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Month: February 2021

Remember Tony Blair?  If you're a Loonie Politics reader the answer is yes.  But it probably took a surprising amount of effort, because he sure has dwindled in the rear-view mirror.  What a lesson for our times.

In case you too had to Google, Wikipedia says "He is the only living former Labour leader to have led the party to a general election victory and the only one in history to form three majority governments."  And he was the main architect of the "Third Way" as well as a proponent of "Cool Britannia".  Which sounds good until you ask, to steal a phrase from Plunkett of Tammany Hall, could a search party find either now?

Blair was also something called "Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East" from the minute he left 10 Downing St. until 2015 and is now executive chairman of something called "the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change".  See search party question above.

Donald Trump seems to have achieved major progress toward Mideast Peace.  Blair achieved major contracts for his consulting firm.  As well as at one point commanding a quarter million pounds per speech and advising some gnomes in Zurich on climate change for a reported £500,000+ per year.  Doing well by doing good except for the latter.

The list of his supposed do-gooding goes on and on.  But to what effect?  Just as in office he was also associated with such projects as ending regional alienation, modernizing parliament, cementing the end of history with various wars for human rights, multiculturalism and zzzzzzzzzzz.  But as Wikipedia says, "Despite his electoral successes and reforms, he has also been criticised for his relationship with the media, centralisation of executive powers, and aspects of his social and economic policies."  Which is sort of vague.  Appropriately, because there's remarkably little there.

So why did I dig him up in order to dump on him?  Because I was reading the bleak pages of the newspapers and thinking to myself, as I often do, "Did they really go into politics for this?"  When some eager young person starts to slither up the greasy pole, from campus to municipal to provincial to national politics, or some eager less-young person straps on the parachute and jumps right in, what sort of headlines are they hoping to create?  What sort of legacy are they hoping to leave?  What do they hope people will say of them when they are gone?  "Oh right, that guy, I'd forgotten him"?

To judge by their actual conduct you'd think the answer was "He got away with it."  I mean look at the solemn guff from our politicians about the hapless if heavy-handed COVID response.  Or imagine if, and sadly this sort of thing passes for my fantasies nowadays, one could challenge our Prime Minister in one of his press conferences with: "In your time in office, can you think of one significant mistake you've made that has had serious consequences?"

Obviously you could ask it in Latin for all the likelihood that he'd answer directly, intelligently or with modesty.  But as with so many public figures, the effect he's actually having on our public life can't be what he meant to do or, indeed, what in the press of events he thinks he is doing.  So there's clearly a need to get more perspective.

One somewhat dismal angle from which to do so is that there are worse things than obscurity.  Some people are remembered, rightly or wrongly, for colossal blunders or tragicomic ineptitude.

I'm not thinking of the actively evil, but of people like Herbert Hoover who famously did nothing when the Great Depression hit.  Actually he jettisoned free-market doctrines for high tariffs and high taxes so he deserves the amount of opprobrium he got but not the kind.  Or Paul Martin, immortal among politics nerds as "Mr. Dithers".  Dang.  Or the Emperor Galba who at least inspired an immortal jibe from Tacitus: "Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset".  Which is in Latin, and means "Everyone would agree that he was fit to be emperor if only he never had been" or fewer and more pointed words to that effect.  So he's more famous than Martin for much the same sort of debacle.

Now if you're wondering when I'll drop the subjunctives and get to the punctum, it's this: Most people in politics if asked to assess the legacy of such and such a figure will think of their partisan affiliation and respond accordingly.  Oh yeah, he was the best, old what's-his-name, or she really stank, that no-good neoliberal/conservative/socialist/thingamajig.  As might most voters.

Barack Obama, for instance.  Love him or hate him?  Then I probably know what party card you carry.  Obama's real legacy, IMHO, was Donald Trump, because he and his ilk did so little for such a large part of the electorate while driving them round the bend with their condescension, which is awkward for all parties but rarely acknowledged.  And only very loosely connected to the lofty aspirations and grubby partisan battles of his time in office.  The history books on the Obama years will not remind anyone of the headlines, and it matters.

What of Clinton?  Lowering the tone of public debate in every way.  (I mean Bill Clinton, in case it's not clear.)  But before you pull out my GOP card in triumph, George W. Bush completed the surrender of that party to reckless spending and imperial overreach.  Which he never meant to do, I'm pretty sure.  Stephen Harper?  Uh uh gosh well say he was great because of the blue sweater.  Or not.

