Jagmeet Singh

Wednesday November 20, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 20, 2019

Why affordability is (was) dominating Canada’s election campaign

(Article published 6 weeks before editorial cartoon was printed)

September 19, 2019

Canada’s political party leaders are making affordability the central talking point of their election campaigns, rolling out targeted measures to alleviate the financial strain besetting voters.

Though broad economic data show the nation’s economy is humming along, Canadians are still feeling tight on cash. The worsening global outlook and unprecedented policy uncertainty are adding to the apprehension.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, along with the leaders of smaller parties are seeking to parlay that stress into votes as the clock winds down on the Oct. 21 election, by promising a slew of tax cuts and other measures to make life more affordable.

“Politicians are putting their finger on something, some form of financial anxiety about rising costs, or concerns about future rising costs, or future standard of living,” said Jennifer Robson, associate professor of political management at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Here’s why consumers are feeling pinched.

It’s old news that owning a home in Canada’s biggest cities has become an almost impossible goal for much of the middle class. Skyrocketing prices in recent years pushed potential buyers to the sidelines. New mortgage lending rules, so-called stress tests introduced by federal regulators in 2017, put ownership even further out of reach for many.

September 12, 2019

Toronto and Vancouver are easily Canada’s two main cities where residents are struggling to find an affordable place to live. The average selling price for a single-family home in Vancouver was $1.51 million in September, and $1.1 million in Toronto. Renting in those cities is no easy feat, either, as low vacancy rates have pushed up prices for accommodation.

Elevated real estate prices are the main driver of the country’s record household debt ratios, now the highest in the Group of Seven. Buyers took out larger and larger mortgages as the housing market heated up, even as incomes failed to keep pace. As a result, household savings rates are hovering near the lowest in decades, and the debt service ratio — which measures the share of disposable income paid toward principal and interest — climbed to a record in the second quarter.

While overall price inflation in Canada has been relatively benign, shoppers have experienced sticker shock on many basics. Prices for fruits and vegetables jumped as much as 60 per cent in the past decade, according to Statistics Canada. Child-care and tuition costs rose upwards of 35 per cent, and public transit prices ballooned by 50 per cent.

To top it all off, wages after accounting for inflation have remained relatively flat, even as costs for rent and basic goods increased. A puzzle for many economists and policy-makers is why unemployment is hovering near record lows, yet incomes are struggling to pick up. (Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Thursday November 7, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 7, 2019

NDP lost a lot, but Jagmeet Singh risks losing more

January 7, 2019

Justin Trudeau will now have to find dance partners from the NDP and/or the Greens to govern. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh ran a strong campaign. His line during the English language debate that voters did not have to choose between “Mr. Delay” (Trudeau) or “Mr. Deny” (Scheer) was the campaign’s most memorable zinger.

But Liberal alarmism over the prospects of NDP votes leading to a Scheer government appears to have spooked enough would-be New Democrat voters to contain any orange waves.

Singh lost all but one of his 14 Quebec MPs, the result of ground ceded in the lacklustre first 18 months of his leadership.

The compensation, if it is one, is the influence he may wield over the Liberals.

September 5, 2019

But a glance at the history books should be enough to convince Singh to tread lightly when it comes to dealing with the Grits. One of his predecessors, David Lewis, propped up Pierre Trudeau’s government after the latter won a plurality of just two seats in 1972. By the time Lewis decided to bring down Trudeau’s government  in 1974, he was in disrepute with voters, having received all of the blame and none of the credit for the preceding two years in power. In the ensuing election, the NDP lost half its parliamentary caucus.

The mercy is that no-one wants, or can afford, another election. MPs first elected in 2015 will look covetously towards pensions that will become vested after six years. Members from all sides of the House may be less enthusiastic to risk rich retirement plans.

The configuration of the new House of Commons suggests we may be about to encounter that most rare of beasts — a strong, stable, minority government. – John Ivison (National Post) 

 

Wednesday October 23, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 23, 2019

Justin Trudeau’s Anemic Victory

Sure, he eked out a “win.” But it shouldn’t have even been a fight.

This should not have been a competitive election.

Justin Trudeau 2015

When Justin Trudeau won a healthy majority government in 2015, it seemed as if destiny itself had cleared the way for the scrappy scion of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to dominate Canadian politics for years to come. Neither the Conservative Party nor the New Democratic Party nor the Green Party had any leader in the hopper who seemed able to compete with the Kennedy-esque Mr. Trudeau, who scored photo shoots in Vogue and his own comic book cover. He should have been untouchable for an election or two, at least.

