At the recent NDP convention the other weekend, party delegates showed remarkable unity by coming together to support an important resolution regarding the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
With 80 percent of delegates voting in favor, and only 16 percent opposed, the NDP officially changed party policy to end "all trade and economic cooperation with illegal settlements in Israel-Palestine" and suspend "the bilateral trade of arms and related materials with the State of Israel until Palestinian rights are upheld."
Overdue though it may be, the adoption of this policy, even by just a third party such as the NDP, is a positive step in the right direction, both for New Democrats, and for Canada as a whole.
For far too long, the bulk of Canada's political leaders have placed themselves on the wrong side of the Israel-Palestinian affair.
Whether through cowardly silence and inaction, or worse, willful collusion and obstruction, Canada's political elites have shirked their responsibilities to the millions of displaced and poverty-stricken Palestinians, desperate for international support.
And they have been doing so for much of the past decade and a half.
Beginning under the prime ministerial tenure of Paul Martin, the Liberals were the first to turn Canada away from the international consensus developing in favour of the Palestinians, and instead, join the U.S. as a far more unwavering backer of the Israelis at the UN.
Then along came Steven Harper, who only increased Canada's support of Israel, all while slashing finding to the UN relief fund for Palestine refugees. While no longer in office, Harper nonetheless leaves behind a plethora of Conservative disciples who now openly campaign to relocate Canada's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; a move which flies in the face of all the principles of international justice.
After more than five years in office, Justin Trudeau has maintained this completely one-sided and harmful legacy in the middle east.
Unfortunately, the NDP, long referred to as the 'conscience of parliament', has often been founding wanting in their efforts to keep either of these parties accountable.
Under Jack Layton, and later, Tom Mulcair, NDP leadership has either tried to ignore the tragic loss of life and Palestinian suffering, or have made heavy-handed attempts to restrict its debate.
With such an abysmal history of engagement on the issue, Canada desperately needs a rethink of its Middle Eastern policies; ideally, one which will result in shift of values amongst Canada's political representatives to never again feign ignorance over Israel's grave crimes.
And grave crimes they are.
With its devastating blockade of the Gaza strip and its decades-long occupation of the West Bank and annexation of East Jerusalem, Israel is, and has been for some time now, an apartheid state.
Of course, there will always be some misguided pundits, off in the newsrooms of the National Post, who will vehemently deny these charges, claiming that any such criticism of Israel is rooted not in objective fact, but in noxious anti-Semitism.
Evidently, though, these imprudent observers have not taken into consideration the research compiled by human rights groups like the Israeli-based B'Tselem, who have also condemned Israel with similar damning findings.
Nor have they taken into consideration the arguments advanced by famed linguist and foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky, who believes that even the apartheid characterization is not sufficient to cover all manner of Israeli crimes committed.
It's why, when surveyed, they express their opposition to the Israeli annexing of Palestinian territory, and back the use of sanctions.
That was made clear in the results of last year's EKOS poll, which showed that 74 percent of Canadians would like to see their government express opposition to Israel's annexation of Palestinian land, with 42 percent supporting sanctions against the Israelis, should they continue their illegal and immoral expansion.
So well done, New Democrats.
On the issue of Palestinian rights, all of Canada's political parties could borrow a page from your revised policy book.
Photo Credit: Medium
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.
Despite no funding in the provincial budget, B.C. is under growing pressure to create a paid sick leave program to prevent people going into work and unknowingly spreading COVID-19.
The provinces were looking to the federal Liberals to enhance the national paid sick leave program, but Monday’s budget offered no changes to the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit. Labour groups across the country have slammed the $500-a-week benefit, or $450 after taxes, for anyone sick with COVID-19 as an inadequate measure that fails to replace a worker’s full wages.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced on Thursday that his province would develop its own paid sick leave program but offered few details about when the program will take effect, the level of sick leave benefits and how much it will cost taxpayers. Ford spoke outside his Etobicoke home as he remains in self-isolation due to a staff member testing positive for the virus.
B.C. Labour Minister Harry Bains said Wednesday the “federal government’s inaction (on enhancing the national paid sick leave program) is disappointing.”
Bains said B.C. is looking at “next steps,” but did not explicitly confirm that the province will launch its own paid sick leave program.
“Now we are preparing to look at this issue ourselves and look at all avenues to find solutions so that workers don’t have to go to work when they’re sick, and that they don’t have to choose between a paycheque and going to work sick,” Bains told reporters.
The B.C. Federation of Labour said the budget failed to ensure paid sick days, which means many workers still have to make the “untenable” choice of staying home while sick or paying the bills during a pandemic.
“In this time of deadly variants and rising cases, ensuring worker safety with paid sick leave is imperative,” federation president Laird Cronk said in a statement. “Paid sick leave saves lives. We will continue to advocate for the over half of B.C. workers, and nearly 90 per cent of low-wage workers, that don’t have paid leave and are at higher risk of exposure.”
Cronk noted that lower-income workers, who are predominantly women and people from racialized communities, have been hardest hit by the economic impacts of COVID-19 and are least likely to have the financial resources to miss work.
