June 2017 - Page 2 of 3 - Loonie Politics

A big lead in the polls doesn't necessarily mean a bigger majority in Parliament. You must ensure the leader is prepared and your policies have meat on the bone

TORONTO, Ont. /Troy Media/ Last week's general election in the United Kingdom provided some important lessons for western democracies, including Canada.

When Theresa May was elected to replace David Cameron as Conservative leader and U.K. prime minister last July, many political observers had high hopes.

They promoted her as the second coming of the late Margaret Thatcher, even though her ideological leanings were much softer than the Iron Lady's. May has been described as a "liberal-conservative" and "one-nation Conservative," or someone who believes the state should protect citizens from all walks of life.

They also thought she would be an excellent choice to lead her country during the process when Britain leaves the European Union, or Brexit. With no disrespect to May's leadership skills, it's puzzling that someone who was aligned with the Remain campaign would be touted for this important role.

Regardless, May had a successful run. She enjoyed a 20-point lead over the opposition Labour Party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. He's an uber-leftist who supports high taxes, wealth redistribution and nationalizing institutions like the railways, energy companies and post office.

With everything seemingly in the government's favour, May called a snap election for June 8. If successful, the Tories would have commanded a bigger parliamentary majority. Achieving a "hard" Brexit, which would have given Britain complete border control, the ability to arrange new trade deals, and ease in abandoning the single market and customs union, would have been that much easier, too.

Alas, May's day turned out to be more of a Mayday.

The PM was a huge political liability, worse than anyone imagined. She performed poorly on the campaign trail and looked weak against Corbyn (who handled himself surprising well for the entire election) during the TV debates. Her policy platform was often short on details, and some proposals after the Manchester and London terror attacks (i.e. Internet regulation, reduced immigration, changes to human rights legislation) were immediately condemned.

Plus, a significant number of British voters lost faith in her. Calling an election with three years left on her mandate wasn't viewed as a way to deal with Brexit, but rather a selfish strategy to increase her government's influence.

That's why May and the Tories ended up with 318 out of 650 seats.

They now face a minority government situation, or hung Parliament. The PM hastily made an arrangement with the right-leaning, 10-seat Democratic Unionist Party to save her political neck, although the final details are still being worked out.

What lessons should Canada's political parties learn from this fiasco?

Our country uses the U.K.'s historical Westminster system of government. While there are some subtle differences Canada stopped using leadership spills, or snap leadership reviews, which remain a popular tactic for May's Tories both countries firmly believe in the cherished principles of parliamentary democracy.

Hence, Canada's political leaders could also see the benefit in calling a snap election, depending on the situation. There have been times when it worked well (Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien in the 2000 federal election), and occasions where the final result was disastrous (Ontario Liberal premier David Peterson in the 1990 provincial election).

Nevertheless, it's important to ensure a snap election call doesn't turn into a campaign that resembles a snap of your fingers.

A big lead in the polls doesn't necessarily translate into a bigger majority in Parliament. Therefore, you have to ensure the party leader is fully prepared for a snap election, the party's policies have plenty of meat on the bone, and the party's agenda is understood to be about achieving greater political stability in the House rather than pure personal gain.

In fairness, there aren't any signs that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ever planned to follow May's lead. But if he ever contemplated a snap election before, he would be wise to stop thinking about it now.

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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On Monday afternoon, Liberal MP Arnold Chan got up in the House of Commons to deliver what sounded very much like a farewell speech. Chan, who has been suffering from a renewed bout of cancer, had his family in attendance as he offered a love letter to the institution of parliament, and an exhortation to his fellow MPs that it was time to start treating the place with the respect that it deserves, as well as treating one another with greater respect. While Chan has not announced that he would be resigning his seat, he did say that he wasn't sure how many more twenty-minute speeches he would be able to give, and there was a note of finality to his comments.

Among the points that Chan made about respect and reverence for Parliament and democracy going so far as to praise Green Party leader Elizabeth May for her dedication and constant reminders that MPs follow those rules in the Standing Orders about not speaking disrespectfully about one another was perhaps the most important point of all, which is about the need for parliament to get away from the "canned talking points" that have been hobbling our debates.

"I am not perfect," Chan said. "I know that sometimes it takes some practice. There are instances where it is necessary for us to have the guidance and assistance of our staff, the ministries, and of our opposition research. However, I do not think it gives Canadians confidence in our debates in this place when we formulitically repeat those debates. It is more important that we bring the experience of our constituents here and impose it upon the question of the day, and to ask ourselves how we get better legislation, how we make better laws."

