Thursday April 7, 2016

April 6, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 7, 2016

Justin Trudeau dismisses worries over private fundraiser with attorney general

With his justice minister set to woo supporters at a $500-a-ticket event, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is voicing little appetite to end private political fundraisers.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould is the guest star at a Liberal fundraiser Thursday night hosted at the downtown Toronto law office of Torys LLP.

“Please join us for a private evening in support of the Liberal Party of Canada with the Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould,” reads the event notice on the Liberal website.

Having the justice minister appear at an event at one of the country’s top law firms creates the appearance of a potential conflict of interest, Conservative MP John Brassard said.

“You blur those lines between party business and government business,” he told the Star

“This is a party that is billing themselves as a champion of the middle class and you’ve got a $500-a-ticket fundraiser that’s happening in a big Bay St. law firm,” said Brassard, the MP for Barrie-Innisfil.

“I’ll let others draw their conclusions whether this is pay for access,” he said.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne this week said her ministers would no longer attend such private fundraisers after the Star revealed that provincial cabinet members were expected to raise upwards of $500,000 for party coffers. (Source: Toronto Star)

Wednesday March 30, 2016

March 29, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 30, 2016

Ontario, the Wild West of Political fundraising

Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals will rake in roughly $3 million in a single fundraiser Wednesday night.

Fun with Queen’s Park

At their sumptuous Heritage Dinner, “Victory Tables” are priced at $18,000 for corporate high-flyers, and the biggest donors are feted at a private cocktail reception by a grateful premier. But that’s only half the story of how the governing party raises big money.

In Ontario, the Wild West of fundraising, cabinet ministers are assigned secret targets as high as $500,000 a year, the Star has learned.

The unsavoury spectacle of Ontario’s politicians supplicating big business and big labour for events such as the Heritage Dinner is only a small piece of the fundraising puzzle glimpsed by the public. Beyond the showy hobnobbing, shadowy appeals by cabinet ministers for corporate money are the untold story at Queen’s Park.

Corporate and union contributions that Wynne persists in publicly defending create a demonstrable conflict of interest for cabinet ministers, which is why they were banned for federal parties in 2006, and are no longer legal in four other provinces.

And yet, according to multiple sources, top cabinet ministers at Queen’s Park are given financial targets that are typically in the range of $250,000 annually — double that amount in some cases. These quasi-quotas are never written down, conveyed instead by the Ontario Liberal Fund through confidential meetings and phone calls.

They are the price of admission to power, revealed here for the first time, and they are astonishingly high.

The two most marketable ministers are Charles Sousa, the minister of finance, and Eric Hoskins, who helms the province’s $52-billion health care budget. Both are expected to bring in as much as $500,000 a year, well-placed sources have confirmed.

Sousa’s control of the provincial treasury, tax policy and auto insurance makes him a prime target for lobbyists in the banking and insurance industries. But Hoskins is also in high demand because of his regulatory authority over drug companies and nursing home conglomerates.

That’s why Hoskins was the big draw for the Ontario Long Term Care Association at an event organized with the Liberal Fund last year, which offered “an unprecedented opportunity only for OLTCA members” where they could “discuss the sector with the minister, up close and personal.” (Source: Toronto Star)

Thursday March 24, 2016

March 23, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 24, 2016

Canada government tries to fend off critics worried about deficits

Canada’s government on Wednesday sought to deflect criticism that it had condemned the country to years of budget deficits, saying it could balance the books within five years if efforts to boost the economy succeed.

The ruling Liberals on Tuesday projected a C$29.4 billion ($22.3 billion) deficit for fiscal 2016-17, nearly three times larger than what they promised during last year’s election campaign.

The Liberals, who say the spending will help boost growth, gave no target date for returning to balance, with the budget still expected to show a deficit of C$14.3 billion in 2020-21.

Opposition politicians and influential media commentators said they feared Canada would face a long string of shortfalls of the kind it has not seen in two decades. This could cause problems for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“We’re hoping to increase the growth rates,” Trudeau told CBC Radio on Wednesday.

If the government can stimulate the economy, “we get to balance in the coming five years,” he said. “There is a track to that if we increase the growth in the economy.”

Trudeau faces no immediate political threat, since he only took power last November and is sitting high in the polls.

But the longer the deficits last, the greater the potential political risk. (Source: Reuters)

Thursday November 5, 2015

November 4, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 5, 2015

No more selfies, but way more drama

(James Mennie column) When you consider we’ve just come through a federal election campaign where the selfie proved itself a legitimate and highly effective political tool, it wasn’t surprising this weekend to see Justin Trudeau, the undisputed winner of that campaign, proving once again he is the most photogenic prime minister designate in recent Canadian history.

If you missed it, the Trudeau family’s trick or treat theme on Saturday night was rather eclectic, Mom and Dad going with a generic Star Wars look while the two older children opted for your standard Disney princess and sword toting bird ensemble while the youngest (the choice presumably made for him) was led from door to camera-crew-surrounded door as a Ninja Turtle.

