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Month: September 2017

Most NDP members have received their ballot kit by now, some even received two.  On Sunday afternoon, many of them will likely tune-in to the NDP Leadership Showcase, which is happening in Hamilton.

The four candidates will be allotted 22 minutes to make their last official party sanctioned pitch to New Democrats.  The party has decided to innovate for this Leadership race and try to maximize members' participation.  This event is meant to replicate the Friday night speeches you would have received under the dated delegated leadership convention model.

If every single person who announced they were seeking that contest had made it to this point, you would have seen 12 candidates take their turn on Sunday afternoon.  Cheri Di Novo dropped out before the race even started, for health reasons. Brian Graff was rejected by party officials and by the court.  David Berlin, Ibrahim Bruno El-Khoury, Alan Gorman registered with Elections Canada but failed to meet the minimum party requirements.  Socialist caucus treasurer Mike McNamee announced he was in but didn't go anywhere.  Pat Stogran dropped out a few days after his first debate.  Peter Julian abandoned during the dog days of summer.

This leaves four New Democrats standing.  The race has not produced as much ink or as much money as the Conservatives, but it has been an interesting race nonetheless.  Media and pundits might have complained a lot about the low-profile, the format, the rules, but the truth is that 124,000 NDP members have been engaged.

My social media feeds have been overtaken by serious discussions about the future of the party and which of the four can lead the orange crew forward.

Jagmeet Singh is now perceived as the front runner.  He certainly has brought some buzz to the race.  His recent encounter with a racist heckler has been seen by more than 35 million people.  Many describe him as the NDP answer to Justin Trudeau, a hipster politician with fancy suits and stylish turbans.  His campaign hopes to win on the first ballot and has lots of dedicated volunteers.

Charlie Angus has established himself as the guy who's got your back.  A classic New Democrat, fighting for the little guy, with rural and blue collar roots.  But also a no-nonsense punk rocker with a big heart.  He is seen as Singh's main contender and has been courting Ashton and Caron's supporters in order to secure a come-from-behind victory in the later rounds.

Niki Ashton has matured since her attempt to succeed Jack Layton in 2012.  She is targeting millennials, the left wing of the party and is a self-describe transactional eco-feminist.  She is using slogans like "You say privatize it, we say nationalize it" and is trying hard to channel Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.

Guy Caron has been lagging behind but is now surging at the end of the race.  He has secured big endorsements of late, including numerous MPs and former NDP Leader Alexa McDonough.  He is the most cerebral of the bunch, with a plan that adds up.  He has grown during the race and learned to show empathy and relate to people.  Despite his small regional Quebec base, he makes the case that he is best positioned to revive the party in La Belle Province.

These four candidates now must get their vote out.  Singh and Angus will rely on their respective organizations, having targeted and identified supporters.  Ashton and Caron will hope for a high turnout to pull an upset win.  Whatever happens, the NDP could do worse than these four.

Each of them will use Sunday's showcase as the platform to bring the Crown home.  They've had very serious and respectful debates, with a lot more agreements than disagreements.  They have one last shot at triggering some fireworks and maybe even interest Canadians to pay attention to the finale.

Let's hope they are ready and have their game faces on.

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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If you ask people what's wrong with government in Canada today you'll get an earful.  Even from people who generally believe in principle that the state can and should do great things for us.  If you ask for ideas to fix it, the other ear will get filled with ideas ranging from the obvious to the brilliant to the … eccentric.  If you ask what good things have been done, you won't need a third ear because you'll get silence.  Why is that?

I ask especially because I've just been at a "Restoring the Alberta Advantage" conference in Calgary.  Which wasn't really about Alberta but about how to make government less burdensome and more effective while getting rid of ominous deficits.  And for the most part the answers were both obvious and familiar.

Alberta currently has about the worst problems in Canada in this respect, which is not familiar.  But its problems are; they are very much like those of other provinces and territories and the federal government because whatever "Alberta Advantage" of inherently smaller government once existed vanished long ago.  And if it's really hard to put sensible policies back in place even here, it cries out for explanation.

Our conference was outstanding, with all sorts of important ideas about simplifying the tax system, streamlining regulations, improving municipal government, fixing health care and so on.  But most of them were familiar in outline even if some participants brought important new details about how to implement them.  And this familiarity is both good and bad.

It's good because, as I just wrote in the National Post, it means we do understand what can be done and should be.  But it's bad because it has to be repeated again and again instead of being explained and then implemented.  Which is also more than a bit weird.

The point of the conference was not to find something no one ever thought of before.  It was to make clear what the available tools were for fixing the problem so politicians and citizens could get serious about using them.  And we succeeded if you ask me.