He's right in many cases, MPs haven't been practicing the art of giving a speech on their feet. But part of the problem is the twenty-minute speech rule has created a culture where we are using prepared speeches to fill that time rather than allowing more spontaneous debate. The need to stick to talking points exacerbates this problem, and yes, it becomes a formula.

"We can disagree strongly, and in fact we should," Chan added. "That is what democracy is about. However, we should not just use the formulitic talking points. It does not elevate this place. It does not give Canadians confidence in what democracy truly means."

That is very much what has happened in our parliament, where debate has been replaced with speechifying, which is further exacerbated by speaking lists that have removed any and all spontaneity from the Chamber. Speechifying is usually (but not always) more about House Duty than it is about caring about a topic.

A few weeks ago, when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel alerted her followers over Twitter about her slated speaking time in a debate, I remarked how the fact that it could be timed so precisely was indicative of the problems with debate under our current rules. While she became indignant about the suggestion that she was merely reading points given to her (which I wasn't suggesting I know that she's one of the better MPs who does her own homework), a number of her followers came after me about what was wrong with MPs giving "well-researched speeches" to Parliament about important issues.

But the problem isn't the research it's that speeches aren't debate. While Rempel may be one of the exceptions to the rule when it comes to listening to previous speakers and incorporating or reacting to what they say, vanishingly few MPs do. When it comes to the few minutes allotted for questions and comments at the end of a speech, most of the time it's either an opposing MP giving their own canned talking point on the subject, or worse yet, a fellow members of that MP's own party who is just looking to get an approved talking point reiterated. This is not debate, and it debases Parliament, as Chan points to.

Part of the problem is the way in which the rules around speaking times codified the need to fill time rather than engaging in substantive debate. Parliamentary blogger Radical Centrist (@procedurepols) went digging into the history of this after my column on the problem we have with debate management in this country, and found that once the rules were changed to limit speaking times to forty minutes in 1927, MPs began using their notes to fill up those forty minutes. Cut-and-thrust was squelched, and in 1982, they changed the rules to limit speeches to twenty minutes with the added ten minutes for questions and comments in an attempt to bring back cut-and-thrust. That too has failed.

If this current parliament is looking to honour Chan and his reverence for our Parliament, then it's time to start making a radical restoration to the way we govern our debates. That means restoring the old Speaker's ruling about not allowing scripts with very few exceptions (like replies to a Speech from the Throne or budget speeches), and notes only being used for technical terminology. It means getting rid of the speaking lists so MPs need to catch the Speaker's eye if they want to speak, and it means loosening the clock so that they don't feel the need to fill those twenty minutes, but rather can speak extemporaneously on a topic for six to eight minutes, with room in there for interruption for the purposes of debate and "cut-and-thrust," as they still do in Westminster (and to a certain extent in the Canadian Senate). But above all, we need to get away from the need to always sell the party message, the branded slogan on each issue that otherwise ensure that debates are simply sponsored content rather than substantive dialogue. Only then can we start to get back to actually debating the issues that matter, rather than selling messages with clips destined for YouTube.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

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One of the fun things about moving to Quebec as an anglophone Ontarian were the looks I'd get. The guy at the bank, the woman behind the counter at the health department, new neighbours.

Like my dog wondering if she's just heard the word "treat", their heads would all get the same familiar tilt. "Whâ€”why are you doing this? No one does this." You could see it in their eyes, "Alright, pal. If this is really what you want."

I bring all of this up, after more than two years of living in Montreal, because our premier, Philippe Couillard, has said he's ready to bring Quebec formally into the constitution. Which would be a nice way to acknowledge the province already operates under the constitution and is a province in Canada.

Which might be making you, dear reader, wonder, "Whâ€”why are you doing this? Why now? God, just let us live our lives."

Bringing Quebec into the constitutional fold would, of course, do the most dreaded of things in this country, re-open the constitution. Because, this province wouldn't just sign onto the document as it stands, we'd like some changes. There's more nuance to it than this, but Quebec has five central demands: recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, federal spending power limits, guaranteed Supreme Court representation, a constitutional veto right, and increased immigration control.

But to get that far, the other provinces are going to want to have their say. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall wants to revisit an equalization formula that he seems to think is too generous to Quebec. Alberta PC leader Jason Kenney was quick to chime in agreement. Who even knows would happen with B.C. once they sort out their whole mess. And on and on.

Everyone will want something, and don't you people remember Meech Lake, Charlottetown? My god. (For the record, I do not. I was five when the Charlottetown referendum went down, and I have zero recollection of it.)

