Erin O’Toole has been leader of the Conservative Party for close to 18 months now, and during his leadership the only time his favourability numbers showed any sign of improvement was the two-week span between the Prime Minister calling an election last August and the first televised leaders’ debate during the campaign. As I wrote before the holiday break, O’Toole’s numbers have increasingly eroded back to their pre-election levels since the Liberal victory last September, and polls fielded since the New Year have shown no sign of growth for the Conservative leader.
While the latest federal poll from Léger still shows a competitive horserace between the Liberals (34 per cent) and Conservatives (31 per cent), numbers mostly unchanged from those before the holiday break, it was once again O’Toole’s personal numbers that stood out of the survey. To the question: “In your opinion, which federal party leader would make the best Prime Minister of Canada?”, the CPC leader ranked third with only 16 per cent, behind both the Prime Minister (25 per cent) and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh (19 per cent).
For O’Toole, the regional breakdown is even bleaker than the national numbers (see graph below). In Canada’s two most populous provinces, O’Toole (himself an Ontario MP) trails the Prime Minister by double digits. In Quebec, where the NDP won a meagre 9.8 per cent of the popular vote last September and holds a single seat, O’Toole (13 per cent) is tied with Jagmeet Singh (12 per cent). In Ontario, the province through which goes any realistic path to a CPC victory, O’Toole stands as a distant third with 13 per cent—15 points behind Trudeau and 10 points behind Singh.
Whereas O’Toole unsurprisingly leads the field in Alberta, it is by no means the dominance one would expect from a CPC leader: O’Toole is the choice of 26 per cent of Alberta respondents, followed by Trudeau with 20 per cent, and Singh with 14 per cent.
In British Columbia, Singh (22 per cent) and Trudeau (21 per cent) are tied for the lead, while O’Toole takes third place with 16 per cent.
Even among his own party’s supporters, O’Toole scores lukewarm approval numbers at best. Whereas Singh is the preferred choice of 78 per cent of NDP voters, and Trudeau of 74 per cent of Liberal voters, only 58 per cent of Conservative voters see O’Toole as the best candidate for PM:
Similar numbers were released last week by the Angus Reid Institute (see poll report here). Both Trudeau and Singh score north of 85 per cent approval from their own voters, but O’Toole is perceived favourably by fewer than two-thirds of CPC voters. Among voters of other parties, O’Toole is perceived favourably by a meagre 8 per cent of Liberals and 7 per cent of NDP voters. As for Maxime Bernier’s PPC voters, only 26 per cent view O’Toole’s favourably.
So the available data could hardly be clearer: There is simply little to no room to grow for O’Toole among non-CPC voters, which may partly explain why O’Toole has looked and sounded like he’s running for the CPC leadership again of late, and not like the leader of a government in waiting.
Obviously, we cannot ignore the elephant in the room: All these numbers predate this weekend’s hectic events in Ottawa, so it will be fascinating to see whether they move the needle at all for O’Toole and the CPC in the coming days. Several CPC MPs have openly come out in favour of the convoy and its core message as it travelled west towards Ottawa last week, even though the links between some organizers and extremist organizations had been thoroughly documented (see the work of journalist Justin Ling, among others). O’Toole himself met with a number of truckers on Friday, but on Saturday night tweeted to condemn the actions of those who, among many things, desecrated the War Memorial:
Today, I met with truckers heading to Ottawa. Truckers are our neighbours, our family, and most importantly, they are our fellow Canadians. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/Hl8ULjef5m
How will CPC MPs respond to this weekend’s events as the convoys leaves the nation’s capital next week? And how will voters react to the fallout of these protests? The next round polling should be quite interesting to say the least.
Perhaps Erin O’Toole’s poor numbers do not tell the whole story. Perhaps it is a toxic minority trying to take over the CPC that is sinking O’Toole in public opinion and hindering any efforts to grow the party, not the other way around. Perhaps the true division decried by politicians right now lies not with the average Canadian voter, but within the Canadian conservative movement itself. We have seen a similar script unfold in the United States (a mainstream right-of-centre party being taken over by post-truth populists). It ultimately led to the January 6 insurrection in Washington.
The fight the legendary hippie singer-songwriter Neil Young brought to the music-streaming giant Spotify on Monday over the privileged place it provides a wildly popular podcast by the contrarian comedian and former wrestling colour-commentator Joe Rogan appears to have ended as quickly as it began. But the wider war is gathering steam.
“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines,” Young said. Either Rogan goes or I go, he told the Stockholm-based audio-streaming giant. On Wednesday, Spotify responded: Off you go, then. By Thursday, Young had decamped with his entire 45-album backlist and all his bread to Apple Music, while Rogan’s big-tent circuses, with their sideshow freaks and thrill rides, will carry on, as before, with Spotify.
It all sounds so frivolous, but it isn’t, because the public-policy hostilities arising from our common captivity in the grip of COVID-19, now in the first days of the third year of SARS-CoV-2, are only becoming more pronounced with every passing day. Millions are dead, the stricken keep on dying, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to discern what the basic facts are and the uproars are unfolding in the midst of what has been called a “crisis of epistemology.”
That’s the philosophical way of describing the erosion of common understandings about not just what the truth is, but about how we’re all supposed to go about the work of figuring out what the truth is in the first place. Facts used to matter. Now, not so much.
Rogan stands accused of engaging in dezinformatsiya, as the Russians elegantly describe the traffic in dangerous half-truths and lies deployed as offensive weaponry in propaganda warfare. Specifically, Rogan’s offside notions about vaccines and masks are widely understood to make him a dangerous menace to public health. While he’s helpfully referred to himself as a “moron” for suggesting young people shouldn’t bother themselves with COVID vaccinations, the former “Fear Factor” game show host’s Spotify broadcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, still draws roughly 11 million listeners per episode.
I should straight away confess my own loyalties this week were to the cause of Team Neil. One must take sides, after all. Sorry, but that’s how these proxy wars work. There’s little room for conscientious objection, and the alliances that form up can draw the most disparate and ordinarily unfriendly parties to one another in the same blocs, rallying behind banners that wouldn’t otherwise summon them.
In all the epistemic chaos abroad in the Anglosphere—it churns and roils its way through the culture only most noticeably in the undying allegiance of millions of Americans to the disgraced former president Donald Trump—we’ve reached the point where the pandemic’s early public consensus and trust in government experts, in Canada at least, appears to be collapsing.
