process

Thursday February 2, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 2, 2017

Trudeau drops pledge to reform Canada’s electoral system

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has abandoned his longstanding promise to overhaul Canada’s voting system.

December 9, 2016

Trudeau made the dramatic reversal of a key platform plank in a new mandate letter for Karina Gould, his newly named minister of democratic institutions.

“Changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate,” reads the letter.

“There has been tremendous work by the House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform, outreach by Members of Parliament by all parties, and engagement of 360,000 individuals in Canada through mydemocracy.ca,” Trudeau wrote.

“A clear preference for a new electoral system, let alone a consensus, has not emerged. Furthermore, without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s interest.”

December 2, 2016

That clearly contradicts a report submitted by a parliamentary committee to the government last fall.

Trudeau had long said the Liberals would ensure the 2015 election was the last one held under the current first-past-the-post system, under which the party that wins a plurality of votes gets to form government, even if it doesn’t win a 50-per-cent-plus-one-vote majority of the popular vote.

In a town hall in Belleville three weeks ago, Trudeau admitted he was “on record” as personally in favour of a ranked ballot system. But he insisted at that time he would not back away from its plan to change the way Canadians vote and elect their governments.

Instead, Trudeau set out a broader goal — with some new marching orders — for Gould.

October 21, 2016

“As Minister of Democratic Institutions, your overarching goal will be to strengthen the openness and fairness of Canada’s public institutions. You will lead on improving our democratic institutions and Senate reform to restore Canadians’ trust and participation in our democratic processes,” he wrote.

Gould told reporters her priorities will be to legislate changes to boost transparency for cash-for-access political fundraisers, and getting the government’s key electronic signals spy agency (CSE or Communications Security Establishment) to assess the risk posed by hackers to Canadian political and electoral activities.

On the defensive in her first major news conference, Gould said that the government undertook major consultations and listened to Canadians on electoral reform but “we realized there was no consensus to move forward with electoral reform.” (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

Saturday November 8, 2014

Saturday November 8, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 8, 2014

Uncharted waters on Parliament Hill

Of all the utterances in the wake of yesterday’s revelation that two Liberal MPs have been removed from caucus pending the outcome of an investigation into sexual harassment allegations, perhaps the most prescient was this: This is uncharted territory.

Thursday, November 6, 2014It’s not, unfortunately, that sexual harassment is a new thing on Parliament Hill. Far from it. Those who have worked there confirm by the dozens that it’s a unique hothouse work atmosphere where strange and often inappropriate things happen. Which raises an interesting question. If Parliament is indeed a hotbed of questionable moral and ethical behaviour, why hasn’t the Ottawa press corps written about it before now? Could it be that they’re too close to it, that the press gallery has actually become part of the machine?

What is unprecedented here is what happened after the alleged harassing incidents in which the two Liberal MPs are said to have displayed inappropriate conduct toward two female NDP MPs. They took their concerns to their party leader, Tom Mulcair, who determined the situation would be dealt with internally while safeguarding the identities of the MPs.

Then one of the two took her concerns directly to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, and Parliament Hill hasn’t been the same since. After having senior advisers investigate, Trudeau announced the two Liberals were suspended. The resulting firestorm of controversy led to Mulcair accusing Trudeau of “revictimizing” the already traumatized MPs, who weren’t given any notice of the plan to go public.

Mulcair may be sincere, and he may be playing partisan, but regardless he’s off base. What would he suggest Trudeau have done? Had he kept things quiet, he would have been accused of sweeping the matter under the carpet. That’s not a perception he can afford, nor one anyone should find appropriate given the current climate around sexual harassment.

Trudeau is on solid ground here. If anything, he erred on the side of transparency. He didn’t do anything to identify the complainants. In fact, the circle of people who know their identities is small enough that it’s hard to buy Mulcair’s claim of revictimization.

Wednesday November 5, 2014That doesn’t make this outcome satisfactory. This matter will now be investigated by the House board of internal economy, the body that governs administrative and financial policies of the House.

Will the details of the allegations ever come out? Probably not, as that would tend to identify the complainants. So the two Liberal MPs could be branded without really facing their accusers, which isn’t ideal.

While little is clear in this unfolding story, this much is: Parliament needs a better and less politically weighted process to facilitate this sort of complaint. This one seems ad hoc, imprecise, and probably ultimately unfair to one or perhaps all parties involved. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

 

September 3, 2011

Every illustration starts with a crude sketch:

After much erasing and refining details are added in pencil, and made permanent with ink:

The image is scanned and undergoes further refining in Photoshop, followed by lots of colouring and shadowing. Then voila!:

 

December 1, 2007

Buried beneath the weight of all the news over Karlheinz Schreiber’s tedious performance before the House of Commons Ethics Committee was the announcement of another probe by Parliament into allegations of price fixing by Canada’s largest chocolate making companies. It’s been reported that the Canadian divisions of Nestle, Cadbury, Hershey and Mars are under investigation by regulators over alleged price fixing of chocolate bars. The Competition Bureau of Canada has requested that the companies hand over documents related to their pricing arrangements. It is understood that no charges have yet been made and that there is no solid evidence of any wrongdoing. Well, I thought it warranted a cartoon, even though I’m probably the only cartoonist who bothered with this story:

October 18, 2007

The above cartoon is the first draft to the original that was printed in The Hamilton Spectator. It was one of those cartoons that I thought I could safely draw even before the event took place. The going presumption was that there were just two unpalatable options before Stephane Dion in response to the Throne Speech. Several news agencies had sources saying that the Liberals in the House of Commons would opt to support the government rather than declaring non-confidence and subsequently pushing Canadians into a Federal election campaign.

It wasn’t until about 4:30 that Stephane Dion announced that the Liberals would propose amendments to Mr Harper’s agenda but, if they were rejected, his party would abstain from the confidence votes in the national interest. That’s not exactly a decaration of “confidence in Mr. Harper’s Conservative government.” So I had to do something about the chalk board scrawlings by humiliated boy Stephane just to be fair, (not that it’s necessary to be fair when editorial cartooning.)

If fairness is the strength of this cartoon, cheating may be its weakness. Through the magic of photoshop, I’ve banked images for future reuse. The classroom background is completely recycled from a cartoon I drew 2 years earlier:

…and funny enough it features Stephen Harper as opposition leader in the very same embarassing spot as Stephane Dion. The modification only had to be made in the content of the chalk writing.

…and as it turns out I was able to make the letters easier to read than the previous version. The only problem is that I jumped the gun before Dion’s decision was made and I sent the early version to my syndicate. Oh well. Here’s the final version: