For all the talk about whether or not Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario leader Patrick Brown will unseat Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Ontario Liberal Party come next election, there is another element to the equation being largely ignored.  Most of the media seem to have dismissed Andrea Horwath and her Ontario New Democratic Party as an impossibility come next election, citing anemic poll numbers, yet for reasons outlined below this could be a foolish assumption.

Horwath is a seasoned politician — with two decades experience in public office — that can go toe to toe with either of the other two Ontario leaders, as she's proven at Queen's Park over the past several years.  I'd go as far as to say she exudes more warmth than a stiff Brown or mealy-mouthed Wynne.  But if pollsters are still to be given credence, despite all of their recent failures, then as of now she is not really in contention for premiership.

But there are upcoming events that could dramatically change the fortunes of all three leaders.  First, Wynne's Liberals face a looming onslaught of negative press this fall when four former Liberal operatives face charges of bribery or mischief and breach of trust for either allegedly deleting emails related to the gas plant scandal or allegedly offering a quid pro quo to a would-be Liberal candidate to get him to step aside.  The trial relating to the gas plant scandal could be especially damaging as it could reopen an old wound of the ruling party.  Then there are possible unforeseen scandals that could befall the long-time-ruling party leading up to the election.

Although Wynne seems to have new life according to Innovative Research Group's latest poll, which shows Wynne's Liberals at 35 per cent to Brown's 39 per cent, more scandalous information is likely to leak from a party that's been in power for over fifteen years.

That recent poll also shows Horwath's NDP as a distant third at only 20 per cent support, but Horwath and the NDP could gain a lot of support if Wynne's Liberals continue to lose credibility with progressives.  If the powerful unions and the left-wing media see no comeback victory for Wynne they may throw their weight behind Horwath in an attempt to avoid a Brown government.

When the election nears the Toronto Star et al. will stop playing nice with Brown.  Although he's shown strong discipline in keeping his party from doing or saying anything controversial or remotely different from Wynne's Liberals, as the election nears, Brown and PCPO candidates will have to run on some semblance of a conservative platform to distinguish themselves from Wynne's Liberals.  The media will likely harp on his past record and how he has done a one-eighty from his former self, rightfully questioning what exactly he stands for.  The hit pieces will be merciless.

Brown, in hoping he will win by default over the electorate growing sick of the Liberals, is also alienating much of his base by veering left and mimicking Wynne, which could translate in many conservatives abstaining or casting protest votes for the Trillium Party of Ontario.

Wynne is already copying many of Horwath's policies, so if the most recent poll is just a blip and she remains at toxic levels many progressive voters could strategically vote orange seeing it as a viable alternative, punishing the Liberals for their scandals while still getting more socialist policies many Ontarians still seem to think our debt-ridden province can afford.

Another interesting stat from the most recent poll — again, for what little it's likely worth — was that Horwath has the best net favourable ratings at plus seventeen.  Yet 44 per cent of the electorate doesn't know who she is, so if she can raise her profile over the next year, the all-important personality factor could help her outperform a stilted Brown.

Ultimately a lot of this comes down to hypotheticals, but that's politics for you.  To underestimate the NDP has been proven foolish in the past.  God forbid, another orange wave could be upon us.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

Left-of-centre elites in this country — by which I mean most politicians and journalists — enjoy assuming Canadians share their beliefs, yet rarely bother to verify if they actually do.  A writer like Jon Kay, who recently wrote another one of his trademark essays stating with great confidence what "Canadians" feel about this-or-that, never fails to presume the ubiquity of his opinions, just like Prime Minister Trudeau whenever he gives a speech at some international forum making generous use of the pronoun "we."

Such taken-for-granted assumptions are generally flattering — we are a kind people, tolerant, polite, etc. — but also ideological.  They tend to assume a population comprising nothing but liberals, where a progressive consensus on everything from health care to gun control to immigration forms an unshakable part of the national psyche.

I don't doubt Canadians who speak with this sort of confidence about their countrymen genuinely believe their generalizations.  If you're wired tightly enough, it's not difficult to go through life only spotting evidence that reenforces your conclusions.  The problem is self-delusion can become extraordinarily self-destructive when your professional success is tied to accurately reading the public mood, as the massive backlash to the Omar Khadr payout has ably demonstrated.