Finance Minister Selina Robinson told Postmedia on Wednesday that the province had hoped the federal government “would step up and have a national program.”
Premier John Horgan has been in contact with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau advocating for an improved national sick leave program, and Robinson said she’s talked about the issue with federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
“It makes sense, really, for the federal government to deliver on this since it’s a national issue,” she said, adding that the province will continue to advocate for such a program.
Is there more to this story? We'd like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.
The must-have item last fall in my corner of Toronto was a patio heater. Many of my friends and neighbours had either acquired one or were desperately trolling through shopping sites trying to find a retailer with one in stock. I could rest easy; I had purchased mine early, having learned my lesson from the toilet paper aisles at grocery stores in March and the empty shelves at gardening centres last summer.
The must-have item in the spring of 2021 is of course an AstraZeneca vaccine. Since Sunday evening, when the Ontario government announced it was opening up vaccine registration to everyone over the age of 40, the province has seen the health-care equivalent of a Depression-era run on banks. I signed up for an appointment at a neighbourhood drugstore that first night. I put away my computer feeling content: August 20 at a local pharmacy. I wished it was sooner, but hey, I'd be vaccinated.
By morning, texts and social media posts were flying around about Ontarians getting their vaccines the next day, by week's end, early May. Within a day or two, many of my friends and acquaintances had got or were soon getting their shots. Some people lined up for hours outside pharmacies. Some travelled to hard-hit hot spots in the city—Mississauga, Thorncliffe Park, Scarborough—where appointments were suddenly available. A few people drove from drugstore to drugstore in hopes of finding an appointment. Inevitably, I also heard stories of people fudging birthdays, lying about their age, lying about taking care of a relative at home, trying repeatedly at hospitals till they got a jab, using their connections to upgrade to the more coveted Pfizer shot. This wasn't confined to Ontario. "Beginning to wonder if I’m the only person in Vancouver over 40 who isn’t fibbing abt being an essential worker or somesuch," the journalist Ian Young tweeted yesterday.
It took me a day to figure out why my shot is months away. Ontario has a patchwork of pharmacies, grocery stores and retailers providing vaccines, each with its own registration and vaccine supply. The online registrations aren't reliable—some people got calls while others didn't. Some phoned around and found cancelled appointments. Many were using Vaccine Hunters Canada, the Twitter account that has become the best source of the latest information on jabs. Vaccine Hunters is marvellous, but many openings I saw were in areas with high COVID rates and populations of essential workers. I ignored them, figuring they weren't intended for me, a freelance journalist who works from home a half-hour away. And I was reluctant to pester frazzled, overloaded drugstores by phone. So I got on a few waitlists and left it at that.
I have a more fundamental objection, though. Getting a vaccine should not rely on a kind of alchemy involving copious free time, ingenuity, a flexible work schedule, a car, the research skills to manoeuvre through a chaotic sign-up system, technological resources including internet on demand, and, ideally, loads of social capital—friends and connections with good intel. That seems a terrible way to get jabs into the arms that need them most.
Most people lining up their vaccines likely assumed front-line workers are being taken care of by the government—a reasonable premise. But while essential workers are eligible for vaccines, there appears to be no process in place to give them priority or ensure they can actually access vaccines. Those trying to sign up before the AstraZeneca rollout encountered an even more convoluted system: the provincial site, individual public-health-unit portals, separate rules for each pop-up vaccination site. Many didn't know if or where they were eligible to get the jab.
When I called my local pharmacy Monday to ask if they had vaccines, a woman with a strong accent—Middle Eastern? Eastern European?—told me, "No, I need one too. I don't know where to go." I gave her a URL, feeling guilty for not passing on better advice.
I also called the grocery store where I shop to see if workers there were getting their vaccines. I knew a few were anxious to get vaccinated. The employee who answered was hesitant—"you know, privacy concerns," she said—but eventually she told me it's not about where you work, but about postal codes, and that grocery workers are not a priority group for the government, so they have to wait. My heart sank. She was half-right; they are technically a priority group, but her reply reflected a very real gap between what people are allowed and what they can reasonably access.
By Tuesday, the CBC reported, Walmart and Costco, along with other major retailers, had run out of vaccines. St. Michael's hospital in Toronto, which has been vaccinating under-served priority groups, had run out too. As of Wednesday, West Park Healthcare Centre, in a hot spot, was struggling to keep up with demand. One essential worker who was eligible for a shot there couldn't get one because the vaccines were all gone; when her employer called clinics in Rexdale on her behalf, it turned out they were only vaccinating people over 40, and had run out anyway. Access, not vaccine hesitancy, was the barrier; as both The Local and Toronto Star reported, people lined up for hours at pop-up sites in the Jane and Finch area to get their shots.
By mid-week many of the newly available vaccines were gone. Like tomato seeds and swimming pools and patio heaters and skis last year, they had been scooped up—only this item was of the life and death variety, particularly for higher-risk people who work in grocery stores, warehouses and factories, or live in apartment buildings, or take public transit to get to work. This was their shot at protection—or it should have been.
