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Minority

Tuesday September 1, 2020

September 8, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 1, 2020

With a New Leader, Conservatives Look to Unseat Justin Trudeau

In keeping with the general upheaval that has marked this year, the Conservative Party of Canada announced its new leader at an unusual time: in the middle of the United States’ presidential nominating conventions.

August 25, 2020

Mr. O’Toole, who is from Ontario, offered shout-outs to Indigenous Canadians, people who are “Black, white, brown or from any race or creed,” union members, L.G.B.T.Q. Canadians and people who “joined the Canadian family five weeks ago or five generations ago.”

During his leadership campaign, he pitched himself as a “true blue,” or hard-right-leaning, Conservative, without being too specific about policies. But his record in politics shows that he’s from the moderate side of his party.

During his debut news conference as leader, Mr. Toole moved to distance himself from the party’s social conservatives on issues like abortion.

January 23, 2020

That tack, Professor Marland said, may prove critical to expanding the party’s support in Eastern Canada and among women.

“I’m absolutely convinced that the Conservative leader is going to have to tackle social issues in a much stronger way than has been the case in the past,” he said. “Historically, this has been a problem for parties of the right.”

The contest to elect a new Conservative leader brought with it speculation that Mr. Trudeau’s government might fall shortly after it starts a new session of Parliament on Sept. 23 with a throne speech.

Regardless, a longer lead time to a vote may benefit Mr. O’Toole and his effort to expand the Conservatives beyond their base. (NYT) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: 2020-28, Canada, Chrystia Freeland, Coronavirus, covid-19, Economy, Erin O’Toole, fire, Justin Trudeau, lava, leadership, Minority, pandemic

Thursday January 23, 2020

January 30, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 23, 2020

What we know about the Liberal plan for Parliament after the cabinet retreat

For two and a half days, the Liberal cabinet huddled at the Fairmont Hotel in Winnipeg, focusing on their objectives amid the context of their new reality: a minority government that will need opposition support to get anything done.

October 23, 2019

But from the prime minister’s closing news conference Tuesday and the ministers who spoke publicly when the retreat wrapped up, we still don’t have a full sense of the legislation the Liberals will table this winter — and they certainly made enough promises during the election campaign to keep Parliament busy.

We know the first order of business when the House resumes next week: to ratify the new NAFTA trade deal, CUSMA.

“Passing the new NAFTA in Parliament is our priority,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Whether it will pass, however, is another question. The Bloc Quebecois won’t support the new deal without more supports for aluminum workers, and neither the NDP nor the Conservatives are clear on their support, with both parties having said they want to review it closely.

Trudeau also spoke generally of other commitments, such as pharmacare, protecting the environment and stricter gun control measures, but offered no specifics on what may come forward as legislation or when.

“We’re stepping up to the plate. Just take our pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and to preserve more of Canada’s land and oceans,” said Trudeau.

“We’re taking real action to protect our environment.”

October 11, 2019

The prime minister, however, didn’t say what that action is, nor did he give any clues as to how his government would reach net zero emissions by 2050, amid criticism that Canada is not on track to meet its current targets for 2030.

On implementing a national pharmacare plan, another campaign promise short on details, the health minister couldn’t commit to any legislation this winter.

Here, the Liberals could face opposition not just from other federal parties, but from provinces and territories, as well, with health care a provincial responsibility.

The headlines of the Liberal plan for the winter sessions may be clear — NAFTA, pharmacare, gun control, climate action — but how and when they plan to move on most of them remains a mystery. (Global News) 

 

 
 
Posted in: Canada Tagged: 2020-03, Canada, Conservative, debate, Jagmeet Singh, Justin Trudeau, leadership, Minority, Parliament, pillow fight, Yves-François Blanchet

Wednesday October 23, 2019

October 30, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

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) 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: #elxn2019, 2019-37, Andrew Scheer, Canada, disguise, Elizabeth May, Jagmeet Singh, Justin Trudeau, Minority, Yves-François Blanchet

