September 2019 - Page 3 of 5

So I was thinking about the Prime Minister's decision to attend as few debates as possible and delay the start of the election until almost the absolute last second, and I wondered, "Why do we have to go through with this whole messy 'election' thing, anyway? Wouldn't we all be better off if it justâ€¦ didn't happen?"

It isn't just that this election promises to be particularly "elbows-up". It isn't just that the surfeit of useless election related podcasts clogging the air is probably contributing to global warming somehow. And it isn't just that the Liberals and Conservatives are tied despite it being proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the government can't govern worth a damn. Doing away with the outmoded and probably racist concept of "elections" would save taxpayer dollars, improve our discourse, and eliminate our archaic first-past-the-post system because nobody would ever get past the all-important post.

Aren't you excited for a campaign where Justin Trudeau promises to campaign against conservative Premiers like Doug Ford because he's already written off his opponents as laughable? He can get up there and talk about how it's a big problem that people like Doug Ford, who are part of the 1%, and whose father was a politician, and who kind of didn't know what to do with his life until he went into politics are going around pretending to be "for the people" when they're actually part of the elite group of families that run this country.

And then there's the poor abused "hustings" that politicians hit every time they go out on the campaign trail. (The fact that we still call it a campaign "trail" when we have perfectly good roads in this country is another conundrum I won't get into.) I've never seen a "husting", and I'm not sure why our ultramodern and hashtag-literate political journalists insist on using the term in the second decade of the 21st century, but I do know that they go through some truly horrific punishment every time some elected official shows up. We take enough heat for the seal hunt as it is, and people are seriously thinking about a gun ban, so there's no need to have an election if it's just going to give politicians an opportunity to harm a bunch of hustings that are no threat or inconvenience to anyone.

The United States and Britain had elections/referendums in the past few years, and look how that turned out for them. But how can foreign hacking campaigns hack our election if there's no election to hack? Check and mate, bots!

Ralph Goodale has been in Parliament for so long that he actually forgot his own opposition to same-sex marriage, and he's probably going to be re-elected regardless. Why would you force a man who has so clearly taken leave of his mental faculties out into the elements day after day to meet the same people who have been voting for him for decades? Just let him sit there in the House of Commons for as long as he likes, like part of the furniture.

Come to think of it, the campaign is not just painful for older-than-dirt MP's. The people who are actually giving up their lives and jobs to run as candidates for the Opposition parties are clearly terrified to face the voters. How else could you explain that there are entire regions of the country that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has not visited and that he needs stage directions for his speeches? How else could you explain the fact that Andrew Scheer is pretending he's never met Doug Ford and Jason Kenney? Or that the commentariat has all but called the election for the Liberals on account of the TRIUSM that vote-rich Ontario will be balancing out a blue provincial government with a red federal one?

Face it: Nobody wants this election, and I can't see us getting excited about any future election anytime soon. Well, except for the voters who will doubtless be showing up at the voting booth on E-Day loudly asking how they can vote against Trump and then complaining about being turned away because they don't have any valid Canadian ID.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Written by Josh Lieblein

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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During the 2015 federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ran on a simple message, so simple it can be summed up thusly: "Vote for me, because I'm an adorable, impossibly-handsome, rock-star-style leader who is also tons of fun!"

With a message like that, how could he not win!?

But thanks to the SNC-Lavalin scandal (which never seems to die) Trudeau's aura of fuzziness and warmth and niceness has more or less evaporated over the past year meaning he can't play that single-note tune anymore.

And he isn't.

As a matter of fact, I'd argue that over the next few weeks Trudeau will employ not one, not two, but three separate message strategies, each one specifically designed to attack his main political rivals, i.e. Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

You might call it a political "Triple Play."

And since I like to name things, I'm going to give each of these three distinct message strategies a label: "Bad vs. Bad", "Good vs. Good" and "Good vs. Bad".

Let's go over each in detail, shall we?

Bad vs. Bad = Trudeau vs. Scheer

The one person who could topple the Trudeau regime, of course, is Jody Wilson-Raybould. But luckily for the prime minister, Raybould doesn't (yet) lead a political party. That leaves Andrew Scheer as Trudeau's main opponent. And given how Trudeau can't derail Scheer with endearing smiles and cute photo ops, he will instead embrace his badness and make a voter pitch along these lines: "Yes I might be bad, but Scheer is even badder." Indeed, this tactic started months ago, with the Liberals (along with their media allies) branding Scheer as a clone of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as a lapdog of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, as a homophobe, as a misogynist and as a possible white nationalist. And we still have five weeks to go!