I don't blame my vaccinated friends and neighbours, who were answering what amounted to a civic call to duty: Your country needs YOU to get your jab! That message was everywhere—and rightly so. We do need vaccinations for all. Moreover, the province has been in COVID freefall, with cases climbing and lockdowns on top of untenable lockdowns. People were doing their part. Many were not breaking any rules. Vaccines were available, and like parents dutifully rising at 6 a.m. to sign their kids up for swimming lessons or summer camps before the spots are all gone, the people who had the time and resources used them.
There should be no shame in this for citizens. People who get vaccinated, wherever they do it, are helping to build herd immunity. Vaccine hesitancy, not overzealousness, is the concern of our times. The problem isn't with citizen behaviour; it's with the policy making. The haphazard way in which vaccines were rolled out this week exacerbates terrible patterns of the past year when it comes to disadvantaged Canadians.
How did we go from last Friday, when vast numbers of front-line workers were still awaiting their vaccines, to Sunday, when everyone over 40 was eligible to navigate this mess? How would an overburdened shift worker compete with a 40-year-old accountant or lawyer to navigate the "Gogolian morass" that is Ontario's vaccine sign-up, as The Globe and Mail's Adrian Morrow put it? Would they have time to scroll Twitter relentlessly, looking for a vaccine site they could get to? Could they check that "get to a clinic in one hour" box to take advantage of a cancellation? Would they have time to sign up on 10 different waitlists, as many people I know did? Or the time off to line up for a shot, and recuperate from the side effects?
Even the rules were confusing. I had indicated on my form that I was under 55, it being true and all. "I think you're supposed to attest you're over 55," a friend who has still not registered told me Tuesday. She'd seen a pharmacist on social media advising people to do this because pharmacies hadn't updated their websites yet. "If you are pissed off at how many different pharmacy chains/locations you have to register with to wait for #AZ vax," University of Carleton professor Jennifer Robson tweeted Wednesday, "… you should want governments to invest in their own digital service capability."
The bigger issue is that Ontario's vaccine rollout is failing the same group that was failed with partial lockdowns and pleas to "Stay Home." The government told Ontarians to stay home when it was clear a swath of vulnerable residents couldn't; now it is telling us to get vaccinated, even as its convoluted system means many of those vulnerable residents can't access vaccines.
The AstraZeneca rollout has only compounded an existing problem. For months, Ontario's Science Table had advocated vaccination priority based on hot spot areas in addition to age, Sabina Vohra-Miller, co-founder of the South Asian Health Network, pointed out in an interview."And we've had modelling data that showed that prioritizing essential workers gives us community protection for everyone. That didn't happen." When the AZ rollout began, said Vohra-Miller, "what we should have done is put more AstraZeneca into [pharmacies in] areas that have higher COVID transmission. But we didn’t do that." The hot spot of Brampton had eight pharmacies per 100,000offering AZ vaccines; meanwhile, Kingston, with famously low COVID rates, had 26 per 100,000. "Northwest Toronto had barely any pharmacies giving out vaccinations in the initial days of the pharmacy," said Vohra-Miller. "And there were zero in Peel, completely zero."
Some pharmacists, including Toronto's Kyro Maseh, have taken up the challenge, inviting front-line workers to bring proof of employment and get a shot, no appointment needed. A few drugstores are offering extended hours, which Vohra-Miller considers vital. Not all shift workers can come in during regular hours, and some, she notes, work multiple jobs. Municipal health units, too, have stepped into the breach. Toronto is launching a mobile program to triple the number of vaccinations in the city's hottest hot spots in the coming weeks. But that's not a system-wide response. "The only way you reach the communities that are hard to reach as if you take that very thoughtful, very intentional approach to making sure that they are not left behind," said Vohra-Miller. This rollout "has not been intentional from the get-go. It’s been haphazard. It’s been deeply inequitable."
Nevertheless, days after announcing draconian lockdown measures that ignored the recommendations of experts—such as closing non-essential workplaces and mandating paid sick leave, which Premier Doug Ford finally pledged today—Ontario had changed the channel. The province was on the brink of mutiny; but vaccine hunting is an excellent distraction. Who's still thinking about that brief experiment with shuttered playgrounds and police stops? We're too busy trying to get the last of the scraps before Canada moves back into vaccine famine, or dealing with the side effects of the vaccine, or celebrating that hard-won jab.
The moment of celebration is understandable, and overdue. My Twitter feed overflows with pictures and notes from happy vaccinated people. More than 125,000 Ontarians a day are getting vaccinated—great progress. But which Ontarians get to celebrate is a question worth asking. Some of us are at far greater risk of getting sick and dying from COVID. Shouldn't that group be protected first? For everyone else, shouldn't the joyous moment of getting vaccinated come untarnished by guilt or regret?