Canadians almost invariably end up adopting the culture-war habits Americans torture themselves with, so there’s now a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing.” This is how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau inelegantly described the convoys of truckers and their camp followers rumbling along Canada’s highways in their Peterbilts and Kenworths, and Freightliners and Macks, intent upon converging in Ottawa this weekend.
The On-to-Ottawa organizers insist they are against vaccine mandates imposed upon anyone, not just cross-border truckers, but many protesters appear to share more seething anger and frustration than any clear and coherent objective. Parliament Hill police were planning on about 10,000 people showing up. It’s been a bit unsettling to consider how all this might end up playing out, because there are some genuinely nasty characters who have insinuated themselves into the anti-mandate protests. The Parliamentary Protective Service insists that everything would proceed according to routine this weekend, but it still seems unlikely that events will go on to resolve themselves quite as efficiently as they appeared to in the Young-Rogan conflict.
It wasn’t just a quarrel about Spotify’s royalty rates or shuffle features. The Spotify rumpus was at least partly about whether a musician like Young could use his enormous star power to force an audio-streaming company with roughly 380 million monthly users to ditch what could be described, in the most charitable terms, as the world’s most popular streaming public-affairs talk show. But it’s also about money. A lot of money.
Rogan signed an exclusive contract with Spotify two years ago, reportedly worth more than $100 million, and Spotify is discovering that there’s more profit to be had in podcasts than in archiving digital versions of yesteryear’s hit singles. Young, who had six million monthly listeners on Spotify last week, sold his music catalogue to publisher Hipgnosis last year for $150 million. While Young says losing his him-or-me ultimatum would cost him 60 per cent of his streaming-service revenue, it’s not like his abdication from Spotify will cause him any pain.
Young’s net worth is estimated at $200 million. Now that Apple Music has declared itself Young’s new streaming home, Young’s earnings shouldn’t be disrupted all that dramatically. So as tidy as some of us might want it, this story is not so simple as a moral tale about a shaggy and lanky iconic veteran protest singer, in his 76th year, gallantly impoverishing himself by bravely sticking it to the man.
In normal times, there’s hardly anything even newsworthy about celebrities throwing themselves into causes. They do it all the time and they’re often pretty weird. There are celebrities against circumcision, celebrities against Oprah Winfrey and celebrities against meat. There have always been celebrities against vaccines. Now there are celebrities against COVID lockdowns.
“No more taking of our freedom And our God-given rights, Pretending its for our safety When it’s really to enslave . . .” That’s a lyric line from a one of several anti-mandate songs recently released by Van Morrison, the usually mild-mannered Northern Irish musical icon whose lyrics are sometimes so ethereal as to be comparable to the poetry of the English mystic William Blake.
Early on in the pandemic, Noel Gallagher, the force behind the chart-topping band Oasis, vowed that he would not wear a mask when he was out at the shops. Only last weekend, the Marvel star Evangeline Lilly joined prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy at an anti-mandate rally in Washington D.C.
Last September’s celebrity COVID eruption was perhaps the most amusing. That’s when pop star Nicki Minaj drew unwanted attention to herself by claiming that a cousin’s friend in Trinidad had been abandoned at the altar by a bride who was displeased by the way a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine had made the groom’s testicles swell.
Nicki Minaj has 22 million Twitter followers. Joe Rogan’s Twitter crew, incidentally, numbers eight million. And now there’s a #DeleteSpotify thing on Twitter that’s taking off.
In this bizarre new world where celebrities are taken to be epidemiologists and the toxins of antisemitism are as prevalent on the “left” as they’ve conventionally been situated on the “right,” it’s not especially helpful to dismiss all those angry truckers as a pack of howling white supremacists. Something’s happening here, to borrow a Buffalo Springfield lyric from Young’s late 60s heyday, and what it is ain’t exactly clear.
Jonathan Rauch, the journalist, author, Atlantic magazine fixture and senior fellow in governance studies with the Brookings Institution, proposes a helpful way of comprehending the perplexing phenomena of the times. It goes like this.
Just as the formalized political rules that derive from the American constitution are necessary to make American democracy work, the ways that knowledge itself is constituted are necessary for politics in liberal democracies to work. And the system is close to broken.
In his just-published book, the Constitution of Knowledge: A Defence of Truth, Rauch describes how the space occupied by what he calls the “reality-based community” is shrinking. Its customs and conventions are falling away. The intellectual strata that has conventionally distilled truth from facts and data and goes about the work of constituting knowledge—historians, social scientists, journalists, policy-makers, jurists—is succumbing to cultures of enforced conformity that stagnate in their own hived-off echo chambers.
Ideological rigidity, speech codes, Twitter-induced outrage spasms and a strict emphasis on consistency with “narrative” are supplanting the social mechanisms that have long served to transform disagreement into knowledge. We are counselled to assess truth claims by sizing up the people “who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing,” as Trudeau put it. The norms and institutions forged over decades by peer review, humility, fact-checking, good-faith debate and the evaluation of truth claims against objective evidence, verification and replication—it’s all up for grabs.
It’s not just that facts don’t seem to matter anymore. It’s that it doesn’t seem to matter that facts don’t matter.
We’re still very far from knowing for sure that Russia will invade Ukraine. Or at least that it will invade Ukraine again, more than it already has and on a scale larger than its regular, continuing cross-border harassment. Joe Biden’s “guess” is that there will be an invasion. The U.K. is on edge too. These are serious concerns from at least one serious government.
Skeptics include the French, who have amply earned a hearing when they disagree with the Americans and the British about a security analysis. “We see the same number of [Russian] trucks, tanks and personnel [near the border with Ukraine]” as the Americans and Brits, Le Mondequotes a source in Emmanuel Macron’s government, “but we cannot deduce from all of this that an offensive is imminent.”
Other skeptics include Ukraine’s Centre for Defence Strategies, run by a pro-Western former Ukrainian defence minister. They have what amounts to a bay window looking out onto Russian troops and they say Russia’s army is not behaving the way Russia’s army normally behaves before it invades something. “Russian troops move mainly as battalion tactical groups (mechanized, tank and airborne troops) and tactical groups (artillery, multiple launch missile systems). Russia hasn’t completed the formation of groups of troops in operational areas. It also hasn’t established and tested its wartime administration system. If Russia was conducting preparations for a large-scale invasion, it would have been much more noticeable.”
