June 2019 - Loonie Politics

With Parliament having risen for the summer, we've seen a raft of articles about the status of the "new" Senate, and how well it seems to be operating. And if you listened to the voices of either the leader of the Independent Senators Group, or the Leader of the Government in the Senate err, "government representative," Senator Peter Harder, things are going swimmingly, and there are no problems at all except for the Conservatives. Why this matters is because there are a group of Independent senators, and most especially the ISG leader, Senator Yuen Pau Woo, who want to make the "new" Senate an election issue, and that's not a good thing.

Most of those articles released last week were problematic, either in how they framed the situation with the Independents, or in the way in which the "reforms" will be affected by a change in government. For example, The Canadian Press used the bizarre line about how the Independent senators possibly defeating one of a number of government bills was somehow "biting the hand that feeds it," which makes no sense because these Senators may have been appointed by Trudeau but their continued presence in the Senate doesn't rely on him (which is one of the key features of the Chamber's institutional independence), hence I'm not sure how he is the hand that feeds them. For another example, the CBC article worried that Trudeau's new appointment system would not survive a change of government because he didn't pass any changes to the Parliament of Canada Act err, except that the Act has nothing to do with the appointments (as that is a prerogative of the Governor-in-Council as spelled out in the Constitution), and the changes to the Act that the ISG was looking for related to the allocation of more salary for their leaders and an office budget that normally were only afforded to the government and opposition leaders, and they wanted additional consideration for vote bells all things which have little to do with the appointment system.

That appointment system is something that Independent senators are, ironically, hoping to politicize during the election never mind that they are also trying to assert that they are above politics in their deliberations, and so on. Following the release of that poll commissioned by Senator Donna Dasko where some 77 percent of respondents said they liked the new system (without necessarily understanding it or its implications), there have been repeated calls from Senator Woo and others to press the other party leaders Andrew Scheer in particular about keeping the current system going. Scheer stated that he would return to a system of partisan appointments, which Dasko's poll said that only three percent of people said they supported, again without necessarily understanding the broader scope of the issue. Of course, because only Trudeau supports the appointment system that Trudeau put into place (the NDP, remember, believe in Senate abolition even though it will never, ever happen), Woo and others are basically looking to shill for Trudeau in the election based on this particular issue.

The other thing that Woo, Harder and their fellow travellers will constantly point to are the numbers of bills that saw amendments in the Senate over the past Parliament, and the requisite amount of self-congratulation that goes along with it. The problem with this bit of back-patting, however, is the that it ignores two key facts that Trudeau signalled his openness to amendments (whereas Harper was opposed to them and almost never accepted them except when forced during the minority years, or if a very obvious drafting error was pointed out), and that most of the amendments that this government did accept originated from the government in the first place. Some of those government amendments were laundered through the ISG, but you won't hear any Independent senators rushing to volunteer that fact when they proclaim their record of amending bills to justify the way things operate now.

But things aren't really working that well, and that fact got a single quote in the aforementioned CBC piece when Liberal Senator Lillian Dyck pointed out that the Independents have held up and hindered the passage of bills because they can't act as a group when it matters. And this is one of the biggest problems with Trudeau's "experiment." When he cast off his party's Senators and started naming Independents with no framework for them to operate with or guidance as to how to be senators, which usually the party caucuses would provide, he created a system of chaos and disruption that continues to this day. The Independents essentially groped through the dark to come up with an organizational model that doesn't necessarily work because their members won't adhere to anything that they negotiate, which is how things get done in the Senate. Will this change as time goes on? Maybe. But right now, it's a fraught situation in the Chamber, which none of these articles really delve into because they rely on the voices with agendas to push.

The other reason why I don't think this should be a vote-getter for Trudeau is because it does damage to Parliament in a way that most people don't see, and which certainly doesn't get mentioned in the mainstream press. Eliminating senators from his caucus room centralized his power because the institutional memory was suddenly excised, as were a group of parliamentarians who could push back at him without fear that their nomination papers wouldn't be signed. And worse, he hobbled the Liberal Party for the day that they lose power because that institutional memory and the people who are in a position to help them rebuild have been told they're not wanted. But none of this is part of the sales pitch around the glories of "independence," and that's the narrative that everyone will push, when the reality is far less rosy. But in an election, narrative is easier to push than truth, and eventually it's the lasting damage to Parliament as a whole that will come back to haunt Trudeau more than the defeat of any single bill would.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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I must admit to a bit of disappointment that Dean French, now the former chief of staff to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, "resigned" so soon. I was looking forward to finding out who would be the next scarcely qualified government appointee to have personal ties to him. So much for the neighbour kid who mows his lawn becoming the new managing director of Ontario Parks.