Whatever newfound "concerns" Justin Trudeau now professes to have about the $10.5 million he handed Mr. Khadr to avoid fighting him in court, it seems clear the prime minister and the people around him did not anticipate the decision to offer such a massive settlement would be as poorly received as it was.  Doubtless, Trudeau and his handlers consume a mostly progressive media diet, reading the papers in which all the big columnists and reporters have spent years portraying Omar Khadr as a deeply tragic figure, unjustly screwed by the American war machine and the cruel Harper government.  No doubt the prime minister genuinely believes his election was at least partially a referendum on softening the Islamophobic edges of the war on terror, with his opposition to nasty Conservative policies like stripping the citizenship of convicted terrorists broadly popular.  Surely his party had convinced themselves that Canadians are such a permissive and progressive bunch that they would welcome — maybe even celebrate? — their government's generosity in showing Mr. Khadr just how compassionate Canada can be.

Unfortunately for them, one reality about Canadians that is very easy to prove, but completely absent from progressive conventional wisdom, is our general hard-heartedness on what could be called "law and order" issues.  A poll I like to cite is a 2010 Angus Reid survey that asked Canadians, among other questions, what sorts of crimes convicts deserved to be executed for.  62% supported executing murderers, 31% supported executing rapists, 17% supported executing kidnappers, and 6% supported executing those convicted of armed robbery.  Think about that for a moment — the number of Canadians who support executing kidnappers is roughly the same as the number of Canadians who voted NDP in the last election.  The idea of executing murderers has a higher approval rating than just about any politician anywhere in the country.  Yet how many people in Ottawa, or in privileged media jobs, would be likely to think "executing criminals" when conjuring up popular Canadian opinions?

Omar Khadr was an al-Qaeda operative who participated in armed combat against US forces in Afghanistan — in other words, he fought with our enemies against our allies in a war in which Canada was (and still is) a combatant.  He was captured, and held as a prisoner of war in Guantanamo Bay, and ultimately pled guilty to murdering Christopher Speer (and other terrorism-related charges), for which he served a prison sentence in Canada.  Whatever other legal complexities of his case, these are the indisputable facts, and the evidence suggests most Canadians are not inclined to be compassionate in the face of them.  A nation that supports executing murderers is not one eager to make them multi-millionaires, at least.

Nor are "we" particularly concerned with preserving the protections of citizenship to those who make war against their own country.  A 2012 poll from NRG Research found over 80% of Canadians supported stripping citizenship from convicted traitors and terrorists, a sentiment which later became law through the Harper government's Bill C-24.  (You may recall that this legislation was described as "controversial" by the press and opposition parties.)

Most Canadians clearly conceptualize citizenship as a privilege to be earned, as opposed to something that can be held indefinitely through an accident of birth, as was the case with Khadr, who lived barely a year in Canada before being shuttled back to Pakistan with his immigrant parents, themselves al-Qaeda traitors.  The prime minister's famous quip that a "Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian" may make a good soundbite, and may well reflect the prevailing view of the legal establishment, but as a summary of national sentiment it could not be more ignorant.

What the Trudeau government has hopefully learned from Khadrgate — already evidenced by the prime minister's rapidly changing, increasingly defensive tone — is that confident liberal assertions about Canada do not become reality by virtue of repetition.

Canadians may well be very progressive in some ways, and on certain issues, appreciably more progressive than Americans (which is the only measure most care about).  But there has never been much evidence to suggest the majority of Canadians have bought into what appears to be the elite consensus on crime and terror, namely that compassion is more important than punishment, and the legal status of citizenship infers victims a moral righteousness that can never be shed.

Written by J.J. McCullough

Many far reaching questions have been asked during the extended freakout our proud nation recently had over Omar Khadr's $10.5 M payout.

To wit: What is the "rule of law" that everyone keeps talking about?  Which government can we blame for the current state of affairs so we don't have to feel responsible?  And, most crucially, are we a bunch of racist racists who are just being racistly racist because Khadr's first name is Omar?

These and many other important debates will go unresolved because having pointless screaming matches to distract us from the boredom of our existence is what we Canadians do.

Also, as fate would have it, I am (to my eternal shame) not a constitutional lawyer or journalist who spends all day on Twitter sneering at lesser people, so it is unlikely that anything I will be able to clarify matters.

However there is one question pertaining to the Khadr affair which I can answer, one that has gone unasked but has doubtless been wondered about.  Specifically is this entire thing a massive troll on the Canadian public and conservatives in particular?  Undoubtedly and unambiguously, the answer is yes.