Good vs. Good = Trudeau vs. Singh

Yes, I know given how it doesn't have any money, given how it's floundering in the polls and given how its leader is basically irrelevant, the NDP is not much of a strategic threat to the Liberals. Yet Trudeau, who needs every vote he can get, likely covets NDP seats and who knows, maybe Singh's personality will finally catch fire. So Trudeau will have to expend at least some effort degrading his socialist competitors. But, given the ideological affinity between the NDP and the Liberals and given that Singh doesn't come across as that threatening, Trudeau really can't go negative against this particular foe. Hence, Trudeau's approach will be to kill the NDP with kindness, by saying stuff like, "Singh is a good guy, I'm a good guy too, we believe in a lot of the same things. But here's the difference: I'm the only one who can stop the barbarian hordes of Scheer, I'm the only one who can put in practice what Singh believes." This approach may even charm Singh!

Good vs. Bad = Trudeau vs. May

Elizabeth May is usually perceived as simply a quirky politician who espouses a trendy issue. But now she's being taken more seriously, since, at least according to some polls, May is eating into Liberal Party support. This clearly presents a problem for Trudeau. So what can he do? Well, I think Trudeau will present voters with a stark contrast, defining himself as a responsible environmentalist who embraces a balanced approach, i.e. he will impose a steep tax on gasoline while also destroying pristine environments with oil pipelines; whereas May will be portrayed as an irresponsible environmentalist who will force everybody to buy windmill- powered cars. Oh and Trudeau might also mention how May possibly harbors within her Green ranks (horror of horrors)a few pro-lifers.

So there you have Trudeau's three main message strategies for his re-election campaign.

Sure, it's a little more complicated than his last campaign, but it could be just as effective.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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Over the weekend, Justin Trudeau was campaigning mostly in Quebec, where he elected not to take any questions from journalists. This is the same Justin Trudeau who claimed in 2015, that he was taking more questions than anyone else. How things have changed! Is it just the classic front-runner strategy? Was it to avoid more questions on Bill 21, which has caused the Liberal lead in Quebec to shrink by more than half, according to Mainstreet? Or is there something else amiss?

In a piece published in French in Policy Options, I explain what is behind these kinds of decisions.

Simply put, news media are becoming more and more irrelevant to political parties. Around the world, mainstream news media are losing momentum and Canada is no exception. At the local level, newsrooms are far and few between. When they exist, they are smaller and smaller!

In fact, over 200 Canadian communities have seen at least one local media shut down in the past 10 years. Dailies, weeklies, radio and tv stations, they all face growing competition from social networks, which publish their content without royalties while capturing more than 80% of advertising revenue and not paying their fair share of taxes.

This decline of the fifth estate has an impact on our democratic and political life. Electoral planning is no longer centered on the news cycle. While political parties cannot fully do away with news organisations to get their messages out and their candidates known, they know full well that the media is not the necessary tool it once was. In a democracy, this presents a certain danger, as illustrated by Trudeau this weekend.

This new media reality has triggered a political transformation though access to direct communication with the voters. Since news organisations are less and less important, the political parties have refined their communication techniques to avoid the filter of the media.

Since people are consuming less and less hard news, political actors can now increase the reach of their message by surfing on superficial journalism while micro-targeting voters. Why? Because voters often deprive themselves of credible and diversified political information for the benefit of news (or even fake news!) that reinforces their preconceived opinions, helped by the algorithms set up by multinationals who live, and profit, by the click.

Still, local media remains a priority for political parties to convey their message. The reality however, is that regional newspapers, in particular, suffer from a lack of staff and a chronic inability to generate original content. This provides another opportunity to manage messaging, as it is quite common to see news articles published by small outlets lifting entire paragraphs from communiquÃ©s issued by political parties. A real boon for political operators, especially when the content is then put online, allowing parties to amplify the news by appealing to their armies of trolls and other bots.

National media also have less and less resources. The space devoted to politics is decreasing. The number of journalists compared to columnists, polemists and analysts is down. Media outlet budgets are always being cut, while the costs of election campaigns are on the rise, which discourages the mainstream media when it comes time to reserving seats on the aircraft of party leaders. At thousands of dollars a day, why bother if they won't take questions anyway?

Given the situation, the calculation is simple: participating in the leader's tours is an unprofitable operation, especially since most of the events are broadcasted live by news networks, webcasted by journalists, or even distributed directly by political parties. No need to be there in person!

