exit

Friday August 27, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 27, 2021

As the evacuation window closes, Trudeau should focus on the Afghan crisis

Who will be left behind?

As the Taliban’s evacuation clock races to its final, terrible hour, we are left feeling helpless in our minute-by-minute prayers for the Canadian citizens and permanent residents still on the ground in Afghanistan and the thousands of Afghans promised safe harbour in a grand resettlement plan.

The pulse races. Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could not have sounded more of a naif when he said, after a meeting of G7 leaders Tuesday, that “we will continue to put pressure on the Taliban to allow people to leave the country in safety.”

November 17, 2015

To state the obvious: he’s not bargaining from a position of strength.

And to restate past assertions in this space, evacuation efforts have been late, slow and confused. How many more evacuees could have been assisted if the government had moved with speed?

It was no comfort to listen to a triumvirate of Liberal ministers Wednesday – Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino and Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau – attempting to express hope and optimism for better days ahead, the better life that Canada offers. In real time, the government’s so-called corridors of protection have not been up to the task of shepherding the desperate into safety at Kabul’s airport.

August 24, 2021

A bombardment of pleas and videos from those desperately trying to flee will continue to rain down.

And in yet another penny-dropping moment, it has finally sunk in that with U.S. forces scheduled to evacuate from their longest war by Aug. 31, a process that will take days, the last opportunity for a Canadian supported exit may be just hours away. And that’s assuming the risk of attack against U.S. troops by the ISIS affiliate — and Taliban enemy — ISIS-K doesn’t become a reality. U.S. President Joe Biden defined that risk this week as acute and growing.

In Wednesday’s press conference it fell to Marc Garneau to acknowledge the obvious: that there’s a “possibility” that the Canadian effort will fail to successfully complete its rescue mission. We’re on the job, Garneau said, “even though there may be some election going on.”

It’s not an easy hand that Trudeau has been dealt. It would be folly to argue otherwise. That the Taliban briskly took the capital on the same day as the election was called should be material for Trudeau’s memoirs. That’s far in the future. How the Biden administration failed to anticipate the Taliban’s lightning-fast takeover will be one for the history books.

July 15, 2021

In the instant, it’s obvious that the Afghanistan crisis has emerged as a trip wire for Trudeau, one that’s becoming more barbed with each passing moment. A month has passed since the government backtracked on its ill-considered 72-hour deadline for Afghan interpreters and others who worked in support of Canadians to file resettlement paperwork. That shemozzle revealed wonky bureaucracy at work.

And it was a signal to Trudeau to prioritize the Afghan file. This he has failed to do.

That has left a broad opening for opposition leaders. When Conservative party Leader Erin O’Toole charges, as he did Wednesday, that Trudeau failed to take timely action on Afghanistan months ago, and that the prime minister put the political interests of the Liberal party ahead of the crisis, it sounds discordant to hear Trudeau on the same day pledging to raise corporate taxes on the big banks.

The remedy would be for Trudeau to get off the campaign trail and high tail it back to Ottawa. The next 48 hours will be crucial to the outcome of the Afghanistan crisis. Getting updates, as the prime minister calls them, as he travels through Hamilton, or Winnipeg or Surrey, B.C., releasing the Liberal platform drip by drip, is not the mien of a seasoned G7 leader. (Toronto Star Editorial) 

 

Thursday June 29, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 29, 2017

Peter Mansbridge plans quiet exit from ‘The National’

Peter Mansbridge doesn’t want to make a fuss about leaving the anchor’s chair at CBC’s  The National.

At Issue

Nearly a year after telling viewers he planned to retire from the public broadcaster’s flagship program, the 68-year-old newsman who defined an era at CBC News plans to sign-off for the final time with little fanfare.

“Don’t expect much,” he said in a recent interview. “I’ve never wanted it to be about me, this program.”

As Canada’s 150th celebration nears on Saturday, so does Mansbridge’s chosen date to say goodbye. The procession begins Wednesday night when he delivers his final broadcast of The National from the CBC’s Toronto studio.

Brian Williams

Carole MacNeil helms Thursday’s show, which will pay tribute to Mansbridge’s 50-year career, including almost 30 years as The National anchor. He’ll then return to the newscast one last time on Friday from Ottawa, before leading the CBC’s Canada Day broadcast at Parliament Hill.

“I’ve always taken most of the summer off anyway, so it seemed like a good exit point,” he said.