Getting rid of French had to be done, of course. But after you've been diagnosed with cancer, cutting out the big, lumpy malignancy is only the first step toward recovery. Ford and his caucus are thoroughly in denial that killing off all the diseased cells may require a round of chemo.

The most recent and most embarrassing example of their denial comes from Etobicoke Centre MPP Kinga Surma. Writing for the Torstar chain on Monday, Surma described her "disappointment and disbelief" at witnessing her boss get booed at the Toronto Raptors championship victory rally. "I am tired of the unfair negativity that seems to be purposely perpetuated to contaminate the truth and direct the focus away from the positive things our government is doing to clean up the mess the Wynne Liberals made of Ontario's finances," she complained.

She wasn't accusing the media of unfair spin or fake news, as you might expect. She wasn't lambasting the Opposition. She was clapping back at a crowd of somewhere between one million everyday Ontarians. She was directing her anger at The People. And as more seasoned politicians know, if you think you're doing a good job, but the public disagrees, it's your fault.

Just one MPP? Probably one whose staffer had a short-pants looking over their shoulder as they drafted this thing? Not so. Ford himself has expressed disbelief that The People may not be for him that much. To use his own words, it "boggles [his] mind" that the families of children with autism continue to protest his government's bungling of the file. (For those unfamiliar with the bungling, economist Mike Moffatt, himself a parent of two children with autism, is doing yeoman's work keeping stakeholders informed.) Ford signaled no intent to change course, or even try to find out how he should. To him, as always, one improved metric equals sound management.

Despite the loyalty of his caucus, which is enforced to near-Stalinist proportions, Ford has been content to make them the scapegoats. Vic Fedele, shunted from Finance to Economic Development, is among the more high-profile of last week's demotions. Lisa MacLeod is another, now in charge of Tourism, Culture and Sport after becoming the face of the autism omnishambles. The nearly indistinguishable Lisa Thompson is down to Government and Consumer Services after overseeing deep cuts to K-12 education. Their replacements plus the seven new ministers added one year after Ford's promise to keep his cabinet small should have the pattern down: get appointed, become inextricably linked to a terrible idea, get demoted an absurdly short time later. Good luck to them.

When on the defensive, Ford tries to remind us that Kathleen Wynne was premier before him. Ontarians booted her Liberals from government after a decade of corruption and mismanagement, under little illusion that Ford would be a shining beacon of competence, but hopeful that he'd at least be an improvement. Desperate to look like a hard worker, he careens wildly between one good idea and 15 awful ones, building enough of a record of his own to make Wynne feel like a much more distant memory than she is. New governments can typically get away with blaming their predecessors for at least two years. Ford has run out the clock in half the time.

Most voters are not deep thinkers on policy or political philosophy. But even if they don't read all the endnotes in a platform, or even any of the body copy, they like to be confident that some serious thought goes into what their government is doing. Ford has inspired no such confidence. He has made himself a hard worker at the expense of being a smart worker, one who is in tune with how his work affects The People day-to-day. He is either unwilling, unable, or both to reflect on his actions, learn from his mistakes, and admit to his deficiencies. As far as he is concerned, he is doing a fine job, and if the public disagrees, it's their fault.

Photo Credit: National Post

Written by Jess Morgan

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Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has finally crossed the floor-level bar set for him on environmental policy. He has released a document with the words "environment" and "plan" both in the title.

They've also liberally peppered the word "real" in there, by calling it a "real plan." Anything that requires explicit branding as "real" is a giant red flag that it is not, in fact, real.

In his brief introduction statement to the document, Scheer makes sure to use the phrase "real plan" four times in a brisk 500 words*.

But that's not the only repetition in this document. There are a number of phrases that get hammered again and again. Not just in the parts where the document is explaining what the plan is, but also the turgid first portion where the Conservatives talk about how bad the Liberals are.

It has three guiding principles: "Green Technology, Not Taxes"; "A Cleaner and Greener Natural Environment"; and "Taking the Climate Change Fight Global." Each of these principles is absurdly capitalized, and endlessly repeated throughout the document.

And that kind of gives you an idea of what this document really is. It's not a policy plan, it's a communications document. It's a spin plan.

To make that clear, one of the planks of the green technology section of the document is to set up a federal-level equivalent of Alberta's so-called energy war room. The idea is that, essentially, Canadian products and resources don't get the proper rhetorical credit for how much cleaner â€” note the relative nature of "cleaner" â€” they are than their foreign competitors. Scheer's government would fix that by making a bunch of labels to slap on stuff that read "Canadian Clean."

