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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.


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is going to shine so much positivity — and splash so much money on the media — this election year that most average Canadians will be blindfolded from seeing his hatchet men (peoplekind) and apparatchiks at work spewing negativity and smear campaigns against his opponents.

The combination of spending nearly $600 million to bail out the legacy media and $7 million to get Liberal-friendly organizations to police alternative media, as well as the Liberals' friends at Google, Twitter and Facebook helping remove critical content and undesirables from the mainstream internet, will ensure most Canadians don't see much of the ugly side of the Liberals.

The latest example of whitewashing bad behaviour of a Liberal was of Toronto Liberal MP and notorious progressive bully Adam Vaughan's latest bozo eruption on Twitter.

Vaughan tweeted out Saturday morning: "So Ford's [sic] gang could get folks upset over hurting Kindergarten students instead of being angry over the damage he's done to University students.  Next he will go after young offenders & end 'free school' in detention centres…instead of playing whack-a-mole; Let's just whack him."

No public figure should be able to call for the whacking (i.e. murder) of any other public figure without round condemnation from all parties, including the individual's own, and the media.  But because the Liberals are the Natural Governing Party and the supposed Mr. Nice Guy is their leader, the rules of civility do not apply to them.

Sure, Vaughan would try and backtrack and wriggle out of his despicable tweet by following it up with a pathetic mock apology that included kids playing whack-a-mole with Ford's face photoshopped over the toy moles in an attempt to try and make light of saying they should "just whack him", but this was only after swift backlash from Conservatives had ensued.

A belated, half-hearted apology would come in the evening of the same day, yet the offensive tweet remains up to this day.  And when Trudeau was confronted by opposition house leader Candice Bergen he excused the parliamentary secretary's tweet since he made an apology, despite still leaving up the call to "whack" Premier Doug Ford.

If this was another politician without a reputation for being rude and aggressive towards those on the other side of the political aisle this could possibly be passed off as a bad joke, but in Vaughan's case there is a long, bitter history between him and the Fords at Toronto City Hall, not to mention his alleged intimidation of Tory MP Alice Wong.  And there was the disgraceful incident in which he thought it appropriate to sit in the front row at Rob Ford's funeral after being sworn enemies with him for years.

The media finally got around to writing stories by Saturday evening about Vaughan's tweet, but they downplayed it.  CBC didn't think it relevant to mention which party Vaughan is with, until finally updating the story to include it after being called out for the glaring omission.

Other Liberal MPs, PMO staffers and Trudeau himself continue to make baseless accusations that conservatives are trying to stoke division and fear in the electorate for simply trying to get answers from a government on its out-of-control spending and open border policy.

Trudeau says this is going to be the nastiest elections in a long while, but if that's the case it takes two parties to tango.

"Sunny Ways", as portrayed and interpreted by the pliant mainstream media, doesn't necessarily mean warmth and kindness.  A bit odd they would think that since they believe the sun will fry our planet imminently, which would be a more apt metaphor for the current regime's actions consequences for our country. But parsing that metaphor further, the term "Sunny Ways" comes from the parable that the Sun is able to get a man to take off his jacket, besting the Wind's attempts to blow it off, which only makes him hold tighter.  So it's the sun's heat that forces the man to take off his jacket.

The Liberals and Trudeau similarly apply heat on their opponents via Twitter and the allied media, who are all too happy to frame Conservatives as out-of-touch bigots.  As the Liberals ratchet up the heat in the coming months, expect the paid pipers to describe the piping hot rhetoric from the Liberals as nothing more than harmless, warm rays meant to melt Conservative's frigid hearts.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

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.


The last time I saw Paul Dewar was at the Maclean's Parliamentary awards.  I arrived late as I was otherwise occupied, but I wanted to drop by anyway to show my support.  He had just been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a dedicated Member of Parliament and a strong Foreign Affairs critic for the New Democrats.

No doubt, the strength and high spirits he showed following the cancer diagnosis played a role in him receiving this award, as he decided to use the time he had left to do what the Dewar family has always been known for: serve his community, this time through a new charity called Youth Action Now, which he established with friends and has since been a success and a fitting legacy.

Paul Dewar was surrounded by well-wishers, politicos of all types looking to show him support and love.  A few minutes earlier, Dewar had made a plea to his former colleagues: "Is it not time to take off the armour of our political party and work together as people representing citizens to build a better country for everyone?" he asked.

"Why not welcome and interact with the people from different political parties?  Imagine — imagine how different it would be if we put our swords down and our shields down for a moment. This is my proposition to you."  In the moment, all in the room agreed with him and wanted to tell him that.  Most of them would soon forget and move on with the blood sport that is politics.

I waited patiently in a corner of the room, not wanting to barge in while he was surrounded.  As he was preparing to leave, he spotted me and smiled.  He was visibly tired and ready to go, but he still took time to talk to me.  "I saw you across the room.  I'm glad you came.  How are you?" he asked.  "I'm fine, but how are you?"  He said he was fine, but didn't seem interested in talking about himself.

"How's the family?  What are you up to these days?"  That was Paul Dewar in a nutshell.  He was genuinely interested in others and certainly didn't want to dwell on his own fate.  We spoke a few minutes, shook hands.  I wished him well, and he departed, gently, slowly, his son at his side.

A few years earlier, mere weeks after the 2015 election debacle and his own defeat, we had agreed to go for lunch and talk about the future.  Paul Dewar had been asked by NDP Leader Tom Mulcair to serve as a Senior Transition Advisor to help re-organize the party.  We were both still stunned about the results and processing what it all meant, for the party and for ourselves.  There was lots of work to do.

What struck me, however, was what happened once we left Brothers, a newish beer bistro located in the Ottawa Byward Market.  As we were chatting and walking away, men and women of Ottawa were stopping by to shake his hands and wish him well.

"Thank you for your service," one young man said.  "I am so sorry you lost," an elderly woman told him.  "You are a good man.  I hope this isn't it for you," interjected another.  It was at the same time beautiful and annoying: I couldn't help but notice a certain sheepishness about most of them.

"They are kind, but it feels like these guys didn't vote for you", I told Paul after a while.  "It all sounds like buyers' remorse to me," I added, in a snickery fashion.

"They did what they thought was right," he responded, before adding:

"I am okay with that.  We must all be."

Photo Credit: Global 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.