I have a friend who cancelled her appointment this week; she discovered the vaccine site was in a hot-zone postal code and decided she couldn't live with that. But this is a problem for governments, not individuals, to tackle. And beyond the obvious moral obligations, there will be consequences if governments don't. Dr. Michael Warner, director of Critical Care at Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto, made a startling point Wednesday: "For teachers/staff to be fully vaccinated when class resumes in September," he tweeted, "they need their 1st shot in the next 2.5 weeks." That's saying nothing of child-care workers, who are equally vulnerable and equally important for many families—and who are not yet on the priority list.
This won't be the last cycle of abundance and supply Canada will face when it comes to vaccines. More than six million Canadians over the age of 40 are still waiting for their jab. Nobody knows when the next shots will come. But when they do, the people at the front of the line should be the workers who've kept our world functioning, at great personal risk to themselves. And the people ensuring this shouldn't be individual citizens forgoing vaccine appointments or guiltily getting a jab, but the government, with an equitable, accessible system that's fair to everyone.
Chinatown advocates are eyeing previously earmarked $7.3 million in provincial funding and other funds as a way to prevent the loss of culturally appropriate seniors housing in Chinatown.
It’s one of several options being discussed as Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., B.C. Housing and the City of Vancouver react to the situation at the Vancouver Grace Seniors Home, where a pending building sale has 70 seniors, many who are in their 90s,
B.C. Housing has publicly said seniors will be able to stay when Grace’s building at 333 East Pender St. is sold to Lu’Ma Native Housing, which is using CMHC funds for those at risk of being homeless to make the purchase. Lu’Ma has funding from B.C. Housing to renovate and run what will be affordable housing.
But even if they can stay at 333 East Pender when Lu’Ma takes over, the offer appears to some families as a temporary solution because there would be the loss of what
. They are sharing heartbreaking stories of their elderly relatives, anxious about being separated from spouses, losing Chinese-language services and their comforts of community.
Michael Tan, co-chairman of the Vancouver Chinatown Legacy Stewardship Group, which was set up to advise the city, said there is a sense in the Chinese community of its seniors not being seen in Chinatown.
“It’s yet another example. People are not faulting B.C. Housing or Lu’Ma in this case, but the Chinese community continues to be overlooked,” he said.
Tan said among the solutions being discussed is the possibility of tapping into the $7.3 million that B.C. Housing had earmarked in 2017 for Chinese seniors housing at the 105 Keefer St. condo project in Chinatown.
The controversial proposal from the Beedie Development Group didn’t proceed after the city’s development permit board took the rare step of rejecting its application. Last month, Beedie took its continuing
There have been no other major housing projects for Chinese seniors since then, so it’s reasonable to ask if that $7.3 million in B.C. Housing funds could be used elsewhere, said Tan. It could go toward buying a fresh site such as one that has been on the market at 624 Main St., the location of the
Italian Food Import Co., a veteran Chinatown business.
There is also asking for those units at the 105 Keefer site itself, said Tan: “It’s a long shot, but it’s a site.”
He said there is also a great deal of interest in exploring the possibility of the SUCCESS social-services group being supported as a long-term operator of seniors housing either at 333 E Pender or in another building.
Queenie Choo, CEO of SUCCESS, said she’s working with different government agencies to understand the situation.
“Our position has and always will be in support of providing culturally appropriate seniors care and services. Whatever we can do, we will do, but we will respect procurement policies and government direction,” she said.
She said SUCCESS runs long-term care, assisted care and adult day programs in Chinatown, “which has given us the opportunity to use our experience and our skill set to help seniors to enjoy life and be comfortable in their community.”
Ben Stewart, Liberal MLA and the Opposition’s critic for housing, brought up the Grace situation during question period in the legislature this week, telling Housing Minister David Eby that he’s hearing Grace’s residents are “being left in the dark.”
“These people are in culturally appropriate housing with the right care in Chinatown and they’re looking to stay where they are at,” said Stewart in the legislature.
Eby said: “We are looking for a solution to this problem that will maintain the social supports and the community supports for these seniors. We recognize the sensitivity and vulnerability of this group.”
He said the CMHC, B.C. Housing and Lu’Ma have found a solution “that will make everybody satisfied.”
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Quebec will be handed roughly 10 times more taxpayer dollars from Ottawa to settle each one of its immigrants than B.C., Ontario, Alberta and the other provinces.
The pandemic is further distorting an already lopsided and increasingly bizarre three-decade-old accord with Ottawa that this year will provide Quebec with roughly $20,000 to support each new permanent resident to the province.
Meanwhile, each new permanent resident set to move to B.C. will be allocated only about $1,800 in settlement services, which include language training, assistance with housing and job counselling.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada settlement allocations show, in addition, that Ontario will be handed about $2,000 this year to support each of its new immigrants.
“If I were the other provinces, I would be really, really angry about it,” says Stephan Reichhold, who heads the umbrella organization that oversees 150 settlement agencies in Quebec.
“The other provinces can complain. They can make public statements that it’s not fair,” Reichhold said, explaining that the ever-widening transfer disparity is rooted in a funding formula embedded in the 1991 Canada-Quebec immigration accord.
