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Hamilton East

February 1, 2007

February 1, 2007 by Graeme MacKay

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HAMILTON EAST
Everytime I draw a cartoon I like to think of it as becoming part of a chronology of particular stories. On my website you’ll find related cartoons beneath each daily illustration of certain current events. Today’s cartoon is the first in over a year that I’ve drawn on the intriguing political situation in Hamilton East, the federal riding of John Munro, Sheila Copps, and Toni Valeri. Here you’ll find links to cartoons on the Hamilton East political story.
In 2002 things could not have better for Liberals in the riding of Hamilton East. The federal and provincial Parliamentarians were firmly in place and a new influencial councillor was on the rise.

Then Jean Chretien announced he was stepping down. The Liberal Party foundation in Hamilton East would begin to crumble. Indeed, throughout the city, fortunes for Liberals would completely change over the next 4 years.
Sheila Copps wanted to become Liberal leader of Canada.

After going down to defeat by Paul Martin at the 2003 Liberal leadership convention, Sheila Copps turned down the offer of a patronage appointment from Martin and announced that she intended to remain in the House of Commons. Many suspect that Martin wanted to appoint Copps as Canada’s ambassador to France or UNESCO. Tony Valeri and Stan Keyes, both Hamilton area MP’s were elevated to cabinet, while Copps was demoted to the backbenches.

Riding redistribution placed Hamilton East MP Copps in a serious nomination battle with another Liberal MP, Tony Valeri from Stoney Creek Glanbrook.

In a December interview Copps complained that Prime Minister Paul Martin was trying to drive her, other women and other Martin opponents out of the Liberal caucus. On January 14, 2004, she suggested that she could campaign for the New Democratic Party in the upcoming election if Valeri won the Liberal nomination. Copps later retracted this threat.

The once rock solid Liberal foundation in the Hamilton area ridings was showing great wear and tear by this point. John Bryden, the MP from the western part of the city had crossed the floor to join the Conservative Party. Beth Phinney, from Hamilton Mountain, was offering her seat to Sheila Copps. Dominic Agostino, the popular Liberal MPP from Hamilton East would throw his support to Valeri. Area city councillors, such as Sam Merulla, would not know who to support.

March 6, 2004 was the date of the Hamilton East–Stoney Creek Liberal party nomination meeting, and Valeri defeated Copps by 2,802 votes to 2,491. Copps alleged improprieties in the nomination process and the conduct of the vote, and called on various authorities to investigate. No evidence was found to substantiate Copps’ allegations.

On the Provincial scene in Hamilton East the popular Liberal MPP, Dominic Agostino suddenly died on March 24, 2004, of liver cancer, to the surprise of many. Some city councillors tried seize upon the opportunity to consider a successor. But in a by-election to fill his legislative seat held on May 13, 2004, Dominic’s brother Ralph Agostino, a Catholic separate school board trustee, failed to retain the Hamilton East seat for the Liberal Party, falling far behind city councillor and NDP candidate Andrea Horwath. During the campaign, Councillor Sam Merulla, was showing signs of abandoning the Liberals for the NDP.

Following a near loss in the June 2004 federal election Valeri was appointed to the sensitive position of Government House Leader in Paul Martin’s minority government. He changed his hair style during this time.

Meanwhile, Stan Keyes who ran as Liberal candidate for the redistributed riding of Hamilton Centre, was defeated by the NDP candidate David Christopherson, a former provincial cabinet minister. The former amateur sports minister would have to watch the summer Athen’s Olympics from his livingroom. (Keyes was later given a patronage appointment by Martin as consul general to Boston. Then, after being demoted by Stephen Harper, went on to become President of The Canadian Payday Loan Association.)

Not much would happen in Hamilton Liberal party politics during the minority government of Paul Martin. Sheila Copps would release her second autobiography, Worth Fighting For, in October 2004, baselessly alleging that Martin had put a pledge in his 1995 budget to rescind the “outdated” Canada Health Act. Beth Phinney would resign her seat.

