redding, Author at Loonie Politics

Dear Gavin:

So here we are, a couple weeks after your Rebel Media "10 Things I Hate About Israel / Jews / Whatever" video dropped during a "fact-finding mission" to Israel, and the backlash that prompted your follow-up to that video where you repudiated Richard Spencer and David Duke, and your other video from Compound Media where you got hammered along with Faith Goldy and Sheila Gunn Reid and complained about the "propaganda tour" you were supposedly being subjected to in Israel as well as some choice comments about "Jewnicorns", and the backlash to that.

Nobody's come out of this mess looking good.

-White nationalists think the Rebel is now alt-lite for propagandizing on behalf of Israel.

-Sections of the Israeli media are annoyed with the Rebel for inserting themselves into the country's politics.

-Ezra has had to deflect and minimize and (depending on who you talk to) order you to walk back your comments.

-Jews upset about your videos are being asked uncomfortable questions about why they didn't complain when the Rebel was saying similarly uncomplimentary things about Muslims.

-Conservative Party of Canada leadership contenders who attended Rebel rallies in the past, as well as the new leader of the PC Party of Alberta, have had to distance themselves while left-wing commentators gleefully speculate about an emerging rift in Canada's right.

-And possibly worst of all, if your Twitter feed is to be believed, your wife isn't speaking to you.

Only you know for sure whether this whole thing was some elaborate attention-grabbing stunt or those long-debunked alternative facts you were ranting about were your real views on Jews, or if it was some bizarre fusion of column A and column B.

What I do know for sure is that I'm damn sick and tired of these ridiculous controversies breaking out over the so-called "Jewish Question" as it relates to the entire conservative movement, not just the alt-right.

I'm sick of seeing Ben Shapiro having to stop doing what he does best- which is wipe the floor with the modern left- to talk about how he's being distracted by trolls on Twitter saying he and his wife should be sent to the ovens.

I'm sick of side conversations and endless speculation about Steve Bannon and whether he wanted to send his kids to a school without Jews, or the alt-right's deplora-ball enforcing a strict "'Mind Your P's and Q's about Jews" policy, or (taking it closer to home) whether Lauren Southern left the Rebel because she didn't have the freedom to "name the Jew" in her quest to trigger everyone in the known universe.

Are you as done with this nonsense as I am? I bet you are.

So, as someone who's also contributed to Rebel Media, including a couple of pieces where I've riffed on the alt-right's Jew confusion and the similar backlash to another of your video rants on the subject of #Gamergate, (and a Jew myself), I think I'm pretty well positioned to tackle this head on.

As I see it, the chief problem here appears to be that various members of the alt-right (and other parts of the political spectrum too) feel as though they can only talk about Jews behind closed doors, and there is the pressing, nagging, all-important need to do so publicly. There is also apparently an unmet need to confront Jews about various behaviours that are supposedly unique to them.

So let me ask you, Gavin if I took it upon myself to be the listening ear you and all the people you're speaking on behalf of (?) have wanted a Jew who calmly hears out whatever charges you want to lay or clear up any confusion you may have would it keep you from feeling you have to say one thing behind closed doors after a few bottles of wine, and another thing publicly at Pearson Airport once you've stepped off the plane?

Would it put an end to this cutesy wutesy code-talk amongst alt-righters that fools no one? This talk of "1488" and the "JQ" and the "fashy haircut"? Would it keep Jews as a group from being broad-brushed because of the actions and statements of "Stalin's inner circle" and whichever left-wing intellectuals drafted the Treaty of Versailles?

If so, then that is a service I will happily provide.

But that all depends on whether it is just about speech, Gavin. If it's about taking things farther, and if it's actually about attacking people, then you have a bigger problem.

And then it won't just be a Jewish Question you'll have to answer.

Photo Credit: Salon

Written by Josh Lieblein

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

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Did y'all hear how we're getting 25 per cent off our hydro bills this summer? The Liberals have been listening sympathetically to our economic plight the last several years over the haywire hydro rates and are acting swiftly to give us major relief promptly.

On top of the generous 8 per cent the Liberals already gave us off our bills by removing the provincial HST earlier this year, we're getting another 17 per cent off the cost of electricity in June. I was listening to the radio the other day and heard the Liberals' new Fair Hydro Plan is going to give us long-term relief as well.

Of course there were the usual suspects being cynical assholes trashing the plan. People from the peanut gallery saying something about our children and children's children having to pay for it down the road. Do they really think Premier Kathleen Wynne â€” a grandmother herself â€” would leave her grandchildren drowning in debt? She's just remortgaging our hydro assets to spread the cost to everyone who will use them in the next 30 years, including the next generations. They shouldn't be spoiled rotten. I also hear those windmills and solar panels produce a tonne of renewable energy in perpetuity, so it seems like a small price for them to pay for a sweet deal.

Then the whining opposition parties complained about the cost of the educational ads that the Liberals released last week. The Progressive Conservatives went all melodramatic, blustering that the Liberals were in contempt of the legislature.