It’s important to emphasize that the think tank doesn’t at all rule out an invasion somewhere down the line, and it argues that the best thing Ukraine can do with its time is to prepare against the worst.
Ukraine’s current defence minister has a similar take. He sees no imminent attack but he’s prudent, as you would be if the neighbours had 130,000-odd troops on your border, and he is not pleased with Germany’s reluctance to send military aid as a way of ensuring Vladimir Putin doesn’t get any ideas.
All of which brings us to Justin Trudeau. As the list of world leaders who are unimpressed with him grows, the Prime Minister has been increasingly listless about foreign policy. Probably he pays no political cost for this at all. More and more Canadians seem convinced the entire rest of the world is more trouble than it’s worth, so our country’s longstanding isolationist streak has lately grown until it now covers most of the road. Nor does the slate of available alternatives lead most voters to believe they’re being cheated out of a chance to witness some masterful statecraft.
But sometimes events impinge. On Ukraine, the Trudeau PMO’s first response was a welcome loan, followed by a bit of pathetic theatre. They followed up with some more pathetic theatre, but by this week the feds had started saying a few things clearly or at least comprehensibly.
Trudeau and three cabinet ministers left a three-day cabinet retreat to say they will extend a Canadian training mission in Ukraine that the Ukrainians and their NATO neighbours hoped would be extended anyway; that the size of the Canadian deployment will be slightly increased; that Canada will send useful military equipment that can’t be used to kill anyone; and that if shooting begins on a large scale, all those Canadians will come straight home. “In the event of a Russian incursion or invasion into Ukraine, we will ensure that Canadian military remain safe,” the Prime Minister said. Because that’s what you’re looking for when you join a volunteer army: safety.
For satisfying outrage over the substance of this announcement, see brother Coyne. I had already argued, last week, that a combat commitment and lethal weapons shipments might be outside the scope of what Canada might want to send, so I can’t now claim to be furious. Instead let me try a few other angles on all this.
First, why not send lethal weapons? Partly because I’ve read CJ Chivers’ reporting on what happens when you ship weapons into a chaotic battle theatre: pretty soon, everyone has them, including the people who have your designated good guys surrounded. Mostly because I believe Canada could add little that’s useful to the large arsenal already being sent to Ukraine by other countries. I just want to point out that I just gave a simple, straightforward answer to a question, which is something the Prime Minister of Canada didn’t do when he faced the same question five times on Wednesday. That’s because unlike him, I respect you and your intelligence.
Second: there’s a lot of chatter this week about how Canadian policy on Ukraine is the pure product of pressure by the large and fearsome Ukrainian-Canadian lobby, personified by the deputy prime minister. I find this sort of argument mystifying, for three reasons. First, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress actually isn’t satisfied with Trudeau’s announcement. More important, diaspora politics is understandable and legitimate. About 300 years of Canadian history has been heavily influenced by our sizeable French, English, Scottish and Irish diasporas. It’s pretty rich to ask anyone else, very much including Ukrainian-Canadians, to stay out of it. And finally, if the geography were a little different and it were Spain or Greece tucked up against menacing Russia and Belarus, there’s no reason to think the behaviour and attitude of successive Canadian governments would be any different.
If you’re curious about the Ukrainian-Canadian angle, four cabinet ministers showed up for an online town hall on Tuesday night, at the invitation of Winnipeg South Liberal MP Terry Duguid, with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress’s assistance. Getting Chrystia Freeland, Mélanie Joly, Randy Boissonault and Bill Blair on a single Zoom call is quite a haul, and it surely reflects the party’s eagerness to hold a seat with a lot of Ukrainian-Canadian voters that Duguid lost three times before winning it three times since 2015, once quite narrowly. But you can watch the session here, and the assembled ministers said nothing to their highly-engaged niche audience that Freeland didn’t say to the whole country the next afternoon.
I want to talk a bit about what she did say. At the Wednesday news conference with Trudeau, Freeland said:
“This is a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. This is a direct challenge to the rules-based international order and an attempt to replace it with a world in which might makes right, and where the great powers—the nuclear-armed powers —have the authority to redraw the borders, dictate the foreign policies, and even rewrite the constitutions of sovereign democracies, whose only fault is that they are smaller and their militaries are not as powerful.
“Canadians—our own parents and grandparents—fought and died to establish the rules-based international order during and after the Second World War. They did that because they knew it was the right thing to do, of course, but also because they understood that Canada, as a middle power, had a clear and direct national interest in a world order based on rules.
“That rules-based international order is today facing its most serious challenge since it was first established. Ukraine is on the front lines of that struggle, and that is why Canada is standing with Ukraine.
“The world’s dictators are watching to see if our alliance of democracies has the will and the capacity to stand up for the rules-based international order. We must and we will show them that we understand the gravity of this challenge and that we will rise to it.”
I don’t think it’s nitpicking to say that the government’s actions and rhetoric are starkly out of proportion. Freeland is describing an existential threat to democracy; Trudeau is packing for a weekend road trip. If this test is in any way comparable to the one “our own parents and grandparents… fought and died” for, then don’t send a smaller deployment then you sent last year to the old-folks’ homes of Quebec and Ontario, and don’t promise to airlift the drill sergeants home at the first sign of trouble. And if it’s not that kind of test, then stow the Patton speeches and the back-patting.
This country is in a kind of extended despair for a bunch of reasons, most obvious and many beyond anyone’s control. But one item on the list that our putative leaders could address if they felt like it is that we seem to be governed by champion self-aggrandizers. It’s a cliche in politics that you should under-promise and over-deliver. This lot are addicted to playing tee-ball and calling themselves Mickey Mantle.
It would be tidy and convenient if democracy faced a single test in the bloodlands north and east of Kyiv. But of course democracy is tested dozens of times a day: in the South China Sea, on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, in one’s own choice of election rhetoric. People who study this sort of thing for a living say democracy is having a terrible century so far. Canada’s contribution to the health of democracy isn’t a binary switch—is Canada Back or Not Back?—it’s the result of sustained and serious engagement, or it’s the sum of a hundred decisions not to engage or be serious.
