redding, Author at Loonie Politics

On February 22, 266 Members of Parliament (MPs) voted in favour of a parliamentary motion, formally declaring the People's Republic of China guilty of committing genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.

The motion received the support of all MPs that participated in the vote, including from even the Liberal caucus. Interestingly enough, though, the motion did not win the approval of the Prime Minister, nor his cabinet, all of whom abstained in a contentious attempt at neutrality.

Depending on who you ask, that abstention was either regrettable but necessary to help secure the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, as well as maintain Canadian access to the Chinese market, or, utterly disgraceful for its servility to the human-rights abusing regime which is the Chinese state; a state which, let us not forget, has for years detained more than one million Uyghurs in concentration camps, where they have been subjected to anything from forced sexual sterilization to slave labour, along with sexual assault, physical torture, and even murder.

Personally, I am of the opinion that the strategy employed by the Prime Minister and his subservient cabinet, even when applied to a simple, non-binding motion in the House of Commons, is not morally defensible. Whenever a state's actions against a minority become so abhorrent, so profoundly unconscionable, that they are being legitimately considered as "physically" genocidal (as is China's against the Uyghurs), inaction, even from a middle-power such as Canada, is no longer a justifiable decision.

But then again, nor is putting up our feet and wiping our hands clean of the Uyghur's plight, after simply voting in favour of a largely symbolic motion, as many of our MPs have done.

It is easy to criticize the federal Liberals for their disregard and negligence over the Uyghur issue. That goes without saying. But it is a little more challenging to successfully press the government into taking concrete action to assist the Uyghurs, which is possible in the current minority government situation.

So, what could Canada's political leaders do to support the Uyghurs, besides just rattling their sabers and scoring cheap political points?

For one, Canada's parliamentarians could start by making good on the proposal in the above-mentioned motion to call on the International Olympic Committee to relocate the 2022 Olympic Games from Beijing. Canada might not have much clout over the Chinese economically, or militarily, but together with other like-minded countries, it does have the influence to deny Chinese leaders the spotlight they crave in political and international forums. Alone, actions like these might not do much to put an end to the ongoing Uyghur genocide. However, they do increase international spotlight on the horrors committed against the Uyghurs, while helping amplify both internal and external dissent against those complicit in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Speaking of complicity, another policy avenue that Canadian parliamentarians could take to defend the Uyghurs and push back against those guilty of perpetrating genocide is to exercise the powers of the oft cited but rarely used Magnitsky Act. In utilizing the Act, the Canadian government can impose financial restrictions and other sanctions on select individuals in the CCP, complicit in the mass detainment, relocation, and murder of Uyghur Muslims. While the Canadian government finally came around to placing sanctions on four Chinese officials (after dragging its heels for years), there are still many more names that could be added to the list.

Again, sanctions alone against top CCP officials will not stop the Uyghur genocide. But they will ensure that at least some of those culpable face consequences for their appalling actions.

Furthermore, Canadian MPs could also band together to press the Liberal cabinet into banning certain products and implementing stricter regulations against corporations that profit from Uyghur slave labour. Or into providing a welcome home to some of the thousands of Uyghur refugees in Turkey, living fearfully day to day over the threat of deportation if the Turkish government ever decides to ratify its extradition treaty to the Middle Kingdom.

While the MPs are at it, they could also apply pressure on cabinet to allow three Uyghur men Ayub Mohammed, Salahidin Abdulahad and Khalil Mamut, who were wrongly accused detainees in Guantanamo Bay, to rejoin their families in Canada. Not just issue more token statements of support, while offering no substantive assistance, as Prime Minister Trudeau himself is guilty of.

If the many MPs that voted on behalf of the Chinese-Uyghur genocide motion have any conviction, they will come together again to persuade, and even force, if necessary, the Liberal cabinet to act on at least some of these policies. Justice for the Uyghurs requires nothing less.

Photo Credit: www.aa.com

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Book review: Bootstraps Need Boots: One Tory's Lonely Fight to End Poverty In Canada

by Hugh Segal

On Point Press (an imprint of UBC Press), 2019

â€”â€”â€”â€”â€”â€”â€”â€”-

The concept of a basic income that is, providing every person with a financial foundation to ensure nobody suffers from want has gained considerable traction in recent years. However, proponents hail almost exclusively from the political left. Why, then, has one of Canada's most thoughtful conservatives championed a basic income relentlessly for more than half a century?

This is the topic explored in Bootstraps Need Boots, a recent book written by former senator and Progressive Conservative political advisor Hugh Segal.

Bootstraps Need Boots is structured primarily as a memoir that begins from Segal's childhood, focusing on the experiences that contributed to his enthusiasm for eliminating poverty. But the book is somewhat genre-defiant, as it avoids lusting after the drama of politics and instead expends considerable energy explaining the potential benefits of a basic income. Segal expresses disbelief that after several decades of consideration, Canada has somehow still avoided adopting what he argues would be an obvious improvement to our society and economy.

Segal also yearns nostalgically for a bygone era in which Conservative politicians sought to achieve a better future through grand planning. While the political left's Tommy Douglas is credited for championing social healthcare, Bill Davis of the political right deserves most of the plaudits for Canada's guaranteed income supplement for seniors. Ontario was an incredibly progressive province under premiers Robarts and Davis despite their blue political tinge, constructing several public universities, teachers' colleges and community colleges; creating GO Transit commuter rail; ensuring tuition fees weren't a barrier for low-income students seeking a post-secondary education; and launching TVOntario, the first educational television channel in Canada. It was also the Tories who established public utility Ontario Hydro, some 115 years ago.