"This is just short of a million dollars from the taxpayers that's going towards Premier Kathleen Wynne's re-election campaign instead of desperately needed hydro relief for families and businesses. It's only going to continue to cost more as the vanity ad campaign ramps up," said a joykill Brown.

No, Mr. Brown. Wynne is in fact responsible for cleaning up election campaign financing laws. Like her energy minister spokesperson Colin Nekolaichuk said, the government has a duty to inform Ontarians and the new rules for government ads give a "clearer definition" on how to keep them apolitical.

What I now know thanks to the Liberals is sweet relief is soon on the way. You're harping about re-amortization costs and other such mundane details can go straight to the devil.

And now this week, the impartial Speaker of the House, Liberal MPP Dave Levac ruled that the ads were not in contempt because the Fair Hydro Plan legislation has not yet been tabled, so is not an impediment to future proceedings. The Ontario Auditor General also approved the ads, although she was a bit nitpicky in her comments to the Toronto Sun: "However, they would not have passed under the previous legislation because we feel that these ads have the objective of fostering a positive impression of the government."

So the Ontario PC's got caught being wrong again, so why don't they heed the honest Liberals advice, "The facts still matter in Ontario," and check out their website with the unvarnished truth.

The truth is whatever Wynne says. Mistakes were made by the previous NDP and Conservative governments and the Liberals have been spending the last 14 years tirelessly cleaning up their predecessors' messes. They invested in green innovative energy that cleaned up our air and just cost a "bit more." They drove a hard bargain for those contracts. And now they've figured out an ingenious way to lower our bills that'll just end up costing "a bit" more down the road.

If you ask Wynne or me, things are looking up in June.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

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Kevin O'Leary was right about voter fraud, but his mudslinging has also opened the door to further Tory leadership campaign nastiness and that serves no one

TORONTO, Ont. /Troy Media/ Financial commentator Kevin O'Leary isn't my choice to be the next federal Conservative leader. He's one of the recognized front-runners but I don't think he's a suitable candidate I have many concerns about his policies, statements, positions and political brand.

Regardless, O'Leary and his team deserve full credit for correctly saying that voter fraud was occurring in the Conservative leadership race.

When the initial charge of "widespread vote-rigging" made its way into the public discourse, there was a predictable amount of snickering and snorts of laughter. It was also interpreted as something akin to either allegations of Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election or President Donald Trump's unproven allegation that he had had his "wires tapped" in the Trump Tower by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

But in this case, the allegation turned out to be true.

The Tories removed 1,351 people from the party membership rolls last week. The memberships were reportedly purchased anonymously through two IP addresses. This was obviously an illegal procedure and the matter was properly dealt with.

That's the good news.

Here's the bad news:

The original email sent out by the O'Leary campaign about voter fraud also contained this allegation: an unnamed Tory leadership rival was behind this scheme using prepaid credit cards.

While the party brass couldn't prove it anonymous purchases through the Tory website apparently can't be traced the Canadian Press was reportedly told by two unnamed sources that the focus was on Maxime Bernier's campaign.

The Tory MP and former cabinet minister, who is also a top leadership candidate, was clearly furious. In a fundraising email, he was quoted as saying that O'Leary "knows my campaign has raised more money, signed up more members, has more supporters and more volunteers. He's a bad candidate. Instead of trying to win people over by putting out a platform, he's throwing mud to try to save his campaign."

Is this true?

Mudslinging has been part of the political process since long before the Tories started searching for a replacement for former prime minister Stephen Harper. It happens in leadership races, nomination ridings and even during the candidate selection process. No political party is (or has been) immune from it.

In O'Leary's case, he did sling some political mud when he claimed the votes were being rigged by a leadership rival. He didn't mention the person by name, but he was obviously trying to stir the pot and get party members talking.

That's what happens when you dangle a political carrot. Someone will eventually take a significant bite out of it.

Yes, O'Leary has been involved in, and been the recipient of, some mudslinging since he decided to run for the Tory leadership.

Then again, that's what happens when you spend a significant amount of time in the United States instead of campaigning in Canada. Or muse about running for the Liberals and finally settle on the Tories. Or tell radio host Tasha Kheiriddin in January, "I am not a capitalist," after spending most of your adult life as an identified champion of capitalism. Or criticize the Canadian military on several occasions. Or speak apprehensively about joining the fight against the Islamic state.

I could go on but you get the point.

I'm certainly pleased that O'Leary vigorously spoke out against voter fraud. It means he wants to ensure it's a clean race, and that the next party leader will be chosen fairly and democratically.

We can all agree that's a good thing.

But it doesn't excuse O'Leary's decision to engage in mudslinging against any of the other candidates. And it certainly doesn't change my position about his leadership bid and whether he truly is a conservative.