Political parties have taken note of this reality. Why be available to journalists at all? Most do not go on tour. Those who do may derail the message of the day. Parties know that it is easier and less risky to convey their message directly through their own dissemination tools. Especially since, by necessity, there is a good chance that the media will report it anyway!

By their consumption habits, voters have made their choice: traditional media is no longer their primary source of political information. The media has been unable to adapt to keep these consumers. The political parties understand this more and more.

Photo Credit: Reuters

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The hypothesis, now being taken as fact by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his government, is that nefarious foreign billionaires are trying to landlock Alberta's oil wealth by funding environmental activist groups.

Those groups are spreading false information about the oil sands in order to stymie the province's efforts to build pipelines to markets so Alberta can get a decent price for its resources.

In the interests of shining a light on this conspiracy, and possibly cutting off Canadian funding and charitable status to these environmentalist proxies, Kenney has announced a public inquiry into the anti-Alberta energy campaigns.

The inquiry's website doesn't for a moment include a suggestion that the whole conspiracy theory should be challenged, although critics are happy to take a stab at debunking the whole foreign influence scenario.

The inquiry's mandate has already raised plenty of eyebrows thanks to its pre-ordained conclusion, but the rest of the details unfolding on this $2.5 million taxpayer funded debacle should be giving Albertans pause.

Kenney likes to say he wants to inject transparency into the funding of anti-oil sand activist groups. But the inquiry is about as opaque as it could possibly be. The public inquiry is not designated a "public body" so it isn't subject to freedom of information requests.

An FAQ section of the website includes the question of whether the inquiry commissioner, forensic accountant Steve Allan, will be answering media questions. "There is very little the Commissioner can share with the media at this time that is not contained on this website. The website will be updated whenever the Commissioner has information that can be shared with the public."

So that's a hard no.

The commissioner can compel witnesses within the provincial borders to testify. Oh and members of the public can call a number if they have information that would be useful to the inquiry. The term "snitch line" sprouted instantaneously on social media when that was announced.

The commissioner has to issue a report by next June but the government can sit on it for another three months before releasing it to the public.

Could this whole inquiry backfire on the Kenney government? Oh yes. Already Amnesty International has fired off a letter to Kenney saying the exercise is an affront to human rights. That's a pretty major stretch, and Kenney lost no provincial support by laughing it off. But the implications of the inquiry: the "snitch line", the lack of accountability for a taxpayer funded initiative, the shocking lack of open-mindedness in the whole exercise, has to leave Albertans wondering what the end game is for the government.

Albertans are aggrieved over the seemingly endless delays in getting a pipeline. They are frustrated by the low price Alberta oil commands. The province is labouring under uncharacteristically high unemployment rates. For a province that has generally had the highest incomes in the country, lowest tax rates, and a robust economy for decades, the current slide has been a shock.

But the idea that the province's woes are all the result of a mysterious cabal of bad actors outside Alberta's borders telling lies about the oil sands is not helpful and syphons off provincial energies that could be better used on other fronts.

The price of Alberta oil isn't only about access. It costs more to get oil sands out of the ground than free flowing light crude. The climate change protesters who want to keep the oil in the ground aren't the only factor slowing the progress of pipelines. The courts have fixed on the lack of federal consultation with First Nations as the bigger ongoing impediment.

The underlying assumption of Kenney's inquiry is that Albertans are single-minded in their support of oil sand development and those who aren't are clearly misled. Any Albertan who has hefted a protest sign as an anti-oil development rally must be a willing dupe of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

And the oil patch itself, replete as it may be with wealthy (often foreign-owned or heavily invested) multinational corporations, is a poor victim of a handful of charitable foundations from the U.S.

Ultimately at some point taxpayers need to ask, is this what we elected the UCP to do? Fighting for the oilpatch is a natural role for an Alberta government. Launching court challenges and interventions, marketing out brand of ethical oil across the country and internationally and challenging false statements when they turn up in news or social media all seem pretty legit.

But the Spanish Inquisition-style secretive inquiry Kenney has launched feels wrong in a society that prizes free speech and the right to hold dissenting views.

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Well, here we are. Election 2019 is officially underway. Of course, the issuing (not dropping) of the writs of election is just a formality; election-style rhetoric never really stops in Canadian politics. But now that the formality has been executed, it is the appropriate time for me to unveil my official endorsement, which is highly coveted in all quarters and will ultimately increase the recipient's share of the popular vote by at least 10 percentage points. Thanks for the fruit baskets, by the way.