And yet on Monday, Mr. Trudeau’s government was reduced to a minority. His party lost the popular vote to the Conservatives. Canada’s electoral map is now disturbingly divided between the Liberal-dominated east of the country, and the Conservative-dominated west. Mr. Trudeau will likely depend on the support of the other parties to keep his hold on power.

Justin Trudeau’s First Term

What happened to Canada’s progressive idol? The short answer is that Mr. Trudeau came to power when Canadian politics was dominated by issues like deficit spending, electoral reform and whether a local Conservative candidate peed in a cup on television. At the time, he presented a happy contrast to incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who seemed stodgy, cynical and petty by comparison. Mr. Trudeau’s campaign promised “sunny ways” and at a time when the future looked rosy for Canada, voters responded warmly to the change of tone.

But the world has grown much scarier and more uncertain since the 2015 election. And Mr. Trudeau has done little to convince voters that he is the right man to manage it.

November 12, 2015

Take, for example, the refugee crisis. Mr. Trudeau won in part in 2015 after striking a compassionate stance on the global crisis in the wake of the death of Alan Kurdi, the little refugee boy whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey, inspiring horror and outrage around the world.

It was a moment for Mr. Trudeau to distinguish himself. Canada has always seen itself as welcoming toward refugees, and the Liberal Party responded by promising Canada would take in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year. But Canada’s once-easy consensus on matters of asylum and immigration has been shaken over the past four years. Canadian openness was sorely tested shortly after Mr. Trudeau’s election by an influx of asylum seekers using loopholes to enter the country at unofficial border crossings. Perhaps as a result, reporting about asylum seekers; far-right groups have even taken to protesting near the border. 

March 9, 2016

Mr. Trudeau was also elected in 2015, just as President Barack Obama was in the twilight of his term. Relations between Canada and the United States seemed warm. The relationship between the two leaders was even described as a “bromance” (Mr. Obama endorsed Mr. Trudeau via Twitter in the closing days of this campaign.)

The warm feelings did not last long. In 2016 came the election of Donald Trump. Whatever Mr. Trump’s election says about the state of the liberal world order, or of America’s political and economic insecurities, none of it has been particularly comforting for your friendly neighbors to the north.

November 12, 2016

Mr. Trump broke with recent tradition by visiting other countries ahead of Canada early in his term. Mr. Trudeau went from being one-half of a bromance to the guy whose firm handshake became a matter of international scrutiny. A relationship that once seemed unshakable now seems vulnerable to partisan whim.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau might be considered political foils — except one man represents a global superpower and a country ten times Canada’s size. Down south, the revised North American trade agreement  may be a petty partisan affair that scores a few laugh lines on the stump; up here, that trade deal was a matter of obsession on national political talk shows for months.

April 11, 2018

Canadian domestic politics have also taken an ugly turn. The drop in oil and gas prices, amid difficulty building pipelines, has resulted in depressed economies in the western provinces, raising the specter of an angry new separatist movement in Alberta. Paradoxically, Mr. Trudeau’s attempt to head off that movement by purchasing the Trans Mountain pipeline was seen as a betrayal by progressive and Indigenous communities who believed Mr. Trudeau would be a champion of climate change.

All of these incidents have shaken Canadian’s faith in our alliances, our economy and ourselves. Though Canada’s economy is strong, according to monthly polls conducted by the polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs, more than half the country believes a recession is imminent. The firm’s barometer of consumer sentiment and sociopolitical stability has registered a steady decline since the end of 2016.

June 22, 2018

Just a few years ago, Mr. Trudeau’s charisma and progressive bona fides were everything Canada wanted to say about itself to the world. But symbolism and optimism alone feel thin when the risks to your institutions and economies grow material.

In Mr. Trudeau, we have a leader whose major legislative achievements include legalizing marijuana and putting in place a carbon tax. His greatest hits in power include gallivanting across India in an outfit so outlandish he could have served as a cast member in a Disney remake.

February 9, 2019

He demonstrated the hollowness of his progressive virtues during what became known as the SNC-Lavalin scandal, in which he allegedly sidelined Canada’s first Indigenous attorney general because she refused to subvert the independence of her office by granting a politically well-connected engineering firm a pass on corruption charges. The episode betrayed a government that is just as centralized, controlling and cynical as the one it replaced.

Time magazine’s discovery and publication of photographs depicting Mr. Trudeau in painted brownface and wearing a garish Aladdin costume was the perfect encapsulation of the man’s faults.

September 20, 2019

No one seriously believes that Mr. Trudeau is or was a racist — at least not in a way that intends active malice. Rather, this prime minister, who has apparently lost track of how many times he darkened his skin for fun, is a blinkered frat boy. A child prince who, in the past, has sometimes “been more enthusiastic about costumes than is sometimes appropriate.”

