Pierre Trudeau – Page 4 – mackaycartoons

Tuesday August 25, 2015

August 24, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 25, 2015

The Growing Power of the PMO

In 2006, Stephen Harper rode into Ottawa with a mandate to clean up the ethical wreckage of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. The Conservative Party leader moved quickly as the prime minister of a minority government. He banned corporate and union donations, and lowered the individual donation limit to $1,000. He toughened federal lobbying rules, created the Parliamentary Budget Office and gave additional powers to the Ethics Commissioner.

His goal, he said over and over, was to return accountability to Ottawa. And he did that, to a degree. His reforms have helped bring the federal government up to date on important issues of political financing and budget oversight.

Not surprisingly, though, Mr. Harper failed to target the real source of Ottawa’s accountability crisis. As the trial of Mike Duffy has reminded us, the greatest threat to responsible government in Canada is none other than the Prime Minister’s Office.

Over the past 40 years, the PMO has morphed into a parasite on the body of Parliament that prospers by sucking the democracy out of its host. The court-documented efforts by Nigel Wright, the former chief of staff to Mr. Harper, to control the Senate from inside the PMO are outrageous only because they have been exposed by Mr. Duffy’s lawyer. The real scandal lies below the surface, where the PMO uses its toxic tentacles to neutralize every part of government that might compete with it for power, so that today we are ruled by an imperial prime minister, unaccountable to anyone or anything.

Do not blame Mr. Harper alone for this. The expansion of the PMO began under Pierre Trudeau, and every prime minister since then has been responsible for increasing its malignant grip on Parliament. Brian Mulroney was the first to name a “chief of staff” and elevate that person above the principal secretary who was, up till then, the highest unelected authority in the PMO. Jean Chrétien relied on the protective coating of the PMO to shield himself from direct responsibility for the sponsorship scandal, just as Mr. Harper is now doing in the Duffy affair. (Continued: Globe & Mail)

Saturday August 8, 2015

August 7, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 8, 2015

Thomas Mulcair’s Clarity problem

At about the midpoint of last night’s debate, during an otherwise necessary chat about the state of democratic institutions, things veered into a constitutional abstraction of the sort that has obsessed this country’s political class for a half century. It lasted about five minutes and was prompted by Justin Trudeau, who looks younger than his 43 years but, at that moment at least, could have passed for pater Pierre Elliott circa 1968, shaking his fists at the evil Quebec separatists in our midst.

“One of the things that really frustrates a lot of people is when they see politicians pander, when they say one thing in one part of the country and a different thing in another part of the country. One of the things that unfortunately Mr. Mulcair has been doing quite regularly is talking in French about his desire to repeal the Clarity Act, to make it easier for those who want to break up this country to actually do so. And in doing so, he is actually disagreeing with the Supreme Court judgment that said one vote is not enough to break up the country.”

The Clarity Act was wrought by Jean Chrétien’s government in 2000 to try and address the question born in 1995’s Quebec referendum, which the No side won by all of 54,288 votes: would it have been enough to separate the country had the Yes side won by as many (or fewer) votes? The Supreme Court’s answer was no: a province would need a “clear majority.” Except no one defined what, exactly, constituted this clear majority. The resulting lack of clarity has obsessed Canada’s political class and legions of its journalists ever since.

Three things usually happen whenever this issue is brought up in a federal campaign. First, chest puffed, each leader will say what good Canadians they are. Then the others will say how irrelevant it is to talk about separatism, because Quebec’s sovereignty movement is stuck somewhere between cryogenic sleep and outright death. Finally, they do exactly that—talk about an apparently irrelevant issue. For over 50 years, it’s been our political quicksand: impossible to avoid, and even harder to escape. (Continued: MacLean’s)

Saturday October 20, 2012

October 20, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday October 20, 2012

Lincoln Alexander 1922-2012

He was never one to sell himself short, to shrink into the background and idly watch.

Lincoln Alexander, who has passed away at the age of 90, always knew he was a politician, not a policy wonk. But he also knew he was a politician whose skin colour would lend his every move, his every accomplishment, the weight of history.

“I have no qualms about saying I don’t think anyone can work a room better than I can,” he once told an interviewer.

“I’ve never really been in awe of anyone. When you’re 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds and good lookin’, you know, you’re not in awe of too many people.”

It’s hard to imagine a man of lesser confidence surmounting so many barriers to African-Canadians in the span of a single lifetime — the first black Member of Parliament, the first black cabinet minister, Ontario’s first black lieutenant-general.

Alexander’s ability to mix courtliness and anger soon came to the fore amid 1971’s “fuddle duddle” scandal, in which Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was alleged to have mouthed an obscenity in the House of Commons, one directed at Alexander and Newfoundland MP John Lundrigan.

“He mouthed two words, the first word of which started with F, and the second word of which started with O,” Alexander told reporters at the time. “Now I think that we’ve reached a point where this type of conduct, it’s not only disgraceful but it’s unacceptable, and I tried to bring that point home.” (Source: Toronto Star)

Thursday February 16, 2012

February 16, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 16, 2012

Trudeau remark reveals underlying narcissism

Justin Trudeau betrays his political immaturity and narcissism in suggesting that his commitment to a united Canada is dependent on whether the Conservative government validates his personal values, say prominent political analysts.

“This guy is clearly self-indulgent; he really does think everything is about him and his feelings,” Barry Cooper, a political theorist at the University of Calgary, said Tuesday in commenting on statements Trudeau made in a recent French-language interview. “That’s a measure of his lightweight status in the firmament of deep-thinking Liberals.”

On Sunday, Trudeau, a Montreal MP, told his Radio-Canada host: “I always say, if at a certain point, I believe that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper — that we were going against abortion, and we were going against gay marriage, and we were going backwards in 10,000 different ways — maybe I would think about making Quebec a country.”

The remarks have generated a furor this week. The blogosphere and the twitterverse went into hyperdrive, with commentators stunned that the 40-year-old son of Pierre Trudeau could so readily offend his father’s federalist vision. The politicians weren’t far behind. Not surprisingly, the Bloc Quebecois interpreted Trudeau’s remarks as an endorsement for their own opposition to the Conservative government.

A Tory MP, Merv Tweed, taunted Trudeau, saying “while our Conservative government is committed to keeping Canada strong, united and free, the member opposite is contemplating reasons for Quebec to separate from Canada.” (Source: Canada.com)