The upshot of the accord is that Quebec, despite reducing its immigration levels two years ago, will nevertheless be handed a whopping $650 million to help settle the 30,000 to 35,000 new permanent residents it expects in 2021.
Meanwhile, the settlement allocations show all the other provinces and territories combined are this year scheduled to receive $741 million to help integrate about 370,000 new permanent residents, based on Ottawa’s target, which is a record 401,000 immigrants for 2021.
B.C. is set to receive only about $109 million, even while it is projected to take in more than 65,000 new permanent residents, about twice as many as Quebec.
Ontario, which normally takes in 45 per cent of all immigrants to Canada, will be transferred just $372 million, far less than Quebec.
It all adds up to mean, said Reichhold, that Quebec, which accepts only one-tenth of the country’s new immigrants, will receive almost as much transfer money as the other nine provinces and three territories combined.
Vancouver-based Chris Friesen, chair of a national umbrella association that represents immigrant serving agencies across the country, said the gross imbalance in immigrant-support payments is yet another reason he and others are
, possibly a royal commission, into the country’s immigration policies.
Friesen, who is also director of the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. that supports refugees, said the Quebec-Canada formula constantly escalates the proportion of transfer funds going to Quebec. As a result the province will actually receive $58 million more to settle permanent residents this year than last year — despite taking in fewer immigrants than it did in 2019 and 2020.
Even though the provinces have a moral right to protest their poor treatment, Quebec’s Reichhold doubted it would do much good.
That’s because the Canada-Quebec immigration accord, which prime minister Brian Mulroney signed in 1991, gave unique immigration powers and generous transfer payments to the province, mainly to appease a then-surging sovereigntist movement. The other provinces do not have anywhere near the same level of influence over immigration, which is constitutionally in the hands of Ottawa.
from Ottawa than the other provinces. In 2019, Quebec received about $11,000 for each of the roughly 40,000 permanent residents it accepted. That compared to about $2,400 each for immigrants to B.C. and Ontario.
This year, because of both COVID-19 border restrictions and Premier Francois Legault’s campaign promise to further reduce immigration levels, the money gap continues to grow wider than ever. Quebec expects only about 30,000 to 35,000 new permanent residents in the province this year, said Reichhold, who noted that Legault’s government announced Wednesday it is considering upping its target to 50,000 in 2022.
Despite the unfairness of the transfer system, Reichhold said Quebec can always use the federal money. And he was pleased to see that Legault is directing two to three times more of Ottawa’s funding into immigration services than the previous Liberal premier, Philippe Couillard, who mostly shovelled it into general revenue.
“Legault has really raised the amount that goes into language training and other resources,” said Reichhold. Asked if he thought other provinces should get as much money per capita as Quebec for settlement services, Reichhold laughed and said, “Can you imagine the amount? It would cost three to four billion dollars.”
Quebec’s immigration program is unique in the world in the way it gives so much control to a regional jurisdiction, Reichhold said.
Quebec also has its own distinct immigrant-investor program, which had for years been bringing in about 4,000 rich newcomers from around the world, mostly Asia. Nine out of 10 don’t stay in Quebec, but
. Reichold said the program, which critics call a “cash-for-passport scheme,” is not taking new applicants, as it deals with a backlog.
The media outside Quebec don’t often look at how the immigration system works, or its dramatic anomalies, because most English-language journalists show little interest in francophone Quebec, said Reichhold. For that matter, he said, most Quebeckers don’t understand immigration policy either.
The public’s overall ignorance is one of the reasons Friesen, along with Jean McRae of Victoria, B.C., and Victoria Esses of London, Ont., are
into Canada’s convoluted immigration policies, which are produced closed doors. That includes Ottawa’s announcement in October that its objective is to admit over 1.2 million new permanent residents between 2021 and 2023,
Although a recent poll found Canadians are among the most welcoming people in the world to immigrants, Friesen, MacRae and Esses said the public’s “lack of control and generalized uncertainty can easily stoke anti-immigrant and anti-immigration sentiments. Involving Canadians in an informed consideration of how Canada’s future immigration programs and policies should be structured will work to dampen these effects.”
It may be possible to forgive Canadians for not comprehending what’s actually going on in Quebec or elsewhere in regard to immigration policy. Still, it would be prudent to avoid being naive.
What's that saying about judging people? How does that go again?
It's relevant, because Alex Jones says he really doesn't like Doug Ford.
This week, the InfoWars host unburdened himself with his views on Ontario's Premier.
Here's a sampling:
Jones said that Ford "looks like the most guilty, lying, disingenuous sack of garbage… a giant demonic ferret."
Jones said Ford was "an evil hedgehog that just ate your freedoms."
Jones said Ford had "declared marshal law" on Ontario.
And: "Doug Ford has been elected Ontario Premier and he looks just like Sylvester when he just got caught eating Tweety bird."
We could go on and Jones did but you get the picture. When you strip away the colourful ad hominem stuff, Jones summarized why he is upset in this way: "We'll never end the lockdown, we'll never stop the power, it's always about more, more, more, more power. They want power over you."