For instance. In 2019 the Trudeau Liberals ran on a promise to “establish the Canadian Centre for Peace, Order, and Good Government, which will lend expertise and help to people seeking to build peace, advance justice, promote human rights and democracy, and deliver good governance.” Freshly re-elected, the PM wrote to his foreign minister and urged him to “establish the Canadian Centre for Peace, Order and Good Government.” Unfortunately that was the minister before the minister before the current one. The Liberals ran on the same promise in 2021. When Biden held a global summit on democracy in December, Trudeau showed up with a promise to “establish a new centre,” using language lifted verbatim from the last two Liberal platforms. This is statecraft as tree-planting, the announcement as the thing. No wonder when things get serious, the phone doesn’t ring.
Going to be swarmed: Freedom Convoy organizers says protesters intend to gridlock Ottawa, the Postreports. “The city’s going to get gridlocked. Completely,” said Jason LaFace. “When we first get in there, it’s just going to be everywhere and anywhere and everybody’s just going to be swarmed.”
The Ontario Provincial Police told the National Post it was unaware how many trucks were in the various convoys, but Ottawa police said Wednesday that they were preparing for the arrival of between 1,000 and 2,000 vehicles. Media reports suggested around 400 vehicles — truck and personal cars combined — were in the convoy coming from the west that gathered in Thunder Bay on Wednesday, while other convoys launched from southwestern Ontario and eastern Canada. It’s a far cry from reports of tens of thousands of vehicles that have been circulated on social media, but more than enough vehicles to cause traffic headaches in the city.
Getting ready: Police and parliamentary security are bracing for up to 10,000 protesters, CP reports.
The group billing itself as Canada Unity is demanding that the Governor General and Senate combine forces to order the federal and all provincial and territorial governments to lift any remaining COVID-19 restrictions, waive all fines and cancel “illegal” vaccine passports. There is nothing in the Constitution affording the Governor General or the Senate the power to take such action. In a video posted on the group’s Facebook page one supporter said “failure is not an option. Surrender is not an option.”
MPs warned: Sergeant-at-Arms Patrick McDonell cautioned MPs in the national capital region that they could have protests outside their homes, CTV reports. In a memo to MPs, he suggested if that happens they should “go somewhere safe.”
“Avoid physical altercations, even if provoked, close and lock all exterior doors, advise the local authorities… [and] refrain from posting anything related to the demonstration on social media.”
A win for protesters: Ottawa Public Health closed down vaccine clinics.
Hijacked: The protest convoy has been hijacked by the far right or extreme rhetoric, Mike Millian, president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, told CBC: “We’re seeing signs calling our government communists and Nazis and comparing [the mandate] to the Holocaust. And if you’re comparing this to the Holocaust, you need to educate yourself.”
Protesters have spat on and threatened journalists covering the movement.
Musk onside:Elon Musktweeted in support of the protesters, the Postreports.
World record? America’s Fox News has an upbeat report on what could be a record-breaking assembly of trucks.
Andrew MacDougall, former director of comms to Stephen Harper, has a column in the Citizen, warning Tories against social-media dopamine hits.
By all means, keep Trudeau busy on big issues such as inflation, for which he has no answer but — for the love of God — keep away from issues where he has the broad support of the public, such as vaccines. Put your dumb-phones down and listen to real people, whether that’s in their homes, at their place of work, or in the aisles of the grocery store. As many as you can. Listen more than you speak. Governing is a deliberative act, not a dopamine pleasure cruise. Playing everything for clicks plunges you deeper into the real-world electoral hole.
Ready to meet:Erin O’Toole said Thursday he will meet with truckers taking part in the protest, CBC reports: “I will be meeting with truckers, I will be meeting with parts of the convoy. I will try and do it outside of the Hill core so it can be done effectively.”
Law and order?Globe editorialists write that O’Toole has not done enough to distance his party from the mess descending on the capital.
Diminished: O’Toole is playing for time after a post-election review found fault with the Conservatives’ brand and data game, Global’s Alex Boutilierreports.
The message coming out of O’Toole’s camp on Thursday was an appeal for more time — to address those perceived “brand” issues and to build up a new data game, a costly and risky proposal — and to better acquaint Canadian voters with O’Toole rather than switching horses once again. But there is little doubt, including among O’Toole’s supporters, that the leader has been diminished since last September’s disappointing federal election results.
Free cards? The Star’sStephanie Levitzreports the party is considering a proposal that membership be made be free.
Diversity: The Globereports that the party needs to “recruit a wider diversity of candidates and improve its ethnic outreach if it hopes to improve on last year’s results and make gains in Canada’s largest cities.”
Freeland popular: Speaking of leadership politics, a Nanos poll in the Globe finds that “25 per cent of respondents said [Chrystia] Freeland is best suited to lead the Liberal Party into the next election, compared with 18.4 per cent who said Mr. Trudeau would be their choice.”
Who helped? The RCMP is looking for members of a suspected human smuggling ring who helped smuggle a family from India who froze to death during an attempt to illegally cross into the United States, the Postreports.
Influencers abandoned: James William Awad, organizer of a notorious Sunwing flight to Cancun, plans to sue the airline for refusing to fly his group back to Montreal, CBC reports: “Yes, we saw the videos, there were a few people partying on the plane. But what happened is that [the airlines] decided to put everybody in the same boat.”
Training mission: Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday that Canada will not send small arms to Ukraine to defend the country against a threatened Russian incursion, Global reports. The government is extending a training mission for three years and boosting intelligence sharing, and will send “non-lethal equipment.” The Liberal cabinet discussed the matter at three-day virtual cabinet retreat that just ended.
Trudeau said Canada is deploying 60 additional Canadian Forces members now to join the roughly 200 others already on the ground as part of Canada’s military training mission, and that he is authorizing the potential for another 200 to be deployed in the future. “Things like body armour, optics and scopes, elements like that,” Trudeau said when asked to explain what non-lethal aid Canada plans to provide and why the decision was made not to send weapons.
Offside: Three NDP MPs have been criticized for posting objectionable comments online about the Ukrainian situation, Global reports.
Prepared for violence: Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told the police services board Wednesday that he is working with the RCMP and intelligence bodies to prepare for a trucker convoy protesting vaccine mandates that is making its way to Ottawa, CP reports.
Sloly said the convoy organizers have been co-operative in telling police about their plans for the protest, which he predicts could last several days, but the situation is evolving rapidly. Deputy Chief Steve Bell said police are “tracing parallel groups” that are preparing to join the truckers, as well as counter-protesters, and are monitoring social media.
