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Tuesday July 17, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday July 17, 2018

Premiers’ much-hyped internal trade deal hasn’t amounted to much

June 28, 2018

On the day they released the Canadian Free Trade Agreement in 2017, all the provincial and territorial trade ministers were given a symbolic pair of golden scissors to remind them to start cutting interprovincial trade barriers.

The trouble is, they aren’t using them.

The scissors were gifts from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a relentless advocacy group for whom harmonizing — and ideally, cutting — government regulations is a mantra.

Its president and CEO, Dan Kelly, said he’s seen his snippy trophies proudly displayed in ministers’ offices across Canada. But one year after the trade deal took effect on Canada’s 150th birthday, July 1, 2017, has any tangible progress been made?

Well …

August 5, 2010

“It’s slow-going,” he said. The process lacks concrete timelines. He’s still waiting for the interprovincial trade committee to set priorities, let alone roll back barriers.

“I don’t think there’s anything that has changed, other than a commitment to start some work,” he said, laughing a bit when asked to identify which specific irritants have been settled between provinces in the deal’s first year of operations.

It’s easier to point to reasons things stalled.

There’s the pipeline debate in British Columbia and Alberta’s threat to retaliate, for starters, which risks “undermining the whole spirit of this agreement,” Kelly said. (Saskatchewan, another energy exporter, jumped into this fight too.)

It’s also hard to maintain momentum across 13 governments. During its time as chair of Canada’s internal trade committee, Ontario’s Liberal government (and specifically minister Brad Duguid) was a driving force in finalizing CFTA, which was announced at the premiers conference in Yukon in 2016 but not actually unveiled until the following spring in Toronto.

The chair has changed hands twice since then. First it swung to New Brunswick — home of the much-discussed Comeau case, in which that province’s right to stop its citizens from stocking their personal beer fridges across a provincial boundary was upheld by the Supreme Court. Now it’s Quebec’s turn.

Ontario’s recent change of government also delayed the distribution of a working group report on alcoholic beverages that was due by July 1 (more on that later). (Continued: CBC) 

 

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Wednesday June 13, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 13, 2018

Trump says he’ll punish ‘the people of Canada’ because of Trudeau’s news conference

Escalating his attack on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Donald Trump is now pledging to punish “the people of Canada” economically because of the post-G7 news conference in which Trudeau criticized Trump’s tariffs.

“That’s going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada. He learned. You can’t do that. You can’t do that,” Trump said Tuesday in Singapore after meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Trump repeated the vague threat in an interview with ABC.

“I actually like Justin, you know, I think he’s good, I like him, but he shouldn’t have done that. That was a mistake. That’s going to cost him a lot of money,” Trump said.

Canadian leaders responded with restraint. Trudeau briefly addressed the latest barb on his way into Tuesday morning’s cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill.

“Obviously we support the continuing efforts by the president on North Korea. We look forward to looking at the details of the agreement. On his comments, as I said, I’m going to stay focused on defending jobs for Canadians and supporting Canadian interests,” Trudeau said.

This is the first time Trump has threatened to take out his frustration with Trudeau on the Canadian people.

The threat comes as the two countries attempt to negotiate a new North American Free Trade Agreement and as Trudeau both seeks an exemption from Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs and attempts to avoid the automotive tariffs Trump is now floating.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Tuesday that the government is “prepared for any eventuality” on the possibility of auto tariffs, and that she and Trudeau raised the issue with Trump and other American officials during last weekend’s G7 summit in Quebec. She pointed to Canada’s planned response to the steel and aluminum tariffs — responding duties on a range of U.S. imports worth more than $16 billion — as evidence the government is prepared to be “absolutely resolute” in defending the national interest as trade talks continue.

“From day one, we have said that we expected moments of drama and that we would… keep calm and carry on throughout those moments of drama,” Freeland said. (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

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Saturday December 16, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday December 16, 2017

Exclusively rural Flamborough ward is coming apart

Farmers may feed cities but based on the Ontario Municipal Board’s ward boundary ruling it looks like cities politically devour farmers.

April 26, 2012

The most lamentable change in the board’s redrawing of Hamilton’s electoral map is the elimination of the current Ward 14 in west Flamborough, effectively shutting down the one voice around the city council horseshoe which speaks exclusively for rural residents.

Under the plan, the ward will be wiped out and partitioned between Ancaster and Dundas, reshaping the unique agricultural community into a mixed urban-rural precinct. In its stead a new ward will sprout on the Mountain.

Ward 14 comprises more than one-third of Hamilton’s total land mass and accounts for a big portion of the $1 billion plus economic activity which agriculture annually contributes to Hamilton’s economy.

June 24, 2016

For the past 11 years Coun. Robert Pasuta, a farmer himself, has been the voice of that community, which since amalgamation has become part of the flavour and fabric of the city.

Pasuta’s updates to council on the state of asparagus, corn, and soybean crops are a quirky but restorative reminder of how singularly blessed Hamilton is, how just a short distance from the choking traffic and concrete of the big city the elemental forces of nature still call the tune that people’s lives and livelihoods dance to.

The weather and soil will remain if the board decision stands. An independent political voice for farmers will not.

Word of the board decision knocked the wind out of Pasuta. He’s got his legs back under him now. If legal grounds permit, he firmly supports appealing the ruling. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

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Friday August 18 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 18 2017

Donald Trump is burning every bridge he can, 1 tweet at a time

November 9, 2016

Before 9:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, the President of the United States had already:

  • Attacked not one but two sitting senators of his own party.
  • Savaged the “fake” news media.
  • Tripled down on his comments regarding the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia.
  •  Echoed the rhetoric of the far right by insisting that our “culture” was being destroyed by the cult of political correctness.