It is of course too late to decide whether we should give Galba the purple or Hoover the raspberry.  But every day in every way we are required to choose who shall lead us, or at least how we shall react to whatever they just did and in some small manner help shape the course of events.  And if anyone still reads history books, or at least listens to them digitally online, I believe it would help to think about that small group who are still remembered for having made a useful contribution to the public good, and the much larger group who were born futile, achieved futility or had it thrust upon them.

What distinguished the former from the latter?  How can we be more like them?  Who were they again anyway?  All questions worth asking.  Unlike "How skilfully did I evade truth and logic in Question Period?" or "How loudly did I cheer for my team?"

Those things fade like a Blair, leaving nothing but vague puzzlement at how it could all have meant so little.  A sad legacy indeed.

Photo Credit: The Scotsman

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Cabinet shuffles and junkets.

A fellow who had been a Chief of Staff to a Prime Minister once said to this writer that's all that the youngsters in PMO do: debate cabinet shuffles and plan for their next international trip.

During a global pandemic that has killed and sickened millions, one more task could've been added to the PMO job description: obtaining vaccines to save the lives of Canadians.

But that didn't happen.

Why?

The magnitude of Justin Trudeau's incompetence is now plainly seen by all.  A Campaign Research poll released this week found that 52 per cent of Canadians blame Trudeau's government for Canada's appalling vaccine rollout.  Only 15 per cent blamed the provinces.

Any politician who has knocked on doors during an election knows that voters aren't very knowledgeable about the division of powers in the Constitution.  They get confused by that stuff.  But this year, they know who deserves to be indicted in the metastasizing vaccine scandal.

Because Trudeau's vaccine mismanagement is there for all to see.  All you need is an internet connection to see for yourself.

On Sunday, for example, the Americans vaccinated more than a million of their citizens something they've been doing for quite some time.

Canada vaccinated five thousand.

Five.  Thousand.

More than a million versus five thousand: by any reasonable standard, that represents a human calamity.  And it didn't have to be this way.

Let's take a look at Trudeau's myriad excuses, and the reality.

"We used to have [vaccine manufacturing capacity] decades ago but we no longer have it."  That's a quote.  Early on, Trudeau used that excuse often, but it wasn't just a fib: it was a lie.  Canada has had vaccine manufacturing capacity for decades: Sanofil in Toronto and GlaxoSmithKline in Quebec.  We could've developed a coronavirus vaccine, right here.  We didn't.  And now it's too late.

"This is encouraging news." That's what Trudeau said last year, when announcing a deal with China to jointly develop a vaccine.  The deal fell apart just days after Trudeau announced it and our Prime Minister covered up that failure for months.  Even now, many questions remain, like: why did he think it was ever advisable to do a deal with the country that has illegally imprisoned two Canadian citizens?  Why did he trust the Chinese, when no other nation would?

"We have secured the largest number of doses per cabinet of any country."  Trudeau and his ministers still like to use this excuse a lot.  But, so what?  As my Sun colleague Brian Lilley noted on my Kinsellacast podcast this weekend: what good is a bunch of shiny new firetrucks arriving months after your house has burned to the ground?  We need the fire put out today.  Now.

"All Canadians, including me, are frustrated to see vaccines in freezers and not in people's arms."  That was a shot at the provinces, particularly the ones led by conservatives.  It's what Trudeau said at the end of 2020 and it was wildly dishonest, then and now.  Right after Trudeau uttered those words, provinces across Canada started to run out of vaccine.

There's Trudeaupian spin, and there's reality.   And the reality is that the federal government is responsible for purchasing vaccines.  Not the provinces, not municipalities.  The Trudeau government.

And here, finally, is another grim reality for PMO's little boys in short pants to contemplate, as they plan their next trip to, say, Israel.  In that country, 60 per cent of the population have received the Pfizer vaccine.

In Canada?  Our Pfizer vaccine supply ran out last week.  And, as of this writing, only about two per cent of Canadians have received a potentially life-saving jab.

Enjoy debating the next shuffle, or plotting your next junket, PMO kiddies.

If you don't fix your vaccine failure anytime soon, it's going to be your last-ever trip on us.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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Jason Kenney is a man who loves to trumpet the importance of common sense.

He reveres the phrase so much you would think he was speaking about free markets and unbridled capitalism.  To him, the two are practically synonymous.  In his 2019 campaign platform, Kenney mentions common sense almost as much as he does cutting taxes, which really is saying something.  Just check out the document.