Despite the magnitude of the troll, many trusting and naive Canadians are unaware that it is taking place.  Much like Trump whipping the media into a frenzy with a wrestling meme, the Liberals have deliberately tossed a hand grenade into the conservative camp.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  First we must define:  What is trolling?

You may think that trolling refers specifically to being rude, but it's actually about getting a reaction from the target.

Often trolling is conflated with racism, and many trolls are racist.  (This is why most people don't accept that the Liberals could be trolling the Conservatives- because as we all know, Liberals cannot be racist.)

However, the racism as it relates to trolling is employed to get a reaction.  Logically, then, the best way to avoid being trolled is to keep this fact in mind and to respond (not to ignore, because ignoring the troll will only make them try harder) with that fact in mind.

Now, how do we know that the Khadr settlement was a troll?

To answer this question, let us move from the general to the specific.  The Liberals have spent enough time baiting conservatives that we may credibly classify everything they do even the stuff that looks like it's an unintentional blunder as an attempt to troll their enemies.

Trudeau forgetting Alberta in the Canada Day speech?  Troll.

Trudeau gallivanting around the world showing off his socks?  Troll.

Trudeau blaming the opposition for failing to get his agenda off the ground in the House?  Troll.

Opinions vary as to whether these offences were deliberate, but in the world of trolling, intention matters very little.  In all three of these cases, conservatives lost their ever loving minds.  They were trolled, so whether the Liberals intended to troll them or not doesn't matter.

(Please don't misunderstand me I'm not letting the Conservatives off the hook.  They shouldn't have lost their ever loving minds and allowed themselves to be trolled, but because nobody has called the Liberals out on their trolling, I made that the subject of today's rant.)

In the specific case of the Khadr payout, the Liberals knew full well what they doing.

Every time the Khadr case has come up previously, and every time the Liberals have spoken of Khadr as anything other than a murderous terrorist, the conservatives have lost their ever loving minds.  The Liberals had no reason to suspect that this time would be any different.

The Liberals also chose to go with a REEEEEEALLY BIG NUMBER for the settlement, in the millions of dollars, because it is well established that conservatives like to freak out over large dollar amounts.  (The number couldn't be in the billions, however, because that couldn't be dismissed as "a rounding error" when compared to all the other billions the government is currently blowing.  And yes, the "rounding error" excuse is another troll.)

Announcing the settlement on the 4th of July, however, was relatively blatant.  This was likely thrown in there so the stupid Americans would understand that they were being trolled as well.  Being stupid Americans, of course, they completely failed to notice.  (What nerve!)

You might be wondering: Why do they do it?  Why do Liberals go to such lengths to troll conservatives?  The answer is: Because they hate conservatives most of all.

As incomprehensible as this may be for conservatives, Liberals believe that, despite holding nearly absolute power in this country, they are still being frustrated by conservatives at every turn.  Somehow, they believe this despite also believing that conservatives in the country can't organize a paper route, which would indicate that the Liberals are trolling themselves.

Anyway, real power would be the ability to pay out $10.5 million to Omar Khadr WITHOUT the backlash and resistance.  I guess there is always something more to shoot for.

But there are other reasons beside megalomania for trolling conservatives.  Politically, it doesn't suit the Liberals to appear as though they have nearly-absolute power.  So, when conservatives lose their ever loving minds, and we start seeing polls showing some ridiculous majority of Canadians opposing the payout, the Liberals can now credibly present themselves as the underdogs.

Look at what we have to deal with! say the Liberals and their enablers.  Look at how totally unaware of their unconscious racism these bumpkins are!  A stain on our international reputation!  Clearly this justifies more anti-racism legislation.

The final and most important reason Liberals go to such lengths to troll conservatives, however, is because they hate the moral authority that conservatives claim to have.  They don't like being called "snowflakes" and being mocked for having too many inconvenient feelings when conservatives are just as easily triggered.

And on this point I must agree with the Liberals, having spent months on end dealing with holier-than-thou assertions from the Maxime Bernier crowd that their principles have immunized them from any snowflakey tendencies.

There is a large demand out there for media that shows conservatives up for being the thin-skinned hypocrites that they are.  This is why, to cite one example, VICE prepares lists of how easily triggered the Canadian provinces are, and wouldn't you know it, the stereotypically conservative provinces are right at the top of the list!  LOL!