Donald Trump did all of these things via Twitter — starting at 6:19 a.m. ET with a tweet alleging that “publicity seeking” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) had purposely contorted his comments after the violent white supremacist protests over the weekend and ending at 9:21 a.m. ET with a slippery slope argument that liberals were responsible for the “beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks” by calling for the removal of statues honoring Confederates.

July 28, 2017

So, for three hours — at least — the most powerful person in the world was glued to social media, gleefully settling scores.

This is not a new reality for Trump. Since he became a candidate, he has used Twitter as a combination of a focus group and a blowtorch.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump would regularly try out new attack lines — “Lyin’ Ted,” “Little Marco” — on Twitter to see if his fans responded to them. If they did, those attacks were quickly inserted into his stump speech or his debate answers.

He would also use Twitter to fight back against his critics, to lambast the media and to, generally speaking, provoke. (Never forget: Trump is, at root, a provocateur more than he is a politician.)

November 9, 2016

Despite his promises to be “so presidential you will be so bored” if elected, Trump hasn’t changed one iota. That’s most obvious in his Twitter habits. While he went through patches — a few days, maybe a week — early in his presidency when he would lay off Twitter entirely or only tweet his speeches or other more generic political pap, Trump has always returned to his Twitter addiction with a vengeance.

His tweets have produced many of the defining moments of his presidency — none of which are good. His March tweet that President Barack Obama had wire-tapped Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign sparked weeks of questions — zero of which he could answer. His repeated attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell helped to turn Republicans in the Senate against him. His personal attack on MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski was roundly denounced by politicians — and humans — of all stripes. (Source: CNN) 

November 10, 2016

Meanwhile, for about two hours on Monday August 21, weather permitting, the entire US should see the moon slide in front of the sun. The last solar eclipse to slice across the entire continent happened 99 years ago; unlike that event, this eclipse will occur in an era of record internet usage — one in which 95% of American adults own a mobile phone. (Source: Business Insider) 

Letter to the Editor (Hamilton Spectator – August 24)

Most now can’t even stand Trump’s voice

RE: MacKay editorial cartoon Aug. 18

I loved Graeme MacKay’s succinct and very timely cartoon Friday of Trump as a dark cloud, the eclipse, over the U.S., dividing the country in two with his overly-long trademark red tie. Unfortunately it also lumped more progressive “blue states”, e.g. California, in with the south, but the point was well made. It should also be made clear that many people, perhaps now even a majority of southerners who once liked and believed in him, can no longer can support or even stand listening to the voice of their insecure, paranoid and narcissistic, therefore very dangerous, “leader”.

In case you missed Anderson Cooper’s CNN interview with Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of Trump’s “Art of the Deal”, he predicts Trump will resign before he is impeached, naturally blaming everyone else along the way for his dramatic failure. Hopefully this happens very soon and in time to relinquish his power to pardon his cronies and even family members for their crimes committed by association with this very sick man. SAD!

John Royds, Carlisle

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Friday August 11, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 11, 2017

Canada’s Army Builds Tent Camp For Haitian Asylum-Seekers Arriving From U.S.

Featuring a Fire and Fury gallery of Donald Trump cartoons

The Canadian military is building a temporary shelter near the border with the United States, to accommodate hundreds of asylum-seekers crossing illegally from the U.S. into Quebec.

June 2, 2017

Most of those arrivals are Haitians who were admitted to the U.S. after the earthquake in 2010, and whose future legal status in America is unclear.

Dan Karpenchuk, reporting for NPR, says the Canadian service members are only building the camp, not remaining afterward to staff it.

“The camp will hold as many as 500 seekers, about the number of asylum-seekers waiting to be processed,” Karpenchuk reports. “The soldiers will also set up lighting [and] heating, and install flooring. They will not have security roles.”

May 11, 2017

The CBC reports that currently, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a tent set up at the border to handle processing — but there are no beds. People spend two to three days waiting on benches and chairs.

The soldiers, at the request of Public Safety Canada, are assembling a camp at a nearby “converted private campsite,” the CBC reports.

“Setting up tents, this is something obviously we’re quite familiar with, we’re pretty good at doing this,” Maj. Yves Desbiens, the spokesperson on the ground for the Canadian Armed Forces, told the Canadian broadcaster. “But in terms of these capacities, this is not something we do often.”

February 10, 2017

The tent camp on the border is just the first stop for asylum-seekers.

“After they’re processed, the asylum-seekers will be bused to Montreal, where they will be put up in other temporary accommodation, including the Olympic Stadium, a former convent and now a facility at one of the city’s hospitals,” Karpenchuk says.

As we reported last week, Montreal’s Olympic Stadium has just recently been pressed into service to house asylum-seekers, after normal facilities were overwhelmed. But it’s only a temporary option, since the stadium won’t be available during upcoming events.

June 29, 2016

The surge has, by all accounts, been dramatic. Last week, a spokesperson for the provincial government organization that helps asylum-seekers told the CBC that the group helped about 180 people last July — and that more than 1,000 people crossed the border this July.

Immigration Canada told the CBC on Wednesday that crossings at one point along the border have quadrupled in just the past two weeks. (Source: NPR) 

 

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