To further the point, it's worth remembering that when Canadian provinces began to establish medical insurance programs as of the mid-1960s, half of the provinces adopted such publicly-funded healthcare under right-leaning governments.

Segal's brand of Toryism stands in stark contrast to the government-loathing, Thatcheresque politicians of today who seem capable only of tearing down, rather than building. According to Segal, conventional conservatism is just as interested in egalitarianism and communitarianism as the political left. He defines his political philosophy as "a politics that sees as unacceptable the vast difference between those living happy, well-funded lives of travel and luxury and a sub-culture in which people are denied enough to eat, indoor plumbing, time for family, or any enjoyment at all. A Tory respects tradition and the rule of law but sees the reduction of the gap between rich and poor as essential to his or her mission."

The author is a rarity: a Conservative who walked the corridors of provincial and federal power despite originating from a family that often struggled with poverty. This is what makes his conclusions so captivating: he's not lecturing the poor with condescending "if only you'd worked harder" tropes we so often hear from right-wing politicians who inherited wealth.

Eradicating poverty is simple: give people money

Segal's central argument in favour of Canada adopting a basic income is as follows: poverty is expensive, preventing people from living productive and fulfilling lives; more than three million Canadians fall beneath the poverty line; welfare and disability supports trap people in poverty, rather than liberating them; government tinkering at the peripheral symptoms of poverty with an array of constantly-shifting social programs achieves surprisingly little, while costing a lot; a basic income could quickly and directly lift people from poverty; and unlike welfare a basic income would actually incentivize work.

Canada already spends a surprising amount of money attempting to support people in poverty, but as Segal argues, it achieves little and is indeed often counter-productive, ensnaring recipients in a state of perpetual poverty. Considering that Ontario alone already spends almost $10 billion each year on welfare and disability supports, while a basic income program similar to Ontario's recent pilot would cost just $43 billion annually if rolled out across the entire country, the reader quickly appreciates that cost is not the major barrier to eliminating poverty in Canada.

If a basic income still seems excessive, Segal points out that Canada already uses it just not a universal program. The guaranteed income supplement which, again, originated from Conservatives cut poverty among seniors in Ontario from 35 percent down to just five percent in only two years. The Canada child benefit, implemented in 2016, quickly lifted many low-income families out of poverty. If we genuinely wish to liberate people from want, the solution is simple: give them money.

Segal argues that a basic income is inherently conservative: give people money and let them choose what to do with it, rather than government spending a similar amount creating a bureaucracy-laden array of support programs of dubious value. Enable poor people to pay their rent or buy food with that money instead. Poverty and its myriad pathologies are ultimately caused by a lack of cash, so we should simply distribute money more widely if we really want to lift Canadians from poverty.

Preventing families from subsisting in Dickensian destitution might sound all well and good, but a basic income would make people lazy and disincentivize work, critics argue. In reality, pilot programs conducted across the world have shown that not to be the case. On average, people worked slightly more when they received a basic income, and entrepreneurialism increased. If thoughtful Canadians seek government that makes decisions based on data rather than bias and ideology, very few arguments against introducing a basic income remain.

Without dancing astray from the book's core objective, Segal also makes a clarion call for Canadian conservatism to increase its appeal by returning to its roots, focusing on increasing equality of opportunity rather than an obsession with less government. The author paints a compelling argument for Red Tories to take back their party from Reformers, having lost control after the 2003 merger between Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance.

Texan accents, "swells" and unanswered questions

But is Segal's book a captivating read? The concept of exploring how an intellectual Tory came to support a policy generally considered left-wing is intriguing, but it makes for a project that's challenging to execute entertainingly. Segal partly succeeds, opting to tell stories and share anecdotes where possible. He wields a deliciously dark sense of humour that we get occasional glimpses at, and has concocted a political memoir that is refreshingly self-deprecating.

But frankly, parts of the book drag for the reader: describing meetings or interactions with bureaucrats and other officials isn't exactly gripping drama, even if it's a necessary aspect of the book's journey. Delving into the October Crisis and the Front de libÃ©ration du QuÃ©bec makes chapter nine a page-turner, as is the concluding chapter. But much of the book lacks a sense of urgency.

To Segal's credit, he keeps most chapters and the overall book rather short, and uses accessible language that ensures approachability for general readers. Academics from the social sciences are often guilty of using heavily verbose language to adorn simple assertions, but that's thankfully not the case from this book, despite being released by an academic publisher.

One confusing matter central to the book's objective that isn't successfully clarified is why Segal opted to become a Conservative rather than join the left-wing New Democrats, if poverty alleviation was his primary political motive. We receive part of the story: he mentions becoming enthralled by a John Diefenbaker speech at his school, and his political awakening occurred during an era when the Red Tories who wielded power had few inhibitions about nation building or constructing social programs. But Segal's father was Liberal, and his grandfather an NDP ideologue. So why did Segal come to hold distain for the "far left" students he encountered at university? Which events or interactions subsequent to meeting Diefenbaker cemented Segal's identity as a Tory? He would have been exposed to plenty of left-wing ideas about curtailing poverty, even at his own family's dinner table, yet chose to reject them. But why? Sadly, this crucial part of his formative political story is left unexplained.