Written by Josh Lieblein

Premier Kathleen Wynne has been a busy beaver the past several months in unveiling hard-left policy after hard-left policy to try and build a dam to stem the tide of Ontarians abandoning her failing government.

Although Wynne is trying to build up these new Liberal policies as a way of making a fairer Ontario, when scrutinized closely these new socialist policies clearly only push the province closer to economic ruin, which will lead to devastation for the lower classes not anything close to resembling fairness and equity.  Wynne is, it's safe to say, aware of the pitfalls and fallacies of her policies, but, devastating consequences be damned, she doesn't seem to care as long as it helps her win the next election.

First there was the "Fair Hydro Plan."  This makeshift "plan" was supposedly going to give Ontarians a 25 per cent rate relief on their electricity bills starting this summer.  But of course, like almost all big government announcements and particularly any of those coming from the Ontario Liberal Party the slogan pitched didn't match the reality of the legislation passed.  It turned out the rate relief was actually an additional 17 per cent reduction added to the 8 per cent provincial portion of the HST already taken off hydro bills at the start of January.  This meant the government had already given up $1 billion in annual revenue to reduce rapidly increasing electricity bills by 8 per cent, which had the consequence of adding to the annual deficit and increasing the out of control provincial debt.  The new plan was supposed to only cost $21 billion in additional interest payments over 30 years and an additional $2.5 billion to taxpayers (i.e. hydro ratepayers) over the next three.

If throwing away billions in interest payments (something Ontario really can't afford) to refinance the electricity debt didn't sound bad enough, eventually the long-term impact of the irresponsible plan leaked.  OLP cabinet documents revealed that electricity costs will again skyrocket in five years' time, leaving one to wonder if Wynne would unveil the "Fairer Hydro Plan" in 2022 if she miraculously wins next year.

Something far more likely though, is that Wynne knows her plan is not in the best interest of the province's financial future, but will be helpful for her on the comeback trail.  Wynne surely saw those leaked cabinet documents and has enough financial acuity to know this isn't a good plan for the province.  It's pretty obvious Wynne proposed this plan for the simple fact that she wants to quell Ontarians' ire towards her government's many blunders before an election.

But this isn't the only crackpot policy Wynne is willing to embrace in her desperate and cynical attempt to hold onto power.

The supposedly balanced budget was only reached after Wynne sold off the majority of Hydro One shares, a revenue generator now mostly gone.  In reality, the Wynne government's spending still far exceeds its revenue.

But this hasn't deterred Wynne from going on a spending blitz.

Wynne bought off public sector workers with flush raises, no matter the impending debt and interest payments it will incur.  Wynne threw money at hundreds of thousands of university students tuition fees with no requirement of having exceptional grades and most will earn(?) superfluous degrees no matter the impending debt and interest payments it will incur.  Wynne doles out minimum incomes, no matter the impending debt and interest payments it will incur.

And then there is Wynne's recent gambit of upping the minimum wage to $15 an hour, without doing any preliminary research into the effects of such a large and sudden increase.  Speaking to several small business owners in Toronto, everyone I've heard from thinks this would be disastrous for their businesses.  But let's not just go on anecdotes.  A University of Washington study on the raised minimum wage in Seattle turned out to find the wage hike to be disastrous.  The results ended up hurting low-wage workers far more than benefiting them, with the average worker making $125 less a month.  Businesses also cut back their payrolls in order to survive.  Now Wynne's government is conducting a public consultation process this summer to see if her plan has support.  But this rushed policy plan to significantly raise the minimum wage in a small timeframe of just 18 months has already been announced before consultation or a proper economic review were done.  This is a reckless policy "plan" on the fly.

Wynne cares more about pleasing voting blocs to keep herself in power than what the actual consequences of her policies will wreak on the province.  Hopefully, and polls lead one to be optimistic, Ontarians won't fall for her ugly desperation and naked self-interest.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

The great mythology of British Columbia politics over the last 16 years has been that the four-term reign of the BC Liberal Party represented some manner of conservative — or, if you're on the BC left — "hard right" rule.  No one internalized this truism more than the BC NDP, and their embrace of it will have dramatic consequences for the economy of the province they now rule — and the national one as well.

Ideology is not just some abstract thing people like me use to label and judge others.  How you perceive your place on the political spectrum — and the place of your opponents — informs the ideas and tactics you're willing to entertain.