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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The sordid tale of Senator Don Meredith and the release of the Senate Ethics Officer's report into his conduct has prompted universal condemnation and calls from all sides for his resignation. But with Meredith unwilling to leave of his own accord, we are about to see a test of the Senate's ability to police itself.

Despite what you may hear from a number of pundits and TV hosts, the Senate has a clear ability to police itself. Just because the kinds of ethics breaches that the SEO has found are not enumerated in Section 31 of the Constitution with regards to an automatic expulsion order from the Senate things like bankruptcy or being convicted of a felony the Senate has parliamentary privileges that don't fall under that section. Why is this important? Because Parliament is a self-governing institution, and it needs the ability to police itself. While the Auditor General may have been horrified by the fact that the Senate makes its own rules, that's actually a feature and not a bug when it comes to the practice of Responsible Government.

The ability for a body that has institutional independence to police its own is well established. We see it with judges and the Canadian Judicial Council, as the recent brouhaha around Justice Robin Camp (of the infamous "knees together" comment) proved when they recommended his removal from the bench. Camp had enough wherewithal to resign before Parliament could vote to remove him. The House of Commons has expelled its own members on several occasions (though few in recent memory), though there was talk about the possibility of needing to do so recently when the revelations about Dean Del Mastro's illegal campaign activities came to light before he too resigned.

While the bar for the Senate expelling one of its own members is high, it is so necessarily. After all, the institution is designed to be a permanent institution of parliament (in contrast to the House of Commons constant changing makeup) that must act as a check on the government of the day without being easily removed. After all, if a sitting Prime Minister with a majority could remove senators, then there would be nothing to stop him or her when things go badly. But the bar is not impossible, and we are about to test it.

Oh, but the more obtuse pundits and talking heads will insist the Senate has never expelled its members before! What about Andrew Thompson? Or Raymond Lavigne? The difference, of course is that those men had just enough shame left in them to resign when they ran out of options before the Senate decided to oust them for their sins. Meredith, however, seems to be absent that sense of shame, and refuses to be moved, but the Senate is also a different place than it was then. A bit battered after years of scandal and overwrought denunciations, particularly in the wake of the ClusterDuff affair, its denizens, many of them new without any particular sense of partisan loyalty to the prime minister that appointed them, have far less patience for the peccadillos of their fellows.

This entire situation is also different from what happened with Senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau. In that case, their suspensions were handled in a ham-fisted manner, dictated by a prime minister who controlled his Senate majority caucus, and who wanted the story out of the headlines. His proxies bullied the suspension motions through without due process, and that left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of senators on both sides of the chamber. What happens with Meredith this time around will need to avoid those same pitfalls of process.

But process is also what the Senate has the benefit of. New rules and processes have been put into place over the last number of years as part of their internal reforms that most people haven't paid attention to. Ethics rules that Meredith is subject to will mean that there are grounds to oust him according to the parliamentary privileges of the chamber now that they have the report of the SEO that he has contravened them. But it also means that the Senate and in particular the pundit class are going to need to have enough patience to go through all of the proper steps, and that no one jumps the gun to move a motion on the floor of the chamber to try and oust him immediately in order to silence the critics.

If there is any danger, I think that is the one that senators need to beware of. Yes, this latest incident has again given voice to those same rabble-rousers who constantly call for the chamber's wholesale reform or abolition, damn the broader consequences to our parliamentary institutions as a whole. Wanting to silence the critics during the ClusterDuff affair meant that they were ham-fisted and opened themselves up to bigger problems because they contravened the rules of natural justice during those suspension motions. Going in haste to silence the mob will only end badly for all involved, but that's going to mean needing to ignore some of those same howling voices in the meantime.

The other complicating factor is that Meredith has gone on sick leave since the SEO's report came to light, and that could delay any action that the Senate's ethics committee or the chamber as a whole could take if they want to respect the rules of natural justice and denying Meredith his say in his own defence. But delay though he might, he can't stay on sick leave forever, and will eventually need to face his peers, whose resolve will likely have hardened by that point. He can threaten a court challenge, but the courts are loath to interfere with parliamentary privilege. It's possible he may find a shred of shame and still resign honourably, but I suspect we will soon find ourselves with a precedent for expulsion.

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I want to tell you about the governor of a large industrial state. He's a Democrat, elected as the third term of a moderate Democrat in an historically Republican state. His state was hit hard by the Great Recession, but today the state's economic growth is leading the country, and he aims to balance the budget this spring. Some estimates actually suggest his state's economic growth will lead the entire G7. He's had seven months of strong job creation, mostly full-time and high-income jobs. Part of this growth is due to his massive investments in infrastructure, particularly transit in the state's biggest city and suburban region. This autumn, he's bringing in free tuition, in addition to building and rebuilding hundreds of new schools and improving hospitals. He also reached a deal to dramatically enhance people's pensions. It's an impressive record.