In the chapter on infrastructure spending, you can find Kenney promoting the need for "common-sense financing options like public-private sector partnerships."  On matters relating to K-12 curriculum reform, Kenney promises to "bring common sense to education."  And on environmental protection, Kenney pledges to implement a "Common Sense Conservation Plan" (which ironically, as we know now, doesn't include adequate funding for waterway monitoring, but does involve rescinding policies that protect the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains from destructive open-pit coal mining).

Heck, just last year, when the Federal Court of Appeal rejected legal challenges to the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, Kenney hailed the decision as a "victory for common sense."

He reiterates the phrase so often, it is as if his NDP predecessors were all a bunch of fanatical, uncompromising zealots, incapable of good sense and sound judgement.

But of course, that is exactly what Kenney seeks to convey.  It is why he alleges so frequently that the NDP were, and continue to be, driven by radical ideology, as opposed to the sageness he himself displays whilst in office.

It is a rather fascinating observation.

For a man who loves to pronounce his devotion for prudence and level-headedness, he really has not demonstrated a whole lot of it as premier.

Under his tenure in government, Alberta has reverted away from the NDP's necessary and long-overdue efforts to tackle climate change and income inequality, and instead, implemented massive corporate tax cuts, reductions in social expenditures and the elimination of various environmental regulations, among other destructive, neo-liberal policies.  It is hardly the stuff of sensible decision-making.

Then there is the Keystone pipeline.

For more than a decade, now, Keystone XL has been mired in controversy.

Long before Kenney was ever Premier, and even before Rachel Notley was in office, significant opposition to the pipeline was mobilizing.  As far back as 2011, thousands of protesters chained themselves to the gates of the White House to oppose the construction of the pipeline.  Resistance to the project only increased in the years afterward, including from not environmental activists and their progressive allies, but also from many indigenous groups, and even some Texas and Nebraska ranchers.

With such intense lobbying against Keystone, it was hardly surprising when Barack Obama signed in the pipeline's first death knell in 2015, much to the joy of progressives, and eventually, the majority of the Democratic establishment.

Still, many conservatives, in both Canada and the U.S. held out hope for the project's resurrection.

And for a time, after Donald Trump's surprise 2016 election victory, they did have some reason for hope.

Yet if the project had even the slightest chance of coming to fruition, it required Trump's re-election; a prospect which appeared more and more unlikely as Trump increasingly lost favour with the American public, while the Democrats under Joe Biden, maintained a significant polling lead over their Republican opponents.

To any sane-minded politician, the project appeared like a non-starter.  It was simply far too financially risky (let alone environmentally hazardous), to be anything other than a likely sinkhole for investment dollars.

But not to Kenney.

Even with the regulatory challenges ahead (of which he had no control) as well as the high possibility of Biden securing the presidency and outright axing Keystone, Kenney still poured billions of Alberta tax dollars into the project.

While a final tally of the doomed investment is not yet known, we do know that at least $1.5 billion was invested in project equity, along with billions more in loan guarantees.

It was an example of irresponsible financial mismanagement at its very worst.  And one even more repugnant coming from a government that has justified spending cuts to some of the most vulnerable in society by claiming that such social spending is not currently feasible in Alberta.

Its utterly absurd.  And a complete insult to the everyday, working class Albertan.

The Alberta government has the money. Kenney just chooses to prioritize its spending on near-hopeless infrastructure projects, that even if implemented, would hinder meaningful action on climate change, over that of helping Albertans in need.

Despite all his big talk, Kenney's reckless investment in Keystone shows once again that he is clearly found wanting when it comes to common sense.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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The numbers of new Covid cases in Alberta are steadily going down.  Hospitalizations are declining.

Whew, said Premier Jason Kenney, as he announced last week that Alberta would open the Covid restriction door just a crack on February 8 to please the increasingly restive faction of Albertans who want to restart the economy.

But the virus has a few tricks up its sleeve just to make the balancing act that much more precarious.

Even in the couple of days since the announcement of the plan to reopen restaurants, kids sports and limited fitness training, Alberta is being hit by an escalating number of Covid variant cases.  There are now more than 50 confirmed variant cases in the province with both the UK and South African strains identified.  Most are international travellers but a handful are not.

Two schools and a day care have been linked to variants.

