party

Tuesday September 13, 2022

September 13, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 13, 2022

Firebrand Poilievre now starts the hard search for wider support as a no-pivot party leader

It’s a daring experiment by the Conservatives – overwhelmingly elect a hard-right fire-breathing leader and expect enough voters to gravitate in his direction to win a federal election.

September 14, 2021

That wasn’t the case with post-Harper leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, who shifted right-wing positions toward the mainstream in what became a futile effort to find broader voter support.

But there’ll be no waffling in the political winds by steamrolled-to-victory Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre; no pivoting to a kinder, gentler, mushy middle to win over voters. That’s just not in Poilievre’s DNA.

This makes Saturday’s commanding leadership win (with 68 per cent of the ballots) the easy part of Poilievre’s ultimate goal to become prime minister.

The baby-faced 43-year-old partisan pit-bull faces an even tougher test now to reposition himself as leading a viable government-in-waiting.

His next quest has bedevilled Conservatives and indeed majority-seeking Liberals for the last two decades: Where to find the crucial five per cent bump in voting support that it takes to win a federal election?

It’s not a simple search. His oratorical assault on elites, gatekeepers and the ArriveCAN app easily fires up those fed-up and frustrated with Justin Trudeau’s preachiness and his open-the-vault response to every politically correct cause.

But to corral votes further left politically and further east geographically would seem a mission impossible, particularly given that the issues he’s attacking are now losing some of their traction.

May 13, 2022

Poilievre’s preoccupied with “Justinflation” that’s easing slightly courtesy of a Bank of Governor he wants to fire. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrencies Poilievre advocated as a safe monetary alternative are in the dumpster and the illegal “Freedom Convoy” he supported for protesting vaccine mandates he opposed are a repressed memory and unlikely to be revived.

And then there’s his party unity problem.

While he delivered a classy outreach to rival camps on Saturday night, lasting damage has been done to the progressive wing of the party after his campaign trash-talked rivals as unworthy Conservatives from the opening bell of this seven-month leadership brawl. You can bet distant-second-place-finisher Jean Charest and his pathetic 16 per cent of voting party members will not lift a finger to help a Poilievre-led party. Ever.

That suggests we’ll see an Official Opposition that’s a Reform reincarnation – and that will be a tough sell in urban Ontario and B.C., a seat expansion challenge in Quebec and register at best modest support growth in Atlantic Canada.

All is not lost, of course.

August 5, 2022

The Liberal government is failing to deliver basic services on multiple fronts, has unleashed inflation-fuelling budgets and is led by a Prime Minister whose popularity is at a personal low. This government seems hell-bent to defeat itself.

Poilievre, for his part, is going to be a masterful Opposition leader, slicing and dicing the Trudeau Liberal cabinet with devastating quips and clips on the government’s economic failures and working-class letdowns, many of which were nicely previewed in his feisty victory speech.

Anyone watching Question Period starting next week will see his exquisitely entertaining eviscerations of Justin Trudeau, which will stand in favorable contrast to a Prime Minister who pretends not to hear his questions while reading staff-scripted responses.

And with two-thirds of the Conservative caucus behind him and that massive convention victory, Pierre Poilievre will undoubtedly get something Scheer and O’Toole didn’t – two election campaigns before the party does its usual dump-the-loser-leader routine.

December 3, 2015

But his longer-term success depends on swaying the undefined, unpredictable and risk-adverse voters in Central Canada and B.C. who usually christen the election winner and do it while sticking to his controversial positions.

If those voters don’t pivot to firebrand Pierre Poilievre, well, congratulations Conservatives — you’ve just voted yourself four more years or longer in Official Opposition. (Don Martin – CTV) 

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro …

 

Thursday May 28, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 28, 2022

All parties fall short on housing crisis

December 1, 2021

When it comes to tackling the crisis of housing affordability in Ontario, pretty much everyone agrees on what must be done: build a lot more houses.

The trouble is, none of the parties asking for your vote on June 2 have a convincing plan to achieve the ambitious goals they’ve set out.

We got our hopes up earlier this year when a task force appointed by the Ford government produced an admirably clear and compact report on how to tackle the issue of supply lagging behind demand.

The panel put its finger on a key reason for the problem: the fact that municipalities typically put most of their land off-limits for anything but single-family homes.

So in too many communities, you can’t build duplexes or small apartment buildings, the so-called “missing middle” that would make cities denser by allowing a lot more units to be built.

But that would mean leaning heavily on municipalities whose councils usually speak for existing homeowners — the ones who want to preserve the “neighbourhood character” of their cities by keeping things just as they are. It’s called “exclusionary zoning.”

April 2, 2020

It was no big surprise, therefore, that when the Ford government produced a housing plan in March it conspicuously failed to address this issue head-on.

The plan made no mention of the ambitious goal the task force set out: building 1.5 million new housing units over the next decade. And it had nothing to say about exclusionary zoning.

At least the municipal affairs minister was frank about why he didn’t follow through with the task force’s key recommendation: he didn’t want to upset towns and cities. “They’re just not there yet,” he said.