Maybe you shouldn't, because I was one of the organizers and there's a reason we don't let students grade their own work.  But one big disappointment about the event was how few current or aspiring politicians attended.  You'd think they'd care about this stuff.

You'd think politicians would care a great deal that it's extraordinarily hard to get even the most basic reforms passed.  And you'd think it would especially concern those politicians who believe in big government and whose careers hang in the balance if they can't make it work better.  And yet them seem singularly uncurious about how to make it more effective and less expensive or why it's hard to fix.

I remain very much interested in good policy ideas, as I have been since my days at the Fraser Institute in… well, never mind how long ago it was.  Except to underline my point that we've had a pretty good idea of what needs doing for quite a while now.  But I increasingly think our attention should be directed less to what needs to be done than why it is so hard to do.

To give another example, I'm on the C.D. Howe Institute's mailing list.  (And full disclosure: my brother runs the place.)  And I get all sorts of notices from them about problems in government, from which I especially underline things like unfunded pension and health care liabilities, and what needs to be done.

Like a great many other people, when I get these things I nod my head and think yup, that's an issue.  I have no doubt that C.D. Howe and its researchers (like those at the Fraser Institute, the Frontier Centre, the Montreal Economic Institute, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, AIMS and others) have done their homework and done it properly.  They get their facts right, their logic is generally sound, their speculations usually plausible.  But like a great many other people, I don't expect these studies to have any impact.

Even when they expose a cavernous weakness in public finances that ought to concern those in power above anyone else, I know that if the authorities deign to respond it will be with a pompous denial that any such thing could be happening with them in charge.  And they will mean it.

They will mean it even though their own continued tenure in office depends upon recognizing that it is happening, because major fiscal disasters on your watch are a sure ticket to defeat in the next election.  They will mean it even though they face daily public relations as well as administrative headaches from the unnecessarily poor performance of government.  And they will be loudly seconded and quietly funded by vested interests, material and ideological, who benefit from inefficiencies and injustices in programs big and small.  Every existing program, from a broad social program to a boutique tax credit, has a political constituency.  And it knows on which side its bread is buttered.

Indeed, they continue to proliferate.  As Andrew Coyne just acidly wrote in the National Post, in Ontario "Distribution and sales of marijuana, after it has been legalized, will be carried out via a chain of special-purpose stores operated by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and staffed by members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, thus fulfilling two key objectives of legalization: more money for the LCBO, and more members for OPSEU."

There are people who actually think the current problems with implementing sound policy are good things.  But surely the rest of us don't.  Even the fabled millennials who may have voted for Justin Trudeau but, according to polls, distrust government at least as much as the most crotchety of aging Boomers.

After listening to the Calgary presentations I can say with some certainty that governments across Canada have major problems that can only be solved by finding ways to reform even programs with entrenched material and ideological defenders.  And also that these readily available tools attract far too little attention even from those in most desperate and urgent need of them.

So let us insist on the proverbial adult conversation about what tools we know are available, and necessary, to fix major governmental fiscal problems and, crucially, about why it is so hard to make sensible use of those tools.

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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It's coming up on a pretty dangerous time for Bombardier aerospace.  The plane-making division of the Québec company is about to find out whether it will be crushed by the U.S. government's significant might.

You see, Boeing has filed a formal decree of sore feelings with the U.S. commerce department that Bombardier is selling its C Series planes in the U.S. below cost.  Further, it's able to do this because the Québec and Canadian governments have subsidized the company.

Next week a report will be delivered by the commerce department outlining whether Bombardier should be sacked with sanctions, like border tariffs, for undercutting an American company.

This is all more than a little rich.

Boeing is as heavily subsidized as any other aircraft maker, maybe even more so.  Not all of it is in straight cash, though.  Much of it is less tangible, or at least not an explicit cash handout.

But consider this: The single most famous plane in the world is a Boeing.  No marketing campaign in the world could equal to the fact the U.S. president's personal jumbo jet, Air Force One, is a Boeing 747.

Then there are the billions, and billions of dollars in contracts with the American government.  Not only do they build commercial jets, but they also dabble in warplanes and spaceships.  (You don't really think Boeing is footing the bill for the research that goes into designing giant rockets for NASA, do you?)

But it goes further than that, of course.  The American government isn't just picking up the slack in marketing and research, it has a huge part in the plane manufacturer's sales team, too.

Take, for example, this 2011 New York Times report, which details how U.S. diplomats do a lot of the heavy lifting when Boeing's trying to sell its planes overseas:

State Department and Boeing officials, in interviews [in December 2010], acknowledged the important role the United States government plays in helping them sell commercial airplanes, despite a trade agreement signed by the United States and European leaders three decades ago intended to remove international politics from the process.