As thoughtful and open-minded as Segal generally appears compared to many of his right-wing peers, one annoyance for non-Conservative readers stems from the occasional partisan jabs he makes at Liberals and the political left, as well as petty shots directed toward the civil service and unions. Such right-wing tropes risk alienating readers from the book's important message about a basic income. Several instances are perhaps necessary to explain how the author came to formulate his world view, but these needn't drip with condescension. The unintentional irony is obvious as Segal refers to Pierre Trudeau as "the trust-fund-based dilettante" in the same chapter he praises mentor David MacDonald for eschewing hyper-partisanship. Segal also contradicts himself as he casts venom toward the civil service, referring to bureaucrats as "swells" only interested in "protect[ing] their own jobs", yet elsewhere in the book commends Ontario government workers for their professionalism.

Because the book rigidly adheres to the scope of explaining how Segal's experiences contributed to his views on alleviating poverty through a basic income, some of his fascinating roles in high political office receive scant attention. For example, if you're looking for Segal to pull back the curtain on his time as Brian Mulroney's chief of staff, only seven pages are devoted to that period, and half of it specifically to Segal's basic income efforts. For readers who seek dramatic political memoir, Segal's No Surrender: Reflections of a Happy Warrior in the Tory Crusade (HarperCollins Canada, 1996) would better scratch that itch.

Despite that many fascinating posts in Segal's career are scarcely covered, others parts of the book arguably contain unnecessarily excessive detail. Do we really need to know the name of the shop where Segal printed a policy brochure in 1970, or that the owner had a Texan accent? Such specifics perhaps add to a bit of colour and tell a fuller story to what's otherwise a policy-heavy manuscript, but it seems odd to gloss over some of Segal's top career positions in favour of trivial facts perhaps only of interest to the author. Segal also has a habit of dropping names not to brag about his extensive professional network, but rather to give credit to others. Normally that should win someone praise, but most readers probably aren't interested in the names of Segal's opponents from student council elections a half-century ago. These details belong in footnotes or endnotes, if they're needed at all.

The number of Tories who are singled out for criticism from Segal is surprisingly short. Even though he bemoans how modern conservatism has replaced nation and community building with selfishness and an obsession with privatization, he is really only critical of one specific Conservative politician: Doug Ford. Perhaps this can be partly excused by the book adhering to the topic of poverty alleviation, as Ford infamously terminated Ontario's basic income pilot pre-maturely despite promising not to, a duplicitous act Segal fumes over. But somehow there isn't a single mention of former Ontario premier Mike Harris in the entire book despite his legacy of slashing social services, and yet Segal finds space to criticize Paul Martin for similar austerity, even though the former Liberal prime minister appointed Segal to the Senate. He also bestows very gentle treatment on Stephen Harper, despite incompetent meddling in Senate matters. Again, the reader occasionally wonders if they're wading through a partisan manuscript, a dangerous outcome if Segal hopes to appeal across the political spectrum.

Several critics have remarked that Segal has not specified in Bootstraps Need Boots whether a basic income would complement existing social programs or replace them, a reason why some on the political left remain suspicious of a basic income. But frankly, it's not his responsibility to do so. That's up to whichever future government entertains adopting such a program. And as Segal helpfully notes, the Canada child benefit implemented in 2016 replaced a series of pre-existing programs, yet didn't decrease any individual family's benefits. Future governments could easily eliminate fears of program replacement by guaranteeing that no household's benefits would decline as the result of adopting a basic income.

The conservative appeal to eradicate poverty

Overall, Segal has written a provocative book in an engaging style. He dispenses erudite wisdom, masked with a folksy tone and self-deprecation to make what could have been a dry, policy-heavy manuscript instead palatable to a general audience.

As to whom Bootstraps Need Boots will appeal to most, there are three camps. First, people who seek social justice: those who campaign against poverty, particularly anyone interested in a basic income. Second, this book should fascinate open-minded conservatives who enjoy the intellectual stimulus of having their assumptions challenged, as well as Tories who simply can't fathom how one of their own could support a basic income. But the third sub-audience is much wider: those from across the political spectrum who yearn nostalgically for the political right to once again offer more to society than yet another round of incessant, Thatcherite cuts. It's incredibly refreshing to read from a Conservative who wants more social programs not less and can adeptly articulate how such a philosophical realignment would better match traditional conservative values than today's bleak offerings of austerity. Intelligent Tories especially younger ones reading this book may find themselves in disbelief how their political movement veered so far off course in recent decades.

Ultimately, Segal makes a compelling case with a conservative ethos that society would flourish with the addition of a basic income, and that we're letting fear of change and ideological stubbornness prevent us from both stimulating the economy and allowing people to reach their full potential.

For readers hoping to delve into the details of what a basic income program might look like, Evelyn Forget's Basic Income for Canadians (Lorimer, 2018) would prove more relevant. But Bootstraps Need Boots is perhaps the most profoundly conservative argument yet in favour of Canada adopting a basic income, and is thus a welcome and much-needed addition to existing literature.