He may be right. But we need to get there given how serious the national housing crisis is. Canada has the lowest average housing supply per capita among G7 nations, with 424 units per 1,000 people. That’s behind the United States and the United Kingdom. France, by comparison, leads the G7 at 540 units per 1,000. The pandemic, which allowed households to accrue record savings and saw unprecedented stimulus measures, stoked the country’s hot housing market and pushed it into utterly unaffordable territory.

August 26, 2021

Voters who want to make up their minds based at least partly on which party would best tackle the crisis of housing affordability will find more to chew on in the platforms put forward by the New Democrats, Liberals and Greens. But, on this same crucial point, the opposition parties also fall short.

On the positive side, both the NDP and Liberals include the goal of building 1.5 million new homes over the next 10 years. But that won’t be achievable unless cities allow denser housing across much more of their area; the time is long gone when just building endless suburbs on empty land could be justified.

The opposition parties actually have quite a bit to say about exclusionary zoning. They clearly recognize that it’s a problem. But when it comes to actually acting on this, they’re awfully vague.

The NDP’s housing platform promises to end exclusionary zoning. How? It says it would “work with municipalities to reform land-use planning rules.” The Liberals say almost the same. They would “work with municipalities to expand zoning options.”

July 13, 2016

Clearly, none of the parties want to anger municipalities or residents who already own single-family homes in low-rise, low density neighbourhoods. It’s understandable politically, but it puts a big question mark over whether they’d be able to meet their big targets for new homebuilding.

There’s much more to housing policy, of course. The opposition parties promise to build a lot more affordable housing for those completely shut out of the market. And there’s a big difference in what they would do for renters.

The Liberals would reinstitute rent control for units built after 2018 (the PC government excluded them). The NDP would go much further and bring in rent control for all units, even if a tenant voluntarily moves.

But the key to loosening up the housing market is more houses. And right now none of the parties are really stepping up. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday March 8, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 8, 2022

Who’s in, who’s out, and who else might join the Conservative Party leadership race

With Sept. 10 picked as the date for when the Conservative Party of Canada will have a new leader, time is ticking for prospective candidates and their teams to get into place. Those running have until April 19 to throw their hat into the ring and until June 3 to sell memberships.

Here’s a look at the contest so far:

March 3, 2022

IN: Pierre Poilievre: The 42-year-old Ottawa-area MP and well-known Conservative declared his candidacy almost one month ago. He has begun fundraising and holding events. At one, he pledged to cancel the federal carbon tax.

May 24, 2012

CONSIDERING: Jean Charest: The former Quebec premier who led the federal Progressive Conservatives in the mid-1990s is considering a run. He recently held a reception for MPs and senators in Ottawa and met with more of them one-on-one. He says he wanted to see the rules of the race before making a final decision.

Wednesday February 2, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 2, 2022

Pierre Poilievre sounding like the next CPC leader

January 28, 2022

If you were just waking from a long pandemic nap and you turned on the television and saw Pierre Poilievre in action, you might conclude that he was the guy who’s in charge of the Conservative Party of Canada, the guy who wants to be the next prime minister.

Here was Poilievre on Twitter declaring a grocery store crisis: “If you walk into a store and you see empty shelves, thank Justin Trudeau. His … vaccine vendetta against our hard-working truckers is going to drive up the cost for our people, drive people out of work, and leave us with empty shelves.”

Or Poilievre mocking the prime minister almost every day during question period about inflation, and coining the clever hashtag #JustinFlation. His persistent needling of Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland must surely get under their skin.

Wednesday November 17, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 17, 2021

O’Toole kicks senator out of Conservative caucus after she questioned his leadership

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has kicked Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters out of the national caucus a day after she launched a petition calling for an expedited review of his leadership.

November 9, 2021

“As the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, I will not tolerate an individual discrediting and showing a clear lack of respect towards the efforts of the entire Conservative caucus, who are holding the corrupt and disastrous Trudeau government to account,” O’Toole said in a media statement late Tuesday.

The statement was released shortly after Batters emerged from a virtual meeting of the Senate Conservative caucus. The Conservative leader in the Senate, Manitoba Sen. Don Plett, took no action against Batters on that call.

Instead, Batters said she learned she was out of the Conservative fold through a telephone message from O’Toole.

January 22, 2021

“Tonight, Erin O’Toole tried to silence me for giving our CPC members a voice. I will not be silenced by a leader so weak that he fired me VIA VOICEMAIL,” Batters said in a social media post.

“Most importantly, he cannot suppress the will of our Conservative Party members!”

Batters launched the petition Monday, saying she and other party members have lost faith in O’Toole. She argued the party experienced “significant losses” in the fall campaign after O’Toole flip-flopped on major issues such as carbon pricing, firearms and conscience rights. She said she wants members to have a say on O’Toole’s future prior to the planned 2023 party convention.

September 14, 2021

Party rules require an automatic leadership review at the first national convention following a failed federal election campaign. Batters has said she wants that vote to happen in the next six months.

“Mr. O’Toole flip-flopped on policies core to our party within the same week, the same day, and even within the same sentence. The members didn’t have a say on that, but we must have one on his leadership,” Batters said in a statement announcing the petition.

Under the party’s constitution, a referendum on any matter can be launched if five per cent of Conservative members sign a petition calling on the party to poll the membership on the topic through a referendum. (CBC)