He doesn't like lockdowns.
An ashen Doug Ford said this week that he doesn't like them either. But, as Ford tearfully said, thousands of sick and dying Ontarians must be protected. Lockdowns are needed.
Now, Alex Jones is not alone in his anti-lockdown view. Just this week, various Canadian politicians are having anti-lockdown rallies in towns in Ontario like Barrie and Stratford. The rallies will feature conservatives who were emphatically rejected by voters and/or their fellow conservatives: Randy Hillier and Derek Sloan.
The anti-masker, anti-lockdown knuckle-draggers are like the anti-vaxxers with whom they've linked up. They think the coronavirus is all made up, a conspiracy, and it's all a big power grab. Or something.
Those of us who've worked in government and this writer (a) has been a special assistant Jean Chretien, and (b) my firm, full disclosure, worked on a couple files for Ford's government a some time ago laugh when we hear about conspiracies.
We can tell you that government, like the media, couldn't organize a good conspiracy if our lives depended on it. Governments are barely able to keep the lights on, let alone secretly assist Bill Gates and George Soros in injecting 5G chips into the arms of millions of people.
If only we were that organized! We wish. (Disco would've never happened, among other things.)
Anyway. Is it bad for Doug Ford that Alex Jones and his cabal, dislike Doug Ford? This writer doesn't think so, but judge for yourself. Here's the rap sheet on Alex Jones.
Jones has called the 2012 slaughter of 20 small children at Sandy Hook "completely fake."
Jones has said the 1995 Oklahoma City attack, where 168 children and adults were killed by a white supremacist's bomb, was a "false flag" operation carried out by the government.
Jones has said juice boxes "make kids gay."
Jones has said the high school students who survived the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shootings were "crisis actors" paid by the Democratic Party and George Soros.
Jones has said gay marriage is a plot "to get rid of God."
Jones has said, about different mass slaughters, that the government "stages terror attacks."
Alex Jones isn't merely "a conspiracy theorist," which is the bland and antiseptic descriptive the media usually attach to his name. That doesn't quite cover it, does it?
Alex Jones is a monster. He is evil. He is beyond redemption. To be condemned by him, as Doug Ford was, is a gift.
Which brings us back to the question at the start of this column. Here's the answer: judge them by their friends, Lord, but also their enemies.
And when Doug Ford has enemies like Alex Jones, he's doing good.
Kinsella was Special Assistant to the Rt. Hon. Jean Chretien.
Photo Credit: Variety
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.
An explosive letter demanding Premier Jason Kenney’s immediate resignation is circulating among UCP riding boards.
It has so far gained about 90 signatures of board members and presidents from a variety of ridings, party sources say.
“We, the undersigned members of the United Conservative Party, formally request your immediate resignation as leader of the party and as Premier of Alberta,” says a copy of the letter obtained by Postmedia, without the signatures included.
Organizers say they hope to get many more signatures before the names and letter are released and sent to the premier.
“We signatories sit, or have recently sat, on UCP boards across the province,” the letter continues.
“Mr. Kenney, for the sake of a strong and free Alberta and for the well-being of the conservative movement in this province, we ask that you do the proper thing and resign . . .
“Furthermore, we do not believe you have the moral authority or trustworthiness to lead this party into the next election or to continue to deliver on important conservative priorities.”
Kenney’s communications boss, Brock Harrison, says “the premier isn’t going anywhere.”
“We saw this letter two weeks ago with no signatories and no names attached.
“Since then, we’ve heard from far more people who want absolutely nothing to do with it versus the numbers you’re speculating will support it.”
At this point, it seems none of Kenney’s MLAs have signed the letter.
, 17 of them sent another letter critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic.
It did not ask Kenney to resign. The premier said his caucus members were free to speak their minds, but the government had to continue with restrictions to fight COVID-19.
Even before that episode, critics were pressing for a formal party leadership vote.
About nine ridings have now passed a motion asking for a such a review. Twenty-two riding boards must sign on before a vote can be forced.
Under pressure, the party executive said there will be a leadership review in the fall of 2022, about six months before the next election.
That didn’t satisfy many of the critics. Increasingly impatient, they decided to demand an immediate resignation.
Addressing Kenney directly, the letter continues: “It has become increasingly clear to us that you will not allow a proper review of your leadership in a timely manner.
“Party leadership has resorted to procedural tactics and strongâ€arming to prevent any sort of meaningful change in this party and grassroots control.
“Therefore, we realize the time for discussing your leadership has come to an end.”
The letter will be part of the conversation during an informal virtual meeting of riding presidents set for Thursday.
The anger is deeply tied to COVID-19 rules, their perceived breach of freedoms and the harm to business.
The letter alleges: “You have not upheld the core grassroots principles of the party, particularly by repeatedly violating our Statement of Principles in attacking free enterprise, personal responsibility, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly and the free use of private property.”
“It has become difficult to defend a number of recent decisions and mistakes. We are concerned that your personal association with government policy, even in matters that do align with our principles, is a liability.