Saturday October 3, 2015

October 2, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday October 3, 2015 Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair battle each other as Stephen Harper pulls ahead In this election campaign, Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair have nothing kind to say about each other. New Democratic Party leader Mulcair dismisses Trudeau as a callow youth. Echoing Conservative attack ads, his New Democrats say the 43-year-old Liberal leader just isnÕt ready to become prime minister. From time to time, and again echoing the Conservatives, Mulcair dismissively refers to his Liberal rival as ÒJustin.Ó Trudeau is no less harsh. He accuses Mulcair of duplicity Ñ of saying one thing in French and another in English. He says the NDP, by pandering to Quebec separatists, threatens national unity. He dredges up old charges that Mulcair, a former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister, once contemplated the idea of exporting fresh water in bulk. All of this occurs at a time when Prime Minister Stephen HarperÕs Conservatives are quietly edging up in the polls. For the Liberals and New Democrats, the back and forth attacks make sense. Each hopes to present itself as the unique alternative to the governing Conservatives. That in turn, they calculate, requires them to tear each other down. But to a wide array of Liberal and NDP voters, the two opposition parties appear to be engaging in a game of mutually assured destruction. These so-called progressive voters desperately want Harper gone. And they are horrified by the real possibility that this war to the death between Liberals and New Democrats will split the anti-Harper vote, thus allowing the Conservatives to win power again. Recent polls have underscored those fears. On Tuesday, Forum Research released a poll putting the Conservatives in first place among decided voters, with 34 per cent support. The NDP and the Liberals were significantly behind at 28 and 27 per cent respectively. That follows an earlier Ekos poll that shows the Cons

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday October 3, 2015

Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair battle each other as Stephen Harper pulls ahead

In this election campaign, Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair have nothing kind to say about each other.

Thursday March 19, 2015New Democratic Party leader Mulcair dismisses Trudeau as a callow youth. Echoing Conservative attack ads, his New Democrats say the 43-year-old Liberal leader just isn’t ready to become prime minister.

From time to time, and again echoing the Conservatives, Mulcair dismissively refers to his Liberal rival as “Justin.”

Trudeau is no less harsh. He accuses Mulcair of duplicity — of saying one thing in French and another in English. He says the NDP, by pandering to Quebec separatists, threatens national unity.

Saturday November 8, 2014He dredges up old charges that Mulcair, a former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister, once contemplated the idea of exporting fresh water in bulk.

All of this occurs at a time when Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are quietly edging up in the polls.

For the Liberals and New Democrats, the back and forth attacks make sense. Each hopes to present itself as the unique alternative to the governing Conservatives.

That in turn, they calculate, requires them to tear each other down.

But to a wide array of Liberal and NDP voters, the two opposition parties appear to be engaging in a game of mutually assured destruction.

These so-called progressive voters desperately want Harper gone. And they are horrified by the real possibility that this war to the death between Liberals and New Democrats will split the anti-Harper vote, thus allowing the Conservatives to win power again.

Recent polls have underscored those fears.

On Tuesday, Forum Research released a poll putting the Conservatives in first place among decided voters, with 34 per cent support. The NDP and the Liberals were significantly behind at 28 and 27 per cent respectively.

That follows an earlier Ekos poll that shows the Conservatives leading with 35 per cent support.

In fact, the possibility of a Conservative win has never been out of the question. Harper’s claim to be a good economic manager has always had resonance. (Continued: Toronto Star)


2015-10-03tearsheet

The Telegram, St. John’s, Newfoundland

 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: #elxn42, campaign, Canada, coalition, election, fight, Justin Trudeau, Minority, politics, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair

Thursday April 16, 2015

April 15, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Thursday April 16, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 16, 2015

Trudeau might be open to forming coalition with NDP, but not with Mulcair as leader

Grumpy Gramps Thomas MulcairLiberal Leader Justin Trudeau says he would “maybe” be more open to the idea of forming a coalition with the NDP if Tom Mulcair was not running the party.

Thursday March 19, 2015Asked on Tuesday whether having someone other than Mulcair as leader would change the dynamic in terms of a coalition between the two parties, Trudeau replied: “I don’t know…. Honestly, I don’t want to get into hypotheses. Maybe, but maybe not.

“There are no problems in terms of personality,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview from Oakville, Ont. “Mr. Mulcair is a veteran politician who has proven himself.

Thursday, November 28, 2013“His style is anchored in the old way of practising politics. Politics needs to be about rallying. And we have very different perspectives on how politics should be practised.”

Some recent polls have suggested the possibility of a minority government in Ottawa after this fall’s election.

Mulcair reiterated his openness last month to a possible coalition with the Liberals if it is necessary to topple Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

Friday, April 12, 2013The Opposition leader accused Trudeau at the time of putting personal interests ahead of those of Canadians because the Liberal leader had repeatedly expressed his lack of interest in discussing coalitions.

“Whenever we have opened that door, Justin Trudeau slams it shut,” Mulcair said. “My first priority is to get rid of Stephen Harper. The first priority of Justin Trudeau is Justin Trudeau.” (Source: CBC News)

Posted in: Canada Tagged: age, Canada, coalition, election, government, Justin Trudeau, leadership, Liberal, Minority, NDP, old, party, Thomas Mulcair, young
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