At the time of this writing, I will have been a resident of the United States for over a year and a half. If I wish to vote in Election 2019, I will need to apply to vote by mail. In order to get an absentee ballot, I must supply my most recent Canadian address and a photocopy of a document proving my Canadian citizenship. Then it's just a matter of filling in an online form and waiting a few weeks. Easy.

It was also easy to vote in Election 2015. I would have had to walk a few blocks to the polling station, but I like walking. Yet I didn't. It wasn't worth it. Spoiled ballots don't count, anyway.

Such is the dilemma this cycle. If the only vote I can conscionably cast is for a dead person, or a fictional character, or an inanimate object, or a long string of obscenities, why bother filling in that form? What's the use of an absentee ballot that won't count?

Once again, it's that bad. The individuals seeking to head Canada's government are so uniformly self-interested, hypocritical, incompetent, incurious, and dislikable and that's just a baseline that I have no choice but to endorse my dog for Prime Minister of Canada.

Fisher Morgan was born in Washington State, but as a purebred Newfoundland, his ancestral ties to Canada run deep. Like the province for whom it was named, this breed is renowned for both its handling of rough seas and its friendliness. For this reason, Fisher will simultaneously be running as the Independent Member of Parliament for Coast of Baysâ€”Centralâ€”Notre Dame, the riding which includes the town of Gander. He has never been there actually, he's never been to Canada at all, now that I think of it but that never stopped a good share of the 2011 NDP class.

In any event, what really matters is likability and relatability, qualities that Fisher possesses in spades. Having been socialized in public places since he was three months old, he is comfortable with both large crowds and one-on-one discussions with big and little humans alike, whose testimonials call him "sweet," "floofy," and "SOOOO CUTE!" As well as people, he lives in a neighbourhood with a diverse population of wildlife and has forged particularly strong bonds with the deer community and the rabbit community. We're still working on the cats, but . . . well, you know. Cats.

Like many Canadians, Fisher's favourite activities include sleeping, running around in the park, and eating bacon which brings me to his Five-Point Plan for a Very Good Canada:

Promote physical activity and the preservation of outdoor spaces through regular walks and swims.
Take action on climate change so there aren't as many sky booms.
Stop irregular crossings of squirrels into the backyard.
Offer free noggin pats and snugs to all humans who need some.
More bacon.

In addition, having been named for Admiral John Fisher, he understands what it takes for a tricoastal country to have a strong navy for example, boats and people who know how boats work.

Of course, contemporary elections are more about what a candidate is not than what they are. So let me assure you of the following: Fisher is not the sort of dog who will interrupt Question Period with loud borking or doodle in the middle of the aisle. You can see in his eyes that he will never lie to you or do anything to make you call him bad. He may get some drool on your pants, but it's only because he's just met you and he loves you. And, yes, he may nap in the middle of a committee session, but being a puppy is hard work, you know.

So, if you can't figure out which of the human mediocrities deserves your grudging support the most, don't encourage them just vote for Fisher. Who's a good Prime Minister? He is.

Photo Credit: Jess Morgan

Written by Jess Morgan

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Politicians, political scientists and the public are usually in agreement that Canada's House of Commons suffers from too much party discipline, so it was perhaps a surprise earlier this week when the Greens were rebuked for not hypothetically whipping their future MPs enough.

Green party leader Elizabeth May was recently interviewed by CBC News Network's Power & Politics host Vassy Kapelos. One question was: how would you respond if a backbench Green MP wanted to introduce a private members' bill to re-open the abortion debate?

The journalist's intention was likely to expose potential consequences of Greens ostensibly eschewing party discipline. If so, May eagerly took the bait. Despite clarifying that her personal position was pro-choice, and that the Green caucus would attempt to "work to consensus" and talk an MP out of such a provocative motion, ultimately May would not invoke party discipline in such a scenario.

"â€¦I don't have the powerâ€¦ to whip votes, nor to silence MPsâ€¦ democracy will be healthier when constituents know that their MP works for them, and not for the party leader," said May.

Within hours, headlines shouted that the Greens would allow their MPs to re-open Canada's abortion debate never mind that a woman's right to choose is official Green policy. It became the main news story on several networks and was exploited heavily on social media, including by NDP candidates and supporters who attempted to construct the narrative that Greens might secretly harbour socially-conservative inclinations.

The public backlash was framed specifically around abortion, but the broader issue is really about party discipline specifically the Greens' claim that they wouldn't employ it. Is Green policy of any use for predicting the party's future voting record if no topics would be whipped, and what would happen if one Green MP asserted an agenda that clashed with party policy?