In the Christmas election of 2006, the Hamilton Spectator reported that Toni Valeri had purchased a property for $225,000 only to later sell it to a Liberal supporter for $500,000 a few months later. While Valeri insisted that the Ethics Commissioner had cleared the transaction, lingering doubts about the sale remained. Valeri was narrowly defeated by a margin of less than 500 votes by the New Democratic Party candidate Wayne Marston. Beth Phinney’s old seat would go to the NDP’s Chris Charlton, Dundas-Ancaster-Etc would become Tory under David Sweet, and Stan Keyes old riding would continue to be represented by David Christopherson of the NDP. No Liberals would be left standing in Hamilton after the 2006 federal election.
By February 2007, with another federal election set to be announced at anytime, Liberals in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek remain in disarray.
More: The Sheila Copps Gallery

Posted in: Hamilton Tagged: Andrea Horwath, Beth Phinney, Chris Charlton, commentary, David Christopherson, David Sweet, Dominic Agostino, Hamilton East, Jean Chretien, John Bryden, John Munro, Liberal Party of Canada, Paul Martin Jr., Ralph Agostino, Sam Merulla, Sheila Copps, Stan Keyes, Toni Valeri, Wayne Marston

Thursday October 3, 2002

October 3, 2002 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Thursday October 3, 2002 The Royal Itinerary of the Hon. S. Copps Tickets for Queen Elizabeth's royal touchdown in Hamilton next week are gone. Half an hour after the Copps Coliseum box office opened yesterday morning, they were taping the signs on the doors. "General public tickets no longer available for Queen's visit." A lineup of about 150 people was waiting for the box office to open at 10 a.m. Limited to four tickets each, they scooped up the first 600, and the remaining 400 available ducats were gone shortly after. Although Heritage Minister Sheila Copps's office estimated "at least 6,000" seats would be available for the Oct. 10 event, box office manager Dianne Zemba said she was limited to "a bit more than 1,000 tickets," all in the upper bowl of the 17,500-seat arena. Copps's advisor, Terry Whitehead, said he was surprised only 1,000 seats were available. "My first blush when I talked to you (earlier in the morning) was 6,000, that's what my expectations were personally. Obviously I was wrong." Seating for the event is expected to be about 16,000. The sole purpose of the visit is the presentation of new colours to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the Hamilton reserve regiment of which the Queen is the colonel-in-chief. The Argylls were allotted 6,400 seats, invited elementary school children and seniors get 6,000, and multicultural groups and VIPs take 1,000, with the remainder distributed by Heritage Canada. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) Hamilton, Sheila Copps, Royal visit, Liberal, Hamilton East, Dominic Agostino, Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth II, Prince Phillip, royalty

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 3, 2002

The Royal Itinerary of the Hon. S. Copps

Tickets for Queen Elizabeth’s royal touchdown in Hamilton next week are gone. Half an hour after the Copps Coliseum box office opened yesterday morning, they were taping the signs on the doors. “General public tickets no longer available for Queen’s visit.”

British Monarchy Merch

A lineup of about 150 people was waiting for the box office to open at 10 a.m. Limited to four tickets each, they scooped up the first 600, and the remaining 400 available ducats were gone shortly after.

Although Heritage Minister Sheila Copps’s office estimated “at least 6,000” seats would be available for the Oct. 10 event, box office manager Dianne Zemba said she was limited to “a bit more than 1,000 tickets,” all in the upper bowl of the 17,500-seat arena.

Copps’s advisor, Terry Whitehead, said he was surprised only 1,000 seats were available. “My first blush when I talked to you (earlier in the morning) was 6,000, that’s what my expectations were personally. Obviously I was wrong.”

Seating for the event is expected to be about 16,000. The sole purpose of the visit is the presentation of new colours to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the Hamilton reserve regiment of which the Queen is the colonel-in-chief. The Argylls were allotted 6,400 seats, invited elementary school children and seniors get 6,000, and multicultural groups and VIPs take 1,000, with the remainder distributed by Heritage Canada. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Hamilton, Sheila Copps, Royal visit, Liberal, Hamilton East, Dominic Agostino, Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth II, Prince Phillip, royalty

Posted in: Hamilton Tagged: Dominic Agostino, Elizabeth II, Hamilton, Hamilton East, Liberal, Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth, Royal visit, royalty, Sheila Copps

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.)

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: campaign, Canada, election, federal, GST, Hamilton East, mouth, promise, Sheila Copps, zipper

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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