Just to give you an idea of how empty this is, one of the products Scheer wants to label as "Canadian Clean" is aluminum. The trouble with aluminium is that for every tonne of it you make, two tonnes of carbon are released. Canada's aluminum is certainly produced with less carbon than elsewhere, thanks in large part to 90 percent of the metals' production taking place in QuÃ©bec, where the grid is largely powered by hydro electric dams. But the 2:1 carbon to aluminum ratio still stands **.

It's also a document peppered with self-congratulation. The independent research used is "great." The stakeholder consultations were â€” are? â€” "endless." The work putting it together was "hard." All that back patting is just from the first sentence of the introduction.

It also complains the Liberals climate plan "gives polluters a pass" and says he would be different, because the Conservative plan would expand the number of companies on the hook by changing the threshold to 40 kilotonnes of CO2 emissions from 50 kilotonnes. This would, yes, catch more companies in its net. But a company pumping out 39.9 kilotonnes of CO2 would still be given a pass, to pick a phrase out of nowhere.

It also requires that companies emitting more than a certain amount â€” the actual threshold will be figured out at a later date, we're assured â€” would have to invest an amount â€” the size of which would depend on how much they'd over-polluted â€” into green technologies. But this isn't a tax, you see, it's a mandatory investment in green technology to be certified by federal oversight. Very different from a tax.

The plan, of course, also includes some consumer goodies in the form of a tax credit to make your home more energy efficient. There's also a credit if you patent "green" technologies, and the promise of a tech hub, and an innovation fund.

There are some interesting ideas in there, such as connecting remote communities to the power grid, rather than having them rely on diesel generators for power. And increasing the amount of nuclear power produced in the country. Investing more money in carbon reduction technology is certainly decent.

So much of the document is a broad sketch aimed not really at reducing carbon emissions in Canada, but placing the blame elsewhere and promising to export solutions abroad so everyone else can fix their problems. It is, in many respects, an abdication of any of the moral necessity to clean up our own mess no matter how much dirtier someone else may be. We can do both things at once.

But let's forget about morality and tax credits and all that for a moment. The trick with this Conservative plan-thing, is this is all they needed. For more than a year now Scheer has been dogged by questions of when he'd be releasing a climate change plan. The lack of a plan has lingered for so long, the implication there never would be a plan at all. (Oops, guilty.)

The point of the Conservative plan is merely that a stack of paper needs to exist. And here it is, existing. Scheer was asked merely to show up, now he has.

Such is politics, an ever baser game of gotcha, never really about what a thing is, but how it looks from afar.

***

* This column, by comparison, is a little more than 900 words long.

** There is a pilot project in QuÃ©bec involving a new smelting process that releases no carbon, but it hasn't been proven on an industrial scale, and is nowhere close to replacing the current production country-wide. Canada currently produces about 3.2 million tonnes of aluminum every year. You can read more about the carbon-free process here, in CIM Magazine, on page 21.

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Filibusters rarely bring out the most cogent of political arguments or the wittiest rejoinders, especially as the hours wear on and legislators confined to their seats get punchy.

And so late one night last week, Premier Jason Kenney, not the funniest guy to begin with, displayed a lack of comic timing with a "lighthearted" prank apparently directed at the opposition to his government's bill to stall contract mediation with Alberta's civil service.

He handed out earplugs to fellow UCP caucus members as an NDP MLA continued the impassioned debate over Bill 9, the Public Sector Arbitration Deferral Act.

It wasn't the best look on a premier who has proclaimed he wants to bring civil discourse back to the legislature.

Rachel Notley and NDP supporters across the province spotted the dissonance immediately.

"This premier lowered the bar once again in his display of disrespect for the people of Alberta," said Notley. "They literally plugged their ears when Opposition members raised the concerns of these 180,000 Albertans."

Those 180,000 Albertans are the public sector workers watching their hopes for a wage bump evaporate with the mediation halt, and waiting with trepidation for an expected further attack on their existing wage and job security.

Kenney's reaction to the NDP's jowl shaking over disrespect in the legislature could have gone three ways. He could have apologized and admitted the earplugs were an ill-conceived jest.

Or he could have decried the NDP's lack of a sense of humour.

Instead he started giving interviews about how the earplugs were prompted by an MLA who suffered from tinnitus being unable to bear the loud commentary from an opposition member topping out at more than 100 decibels.

That came after his press secretary dismissed the incident as "a harmless and light-hearted attempt to boost Government Caucus morale."

Say what?