“Once you have lost trust, it can never return. Your personal unpopularity will only result in defeat.”
There’s some chance the discontent will fade if the pandemic eases and the province emerges into what Kenney calls “the best summer ever in Alberta history.”
Kenney has tight control over the party apparatus and he’s not the type to quit. His pandemic measures still have significant caucus support despite the obvious divisions.
But his opposition is getting bolder and noisier as the restrictions persist.
Don Braid's column appears regularly in the Herald.
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‘s four city councillors quit the party on Wednesday to sit as independents, saying the last straw was the organization’s “Old Boys club” suddenly appointing a mayoral candidate this month.
In a joint statement, councillors Lisa Dominato, Sarah Kirby-Yung and Colleen Hardwick said they “don’t have faith the NPA will represent the priorities and values of Vancouver residents” and have “lost confidence in the NPA’s ability to govern fairly and responsibly.”
The announcement answers one of the most-asked questions in Vancouver politics over the past year
, namely if and when the NPA’s remaining councillors would officially break away from the party after
This latest defection reduces Vancouver’s oldest and
historically
most dominant party to a single member of council, down from five following the last election.
Second-term Coun. Melissa De Genova was conspicuously absent from the trio’s announcement Wednesday, and is apparently remaining with the party, at least for now.
The defections follow more than 16 months of growing friction between the NPA’s elected caucus and the board of directors chosen at the party’s most recent general meeting, in 2019. Soon after the new board was elected, Coun.
— to the surprise of almost everyone, including the party’s own politicians — that it had appointed NPA park board commissioner John Coupar to be the party’s mayoral candidate in next year’s election.
In an open letter released addressed to NPA supporters, the three departing councillors cited Coupar’s sudden appointment as the primary reason for their decision.
The trio had issued an earlier public statement — also without De Genova — saying they were “extremely disappointed there was no open, transparent and democratic mayoral call for candidates, or application or nomination process, thus eliminating any opportunity for elected women in the NPA caucus to participate, or for any others to submit expressions of interest.”
“Instead of a fair and democratic process to select the best mayoral candidate, the NPA board and John Coupar sidelined the elected members of the NPA and made a backroom deal. By any measure, it was about as Old Boys club as it gets,” Hardwick said
But others, including Coupar and NPA president David Mawhinney, questioned the sincerity of the councillors’ concerns over the board’s supposed “backroom” candidacy appointment
"We remind everyone that each of the three departing councillors were appointed to their role as candidates for the NPA in the exact same manner as our current mayoral candidate,"
Mawhinney said.
Coupar also said that when Hardwick, Dominato and Kirby-Yung were appointed in 2018 by the NPA board to run as council candidates, “they didn’t complain about the process then.”
“I’m disappointed they did it so quickly,” Coupar said. “I had a good conversation with them the other day and I thought we were perhaps moving forward in a more positive way, but I guess they made a decision contrary to that, which is their right.”
Many observers have also viewed the situation through the lens of gender, after an almost entirely male NPA board decided privately to give a male park commissioner the mayoral nod, instead of allowing any of the four female NPA councillors to pursue the nomination.
This was evident in Wednesday’s statement from the defecting councillors.
“I’m proud to be serving on Vancouver’s first-ever majority women council and I won’t diminish that by not drawing the line,” Kirby-Yung said in the statement. “In 2021, we shouldn’t have to fight for a level playing field, but we are.”
Dominato said: “Women in politics need to stand up for their point of view and lead by example.”
The NPA dominated municipal politics in the city for most of its eight-decade history, with the notable exception of recent years. Since Sam Sullivan won the mayoralty for the NPA in 2005 and served for a single term, the party’s mayoral candidate has lost four consecutive mayoral races.
to independent Kennedy Stewart, the 2018 election was otherwise largely seen as a success for the party: five NPA councillors were elected to council — the party’s best showing there since Sullivan’s election 13 years earlier — along with two park board commissioners, and three school board trustees.
But cracks within the party started to become apparent, even to outside observers.
The sole remaining NPA councillor, De Genova, has served with the party longer than the other four councillors elected in 2018, and previously sat on the park board alongside Coupar.
Asked for comment Wednesday afternoon, De Genova wrote in a text message: “The reality is, little will change for me. As a caucus, sometimes we would vote together, sometimes not. I expect that to continue.”
With this week’s departures, the NPA goes from being council’s largest single bloc to tied with COPE and OneCity at one seat each, with the Greens’ three-member caucus suddenly becoming council’s largest.
VICTORIA — The New Democrats have granted $7.22 million to the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, saying the money will promote “unity” in a nation divided between elected and hereditary leaders.
The three-year funding builds upon last year’s memorandum of understanding, signed after the showdown over construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory.
“This funding will support the unity-building work within Wet’suwet’en Nation that is critical to move forward,” Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Minister Murray Rankin said Friday.
The money is all from the province, though the federal and provincial governments both signed the memorandum and continue to negotiate with the hereditary chiefs on implementation of Aboriginal rights and title.
