populism

Tuesday April 26, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 26, 2022

Pierre Poilievre’s infuriating campaign to be Canada’s Conservative leader

March 8, 2022

In September, Canadian Conservatives will choose their next leader. The last two, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, will go down in history as a couple of one-and-dones — leaders who ran against a prime minister, failed to form a government and were ousted by their party soon after. Never mind that each won more votes than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party. Parliamentary democracy doesn’t simply tabulate the popular vote and declare a winner. Only seat count and the capacity to command the confidence of the House of Commons matter, and the two most recent Conservative leaders couldn’t get the job done. The next one might.

Of the leadership candidates, member of Parliament Pierre Poilievre is particularly infuriating and reckless. He peddles an angry and appealing message: that Canadians are getting screwed, and he’s here to save them. The recklessness isn’t so much in the tone of his messaging — folks ought to be angry at an economic and political system that structurally marginalizes, underpays and excludes them — but rather Poilievre’s plan, or lack thereof, to address the underlying causes of discontent while demonizing the state capacity that will be necessary for reform.

Poilievre is a market fundamentalist and ideologue. He believes government is the problem, deficits and debts are a threat to the well-being of this generation of Canadians and the next, cryptocurrency is the solution to inflation, and the carbon tax must go because it’s wasteful and useless. He believes in the libertarian conception of freedom all the way. In February, he boosted the occupiers in Ottawa — a convoy of truckers and hangers-on who besieged the city for a month — saying he was “proud” of and stood with them.

Thursday June 11, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 11, 2020

Brazilian president’s pandemic denial has cost lives, but may not hurt him politically

What do you do if you are in charge of dealing with the pandemic and the number of deaths is getting out of control?

Simple. Stop publishing the number.

August 28, 2019

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been having a bad time with the pandemic. His default mode has been callous disinterest: when told in early May that the country’s COVID-19 death toll had reached 5,000, he said “So what? I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

So on Sunday, with Brazil’s death toll about to pass 40,000 and become second only to that of the United States, Bolsonaro stopped his government from publishing the total any more.

From now on, only today’s number of infections, deaths and recoveries will be announced. No more awkward comparisons with other countries, no five-digit running total to confront him with his failure each day. And of course no attempt to establish the real number of deaths, which is almost certainly at least twice the official number since many victims never got to hospitals.

December 16, 2019

There is a temptation to group the three populist leaders of big Western democracies together, and they do have a lot in common. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson removed a similarly damning piece of data from the daily news conference when the UK’s death toll per million overtook that of every other major European country. (It is now second-worst in the entire world.) 

America’s Donald Trump, Bolsonaro’s idol, spent just as much time in the early months of this year belittling the gravity of the threat (Bolsonaro: “It’s only a little flu”; Trump: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”) None of the three men will wear a mask, and they are all compulsive serial liars.

March 16, 2020

Nevertheless, there are major differences. Johnson manages to sound as if he cares about all the lives lost, and Trump at least goes through the motions occasionally. Johnson eventually declared a lockdown, although much too late, and Trump at least went along for a while with the lockdowns declared by almost all of the states.

Bolsonaro, by contrast, openly condemned the lockdowns declared by the various Brazilian states and ostentatiously disobeyed them. He held rallies and took crowd baths. He swiped his nose on the back of his hand and then shook hands with a fragile old lady. He showed up at a barbecue on a Jet Ski.

May 3, 2017

He has fired two successive health ministers since January because they were taking the pandemic too seriously and hindering Brazilians’ return to work. He joined a street protest calling for a return to the military dictatorship that finally fell in 1985. He regularly vilifies the poor, the left, Indigenous Brazilians, gays and non-whites.

And he is currently presiding over a pandemic that will probably kill over 100,000 Brazilians without lifting a finger to stop it.

Yet in late 2018 he won the presidential election in the first round with 55 per cent of the vote, and his character was hardly a secret even before the election. A recent poll showed that his popularity is now down to 32 per cent, so Brazilians have noticed that something is wrong with him, but it still verges on the inexplicable. Or does it?

The electorate that voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 was little changed from the one that gave Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva, the absolute antithesis of Bolsonaro, two terms in the presidency immediately before him. Just as the American electorate that put Trump in office in 2016 was little changed from the one that elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. (Gwynne Dyer – Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Thursday May 31, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 31, 2018

All three parties spending like drunks

During the last televised leaders’ debate, 19-year-old Martin Badger, a first-time voter from Burlington, posed an audience question to the three party leaders that’s probably troubling other Ontario voters.

May 16, 2018

How do you plan to pay for the additional services that you’re promising? Badger asked.