And it wasn't that long ago that Boeing was fined for, let's see here… Ah, of course, unfair trading practices because of government subsidies.  The government of Washington state paid Boeing an imperial butt-load of cash to build its new manufacturing plants in the state.  That offers the company the ability to build its factories at a lower cost thanks to a subsidy, which happens all the time.  The wrinkle that really cost Boeing was that as a condition for receiving the money, the company had to assemble its 777x planes in Washington.

What I'm getting at here is Boeing isn't trying to level any particular playing field here.  Really, they're trying to do is use another arm of the U.S. government they have sway over as a cudgel to prop up its own business.  This time to crush foreign competition.

Which is why you see our government threatening to cancel plans to buy a bunch of Boeing Super Hornet fighter aircraft.  They're intended as a stopgap while we decide whether we want the F-35 or some other aircraft to make up our permanent fleet.

Along with this stick, the government was hoping to carrot Boeing into some kind of negotiated settlement with Bombardier before the U.S. government intervened.  But Boeing walked away from those talks.

But there is, of course, a further layer of absurdity.  The C Series is assembled here in Canada, by a Canadian owned company, but it's not just made here in Canada.  For example, the wings are made at a Bombardier plant in Northern Ireland.  But the fun starts with the engines, which are made by the American company Pratt and Whitney.  If the U.S. government should decide to punish a Canadian company to protect an American one, they would also be punishing an American company.

So now British Prime Minister Theresa May is stepping in to lend her support to the company and its Northern Irish plant, by bringing British diplomacy to bear against the U.S. government.  Bombardier is going to be one of the central features of May's visit to Ottawa this week.

(I should note at this point that my wife works for the British Foreign Service, and receives a salary from Her Majesty's Government.  Plus we live in Québec, meaning we have a literal stake in Bombardier.  Make of this what you will.)

So here we are, in the throes of a multi-national diplomatic spat over whether a heavily subsidized airplane manufacturer, through its subsidies, is hurting the business of another heavily subsidized airline manufacturer.

The entire situation is a farce, with the American company playing the most absurd role.  That multiple governments have been drawn into this to in some way defend free trade and markets is ridiculous.

Boeing should pound the sand their glass house is made out of.

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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The political narrative has suddenly shifted to how the federal Liberal government is hurting the middle class's financial future

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau's proposal to eliminate tax loopholes for small business has been both widely discussed and heavily criticized.  This isn't surprising when you consider it could have a detrimental economic effect on everyone from doctors to farmers.

But one component has been mysteriously absent from this conversation: Morneau's plan is actually anti-egalitarian.

Merriam-Webster defines egalitarianism as "a belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic affairs," and "a social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among people."

The political left (Liberals, New Democrats, Greens) strongly supports egalitarian principles.  The political right (Conservatives, Libertarians) strongly supports personal liberty and freedom.  It doesn't mean either side vehemently opposes the other's core beliefs, but that they view the world with very different political lenses.

How is the Liberal tax reform plan anti-egalitarian?

While Canadians dislike paying income tax, they mostly recognize there's no way to completely avoid it.  Hence, our country's two major political parties, the Liberals and Tories, have strategically fought for lower tax rates, maintaining current tax rates, or justifying minimal tax increases for a garden variety of reasons (i.e. the public good, cost of living index, safety and security measures, etc.).

Tax loopholes have always been a more difficult issue for the major parties to tackle.  While this concept is neither egalitarian nor freedom-loving, it's often seen as a way for large corporations, small businesses and individuals to avoid paying tax on some of their hard-earned money through legal, non-confrontational means.

Closing loopholes is, therefore, more of a political benefit than an economic benefit.  It's easier for a politician to publicly call for the removal of tax loopholes than it is to implement this policy.

The Liberals are fully aware of this.  They receive political and financial support from wealthy donors as well as small business owners.  Both groups benefit from logical tax cuts and questionable tax loopholes, and don't want to see the well dry up in either case.

Political consultant Gerry Nicholls pointed out on CTV News Channel's Power Play on Sept. 8 that the Liberals initially tried to use "class war rhetoric" to sell their message to Canadians.  He's right but when the economic classes began to realize the rhetoric was being used against them, they went to war against the Liberals.

Why?  It became painfully clear Morneau's proposal wasn't just an economically egalitarian plan to soak the rich (which is politically viable for this government).  It would also affect small business owners like farmers and convenience store proprietors.  The political narrative suddenly shifted to how the federal Liberal government was hurting the middle class's financial future, rather than plugging up tax loopholes and creating more equality in the system.