Suddenly Kenney is everywhere answering Covid questions on an open Facebook chat, appearing on radio shows, even popping up at press conferences.

It's too late now to haul back the Feb. 8 changes, but even Kenney is openly nervous about what may be in store for the province if the more virulent versions of Covid spreads.

During his Facebook chat he expressed concern that if the variants take hold in the province cases could "take off like a rocket."

From the get-go, the justification for the latest easing of the rules appeared a bit iffy.  Small town restaurants were staging a protest and remaining open, garnering plenty of support and media attention.  By giving in and allowing them to reopen, Kenney avoids an escalation of that particular brush fire.

Luckily the number graphs backed up the plan.  On Tuesday, Alberta had 268 new cases and 556 Covid patients in hospital, a significant decrease from late December when daily cases topped 1,800.

Alberta's re-opening schedule uses hospitalization numbers as benchmarks 600 for this first easing of restrictions, 450 for the next, etc.  A few other factors, including a sudden uptick in cases would factor into any decision to halt restriction easing or roll it back.

For the majority of Albertans who fall between extreme lockdown and let-'er-rip factions, the prescription looked pretty good.  But the rise of variants is a now a looming menace that puts the whole plan in jeopardy.

Kenney finds himself in the unenviable position of having to depend on his archenemy Justin Trudeau to keep international borders tight and limit the influx of the new pandemic versions.

While Alberta has had relatively lax lockdowns through the pandemic compared to other provinces, the variant question has spooked the government enough that it has imposed the toughest quarantine measures in the country on incoming international passengers and their families.  Family members of those who test positive for a variant can be stuck in isolation for 24 days under the new rules.

Besides the very real threat of Covid, Kenney is also battling the conspiracy theorists in Alberta who contend the pandemic is just a stalking horse for the 'great reset'.

Social media trolls fill comments on his fireside Facebook chats and live news conferences with vitriolic rants on how Covid is basically just the flu and the government wants to take away all civil rights.

The premier has lashed back, telling covidiots to give their heads a shake and face reality but the conspiracy theory flood continues, wearing down the premier and over weighing the majority of Albertans who want a sound solution to the pandemic vs. economic collapse conundrum.

Kenney has proven unwilling to confront Covid rule-breakers head on himself, saying enforcement of the public health regulations is up to enforcement agencies.  Isolated rogue restaurants, hair dressers and churches have not been particularly punished for putting patrons at risk.

The premier will have to stiffen his spine and prepare to clamp down on those who push beyond the limits of safety now if he thinks he can retain his balance on the constantly shifting Covid balance beam.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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The kid at the gas station eyed me warily.

True, I was there legitimately: to get gas, and to purchase a lottery ticket.  I swear.

But the kid, running the Wellington gas station all on his own this night, looked uncertain.  I stood there, grinning behind my mask.  The gas station kid stood there, eyeing me with suspicion.

He suspected, I suspected, that I was there for a purpose other than gas and lottery tickets.  Guilty.  Busted.

In this, he was right.   I didn't really need the gas, and I definitely didn't need a lottery ticket an extravagance someone once called, not inaccurately, a tax on daydreams.

I was there, mainly, to talk to the kid about anything and nothing.  To have actual, face-to-face or mask-to-mask human interaction.

I was there for what a bemused therapist friend told me was "object hunger."

It's a Freudian thing.  When we are little, the number one object is our mother.  She provides sustenance and life.

Later on, other folks become the objects in our lives.  From what I can glean, the psychoanalytical folks have spent a lot of time on this object stuff, writing books and whatnot.

Objects people, representations of people are pretty important to us, said my therapist friend.  They help form our personalities.  And the need for these objects is intense.  We hunger for them.

Thus, said he, "object hunger."  During a global pandemic that has confined us to our homes eating saltines and watching Netflix shows we don't really want to watch but will of course watch anyway we hunger not just for saltines, but for other folks.  Objects.

In the little hamlet where I live in Prince Edward County, there ain't a lot of objects around to interact with at the best of times.  During a frosty winter, mid-pandemic, there's even less.

Sure, there's Len, but he's busy this time of year, piloting around a snowplow affixed to the back of his tractor.  There's Diane, across the way, but she (wisely) emerges only to fetch the mail.

Most days, there's Conrad, over the back fence.  He's the object du jour.   He's the object every single jour, pretty much.