The Liberals themselves tried to capitalize on a growing sense of insecurity among Canadians during the election by portraying the Conservatives as racist Trump-lite populists. However bad this tactic made the Conservatives look, it did as much to highlight the Liberals’ key weakness — that if Canada is facing some kind of ascendant far-right threat, this lightweight who wore blackface may not be the one best equipped to meet it.

Given the domestic and global factors that influenced this election, no doubt many Liberals will see securing a minority government as a success. This is the victory of low expectations. Mr. Trudeau will now struggle to pass budgets and maintain confidence in the House of Commons in a divided country.

The only factor saving Mr. Trudeau from a disastrous outcome on Monday was that none of the other parties convinced the electorate that they were better equipped to deal with the future that lies ahead. That was their failure. But Canadians should expect to be back at the ballot box before too long. And if you were a Canadian voter suddenly troubled by such uncertainty, honestly, is this the guy you would pick again? – Jen Gerson (Source: New York Times) 

Saturday October 19, 2019

October 19, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday October 19, 2019

How the 2019 Federal Election Became a Vote for Nothing

March 12, 2019

The first drinking straw known to archeology was reusable. True story. It is a glamorous gold thing encrusted in blue lapis lazuli, buried in the tomb of a Sumerian queen at Ur in modern Iraq, the reputed birthplace of the patriarch Abraham, but long before his time.

Three millennia later, Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May was having a drink from a disposable cup when she was photographed. This was a problem for her 2019 election campaign. To solve it, her party digitally altered the picture to show instead a reusable cup with a metal straw. This indicated May’s ideological rejection of plastic straws, which are no longer a symbol of royal affluence, as in ancient Sumer, but an environmental menace as numerous as the stars in the sky, like Abraham’s descendants. Caught out by a reporter, the party lied about it, and was caught out again.

August 30, 2019

That may seem like nothing to get worked up over, but this was an election where nothing was the whole point.

For a few days, the Greens’ ridiculous self-own and own-goal of a pseudo-scandal was the temporary focus of a general election campaign that never actually found a permanent one. And not for lack of trying.

It could have been otherwise. In Canada, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2019, was a flurry of high-spirited national activity, quite unlike the solemn day of remembrance and reflection it was in America.

Andrew Scheer, the former Speaker of the House of Commons about to fight his first campaign as Conservative leader, had his morning flight from Ottawa diverted by nasty weather to Quebec City, then carried on to Trois-Rivières, Que., by bus.

September 5, 2019

Jagmeet Singh of the NDP was in London, Ont., where he once studied undergrad biology, and where on this day he observed to his supporters that his Liberal rival Justin Trudeau “is not who he pretends to be.” It was a run of the mill political dig from an underdog about campaign trail idealism and the realities of governance, but it was soon to become a lot more poignant.

For his part, Trudeau had official duties as prime minister in Ottawa, walking up the lane to Rideau Hall to advise Governor General Julie Payette to dissolve Parliament, where his Liberal Party then held a 177-seat majority, compared to 95 Conservative, 39 NDP, and a few others.

Holding hands with his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, he was trying his best to evoke optimistic memories of his cabinet swearing-in day at this same spot all those years ago, when he so wryly told everyone that half his ministers were women because it was 2015.

Not anymore. The National Post’s John Ivison noted that Trudeau’s eyes on this final day of Canada’s 42nd Parliament “radiate broken glass.”

August 20, 2019

At the beginning, the campaign seemed to have a clear focus. Trudeau was saddled with an Ethics Commissioner ruling that his campaign of pressure on former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to cut a deal on corruption charges with SNC-Lavalin was improper. This affair, which led her to resign from cabinet after Trudeau demoted her in a shuffle, tarnished his image with constituencies she represented, both women and Indigenous people.

Contrary to his hair-trigger apology instinct for national crimes, however, Trudeau had been uncharacteristically stubborn in accepting anything resembling blame. He claimed to accept responsibility, but did not apologize, nor admit he did anything wrong. Quite the opposite. His chief of staff Gerald Butts had resigned for his central role in the affair, and to protect Trudeau. As the campaign started, though, Butts was back in the hot seat, running the show.

It was the first clue that, in the campaign of 2019, nothing mattered. Things briefly seemed to matter, until they did not. People would talk about them until the next thing came along, and then that too would fade to irrelevance.

October 18, 2019

By the end, the whole thing would have a carnival feel, all flashing lights and calliope music, with well-dressed grifters barking for attention in what was preposterously promoted as a leaders’ debate. The earnest curiosity of voters about platforms and issues melted away like soft-serve ice cream.

The campaign was at times such a fun-house freak show that the Rhinoceros Party found another guy called Maxime Bernier to run against Maxime Bernier, leader of the upstart alt-right People’s Party of Canada.