Ottawa originally held firm and pointed out that a 75-day consultation period was in effect.  But within days of growing criticism from all sides of the political fence, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau started hinting at the possibility of tweaking Morneau's proposal.

This was an early sign that Liberal mandarins realized their tax reform plan had gone too far.

Morneau received this message loud and clear, too.  In his Sept. 10 interview with CTV News's Evan Solomon, he suddenly claimed this plan "isn't about small business" and his government has "no intention of trying to make it more difficult for the family farm."

Yeah, sure.  Shall we put on another tap dance number for the minister to try out?

Morneau and the Liberals made a huge tactical error in assuming that closing tax loopholes would unite party supporters and Canadians behind their plan.  They should have realized the political messaging model behind tax fairness and tax benefits is very different.

Instead, they got caught with their political pants down and anti-egalitarian flies open.  And it shows.

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

© 2017 Distributed by Troy Media

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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As Parliament is set to return next week, there is a state of flux with the group of independent senators as their nascent organisation prepares to undergo yet more change.  There will soon be a change of leadership for the Independent Senators Group as much as one can call it that which could have lasting repercussions for the whole movement towards Senate modernization.

A new name has been put forward for the role of "facilitator," being BC Senator Yuen Pau Woo, with Senator Raymonde Saint-Germain putting her name forward as deputy facilitator.  Former Liberal-turned-independent Senator Larry Campbell was first to declare his intention to run for the facilitator position after Senator Elaine McCoy said that she wasn't going to be running again for the job that she's held since the ISG was first formed as a "working group" looking to organize the new independent senators in order to ensure that their logistics and so on were taken care of without a caucus whip to handle that role (and ensuring that the government's senate team didn't co-opt them all out of the gate).

And it should be stressed that yes, logistical and procedural support is really the point of the ISG, before anyone asks why independent senators require any kind of leadership.  It's about working within the power structures of the Senate, and in my personal opinion, it should be trying to keep those structures within the Westminster model as closely as possible as I can only foresee disaster if we wound up with a chamber of 105 complete independents.

To that end, Senator McCoy has been spending her remaining time as facilitator in ensuring that there is a "Secretariat" in place in lieu of a caucus support system, with the goal that those staffers within said secretariat are working for the benefit of all members of the ISG as opposed to being for the benefit of the facilitator.  The kinds of support that they're supposed to offer range from getting information on current legislation from external sources, or legal analysis, and ensuring that it gets distributed to members of the ISG.  It's about helping with procedural matters, because procedure is very important in any parliamentary body but especially so in the Senate, where the rules have been set up in such a way as to give a great deal of power and latitude to individual senators so that they have the right to speak to every single piece of business on the Order Paper, and that they are not hidebound to caucus organization.  While caucuses are important in many ways, the Senate rules ensure that they alone don't determine how much power a senator has to speak and to which issues.

To that end, it's important that there be some procedural experts that the ISG members can draw upon (as there are only so many skilled staffers to go around), and the secretariat is ensuring that they have those supports in place.  Part of that means keeping track of what has been going on in the Chamber at all times, particularly when there are late night sittings, and translating what those procedural manoeuvres mean for the ISG members and their staff.

Coordination is another function that the ISG's secretariat is expected to play, not only with the logistical needs of independent senators around things like allocation of offices and parking, and coordinating the selection of senators to sit on committees since there isn't a whip's office to take care of those issues.  Most people don't appreciate the fact that in the Senate, a whip's role is less about counting votes than it is about ensuring that these sorts of issues get taken care of.  (As for the job of ensuring that any substitutions on committees for absent senators takes place, I'm not sure if this is something the secretariat plans to take care of, or if that is deemed the responsibility of the absent senator).

And then there is the business of the "scroll."  This is the term given to the Order Paper and the plans for how each day's sitting plans to play out, from which bills they plan to debate, and which senators plan to speak to them, so that each of the caucuses can plan effectively.  This is also where negotiation tends to happen between groups to come up with plans as to which bills they plan to prioritize and get through, and there has traditionally been some give-and-take that happens here.  That's been a bit more of a fraught consideration over the past couple of years with the arrival of Senator Peter Harder as the Leader of the Government in the Senate err, I mean "Government representative," and where some of the breakdowns occurred with certain bills that took longer to get through than was probably necessary, as there were times when Harder didn't feel the need to negotiate, and other times where his deputy, Senator Diane Bellemare, would force an issue and undo some of the cooperation that had been building around certain bills.  And this again is one of the places where the ISG will play a role, in ensuring that its members have that coordination in terms of planning who is looking to debate which bills and when.