It's worth taking a step back to recognize the negative role of party discipline in Canadian politics. Critics argue it undermines democracy: if elected representatives are instructed to vote along party lines rather than in the interests of constituents, do we really have a representative democracy? In Canada we tolerate an election system riddled with flaws because it supposedly gives voters a powerful voice in local affairs, when in reality local representation is undermined by top-down decision-making from the first minister, cabinet and their unelected strategists. In practice, our politics begins to resemble the Dutch system, in which there are no ridings and people only vote for party, as candidate names do not appear on the ballot. Party machinery dominates, and elected politicians merely become numbers to ensure legislation is passed.

As Mount Royal University journalism professor Sean Holman stated at the end of Whipped, his 2013 documentary: "â€¦[P]arty disciplineâ€¦ means our democratically-elected representatives may have very little influence overâ€¦ government, and if they don't have any influence, how much of a say do voters really have?"

"â€¦[I]n the advanced parliamentary democracies, there is nowhere that has heavier, tighter party discipline than the Canadian House of Commons," Leslie Seidle, a research director with the Institute for Research on Public Policy, told the Globe and Mailin 2013. "People are kicked out of their party temporarily for what are really very minor matters."

Perhaps understandably, the young and idealistic Green party decided years ago it would refrain from using party discipline if it were to one day elect a caucus of MPs.

The idea that party discipline run amok corrodes democracy is by no means an exclusively Green notion. Many outgoing politicians of all partisan stripes have bemoaned its influence. These include former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, former Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber, and former NDP MP Bruce Hyer. It's no different at the provincial level, with former BC Liberal finance minister Carole Taylor and former Nova Scotia NDP finance minister Graham Steele both outspoken against party discipline.

Many Canadian voters agree. A spring 2016 poll by Nanos found that 74 percent of the public felt having more free votes is important, an increase from 56 percent in 2009.

Although party discipline carries a sinister reputation in Canada due to the heavy degree that it has been invoked, a party exerting some level of control over its representatives can serve a useful purpose in moderation. Discipline can help ensure voters aren't lumped with a Green MP who claims that climate change is fiction, a NDP MP who advocates for private health care, or a Conservative MP who wants to balloon state spending.

In reality, the Greens aren't completely free from party "discipline" as they claim it's just that such moderation occurs during a different period in the political cycle. Rather than (hypothetically) whipping parliamentary votes, the Greens subject prospective election candidates to scrutiny over their personal values. If a person doesn't seem a good fit for the party, they're barred from contesting an election under the Green banner. This process perhaps partly contradicts the Greens' claim that they're more membership- and constituent-oriented and less leader-centric, if all candidates have to be approved by a backroom party committee.

Is this reduced level of moderation sufficient? Fast forward to the present, and the Green party has elected two MPs, currently wields three, and looks set to enlarge its caucus next month. Predictably, the party is now coming under scrutiny for how it would react to a backbencher introducing controversial motions and rightly so.

Canada's other political parties suffer from the opposite problem: too much party discipline, which does not serve voters well. Although the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP release election platforms that clarify their policy positions, in decent decades they have usually not elaborated which topics they would and would not whip. This becomes particularly problematic when a party whips votes on topics not even covered by its platform, as the NDP has been particularly prone to do.

So how can Canadian politics reach the "Goldilocks zone" of party discipline? First, find an appropriate balance. Tolerate more whipping than the Greens currently offer, but less than the traditional big-three parties demand. Justin Trudeau has increased the number of free votes compared to the Stephen Harper era, yet parliament remains more disciplined than under Paul Martin.

Second, backbench MPs should be allowed greater freedom. These MPs remain technically outside of government since they do not hold a cabinet post, yet are usually expected to vote in accord with government. In comparison, British backbench MPs are much more likely to vote against the government and remain unpunished by party brass for doing so.

Third, parties should compile a list of topics they would and wouldn't whip, and include it in their election platforms to prevent ambiguity. This would assist voters in making their decision each election. To be fair, the Liberals have clarified three categories of topics that are whipped, but it would clearer to the electorate if each individual topic were listed.

Ultimately, the Greens are likely to discover that being completely devoid of parliamentary discipline will hinder them. Although their democratic idealism is refreshing in this era of political cynicism, having no party discipline may prove just as extreme as invoking too much. The Greens would be smart to find a more realistic middle ground as would the rest of Canada's political parties.

Expecting a combination of candidate scrutiny and caucus meetings to prevent unpalatable issues from surfacing among future Green MPs may prove naÃ¯ve even by Elizabeth May's standards.