It was not that people did not care about political issues, like health care or the economy. It was just that the parties offered so many other things to not care about instead. (Continued: National Post) 

 

Friday October 18, 2019

October 18, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 18, 2019

Is the 2019 election Canada’s ‘nastiest’ ever? Not by a long shot

Canada’s electoral history has never been pretty.

Sir John A. Macdonald

In the years immediately before and after Confederation — when votes were carried out by voice at public meetings — the system was crooked by design. The parties frequently purchased loyalties with cash, or with gifts of food, booze or household staples. And they made certain they were getting what they paid for by keeping lists of the bribes and crossing off names.

The necessary funds came from party backers and self-interested corporate titans — people like railway baron Sir Hugh Allan, who was at the centre of the Pacific Scandal that led to the fall of Sir John A. Macdonald’s government in 1873.

“Elections cannot be carried without money,” fumed John H. Cameron, the Conservative MP for Peel, as the House of Commons debated secret ballots in the scandal’s aftermath. “Under an open system of voting, you can readily ascertain whether the voter has deceived you. Under vote by ballot, an elector may take your money and vote as he likes without detection.”

Sir Robert Borden

The abuses continued even after open voting ended. Clergy regularly threatened hellfire from the pulpits, and businesses promised instant unemployment, should parishioners or employees break ranks and vote for the wrong party. Electoral lists were drawn up by government appointees who struck off opposition supporters and retained the names of residents who had moved or died — so that ballot boxes could be stuffed if required.

How bad was it back then? According to Elections Canada, between 1874 and 1896 the courts overturned the results in 134 ridings on the grounds that one party or the other had committed vote fraud.

Changes to the laws on elections and political donations improved the situation. But that didn’t result in campaigns becoming more genteel or evidence-based.

Matthew Hayday, a professor of Canadian history at the University of Guelph, cites a few prime examples of gutter politics. In the 1917 election, Robert Borden’s Unionist government manipulated voting rules, painted anti-conscription Quebecers as traitors and openly accused Liberal Leader Wilfrid Laurier of being in the corner of the German Kaiser.

Kim Campbell

In the 1993 campaign, Kim Campbell’s Conservatives aired their infamous “Think Twice” commercials featuring close-ups of Jean Chrétien’s face — ads that many perceived as mocking the Liberal leader’s partial facial paralysis.

“To me, those campaigns were far worse than anything we’ve seen in this election,” said Hayday.

Richard Johnston is the Canada Research Chair in Public Opinion, Elections and Representation at the University of British Columbia. He said he thinks that this campaign has been “more vituperative” that many recent elections — but negative politics has been the norm in Canada for a long time.

He pointed to the June 1945 federal and Ontario provincial elections, which saw Conservative backers portraying the left wing Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) — the forerunner of the NDP — as a party of “foreign” ideas, and published pamphlets featuring anti-Semitic caricatures of David Lewis, the CCF’s national secretary.

Paul Martin Jr.

“That would probably be the true low point in Canadian history,” said Johnston.

In fact, upbeat and optimistic campaigns like Jack Layton’s 2011 run, or Justin Trudeau’s 2015 offer of “sunny ways”, are the exceptions in Canadian politics — not the rule.

Paul Martin’s Liberals clung to power in 2004 by going ultra-negative against Stephen Harper’s Tories. The 2011 Conservative win was sullied by the ‘Robocall’ scandal — which saw voters directed to the wrong polling places — and by the attempted ‘swiftboating’ of Jack Layton with a leaked story about an old massage parlour raid.

And it’s worth noting that self-fulfilling prophecies seem to be at play this time around. A year ago, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and Trudeau both warned that the 2019 election would be dirty and perhaps “the nastiest one yet.”

To be sure, this campaign has been filled with pointed personal criticism, and things like Trudeau’s blackface scandal and the controversy over Scheer’s dual citizenship have often overshadowed the platforms.

And it’s fair to say that, as the vote approaches, all the parties seem to be doing their best to stoke public fears about their opponents with talk of “secret” plans about hard drugs or abortion, or through third party attack ads and selectively-edited campaign literature.

October 16, 2019

“We are living in a more polarized political climate in Canada,” said Johnston, “and nobody’s hands are clean.”

It’s worth remembering at this point that, just six months ago, the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP all signed on to a global “election integrity” pledge through which they vowed to crack down on the use of social media bots and avoid the dissemination of “falsified, fabricated” disinformation.

The Verdict: False. The 2019 campaign has featured plenty of ugliness, but it is hardly ranks among the “nastiest, dirtiest” elections in Canadian history. Still, as the clock ticks down, there might be new depths to be plumbed. (CBC News)