The NDP could have made their point and gone back to more substantive issues, including Bill 9 itself which did pass, no surprise given the UCP majority, on Thursday.

Instead they pushed it into a point of order in the Legislature charging that UCP House Leader Jason Nixon had misled the house when he declared that his fellow MLAs hadn't actually used the offending earplugs.

Speaker Nathan Cooper ruled that there was no foundation to the complaint. He wasn't happy with either party about the initial incident or the resulting complaint.

"It has not been my experience that there is a positive correlation between sitting late into the night and decorum in this assembly," Cooper said after his ruling.

Theoretically the incident, which has had a six-day political life, is winding down now.

If Kenney is unlucky, Notley will find a way to turn the gaffe to her advantage as she did with an offhand insult from former Premier Jim Prentice about math being hard.

Bubbling along under the seemingly slight uproar about legislature decorum is the more substantive fight over the public sector contracts at the heart of Bill 9.

The contracts signed under the NDP government called for wage freezes in 2017 and 2018 with a reopening on the wage issue in 2019. Presumably the intention was that a small hike might be possible if the provincial economy was back on the upswing.

The UCP government bill delays that wage mediation until after its "blue-ribbon" panel on government spending reports on how to wrestle provincial finances back into the black.

Public sector unions are proclaiming the tactic a precursor to major cutbacks.

The Alberta Union of Public Employees and the Alberta Teachers Association have both launched legal challenges against Bill 9, saying it violates collective bargaining rights.

This confrontation is just the opening salvo on the inevitable coming confrontation between the UCP government and public sector unions. And those unions are preparing to fight, or at least to protest as loudly as possible.

Kenney will need his earplugs.

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Last week, as part of his fit of pique that the federal government passed bills C-48 and C-69, Alberta premier Jason Kenney announced that the province would revive their defunct and unconstitutional "consultative election" legislation for Senators. While there is little danger of it being used right away the next provincial election is slated for around May 31, 2023, which is when this sham Senate "election" would be held, and the next Alberta vacancy is due by March of 2021, when Senator Elaine McCoy is due to retire, it wouldn't be able to be held before then (unless Kenney holds some kind of a special election, which I would not put it past him to do), the whole scheme is just an instance of Kenney manufacturing a grievance that he can use as a cudgel against the federal government. After all, he has whipped his voter base into a state of irrational anger that he has no means of dissipating, and he now has little choice but to keep the cycle going and hope that it doesn't blow up in his face.

Alberta's history of "electing" senators has always been constitutionally dubious, and it was done as a kind of impotent protest against Ottawa. The whole mythology around a so-called "Triple-E" Senate was never going to work in the first place the kinds of things it railed against in its populist way, such as the National Energy Program or the decision not to maintain the CF-18s out of Winnipeg would not have been stopped by a Triple-E Senate, and the only thing it would accomplish would be to create 105 new backbenchers that would stymie the legislative process because they suddenly had electoral legitimacy that would "outweigh" that of MPs given the scale of the number of constituents each represented. That Stephen Harper made a point of appointing largely only "elected" senators until the prorogation crisis of 2008 forced his hand into making those 18 panic appointments (the quality of most of which were proven to be dubious) was meant to try to pressure other provinces to adopt Alberta's model, but that too was shot down by the Supreme Court of Canada.

In their 2014 reference decision on Senate reform, the Court found that trying to use "consultative" elections was unconstitutional without a constitutional amendment because it fundamentally altered the constitutional architecture of the Senate, as it would "modify the Senate's role within our constitutional structure as a complementary legislative body of sober second thought." After all, one of the roles of the Senate is to be able to look at issues beyond the next electoral cycle. Some scholars have stated that there was nothing in the decision about the province creating a process, but that's playing a bit too cute and legalistic with the reference decision. Indeed, it's the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law, or in this case, the spirit of the reference decision, and what the Supreme Court ruled as to what constituted the basic premise of the Senate.

Granted, constitutional experts I've spoken to have said that because the province isn't the one making the appointment, it would be hard to invalidate their "consultative election" law, but any attempt to use the results to pressure the prime minister into naming senators that emerged from that process is clearly contrary to what the Supreme Court stated in the ruling as it trying to do this on a one-off basis with each of the provinces that might adopt such legislation. That is clearly attempting to do through the backdoor what can't be done through the front door, and you can bet that the courts would not stand for it if a government attempted it.