Besides, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he wants no part of opening up the constitution. But, even if he did, I don't think any of this national nightmare stuff matters. Because at the end of Couillard's proposed consultations, nothing will come of this. This is, like all things, a political play. The heart of all this is what is so broken at the heart of Quebec politics, whether the province should be a country of its own. Everything in this place turns, eventually, to the question of whether Quebec should separate from Canada.

You've probably heard how corrupt this province is, and you might even remember the Charbonneau Commission from a while back. The details of what was found in the endless days of testimony aren't what was important, but generally speaking many high-level provincial Liberals ended up with a certain stink about them.

So you might wonder, with all this smell, how come the Liberals managed to regain power after only one term out of office. It's pretty simple: The Parti QuÃ©bÃ©cois' star candidate, the billionaire Pierre Karl PÃ©ladeau, raised his fist at his introductory press conference and pledged his support for the cause of sovereignty.

The PQ had made a point of not making a point of sovereignty, and practically overnight what looked like a cakewalk of an election turned into an abysmal failure. Why? Because outside of an aging core of PQ diehards, few people actually want to separate. Even though Couillard was a new leader, he was going to have a hell of a time convincing Quebecers that the Liberal Party deserved to be back in the big chair after only a few years in the wilderness. Instead, the only steadfast federalist party in the province ran away with the thing.

It's hard to look at Quebec politics through a lens any less existential. Fights over road paving contracts seem so small when compared to whether Canada should continue to exist.

And this is why you in the rest of the country shouldn't feel too alarmed when you see Couillard taking his constitution show on the road over the coming months. The current PQ leadership has said flat out they aren't looking for a referendum any time soon. But once the idea of putting Quebec in the constitution in some formal way might just be enough to relight the PQ's sovereigntist instincts.

That's why Canada shouldn't worry too much about the constitutional rattlings coming from Quebec. It's not a show for you, it's a show for us.

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The election of Andrew Scheer is setting up the stage for the 2019 election, and the other parties are scrutinizing the new arrival, adjusting their tactics and strategies with less than 30 months to go before the 43rd election.

Justin Trudeau's Liberals were surprised by Scheer's election. The ruling Liberals were assuming Maxime Bernier was going to be their opponent, as did many observers. After all, Bernier was leading in key indicators such as fundraising and polling numbers, and the previous presumed front runner Kevin O'Leary had withdrawn in his favour.

Liberal hacks, back in their Ottawa war room, were blasting out emails denouncing Bernier's policies, framing him as a right-wing extremist, an enemy of farmers and reminding all who would pay attention about his separatist past. A few Liberal operatives even made the trek to Etobicoke to spin and spread the Liberal message to media and observers.

They had to change their tune at the last hour, when Scheer came back from behind to win on the 13th and final ballot. So the Liberal target changed and the tactics will evolve, but the strategy will remain the same: paint the new Tory Leader as scary and dangerous, hoping that another fear campaign will yield another victory for the Liberal Party of Canada.

"He won because of the social conservative wing of the party so he will be under pressure to reopen those debates," MP Pablo Rodriguez said. "He's somebody who wants to be in charge of the thought police," MP Adam Vaughan added. They'll accuse him of wanting to turn the clock back on progress, of being Stephen Harper with a smile.

But that smile might actually work for the new Conservative Leader. It will blunt the attacks.

Scheer is a young, affable, sociable family man. He has a good sense of humour, which he showcased on Saturday, giving the funniest speech at the Press Gallery Dinner. And come on, who in Ottawa is really afraid of Andrew Scheer?

Many New Democrats are. As they were of Stephen Harper. The temptation will be strong to focus on the Conservative Leader as the real enemy, in effect playing the Liberal hand for them.

When New Democrats were pondering when to hold the leadership race to replace Thomas Mulcair, an argument kept coming back again and again: let's wait for the Conservatives to elect their new Leader, this will give us a chance to assess their choice and to act accordingly.

At the time, I thought this was ill-advised. In my opinion, our members will likely not vote for an NDP candidate based on the Conservative leader. Furthermore, allowing the Conservative Party to choose its new Leader before the NDP would simply set the stage for the classic Blue-Red confrontation, leaving the NDP as the leaderless third wheel while the narrative would be set as Trudeau facing the new Tory Strawman.

So what now?

