politics

Tuesday May 28, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 28, 2019

Wilson-Raybould, Philpott to run again as independent candidates

Former ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott will be running for re-election in the fall federal campaign as independent candidates, though have both cited an intent to align themselves with the Green Party on some issues.

March 8, 2019

The two former Liberals and close political allies donned white and unveiled their next political moves in consecutive announcements in their respective ridings on Monday. Meanwhile in Ottawa, Green Leader Elizabeth May said while she she’ll push for their re-election, she is “at a loss” as to why the two wouldn’t join her team after a serious courting.

Wilson-Raybould, who was Canada’s first-ever federal Indigenous justice minister and attorney general, said being an MP has been one of the greatest honours of her life and she wants to be elected again to return to the House of Commons, without any party affiliation.

“Today is a good day,” she said during the much-anticipated announcement in her Vancouver-Granville, B.C. riding. “I know who I am, and I am not a party person.”

Philpott, who held a trio of cabinet positions over the course of the last four years, said her decision to run again comes in part out of a desire to show young women that you shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for what you believe in.

March 27, 2019

“What lesson would it be for those young girls if I were to walk away… with my tail between my legs… I need to persevere,” Philpott said in her Markham-Stouffville Ont. riding announcement. “We’re going to do it together.”

Running as independents will prove to be tougher campaigns to wage and win, given the additional supports available to recognized parties in the Canadian electoral system. While they will likely continue to help each other, the political realities in their ridings differ. Wilson-Raybould won her seat in 2015 with 44 per cent of the vote, while Philpott won with 49 per cent.

“There will be challenges but with your support I am confident that running as an independent is the best way to go about it at this time, and the best way to transform our political culture,” said Wilson-Raybould.

Similarly, Philpott spoke about how this decision will free her from the confines of partisan politics. She said she hopes that her and Wilson-Raybould’s campaigns will start a tradition of more independent candidates running, and winning. (CTV) 

 

Saturday March 9, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 9, 2019

Trudeau expresses regret over scandal, but does not apologise

Justin Trudeau has expressed regret for his handling of a political scandal that has cost him two cabinet ministers and a close adviser – but stopped short of apologising, insisting no laws had been broken and that neither he nor his staff had taken any unethical actions.

October 31, 2018

“This has been a tough few weeks,” the Canadian prime minister said on Thursday. “Canadians expect and deserve to have faith in their institutions and the people who act within them … I have taken – and will continue to take – many lessons from these recent days and few weeks.”

Trudeau and his close aides are accused of improperly pressuring the country’s former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to abandon the prosecution of the engineering company SNC-Lavalin, which is alleged to have bribed the Libyan government to secure lucrative construction contracts. He said: “There are conversations that were experienced differently. I regret that.”

March 8, 2019

The firm, which employs 9,000 people in Canada, is based in the province of Québec, where Trudeau’s Liberals need to pick up seats to win a federal election set for October. The scandal has cast a shadow over Trudeau’s domestic image as someone who is committed to transparent government.

His conciliatory remarks in front of reporters on Thursday were an attempt to shift public attention away from the scandal.

Justin Trudeau has expressed regret for his handling of a political scandal that has cost him two cabinet ministers and a close adviser – but stopped short of apologising, insisting no laws had been broken and that neither he nor his staff had taken any unethical actions.

“This has been a tough few weeks,” the Canadian prime minister said on Thursday. “Canadians expect and deserve to have faith in their institutions and the people who act within them … I have taken – and will continue to take – many lessons from these recent days and few weeks.”

January 12, 2019

Trudeau and his close aides are accused of improperly pressuring the country’s former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to abandon the prosecution of the engineering company SNC-Lavalin, which is alleged to have bribed the Libyan government to secure lucrative construction contracts. He said: “There are conversations that were experienced differently. I regret that.”

The firm, which employs 9,000 people in Canada, is based in the province of Québec, where Trudeau’s Liberals need to pick up seats to win a federal election set for October. The scandal has cast a shadow over Trudeau’s domestic image as someone who is committed to transparent government.

His conciliatory remarks in front of reporters on Thursday were an attempt to shift public attention away from the scandal. (Source: The Guardian, UK) 

 

Tuesday March 5, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 5, 2019

Jane Philpott resigns from cabinet, citing loss of ‘confidence’ over government’s handling of SNC-Lavalin

February 9, 2019

Jane Philpott, one of Justin Trudeau’s most trusted ministers, announced today she has resigned from cabinet as the Liberal government’s crisis over the SNC-Lavalin affair deepens.

“I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities and constitutional obligations,” she said in a written statement.

“There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.”

Trudeau later praised Philpott for her diligent work on crucial government files.

Philpott, the MP for Markham-Stouffville, said she has been considering the events that have shaken the federal government in recent weeks and, after “serious reflection,” concluded she must quit.

She said the constitutional convention of cabinet solidarity means ministers are expected to defend all cabinet decisions and other ministers publicly, and must speak in support of the government and its policies.

August 20, 2016

“Given this convention and the current circumstances, it is untenable for me to continue to serve as a cabinet minister,” she wrote.

“Unfortunately, the evidence of efforts by politicians and/or officials to pressure the former attorney general to intervene in the criminal case involving SNC-Lavalin, and the evidence as to the content of those efforts, have raised serious concerns for me. Those concerns have been augmented by the views expressed by my constituents and other Canadians.”

Philpott is a close ally of Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former justice minister and attorney general at the centre of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Wilson-Raybould testified before a Commons committee last week that 11 officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and other offices inappropriately pressured her to override a decision to prosecute SNC-Lavalin on bribery charges related to contracts in Libya. (Source: CBC News)  

 

Tuesday November 20, 2018


Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 20, 2018

Why Doug Ford’s Franco-Ontarian cost-cutting could spell trouble for Andrew Scheer

What’s been called a “sad day for Franco-Ontarians” presents a challenge for Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer — not only in Ontario but in every part of the country where francophones live.

November 27, 2006

The Conservatives are hoping to replicate Premier Doug Ford’s electoral success in Ontario and see him as a key ally in the fight against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax. But they also have great hopes of wooing Quebec voters — hopes that could be dashed if Scheer is unable to reconcile his support for Ford with his pitch to the francophone voters now angered by Ford’s actions.

In its fiscal update on Thursday, Ford’s government announced it would be cancelling a project to build a long-awaited French-language university in Toronto and would be abolishing the position of the French language services commissioner.

These decisions hit Franco-Ontarians hard and the reaction has been swift and furious. The front page of Le Droit, a major Franco-Ontarian newspaper, called it a “black day for francos.” Francophone organizations and associations across the province have denounced the move and say they are prepared to contest it in the courts.

But French-speakers in Ontario weren’t the only ones who took notice. In New Brunswick and Manitoba, concerns are being raised about what it signals for the francophone minorities in those provinces.

This is an especially sensitive issue in New Brunswick, where a new Progressive Conservative government is taking office that is dependent for survival on the People’s Alliance, a party that wants to roll back some parts of the province’s Official Languages Act.

Quebec’s French-language media — which normally would pay little attention to a provincial fiscal update in Ontario — also jumped on the news. Le Devoir reported the decision under the headline, “Doug Ford sacrifices Ontario francophones.” Le Journal de Montréal, a widely-read and generally conservative-leaning paper, called it a “sad day.”

Quebec Premier François Legault, a small-c conservative himself, also expressed his concerns and said he would take up the issue with his Ontario counterpart. The mayor of Quebec City — the municipality at the centre of the region where most of the Conservatives’ seats in the province are located — denounced the move as mean-spirited and provocative. (Source: CBC News) 

 

Monday November 12, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday November 12, 2018

Smug Canada probably wouldn’t let in a caravan of migrants either

September 16, 2017

Schadenfreude is of course the German word for taking pleasure in the discomfort of others. There should be a specific Canadian variant to indicate our enjoyment of Americans’ discomfort, which is and always has been a major source of satisfaction for many of our media elites. Maybe schadenfreud-eh?

The latest example is our media’s tut-tutting over the so-called caravan of 7,000 people making its way to the United States from poor, benighted Honduras (which caravan members might themselves categorize as a “s**t-hole country,” given its current lamentable state). I’m not aware of any Canadian journalists yet embedded in the caravan, although surely it won’t be long now given all the publicity it’s been getting in presidential tweets. U.S. President Donald Trump’s Twitter account has 55.3 million followers. Judging by the full-court news coverage he gets up here, at least five per cent must be CBC producers. (Free advice: To really #Resist, get off Twitter.)

Controversy over whether the 7,000 include gang members or “Middle Easterners” has so far obscured two crucial and true, not fake facts. The first is that it is a great tribute to the U.S. that the land of Trump — which is said to be boiling over in micro-aggression, rape culture, transphobia, systemic racism, toxic partisanship, you name it — is the declared destination of the 7,000, not neighbouring Nicaragua, El Salvador, or Guatemala. Not even Mexico, which they’re now trekking across to get to the U.S. Maybe America no longer seems the shining city on a hill it once was. But it’s a shining something north of the Rio Grande and the light apparently can be seen even from the Honduran jungle and through the determined anti-American media jamming.

July 3, 2007

The second clear fact, despite our media’s smug twitting at the president’s tweeting, is that if the 7,000 changed their minds about the U.S. and said they preferred to come to Canada instead, we almost certainly wouldn’t take them either. Without a doubt though, we’d be much nicer and more polite than the president in delivering exactly the same refusal.

None of this is to diminish the tragic situation most of the caravaners find themselves in. There may not be many classic refugees among them, in the sense of being victims of state oppression, but economic and social conditions have so deteriorated in many parts of Central America that few of us would willingly live there. Pity is the right reaction toward anyone forced to live in those conditions, even if that means most of the 7,000 would-be escapees are economic migrants. (Continued: Financial Post)