over Canada spend  on their own class supplies and resources, and how many of the activities they do are voluntary.

November 13, 2019

In the latest strikes, Ontario teachers are once again taking action with students in mind. Since Premier Doug Ford assumed his role in 2018, the changes to the education system have been moving the province backwards: increasing class sizes, reducing funding for school programs and moving away from a much-needed inclusive curriculum. A student-teacher ratio reaching as high as 40:1 and e-learning won’t set students up for success.

I’ve seen this drama play out over and over again in Ontario, and I decided I wasn’t going to be part of it. After graduating in 2018, I moved to China instead. (Continued: Huffington Post) 

 

Wednesday January 10, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 10, 2018

Some questions for Mr. Trudeau

Later Wednesday morning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau drops by McMaster University for the second in a series of town hall meetings. It’s the sort of thing Trudeau is good at. His charisma, empathy and accessible style stand him in good stead.

The Liberals under Trudeau continue to enjoy strong support. The latest Nanos Research has the Liberals at 40.9 per cent, the Conservatives at 30.7, the NDP at 19.5 and the Greens at 4.8. Even more impressive is that 45.6 per cent of respondents prefer Trudeau as PM, compared to Conservative Andrew Scheer (20.3 per cent) and Jagmeet Singh (9 per cent). Even after the Aga Khan holiday scandal, Bill Morneau’s travails and numerous broken promises, Trudeau enjoys a level of support most politicians would envy.

Journalists don’t get to ask questions of the PM at today’s event. But here are some we’d like to see him answer. Feel free to borrow.

Entitlement: Trudeau, and his Finance Minister Bill Morneau, are seen by a growing number of Canadians as elitist and privileged. They owe no apologies for their accidents of birth. But even though measures like the child tax credit are unquestionably helping middle class families, there is a sense that Trudeau, especially, is more of a tourist in the lives of working class Canadians. How can the PM assure working Canadians that he is truly in their corner when he doesn’t have the life experience?

Pensions: Stories, many of them heartbreaking, continue to pour in about the hardships being experienced by Sears Canada retirees who have seen incomes cut and benefits lost. U.S. Steel retirees are still in limbo and at risk. Why won’t Trudeau commit to rewriting obsolete bankruptcy protection legislation to give pensioners more clout?

Democratic reform: Trudeau promised electoral reform but broke that promise and now says he thinks a proportional representation system would be “damaging to our stability, to our electoral system.” How can that be? How did reform go from being needed to being a threat? And are we stuck with the status quo forever?

Poverty: The government deserves credit for its $40 billion national housing strategy. But why does the investment not kick in until after the next election? Even more seriously, where is the government’s promised plan to fight poverty, promised in 2016? In his mandate letter, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Jean-Yves Duclos was given this direction: ‘Lead the development of a Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy that would set targets to reduce poverty and measure and publicly report on our progress, in collaboration with the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour. Our strategy will align with and support existing provincial and municipal poverty reduction strategies.’ Nice words, but where’s the action to back them up?

If Trudeau could give credible answers to even two of these four questions, he’d offer assurance to the growing number of Canadians who fear his leadership is long on style and charisma, but short on substance. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

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Thursday April 9, 2015

Thursday April 9, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 9, 2015

We may tire of the Duffy circus

If nothing else, we now know that the trial of Mike Duffy will be exhaustively chronicled, in real time, with no tawdry detail left un-tweeted. At times Tuesday it seemed every journalist in Canada was engaged in the play-by-play.

But will Canadians beyond Ottawa get mad at the Senate fat cats and power mongers all over again? Or will they gaze through the headlines with a fatalistic, heard-it-allbefore shrug? With Election 2015 looming, this is the critical question. And the best answer is neither clear-cut nor satisfactory: It depends. For each of the major parties, including the Conservatives themselves, there are potential opportunities in this, the closest political Canada has seen to the O.J. Simpson trial, as well as the obvious pitfalls.

The consensus view, much asserted in the past 48 hours amid a cascade of setup coverage (Five things you need to know about the Duffy Trial; Your Duffy Trial Primer; All About Duff, no Guff!), is that the trial of Mike Duffy on 31 criminal charges, including fraud, breach of trust and bribery, could be Stephen Harper’s Waterloo. It has been likened to the Gomery inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal, accounts of which rocked the Liberal party in 2004-05 and contributed to Paul Martin Jr.’s being held to a brief two years as prime minister. This trial comes at a most awkward time for Harper, with his bid for re-election already hampered by an economy gone soft, and his party suffering from the sclerosis common to all decade-old Canadian administrations. (Source: National Post)

Posted to National Newswatch.com

Thursday June 21, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday June 21, 2012

Hudak got off too easy during budget crisis

As Ontario teetered on the brink of its second election in less than a year, attention was squarely focused on the public spat between Dalton McGuinty and Andrea Horwath.

But to understand why the province’s minority legislature is still very much on borrowed time, even after a summer campaign appears to have been narrowly avoided, there’s no getting past the role of the party leader who actively avoided the spotlight during the past week.

For all that Mr. McGuinty’s Liberals and Ms. Horwath’s New Democrats have at various points been guilty of bluster and false bravado and overplaying their respective hands, it’s Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives who are most responsible for this legislature’s dysfunction.

Faced with a $15-billion deficit, Mr. McGuinty has decided that he needs to adopt a relatively fiscally conservative agenda. That should leave him looking to find common ground with the right-of-centre Tories. But because they’ve shown very little interest in engaging, he instead has to keep tilting left to appease the NDP. And the more that becomes obvious to the New Democrats, the more they keep pushing him away from what he wants to do, and toward impasses.

This situation began to play itself out around the tabling of Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s budget this spring. Although the Tories now insist otherwise, it was obvious to most anyone around Queen’s Park that they had no intention of voting for it, no matter what was in it. That meant the Liberals had to table a document the NDP could conceivably be willing to support, then add various concessions – most notably a tax increase on the highest income earners – in order to get the budget motion passed in April. (Source: Globe & Mail)