When what passes for the conservative movement in this country does something abominably stupid, such as freak out about the cost of a swing set (ostensibly because the Liberals complained about a $16 glass of Conservative orange juice once upon a time?), I like to say that if there is a right-wing conspiracy in this country, then someone deserves their money back.

I say this because the left would have you believe that enormously profitable Canadian corporations are in league with conservative elected officials to screw over the little guy and enact a white supremacist agenda.

Then you look over at what the CPC is actually doing, and you see that they are putting together websites making fun of the PM's tendency to take personal days, using a joke that stopped being funny last decade.

I understand that a car full of clowns is scary for some people, but to the rest of us they're far too goofy to be considered a threat.  And so it is with the conservative movement in this country: If you're going to try to make the case that some secret injustice is being perpetrated by the right, you must absolutely provide evidence that the right is competent enough to organize and execute such a plan, even badly.

Bog-standard conservative yelling about wasted public dollars, even when that yelling plays fast and loose with actual facts, simply does not evoke associations with the Trump administration, and yet Chantal Hebert seems to be trying to do just that.

It is, of course, possible for a nominally conservative government to be threatening and ridiculous.  The actual Trump administration can preside over the ripping of children away from their parents and Twitter fights with late-night TV talk show hosts simultaneously.

But if anyone's doubling down on a fake-news narrative, it's got to be the left.  Not just because they are suggesting Scheer's evasions are tantamount to Trumpian falsehoods, but because they themselves are trying to push the narrative that Canada is being beset by an epidemic of falsehood, and that this not their own incompetence is the reason why Doug Ford won.

To ignore the fact that the Liberals ran an absolutely wretched campaign here in Ontario requires a level of intellectual dishonesty that I don't even think Trump himself would be capable of.  And yet, that's exactly what Liberal campaign manager David Herle did on the latest installment of his podcast, where he had the temerity to state (in public mind you) that "Kathleen Wynne offered a superior product to sell."

Yet as risible, and as typical, as Herle's failure to acknowledge his own failings is, it remains comparable to the distractory tactics of the CPC.  It is only when you consider the Liberal establishment's incompetence when it comes to dealing with the fake news problem and the other unsolved problems that fuel the anger of the Trumpets  that a clear distinction emerges.

The half-assed manner in which Kathleen Wynne attempted to call out Doug Ford.  Gerald Butts intervening on Twitter to shut down one single Catherine McKenna parody account after a Canadian quasi-celebrity was fooled by it.  Outsourcing the fact-checking of Canadian Facebook because we apparently aren't up to the task of doing so ourselves.  These are the solutions dreamed up by the West-Wing binge-watching blue checkmarks currently occupying the Trudeau PMO, to a problem that they told us was eating away at the fabric of our democracy.

Were Trudeau and his army of fact-checkers to actually rip those who are insufficiently verified away from their social media, and were they to actually follow the example of the Chinese basic dictatorship that they so admire, it would actually send the message that they were willing to back up their apocalyptic rhetoric with commensurate action.  But that would make it harder to fundraise off the threat of Conservative "negative and divisive politics", which is, not so coincidentally, the same sort of grift conservatives are frequently accused of.

The first person, or group of people, who can demonstrate that they can govern well, as opposed to just doing so in a way that meets fundraising targets, will find that they are the ones who are beating back the populist threat, and that's the realest news you'll hear all day.

Written by Josh Lieblein

Parliament's summer recess has begun, and with it comes the silly season in Canadian politics, described on Wikipedia as follows: "Issues raised during this period are likely to be forgotten by the election, so candidates may rely on frivolous political posturing and hyperbole to get media attention and raise money."  Don't tell me Wikipedia is an unreliable source.

Of all the reasons the Liberal government has given the Opposition to engage in "frivolous political posturing" this year, one of the most foreseeable has been their change to the Canada Summer Jobs program, requiring applicants to attest that their organization "respect[s] individual human rights," in particular women's reproductive rights.  While the government has insisted that this refers only to an organization's "core mandate," not the personal beliefs of its members, over 1,500 applicants have declined to check the box confirming their attestation, and subsequently have been rejected.  Even if they were never planning to hire anyone to wave blown-up photos of dismembered fetuses in anyone's face, they could not bring themselves to engage in what they view as "compelled speech."