First, the NDP can breathe a little more comfortably in Quebec and so can the Bloc QuÃ©bÃ©cois. Had the Tories picked Maxime Bernier, New Democrats would have been really hard pressed to keep their 16 seats. The Bloc would have had a hard time to re-emerge. The main opposition to Trudeau in Quebec would have been Maxime Bernier's Conservatives. With Bernier facing Trudeau and Martine Ouellet as a wild card, the NDP would have had very little space to grow. This is good news for the four non-Quebecers in the leadership race, who won't face that immense challenge with Scheer, who is basically unknown in Quebec. Paradoxically, it is also good news for Guy Caron: had Bernier won, many New Democrats would have been tempted to give up on the Quebec candidate and take the geographical advantage of having the sole non-Quebecer running for Prime Minister.

Speaking of geography, Scheer hails from Saskatchewan. Niki Ashton, from Manitoba, is the only prairie candidate in the NDP leadership race. This shouldn't have a major impact on her chances. But Scheer's election does give her a big contrast card to play: against Trudeau and Scheer, she would be the sole woman to be realistically competing for Prime Ministership. And, as Trudeau himself said, "there is something very special about imagining a female prime minister. I think it's long overdue. I just don't think we have to wait that long." Move along, Kim Campbell, Niki Ashton can fill the Prime Minister's dreams and his shoes!

Had the Tories gone for Lisa Raitt or Kellie Leitch, that card wouldn't be there. But frankly, there was slim chance of that happening.

But Ashton is not the only one who can play a big contrast card. Jagmeet Singh can, too. Singh is the only non-white still standing who can aspire to become Prime Minister. Deepak Obhrai and Michael Chong could have been that guy. But frankly, there was slim chance of that happening.

Still, New Democrats love to break barriers. They did it in the past when they elected Audrey McLaughlin to succeed Ed Broadbent, over former BC Premier Dave Barrett. McLaughlin became the first female to lead a federal political party in the House of Commons. For that leap, the NDP was rewarded with 9 seats in 1993 still, 7 better than Kim Campbell, the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

What about Peter Julian and Charlie Angus? They are no further ahead because of the arrival of Andrew Scheer. The truth is, they are probably no further behind either. Sadly, for New Democrats, they wasted a full year waiting for a leadership race outcome that will probably have little to no impact on their own choice in leader.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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There's no such thing as a perfect electoral system, and the best proof can be found by looking at one that purports to be.

I think Andrew Scheer will make a fine leader of the Conservative Party (he fits the formula of a low-risk but high-potential "boring leader" I made the case for last fall), and I don't question the validity of the outcome that produced him last week. Yet even the satisfied must concede Scheer's victory was generated by a fairly bonkers process. Any attempt to honestly evaluate the health, demographics, and trends of the Canadian conservative movement circa 2017 must begin by correcting for a number of systemic oddities within the voting system of a party that claims to reflect all of the above.

The Conservative Party's electoral system promised to honor two abstract principles everyone can support in theory: all electoral districts should be treated equal, and the party leader should be elected with a majority of votes. Both proved deeply difficult to implement in practice, however.

For its egalitarian electoral districts, the party chose to use Canada's existing 338 parliamentary ones, a bad choice given such things are neither equally-populated (the Maritimes in particular have way more seats than they should due to the constitution's insistence that no one gets fewer seats than they have senators â€” and the Maritimes have way too many senators), nor equally conservative.

Thanks to data surreptitiously obtained by OttWatch's Kevin O'Donnell, who trusts the Canadian public with the intimate details of the Tory election more than the Tories, it's been revealed that 54 ridings â€” about 16% of the total â€” cast less than 100 votes each. The vast majority were from Quebec, where the Conservative Party is notoriously uncompetitive, and included places like Gilles Duceppe's old riding of LaurierSainte-Marie, where the Conservative candidate pulled a whopping 4% in 2015, or GaspÃ©sieLes ÃŽles-de-la-Madeleine, where total Conservative Party membership consists of 19 brave souls.

Maxime Bernier swept these ridings, which doesn't reflect too poorly on him, given he swept a number of enormous ridings as well â€” indeed, the fact he won first-ballot victories in both the smallest riding, Nunvut (voters: 16), and the largest, Medicine HatCardstonWarner (voters: 1,425), reflects well on the broadness of his appeal. Yet it does go some ways to explaining why when you look beyond the party's "point" system, which is based on riding-by-riding popular vote percentages, and towards the aggregate national popular vote, Scheer's margin of victory (53-47%) looks less ambiguous.