“Openness and transparency continue to be a key focus in the negotiations,” said Rankin.
Elected leaders of the Wet’suwet’en were quick to dispute Rankin’s claims on both the unity and the openness fronts.
“British Columbia’s funding announcement to ‘unify’ the Wet’suwet’en nation is the latest in a year-long series of insults and betrayals of the elected representatives of the Wet’suwet’en people,” declared elected chief Maureen Luggi and councillors Karen Ogen and Heather Nooski.
“For nearly a year, Canada, B.C., and the recipients of this funding have been negotiating in absolute secrecy about the communal Aboriginal rights and title of the Wet’suwet’en people,” they continued.
“Once again, the democratically elected representatives of the Wet’suwet’en people learned from public media that B.C. has given $7.2 million to a non-profit society to ‘unify’ us.”
The non-profit society being the “Office of the Wet’suwet’en,” controlled by the hereditary chiefs. They opposed the pipeline and supported protests that spread to the steps of the legislature last year.
“The elected councils supported B.C.’s priorities for this pipeline because it is in our mutual interest,” wrote Luggi and her colleagues.
“But in return, we are being removed from any meaningful participation in the future of our territory. And now, despite every appeal to right and reason, the province has handed $7.2 million to an unelected, unrepresentative, unmandated, unaccountable society to continue their secret negotiations and to ‘unify’ the Wet’suwet’en people.”
The latest provincial contribution follows an earlier grant of $1.2 million to purchase the former Lake Kathlyn school property. Some of the new funding will be used to convert the property into “a Wet’suwet’en nation governance centre,” according Friday’s statement from Rankin and the office of the Wet’suwet’en.
Such is the NDP government’s relationship with the hereditary chiefs that the release made no mention of a role for the elected leadership.
Rankin had a role in establishing the relationship. He was paid more than $140,000 in fees and expenses as provincial representative to the hereditary chiefs, up to September when he resigned to run for the New Democrats in the fall election.
Some of the reasoning behind the NDP decision to favour the hereditary chiefs was spelled out in confidential briefing notes for the incoming minister of Indigenous relations on the eve of last November’s postelection cabinet shuffle.
If asked about opposition to the memorandum from the elected chiefs, the minister (who turned out to be Rankin) was advised to say: “Ultimately it is for the Wet’suwet’en people to resolve their own governance matters — that is central to self-determination.”
But also: “All Wet’suwet’en must be consulted on agreements negotiated and there must be clarity on Wet’suwet’en governance structures and systems.”
What, then, would be the role for elected chiefs in the negotiation process?
“That is an internal governance question that the Wet’suwet’en need to determine,” was the suggested answer. “The province is available to support conversations between the hereditary and elected leadership if that would be helpful.”
Not likely would the province be helpful in bridging the gap after repeatedly siding with the hereditary leadership.
The minister’s briefing notes also claimed that “in general, the province consults and negotiates with whichever leaders are decided on by the First Nation and will typically seek to consult with both elected and hereditary leaders in areas where traditional house systems remain established.”
But that is not how B.C. proceeded with the Wet’suwet’en.
“They have funded the organization that did not consult us about their MOU, that did not seek our support for their negotiations and that did not even inform us how their negotiations would affect our rights and interests, to bring our people together,” wrote the elected leaders in reference to the NDP’s dealings with the office of the Wet’suwet’en.
“That is 19th century colonial manipulation that cannot possibly do anything but drive us further apart.”
You also have to wonder what message this sends to investors in Coastal GasLink, which is the intended supply line for the multi-billion dollar LNG terminal now under construction in Kitimat.
The New Democrats say the agreement with the hereditary chiefs means “no change” for the project.
“The Coastal Gas Link project is permitted and approved to proceed,” said the briefing notes. “The project is supported by Indigenous communities along the entire pipeline route, including Wet’suwet’en members.”
But the March construction update on the project reports that next to no work — zero grading, zero pipe installed — has been completed on the 78-kilometre section flanking the protest encampment supported by the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.
That’s a big gap in the line. If it is not too much to expect, perhaps the province’s $7.2 million grant will help clear the way for construction to proceed.
![VANCOUVER, BC - April 21, 2021 - Three NPA Vancouver Councillors, Left to right: Colleen Hardwick, Sarah Kirby-Yung and Lisa Dominato in front of Vancouver City Hall in Vancouver, BC, April 21, 2021.
Photo by Arlen Redekop / Vancouver Sun / The Province (PNG) (story by Dan Fumano) [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://smartcdn.prod.postmedia.digital/vancouversun/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/png0421n-npa.jpg "VANCOUVER, BC - April 21, 2021 - Three NPA Vancouver Councillors, Left to right: Colleen Hardwick, Sarah Kirby-Yung and Lisa Dominato in front of Vancouver City Hall in Vancouver, BC, April 21, 2021.
Photo by Arlen Redekop / Vancouver Sun / The Province (PNG) (story by Dan Fumano) [PNG Merlin Archive]")