Unless you’re dipped, dyed and butt-branded in party colours, the answers weren’t exactly comforting. The reality is they’re all spending like old-time drunken sailors, tossing free programs and tax cuts around as if the election is an extended shore leave binge.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath kicked off by acknowledging that people across the province, including herself, are concerned about the accumulated debt, now pegged at about $325 billion and rising.

May 15, 2018

To help pay for her promises, which include drug coverage for everyone, lower electricity rates, hiring 4,500 new nurses and getting rid of “hallway medicine,” Horwath said she’s “going to ask” the richest people and corporations to pay a “little more” in taxes.

What Horwath didn’t specifically mention is she also plans to borrow $25 billion to pay for these and other elections promises. Oh, yes, and then she’ll balance the books and stop deficit spending. Once that’s done, Horwath previously told The Spectator, the New Democrats “will take any surpluses … and apply them to the debt.”

For his part, Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford basically repeated what he’s been saying before the campaign began. He intends to pay for his promises by finding four cents of savings on every dollar spent by the province and by bringing in outside auditors to find more “efficiencies.”

That’s a tall order, particularly since the platform-free Ford is promising to cut hydro rates, lower gas prices and taxes, create 15,000 new long-term care beds and invest almost $2 billion in various health and housing services, which, of course, means less revenue and more expenses. He also intends to run a deficit for at least the first year.

Liberal promises include more money for hospitals, more free tuition for post-secondary students, free preschool child care, and free prescription drugs for children, young adults and seniors. In total, it amounts to more than $20 billion of new deficit spending. Still, in a woebegone gesture to fiscal responsibility, Wynne also promises to introduce legislation directing budget surpluses be used to pay down the $325 billion debt. (Continued: Andrew Dreschel, Hamilton Spectator) 

 

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Wednesday May 9, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 9, 2018

Wynne, Horwath take aim at Ford in first debate ahead of Ontario election

Doug Ford was the main target in the first debate ahead of Ontario’s provincial election, with his rivals suggesting Monday that the Progressive Conservative leader, who is leading in the polls, would slash jobs and shrink services if elected premier.

Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath spent much of their time warning about what a Tory government would bring, while Ford hammered home his key messages of finding “efficiencies” and “respecting the taxpayers.”

The race officially begins Wednesday, but the debate set the stage for the campaign and provided the leaders of the three major parties an opportunity to test drive their slogans.

January 15, 2014

When both Horwath and Wynne used their questions during a leader-to-leader portion to ask Ford exactly what he would cut, the Tory leader repeated his key phrases.

“The other Conservative leaders, Mr. (Tim) Hudak, Mr. (Mike) Harris — they were very upfront about what their cuts are going to look like,” Horwath told Ford.

“Why don’t you have the guts to tell people what your cuts are going to look like? What is in store for the people of Ontario?”

Ford didn’t provide specifics, though he has promised to cut four per cent from the budget.

“I’m going to make sure we run a government that respects the taxpayers,” Ford said during his closing remarks. “You know me. I’m for the little guy.”

Horwath repeated that voters “don’t have to choose between bad and worse,” several times stepping back when Wynne and Ford began to spar, attempting to set herself apart from them.

Wynne said the election features “some pretty stark choices,” between what she calls her plan for care and Ford’s plan for cuts.(Source: CP24) 

 

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Thursday May 3, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 3, 2018

Ford reverses course on Greenbelt development, says he’ll maintain protected area

Public backlash prompted Doug Ford to backtrack Tuesday on an election promise to allow housing development in a protected green space around the Toronto region, with the Progressive Conservative leader saying he’s going to listen to those who want the area preserved.

A Tory government would maintain the Greenbelt in its entirety and enshrine that pledge in the party’s soon-to-be-released platform, Ford announced in a statement issued a day after saying he’d open the region to some construction to ease the housing crisis in the Greater Toronto Area.

“I looked at it as making sure we have more affordable housing,” Ford said of his initial position. “The people have spoken. I’m going to listen to them, they don’t want me to touch the Greenbelt, we won’t touch the Greenbelt.”

The Greenbelt — the world’s largest permanently protected green space –is a 7,200-square-kilometre area that borders the Greater Golden Horseshoe region around Lake Ontario. It was protected from urban development by legislation in 2005.

Ford’s flip-flop came less than a week before the official start of the provincial election campaign and hours after Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne called his Greenbelt-development pledge “wrongheaded”.

“If you open up the Greenbelt and make it into a Swiss cheese map you never get that back,” Wynne said earlier on Tuesday. “You never get that water protection back. You never get that agricultural land protection back.”

Wynne had acknowledged that some areas around the border of the Greenbelt have changed since it was established over a decade ago, but that was part of the original plan for the region, she said. (Source: CTV)