CPC on side: While Ottawa is bracing for the angry truckers, CPC MPs are cheering them on, CTV reports. That makes some people uneasy, given that some of the protesters appear to be extremists.
While organizers say they are running a peaceful and law-abiding demonstration, experts have raised concerns over the online discourse related to the trucker convoy. From social media posts expressing anti-government and violent sentiments to a suggestion that the event could be like a Canadian version of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, experts CTVNews.ca spoke with said that the messaging and rhetoric is veering into dangerous territory.
Fringe: Trudeau called the protesters a “small fringe minority of people” who hold “unacceptable views,” Global reports.
Singh against: On Wednesday, Jagmeet Singh condemned the convoy, saying protesters are pushing “false information” through “inflammatory, divisive and hateful comments,” CBC reports. Online records show Singh’s brother-in-law, Jodhveer Singh Dhaliwal, donated $13,000 to the demonstrators. “[I] … disagree with him about this donation and told him so,” Singh said. “I am against this convoy and against the dangerous and divisive rhetoric we’re seeing coming from it.”
Pleads for calm:Erin O’Tooletook to the Toronto Sun on Wednesday to plead for calm and unity.
Not calm: Meanwhile, another Western CPC riding association called for a leadership review, presumably because they would like to get rid of O’Toole, Global reports.
Levi Derkson, the Carlton Lake—Eagle Creek riding president, told Global News that they were inspired by the Foothills motion, but that they did not co-ordinate with other EDAs. “We are representing members who have concerns about the policy direction that the current leadership is taking the party,” Derkson wrote in a statement.
Report today: CPC MPs will be briefed today on a review of the party’s election loss by former Alberta MP James Cumming, CP reports.
Part of the presentation will also focus on Leader Erin O’Toole’s performance during the campaign — something those concerned about his leadership are eager to see. The party wouldn’t specify if caucus will be shown the review in its entirety, with a spokesman saying only that O’Toole committed to elected members receiving a briefing, unlike campaign reviews of the past which have been held by the party leader and senior staff.
In waiting? O’Toole did an interview with the Post’sJohn Ivison to make his case for his continued leadership in advance of the report, arguing the party mustn’t become the NDP of the right: “We have to offer a government-in-waiting to the Liberals. We can’t focus on one or two issues that might be the top priority for some people in politics. We have to tackle all issues, including the environment and being more inclusive with the LGBTQ community.”
Not both: Canadian rocker Neil Young has pulled his music off Spotify to protest the way the streaming service allows podcaster Joe Rogan to spread vaccine misinformation, the Hollywood Reporterreports. Young wrote on his web site: “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
EDA seeks review: The CPC riding association in the southern Alberta riding of Foothills has become the first in the country to formally petition the party for a leadership review for Erin O’Toole, Global reports.
The decision by the Foothills electoral district association (EDA) represents another Western-based challenge to Erin O’Toole’s leadership, after Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters’ petition demanding an accelerated leadership review was blocked by the party’s governing council. The Foothills EDA passed a motion on Jan. 22 calling for a leadership review vote no later than June 15 to “ensure a united and strong Conservative Party of Canada in preparation for an imminent election.”
Poilievre to the rescue? In the Globe, Gary Masonwrites that O’Toole’s days are numbered, and suggests Pierre Poilievre appears poised to take over.
After an earlier tweet of Mr. Poilievre’s denouncing “vaccine vendettas,” Conservative MP Mark Strahl said on Twitter: “Thank you @PierrePoilievre for your clear and decisive leadership.” Conservative MPs aren’t even disguising their disdain for Mr. O’Toole now. Meantime, a new Nanos poll conducted for The Globe and Mail shows Mr. Poilievre has significantly more support among Canadians than Mr. O’Toole, a survey that is bound to cast a long shadow over the CPC’s retreat. It also says Canadians are five times more likely to say Mr. O’Toole has done a poor job as leader than an excellent one. Not good.
Won’t back down: The federal government says it will not back down on its vaccination rule for cross-border truckers despite a convoy headed to the city to protest, CBC reports.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said Tuesday the government is not interested in alternatives like rapid testing for unvaccinated truckers: “Our plan is to defeat COVID and end the pandemic as quickly as possible. What we’re doing right now is for the protection of truck drivers but also for the protection of our supply chains and our economy.”
Extremists on the road: Some Canadian far-right groups hope the so-called “Freedom Convoy” will be Canada’s version of last year’s Jan. 6 riot in Washington, Global reports. “A review of the protesters’ online communications, including real-time chatter over walkie-talkie app Zello, suggest a collection of grievances and anti-government sentiment that extends beyond vaccine mandates.”
Maclean’s contributor Justin Ling looks at the group’s MoU in this Twitter thread:
I'm not sure that we're adequately paying attention to the fact that "Canada Unity," which is *the* organizing body for the trucker convoy, is essentially calling for the removal of the Canadian government. (More below)
Won’t be tolerated: A key convoy organizer said on Facebook that acts of violence or vandalism won’t be tolerated: “If you see participants along the way that are misbehaving, acting aggressively in any way or inciting any type of violence or hatred, please take down the truck number and their licence plate number so that we can forward that to the police,” Tamara Lich said.
Against O’Toole: Lich also called, on Twitter, for the Tories to get rid of their leader, who has dodged questions about whether he will meet with the group.
Alarm bells:Justin Trudeau is seeking to exploit the convoy for political reasons, writesBrian Lilley in the Toronto Sun, but mainstream business organizations are legitimately concerned about a policy that will strain supply chains.
The people sounding the alarm bells and asking the government to reconsider its position — in order to put very practical considerations ahead of dogma — aren’t radicals; they’re far from it. They are the moderate voice of our largest business organizations that have worked alongside the government throughout the pandemic.
Radical Tories: Conservatives “appear to be dug in hard” to anti-mandate rhetoric, CBC’s Aaron Wherrynotes.
Even if the vaccine mandate for cross-border transport ends up contributing to those problems, Poilievre’s simplistic summation can just as easily be turned around. If the shelves are full, thank a vaccinated trucker. If the shelves are empty, thank an unvaccinated trucker.
Extreme tweet: Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said Tuesday that Twitter should remove a tweet from Independent Ontario MPP Randy Hillier, who called Alghabra a “terrorist,” CTV reports. Mendicino said the tweet is “flagrantly abusive, offensive and Islamophobic.”
