GST – mackaycartoons

Wednesday March 29, 2006

March 29, 2006 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 29, 2006

PM given ultimatum

Opposition party leaders warned recently that they are willing to bring down Stephen Harper’s minority government if it does not change its course — particularly on the Tory promise to provide a child-care subsidy to parents — in the next two weeks.

In separate meetings with the Prime Minister, interim Liberal leader Bill Graham and the Bloc Quebecois’ Gilles Duceppe reminded the Conservative leader his party is outnumbered in the House of Commons and urged him to compromise on the government agenda as he drafts his Throne Speech.

The speech, which will be delivered by Governor-General Michaelle Jean on April 4, sets out the agenda for the coming parliamentary session and will be passed or defeated in a confidence vote that could spark another election.

Mr. Graham insisted the Liberals are willing to face the consequences of a confidence vote even though they won’t have a new leader until December and are still struggling with the fallout of the party’s defeat in January.

He laid out his party’s well-known concerns about the Tory agenda, including the fate of a $5-billion deal — signed by the Liberals last year — to improve living conditions for aboriginals, opposition to a cut to the Goods and Services Tax and Mr. Harper’s promise to pull out of child-care agreements that were also signed by the previous Liberal government (Source: National Post)

Thursday July 16, 1998

July 16, 1998 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 16, 1998

Mulroney deserves some sort of medal from Ottawa

This is an opinionated column about Brian Mulroney being named a Companion of the Order of Canada. The rank of Companion is the highest in the Order. It is the highest civilian award a Canadian can receive; normally, most of those so honoured first became a Member of the Order, or an Officer, before – if ever – they become a Companion. (An exception is the Governor-General who becomes a Companion on his or her appointment to Rideau Hall since, of course, the Governor-General is always the ranking member of the Order.)

Appointments to the Order are made on being designated by a committee whose members include the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Clerk of the Privy Council, other ranking civil servants and other distinguished Canadians. None of the committee is an elected or serving politician.

Anyone who is a Canadian citizen may be nominated for the Order of Canada by anyone, including politicians, friends, or even one’s mother. But the decision as to whom is admitted to the Order is entirely that of the committee. It is easier to become a Lord in the British House of Lords – peerages are often sold and are always created almost exclusively by elected politicians – than it is to be appointed to the Order of Canada.

I am an Officer of the Order and honoured to be so. I have never met anyone who has been appointed who was not pleased about it, or anyone who was selected for the honour but turned it down. I have no idea who nominated me, or why. Finally, there was some added personal satisfaction in my case because the appointment was made during the reign of a Liberal government (thereby confounding legions of Canadian paranoids) and it so disturbed my morning paper (national edition) that it printed the news of the appointment, and the list of appointees, in four-point type in the back of the paper, near the truss ads. (The citation, which accompanies the award, made mention of my career in journalism.)

Not all appointments to the Order meet with public favour. It is not and should not be a popularity contest. An irate letter appearing in my morning paper complained about the honour conferred upon Mulroney, quoting a phone-in poll taken by a Vancouver television station which showed 97 per cent of callers had expressed disapproval.

I suppose one should praise the impartiality of those who made the Mulroney appointment, surely being well aware of the controversy which would come in the wake of their decision. The prestigious members followed their best judgment as to the merits of the nomination. We can’t have it both ways: either the appointments are made by those who will proceed with wet fingers to the political winds – which would disgrace the Order of Canada – or do what they believe is appropriate and fitting. Which sort of committee do we want?

Still, it is disconcerting to have the Order of Canada become a source of such rancour and controversy. Friends of the former Prime Minister who organized and supported his nomination deserve better marks for their loyalty than their judgment. To begin with, it is a precedent, so far as I know, and not obviously a good one.

Is Pierre Trudeau a Companion of the Order? Is Joe Clark? Is the appointment of Jean Chretien to the Order only a matter of time?

Alas & Alack

The question is whether the appointment of retired prime ministers to the highest rank in the nation’s highest civilian system of awards is to become a perfunctory matter. If it is, then Kim Campbell is a shoo-in.

But if it’s not to be perfunctory, how then do we fairly do it? What has Trudeau done, or not done, that Mulroney did or didn’t do? We have not read Mulroney’s citation – perhaps it is in recognition of his nine years of service in the nation’s highest elective office, or his leadership in the free-trade debate. Maybe it’s for charitable work beyond his political career. But what, other than some concoction of some other exceptional national contribution – in which case, how to explain the instant elevation to the highest rank? No, the Companion’s rank flows from Mulroney’s high office as prime minister.