The ISG is planning a summit on the 25th, where they will hold their elections for the facilitator positions, as well as looking to identify their priorities for the fall sitting.  It's likely where we'll get a better sense of where they plan to move as a group, whether that group is cohesive or not (and yes, this is a very real issue as the new rules are also soon to come into effect where any group of nine senators will be able to form their own caucus groups, which could splinter the ISG as it is set to become the largest caucus in the chamber), and just how much the new direction of the ISG will respect the Westminster character of the institution or not.

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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It was reported by the Toronto Star recently, in the midst of yet another article detailing how the PC Party of Ontario can't walk and chew gum at the same time, that Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario Liberals will be tying Patrick Brown to Donald Trump as part of their re-election strategy.

If this seems insane to you, and if you think that Ontarians are going to laugh it off- because, don't you know, they have been so clear headed and savvy before then you underestimate both the lengths to which Liberals will go to in order to control the narrative and the propensity of Ontarians to go along with that narrative.

Let me posit that the Ontario Liberals who are currently embroiled in several investigations for varying degrees of rule bending or outright breaking believe that they have the God-given right and duty to defend Ontario, and all that is good and right besides, from the rapacious and violent Forces Of Evil currently manifesting themselves in the persona of the current President of the United States of America.

To them, any process that permits the existence or growth of Trump-populism is no process worth following.  Thus, the shameless quotes from them to the effect that nothing was done wrong in each of the matters currently before the courts.  And they are joined in this belief by the Ontarians who reward them with government after government.

And despite the fact that the Liberals control and have controlled Canada in this matter for the majority of its existence, and despite the fact that they have constantly under-delivered when it comes to standing up for average Canadians, the narrative of Liberals exceeding the boundaries of the law in the interests of defending against the much greater threat of Trumpism resonates and will continue to resonate.

So of course they will try to connect Brown, who does not let a day go by without mewling about how "pragmatic" and "inclusive" he is, to Donald Trump.  And of course the Conservatives, despite knowing that this kind of mythmaking and deflection has worked more times than it has not, will laugh and roll their eyes.  Because, for whatever reason, the Conservatives still believe that Ontarians are "rational".  That they will "see through" this deception.

Now, I would go so far as to say that if they were in Trump's America instead of Trudeau's / Wynne's / Motley's Canada the Liberals would be justified in this kind of guerrilla tactics and in this disingenuous posturing as the underdogs.  The continued survival of the ludicrously incompetent Trump, thwarted and resisted at every turn, is the strongest argument I've seen for the deck being stacked against progressives in the United States.

But when I see Liberals, the Natural Governing Party of Canada, portraying themselves as the victims, as the ones who must subvert a supposedly unfair system by any means necessary, it brings to my mind Trump furiously tweeting at his enemies at 3 AM.

It may be that the Liberals are genuinely unaware of how they, and not the PC Party, resemble Trump each time they throw a tantrum about  having to account for their misdeeds.  (The fact that the PC's themselves never explicitly make this connection doesn't help.)

But even if the Liberals aren't doing it deliberately, they certainly aren't interested in changing tactics anytime soon.  Doing that when they have been so successful would be nothing less than irrational.

Written by Josh Lieblein

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The provincial by-election in the Quebec riding of Louis-Hébert is barely a week old and already the wheels have come off the bus for the two main contenders.  Held since 2003 by the ruling Liberals, they had to pull the plug on their candidate just a few hours after the Coallition Avenir Québec contender also withdrew from the race.

Located in Quebec City, Louis-Hébert is a fairly well off riding, and includes the posh neighborhood of Sillery and Laval University.  So when Philippe Couillard presented his star candidate Éric Tétrault in mid-August, many were surprised, for many reasons.

First, as President of Quebec Manufacturers and Exporters since 2014, Tétrault actually lives on the South shore of Montreal.  According to a Liberal source, the PLQ was struggling to find a more local candidate, being turned down time and again, so they finally settled on Tétrault, a long-time Liberal with experience and knowledge of the business world and political financing.

Second, Tétrault's name came up during the Charbonneau Commission on political corruption, notably because he attended a Céline Dion concert in a VIP box, a gift from businessmen Lino Zambito, who has since plead guilty to fraud-related charges.  Former minister Nathalie Normandeau, who is facing fraud and breach of trust charges, was also present that evening.  Tétrault was also interrogated by Quebec's anti-corruption unit UPAC during a political financing investigation.  Tétrault was also part of Terrebonne Mayor Jean-Marc Robitaille's inner circle.  Robitaille, who lied about his relationship with ex-construction magnate and Charbonneau Commission star witness Tony Accurso, had to resign for "health reasons" after UPAC raided his home.  He was also the spokesperson for Alfonso Gagliano, of Sponsorship Scandal fame.