Underwhelmed: Toronto Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is to table a motion in Parliament calling on the government to devote another $1.1 billion to the fair global distribution of COVID-19 vaccine doses, the Starreports: “Canada has played a leading role in global efforts, but those global efforts have been mediocre and underwhelming and insufficient. We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on our own domestic pandemic response,” he added. “We can spend a fraction of what we spent to protect the world and protect ourselves.”
Out of Kyiv: On Tuesday, Canada ordered family members of diplomatic staff stationed in Ukraine to leave the country, a day after the United States, Britain, Germany and Australia announced similar steps, the Globereports. Global Affairs said: “Due to the ongoing Russian military buildup and destabilizing activities in and around Ukraine, we have decided to temporarily withdraw Canadian embassy staff’s children under 18 years of age and family members accompanying them.”
Remains found: The Williams Lake First Nation, in British Columbia, says a preliminary investigation has identified 93 “reflections” that could indicate the number of children buried around the site of a former residential school, CP reports.
Up to our necks: In the Globe, John Ibbitson has a column warning that the Liberals will soon have to do something about rising debt levels.
Within the Group of Seven, we have gone from having one of the best debt-to-GDP ratios to middle of the pack: behind Germany, roughly on par with France and Britain, but ahead of the U.S., Italy and Japan. Outside the G7 our debt-to-GDP ratio lags behind Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Indonesia, Ireland, Latvia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Turkey and Vietnam, to name just a few. It is true that Canada’s net debt-to-GDP ratio, which includes pension plan and other assets, is considerably lower. Nonetheless, the 38-member OECD ranks Canada as its ninth-most indebted country.
MP fined: Calgary Skyview Liberal MP George Chahal has paid a $500 fine after taking an opponent’s campaign flyer from a front door and replacing it with his own, CP reports. Chahal was captured on a doorbell camera removing a Conservative leaflet while he was going door to door.
Under attack: Global Affairs Canada is coping with a multi-day network disruption that security and government sources describe as a “cyber attack,” likely from Russia, Global reports.
“GAC has been the target of a cyber attack but it is not clear if the Russians, the alleged perpetrators, hacked into the system or were able to merely disrupt its service,” a national security source, who spoke on the condition they not be named, told Global News. The Liberal government has been vocal in its support for Ukraine as Russia masses troops on the former Soviet state’s borders, with Ottawa announcing a $120 million loan to the Ukrainian government last week and re-committing Canadian soldiers to train Kyiv’s security forces.
Guns to Kyiv? Speaking of Ukraine, Trudeau’s cabinet is considering sending weapons to that country, Global reports.
According to the sources, who spoke on background as they are not authorized to discuss the proposal publicly, the federal cabinet will be asked to decide on the possible shipment of the small weapons along with the potential for increased military capabilities support for Ukraine from the Canadian Forces.
Out of storage? The Citizenreports that Canada might send arms that were originally destined for Kurdish fighters.
The $10 million package of small arms and anti-tank systems had been promised to the Kurds in 2016, but after Iraq raised objections the Canadian military put the equipment into storage.
Ottawa-bound: A convoy of hundreds of truckers and supporters left Calgary Monday en route for Ottawa to protest a cross-border vaccine mandate, the Starreports.
Thousands of truckers and supporters gathered in a group chat were looking for rides and praising “modern-day blue collar soldiers” standing up against vaccine mandates. A GoFundMe raising money to help the truckers with the cost of fuel, food and lodging along the way had reached more than $3.2 million as of Monday morning. As many as 26,000 of the 160,000 drivers who make regular trips across the Canada-U.S. border would likely be sidelined as a result of the vaccine mandate in both countries, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance and the American Trucking Associations.
CPC support: The convoy increasingly seems to have the backing of Conservative MPs, CBC reports.
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, the party’s finance critic, claimed the government’s vaccine policy is “emptying grocery shelves and ballooning food prices,” leaving some Canadians to “go hungry.” Garnett Genuis, a Conservative MP from Alberta, said he stands with unvaccinated truckers who plan on protesting the mandate. “Time to end Justin Trudeau’snonsensical vaccine vendetta,” he said in a recent social media post. The party’s transport critic, MP Melissa Lantsman, urged supporters to sign a petition opposing new vaccine requirements. She claimed the policy would result in the loss of thousands of jobs and “empty shelves in Canadian retail sectors.”
Ambiguous O’Toole: BUT, at a newser on Monday, Erin O’Tooledodged questions on his position on the truckers, the Postreports: “It’s not for the leader of the opposition or a political party to attend a protest on the hill or a convoy. It’s up to politicians to advocate for solutions in a cost-of-living crisis, in a supply chain crisis in a way that’s responsible and respectful of the public health crisis we’re in.”
Most jabbed: Trudeau told reporters Monday that the Conservatives are stoking fear, Global reports, and pointed out that most truckers are vaccinated: “Almost 90 per cent of truckers in Canada are vaccinated. I regret that the Conservative Party and Conservative politicians are in the process of stoking Canadians’ fears about the supply chain. The reality is that vaccination is how we’ll get through this.”
Funds frozen: The convoy’s online fundraising campaign — which raised $3.5 million in 10 days — is frozen while GoFundMe considers the situation, Le journal de Montréal reports (translation)
Not a leader? O’Toole’s ambiguous position on the protest suggest he is not really a leader, Althia Rajwrites in the Star.
O’Toole could have said he understands the truckers’ disappointment but doesn’t support their methods, of blocking roads and busy borders. He could have said he has no plans to meet with the group but would have liked the Liberals to negotiate with the U.S. a waiver for unvaccinated Canadian drivers. Or he could have said he agrees with his Alberta MP Garnett Genius who tweeted that he stands with the truckers and called on Trudeau to end his “nonsensical vaccine vendetta.”
Not bothered: O’Toole says he doesn’t “really mind” that Saskatchewan Tory MPs from Saskatchewan have confirmed Senator Denise Batters as a member of their provincial Conservative caucus, even though Mr. O’Toole removed her from the national caucus, the Globereports.
Ontario near deal:Sources tell the Star that Ottawa and Ontario are “very close” to a deal on $10-a-day child care, after Nunavut unveiled its agreement Monday, which leaves Ontario as the last holdout. “I expect a deal to be finalized shortly,” a Ford confidant told the Star.
Lithium objection: Former Conservative minister Peter MacKay thinks it’s terrible that Canada has agreed to let the Chinese buy a Canadian lithium company without a security review, he writes in the Post.