Prime ministers are gorged with honours that are the gift of a pluralistic free society. They collect honorary degrees from prestigious universities. Such occasions reek with conflicts of interest since the university has now become the orphan child of governments. Later on, in recognition of services rendered, our former leaders are named to the boards of the major corporations. Nothing wrong with that, in the natural synthesis of gratitude, utility and homage. But the Order of Canada wasn’t created to honour retired prime ministers or provincial premiers. In fact, the Order was formed largely to recognize Canadian citizens for reasons other than political.

But if there is a medal for distinguished former prime ministers (or premiers) who have taken unjustified public abuse and calculated vilification from a darkly malicious government, then Brian Mulroney should get it. Perhaps he now has, and it’s called the Order of Canada. If so, it is richly deserved. – Dalton Camp (Toronto Star, A15, 7/15/1998)

What’s going on?

Brian Mulroney design

Canada is symbolized as a giant figure lifting a smaller Brian Mulroney using a baseball bat labelled “Public Opinion.” Mulroney, looking dejected, asks Canada to target someone else, gesturing towards Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Further down two the bottom right of the frame, there’s Chrétien, depicted juggling four balls representing significant political challenges: GST, Free Trade, patronage, and cuts. The cartoon captures the political dynamics of the time, illustrating Mulroney’s weariness of public scrutiny and directing attention to the issues faced by Chrétien’s government. Added context referring to the medal dangling from Mulroney’s wrist is about Mulroney being named a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest civilian award. The column, written by Dalton Camp, the late long time writer best known for being the thorn in the side of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, criticizes the decision, citing public disapproval revealed in a poll and questioning whether such appointments should be based on public opinion or the committee’s judgment. The author expresses concern about the Order becoming a source of controversy, highlighting the need to distinguish between political winds and appropriate recognition. The mention of Mulroney’s Order of Canada appointment is seen as contentious, raising questions about the criteria for such honours, especially for retired prime ministers. The column ultimately acknowledges the complexities surrounding awards like the Order of Canada and suggests Mulroney might deserve recognition for enduring public criticism during his political career. (Graeme MacKay – March 2024)

Wednesday May 7, 1997

May 7, 1997 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 7, 1997

NDP’s ideas may be old, but they’re not stale

The last time I recall my morning paper giving heartfelt advice to Alexa McDonough, the NDP leader, was on the occasion of the federal by-election in Hamilton East. The vacancy in Hamilton East was what is nowadays called a “virtual” vacancy in that it was created by the virtual resignation of the sitting member, Sheila Copps, who is the ritual deputy prime minister, mock minister of t he environment, and the government’s let’s-pretend-friend of the CBC. She was resigning her seat in order to seek official atonement for being unable to persuade, as promised earlier, to eliminate the GST by increasing mothers’ allowances and ridding the Great Lakes of conger eels.

Attired in the most fashionable of sackcloth haut couture, the first female deputy prime minister in Canadian history fell weeping upon the shoulders of the good voters of Hamilton East, beseeching their forgiveness for nothing, after all, more than an excess of zeal. And it was midst this thick mist of Liberal lachrymation that my morning paper proposed that the NDP leader test her voter appeal; kamikaze pilots have had better advice from their chaplains. McDonough chose not to run, but filed instead for the seat in her hometown and native province on the occasion of the next grand assize.

All this came to mind when, after the NDP met in Regina to produce its election manifesto, my morning paper filed an editorial complaint under the heading of “New Democrats, old ideas.” This suggested to me that relations between the NDP leader and the editorial board had further deteriorated since her abandonment of Hamilton East. Once into the text, this indeed proved true.

To begin with, the NDP leader has expressed the opinion her party was unlikely to form the next government. It would, however, like to win enough seats in the coming election to be a presence in the next Parliament – anything from a dozen to 40 would be nice, any more than that unlikely but welcome. Unaccustomed to the lack of puffery, critics of McDonough have come unnerved, my morning paper amon g them: “The problem is as long as the New Democrats aspire to Opposition, the longer they will remain there. . . Opposition demands a different calculation and generates a different expectation than government. It allows a less ambitious, less rigorous view of the world, unchallenged by the discipline of power.”

None of this is so, even in the most rudimentary sense. It is like saying the Liberals, in 1993, promised to eliminate the GST, revise the free trade pact with the Great Neighbor, stabilize the funding for the CBC, and do an incredibly better job of creating jobs for Canadians of all ages, and all this implausible promising which all turned out to be impossible of delivery was made because the Liberals had “a less rigorous view of the world” and secretly hoped to remain in Opposition. The NDP might not be able to do half what they say they would do, if elected to govern, but they would likely try harder than the Liberals to keep their word.