The Supreme Court did state that senators selected from a list of "nominees" arrived by election would create the expectation of legitimacy. As they stated:

It is true that, in theory, prime ministers could ignore the election results and rarely, or indeed never, recommend to the Governor General the winners of the consultative elections. However, the purpose of the bills is clear: to bring about a Senate with a popular mandate. We cannot assume that future prime ministers will defeat this purpose by ignoring the results of costly and hard-fought consultative elections.

I would also note that in his questions during the hearings, then-Justice Thomas Cromwell asked that if consultative "elections" were fine, then why not consultative auctions?

Which brings us back to Kenney's case for reviving this legislation, all of which is premised on a foundation of lies. In drumming up anger against the passage of Bills C-48 and C-69, which he falsely claims to be an unconstitutional attack on Alberta's areas of provincial jurisdiction, he points to the Justin Trudeau-appointed Independent senators who voted in favour of those bills as amended, and claims that at least with "elections," there would be an element of accountability for them. This is another lie, however, because even if they were chosen based on the "election," it is for a non-renewable term, which means there is no actual exercise of accountability. Just picking a name off a list is not "accountability." It's a sham.

And that's exactly what Kenney is offering more snake oil to keep his angry base angry just a little longer, because he can hope to rail against a future prime minister not appointing any of the so-called nominees "elected" out of this process, and treat it as some kind of attack against the province. It's ironic that someone who has spent his career railing against totalitarian communism wants to recreate their electoral system in his province, which is what these sham elections have amounted to, with the NDP boycotting because they don't believe in the Senate, and the Liberals because the process was unconstitutional (and more to the point, the current federal Liberal party has disavowed its own senators). That leaves just nominees for a single party on the ballot plus any foolhardy would-be independents which doesn't exactly make it a proper exercise of democracy. But democracy isn't the point irrational anger and the creation of grievances is, and it's a very dangerous game.

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A growing number of Canadians are tired of the traditional parties and politics as usual. Wilson-Raybould and Philpott could offer a choice

Every July 4, millions of Americans celebrate Independence Day. If two members of Parliament are successful this fall, millions of Canadian voters could one day celebrate Independents Day.

Former Liberal ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott were at the centre of the SNC-Lavalin controversy earlier this year that turned the federal government upside down. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eventually booted them out of caucus on April 2 and they sat in Parliament as independent MPs.

They'll be running as independents this fall, too.

Although some Canadian MPs served as independents in the late 19th century, it's a risky move in modern politics. Less than a third of MPs who leave a political party to run as an independent have been re-elected. Some recent exceptions include former Liberal MP John Nunziata (1997), former Canadian Alliance MP Chuck Cadman (2004), radio host AndrÃ© Arthur (2006, 2008) and former Conservative MP Bill Casey (2008), who now sits as a Liberal.

What's different about Wilson-Raybould and Philpott running as independents is their approach. They're both trying to push the idea that running as an independent is the best and most desirable route to reforming Canadian politics.

As the former said at a community centre in her Vancouver Granville riding, "I know that it will not be easy to run a campaign as an independent. There will be challenges but with your support, I am confident that running as an independent is the best way to â€¦ go about it at this time and the best way to transform our political culture."

That's what Change UK The Independent Group recently set out to do. Founded in February, this party is composed of former Labour and Conservative MPs who were furious at the way the old, established parties were handling Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit. They attempted to create a new, middle-of-the-road political home for disgruntled British voters with the slogan, "Politics is broken. Let's change it."

It didn't work.

After getting shut out in last month's European Parliament election, six of the 11 Change UK MPs quit to sit as independents. This included interim leader Heidi Allen and spokesperson Chuka Umunna, who joined the Liberal Democrats on June 13.

Umunna told the BBC he was "wrong" to think "millions of politically homeless people wanted a new party," and he "massively underestimated just how difficult it is to set up a fully fledged new party without an existing infrastructure."

Wilson-Raybould and Philpott's best strategy would be to move further away from the party system and attempt to change the domestic mindset about voting. The former has earned the admiration of Canadians due to her honesty and integrity during SNC-Lavalin, and has a good chance of getting re-elected. Philpott is in a much tougher political battle, but the praise she's earned for standing by her friend could help her survive.

That being said, neither MP is strong enough to move mountains. It would take an enormous effort to change Canada's traditional voting behaviour, even if people are more frustrated with politics and politicians than ever.

But it's a unique political experiment and one worth watching. It fits with the mindset of a growing number of Canadians who, like others around the world, are getting tired of the traditional parties and politics as usual, and are looking for something new.

If Wilson-Raybould and Philpott can tap into this wave of voter frustration, they could transform into unique voices who want to change Canadian politics for the better.

Who knows, maybe they'll be celebrating Independents Day before long.