Now, he's had his share of irritants. His predecessor left a scandal or two that still grate voters. It's hard to separate the one administration from the other in voters' minds. There's a sense, rightly or wrongly, his policies are better for the state's urban and suburban regions, leaving rural voters feeling left behind. And he's made his share of mistakes, including only acting belatedly on campaign finance reform, albeit that when he did act, it was with a vengeance, bringing in some of the country's toughest new rules.

But the main irritant is the price of utilities, which has more than doubled on his watch and his predecessor's. In response, he cut taxes on bills and then, when that wasn't enough to cool consumer rage, he rejigged the financing of infrastructure, to lower costs upfront but pay more over a longer period. He gets that this one issue is killing him, and has to cauterise the wound.

A year before the election, his Republican opponent is fairly glib, routinely sprinkling speeches with falsehoods and half-truths. But his rival is hard working, and thinks he can coast into the Governor's Mansion.

Now, what if I told you this Democratic governor was also gay. And he's actually a woman. And she's a Canadian premier. Named Kathleen Wynne.

Forgive the hypothetical counterfactuals; I wanted to demonstrate a peculiarity of Ontario politics. Premier Wynne's rather positive record is buried under the weight of the high cost of electricity and McGuinty-era scandals. By most objective metrics, she's been a successful premier, but you wouldn't know it from the vitriol and the polling. Liberal internal polling says Wynne's policies are nearly universally popular, when presented in isolation from the Premier or her government.

Lest you think I'm just being a Wynne fanboy, I'm not the only one questioning this disconnect. Steve Paikin wrote a similar blog to this one last December. He asks, "How did Wynne go from inheriting a political mess from her predecessor, to outshining both her rivals during the 2014 election campaign and winning close to 40 per cent of the vote, to being dismissed by so many as a lost cause two and a half years later?"

Paikin suggests a way through this unpopularity for Wynne: "watch for Wynne to try to reconnect with the issues that animated her entry into politics in the first place: educational opportunities and social justice". I agree with Paikin's prescription, but I'd add in an additional ingredient to make a full reelection plan: populism.

In today's charged political environment, populism has a very negative hue; it's associated with the far right or far left. Former president Barack Obama objected to the way the press is misdefining populism as just nativism or xenophobia at a press conference last spring in Ottawa. He ranted, "Maybe somebody can pull up in the dictionary quickly the phrase 'populism' but I'm not prepared to concede the notion that some of the rhetoric that's been popping up is populist", before going on to say that the true measure of populism is through policy changes to stand up for the little guy against powerful interests. Former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg makes a similar argument, suggesting the real utility of populism is to channel reforms to helping those striving to better their lot in life.

Put together with Paikin's notion that Wynne should focus on educational opportunities, there's the beginning of a playbook for Wynne to get back in the public's good graces. It's against the conservative media's narrative, but Wynne has the ammunition to make a case her government has actually saved Ontario families pocketbook pain, the high hydro rates notwithstanding. And she did this through making education more affordable, at all stages of life.

Her free tuition plan for low- and middle-class students is the start of a strong story about investing in the future economy. Add in the costs saved for young parents through full-day kindergarten and her pledge of 100,000 new childcare spaces, and that's families at both stages of raising kids seeing meaningful pocketbook relief in the name of ensuring everyone gets a solid education and a fair shake. More reliable transit, it can be argued, saves those same middle-class parents time and money. Wynne's leadership on pension enhancements is an under-celebrated victory for all generations.

There's more that could be done, including targeting older millennials by offering debt reductions on their student loans, given that their younger siblings will now benefit from free tuition. She should also find some pocketbook relief for that most reliable of voters â€” grandma and grandpa.

But, there's a story to tell here: we will lower the costs and the barriers for you to get the education you need to get ahead, from childcare to grad school. It's a story the former school trustee and education minister is ideal to tell.

Photo Credit: Loonie Politics

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By now I suspect most readers have at least heard of the controversy over The Rebel's Gavin McInnes saying anti-semitic comments in a vlog post last weekend, while the right-wing media organization was doing a tour in Israel. In the now infamous video, McInnes asserts the trip was "basically a brainwashing" exercise funded by the Israeli government and Jewish donors expecting McInnes to believe their "shit." McInnes then went on to say how it's had the opposite effect, making him become anti-semitic. He then goes on to trivialize the holocaust and spout crackpot Nazi revisionist history. Throughout the YouTube video McInnes chuckles at himself and twice tells the audience to not take him out of context, using this lame caveat to set up his lame escape hatch, so he could later deny any culpability in the words he'd just spewed.

Then while McInnes was flying back home, white supremacists like David Duke and Richard Spencer sang his praises on Twitter and Canadian journalists rightfully condemned his despicable comments.

When McInnes landed he acted stunned by the reaction, but don't be fooled by a media maverick with decades of experiences in the industry. The original editor of Vice magazine, McInnes invented crafty and juvenile ways to stir up controversy, helping create a media juggernaut now worth billions of dollars. He knew exactly what he was doing when he went on this mock anti-semitic rant.