Photo Credit: The Canadian Press

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Political dishonesty is like a hydra. You manage to lop off one head and two more pop up hissing at you. But as I recall the solution was to whack it off then cauterize the neck. And where Hercules and Iolaus used a torch I'm going to see if I can get it done with a fiery rhetorical blast at the latest Liberal lie about SNC Lavalin.

As you doubtless recall with a grimace, especially the sort of keener who frequents this site, we and our many-headed, forked-tongued political betters just staggered into the 2019 federal election in the shadow of a fresh scandal. It seems the RCMP wanted to investigate the Prime Minister and his colleagues for obstruction of justice over the shenanigans that led to the departure of Jody Wilson-Raybould (and Jane Philpott) from cabinet and caucus over a Deferred Prosecution Agreement for the Quebec engineering and lobbying giant. But they were, how shall I put it, obstructed?

It was done neatly, or at least brazenly. The Mounties needed to see certain documents they were unable to see because they were protected by cabinet confidences. And while those confidences could have been waived, they weren't. Nasty, huh?

Well no. Not to hear the PM tell it. You see, it was the Clerk of the Privy Council who waved his fingers in a magic mind-bending semicircle and said the police didn't need to see this material. Not that nice Justin Trudeau and his sunny ways. Heck no. "We respect the decisions made by our professional public servants," said the PM on slithering out of Rideau Hall after the election writs were issued. "We respect the decision made by the Clerk." See, it was totally arms-length and apolitical. Move along, people. Especially if you're wearing a cop suit.

So here's the lie I'm trying to chop off: The PM has nothing to do with the Clerk of the Privy Council. It's a flagrant falsehood because the PM, as Her Majesty's First Minister, is de facto head of the Executive Branch of government and everyone in it is ultimately answerable to him. Especially the Clerk of the Privy Council, who as head of the entire civil service is (a) appointed by the PM; (b) serves at his or her pleasure; (c) enjoys spectacular pay and perks you'll have trouble finding on their website; (d) works closely with the PM all the time on all kinds of sensitive files.

Indeed his full title is "Clerk of the Privy Council and the Secretary to the Cabinet". Whose head is the Prime Minister. As the CBC recently explained, the Clerk's "first" job "is to act as the deputy minister for the prime minister". And the website of the Privy Council Office boasts that "The Privy Council Office (PCO) supports the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Led by the Clerk of the Privy Council, the department helps the government in implementing its vision, goals and decisions in a timely manner."

The notion that the PM and his deputy minster work at arm's length not hand in glove is absurd. To ask us to accept a man's complete exoneration by his deputy keeping key documents from the police is to seek to make us complicit in the absurdity by humiliating as well as confusing ourselves. Not least because Trudeau could overrule the Clerk any time he wanted and let the RCMP see what they want to see. So there's another head of this hydra.

As I've had occasion to note before, constitutional theory is in a bad way in Canada. Including the current obsession with putting various things "beyond the reach of politicians" to make them "non-partisan". Since our control of government is exercised through politicians, specifically legislators we elect and the ministers they supposedly scrutinize, this idea amounts to making the government a law unto itself because increasingly large parts are entirely unaccountable to Canadians. Like the Clerk of the Privy Council. If we can't get rid of him or her via the Prime Minister, and get rid of the Prime Minister via Parliament (which they apparently now can't in Britain) we have ceased to be self-governing.

So Trudeau's lie matters a great deal. And I think I just whacked it off. But since two more are likely to grow here comes the flame.

The core of this fresh lie about the SNC scandal is the independence of the Clerk of the Privy Council. Which we know all about because the lid was blown off the whole mess when Jody Wilson-Raybould revealed that she'd tape-recorded a conversation involving outrageous pressure on her as Attorney-General fromâ€¦ fromâ€¦ who was it again? Oh yeah. Michael Wernick. Clerk of the Privy Council. The guy who then appeared before Parliament mumbling weird threats about political assassination if people like him were held accountable, then quit suddenly, pension firmly in hand.

What's more, a key SNC lobbyist with ready access to the Clerk of the Privy Council was SNC board chair Kevin Lynch who was previouslyâ€¦ oh myâ€¦ Clerk of the Privy Council. Small world. Yet we're told there's nothing to see here, it's all been decided by the independent, totally reliable, non-partisan, wouldn't-recognize-the-PM-if-I-saw-him-on-the-street-or-while-twisting-a-minister's-arm Clerk of the Privy Council.