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Andrew Scheer released a climate change plan, but he forgot to bring the "plan" part: no targets means no goals, and no goals means you cannot measure success or failure. By definition, this means he did not release a plan.

More to the point, he and the Tory Party were left boasting about the number of pages in the document, never a good sign â€” like the high-school student who thinks more is more when it comes to an essay page count, or the undergraduate student who thinks dropping in nice blocks of quotations from scholars to pad the paper helps.

Scheer then dissembled on Evan Solomon's show, essentially admitting that his plan to put a fee against a certain cap on emissions, with the dividends going into a technology fund, was a cap-and-trade system, albeit by some other name, because Conservatives feel cap-and-trade, carbon taxes or pollution pricing of any kind are verboten, rather than the simplest, bare-minimum, market-oriented mechanism we have to fight the climate crisis.

That means that Andrew Scheer was for a cap-and-trade system under Stephen Harper before he was against it under his own leadership before he was for it again, just don't call it that, please and thank you. He's in good company, at least: the Ontario Tories were for a carbon tax before they were against it. They even now have stickers and selfies at gas pumps to drive home the point.

I am perplexed by this messiness for a simple reason: raw political strategy.

Here's how I see it: if the Green Party is on the rise, such that the Liberals will struggle to win a minority government, the Conservatives need an answer to the "vote Liberal to stop Tories" siren call. If Scheer is a climate bogeyman, progressives will give credence to such calls. Liberals will be able to rally the strategic voting crowd â€” what some pollsters have aptly and vividly called "promiscuous progressives" â€” in order to ensure the Conservatives are not elected, since they're such recalcitrants on climate action.

But if the Tories can point to a meaningful, measured climate plan, they could inoculate themselves against such progressive corralling in an "Anyone But Scheer" scenario. In political messaging 101 seminars, candidates are taught about "shield and sword" issues, or issues where the party needs a defensive position to shore up a weakness, or an aggressive push on the positives.

Climate change for the Tories in this day and age is a shield issue, but it need not be. There is a conservative, conservationist, everyone-must-do-their-fair-share approach to fighting climate change, but Conservatives in Canada have preferred to take a more resource-exploiting, "read my lips: no new taxes" approach, such that they're far from being able to claim any sort of moral standing on the file. That means they need a shield.

I expected more from Scheer, accordingly. Instead, it seems we are getting a prop of a policy; something that allows him to say "I have a policy on that", without ever sweating the details or actually having a real plan.

This tactic is almost certainly insufficient when what he needs is a clear way of saying to erstwhile Green or NDP voters "I am not scary; you don't need to swing behind the Liberals to stop me; I care about climate change as much as you do and I have a practical plan to address it â€” OK, maybe not the best plan, or your first-choice plan, but at least it's one that represents no massive change to the approach the Trudeau Liberals are taking: nothing to worry about here, folks."

Instead, he's boasting about the page count; he has a rather meaningless document.

This seems like an opportunity lost, a sop to play to his base support, rather than grow it, or more accurately to block a corralling of progressives behind Trudeau in a strategic-voting pincer movement at the end of a campaign.

This means that Scheer has left the classic "vote Liberal to stop the Tories" end-of-campaign tactic open to the Grits â€” expect Trudeau to exploit it with gusto and with fervour.

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As a Loonie Politics Political Columnist Type Person, I would like to use the platform I have been afforded to recognize a constituency that is well known and well respected by all, but doesn't get nearly enough credit from the political class. They may not be "high profile". They may not have a "buzz" around them. They prefer to dig in their gardens and wear those canvas hats with the wide floppy brims and a piece of string for a chin strap. But without these fine folks the province would have been lost to the ravages of extremism long ago.

I speak, of course, of those stalwarts who have stuck with the PCs in good times and bad. You know they have been, because they tell you, often, how many years they've been doing it for.

They might tell you that they cast a ballot for Sir James Whitney after being moved by his passionate denunciations of the Mowat administration's rampant pork-barreling, and you might believe them. When Bill Davis blew up the party by funding Catholic schools, they resolutely marched to the polls, braving screaming crowds hurling religious abuse while U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" played in the background on repeat. When Mike Harris murdered Dudley George in cold blood and subjected the town of Walkerton to pestilence and plague, they blamed Bob Rae and the previous NDP government. When the chuckleheads doing Tim Hudak's advance work in 2014 didn't bother to get a permit to film a video on the TTC and Tim looked like a doofusâ€¦ ehhhhâ€¦ they had second thoughts.