The "Rotten Boroughs" effect is more significant in the case of Michael Chong, who eked out a fifth-place victory despite having run, basically, as a Liberal. Chong received first ballot victories in only 18 ridings, virtually all of which were located in stereotypically far-left urban centres, including Ottawa Centre, home of Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, and Vancouver East, the riding Libby Davies held for 18 years. The Conservative electorate was larger in these places than one might expect, though probably due to Chong's own activism. For all the attention Chong's candidacy received from journalists (who may have been courted by Chong himself, given how much of greater Toronto and Ottawa he won), the only real takeaway from his failed candidacy is that a progressive masquerading as a conservative can be popular in places that vote left â€” but nowhere else.

On the other end of the spectrum, the 15 districts won by Brad Trost are equally revealing in exposing where that candidate's flavour of right-wing thought â€” not merely "socially conservative," but across-the-board-dogmatic-on-every-issue â€” approach plays best. Unlike Chong, Trost's ridings were generally competitive territory for Conservatives, and, most revealingly, included several of the much-mythologized "very ethnic" ridings of Vancouver, Scarborough, Markham, Richmond, etc. Many on the Tory left continue to fantasize that a more "inclusive" party is synonymous with a more moderate one. Trost's results should offer pause.

Honoring the majoritarian victory principle proved no less a challenge. Though Scheer beat Bernier 62,593 to 55,544 in the popular vote (or 17,221.2 to 16,577.8 in "points"), these figures are rather obtuse, given they were cobbled from 13 rounds of voter redistribution. Because the party used a ranked ballot, which presumes you should be ecstatic when even your 10th favorite candidate winds up in power, both Bernier and Scheer gained tens of thousands of voters over the course of the evening simply by having been grudgingly tolerable to the voters of their defeated rivals. By the time he was pushed over the top, Scheer's political destiny was being buoyed by nonsense like the 6th place rankings of Lisa Raitt voters. They must certainly be pleased?

Man does not hold hierarchies of preference as elaborate as the ranked ballot system demands. We saw proof in the final tally, which featured around 16% of the popular vote going to no one, thanks to a high number of lesser candidates' voters refusing to rank Scheer or runner-up Bernier at all. This is a pretty substantial rate of dissent from candidates who, between the two of them, were often presented as offering basically anything a conservative voter could want, and should be kept in mind as Leader Scheer seeks to consolidate a victory that's both more and less decisive than it seems.

Written by J.J. McCullough

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By now it should be quite obvious that the PC Party of Ontario regards its own base with suspicion at best and hostility at worst, as much of a threat to their hopes of forming government as Kathleen Wynne herself.

This attitude has informed the kind of behaviour we've seen from the party during the Ottawa West Nepean nomination controversy and countless other kerfuffles, flipflops and screw-ups over the course of the long sad period in which they've spent in opposition.

The pattern is always the same. Someone feels like they're getting the short end of the stick. The party stonewalls and implies that that person is not being "part of the team". The person, who has invested significant time and effort in the cause, has a public freakout. Complications ensue. Rinse and repeat.

The party laments aloud that their allegedly impossible to please base makes it hard to trumpet their successes, such as a historic by-election victory in Sault Ste. Marie, or to torment the government with fowl puns about the quack-mire that arose when friends of a feather goosed the Ontario Liberals with a DuckTale (woo-hoo) about a giant yellow rubber bath toy costing in excess of 100K which in an additional flip of the bird was alleged to be counterfeit.

But no matter how many times this sad wheel turns, nobody has been bold enough to allege that the party is deliberately shooting their own foot soldiers. Except me, of course.

The evidence is right there, even if nobody wants to acknowledge it.

First we have the well-worn Flanaganite maxim that it is a good thing to have the more "radical" elements of your base in open revolt against you, because this is somehow supposed to convince moderate voters that you aren't as crazy as you seem.

Tom Flanagan never advocated deliberately kicking these beehives, but this is just one of the many examples of the CPC turning a successful strategy into a dead horse, just like the over-reliance on boutique tax credits and Harper pounding the ivories every time there was a spare moment to do so.

Another misapplied lesson from the Harper era is the heavy handed approach to nomination meetings, to the point where it seems to be standard operating procedure.

Conservative parties in Canada have good reason to be concerned about wing nuts spouting off and hurting the party's chances. But even when Harper was at his most controlling we weren't getting reports of egregious bigfooting every other month the way we are with the PC's.

Which brings us to the other bit of recent rough news for the PC's the end of Jack Maclaren's tenure with them as an MPP.

If Patrick Brown had simply wished Maclaren well in his new role as a sitting member for the Trillium Party, he could have remained above the fray and made the controversial ex-Landowner look like he was taking his ball and going home. That's certainly what Harper would have done. Heck, it's what Harper did.