Indeed, the rap on the NDP platform is that it promises to make good on some broken Liberal promises. Old stuff, according to my morning paper, and its boardroom constituents. What’s new – as compared to what’s old – in the world of ideas is “reduced unemployment benefits, however imperfect” and reduced “abuses.” This latter is a reference to reform of benefits for the poor, which has been a new idea for the privileged since the Poor Law Amendments of 1834.

Back then – 163 years ago – public assistance to the poor was made conditional on their being put to work. Strong argument was made, by the intellectual forbears of today’s neo-conservatives, against the provision of meals for hungry school children. In the words of one of the neo-cons of that day, “To feed a child is to give relief to its parents – to undermine their independence and self-reliance.”

The difference between the Bleak House of Charles Dickens and the Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris is that the latter has the endorsement of my morning paper, and three of the four principal political parties running candidates in the federal election to come. The Liberals, from fiscal 1996 to 1999, will cut almost $28 billion from the Canada Assistance Plan. As a result, the poor will be poorer still and their children at greater risk.

The NDP begins its campaign by admitting it is not likely to win it. This must be compared to the predictions of Preston Manning who has promised to win a majority of the seats, including a good handful in Quebec. Manning is my morning paper’s kind of politician, the familiar windbag. But he is as likely to become the next prime minister of Canada as, well, the Reverend Al Sharpton.

It seems to me the NDP’s value to the debate is that the party represents ideas about politics and government that have been absent since the electoral aberrations of 1993 and have been sorely missed. Some of the ideas are old, but as the Conservatives once believed, such was a good part of their virtue. Even so, for those who like their ideas old – as in cheese – some of those being retailed by other parties in today’s contest predate the Industrial Revolution and the invention of income tax. (F3, 4/20/1997, Toronto Star by Dalton Camp, political commentator and broadcaster.)

Thursday April 24, 1997

April 24, 1997 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 24, 1997

Deal with national unity now: Mulroney

Brian Mulroney, who twice failed to enshrine distinct society status for Quebec in the Constitution, is warning Canada’s political leaders that they must try again or risk the breakup of the country.And the former Tory prime minister says time is running out — a constitutional deal must be concluded before the next referendum on Quebec independence, likely within three years.

Mulroney issued the wakeup call in a speech to the Canadian Club yesterday, less than two weeks before Jean Chretien is expected to call a vote, in which national unity could become the sleeper issue, despite the best efforts of the prime minister, most premiers and other party leaders to downplay it.

Although he called on federalist politicians to put aside partisanship to resolve the constitutional question, Mulroney repeatedly took veiled shots at Chretien for failing to show leadership on the issue and for lulling Canadians into a false sense of security before and after the 1995 referendum.

“In the eyes of many, constitutional reform is a tar baby and nobody wants to touch it. To do so is both unfashionable and unpopular.”

Mulroney’s call to arms was greeted by a standing ovation from the almost 1,000 well-heeled guests at the nearly soldout luncheon, who included a host of former Mulroney cabinet ministers, other prominent Tories and the cream of Toronto’s business elite.

A number of Mulroney’s allies from past constitutional fights were present, including former Grit prime minister John Turner and ex-Ontario premiers — Tory Bill Davis, Liberal David Peterson and New Democrat Bob Rae.

While Mulroney’s barbs were aimed at Chretien, he may have inadvertently hurt his successor, Tory leader Jean Charest, as well as Tory premiers Ralph Klein and Mike Harris. Both have resisted any attempt to reopen constitutional talks. Harris, in particular, has called the distinct society concept outdated and unnecessary.

Charest personally supports distinct society status for Quebec, but has had trouble getting his candidates to agree. In deference to them, Charest’s platform avoids promising to entrench distinct society in the Constitution.

Several senior Tories said privately that Mulroney was not doing Charest any favours by making such a high-profile speech just before an election, reminding Canadians of his despised past. Mulroney insisted the timing of his speech was coincidental.

Ironically, given Mulroney’s primary target, Chretien’s Liberals are likely to make the strongest commitment of any party to distinct society. Party insiders say the Liberal platform, to be unveiled during the campaign, will specifically promise to enshrine distinct society in the Constitution.

Mulroney also slammed Chretien’s so-called Plan B — spelling out the consequences of and the rules for independence through such mechanisms as seeking a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of unilateral separation.

He said it only allows for an orderly transfer of powers.

The only way to unite the country, Mulroney asserted, is to get Quebec to finally sign the Constitution.

Mulroney did not have any advice as to how constitutional recognition of Quebec can be achieved without the legally required support of Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, whose premier, Lucien Bouchard, refuses to discuss constitutional issues. (Hamilton Spectator, A1, 4/15/1997)