These people have been STUPIDLY loyal (emphasis mine). They may not have liked everything about Doug Ford, or even anything about Doug Ford, but the Liberals had made a real mess of things and after 16 years it was time for a change. They would have preferred Patrick Brown, or Christine Elliott, or even a stick dipped in blue paint, but going into the 2018 election, it was what it was.

Now, however, they're getting a little worried about the way things are being handled down at Queen's Park. They don't want to say anything, butâ€¦ of course there were going to have to be SOME cuts. They just didn't expect that anyone would get UPSET about the cuts. And who could have predicted that a member of the Ford family would surround himself with loyalists instead of taking the advice of seasoned political veterans?

Meanwhile, the Liberals may have been downgraded from the Minivan Party to the Sedan Party after their two Ottawa members quit, but even so they're still reaching for the stars by trying to draft astronaut Chris Hadfield, or perhaps just Hadfield's mustache, to run for Liberal leader. Another household name that could add some sizzle to the Liberal steak while tossing some red meat to their base is Jack "Kiefer Sutherland" Bauer, who laid one of the all-time-great burns in Canadian political history on Doug Ford when he quoted some American Senator guy from 1988 and said, "I knew Tommy Douglas and you, sir, are no Tommy Douglas." Ouuuch! Do you need some waterboarding after that burn, Doug, just like the terrorists that Kiefer Sutherland used to waterboard on the popular TV show "24" which I am referencing right now?

Anyway, these traditional PC voters are right to be concerned about the fact that the Liberals aren't just drying up and blowing away forever. When the PC's got back into government, it was supposed to be just like it was back in the good old Big Blue Machine days, where there was no possibility that another party could win an election. If the party has to actually work to win the next election, it'll be because of distractions like reports of MPP's being berated to the point of tears in public, Randy Hillier and Dean French fighting like an old married couple, or the Premier being booed at the Raptors parade by people who just fled a shooting.

Unlike the Liberals, however, these traditional PC's have been making their voices heard, which is why Ford managed to get back to what his base really wants from him: triggering the left by marching in a Pride Parade.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

Written by Josh Lieblein

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For Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer things are looking pretty good right now.

He's doing well in the polls, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has suffered a crippling brand meltdown thanks to the SNC-Lavalin scandal, and, recent conservative electoral victories in provinces all across Canada certainly seem to suggest he's riding the crest of an unstoppable "Blue Wave".

Yet despite all that good stuff, it could still rain on the Conservative Party's parade.

In other words, lots things could go wrong for Scheer between now and Election Day.

What kind of things, you ask?

Well, here's a list I've compiled, in no particular order, of possible roadblocks on Scheer's path to power:

The Ford Factor

Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford's perceived "reckless" spending cuts coupled with his feckless leadership is undermining the Conservative Party's reputation for competent governance. And yes, fairly or not, Conservatives do have such a reputation. In fact, Scheer's plan is likely to trumpet that competence in the next federal election. Thus, if Ford's missteps take that card off the table it could sabotage a key component of the Conservative Party's messaging strategy.

Media Coverage

Let's face it, the Canadian media regards Trudeau the same way Toronto Raptor fans regard Kawhi Leonard. Yes, Trudeau's lustre with the media has faded somewhat in recent years, but when push comes to shove, Trudeau's still their guy. So you better believe they will amplify and magnify every Scheer gaffe or misstep; indeed they will magnify and amplify the misstep of anyone even remotely connected to the Conservative Party. True, the influence of mainstream media isn't what it used to be, but it's still a force to be reckoned with.

Combat Skills

The Liberals and their allies have already started to bury Scheer in an avalanche of smears. So he needs to fight fire with fire. To be blunt, he must find the sharpest axe he can find and start hacking away at Trudeau's brand. But here's the question: Can he hold his own in a political street fight? So far, I've seen little evidence to suggest he can. Plus, running an effective "attack ad" strategy requires a high level of strategic acuity. Does Scheer's team have that skill? At any rate, if Scheer can't or won't fight back the chances of Conservative victory will diminish.

Vote Splits

Vote splitting could be an issue for Scheer. For instance, we hear a lot about how the Liberal Party is bleeding support to the Greens, but, if the Green upsurge is due to a populist impulse, isn't it also possible some voters could shift from the Conservatives to the Green Party? Also, keep in mind Maxime Bernier's People's Party is still lurking in the shadows. It too could steal Tory votes. And what happens if the Bloc Quebecois makes a comeback in La Belle Province. Would it cut into Tory support? In a tight race little losses could have a big impact.