Photo Credit: Basic Income Canada Network

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Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a push at a couple of the different Commons committees to summon high-level political staffers to answer questions on either the WE Imbroglio, or the sequence of events around allegations raised about the former Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance. This, however, goes against our parliamentary norms, not that anyone seems to care about those these days. The demands culminated in a non-binding Supply Day vote on Thursday which the government lost and stated that they fully intend to ignore. It's setting up yet another showdown between this government and the opposition, which could very well start moving into procedural gamesmanship which will only have the outcome of getting every bored pundit in this city talking about an election call.

Let's be clear these motions pretty much boil down to some unadulterated parliamentary bullshit, a bit of Kabuki theatre that is purporting to do the great work of uncovering some vast conspiracies rather than some garden-variety incompetence on the part of this government. The prevailing attitude of the opposition parties is about ginning up outrage over their own particular pet causes, each premised on their own particular false promises, but they have found a weak spot in this government's attitudes toward their obligations around conflicts of interest. It's not particularly new that this crop of Liberals has a prevailing belief that so long as they mean well, that the ends will always justify the means, and this keeps tripping them up time and again, and lo, we continue to circle this WE issue because of that very attitude.

Thursday's Supply Day motion was framed in supporting the authority of committees to do their work, and demanded the appearance of three staffers around the WE Imbroglio, and one for the General Vance allegations, but importantly, they contained the option for the prime minister to appear instead but stipulated that he must appear for three hours if that were the case. And because this is all for the sake of appearances, you can bet that both sides would want the prime minister to show up the Liberals so that they can put on a song and dance about being transparent and accountable, and the opposition so that they can gather clips of their MPs badgering and hectoring him, saying outrageous things and making ludicrous accusations along the way, in the hopes that this will do more to gin up the outrage that they think will earn them enough votes to get ahead in the next election.

There is a broader principle at play, which is that of ministerial responsibility. That is, ministers are responsible to Parliament for the conduct of their staff, and they are the ones who get to answer questions on their behalf particularly ministerial staff, as all of the requested staffers are. The Conservatives are very much aware of this fact, as they encountered these very same demands to have their own staffers appear during their time in government, and they also (correctly) asserted that ministers are the ones who should be appearing to answer questions, and not those staffers. It's a fundamental cornerstone of how our system works, but because our parties are more interested in scoring as many cheap political points as possible, they are deliberately ignoring these principles, and not to mention their own histories in this regard. Apparently, they are not too concerned about the whiff of hypocrisy that surrounds these demands (possibly because that may require a dose of shame that pretty much every politician seems to be lacking in this day and age).

This being said, I do think that when it comes to ministerial accountability over these files, that it's become increasingly clear that Harjit Sajjan can't continue in his role as defence minister much longer. While I can sympathise with Sajjan's desire not to politicise an investigation into Vance especially given the blowback over the investigation into now-retired Vice-Admiral Mark Norman he is the person who is accountable to Parliament for the Canadian Forces, and that includes being responsible for the Chief of Defence Staff. That he did not adequately follow-up on the allegations and ensuring that an investigation did happen, or that evidence could be gathered, and he ensured that Vance carried on in the position for a record-setting length of time rather than cycling him out when even the whiff of scandal appeared, which made it harder to maintain the claim that they were taking the attempt to stamp out sexual misconduct seriously. No questioning of his former chief of staff will change these facts, which is why trying to summon her is a bit of a red herring, and perhaps an abuse of power on the part of opposition members, knowing that it violates the doctrine of ministerial accountability.

In any case, the demands for these staffers to appear is pretty much at a place of diminishing returns. With the WE Imbroglio, we already know that the WE family of organizations had effectively pulled the wool over the eyes of civil servants and Canadians as a whole about the efficacy of their operations, and we already know that Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau didn't recuse themselves from any decision-making because they have the ethical blind spot of believing that ends justify means when they mean well. There is nothing new to be gained her in the context of holding government to account, especially when Morneau has already resigned and long since moved on.

With the Vance allegations, again, we have established that Sajjan is the one who needs to fall on his sword for not going far enough in seeing that this situation was dealt with effectively, and subjecting his former staffer to a show trial where Pierre Poilievre, Michael Barrett and Charlie Angus can mug for the cameras, won't get us anything new. No amount of cheap point-scoring is worth violating the principles of ministerial accountability, and it would set a dangerous precedent for any party that hopes to one day form government.

Photo Credit: CTV News

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There's only just so much multi-tasking one government can do.

So Alberta's UCP government is rushing to wrap up its long term fight with the province's doctors in time to open up a battle with nurses and other health care workers.

Last year relations on the doctor front were at an all time low after Health Minister Tyler Shandro ripped up the contract with the Alberta Medical Association and imposed a raft of billing restrictions and changes that enraged doctors.

Doctors rebelled and many, particularly in rural practices, left the province or at least threatened to leave the province. The timing was disastrous as medical workers took on the mantle of superheroes during the pandemic.

Now, according to Shandro at least, there's peace in that particularly valley. A tentative deal with the AMA is being voted on now by doctors.

All the details haven't been made public, but leaks to media outlets suggest there's an overall cap on the budget for doctors payments in the deal. The AMA's bid to get binding arbitration back in the agreement also apparently didn't make it.

But the province's plan to mess with compensation for longer-than-average doctors' visits is now dead.

The provision, which doctors argued would lead to inadequate time with patients and a punishing income drop, especially for rural practitioners, was put on hold during Covid.

Shandro admitted in the legislature that the budget cutting move was wrong from the get go.