"While I was on the plane I had a Justine Sacco moment apparently. I landed hereremember 'wait 'til she lands?' And she said 'I'm going to Africa. I hope I don't get AIDs.' I landed here and I got a bunch of Nazi friends. David Duke and all the Nazis think I totally rock. No offence Nazis, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I don't like you. I like Jews," said McInnes in a follow-up video shortly after getting off the plane at Pearson Airport.

Yet unlike an unwitting Sacco (the woman pilloried around the world and fired from her job after tweeting a politically incorrect and unfunny joke that went viral, also costing her her job), McInnes intentionally courted controversy for the precious clicks. His half-hearted and ambivalent follow-up video allowed him to still woo the alt-right/white supremacist crowd to his paywalled Gavin McInnes American show, while simultaneously projecting an image of him being an innocent jokester to his Rebel crowd.

On top of this, he knew that the mainstream media would freak out, giving him free publicity. When not much coverage was forthcoming from his original anti-semitic rant, he doubled-down with a video originally entitled "10 Things I Hate about the Jews", where he criticizes certain relatively trivial things he noticed in Israeli culture.

Predictably and understandably, progressive publications Canadaland and The Walrus shortly thereafter published pieces condemning The Rebel for hitting a new low and questioning why Rebel founder Ezra Levant â€” himself a proud Jew â€” was allowing this vitriolic rhetoric to be published on his media outlet. Canadaland creator Jesse Brown then spent 20 minutes of his Thursday podcast breaking down the manufactured controversy. All of this coverage results in the Streisand effect, where condemning The Rebel inadvertently drives more traffic to Rebel videos (I guess I'm now doing the same).

The reason Levant allows for McInnes's shenanigans is that his media company relies on viral videos to make his business profitable, and he knows McInnes was doing a cheap tongue in cheek, rickrolling routine to induce a firestorm reaction from the mainstream press and social media, which in turn generates more clicks and eyeballs. It's proven a successful business model. The Rebel garners tens-of-millions of views monthly and recently did another round of hiring.

But at what cost? Canadian conservatives are woefully underrepresented in the Canadian media landscape. The National Post has become a shell of its former self, with most of its younger writers expressing an ideology more aligned with the Toronto Star. The Sun News Network is defunct and the Toronto Sun doesn't reach anyone outside of its blue collar conservative audience. The Rebel has entered to fill a void in this country, but do we really want it to be our standard bearer?

With stunts like the one above, The Rebel runs the risk of smearing all Canadian conservatives as a bunch of anti-semitic crazed loons. Canadian conservatives interested in promoting and furthering conservative principles â€” like reducing bloated socialist governments, absurdly high taxes, ballooning debt, freedom of speech, etc. â€” would do best to distance themselves from this firebrand organization willing to say anything for attention.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

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Wouldn't you know it, that dastardly Justin Trudeau is at it again. Playing politics with the internal politics of his political party. In what's become a familiar refrain, the prime minister and his office were accused of playing favourites in a pair of nomination races.

But the idea that there's something nefarious with a party leader getting choosy about who's running under their banner is a faulty one.

The trouble stems from Trudeau's promise to have open nominations when he was running for the Liberal leadership. In a post on his campaign website from 2013, Trudeau wrote:

"If elected leader, I will ensure that in 2015, every candidate for the Liberal Party will be nominated through an open nomination process. I will not appoint any candidate, in any of Canada's 338 ridings. The goal is to build a truly representative party, made up of citizens who are engaged at the grassroots level, so they can bring Canadians' voices to Ottawa."

More than a few times, that phrase "open nomination process" has become a useful bludgeon when a potential candidate finds themselves either excluded or facing long odds. In the past couple weeks, two nomination races have come to a close shrouded in much controversy.

First, in the race for Ontario's Markhamâ€”Thornhill riding, PMO aide Mary Ng won her spot as the next Liberal candidate. Juanita Nathan, one of Ng's opponents, withdrew her name after the school board trustee claimed party shenanigans had sunk her campaign before it could get off the ground.

Nathan said the cut-off date to register new members was set so some 2,000 of her supporters were disqualified. Because of this, she said the process was essentially rigged and withdrew her name from the ballot.

When the party announces when a nomination meeting is going to be, it also announces when voters have to have been registered to qualify to vote for the nomination. According to Liberal Party rules, that cut-off date has to be anywhere from seven days before the nomination has been announced, to two days after. In the case of the Markham riding, the notice went out Feb. 20, and stated the cut-off date was Feb. 14. (This is the same six-day period the party used in an earlier Ottawa nomination.)

Like anyone who's been burned by not saving a document before their computer has crashed, Nathan is lashing out at her word processor for ruining her class project.

Meanwhile, in Montreal, former Quebec provincial cabinet minister Yolande James was thrashed by two virtual unknowns in the riding of Saint-Laurent. Despite James being heavily favoured, 26-year-old high school teacher Emmanuella Lambropoulos walked away with more than half of the votes cast in the riding.