In using the Canada Summer Jobs program to remind Canadians, again, that they are pro-choice and feminist, the Liberals have politicized what was previously just another slush fund, and they haven't done it well.  They have kept themselves wide open to questions about why this Islamic non-profit, whose director has called publicly for the "eradication" of Israel, is still eligible for funding, while the annual cherry festival in Bruno, Saskatchewan, is not.  Should the Liberals end up a one-term government next year, it will be no trouble for the incoming government either to remove the pro-choice attestation entirely, or add a few attestations of their own.  I expect the Tories have already written a sample paragraph requiring applicants to promise not to undermine Canada's strategic industries.

Yet amid the (justifiable) backlash over the attestation, all of Parliament has been operating on the assumption that the Canada Summer Jobs program itself is valuable.  After all, many small businesses depend on it to pay for summer hires, and we wouldn't want Sarnia Concrete Products Ltd. to miss out.  But when governments subsidize the salaries of full-time employees of major for-profit companies, we call it corporate welfare.  The only significant difference between the two types of subsidies is the word "corporate."  In both cases, the government assumes responsibility for directly creating jobs, and recipient companies come to expect it of them.

There's more room to expect government support in the non-profit world.  As of 2009, government funding accounted for one-fifth of non-profit revenues in the "core non-profit sector," which does not include hospitals and universities.  Specific programs, like Canada Summer Jobs, can make a decisive difference to smaller non-profits.  For want of $3,000 without having to toe the Liberal line, the Bangor Sawmill Museum in Meteghan River, Nova Scotia, now unable to hire a student guide for the summer, will be closed for the season, and possibly beyond it.

It's shameful for an organization to be forced to express a political point of view that has nothing to do with their purpose, whether they agree with it or not.  But if the Canada Summer Jobs program can be weaponized in this way, so can any of the many task-specific grants available to the non-profit sector.  Were the government, via a politically disinterested arm's-length board, to take a more efficient route and provide a single, reliable percentage of direct support subject to clearly defined standards of good conduct, such as not calling for anyone's eradication non-profits would have less need to make work for seasonal employees, and be free to spend the money as they see fit, on personnel or equipment or supplies.  They'd appreciate having fewer grant applications to fill out, itself enough work for one full-time hire.

As for young people by which I mean those who have not finished high school, although the feds will cover anyone between 15 and 30  improved school volunteer programs might be a better source of character-building.  Mandate volunteer hours on a per-year basis, not as a graduation requirement, to reduce the chance of procrastination.  Make sure every student receives a list of local organizations that need volunteers, so they don't have lack of information as an excuse.  The onus is on schools, to say nothing of parents and kids themselves, to make students helpful to the community.  It should be the last thing anyone asks a politician to do.

Photo Credit: National Post

Written by Jess Morgan

It has only been two weeks since Doug Ford won the election, and while he won't become Premier of Ontario until June 29, he's already making it clear there are going to be significant changes in how Queen's Park is going to be run under his leadership.

Last week Ford announced that he will reconvene the legislature in July so that he can enact some of his promises right out of the gate, instead of waiting until the fall.  Included on his to-do list: ending the never-ending York University strike, cutting the provincial excise tax on gas and scrapping the Liberals' cap-and-trade scheme.

Telling the Canadian Union of Public Employees to go pound sand will likely be the first of many battles with the various unions of the province, and Ford acting decisively on this long-standing dispute shows that he will have no problem fighting the public unions that backed Andrea Horwath's NDP this election and have played kingmaker for the past fifteen years.  If Ford is to be successful in saving the province billions of dollars, battles with the unions will be necessary.

Also revealed last week, Ford insiders are saying the new Premier will have less than the redundant-filled 28-person Wynne cabinet of the last government.  On top of reducing the amount of top-level salaries, this may indicate Ford is looking into scrapping some of the superfluous 30 departments and 6 non-portfolio offices that make up the current Ontario government.  Perhaps the Intergovernmental Affairs, Municipal Affairs and Housing departments could all be amalgamated into one department.  Perhaps Ontario doesn't need a Francophone Affairs department, there are only about 277,000 Ontarians speaking French at home, meanwhile countless other minorities don't have their own ministry, or Status of Women department, which only helps out one sex while in a lot of areas the other sex is faring far worse now.  There are some other questionable departments that I'm sure the Ford team is looking at discontinuing and consolidating, so don't be surprised if some of them get axed.  (The only problem for Ford in this area is that he has a very large caucus, so removing the number of cabinet seats would result in disappointing more people's expectations of being in cabinet.)

On Monday, Ford continued to show his commitment to reigning in spending by declaring a hiring freeze on the public sector, excluding front-line workers like teachers, police, nurses and firefighters.  Ontario has a bureaucracy that has become bloated under the Liberals.  As National Post columnist Andrew Coyne and other experts have pointed out, hiring freezes can be an effective tool in balancing the books in a province where the population is increasing, meaning more money coming into the government from a greater number of taxpayers.