"(It) was a policy that we never should have pursued in the first place, and there will be no changes being made moving forward," the minister said in the legislature this week.

Not quite an apology, but pretty close.

So, it's on to the next target. And this time it's nurses and health care workers.

The central issue of this bun fight is absence of action by the government.

Last year, as Covid hit in earnest, nurses and health care workers agreed to suspend negotiations on their contracts until March 31, 2021. Now the government wants to extend that suspension into the summer. The nurses, however, are tired of waiting for a deal.

They also want to see exactly what is on the table. A plan the government cooked up before Covid called for a cut of 500 nursing jobs. That provision was put on hold because of Covid. With Covid on the wane, nurses and healthcare workers covered by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees want some assurance that their insanely hard work through the pandemic won't be rewarded with job cuts and wage reductions.

Perhaps exhausted by his Herculean efforts with the doctors, Shandro is so far leaving the heavy lifting on this fight to Finance Minister Travis Toews.

Toews ramped up the heat pretty quickly with a vaguely threatening press release.

"It's disappointing to see that AUPE has turned down the Covid supports and protections for its members and is instead wanting AHS (Alberta Health Services) to shift its focus away from the pandemic and to their labour demands."

Of course the statement elicited fast response from the unions.

AUPE president Guy Smith suggested Toews is using the job security afforded by the Covid crisis as a hostage to get the unions to back off.

"We believe frontline health-care heroes deserve better than that. That is why we rejected this offer."

The nurses' union is also expressing disbelief that the government can't negotiate while the province is still battling Covid. What about the doctors' negotiations?

The government can, of course, walk and chew gum at the same time. Fighting the pandemic and hammering out a labour agreement don't require the same personnel.

But politically the UCP can't take many more body blows to its popularity. Polls show the party sinking out of sight after a number of political gaffs. Alberta government struggling to walk and chew gum at the same time

If the doctors' agreement passes, it will be rare win for the government. No wonder Shandro and Toews want to delay confrontation with other healthcare unions. If negotiations with other pandemic heroes, especially while Covid is still active, turns into a bloodbath, it could be yet another disaster.

Photo Credit: Calgary Herald

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The Conservative Party of Canada's policy convention was held virtually between March 18-20. It was a relatively straightforward affair. A few potentially contentious issues, including abortion, were kept off the schedule. Party leader Erin O'Toole's speech emphasized political unity and vision, and told grassroots members that Conservatives had to move forward "with the courage to grow, to be bold and to change."

Alas, there was one item that didn't go quite according to plan. We'll call it the Conservative Climate Change Controversy, or Câ´.

This involved a policy resolution related to Environmental Principles in Section I-53. Three additional paragraphs would have been included:

We recognize that climate change is real. The Conservative Party is willing to act.

We believe that Canadian businesses classified as highly polluting need to take more responsibility in implementing measures that will reduce their GHG emissions and need to be accountable for the results.

We believe in supporting innovation in green technologies. We need to become a world class leader and to use innovation as a lever of economic development.

The resolution was defeated 54%-46%.

When news began to spread, the (mostly) left-leaning masses immediately got triggered. "They don't believe in climate change," some said. "I always knew the Conservatives were climate change deniers," others remarked, along with "The Liberals are easily going to win the next election" and "What a huge rebuke to O'Toole's leadership."

You get the idea.

Is Câ´ really as bad as some have suggested? Is the sky falling, as Chicken Little said in the children's fable? Are the Conservatives going to be associated with climate change denial to the end of time?

The answer is "no." The whole controversy is, to quote William Shakespeare, much ado about nothing.

In fact, Câ´ should really be described as C⁵, or the Contrived Conservative Climate Change Controversy.

Let's explore this a bit further.

Climate change was addressed in the Conservative Policy Declaration several years ago. If you go to Section I-53, the fifth paragraph reads, "We believe that an effective international emissions reduction regime on climate change must be truly global and must include binding targets for all the world's major emitters, including China and the United States."

That long-standing reference to climate change would have been listed two paragraphs above the proposed resolution stating "climate change is real." If the Conservatives have already addressed climate change in the policy, it means most party members believe it exists. A primary reference doesn't need to be quantified by a meaningless secondary line.

What about Abacus Data's recent survey that revealed 18% of Conservative supporters believe climate change is a "hoax?" Similar to the theory that no two snowflakes (the ice crystals, not the triggered masses) are alike, no two supporters of any political party think the same way on every issue. If 82 percent of Conservative supporters believe climate change is real in some way, shape or form, that's quite good.

Nevertheless, some wonder how the Conservatives will escape being labeled as climate change deniers.

Yes, it's unfortunate this small dust-up occurred. It would have been wiser in hindsight to have kept this contentious resolution off the table. The Trudeau Liberals will obviously attempt to use C⁵to their political advantage.

That being said, the defeat of a meaningless line that has no bearing on current party policy on climate change doesn't take away from this reality (pun intended). There's no correlation to climate change denial since most party members don't deny that there is climate change.

It's also highly unlikely that C⁵will be a topic of intense debate.

Canadians are mostly unaware of a party's exact policy on political and economic matters on a word-for-word basis. For instance, the Conservative Policy Declaration has a section (J) on Health with a line about Abortion Legislation (Point 70), "A Conservative Government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion." If the party's position on abortion has been clear for years and this one existed during Andrew Scheer's leadership the never-ending questions surrounding this issue should stop.