Mansbridge’s storied journalism career was launched at 19 thanks to a stroke of luck. He was plucked from an airport cargo job in Churchill, Man., after a CBC Radio manager heard his broadcast-ready voice over an intercom system. (Source: Global News) 

 

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Friday April 21, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 21, 2017

Snap Election called in Great Britain

 

March 30, 2017

In a dramatic statement on the steps of Downing Street, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, fired the starting gun on a poll that she hopes will deliver her an unassailable majority to shape the country’s future.

She blamed opposition parties who have been trying to frustrate Brexit for her sudden change of heart after months insisting she will not hold an election – singling out Nicola Sturgeon’s efforts to exploit the situation to tear the UK apart.

The bold move took even Cabinet members by surprise, having been kept a closely guarded secret between a handful of the premier’s closest allies and aides.

March 14, 2003

Brexit Secretary David Davis and Chancellor Philip Hammond have been jointly pressing the PM to call an early vote for some time, and were informed of Mrs May’s decision at a meeting yesterday. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Amber Rudd are understood to have been told this morning shortly before the gathering of her top team in No10.

Mrs May revealed the shift was driven by soul-searching while she hiked in Snowdonia with husband Philip over the Easter break.

The media were given barely an hour’s notice of the speech this morning, and there had been no rumours at Westminster about her change of heart. Even as the Cabinet meeting began this morning, aides to senior ministers were still sending out updates on other areas of government business.

Mrs May said Britain needed strong leadership to navigate the fraught divorce talks with the EU, insisting she was now convinced an early poll was in the ‘national interest’.

She said ‘every vote for the Conservatives would give her a stronger hand when she sits across the negotiating table from the EU’s presidents and prime ministers to hammer out a Brexit deal.

The election is an astonishing U-turn from the Prime Minister who has repeatedly said she would not call another ballot before 2020 – insisting it would cause instability and hurt the country. (Source: Daily Mail) 

 

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Wednesday, May 8, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, May 8, 2013

McGuinty admits moving gas plants was his decision

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty admitted Tuesday he didn’t know the full cost of moving gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga when he made the controversial decision to relocate them.
Speaking before the legislature’s justice committee Tuesday, McGuinty admitted the decision to relocate the plants west of Toronto came later and cost more than he would have liked, but he said relocating them was the right decision, given their proximity to schools and homes.

“We were faced with a circumstance where gas plants were sited right next to schools, condominium towers, family homes and a hospital,” he said. “That wasn’t right.”

The decision to close the power-generating plants become controversial for two reasons. The first was the timing: the Mississauga plant announcement came during the 2011 election campaign; the Oakville decision came a year earlier. Both decisions were made in response to growing opposition in ridings held by Liberal MPPs.

The combined cost of tearing up contracts with the developers was another problem. The cost of moving both plants is now estimated to be more than $585 million, far above the $230 million McGuinty and the Liberals had been claiming.

During his testimony on Tuesday, McGuinty’s clashed with Progressive Conservative MPP Vic Fedeli, especially when McGuinty insisted the $40-million figure the Liberals had been using as the cost of cancelling the Oakville plant came from the Ontario Power Authority. It was recently estimated that moving the plant will likely cost more than $300 million. An auditor’s report on the Oakville relocation is due this summer. (Source: CBC News)

Friday August 24, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Friday August 24, 2012

Corporate Quebec braces for the worst

The hangover from the 1995 sovereignty referendum was not pretty for Montreal. Half a year after a vote that brought Canada to within a sliver of possible breakup, Quebec’s biggest city was left badly shredded.

Its 11% unemployment rate was the highest in urban North America. Residential real estate prices were falling. The vacancy rate for downtown office towers topped 20%. Companies like Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. continued their slow head-office exodus. One Toronto property broker trying to drum up business ran ads in Montreal newspapers that read: “When the road leads you away from Montreal to Toronto, we’ll be at the other end to make you feel right at home.”

There were larger pan-Canadian consequences too, of course. Amid the constitutional crisis, lenders demanded higher interest rates to hold Canada’s debt. That November the dollar fell a cent and a half as post-referendum optimism vanished amid a realization that Canada’s unity problem remained unsolved.

Today, nine years of Liberal Party rule have restored a certain level of stability to the city and to the province as the federalist party wooed private enterprise and buried unity disagreements with Ottawa. But as Quebecers get set to vote again Sept. 4, the corporate world is bracing for change.

“It’s the first time in my life that I sense from the business community a concern this large about the result of an election and the aftermath,” said Yves-Thomas Dorval, head of the Conseil du Patronat, Quebec’s largest business lobby. “There is a lot of worry that the climate for reinvestment won’t be the same.” (Source: Financial Post)