While we’re not yet out of the most serious pandemic seen in a century, we are moving in a direction where we can start to contemplate a slow return to normal. But the new “normal” of a post-COVID world will probably look a lot different from the one we remember pre-pandemic.
I joined Canada’s Department of External Affairs in 1991. I like to say I am the Forrest Gump of the Canadian foreign service. I witnessed and worked on Canada’s response to most of the big events that fundamentally reordered global politics, including the breakup of the former Soviet Union, 9/11, the Arab spring and the 2008 financial crisis.
The question I’ve been asking is whether the pandemic has fundamentally changed the building blocks of the international order. And the more difficult question is how Canada will fit into this new international order.
During the pandemic, three things happened: most countries turned inward, in many countries democracy and social cohesion were shaken, and the world order became even more unpredictable. In this new world of flux and strategic surprise, with shifting power dynamics among the major players and new sources of instability, Canada is not as prepared as it should be.
In the immediate aftermath of earlier “big events,” there was quick and deep international cooperation, largely channelled through the United Nations (UN), NATO, the G7 and the G20. After the fall of the former Soviet Union, there was tight coordination among western states on support for democracy and recognition of independent states and on cooperation with Russia. On the 2008 economic crisis, governments worked together through the G20. And in the aftermath of 9/11, there was quick action at NATO to invoke collective defence and send aerial surveillance in support of the U.S.
So what happened on COVID? Given the past, I would have expected two related things: a realization that this threat was global and that solutions needed to be global too. But COVID was very different.
For Canada, we had to look outside for procurement of vaccines since we shut down our own domestic capacity decades ago. On all else, our immediate instinct was not to “go global” but to focus on vaccinating our own people first and making our own largely unilateral decisions on borders. The politics of this are self-evident. What leader would or could do otherwise? And our government did this brilliantly: delivering more doses than Canadians needed, ahead of schedule and ahead of most of the rest of the world.
But stopping the virus in other countries is also in our self interest: Variants of the virus develop in populations where the disease is allowed to run rampant. These variants then come back and pose an immediate and direct threat to Canadians. So, sustainable solutions ultimately have to be global.
It was not until relatively late in the pandemic that Canada’s focus started to shift to multilateral channels to coordinate international sharing of doses and counter vaccine hesitancy. Other donor countries largely followed the same trajectory, timeline, and internal focus as Canada.
What does this mean for the global world order? We have been talking for a few years about the fraying of the international liberal rules-based order, and the slow death of multilateralism. Is the fact that countries turned almost entirely inward on COVID another nail in the coffin of the post-war International order?
I think we’re not ready to write an obituary for cooperative internationalism yet.
The fact that countries turned inward in their immediate response to COVID can be put down to three factors: first, COVID posed an existential threat to entire populations, requiring governments to focus on their own populations, fast. This is unlike the previous big, transformative events like 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis, where the threat was real but was more diffuse, not threatening each and every citizen. COVID also hit different countries at different times, so the international momentum created with an external, discrete, catastrophic event was slower to form. This differs from earlier Ebola outbreaks or 9/11, for example, where there was quick international consensus on the gravity of the threat.
The third reason countries were slow in turning to multilateral channels was a lack of international leadership. During the Ebola outbreak, while the global response was slow and imperfect, it was internationalized. This was largely because the U.S. stepped up and pushed for coordinated international solutions at the G7 and the Global Health Security Agenda. This time, at the beginning of the pandemic the U.S. was firmly focused inward. Nor was the World Health Organization (WHO) in a position to lead. Although post-Ebola the WHO had improved its capacity as a first responder to global health emergencies, it was overwhelmed by the scope and speed of COVID. Practical coordination and cooperative diplomacy at the WHO were also slowed in the early days by other geo-political factors, including the China-U.S. dynamic.
Today, the fact that waves of COVID variants are lasting longer than any of us would want or expect may be reinvigorating global cooperation. Countries are starting to slowly shift their focus to globalized solutions through initiatives like the COVID treaty at the WHO, agreements at the G7 to share more doses internationally, campaigns to counter vaccine hesitancy or tackling supply chains.
There is a larger lesson to be drawn from this pivot back to multilateralism. What we are seeing on COVID is just another example of a trend in multilateralism that has been underway for quite some time, where states increasingly and pragmatically “forum shop” for the right time, the right international organization, and the right negotiating bloc within those institutions to protect their interests, promote their values, or find solutions.
Canada benefits when crises are multilateral since it gives us a seat at the table and, in structured bodies like NATO, a voice and a veto. This was the case in the immediate post-War period when the international system was first being set up. What is different today is that there are many more states, many more stakeholders and many more complex issues like COVID. I call this messy multilateralism, and it is more difficult to navigate, particularly if close allies of Canada are unable or unwilling to lead. To manage, states like Canada need to be able to do a few things well:
They have to clearly articulate their interests and make strategic choices about what issues, what international organizations and alliances to focus on. I note that the last integrated Canadian international policy review was in 2005, 17 years ago. The aim is to be able to make strategic choices that reflect Canadian interests and have Canadians’ support. Right now, Canada is largely reactive.
States also have to diversify their range of partnerships to be able to count on a wider set of friends across regional divides. While Canada has a unique asset in its cross-regional network of partner states, it does less well in identifying priority relationships based on our interests and does not systematically maintain them. South Korea or Mexico are two examples. There are others.
States also have to consistently engage at the UN, NATO and other international organizations to create openings and relationships so they can protect their interests when the next crisis hits. This requires growing and retaining the professional diplomatic corps; people with multilateral knowledge and networks and deploying them strategically into organizations like the UN or NATO. Canada does not do this well.
A broader point about the importance of knowledge and networks. In a world of flux and strategic surprise, for Canada to be better able to anticipate and respond, we have to do a better job at diplomacy. Professional diplomats understand issues, countries and regions in-depth and this allows them to identify early opportunities for Canada to influence and lead. They then use the international relationships they have built over time to turn these opportunities into action on the ground, whether it be bolstering peace, creating new markets, or development. Too many key jobs at Global Affairs are filled with temporary staff, and promotion and retention don’t sufficiently value diplomats’ international knowledge or their international networks.