Instead, Brown came off as if he was desperately seeking the approval of Liberal voters and that firing Maclaren at this point instead of at the first opportunity like they would have wanted would somehow get them to toss him a bone.

P-Bizzle may have wanted to whip his voters and MPP's in line, but all he did was give the impression that he considered them disposable.

This is doubly clear given that he's not nearly as aggressive towards Kathleen Wynne as he is to those within the PC fold that he perceives to be disloyal.

But the clearest bit of evidence that the party establishment is deliberately targeting its own members is that the members are allowing them to do it. Though they complain, they accept the premise, promulgated by the party and the Liberals, that if they speak out, they are disloyal and are responsible for any subsequent misfortunes the party suffers.

It's also why so many other PCPO "loyalists" are willing to excuse the party's behaviour. Like their "disloyal" comrades, they "know" that the only thing standing between the party and sweet, sweet power is loose Tory lips.

Here's the problem, though: If Patrick Brown excommunicates everyone who he sees as disloyal, and he STILL loses, what then? Who will the party blame for its failure? The media? Third party groups?

It would, of course, be "disloyal" to suggest they need to look in the mirror, but when has that stopped me before?

Written by Josh Lieblein

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Premier Kathleen Wynne got up on her high horse last Friday to squeak about how President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was "appalling!"

Wynne blowing hot air over Trump pulling out of a non-binding, ineffective, economically disadvantageous "deal" was an especially rich dish of foie gras served up from the unprecedentedly unpopular premier. The giant ducky in the room while Wynne was scolding a pragmatic Trump was last week's earlier development of her government's debacle in blowing over $120,000 to rent said ducky to celebrate Canada's sesquicentennial. Besides the bright yellow bird in no way representing Canada, this latest showing of utter contempt for the taxpayer perfectly encapsulates how Wynne's Liberal government has practiced the art of the wheel and deal steal when acting as banker of the public purse.

In contrast to Trump's puffery in retelling how his father used to tell people that everything his son touches turns to gold, everything Wynne touches seems to turn from glimmering promise to blackest despair.

From dooming Ontarians to outrageous hydro bills through green energy schemes, which gave her Liberal-connected friends way-above-market-value contracts, to selling off 60 per cent of Hydro One, a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-a-year revenue-generating golden goose for the province, Wynne has done truly appalling action after appalling action while at the helm of this province. And don't get me started on the radioactive provincial debt expected to soon become completely unmanageable.

Wynne continues to plumb new depths in her shameless pursuit of self-preservation at any cost. Just look at some of her most recent announcements. The "Fair Hydro Plan" refinances the energy debt to reduce power bills by 18 per cent this summer â€” but now it's been revealed through leaks to include the caveats of throwing away at least $21 billion in additional interest payments and still allowing rates to skyrocket again in four years' time. Then there's Wynne's rash decision to up the minimum wage to an unrealistic $15 an hour by 2019 which will result in thousands of layoffs, increased inflation, and many businesses going out of business.

Wynne doesn't seem to give a damn what happens to the province down the poorly paved road â€” in the literal sense as well, since she rewarded construction companies with more contracts for botching jobs â€” as long as they remain the rulers over their own increasingly fiscally hellish Ontario.

They say the devil comes with a smile and the knockoff, Dutch-designed, ripoff duck is just the latest allegorical recrudescence. A replica of the original cheery giant duck could've been bought from the artist for a tiny fraction of the overall $200,000 rental cost, but the government gave the grant and the festival paid the fee to a copycat without question. It wasn't their own money after all. So this giant rubber ducky will be inflated with a bunch of air and look impressive to onlookers for a few days' time.

But after the fanfare is over the government will have ultimately wasted $120,000 on a lame duck. This duck symbolically represents all of the Liberals big announcements over the years that go from over-inflated expectations to deflated disappointment and dejection.

Personally I hope this giant duck blows up â€” like one literally did in Taiwan â€” in Wynne's face in July, for all the horrible deals she's cynically made to feather her own nest politically. But at the very least, as her premiership circles the drain, this 13,500 kilogram rubber ducky deserves to be placed squarely around her neck, like an albatross, for the many appalling sins she's committed against our dear but greatly wasted homeland.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

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As the furore over the nomination of Madeleine Meilleur for the position of Official Languages Commissioner enters into its third straight sitting week, we are reminded of the pattern that outrages follow in this parliament. The fact that this is playing out in rote fashion is starting to get mighty tiresome, and yet here we are, and it's like none of the parties can help themselves.