What if the ramifications of C⁵persist, however?

Then it's up to the Conservatives to push back immediately against this narrative. Don't let the Liberals, NDP, Greens and others take control of this situation and brazenly claim they're just a bunch of climate change deniers. Tell the public it's a bald-faced lie, and show why. Emphasize the positive aspects of the Conservatives' environmental record, including tackling climate change. Propose environmental policies that matter to individuals and businesses, and create a plan of action.

Above all, O'Toole must ensure that Canadians always understand he's the one in charge. Some grassroots members didn't like the way the policy resolution was worded, and they had their say during the convention. What the party leader says and does is the only thing that truly matters.

O'Toole is moving in this direction. He told the convention that he would "not allow 338 candidates to defend against the lie from the Liberals that we are a party of climate change deniers." He also went on CBC's Power and Politics on Monday, and said "there were a lot of measures within that resolution that led for it not to be put forward" and "the debate is over. The Conservative Party, in the next election, will have a very serious plan to reduce emissions while also making sure Canadians get back to work."

That will help get rid of Câ´ and C⁵, and ensure the only "C" that Canadians think about at the ballot box is Conservative.

Photo Credit: Maclean's

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The news that the Conservative Party voted down a motion to recognize climate change as being real during their biennial policy convention this past weekend was a gift to the Liberals (and other opposition parties, really), and set the narrative for what was to come in the days ahead. Party leader Erin O'Toole spent Monday putting on a brave face and doing the media rounds, spinning some elaborate bullshit about what that policy resolution was really about and insisting that he believed climate change is real and that as a party leader he would come up with policies to address it but that didn't stop the nagging whispers that his grassroots rejecting his stance was a sign of his weakness as a leader. I'm not entirely sure that it demonstrates weakness but it certainly demonstrates that all is not well with our party system.

The motion itself came out a Quebec riding association, calling on the party to recognize the climate change is real and that they need to do something about it, as well as mentioning that heavy emitters need to "take more responsibility" (a conservative concept!) to reduce those emissions, while also calling to support more innovation in green tech. It was defeated 54 percent to 46, with most of its supporters coming from Quebec and the Atlantic provinces places where the party is particularly weak in representation, and where they know that this is an issue that hurts them. Lisa Raitt herself said so in a recent interview, saying that a credible climate plan was now "table stakes," as she was constantly faced with questions around it at the doorstop. Nevertheless, for Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario (almost certainly skewing rural in terms of delegates), this was an opportunity for some right-wing virtue-signalling, where any talk of the environment is seen as a threat to their economic prosperity.

As much as O'Toole himself talks about the reality of climate change and needing a "serious" environmental policy, he also hedged with toward that very same right-wing virtue-signalling, saying that the environment was important but the economy had to come first. While the talk about a "serious" policy was absolutely throwing shade at Andrew Scheer's cartoonish environmental platform (which the party and its mouthpieces fell all over themselves to praise and insist that it was credible because it had so many pages never mind that most of those pages where photos with a single sentence), trying to divorce an environmental plan from an economic plan is a red flag that it is not serious after all.

Insisting that you can have an environmental plan that eschews carbon pricing is not credible or serious, and yet O'Toole is trying to go down that route. He derides a transparent, market-based pricing system that allows consumers to make their own choices about how to reduce their own emissions based on pricing incentives, and instead talks about "working with" heavy emitters, but that essentially places a huge share of the burden on Alberta's oil and gas sector, which isn't credible given what it means for his party's voter base. But then again, his Canada Recovery Plan doesn't mention childcare once, and he similarly derides the Liberals plans to include it as part of an inclusive growth strategy, which is also a major sign that O'Toole's much-ballyhooed plan lacks credibility given the realities of what this pandemic has done to women in the economy.

Nevertheless, O'Toole's plans to go ahead with some sort of climate plan in the face of his own membership disavowing the issue is nothing new in party politics in this country. After all, Liberal leaders routinely ignored policy resolutions around drug decriminalization, and in one particularly notable case, a policy convention voted on including a carbon price which Michael Ignatieff immediately dismissed as a non-starter. In recent memory, the NDP have ignored policy resolutions in support of the Leap Manifesto, which has gone nowhere as Jagmeet Singh has essentially turned the party into an AOC stan account. These kinds of tensions between leaders and the grassroots are commonplace.

The reason, of course, is that thanks to the bastardized way in which we choose our party leaders in this country, turning what was an accountable system where the party caucus would choose a leader from among their own ranks, to one enamoured with the American presidential primaries, that overly empowered these leaders by giving them the illusion of "democratic legitimacy," and where they arrive on the scene with policy positions that they plan to enact if they win said leadership. The role of the grassroots in developing these party policy books has largely been relegated to a bit of biennial theatre, a ceremonial performance that acts something of a check on the temperature of the grassroots rather than a serious process of policy development. Occasionally, as with this past Conservative convention, it's also a means for certain activist groups to push their own agenda, not that it does them much good as the leader gets to decide on what forms the campaign in the end.