Given that Trudeau had already tweeted a Happy Halloween message and family portrait to his 932,000 followers, the images flooded social media and the comments seemed for the most part to be positive, many of them expressing delight at the country’s being led by so down to earth and happy looking a family. And when you consider that even the crustiest, most hard bitten political analysts have acknowledged that Trudeau’s message of hope and positiveness pretty much cut Stephen Harper’s campaign to ribbons, it’s a pretty safe bet the optimistic glow engendered by the Liberal victory on Oct. 19 will continue beyond the swearing-in ceremony for Trudeau and his first cabinet scheduled for Wednesday.

That said, I’m not entirely sure that glow will still be around by, say, Christmas. And the reason I suspect Trudeau’s national honeymoon won’t survive 2015 is that the selfie taking, Star Wars loving, YouTube dancing, drama teaching, musketeer mustachioed candidate- the guy who actually won this thing – will, by sheer political necessity, cease to exist once the words “So help me God” have left his lips on Wednesday.

The transformation won’t be due to pressure from any opposition in the House of Commons. The Tories are far too busy trying to figure out how to re-invent themselves and disinfect their party of the political agenda they spent 11 weeks defending during the campaign to effectively hound the new government any time soon. And the NDP is (I suspect) still preoccupied doing a slow burn over how they managed to let a principled stand on a wedge politics issue like the niqab sink their shot at governing while the same stand had no effect whatsoever on the Trudeau Liberals.

No, in the end, I think that Trudeau the prime minister will say good-bye to Justin the candidate because, just like anyone else who’s trained in drama, Trudeau knows when it’s time to change roles. And it’s becoming clear that the role of Justin the candidate has served its purpose. (Continued: Montreal Gazette)

Letter to the Editor

Spec’s Trudeau endorsement seems suspect

RE: Editorial cartoon (Nov. 5)

I find this cartoon disrespectful and lacking in humour. Especially two days before our new government is sworn in.

Considerable effort is already underway to live up to the promise of getting 25,000 refugees in by the end of the year. Numerous groups across Canada are hard at work, our armed forces are looking at ways to implement the plan and other initiatives are under evaluation.

It might be mentioned that the actual number of Syrian refugees taken into Canada, after a few years, is shockingly less than 5,000.

We did not honour our initial promise to take in 1,300 by the end of 2014.

Just another reminder that the Spectator’s endorsement of Justin Trudeau continuous to seem suspect.

Richard Ring, Grimsby

Wednesday October 21, 2015

October 20, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 21, 2015

Justin Trudeau’s turn to face the weight of expectations

Stephen Harper is a goner, and humiliated, too, to the near-erotic ecstasy of Canada’s chattering classes, who loathed him with such intensity it’s hard to think of a comparison in modern politics.

Well, maybe Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s Darth Vader.

Suddenly, in Justin Trudeau we have a prime minister-designate who’s banging on about hope and trust and inclusiveness and believing in yourself and being better and listening to everyone and diversity and all sorts of other happy thoughts. He even threw in tolerance for hijabs.

2011-2015

Last week, Harper tried to say this wasn’t about him, but it was. All those Conservative candidates he muzzled and controlled are probably wishing they’d grown some spine and stood up to those PMO staffers who’ve been ordering them around for years.

The smile that spread across the lips of the Canadian elites during the last week of this election, when Harper was reduced to posing with Rob Ford and his brother in an attempt to shore up what amounts to the Canadian Tea Party vote, was almost wolfish.

It won’t be hard for Trudeau to keep his most prominent promise — to run a deficit for a few years. Spending more than you earn is always easy. He may already be inheriting a deficit.

But he’s taking power at a time of tremendous transformation. A housing correction may be coming. Younger generations are struggling with debt.

At the same time, entire cohorts of baby boomers are retiring. Try to trim their entitlements, which will almost certainly be necessary, and see what happens.

Or try to force some competition into the Canadian banking sector. Or the almost closed-shop telecommunications sector. Or try to cut red tape at the border, and encourage true free trade with the Americans.

Trudeau will need revenue to fulfill his agenda, but even Liberals won’t be keen on restoring the taxes Stephen Harper cut. They may not even really want a larger federal government.

Our new prime minister might say he’s going to sit down and negotiate with Canada’s premiers “with deep respect,” but wait until he gets a load of what’s involved with that. His father knew.

What Trudeau can do, of course, is change the tone. That costs nothing, and a lot of Canadians want it to happen.

He can make Canada’s positions abroad more nuanced, less absolutist and replace Canada’s swagger at the UN with some actual diplomacy.

He can walk back the talk about how terrorists threaten us daily in our very homes, and perhaps speak honestly about the effectiveness of our combat mission in Iraq and Syria.

He may end up joining the rest of the Western world in supporting the nuclear deal with Iran, and perhaps even recognize that there are two sides to the question of Israel and the Palestinians.

But sweeping reversals of Stephen Harper’s legacy? It’s been almost a decade, and Harper changed the status quo. Even Trudeau himself seems to understand that. (Continued: CBC News)