But even more important symbolically speaking — although minuscule in the grand scheme of things financially speaking — is Ford ending free meals for MPPs and print subscriptions to newspapers.  On Tuesday, in his first caucus meeting, Ford bought pizza for his MPPs and said they'll need to bring their own lunches paper-bag lunches.  This is a stark contrast from the Wynne or Trudeau Liberals, that claim to fight for the middle class while living lavishly on the taxpayer's dime.  Ford is sending a clear message that he expects his MPPs to have respect for taxpayers' wallets and purses.

However, taking care of the pennies will in now way end up with the dollars taking care of themselves in a province drowning in a debt of $320 billion, probably more once the PCs get a good look at the Liberals' creative math.  Ford's started off on the right foot, but he's only at the base of what is the equivalent of scaling a debt the size of Mount Everest.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

Hey, you!  Yes, you.  Are you tired of opinion-leading journalists crying poor to the federal government?  Sick of endless layoffs and the slow bleeding-to-death of august publications like Maclean's and Chatelaine?  Anxiously stockpiling Margaret Wente and Rex Murphy columns?

Well, waste no more time asking yourself, "Whither Canadian Journalism?"  Actually, don't waste your time using the word "Whither?", ever.  Seriously, though: Fear not, for I, your humble correspondent, have devised an absolutely foolproof plan for saving Canadian Media from itself.

How do I know it's foolproof, you ask?  Simple: All I propose to do is to take emerging trends within Capital C-Canadian Capital J-Journalism and extend them to their most logical conclusions.  It's the greatest kind of Canadian problem solving: Blindly following along, shunning innovation, declaring victory when nothing of the sort has happened.  And not only that, but the whole plan can be contained in a number of steps people can count to.  Well, most people, anyway.  Without further ado, here's step 1:

Step 1: Get Back To Basics: Unvarnished Partisanship 

Newspapers started out as blatantly partisan rags for one side or the other, and in the intervening centuries we've gotten better and better at pretending this isn't still the case, and that something resembling a code of ethics is upheld.  Actually, that's not quite true: The media has gotten better at pretending, and the rest of us decided we weren't going to mention it because doing so would be uncalled-for dunking on people who can't defend themselves.

Whether it's the Toronto Star's resolute declarations of ¡No pasarán! with respect to the dreaded fake news or the tall foreheads at Canadaland fundraising off the backs of the Sun Media chain going all in for Ford Nation, we've got a lot of journos pretending they are above it all.  Noble, but with the way things are going we're all going to end up on the payroll of one government or another, so why not get it over with?  Journalists of conscience need to recognize that consensus media elected Ford, and they must therefore declare themselves for the glorious anti-Ford resistance now, before he has a chance to do anything, and declare for whichever party has the best chance of invalidating Dougie's Premiership.

Step 2: Fight The Alt-Right, All Day And All Night

Now that we've dispensed with the illusion of fairness, we can get on with the real business of journalism, which involves "fact-checking" the alt-right.  The example of Daniel Dale, who lays passive-aggressive Canadian burns on the Un-President like it's his job….oh wait, that IS Dale's job now, apparently……is instructive in this regard.  What if all Canadian media coverage pushed the anti-Trump agenda in some way?  OK OK, what if it did that, but more so?  Imagine if, instead of boring articles about filling in potholes, we got articles about how filling in that pothole was a defiant act against capitalism.  Private industry didn't fill that pothole, did it now?

Regular old sports journalism?  No, let's have articles about how the Blue Jays should refuse to play in any state that voted for Trump (and let's be honest, the Jays can hardly be said to be "playing" when they do take the field, am I right guys? Guys????) or how the Leafs should switch out the blue on their uniforms for a more centrist red or orange…. for home games only, of course.  Forget your dad's crossword puzzle, what's a seven letter word for "Progressive Battle Cry"?  The answer is, of course, "#RESIST".  What do you mean, you can't use hashtags in a crossword puzzle?  Three other words branch off from that one and they all use hashtags too!

Step 3: Self-Aggrandizing Mansplaining In The Pages Of The New Yorker

I ask you: Where would we be without Adam Gopnik's regular love letters to Canada in the pages of the New Yorker?  As much, if not more effort should be put into building up Canada in the eyes of upper-crust NYC intellectuals than actually maintaining the institution of Canadian journalism.  Otherwise, Americans might start looking more closely at our country and finding flaws flaws that we barely covered in our own media!

Written by Josh Lieblein