These should have been red flags for the Quebec Liberals, who are having extreme difficulties getting rid of the strong smell of corruption and other related scandals especially considering the by-election is triggered by the resignation of disgraced ex-minister Sam Hamad.  They went ahead with Tétrault anyway, to François Legault's CAQ's pleasure.  The CAQ was certainly relishing the idea of facing Tétrault and had high hopes of wrestling the riding away from the Liberals, after being a close runner-up in the last two elections.

Reports of psychological harassment of ArcelorMittal employees when Tétrault was director of public affairs surfaced only a day after the official campaign HQ opening, with Premier Couillard and several ministers in attendance.  The Liberals' reflex was to temper, deny and defend their candidate.  The first assumption was that the story wouldn't have legs and that they could ride the storm.  The Caquistes were pursing their lips!  Beauce-Nord MNA André Spénard made fun of the latest revelations about the Liberal candidate, assuring his party would have researched deeper in Tétrault's past if he had been a candidate for the CAQ.

A few hours later, surprise, the CAQ was dumping its own candidate Normand Sauvageau.  A former branch manager for Scotiabank, Sauvageau was the subject of complaints of psychological harassment which lead to his abrupt retirement in 2016.  When journalists got wind of the story (a coincidence, no doubt) and started to ask questions, Sauvageau unveiled the situation to the Caquiste HQ.   The decision was quickly made to pull the plug ASAP.  CAQ Leader François Legault went to twitter: "At the CAQ, it's zero tolerance.  I acted as soon as I knew.  I will announce a new candidature shortly."

This forced the hands of the Liberals.  After Tétrault spent the day apologizing and reiterating that he would campaign to the end, after seeing one cabinet minister after the other defend their candidate, like Christine St-Pierre who stated that no one was perfect or Lucie Charlebois stating she was "very comfortable" with the explanations provided, the CAQ's move to dump Sauvageau left no more margin to manoeuvre.  Ã‰ric Tétrault finally "decided" to withdraw from the race and it had nothing to do with the CAQ's own decision to drop their candidate.  Right.

Suddently, the race in Louis-Hébert is theoretically wide open.

The PQ, who held the seat in the 90s, is hoping they will benefit from the CAQ and PLQ's self-inflicted wounds.  Quebec Solidaire is playing the righteous card, accusing both parties of having "blind confidence in the business community."  Even the newly reformed Quebec NDP, running a candidate for the first time provincially since 1994, is hoping this gong-show will benefit their candidate, former MP Denis Blanchette.

Voters will choose on October 2nd.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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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Faced with a sub-par slate of candidates personifying a host of uninspiring traits, Canada's Conservatives elected Andrew Sheer, the one who personified "safety."

Safety can be an attractive quality when it protects us from danger.  In the political world, this includes incompetence, chaos, radicalism, and offensiveness.  Yet safety also describes an avoidance of risk, and in doing so numbs instincts for bravery, creativity, and honesty.  As Scheer begins his third month as Tory leader, the practical consequences of this disposition is becoming apparent.  What was  useful in a tight, consensus-based intra-party election is showing its limitations in the arena beyond.

The "safe conservative" is a distinct species.  They're certainly quite different from conservatives of the self-loathing, Michael Chong variety (who seem to be everywhere in the Canadian media these days), forever wailing about how the Conservative Party is too right-wing, too Christian, too bigoted, and too nasty.  Unlike them, safe conservatives have no desire to point guns towards their own team, since that's not a particularly safe instinct — you don't want to risk alienating any faction of the base, after all.  Rather than divide, they seek to focus on issues that "unite us all," as Scheer put it while diplomatically distancing himself from The Rebel (but only once that too, had become the indisputably safe thing to do).

And what unites us all?  Certainly not the dreaded "social issues," which have become a watchword for all that frightens delicate suburban Canada away from Conservative politics.  Nor anything that whiffs of Trumpism, which is to say, any messaging that could be described as aggressively "populist," or expressing skepticism on the immigration file.  And nothing that edges too far in the direction of libertarianism either — that's the kind of philosophical rigidity that gets you branded a heartless ideologue.  These things can be tolerated in private in the name of big-tentism, but must not be allowed anywhere near the spotlight.

What's designated for that space is a sort of "common sense" conservatism based around criticizing liberals when they go unambiguously off the rails, and affirming support for right-of-centre beliefs basically everyone shares — taxes should be low, people who break the law should be punished, terrorists deserve nothing but condemnation, and so on.