Lambropoulos's win essentially mooted earlier complaints in the riding the race had been rigged for James. Former borough mayor Alan DeSousa had been disqualified from running by the Liberal green-light committee. DeSousa, who's well known and fairly popular in the riding, said this was to clear the way for James.

But, more likely than rigging the nomination for James, the party was interested in minimizing their exposure to DeSousa's political past. DeSousa was never charged with corruption, but his office was raided alongside disgraced former mayor Gerald Tremblay's office, and he was elected on the same ticket.

No matter how popular he might be, it's not hard to see why a party might not be interested in enlisting DeSousa under their banner.

At the root of the uproar in these cases is the idea that open nominations mean anyone should be able to run for a party, no matter their background or beliefs. To get selective in who is allowed to run for the party, and to show preference to certain candidates, is somehow a betrayal of Trudeau's democratic idealism.

But to believe that you have to ignore the partisan underpinnings of the parliamentary system. The mindless barking seals that populate the Commons during question period have no doubt sullied the idea of partisanship. Calling someone a partisan isn't something you toss around as a compliment.

But without parties, how do you form a government? How do you make laws, pass budgets and manage the bureaucracy? How do you bring the messy and diverse polity of a huge country like Canada into a manageable set of voting options?

And while voters are technically only directly casting their ballot for for individual candidates, they're voting for the party and the leader, too. That works both ways, candidates ride the coattails of their party into office, but when a candidate goes supernova â€” looking at you, pee cup guy â€” it's the party that owns it.

Showing preference for certain candidates isn't breaking democracy, it's making it manageable. There's nothing nefarious about that.

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Lately I've been gaining a bit of notoriety as the weirdo who pours milk on myself (and who does other crazy things too) in a series of videos I've posted making fun of the Maxime Bernier campaign on #cdnpoli and #cpcldr.

In addition to uncomfortable laughter and praise, I've been asked a few recurring questions. Why do I hate Mad Max so much? Why do I insist on debasing myself and our party? Have I lost my ever loving mind?

The truth is, I don't hate Max or anyone on his campaign. But in a leadership campaign that has been dominated by strangeness, false outrage, and weird moments, Max has somehow escaped much of the mockery and shade while other hopefuls such as Kellie Leitch and Kevin O'Leary have had to endure daily maulings from Canada's consensus media.

This is, in my view and in the view of the thousands of people who watch my videos, a bit of a problem. Because Max has a completely contrived air of unflappability, he really hasn't demonstrated that he can withstand the pounding he's inevitably going to take if he becomes leader.

My silly videos which I know are watched religiously by his campaign team are thusly an attempt to test Bernier to see how he'd fare under sustained fire. The way Max's team has reacted to me and to other events has confirmed a few worrisome suspicions I've held about what kind of leader he'd make.

One And Done

My first video drew a ton of fire from Bernier operatives. Insults, name-calling, "polite" passive aggression (which we'll discuss a bit more later).

Seeing this, the Scheer campaign who have been the target of most of the Bernier campaign's online ire due to what sources say is a rivalry between the two campaigns' top digital guys jumped in and helped to promote the video.

(If anyone cares to witness the depressing spectacle of Bernier and Scheer fanboys pretending to be alt-right trolls online, I invite you to check out r/metacanada, a Reddit community where the Bernier campaign's weird obsession with Photoshopped movie posters is encouraged.)

The others? Not so much. Having "dealt" with me and possibly realizing how reacting to me worsened the pile-on the campaign's operatives seemed to have moved on.

Why is this significant? Because it's part of a pattern. When the Bernier campaign gets attacked, they spend a day or two responding angry insults from the low-level people, catty snark/deflection from the top guys and then total silence.

They did this when Gerald Butts pointed out the discrepancy between Max's about-face on C-16 and his support for the Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline during Election 2015. They did this during the Moncton debate in December when Bernier called Kellie Leitch "a Karaoke version of Donald Trump". And most recently they did it when Bernier's weird "red pill" meme made headlines.

As funny as it was watching Canada's long-in-the-tooth political journalists try to puzzle out what these newfangled "memes" were, the issue is that Max's blunders here won't be forgotten by the left. When a Conservative makes a mistake during an election, it lingers in the press for weeks. Remember Harper's reference to "old stock" Canadians, and the same deflection / minimization strategy from the CPC then? How'd that work out?

The Cone of Silence

Ever since the CPC's defeat, the federal guys has been trying to turn the provincial PC Parties or whatever passes for a conservative opposition in a particular province into branch offices where the "successful" strategy of overbearing message control and the aforementioned "What, me worry?" method of damage control is promulgated, with the excuse that since it "worked" for Harper, it must be the be-all and end-all.

(Incidentally, part of the reason why Leitch and O'Leary's respective success has the party so freaked out is because they KNOW they have no way of "controlling the message" if either of them wins.)

