freedom

Tuesday November 15, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 15, 2022

Ontario’s government is ‘strongly’ recommending masks indoors

Despite increasingly urgent calls from doctors for a renewed mask mandate in Ontario, the province has issued a “strong” recommendation — leaving masking up to individuals at a time when, experts say, governments are wary of the political consequences of forcing health restrictions onto the public.

March 10, 2022

Medical professionals have urged new masking requirements in indoor spaces, including in schools, as hospitals across Ontario feel an earlier-than-usual strain from patients ill with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza, as well as COVID-19.

In Ontario, some children’s hospitals are scaling back procedures and sending some older patients to adult hospitals, as their intensive care units are overflowing with cases of respiratory illnesses in kids. Pediatric hospitals in Quebec also report their emergency rooms are operating beyond capacity due to the three viruses.

On Monday, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, recommended wearing masks indoors, including at social events where young children were present, as kids aged four and under were “highly susceptible” to RSV and influenza.

Moore was still “discussing and reviewing” whether masks should be mandatory in schools, he said. 

November 24, 2020

The Ontario Medical Association welcomed the province’s recommendation, but individual doctors are continuing to push for more measures in schools to help reduce the pressure hospitals will face in the weeks ahead.

Political and health experts say they believe the government is concerned about the potential for a public backlash, with protests over various other pandemic-related restrictions — including vaccine mandates — still fresh in its memory.

“I think part of what’s going on here, both at the level of the medical officials and of the premier, is an assessment of the political risk of requiring something that may be very unpopular and not followed that closely by a fair number of Ontarians,” said Peter Graefe, an associate professor of political science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

A mandate could be interpreted as a signal that it’s no longer safe to dine out, shop, or visit other businesses — many of which have already struggled through multiple prolonged lockdowns, Brock said. (CBC) 

 

Saturday November 5, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 5, 2022

Where is Pierre Poilievre as the facts come out about the ‘Freedom Convoy’?

One story about the convoy protest is not aging well in 13 days of public hearings into events that rattled through Canada last winter.

October 20, 2022

This is the story — still embraced by some Conservative MPs and strident fans of the demonstrators— that the so called “Freedom Convoy” was merely a giant party that would have ended if the participants got a fair hearing from Justin Trudeau’s government.

One OPP intelligence assessment on Feb. 14, as the Star has reported, warned that “potential for conflict or an act of violence is likely increasing as the Ottawa blockade continues.”

This same assessment also served notice that some protesters “appear to be largely unconcerned about potential legal consequences, as they view the state’s institutions as illegitimate and their own ‘fight for freedom’ as all important. Some view themselves as being at war with the Canadian government and everything it represents.”

August 26, 2022

This may be why Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre hasn’t been seen anywhere near these hearings, giving the kind of support to the convoy he did last winter. Ditto for former leader Andrew Scheer or any of the other MPs who cheered on the protest, even after it was deemed a full-fledged occupation of Canada’s capital in its earliest days.

It may still remain an open question on whether Canada was in the throes of a full-fledged emergency when Trudeau’s government invoked the declaration to end the protest on Feb. 14.

But the notion that this was just an innocent protest romp — a cold-weather Canada Day with trucks and hot tubs — is simply unsustainable in the face of all the testimony to date at the hearings.

June 30, 2022

As recently as June, Poilievre was also still insisting on social media “that Trudeau could have ended the trucker protest in one day, if he’d had the guts to listen to the people — and let them go back to their jobs.”

But police and intelligence officials, from all levels and despite their internal spats, have testified that negotiation of any type had its limits, especially because there was no one overall group controlling the protest or demonstrators. Demands, such as they were, ranged from ridiculous (oust the prime minister) to totally unrealistic (end all vaccine mandates immediately.)

Poilievre and the Conservatives haven’t been asked yet how they square their support for the convoy in light of all that has been put on the record so far — the steady, sustained refrain from police and security officials that this was not a good episode for law and order in Canada. How this fits with the Conservative brand as law-and-order advocates remains to be seen too.

February 8, 2022

Now, the all-fun-and-games narrative may re-emerge during the rest of this week when the commission moves from police witnesses to testimony from the convoy organizers.

Lawyers for those organizers, when they’ve had a chance to cross-examine the police officers and political types, so far appear to be making the case that the convoy was mainly a peaceful winter carnival, with a few bad apples here and there.

Judging from mail I’ve received recently about the hearings, some Canadians still fiercely cling to that view too. “We travelled from Hamilton to see for ourselves, and you know what? We saw fun, happy, peaceful people from all backgrounds and regions in Canada. A DJ, pancake breakfast, bouncy castle, fun for the kids and not one instance of the terror, violence and fear you described,” one letter writer told me last Friday.

Unfortunately, that view of the convoy just isn’t standing up in the face of all the evidence presented to date. It isn’t the “Liberal media” or government operatives saying the convoy was dangerous — it is police and security officials, from all levels.