Rubbish. Tosh. And staggering effrontery. I try not to ask people how dumb I look because of the scope it furnishes for a crushingly creative response. (For instance "Did a mud-flap just speak?") But in this case we have to ask something similar.

How dumb do they think we are that we would conclude based on this history of Clerks of the Privy Council with their fingers all over the SNC scandal that if a Clerk of the Privy Council says there's no need to investigate the SNC scandal we can take his word for it?

There. That's one neck not just severed but scorched. Did something just hiss behind me?

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

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Stump speeches are dull stuff. A series of passages loosely strung together with the common thread being theres are all message lines that need to be hit to make sure months of focus group research doesn't go to waste.

Dull as they are, at the start of an election, they're instructive for what the various parties and leaders plan to do.

They also tend to run contrary to what the press want to talk about. The press corps was focused mostly on the SNC Lavalin scandal, or if they were francophone, on the response to Quebec's Bill 21, which banned people who wear hijabs and other religious clothing from the public service. But press preoccupations on the opening days of an election are rarely where these things end up.

For one thing, the writing mass of journalists don't have the discipline to stick to just one thing for more than a day or two. The politicians, on the other hand have a dreary sort of discipline that keeps them relentlessly focused on, like, three things.

And, miserable as it sounds, all the polling and focus group research that the parties do in anticipation of the election does tend to point to certain trends within the citizenry.

The initial campaign kick-off speeches are the clearest distillation of what the parties think the election will be, or should be, about*.

So, on the first day of the campaign, let's see what the people want to be prime minister think this election is about. Some of this, you'll probably notice, runs parallel to the parties' slogans from two weeks ago. What the speeches add, are a bit of meat and just the barest touch of flavour to where the campaign is heading.

First up, Justin Trudeau's Liberals, who launched their campaign in Ottawa at the Governor General's.

Trudeau's speech focused a fair bit on what his government has done â€” things like NAFTA, the child benefit, and the "middle-class tax cut" â€” while asking Canadians to choose his party to move forward along those same lines. It's interesting to focus on the past, while making a plea to the future, without really sketching out what the future will be, beyond a continuation of the present. (The past he really warned of was the past of Stephen Harper, which would have seemed a lot more off-base, if the former prime minister hadn't already appeared in Conservative advertising.)

Andrew Scheer launched the Conservative campaign in, if you'd believe it, Trois-Rivieres, Que. Evidently, the Tories think they can pick up a few seats here in la belle province. Which, credit for ambition, I guess.

Anyway, Scheer's pitch has two prongs. One, he's all about removing taxes from things. Carbon taxes, heating taxes, and so on. This is to make life more affordable â€” whatever the hell affordable actually means. The second prong is that you can't trust Trudeau to follow through on his promises â€” none of which Scheer would approve of, but I digress â€” but you can sure trust an aw shucks guy like him. He also said because of the SNC-Lavalin scandal, Trudeau had lost the moral authority to be prime minister, adding further proof to his lack of trustability. I'm not sure Scheer is actually more trustworthy, he has a nasty truth-stretching habit, but that's the essence of his pitch.

Jagmeet Singh, meanwhile, launched the NDP campaign in London, Ont., in a Goodwill store. Which was in many ways a fitting place to give his opening speech.

In it, he used the SNC scandal as a cudgel against the Liberals, as a party willing to do anything to help a rotten corporation, at the expense of everyone else. He also tied both the Liberals and Conservatives as peas of a pod, both willing to sell out the little guy for their friends in the C-suite. This is the upshot of the SNC scandal the Conservatives can't really hone in on. They have rich corporation friends too, theirs are just different ones from the Liberals. The system is the problem, Singh says, and it's titled to the haves against the have nots. Which is where things like a national pharmacare plan and a wealth tax come in. Of the three parties, it's probably the most ambitious pitch to voters.

Just for fun, some quick predictions to wrap up: I don't think Andrew Scheer has the juice to win this one. There's something missing from the man. Whether it's honesty, or charisma, or just the collected barnacles from a lifetime spent in politics, there's something not there about him. I think Singh has a real chance to make an impression this election and improve on what has so far been a pretty disastrous time at the helm. Trudeau, though, is the interesting one. The guy is a formidable campaigner. It wasn't that long ago that he won an election that was seen as un-winnable. But now we know who he is, and have seen the difference between Trudeau the campaigner and Trudeau the prime minister. That said, I don't think there really are enough people that dislike him as strongly as the Tories assume to make up for the deficiencies of his opponents. A Liberal government is a good bet, and a majority one isn't out of reach.