For example, when Bernier spams the message that he is an "Albertan from Quebec" (whatever that means), he's actually saying that Jason Kenney is a good buddy of his, and that Max is a fan of Kenney's ongoing hostile takeover of the divided right in Alberta.

Considering the lack of success the provincial affiliates have had in beating progressives, imposing discipline from above makes sense. But as we've seen, the federal boys can screw things up as bad as the provincial guys canâ€¦.and if a parachuted ex-CPC lieutenant makes a mess of things, the longtime provincial volunteers rise up in rebellion in an instant.

To go back to Alberta, we have former CPC MP Jim Prentice to thank for the rise of the Alberta NDP. And for Kenney's part, he's had to deal with no shortage of rebellions, court challenges and back-biting from Twitter trolls. But in Bernier's case, his own support in Quebec is far from solid, as his ongoing struggles with Steven Blaney demonstrate.

The Bernier-Brown Bromance

But nowhere is the weakness of the Maxime Bernier campaign more apparent than right here in Ontario, where the two factors I mentioned before are joined by a third.

If you didn't know, Patrick Brown and Maxime Bernier are super duper tight, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte CPC MP Alex Nuttall (who couldn't keep himself from letting me know on Twitter how not-bothered he was by my videos).

And what does Patrick Brown always do when trouble arises? He takes some completely superficial action sending an MPP for sensitivity training, doing an interview where he claims his views on an issue have "evolved", blaming a miscommunication and declares the matter dead, even though the media has no intention of letting it lie. The same operating procedure as Team Max.

But why is this particularly bad in Ontario? Because if Brown and Bernier share a brain, then the activists and keyboard warriors excited at Max's "unapologetic conservatism" are in for a world of hurt.

Yes, all the red-pill taking dudebros, all the libertarians excited about Max standing up to supply management, all the social conservatives who were thrilled to hear him talk recently about reopening the abortion debate or his flip flop on bill C-16, are setting themselves up for disappointment.

Like Brown, who pandered to parents angry about the Wynne government's sex-ed curriculum so he could win their votes, Bernier wants to use these people to win the leadershipâ€¦.and then leave them out in the cold.

And what's worse, Bernier is going to use their anger as the reason why he's "changed his views" on ending supply management, or whatever the issue is.

It's all because Bernier, like Brown, is more worried about image and perception than anything else. If nothing else, Kellie Leitch and Kevin O'Leary have proven they aren't interested in the judgements of others.

Which is, of course, the real reason for their successâ€¦..

Photo Credit: Huffington Post

Written by Josh Lieblein

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Trudeau can go blue in the face talking about Canada's crucial role in protecting the environment, but it is only political rhetoric

TORONTO, Ont./Troy Media/ Most Canadians are worried about the environment in some way, shape or form.

Opinion research firms have shown this on multiple occasions. For instance, a November 2015 Nanos Research poll of 1,000 Canadians noted that 73 per cent either agree or somewhat agree that "climate change presents a significant threat to our economic future."

A December 2015 poll by Ipsos of 24 countries, including Canada, revealed that 82 per cent of the 18,854 respondents believe climate change is a "major threat" to our planet.

As well, an Angus Reid survey earlier this month noted that 67 per cent of Canadian respondents believe our country should continue to support the Paris climate accord even if the U.S. ultimately withdraws.

All of Canada's political parties, left and right, realize the environment has to be a major priority in campaign and government mode. The proposed strategies will obviously be different and the solutions won't be to everyone's liking. Regardless, there needs to be something tangible in a campaign brochure, on a party's website and coming out of the political leader's mouth.

Here's the problem with these environmental strategies that few politicians are willing to address on a regular basis:

The average Canadian firmly believes he or she is doing something beneficial for the country and future generations by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and the overall carbon footprint.

But while they're feeling all warm and fuzzy for going green, did it ever occur to them that this effort, while certainly noble on the surface, is rather meaningless?

No, I'm not suggesting they should stop doing what they feel is right. And no, I'm not referring to the fact that Canada is a middle power and only has so much political and economic influence.

It's much simpler than that. If the world's major polluters aren't completely onside, then Canada's overall contribution to this effort (along with other small and large nations) has little to no impact.

Don't believe me? Consider this intriguing piece of statistical information.

The EDGAR database, created by the European Commission and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in 2015, lists carbon dioxide emissions (via some form of human-based activity) for sovereign states and territories. China ranked first in this study, with 29.51 per cent of the world's carbon emissions. The U.S. was second at 14.34 per cent, followed by the European Union (9.62 per cent), India (6.81 per cent) and Russia (4.88 per cent).

It's no secret that large polluters like China, India and Russia historically pay lip service at climate change conferences but have virtually no interest in going green. Combined with the fact that environmental concerns in the U.S. (real or imagined) will mostly cease during President Donald Trump's tenure, that's more than half of the world's carbon dioxide emissions left unaccounted for.