The pattern begins with the Liberals deciding that they've had enough consultation and making a move, whatever it may be, and it blowing up in their faces. It was with trying to get government business (and most especially the assisted dying bill) passed last spring with Motion 6, the Electoral Reform committee's composition and eventual report, Bardish Chagger's "discussion paper" on modernizing the practices of the House of Commons, and now Meilleur's nomination for the post. To an extent, it's also played itself out with other scandals-du-jour, like the allegations of so-called "cash for access" fundraisers (which really wasn't cash-for-access in any recognizable sense where it has been a legitimately abusive practice in many provinces). Usually these moves happen with some manner of ham-fistedness, such as not having actually had a legitimate conversation with the opposing parties about it, but rather deciding that whatever discussions had been done were enough and they were going to take action. That was certainly the case with Motion 6, or the way that the Liberals on the Procedure and House Affairs Committee decided to prioritize the discussion paper, or with MÃ©lanie Joly not really consulting the party leaders opposite about the short list for a new Commissioner just asking them about Meilleur.

From there, we get the opposition outrage. The government spends weeks giving banal talking points about how great the idea is, and frustrating the issue without actually addressing any of the problems or perceived problems. They don't come up with some actual or effective responses until weeks into the outrage, by which point it's too late. The opposition meanwhile manages to torque all of the issues beyond all semblance of logic or reality, spinning vast conspiracy theories based on the most disjointed threads and coincidence that build the finest tinfoil hats that Parliament has ever seen. At the same time, they start in on the procedural rulebook with dilatory motions, interminable privilege debates, and play out the theatre of the absurd (recall Niki Ashton's complaints that Justin Trudeau created an unsafe working environment for women in the wake of The Elbowing that stemmed from juvenile gamesmanship around the Motion 6 debacle, or David Christopherson's concern trolling that the RCMP would hold MPs hostage in their offices in order to ensure that they missed votes, as articulated during the latest round of privilege debates made in protest of the discussion paper). Throughout it all, the particular hypocrisies of the Conservative positions are exposed, their own time in government having usually done far worse, but this is a parliament where irony has long-since died, and there is no shame on either side in how each and every imbroglio inevitably unfolds.

In the end, weeks of the sitting calendar are consumed, nothing gets done, and Parliament as a whole looks worse for it all. And the Liberals? They eventually climb down from their position after suffering through weeks of trying not to look weak on it.

Every. Single. Time.

So with this pattern now having firmly established itself in the 42^nd Parliament, what strikes me is that the Liberals have consistently brought these issues on themselves. The fact that there is this constant need to try and bring these issues to fore in the most ham-fisted manner possible, whether it was either Dominic LeBlanc, Bardish Chagger, Maryam Monsef or MÃ©lanie Joly at the centre of it, seems to imply that there's a bigger problem with the party's leadership that is driving these particular unforced errors.

A good part of the constant wailing and gnashing of teeth is the fact that there is a need to pounce on the Liberals' high-minded promise to "do politics differently." The reality, however, is that most of the changes any government can make are really at the margins. Because politics is partisan at its core, there is only so much that one can do to try and work around it, and the Liberals, for as much as they may try to show that they are doing things differently than Stephen Harper's Conservatives, are limited in just what they can do. That the opposition is cynically looking to "prove" that the Liberals aren't living up to the promise of doing things differently has nothing to do with the fact that they are being utter hypocrites in criticizing the very things that they themselves did the Liberals promised to be different and that's all that matters.

There is also an issue that Paul Wells raised last week over Twitter, which is that there is growing evidence the Liberals don't see other Liberals as partisans, so when they bully through an issue like Meilleur, this particular cognitive dissonance that they suffer from can help to explain why they are so tone-deaf to why there could be a problem in the first place. That they rationalize and prevaricate without actually acknowledging the concerns that are raised (before those concerns spin out into conspiracy theory territory) and their digging in their heels drives the whole situation into the same outrage cycle which they could stop at any time if they played their hands differently, but they don't. And while the politicization of Meilleur's nomination (by both sides, mind you) will taint the position of Language Commissioner and the "open, transparent, merit-based" appointment process, we will see whether they have their inevitable climb down when the tumult reaches toxic levels. Regardless, in a few weeks, we seem doomed to repeat this all over again with the next Liberal blunder, unless a grown-up somewhere can talk some sense into them. But I'm not holding my breath.