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*This does not apply to the Green Party, whose performance in the run up to this election has shown they have no idea what people want, or why they should be the party to do those things, whatever those things might be.

Photo Credit: National Post

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Over the past couple of weeks, as the meltdown in Westminster has been broadcast worldwide, both in terms of the announced prorogation and the subsequent bill that was passed to prevent a no-deal Brexit, there have been many cries about how the entire sad affair is "proof" that there needs to be some kind of constitutional reform in the UK. There have been people who should know better castigating the Queen for not stepping in, and there are others who suggest that this is somehow a breakdown of the Parliamentary system. I would argue the opposite that amidst the chaos, we are in fact seeing glimmers of a Parliament that is behaving like it is supposed to, where MPs, including backbenchers of the governing party, are doing their part to hold their government in check, and to ensure that the recklessness of the prime minister is being held back from some particular abuses of authority.

While it's still a bit early to see how everything is going to shake out, but over the past week, we have seen floor-crossings, and a number of MPs being cast out of the party (using the rather delightful phrase of "surrendering the whip") for standing up for principle rather than party loyalty. Many are long-standing MPs who have stated that they no longer recognize the party that they have long been a member of one of those MPs decrying that the Conservative party had become a mix of populism and English nationalism and most of those have decided that they won't be running again in the next election, which could be sooner than later (though Parliament has denied Boris Johnson his desired "snap" election by refusing him the votes to call one under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act). More than one Cabinet minister has resigned over the whole shambolic nature of what is happening, and repudiated the government in which they served something that is a sign that things are going very badly in Her Majesty's government.

Nevertheless, the fact that MPs have chosen principle over party cannot be overstated as something that is refreshing to see in an era where MPs are often being reduced to talking-point drones and voting machines, subject to increasingly centralized power from their leaders' offices. Well, that's certainly the case in Canada, while in the UK, discontent has been plaguing both the Conservatives and Labour Party for a few years now, and a great deal of it can be chalked up to the UK parties adopting a more Canadian-like leadership selection system. In the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn won power because he was able to mobilize a group of militants known as Momentum to take out party memberships and get him elected, and who have kept him in power through a leadership review, and who now threaten MPs who don't fall into line with "de-selection" (meaning that they won't be nominated as candidates in the next election). That, along with the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the Labour ranks has caused a number of their members to leave the party and sit as independents, while Corbyn remains unmoved that his personal unpopularity is keeping the party from overtaking the Conservatives in national sentiment.

As for the Conservatives, there is not only a complaint that the party itself has changed, but also that it has been taken over by unelected advisors something we in Canada are intimately familiar with because of the way in which the leadership selection system gives a leader a false sense of "democratic legitimacy" that they use to avoid the accountability of caucus. While it took some time for these particular problems to fully cement themselves in Canada, it took almost no time at all for them to take root and fester in the UK parties, which should be alarming to everyone.

As to the fact that this crisis is demonstrating that Parliament is acting in the way it should be, we should pay particular mention to their Speaker, John Bercow, who has done his utmost to protect the rights of individual MPs against the government exercising its powers over them (despite some of the problems with Bercow). That Bercow has declared that he will stand down as Speaker on October 31^st, whether there is a general election or not, will be a loss to Westminster, and possibly to parliamentary democracy as a whole, because it means that a voice who has stood up for the rights of MPs, and who has reinvigorated accountability practices like Urgent Questions, where ministers can be summoned to the Chamber to answer for issues of the day outside of the usual practice of Prime Minister's Questions or the scheduled daily ministerial questions, will no longer be fulfilling that vital role. That MPs have been more empowered is a boon to parliaments everywhere, because it sets an example.

Of course, this bit of rebellion that we're seeing may be short-lived, and with all of the de-selections and dissident MPs deciding that they won't run again (many of whom were long-time MPs and have a great deal of institutional knowledge and memory), means that what may wind up happening is that we'll see a post-election parliament where many of the moderate voices on both sides of the aisle have bowed out. That would leave more of the radicals, and more of those who are more adherent to their party whips, thus leaving the UK with a more polarized parliament, and one that is more adherent to the wishes of their leaders rather than resistant to them. This is a recipe for long-term damage, and without a strong Speaker to protect their rights, and with power being increasingly centralized in their leaders' offices because they were selected by the false "democracy" of membership votes, it could mean that the UK's parliament is headed for troubled waters. We can hope that enough MPs take the lessons of this turbulent time and will continue to choose principle over party, but it nevertheless leaves me with a terrible sinking feeling.

Photo Credit: BBC News