Conrad is a genial and genuine legend around here.  A playwright, a filmmaker, an artist, a sculptor, a defender of nature.  Throughout the pandemic, we've met over the back fence at the recommended social-distancing distance, and then some to talk about everything and nothing.  Mainly nothing.

I can't recall something about these nothing talks, but they are the highlight of my day, usually.  I know that because I stay there talking to Conrad until my feet freeze up, and then other body parts as well.

We try to avoid talking about the ubiquitous pandemic statistics.  The statistics have been manipulated too many times by the politicians and the nutbars (who are often interchangeable) and, besides, they're depressing.

So we talk about other stuff.  I can't remember any of it, as I said.  But that's not what matters.  What matters is the human interaction part.  And, every time, a miraculous thing happens.  Every time.

It feels good.

Pre-apocalypse, you may have been like me.  Hustle and bustle, hither and yon, never lingering too long to chat with a neighbour or an acquaintance.  Things to do, places to go.  All that.

Well, no longer.  Doug Ford, in his ongoing role as Premier Dad, has encouraged us all to stay home.  So most of us have.

But the human connection?  The conversation not to be found on Zoom or Teams?  The real, flesh and blood interaction stuff?

We need that.  We need other people objects, as the psychoanalytical people clinically put it in our daily lives.  We hunger for it.  It keeps us human.  It keeps us going.

The kid at the gas station regarded me warily, again. "Anything else, sir?"

"No," I said, cheerily.  "See you tomorrow!"

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In the wake of Senator Lynn Beyak's resignation from the Senate before a motion to expel her could be fully debated some of the senators who were behind the move to oust her believe that more needs to be done in the Upper Chamber to combat any future incidents of a Beyak-like character being given licence to exhibit racism in similar ways.  It's a thorny question, however, and one that doesn't have any easy answers, particularly because of the kinds of institutional protections that senators require in order to fulfil their roles.  And while Beyak herself was something of an anomaly, we also have to remember that bad facts can make bad case law.

Part of what is at issue here are the rules in the Senate around their ability to discipline their members something that parliamentary privilege affords them, which is being challenged by Senator Mike Duffy in his legal challenge around his suspension without pay for the ways in which he was found to have abused his expense accounts.  While they didn't (apparently) rise to the level of criminality, per the opinion of one Ontario Superior Court judge, Senate administration found multiple contraventions of policy and the Senate exercised its ability to discipline him in the way they saw fit.  Of course, this was also done in a fairly problematic matter when it comes to giving him and senators Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau the due process that they were owed, and this was in part why much more care was being taken in how Beyak was being dealt with.

In order for there to be clear lines of what does and does not contravene the code of conduct for senators, some better signposts need to be established, which is much of what this particular challenge by Beyak's critics will need to surmount.  This includes the way in which allegations of racism are investigated, which is something that now-retired Senator Lillian Dyck told the Hill Times, and pointing out that the Senate Ethics Officer (SEO) is a white man, and he was asked to determine which remarks that Beyak posted on her website constituted as being racist.  Dyck's assertion is that someone who is not Indigenous and has not experienced racism, and who "doesn't know what the triggers are," should not be able to make such determinations.  And this is one of the first problems that I see.

There has been a lot of discussion around the role of the SEO in recent years, with calls for the ethics rules to be rewritten in the wake of other scandals of senators past, like that of Senator Don Meredith, given how long it took to investigate the issues of harassment in his office, after the RCMP closed their investigation into his alleged relationship with a teenager.  Among those demands were for the SEO to be made a full-time position instead of his current per-diem existence.  Never mind that there hasn't traditionally been enough work for him to have a full-time position most of his duties involve looking over senators' conflicts of interest in the board positions they are allowed to hold, and investments that they have, and much of that work is done upon appointment rather than being ongoing.

With this in mind, I have a great deal of trepidation when it comes to the suggestion that the SEO be turned into some kind of doyen of racism, to arbitrate what is and is not racism in the Senate, or if not the SEO, then some new position being created, ensuring that it is filled with an Indigenous person or other person of colour so that they can be sensitive to the "triggers" of what constitutes racism rather than it being blatantly obviously (as it was with Beyak's offences).  Part of this hesitation is because I have a suspicion that it would quickly turn into a post that would be seeking to justify its existence by proactively calling things racist rather than to respond to and investigate complaints in a fair and impartial manner.