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When people ask me if I think Premier Kathleen Wynne is toast in the 2018 election campaign, I readily reply "no". Why? Patrick Brown. He's on a roll lately, but his support is a mile wide and an inch deep. Who is he? Wellâ€¦ buckle up.

Patrick Brown is a panderer. He is willing to say whatever you want to hear in the hopes you will vote for him. He is a weathervane.

On three key issues â€” sex education, political fundraising and climate change â€” we've seen in recent months how the relatively unknown politician has flipped and flopped so many times, it's a wonder he can keep his current positions straight to himself.

As a backbencher under former prime minister Stephen Harper, Brown bragged about his perfect rating from the Campaign Life Coalition. He voted to repeal equal marriage legislation for same-sex couples. He voted against trans rights. He voted to reopen the debate over a woman's right to choose.

Then he ran for leader of the Ontario Conservatives. Brown spoke at rallies featuring homophobic epithets, and celebrated the endorsement of the most right-wing members of the Conservative caucus at Queen's Park to court social conservatives. But then, once he became Conservative leader, he decided to march in the Toronto Pride Parade. He claimed he now supported same-sex marriage and sex ed. It was a welcome evolution â€” I praised him for it.

But then, his chief of staff was caught working up an open letter for his boss promising to repeal the sex-ed curriculum as a means of pandering to so-con constituents in a by-election. Suddenly, it seemed Brown hadn't evolved on issues of LGBTQ equity. He's stonewalled press enquiries on the matter ever since.

This winter, another former leadership campaign co-chair boasted behind closed doors that social conservative issues would be a priority, but only once in government. Again, Brown admonished him. But when your tenure as Conservative leader is defined by flip-flops on the major issues, taking a professed change of heart on human rights at face value is a risky leap of faith. It happened again â€” he just turfed his former leadership campaign co-chair, Jack Maclaren, from the party, for admitting to a secret so-con agenda on tape.

Not convinced? Well, take the months-long scandal on political fundraising.

Brown admonished Premier Kathleen Wynne for her fundraising practices repeatedly â€” even as Wynne sought to amend the legislation and forbade her MPPs for engaging in "cash-for-access" and declined to capitalise on the "by-election loophole" whereby corporate and union donors could essentially reset their donation limit to give even more to the Party.

Yet, as Adrian Morrow from The Globe and Mail noted, "Mr Brown has regularly criticized the Liberals over cash-for-access, but has maintained it is not wrong for him to engage in it". In fact, just check Brown's twitter timeline: he seems to have held a fundraiser a day all year, where a handful of well-connected insiders, corporate interests and Conservative partisans could buy access to the man they expect will be premier in a little over a year. He boasted that he raised more money than the governing Liberals last week, but he did it through cash-for-access practices he'd decried. It seems what's wrong for the Liberals is A-OK for Brown. So, where does Brown stand on political fundraising? Depends when you asked him.

Likewise, on climate change, Brown ran as a Harper Conservative in 2006 and 2008 on a plan to introduce a cap-and-trade system. We forget about this fact, but the Conservative platform in both elections was expressly for cap-and-trade. Brown ran on this platform. (Aaron Wherry traced the Tory's stances on pollution pricing here.

In other words, Brown was presumably in favour of cap-and-trade from 2006 to sometime around 2015, when as Ontario Conservative leader he came out against Premier Kathleen Wynne's cap-and-trade plan in concert with Quebec and California. Conservative MPPs had petitions up on their websites decrying cap-and-trade, conflating it with a carbon tax, arguing against pollution pricing at all â€” right up until a few days after Brown suddenly announced at a party conference that he now supports a pollution penalty. He was booed.

In summary, then: Patrick Brown was in favour of cap-and-trade before he was against it, and against a carbon tax before he was for it. Just like he was against LGBT rights before he was for them before he was maybe against them before he was for themâ€¦

On these three issues â€” three of the main issues debated at Queen's Park of late â€” Brown has shown something worse than being an empty suit. He's shown a dizzying inconsistency.

Love Premier Wynne or hate her, you know where she stands. Even the far right acknowledges as much: "Liberal politicians like Kathleen Wynne and Justin Trudeau are actually more honest than the weasel-y Brown, who is willing to adopt virtually any position he can and promise any group of people whatever they want", writes the Campaign Life Coalition.

With Brown, you have to wonder if Brown knows where Brown stands. The man is a human multiverse.

The next Ontario election is not until spring 2018. I for one will be counting how many more contradictory positions Brown chooses to take on the issues that matter. Ontario voters should too â€” the premiership is too important a role to risk on a politician who doesn't know his own mind.

Photo Credit: Global News