It's a popular ideology in the sense it's popularly-held, but as a platform for the prime ministership, it suffers from being excessively reactive, especially when emanating from a man like Scheer, who seems non-confrontational by nature (it was not for nothing he coveted the apolitical, mediating job of Speaker).  The end result is a leader who's likable and agreeable, but faces steep handicap as a marketable product in an age of lightning-fast political journalism, which most respects the aggressive.  A politician who reacts well but is disinclined to extend his own neck will not produce headlines, sharable content, or even much of a public profile (over 60% of Canadians have no opinion on Scheer one way or another, according to a recent Abacus poll).  The result is someone who is present in the political conversation, but never leading it — a supporting character, not a star.  Or, as Warren Kinsella more savagely put it, a leader who "exists in some sort of political limbo, neither here nor there."

It would be unfair to completely write Scheer off this early, of course.  We do not know what issues will dominate the Canadian political conversation by 2019, and certainly the massive backlash to the Trudeau government's proposed tax grab on small business owners should give pause to anyone inclined to dismiss the power of "boring" stuff like tax policy.  A charismatic, far-left leader for the NDP could split the vote in a way that lifts Conservative fortunes by default.

Yet when I talk to other conservatives, plenty feel the party is squandering a moment.  Many on the right feel uniquely energized right now, encouraged by the example of Donald Trump, if not necessarily the man himself.  Public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson, Gad Saad, and Ben Shapiro have proven supposedly incontestable left-wing arguments are much more fragile than they appear, and can be defeated decisively, so long as effort is exerted.  The distain felt for Justin Trudeau, a man who so thoroughly personifies the haughty "present year" arrogance of the modern left mirrors the feelings his father sired in a previous generation of Canadian conservatives, many of whom utilized their outrage to write great books, found important activist groups, and launch successful, consequential political careers.

In such a context, Scheer's desire to be the safe man seems dramatically at odds with the fiery movement he's been summoned to politically embody — a fact which his party almost certainly has to know, given their outrage-a-day social media strategy aggressively panders to a style of angry conservative populism so obviously different from what the genteel Scheer actually offers.  This, as many on the left have so gleefully observed, is the root of the Tories' "Rebel problem," whereby botched attempts to play both sides has made an incoherent mess of the career of Chris Alexander and others.

In a leader-centric system such as ours, Andrew Scheer's political instincts are the most important variable determining the near-future fate of the Canadian right.  If we accept the premise that these instincts are broadly wired in the wrong way, then the greatest test of his leadership going forward may prove his ability to follow.

Written by J.J. McCullough

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When news came last week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had nominated the novelist David Adams Richards to the Senate for a New Brunswick seat, I was decidedly neutral on the issue of a literary figure taking his place among the Red Chamber.  After all, we've had some great writers and artists do very good work in the Senate over the years.  Other friends of mine from the East Coast had a few more opinions.

"I hope any bills he writes don't make me want to kill myself after reading," one of them wrote over social media, before adding that "He will bring a perspective and empathy to the role that I think is missing in many of those that are appointed."

Fair enough with the depressing nature of his general oeuvre, but what started to make me a little more nervous were interviews that he gave once the announcement was made, particularly with Power & Politics.

It wasn't so much where he talked about the desire to move onto something else after writing some thirty-one books, or the fact that he'd like to become a voice for New Brunswick and in particular the Miramichi region being a voice for the regions is part of the role of the Senate, after all.  But it was some of the more policy-related issues that Richards expressed that made me question.

"For years, I've been saying that there has to be something done to have a kind of inclusion for the First Nations in education," Richards said.  "There is one female surgeon that's a First Nations person in all of Canada that's kind of tragic.  I've always tried to promote that in my work, and that's what I'll promote up there.  Also, the salmon stocks on the Miramachi are quite bad, so hopefully we can do something about that."

To both of these issues, I have to question just what he thinks that a senator is supposed to be able to do.  After all, the primary function of the Senate is as a revising and deliberative body the famous "sober second thought," where issues and legislation are examined through a lens that is less about electoral gain than it is about bigger-picture considerations, as well as how it will impact regions or minorities.  Coming in with a list of pet policies tends to be a bit more problematic because that's less the role of senators.  Sure, they can make recommendations, and they often do in the form of committee studies, which have a well-deserved reputation for being some of the highest quality policy development tools in the country, and have earned the Senate its reputation as being parliament's built-in think tank.

Nevertheless, as much as there is a subtler policy role in the Senate, what he expects to be able to do with a fairly complex file like First Nations education, or inland fisheries, is where I have questions.  It is especially more difficult to have that kind of direct influence as a senator because any Senate Public Bills that they draft can't task the government with spending any money.  Add to that fact, this new cohort being appointed as independents limits some of their policy influence even further.  And in Richards' case, he is expecting to be just that.