What about Canada? If you eliminate the database's massive category of International Shipping, our country sat in 10th spot at 1.54 per cent. That's higher than other nations but completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can therefore go blue in the face (or red, as the case may be) talking about Canada's crucial role in protecting the environment for our families and children. It's only political rhetoric, folks and it won't help one small bit.

Does anyone seriously think that Canada, or any other country, has the ability to change the hearts and minds of the world's biggest polluters? You obviously can't shame them into adjusting their positions, because they're more powerful than most nations. They're also quite content with the way things are; if not, they would have already changed their tune.

The world will always have its share of climate change supporters, climate change skeptics, and those who sit in the middle (like me). But without any consensus about the state of the world's environment, the political climate won't change anytime soon.

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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Late last week, the Government House Leader, Bardish Chagger, released a discussion paper that looked at ways to reform the rules of the House of Commons in a bid to make things run a little more efficiently. I won't pan the entire paper because there are a few needed changes in there that I would endorse, but for the most part, any bid to make the Commons run more "efficiently" should be treated with suspicion and indeed scorn because most of those fixes have a funny way of having unintended consequences that make things worse and not better in the longer term.

We have a history of tinkering with the rules of the Commons to make things more "efficient." One of the most prominent and existential is the way in which MPs review the Estimates, which is the lifeblood of why parliament exists. Parliament exists to act as a check on the government (meaning cabinet), and the way they do that is by controlling the public purse. If government wants to spend funds from the treasury, it needs parliament to approve it, and the way they go about doing that is by putting forward the Estimates. In 1968, the Liberal government of the day changed the rules so that if MPs hadn't voted on the Estimates by a certain date, they would henceforth be "deemed" have been adopted you know, because the "efficiency" of keeping things moving along outweighs the whole point of why parliament exists in the first place.

This kind of abusive change is one of the reasons why I am very wary of trying to make parliament more "efficient." When they eliminated evening sittings in the early nineties to make parliament more "family friendly," it meant that MPs no longer ate together three nights a week and collegiality suffered as a result. That is one of the reasons why bid to introduce electronic voting in the Commons is of particular concerns more than just obliterating the solemnity of the act for MPs, it is one of the only times where all MPs are gathered together in one place. Time together is how they get to know each other as people and not partisan enemies, and eliminating that time will have more dire consequences on the running of the Commons than just votes running a little more quickly.

While the paper talks about doing away with Friday sittings something that most opposition MPs have panned it also mentions the possibility of adding more time on the calendar for private members' business. This is something I would argue against for the simple reason that MPs are already abdicating too much of their primary responsibilities of holding government to account and doing things like scrutinizing the Estimates. Giving more time for private members' business gives more incentive for them to spend their time riding their personal policy hobby horses and advocating for their bills rather than doing their actual jobs. They're not American lawmakers, and putting forward bills is not doing their jobs.

Restricting the use of time allocation by means of programming motions is also problematic because we shouldn't make things too easy for a government to ram their agenda through the Commons. Opposition is a necessary role, and if there are bills or motions that they deem particularly odious, they should have a suite of tools available to them, be it filibuster or dilatory motions to slow it down. While people may grumble about it, it's an important release valve that needs to be preserved.

This goes as well for trying to limit speaking times on committees. Filibustering at committees is a legitimate tool and tactic (so long as it's properly policed speeches need to be on topic, for example), and shouldn't be eliminated just because governments find it inconvenient. I also find the proposal to give parliamentary secretaries roles on committees to be particularly egregious because they are agents of Cabinet. Committees are there to hold governments to account, not to do their bidding, and they need independence to do that.

Question Period comes up in the discussion paper, but I will say right off the start that I have no love for the idea of trying to institute a UK-style "Prime Minister's Questions" because it would limit the PM's appearance to once per week. The last thing we need to do is give him more excuses to stay away from the Commons. Once per week plus maybe another day for votes is not enough. The PM is not a president he's an MP like all of the others, and "first among equals" in cabinet, and coming up with excuses to isolate him from the rest of the chamber violates those principles.

This isn't to say that all of the proposals in the discussion paper were terrible there were a couple of items that I would certainly find unobjectionable. Extending the response period for written questions from 45 to 65 days is something that I could live with, and giving the Speaker the ability to split omnibus bills is certainly overdue. Likewise, when it comes to coming up with a mechanism to prevent a government from abusing the power to prorogue parliament, I would certainly favour the proposal to restore prorogation ceremonies (like a Throne Speech, only the Governor General lists the government's accomplishments instead of their plans) because it's a public way to keep the government accountable and prevents the PM from simply phoning up the GG to request a prorogation the way that Stephen Harper did in one of his most egregious requests. This is more preferable to their alternate proposal for tabling a prorogation report to be debated in the Commons, particularly because the pomp and ceremony of the GG's visit will focus the attention of Canadians better than a Commons debate would. But we don't need to change the rules to make parliament more "efficient" we need MPs to do their jobs.

Author: redding

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