A national emergency? Maybe, maybe not. But just a fun party? That story no longer stands up. (The Toronto Star) 

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 … These sped up clips are posted to encourage others to be creative, to take advantage of the technology many of us already have and to use it to produce satire. Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comforted.

Thursday October 20, 2022

October 20, 2022Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 20, 2022

Emergencies Act inquiry spells trouble for Trudeau, Poilievre

To say this will be a political and media circus is an understatement. The list of potential witnesses includes key members of cabinet, such as Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and, most notably, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Convoy organizers including Tamara Lich, Pat King and Chris Barber are also expected to be called.

May 13, 2022

The most important part of this hearing may not be the testimony of politicians or convoy supporters, however, but that of the RCMP and intelligence services. How did they assess the threat to public safety? What advice did they give the government, or not? How was that advice treated once received? Was it exaggerated or misinterpreted in any way?

Canadians need clarity on the real state of the threat. If the government overreached for political purposes, then the Liberals will pay the price. Expect the Conservatives to try to find every opportunity to bring the government down before its self-imposed deadline of 2025. The Commission’s report is due by next February — in time for a spring budget and a confidence vote in the House that could plunge Canada into an election.

If the Commission finds that the government was justified in invoking the act, however, the shoe is on the other foot. Expect Liberals to start running attack ads featuring a smiling Poilievre and fellow Conservatives ferrying coffee to protesters. Trudeau could then either engineer his defeat over the budget, or simply dissolve Parliament and go to the polls. And if he doesn’t pull the plug in the spring, there’s always next September, when convoy leaders go to court on a number of criminal charges, and the whole circus starts again.

August 26, 2022

At a time when inflation is rampant, interest rates are rising, and the Liberal government looks increasingly past its best before date, Trudeau doesn’t have many cards to play. The one card he has is that the Conservatives failed to stand for law and order — one of the pillars of their party, no less — at a time of national crisis. And he knows that the convoy does not sit well with “the public” its proponents claimed to represent.

Polling done at the time of the protests found that a majority did not support the convoy protests, including in Alberta where 61 per cent disagreed with the goals of the protest and 67 per cent disagreed with the means. And a Nanos poll taken six months later found that 70 per cent of Canadians still take a negative or somewhat negative view of politicians who openly supported the protests. Another recent Nanos poll found that support for the convoy was one of the “negative” attributes voters held about Poilievre, together with being “too right wing,” divisive, and “similar to Donald Trump.”

Will “Memories of the Freedom Convoy” be the secret sauce that Trudeau uses to win a fourth term in office? Will the Tories founder over ill-advised Tim Hortons runs? Time — and testimony — will tell. (The National Post)

 

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 …

 

Thursday June 30, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 30, 2022

Ottawa braced for Canada Day protest by ‘freedom convoy’ supporters

Members of anti-vax convoy have vowed to maintain a presence over the summer initially mingling with the annual celebrations

April 30, 2022

Residents of downtown Ottawa are bracing for a Canada Day unlike any other, after “freedom convoy” protesters vowed to return to Parliament Hill on 1 July, and maintain a presence over the remainder of the summer.

Every Canada Day, people congregate on Parliament Hill in Ottawa to watch musical performances and fireworks on the anniversary of Canadian confederation. This year, it will probably be difficult for police to distinguish between celebrators and convoy members – which is what protesters are banking on.

In late January, groups opposed to vaccine and mask mandates drove tractor-trailers and other large vehicles into Ottawa’s downtown core and set up camp. The ensuing three-week occupation of the capital city was a traumatic experience for many locals, who faced harassment, incessant noise and other unwelcome encounters, said Ariel Troster, a candidate for city council in Ottawa’s Somerset ward.

“Many people were driven from their homes, many were subjected to harassment, there were at least two cases where people defecated on people’s front steps. There were reports of apartment buildings where convoy people took over the laundry room and wouldn’t leave,” said Troster. “Not to mention the symbols of hatred, which were quite visible not just on the Hill but in the neighbourhoods.”

February 8, 2022

Group communications on Telegram, YouTube videos and other channels show convoy sympathisers believe in white replacement theory and other conspiracies. QAnon activists and propaganda were often seen at the wintertime occupation.

It ultimately cost the city $36m in policing costs and has resulted in a proposed class action lawsuit against protest organisers.

Now that Canada has dropped most mandates, the convoyers appear to be demanding Justin Trudeau’s resignation as prime minister. They have been gaining traction with Conservative politicians, recently having held a meeting with their “allies” in parliament.

The Ottawa police service (OPS) has pledged to foil any new attempt to occupy the city. The force is under immense pressure to get Canada Day right after its many failures to police the previous occupation.

June 30, 2021

At a police services board meeting on Monday, the interim OPS chief, Steve Bell, said a heightened police presence and road barricades limiting the number of vehicles permitted downtown may not be able to keep convoyers arriving on foot away, but it will prevent people from setting up camp.

“Canada Day’s a very important day to Canadians. It’s a day where we celebrate our country and all the good things in it. But people, when they come, they need to be lawful. And they need to be respectful of our community,” Bell said. (The Guardian)