With this reality in mind, is it really a reflection of O'Toole's "weakness" as a party leader that his grassroots ostensibly rejected his position on climate change, or is it simply a sign that it doesn't really matter because his word is the only thing that counts? These same grassroots members will vote for the party regardless, so I'm not sure that O'Toole will see it as a problem until he loses an election and the party turns on him. Our leadership selection system has been driving a wedge between the leaders they choose and the concerns of the grassroots for decades now, devaluing the grassroots into little more than rented crowds to vote in leadership contests, and potential volunteers and donors for the next election. The connection to the party is fraying, and this latest example is just one more sign that our system is in trouble.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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Generally-speaking, when it comes to public affairs, the media tends to focus on what I like to call the "politics of politics."

That's to say, journalists who cover politics love to speculate endlessly on "gossipy" stuff like, who's behind who in the polls, and who's endorsing whom and who's trying to stab who in the back and who is raising money and who isn't.

As a matter of fact, you can see this sort of reporting happening right now with Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole.

Headlines such as "O'Toole's pitch to get Conservatives to embrace 'change' may be off to a shaky start" and "How Erin O'Toole allegedly sidelined Peter MacKay's plan to run in next election" and "Conservative Party initiates proceedings to dissolve Sloan's riding association" have been splashed across social media.

Why does the media like this sort of stuff?

Well, for one thing, it's a lot more fun and interesting to write about, say, the Conservative Party's internal divisions, than it is to report about O'Toole's latest proposals on infrastructure spending reform.

But more importantly, you need to keep in mind that, above all else, the media likes to create narratives.

After all, at their heart, most journalists are storytellers, they like to spin good yarns.

In the case of O'Toole, for instance, since the polls say he's scuffling a bit and apparently not catching on with Canadians, the media feels it has to come up with an interesting narrative to explain why this is so.

Hence, they focus on the "politics of politics", and spend much time and effort exposing internal Conservative Party conflicts and emphasizing personal feuds and dissecting the party's communications strategy.

For the media, all this sort of backroom stuff is endlessly fascinating.

Yet, for most people, who live outside the Ottawa bubble and who don't dwell within the media's echo chamber, much of this sort of reporting is meaningless.

Indeed, when it comes to political news, you have to assume, as a political consultant friend of mine used to say, that "nobody knows anything about anything."

That's because a huge chunk of the voting population doesn't even follow political news; they don't watch public affairs programs or read political columns or follow media personalities on Twitter.

Such people are likely not concerned too much about O'Toole's standing in the polls or about his relationship with Peter MacKay or about his battles with Derek Sloan.

Heck, a lot of them probably couldn't even pick O'Toole out of a line up.

The fact is, and this is something the media never truly understands, the number of people who actively and intensely follow political news is actually pretty tiny.

So, what does this mean if you want to make a career in politics?

Well, first off, it means if the media is chattering about some negative aspect regarding you or your client, and it's just "politics of politics" stuff, don't overreact, don't panic.

Odds are, ten miles outside of Ottawa, nobody really cares about it.

Also, if you want to catch the media's attention, don't release a 500-page report detailing your planned foreign policy initiatives, as that'll end up on page 75.

Instead, if you want front page material, pitch something to the media that's "politics of politics."

In other words, release a poll or pick a fight or brag about your fundraising prowess or make an endorsement.

In short, find a place for yourself in the media's narrative.

My point is, since you can't change the rules, understand the media's game and learn how to play it.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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The Prime Minister of Canada has abandoned victims of gun violence and their families. Don't take my word for it: just listen to the survivors and relatives of the women killed in the December 6, 1989 Ã‰cole Polytechnique massacre.

Over the years, Trudeau has been an assiduous participant in the December 6 ceremonies to commemorate the 14 women who were killed for being women. He won't be welcome no more. They've had enough of the political theatre.

"Let him not come and cry his crocodile tears by my side anymore, then do his political play to try to get votes", said Jean-FranÃ§ois LarivÃ©e, widower of Maryse LaganiÃ¨re, killed at Polytechnique.

Their families and the survivors are not parsing their words. Suzanne Laplante-Edward, whose daughter Anne-Marie was also among the victims, was crystal clear: "If Trudeau goes ahead with C-21, he will be a traitor to the cause of gun control, a traitor to me and my family, and a traitor to the memory of my daughter and her 13 classmates," she said.

Bill C-21 is the political marketing tool used by Justin Trudeau to pretend he is actually doing something about guns and gun violence. It is weak legislation that doesn't deliver on the hype created by the Trudeau Liberals about gun control. The crux of the issue is that the buy-back program for the identified assault weapons is not mandatory. And if it is not mandatory, it means these guns will remain out there and could be used to kill.

That is a non-starter for Trudeau's former allies. By allowing owners of more than 1,500 military-style firearms to keep their guns, Trudeau is betraying those who believed in his pledge to ban these guns outright.

The notion peddled by the government that C-21 will be effective because the owners of these weapons will be prohibited from using them in shooting ranges, bequeathing or selling them, acquiring or importing them is laughable. Why would that stop anyone motivated to commit a rampage if they still own that weapon? Despite the slogans, no one is safer thanks to C-21.

The coalition PolyRemembers, made up of students and graduates of Polytechnique for gun control, published an open letter from families and survivors on Thursday: "If this bill is not radically changed, if the buyback program is not made mandatory, if a simple decision by a future government can overturn the assault weapons ban, we lose the battle, and we lose faith in you and your government," the letter says.