Another part of this unease is because we have senators like Mary Jane McCallum, who are calling out the "systemic racism" of the Senate, while offering dubious evidence, such as the fact that the hearings around Bill C-48 (which formalized the tanker ban on BC's northern coast) heard more witnesses from the oil and gas industry than they did from First Nations as though the quantity of witnesses is the measure of anything other than the negotiating power of those on the steering committee who draw up witness lists.  McCallum also cites the legislation around cannabis legalization that allowed for random police checks which even white MPs and senators noted would likely see increased enforcement of non-white people but she neglects to mention that those (likely unconstitutional) bills were put forward by Jody Wilson-Raybould, who is Indigenous herself.  Bad legislation can be an example of systemic racism the Senate passing it does not make the Senate systemically racist.  And this is the kind of confusion and conflation of issues that raises red flags around this notion of a doyen of racism in the Senate's administration.

While there probably should be an examination of how the Senate's rules and code of conduct for senators can be improved, possibly including some very bright lines around racism and they would need to be bright lines in order to avoid witch hunts, or persecuting senators who espouse unpopular opinions rather than conduct that actually rises to a level that requires expulsion.  Remember that an integral part of the Senate's institutional independence is that senators cannot be easily expelled, so that a prime minister who wants to get rid of his or her critics can't simply use the mechanism to have them ousted so that he or she can replace them with their own cronies.  But rewriting the rules to match the facts of Beyak's case has the potential for overreach and unintended consequences, which senators need to be very wary of.

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Like a knight errant, Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole seems to have embarked on a quixotic quest to endear himself with the Canadian media.

In fact, O'Toole has done all the things he thinks he has to do to earn the media's affection, from publicly and enthusiastically extolling the notion of Tory moderation, to expelling "far right" MPs from his party, to shunning certain conservative websites.

His goal in all this, of course, is for the CBC to one day run headlines such as "News flash: O'Toole is actually far from being a scary and dangerous right-wing radical."

And I can certainly understand why the Conservatives are playing this game.

After all, it'd be nice for them if the media was friendlier to their leader, it might even make it easier for them to win an election.

The problem is, their plan is a fantasy, it won't work.  No matter how much O'Toole tries to portray himself as a gentle, cordial moderate leader, the media will never buy it.

For them, O'Toole will always be too "right-wing."

I say that because, unfortunately for O'Toole, the Canadian media basically believes there's only one true moderate, centrist politician in Canada and his name is Justin Trudeau.

There's a reason for this — Trudeau's a Liberal.

That matters because for the past few decades or so, one key characteristic of Canada's Liberal Party is that it lacks anything resembling a coherent ideology.

All it really cares about is power.

What this means in practice is the Liberal Party will move in whichever direction it deems the political winds are heading, sometimes it'll tack left, (think of Pierre Trudeau's National Energy Program) sometimes it'll tack right (think of Jean Chretien's deficit slashing).

At any rate, my point is, Canadian journalists have come to view this Liberal lack of principle and the resultant ideological somersaults the Liberals periodically perform, not as cynical politics at its worst, but as a stirring example of praiseworthy political moderation.

As long as the Liberals ultimately end up with positions that are somewhere between the NDP and the Conservatives, that's enough in the minds of the media, to make them centrists.

Hence, when Trudeau decided building pipelines was bad in Quebec, but good in British Columbia, that de facto became the moderate stance on the pipeline issue.

Likewise, when the Prime Minister decided to firmly wage a trade war against America in retaliation to steel tariffs, but meekly acquiesced when the Keystone pipeline was cancelled, that too was viewed as Liberal moderation in action.

Do you see the strategic problem this poses for O'Toole?

As long as the media allows Trudeau and the Liberals to define what it means to be a moderate, no matter what O'Toole does or says, he will always be deemed to be on the political fringe.

In other words, any time O'Toole takes a position on a policy that's even slightly different from Trudeau's stance, the media will label it as "right-wing," as beyond the political pale.

This will be the case no matter how many times he dilutes his brand of conservatism or how many MPs he kicks out.

Nor does it help O'Toole's cause that the media generally views the Liberals as enlightened and secular, while seeing conservatives as superstitious and Christian.

There's no way a devout Christian could ever be a moderate, right?

Anyway, what can the Conservatives do about all this?

Well, simply put, they should stop wasting their time pandering to the media.

At the end of the day, it's the voters, not the producers of CBC news, they have to win over.

How do they do that?

Well, here's an idea: rather than trying to appear as a moderate, maybe O'Toole should try looking like a leader.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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