"I'm sitting as an independent man," Richards said in the same interview.  "I'll make my own decisions to the best of my ability when I'm in the chamber."

There once was a time where Senators could have a great deal of influence in the party's back rooms, behind the closed doors of national caucus because they are the institutional memory of Parliament, and can steer discussions or policy plans based on their years of experience, which many MPs don't have by virtue of the low incumbency rate of Canadian politics.  These new senators don't get to have that role unless they join the ranks of the Conservatives, which is the only caucus by which that kind of influence can still be exerted.

For the rest, many are coming into the Senate with an expectation that they will have a greater legislative role than is traditional for the Canadian Senate, and because many of these new appointees are activists from the social sciences who feel like they now have a place inside the system to start making changes, which could very well be opening up Pandora's box when it comes to the way in which our bicameral system functions.

This is why my discomfort with the way that the current government has set up their Senate nomination advisory panel, which relies on self-nomination, has become quite acute.  If you have a group of activists for any number of worthy causes selecting themselves to the role, once they get it, they come in with the expectation that they have power and influence that they can start to exercise rather than what we used to see, which was taking their years of experience in the field and applying their perspective to the legislation before them.  And given the additional fact that because senators are no longer in the caucus rooms, we have an explosion of ministers lobbying individual senators to get legislation passed, offering to trade favours for votes, we risk empowering a group of individuals beyond what their ambit should be in our system.  If we keep going down this path, the Senate is very likely to be less of a chamber of sober second thought and of applying different minority lenses to legislation than it will be a chamber of activists negotiating with the government of the day over personal policy goals.  So, while it may very well be that a new senator like Richards will bring a voice for the Miramichi to the Red Chamber, or that he may have a perspective and empathy that others may not have, that he has actual goals in mind that exceed his role does give me serious pause.

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While a higher minimum wage benefits workers, it can be detrimental to small and large businesses

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne faces an uphill battle in her bid for re-election, so she's tossed out a few political goodies in an attempt to increase her popular support before next year's vote.

Her biggest gift or sop, depending on your perspective is a significant increase to the minimum wage.

Workers in Ontario now get a minimum of $11.40 an hour.  The provincial government will adjust this slightly to $11.60 in October, followed by a massive hike to $14 by Jan. 1, 2018.  (Ed. note: the next provincial election is scheduled to be held on or before June 7, 2018.)  The number will then reach $15 an hour by 2019.

In the Liberal government's view, this can be a huge vote-getter.  Although only 10 per cent of Ontario workers earn minimum wage, roughly 30 per cent of all workers make less than $15 an hour.  By increasing wage standards, the government believes more families can survive rising living costs and that would improve overall living standards.

The Liberals' economic strategy is flawed.

While a higher minimum wage benefits workers, it can hurt business small and large.  You know, the organizations that employ these individuals and pay their salaries.

If minimum wage is increased by an incremental amount, such as this October's adjustment in Ontario, most businesses can handle it.  There will obviously need to be some small fixes to items such as payrolls, benefit programs and annual profit margins.  Nevertheless, an incremental wage shift that complements the financial atmosphere is doable and recommended by many economists.

It's the second and third proposed increases that border on complete economic madness.

The rise from $11.60 to $14 would constitute an increase of roughly 20.7 per cent of the hourly minimum wage.  A further hike to $15 would mean a 32 per cent total increase in just 18 months.

Many small businesses in Ontario couldn't begin to deal with these costs.  Quite a few could be in real jeopardy of restructuring, downsizing or closing on or before these increases become set in stone.

Does the government care about this scenario, which would cause huge financial problems for the province?

That's up for debate.

"We know that there are small businesses, particularly some mom-and-pop businesses in our communities, that are going to have a challenge going through that transition," Wynne recently said.

Ontario Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid noted there will be some relief for small business owners, "likely on the tax side."

While that sounds nice, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the economic upheaval businesses will soon face.

Consider the perspective of the Keep Ontario Working Coalition, which includes diverse groups like the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Ontario Federation of Agriculture and Food and Beverage Ontario.  An independently-commissioned Aug. 14 report conducted by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis said there will be a "$23 billion hit to business" and "185,000 Ontario jobs will be at immediate risk" in the next two years.  And the Ontario government "would need to borrow $440 million more to cover the increases in new costs from this legislation."

The Liberals and their supporters believe raising the minimum wage is a sensible economic plan.  But if you look at the nuts and bolts, and examine it from the perspective of Ontario businesses, the word "sensible" should be replaced with "senseless."

Wynne may truly believe her minimum wage hike is going to lead her to victory in 2018, but she had better be prepared for maximum voter rejection.

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

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