BC's Liberal government ran the province's natural resource sector in tune with Canada's dominant center-left consensus.  This thinking posits that the extraction of energy from the earth is generally something that should make us anxious, given the environmental consequences, while also conceding that harvesting and delivering oil, natural gas, and hydroelectricity to those who want it provides employment and livelihoods to thousands of families.

The preferred centre-left solution, therefore, is an agenda often dubbed the "social license" doctrine.  It's basically an updated version of planting a field of seedlings after harvesting part of a forest: if a government is going to enable the continued exploitation of energy resources, and thus enable the associated ills, then it must make equal effort to compensate and mitigate any damage done.

"Social license" manifests in a multitude of forms, including new taxes, increased funding for  "green" energy initiatives, stricter environmental regulation of resource projects, and a willingness to veto ones deemed regressive beyond the pale.  The governments of BC's Liberal premier Christy Clark and her predecessor, Gordon Campbell, were pioneers of this thinking, introducing Canada's first carbon tax, making record investments in wind and solar technology, demanding new heavy oil pipelines meet six strict "conditions" of environmental and financial assessment, and loudly opposing the high-profile Northern Gateway pipeline, which didn't.

If this agenda of social license is imagined as a philosophy of "the right," which is basically what the BC NDP allowed itself to believe, then what should be the appropriately distinct approach of the "left"?  The answer, it seems, is offering an unqualified "no" to energy projects, period.

In the aftermath of BC's 2013 election, it became received wisdom that then-NDP leader Adrian Dix had blown the race by abruptly choosing to oppose the Kinder Morgan company's TransMountain pipeline expansion project (wags dubbed it his "Kinder Surprise").  The narrative posted the TransMountain pipeline as one of the good, moderate pipeline projects ensconced in plenty of social license, in contrast to one of the unambiguously wicked ones, like Northern Gateway.

Dix's stance cost the NDP "rural B.C., basically," in the words of former five-term rural NDP MLA Tim Lai, one of 2013's most high-profile victims.  Former NDP premier Michael Harcourt tore up his NDP membership in protest, and another former NDP premier, Dan Miller, began writing scolding editorials with headlines like "how will we pay for stuff without the resource sector?" and "NDP must learn that you can sell oil and protect the environment."

But the party's statesmen did not win the argument.  The Kinder Morgan pipeline only became more demonized in the eyes of the British Columbian hard left — particularly after chaotic protests at Burnaby Mountain in 2014 — and the party's new leader, John Horgan, ran this year's election vowing to use "every tool in the toolbox" to prevent its construction, and hinting he might support cancelling northern BC's proposed "Site C" dam, too — another increasingly popular target of left-wing demagoguery.  (He says he supports natural gas, though concedes "I get a lot of grief over that.")

The result was an even starker cleavage in BC's electoral map â€” the NDP swept everywhere urban, where the province's energy sector is often regarded as an abstract thing one can airily oppose to demonstrate environmentalist bona fides, while the Liberals were resigned to mostly rural areas, where resource jobs are a tangible fact of life.  Though the Liberals narrowly won the popular vote and seat count, last week Horgan deposed Premier Clark's minority government and formed a governing coalition with the three-seat Green Party, whose haughty leader has likened positive talk about resource jobs to promises of "unicorns in all our backyards."

Premier Horgan is a moderate man by temperament, but sits on a collision course with a pair of leaders previously regarded as two of the country's progressive heroes, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  Both favour the Kinder Morgan pipeline, believing the social license infrastructure introduced by the outgoing Liberal government provided the project with sufficiently robust moral cover.  Horgan's base — and particularly his Green coalition partners — will insist he not take their "yes" for an answer, and instead expect him to promote a dogmatic agenda that, in the words of Diane Francis, transcends traditional centre-left NIMBYism in favour of full-blown BANANA — "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone."  It does not seem an agenda born of any particularly deep thought, economic or otherwise, but rather a traditional NDP desire to always, somehow, be the most left-wing party in the room.

The BC NDP, and its orbit of union allies and far-left blogs, have spent much of the last sixteen years declaring everything wrong with the BC government to be a product of the Liberal Party's dark "ideology."  The prescription evidently entails installing a government whose religion of knee-jerk contrarianism has carried it to an economic la-la land.

Photo Credit: Vancouver Sun

Written by J.J. McCullough