"If you carry on with this bill, we will never again accept to have you by our side as we mourn the death of our daughters, our sisters, our friends, during annual commemorations." On Friday, Trudeau appeared to be shaken by the virulence of the outburst and said that his government was open to improve the legislation, yet he remained convinced "that the approach we have advocated is the right one ".

That won't be good enough. Unless Trudeau goes all in, it is doubtful that he'll be forgiven. These activists, who have lived first hand the drama of a mass shooting, feel used. The 2019 election promise to ban assault weapons, followed by the freeze on the assault weapons market last spring, gave them hope: "Finally, the Ruger mini-14 used by the Polytechnique killer as well as all military style semi-automatic weapons will be banned from Canada, once and for all!" they wrote.

They believed Trudeau and his "Sunny Ways". They bought his discourse against gun violence. They believed him when he said he would act. And after 31 years of fighting for stricter gun laws, for tougher controls, for real protection against gun violence, bill C-21 made them realize that the fight was far from over.

Photo Credit: CTV News

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In the early days of Stephen Harper's government, the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer was envisioned as being able to provide independent fiscal projections from those produced by the Department of Finance, in the days where the opposition accused the ChrÃ©tien and Martin governments of padding their budgetary projections to provide larger-than-envisioned surpluses at the end of the fiscal year. Inspired by the American Congressional Budget Office, its role quickly grew to providing costing estimates at the request of MPs and senators, and its first office-holder became something of a media darling as he pushed for transparency from a government that refused to provide it. But we are now on our third permanent PBO, and his mandate seems to be expanding again, this time into the annals of fiscal punditry, and we should be concerned.

Yves Giroux has apparently discovered a taste for the spotlight, and is now a frequent guest on political talk shows, offering his opinions on policy directions that stray far beyond the mandate of his office. For someone who is supposed to provide neutral costing evaluation, he's instead offering value judgments of the government, which is not his job. Section 79.01 of the Parliament of Canada Act, which created the position as an independent officer of Parliament in 2017, describes the office as "an independent and non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer to support Parliament by providing analysis, including analysis of macro-economic and fiscal policy, for the purposes of raising the quality of parliamentary debate and promoting greater budget transparency and accountability." I'm not sure that what he's doing is staying within the boundaries of his enabling statute, especially as he's not even a "watchdog" like other officers.

This was precisely an outcome that I had been worried about when the Liberals strengthened his position in 2017, removing it from the umbrella of the Library of Parliament and spinning him off as an independent officer. While this ostensibly was to give him greater independence his predecessors fought for a greater budget after the previous government kept attempting to cut it because they didn't like that their creation bit the hand that fed them it also removed any particular ability to have any oversight of this role (barring gross misconduct). These independent officers of parliament have no actual accountability, and they are often egged on by the media, which is the only institution that could actually provide any kind of check on them if they so wished. They don't, however, and most outlets are more than happy to invite the PBO to stray into political analysis, which he obliges.

There has also been no particular critical thinking of his reports, in spite of dubious costing methodology, or the fact that several of his reports have been gamed in how they were requested so as to prove largely useless not that you'd understand that from the headlines they generate. A good example of this was his costing of the Joint Supply Ship procurement program, where the capabilities of these ships was left out of the requested costing. One of the most important determinants of what could drive up these costs was exempt from the report, not that you'd know that from how they were reported on, and when this was mentioned, Giroux just shrugs and states that he did what was requested. And those who should be thinking critically about these very reports treat them as authoritative without question, which is as much of a statement on the quality of said reporting than it is on the office that produces some of these reports. (This is not unique to the PBO there were some deeply problematic reports from the former Auditor General as well that nobody called out).

Throughout the pandemic, Giroux's commentary has become most definitely problematic. When Bill Morneau resigned and was replaced with Chrystia Freeland, Giroux was doing the media rounds to make the tortured analogy about changing pilots mid-flight as though that's not what already happens on long-haul flights which is also not really something he should be commenting on. There have been countless interviews that contain the phrase "I'm not really supposed to comment on the politics, butâ€¦" and he goes and does just that, and because it makes for good soundbites, they keep bringing him back to do it again.

Last weekend on CTV's Question Period, he opined that the government's promised post-pandemic stimulus measures would be "too much and too late" because it's possible that the economy may have better recovered than anticipated back in November, based on a single month's worth of job numbers (which are notoriously unreliable). It's hard to see how commenting on the wisdom of fiscal policies falls into the realm of analysis. His complaints that said planned stimulus spending lacks details seems premature given that we still don't have a clear picture of the shape of the economy once the pandemic does end, as we reach herd immunity and the hospitals are no longer overloaded committing to that spending months ahead of that clear picture, particularly if different parts of the country are able to open up sooner than others. It would also be pre-empting the kinds of programs that the government is looking to roll out with their budget, likely to come in the next few weeks, and Giroux should know this.

I will grant that Giroux has a legitimate beef in that the government has not been releasing updated spending figures as often as they were earlier on in the pandemic, but the constant stream of commentary should be worrying. His role is not to be a watchdog of spending, despite media headlines branding him as such that's the job of MPs, and the PBO is supposed to be a tool that can help them do that job. He is no longer such a resource he is becoming a political actor in his own right, which is not how the office was envisioned, was legislated, or was enacted. This is not "raising the quality of parliamentary debate" it's replacing it, which is a red flag for the health of our parliamentary democracy.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Author: redding

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