The Power of Incumbency

Justin Trudeau has one big advantage in 2019, he didn't enjoy in 2015, i.e. he now has the two words "prime minster" in front of his name. As a sitting incumbent, Trudeau can do all sorts of cool things: he can jet to Washington D.C. or to Europe and look all statesmanlike; he gets to set the agenda and to frame the debate, he also has the power to dispense election goodies. In short, it's easy for him to look and act prime ministerial.

As you can see, Scheer faces possible bumps on the road to Ottawa. And, by the way, this is just a partial list of potential "what if" scenarios which could derail the Tory Express, others include what if, Scheer bungles the TV debate; what if, during the election, there's "white nationalist" terrorist attack, what if Trudeau runs a brilliant campaign?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not predicting Scheer will lose.

He still has a lot of advantages and Trudeau still has lots millstones around his neck.

All I'm saying to Conservatives is remember the Roman saying, "Ante victoriam ne canas triumphum" which roughly translated means, don't count your chickens before they're hatched.

Photo Credit: National Observer

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Last week's announcement for the federal approval of the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline sets the stage for the 2019 election campaign. What with the ongoing carbon tax dispute between the Liberals and its conservative opponents, this election is shaping up to be one fought primarily on the dual planks of energy and the environment.

That's not to say that the 2019 election will be a single issue election. No election ever is. Though some are more focused on a particular issue than others. Think reciprocity in 1891 and 1911. Or conscription in 1917 and 1944. And of course, the return of Canadian anxiety over the trade relationship between Canada and the United States in 1988.

For a time, it appeared that immigration concerns and the fervour caused by irregular border crossings would endure in the minds of the electorate. But as of late, the issue has lost much of its political potency.

With the release of Dr. Eric Hoskins report, advocating for a universal pharmacare plan, it is certainly possible that the issue of drug coverage becomes a major point of contention.

Nonetheless, the ongoing debate over pipeline expansion and taxing carbon emissions has not only proven the most salient electoral topic, but also the most impassioned one.

As Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau has risked his political futures on balancing the interests of both the environment and the energy sectors, in the search of pleasing the median Canadian voter.

Attempting to juggle disparate interests, all to maintain the support of the mushy middle, has often been a tried and true method to political success.

Mackenzie King, Canada's longest serving Prime Minister, was most adept at this sort of balancing act. When World War II broke out, significant pressure from much of English Canada was levied on King to invoke conscription. In contrast, a majority of Quebeckers were vehemently opposed to any such draft.

At first, King stalled by calling for a national plebiscite to release the government from its earlier promise to never compulsory enlist. Countless other delaying tactics were also utilized by the wily Prime Minister to not split his caucus or his party's broad coalition of support; all while continuing to provide significant resources and volunteer troops to the Allied war efforts.

In 1944, he finally succumbed to the pressure and invoked a limited form conscription. By the 1945 election, the Liberals did indeed lose some western seats as a result of King's delays. And certainly there were many Quebecker's who were outraged at King's decision to conscript at all. Nonetheless, his governing coalition held solid in 1945. And when King finally chose to retire in 1948, he left the country, and the Liberal Party, more intact than any leader before or since.

King may have been "the world's champion fence sitter" as one official British report described him. But his fence sitting also allowed him unprecedented electoral success, all while maintaining national unity and making impressive contributions to help defeat Britain's enemies.

Stephen Harper has often been compared to Mackenzie King, and in some ways, the comparison is apt. Both men were fiercely partisan. They also both opted for incremental policy changes while in office, instead of pursuing grandiose nation-building schemes.

However, Harper was far too narrow-minded and vindictive to maintain the allegiance of centrist voters. Something that King did so skilfully, and for so long.

Instead, Harper's one-sided approach of championing pipeline construction, all while vilifying the environmental community, proved hopelessly inadequate. After all, not one of the four major pipelines approved during his tenure were in operation, let alone construction, by the time of his political defeat. And any Conservative action on addressing climate change was limited at best. The combination of these two failures helped undermine his very Prime Ministership.

Harper should have recalled another former Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, and his description of Mackenzie King before he chose such a route:

"(King was) aware that his posture was often neither heroic nor dramatic. Nailing your colours to both sides of a fence seldom is; but it may be better than nailing your colours to one side if in so doing, you bring down the fence."

It is evident that Justin Trudeau has chosen a more even approach than Harper ever did in balancing the interests of both energy and the environment. With his concessions to both sectors, and their constituencies of support, Trudeau is echoing the approach taken instead by King.

However, it remains to be seen whether this will prove the key to his re-election, or to his defeat. Unfortunately for Trudeau, the middle ground doesn't appear to be as solid as it was in King's day.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics