politics – Page 19 – mackaycartoons

Saturday July 20, 2013

July 20, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday July 20, 2013

JT stokes the flames of native grievances

According to Justin Trudeau, it’s Stephen Harper’s fault that a group of native leaders is threatening to set up a rival organization to the Assembly of First Nations.

“One of the things that this current Conservative government has done very well, because of its lack of movement on those issues, has been encouraging a splintering and a division within First Nations communities,” the Liberal leader said.

“There is a deliberate attempt to pick and choose whoever is willing to sign on the dotted line first rather than work with all people,” the Liberal leader said.

“It’s obviously in this government’s playbook to try and divide people as much as possible rather than work together.”

Mr. Harper is having a busy summer in terms of being blamed for things. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, while insisting he wasn’t blaming the Tories, held them responsible for the disaster at Lac Megantic in Quebec.

“The Conservatives have failed to protect the public in key areas such as maritime search and rescue, such as food inspection, and such as railway. Because when you start cutting the budgets for railway inspections, you’re not taking care of public protection,” he said in a CBC interview. To CTV, he said the accident was “another case where government is cutting in the wrong area.’”
The didn’t do it, you see, it was just their fault. (Source: The National Post)

Friday August 24, 2012

August 24, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Friday August 24, 2012

Corporate Quebec braces for the worst

The hangover from the 1995 sovereignty referendum was not pretty for Montreal. Half a year after a vote that brought Canada to within a sliver of possible breakup, Quebec’s biggest city was left badly shredded.

Its 11% unemployment rate was the highest in urban North America. Residential real estate prices were falling. The vacancy rate for downtown office towers topped 20%. Companies like Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. continued their slow head-office exodus. One Toronto property broker trying to drum up business ran ads in Montreal newspapers that read: “When the road leads you away from Montreal to Toronto, we’ll be at the other end to make you feel right at home.”

There were larger pan-Canadian consequences too, of course. Amid the constitutional crisis, lenders demanded higher interest rates to hold Canada’s debt. That November the dollar fell a cent and a half as post-referendum optimism vanished amid a realization that Canada’s unity problem remained unsolved.

Today, nine years of Liberal Party rule have restored a certain level of stability to the city and to the province as the federalist party wooed private enterprise and buried unity disagreements with Ottawa. But as Quebecers get set to vote again Sept. 4, the corporate world is bracing for change.

“It’s the first time in my life that I sense from the business community a concern this large about the result of an election and the aftermath,” said Yves-Thomas Dorval, head of the Conseil du Patronat, Quebec’s largest business lobby. “There is a lot of worry that the climate for reinvestment won’t be the same.” (Source: Financial Post)

Wednesday March 21, 2012

March 21, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday March 21, 2012

Attack ads may force Rae’s hand

You can tell when Bob Rae is getting annoyed – the contrived chuckle is superceded by a sound like a sausage stewing in its own grease. When he was asked about the new Conservative ads that attack his record as Ontario’s NDP premier on CBC’s Power & Politics, he started to fizz and pop.

The ads ask if Mr. Rae “couldn’t run a province, why does he think he can run Canada?” They have clearly chafed the interim Liberal leader. If the Conservatives are going to highlight all the bad news that happened on his watch, they should also mention the Toronto Blue Jays won two World Series, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the Soviet Union collapsed, he told Evan Solomon. Eh? Maybe he’d been out in the unseasonably sunny weather too long without a hat.

“I’m not uniquely responsible” for the recession that sent unemployment and deficits soaring in Ontario in the early 1990s, he said. No – but the NDP government made the worst of a bad job, by the account of even the most charitable observers.

Mr. Rae now thinks the Liberal party has a “responsibility” to respond and defend his record as NDP premier. The party is planning to raise new money in response to the ad and mount a counterattack with those funds.

This has triggered a backlash from a number of Liberals I spoke to Tuesday, who are uncomfortable about the idea of squandering the party’s meagre war chest to defend the man who is still, nominally, the interim leader.

In public, Mr. Rae dismisses the thought he might run to be permanent leader as “idle speculation.” But in his own mind, it seems, he already has the job. If you doubt this, go to the Liberal.ca website and scroll to the Meet Bob Rae section, where he is introduced as “Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.” (Source: National Post)

Thursday March 1, 2012

March 1, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday March 1, 2012

Political dirty tricks have a long and sordid history in Canada

Outraged opposition MPs assure us that the robocalls controversy is the worst degradation of democracy in a century-and-a-half of Canadian history. They may be a bit too focused on today.

Dirty tricks are nothing new in Canadian politics. In fact, they’re as old as the country itself. The rough-and tumble-politics of post-Confederation Canada included a much looser definition of “ethical campaigning” and outright vote buying fell well within that.

The use of call centres and automatic dialling machines to steer opposition supporters to non-existent polling stations is a uniquely modern mix of technology and skullduggery, but the Fathers of Confederation were quite capable of their own unplugged chicanery.

Nelson Wiseman, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, says politicians kept detailed lists of their constituents’ preferred bribes — ranging from a few dollars to a bottle of whiskey — well into the 20th century.

He says the practice was so common that one MP actually spoke out against the introduction of the secret ballot in 1874 on grounds that he wouldn’t know he was getting value for his bribes.

Wiseman said the MP reasoned: “If I’ve paid somebody good money to vote for me, if he goes behind a curtain I don’t know how he voted, he may have voted for somebody else.”

And where did the bribe money come from? Well in the 1872 election, it was clear that Sir John A. Macdonald and his Conservative party got some of their money from the Canadian Pacific Railway. That became the Pacific Scandal which drove Macdonald from office. (Source: Winnipeg Free Press)

October 8, 2011

October 8, 2011 by Graeme MacKay

L E T T E R t o t h e E D I T O R

Election cartoon bordered on treason

I read daily the moans of the press about the low turnout at election times. But one only has to look at the cartoon in last Saturday’s Spec to see one of the reasons why.

Elections are portrayed as being boring, unnecessary and tedious. Let me remind our editor that the right to vote was bought with blood and pain, and to denigrate and belittle the democratic process is to devalue the sacrifices of those who paid the ultimate price.

Knock the parties all you like, but to constantly portray the elections themselves in this way is, in my humble opinion, bordering on treason.

Elections are the heart and soul of our democracy, so stop with the snide cartoons and comments already.

Les Scanlan Sr., Hamilton