As we reassess our foreign policy priorities we need to think about how we do foreign policy better on the ground. We need a bottom-to-top functional review of Global Affairs, by those who have the background in international affairs to assess whether we are building the skills, the people and the international presence we need to position Canada to flourish in a world where we could quickly lose relevance, influence and an ability to foresee and prepare for international transformative events.
The second effect of COVID has been increased polarization and political destabilization. While during the Cold War there might have been a shared belief that the Soviet Union and China would eventually succumb to the forces of liberalization and democracy, democracy is no longer seen as the default. Instead we are seeing rising autocratic tendencies, including among close allies of Canada. We are also seeing increasing polarization within countries, often as a result of disinformation campaigns designed to create societal divisions and more and more countries putting forward competing visions of non-liberal democracy.
The conclusion to be drawn is one where democracy is more vulnerable. And one where competition and conflict over democratic norms increasingly occur on social media, widening polarization.
Canada has considerable assets when it comes to stable, functioning democracy. Think of the debates about vote counting during the last American presidential election and give thanks to Elections Canada. But when it comes to shoring up democracy abroad, we should be more deliberate and more targeted:
In our diplomacy and security and development programming abroad, we need to take a deliberate, coordinated, whole-of-Canada approach to supporting good governance: engage provinces, municipalities, media and Parliament and focus on the things Canada is good at, like building the institutions essential to democracy, fostering credible and independent media, overseeing elections, or countering corruption.
And we should learn from others, like the Baltics or Taiwan, about how to educate populations, including our own, to recognize disinformation and counter it using digital tools; build our own regulatory and promotional tools to protect the Internet while blunting the societal divisions it creates.
On international power dynamics, for some time now, China and Russia, in different ways, have been acting in ways that are less predictable and markedly more dangerous than in the past. Russia reinvested in its military and started crossing European borders with armed force, beginning in Georgia in 2008 and continuing in Ukraine in 2014. It also started engaging in grey zone tactics; activities like election interference, disinformation, or propping up autocrats in its immediate neighbourhoods. And now it is testing again, massing troops on Ukraine’s border. China under President Xi Jinping has also become more muscular, more visible and more bellicose on international economic, military and diplomatic fronts, but with a global reach and an economic base that far exceed Russia’s capacities. At the same time, the U.S. has been relatively weakened–first by President Trump’s rejection of alliances and embrace of dictators, but also by its relatively poor performance on COVID. And as the major players are jockeying for position, a complicated backdrop has been building for decades, where more states demand a say and where no small group of countries has sufficient dominance to set the rules in their own image.
In other words, while the power dynamics might be shifting, this is not your grandmother’s Cold War. It’s a world filled with many more players, some acting unpredictably and much more dangerously, and where Canada’s closest neighbour might end up carrying less weight internationally.
To adapt to this new world of strategic surprise, Canada should consider some key steps:
First, we need to take a hard look and identify Canada’s specific security vulnerabilities. Then we need to prioritize and invest. My own short list would include: better protecting our sovereignty in the Arctic, investing more in North American defence through NORAD, dusting off Canadian expertise and credentials in non-proliferation and arms control to reinvigorate weakening international norms in the face of new technologies, bolstering our intelligence capacities and our cyber resilience.
To be able to prioritize, we need to increase security literacy across the federal government, the provinces and the private sector, with regular, integrated threat and risk assessments that look across security, social, environmental and economic sectors. If national security threats can emerge from non-traditional areas like climate change, pandemics or mass migration then our intelligence analysis needs to be able to predict longer-term trends, and our national security architecture needs to be flexible enough to bring in players from all sectors and all levels of government. Here, as with our international policy, I note that Canada has not had a national security policy review since 2006.
Finally, Canada’s response to security threats at home has to be complemented by our foreign policy. And vice versa. There is no single security threat at home that doesn’t have global roots or global solutions. The more we turn inward, the more Canada will be forced to follow others’ lead internationally. And it would be a mistake to default to an American lead – that would not only make us a client state, it would be risky if U.S. leadership or its political stability were to wane.
We’ve carved out our own space in the world before. In the period after the Second World War, we did the work to define our policy goals and make a distinct space for Canada in the international architecture being constructed at the time. Since then we have managed to consistently lead and influence. Canada has significant assets, but is not a major power. We have learned that an approach to international engagement of “walk softly and carry a big stick” does not work for us. Megaphone diplomacy – “walk loudly and carry a small stick” or take too long to deliver on commitments – has limited results and damages credibility. So while, in some instances, Canada’s international strength has been in numbers, more often Canada has made its mark by leading with “Canadian” ideas and effective diplomacy, backed up by action. More than a few examples come to mind: Canadian leadership on the Ottawa landmines treaty; human security; protection of civilians; women, peace and security; our deployments to Kandahar and the Haiti earthquake; our maternal and child mortality initiative; or our battle group in Latvia.
The two years we have spent locked inside our houses and inside our countries dealing with COVID now present us with a window of opportunity. Canada can maintain our long-standing position of influence and leadership. But we have to adapt to this new normal of a world in flux and be ready for strategic surprises. For this, we need to reinvest in our capabilities, people and networks.
Broken chains: Consumers should expect fewer choices on grocery-store shelves in the coming months, industry experts tell the Globe.
The United States began barring unvaccinated truck drivers on Saturday, a week after Canada implemented the same rule intended to slow the spread of COVID-19. Ottawa has also said it will require freight haulers who work domestically to be inoculated against the virus, just as airline and railway employees are, but has not announced a date. Trucking-industry lobby groups say the border requirement will worsen the shortage of available drivers, sending up food prices and slowing deliveries.
Do something: The Conservatives have written to the government demanding it make supply chains more resilient, CBC reports. The CPC letter warns of “shortages of basics like meats, fruits, and vegetables, your government’s policy will undoubtedly cause unnecessary harm and food insecurity,” although an industry spokesman observed that the opposition seemed to be “hyping” the issue. And on Twitter, sharp-eyed observers noted that an image CPC MP Melissa Lantsmantweeted showed empty shelves in the U.K., not Canada.
Freedom! B.C. truckers took to the road Sunday in a “freedom convoy” to Ottawa to protest the vaccine mandate , Global reports. An online fundraising campaign in support of the convoy has raised $2.7 million as of Sunday night. The leader of the fundraiser is a former official with the separatist Wexit party, according to Truck News, which points out there is no way of knowing where that money will end up.
A disapproving view: The Canadian Trucking Alliance, which represents truckers across Canada, has denounced the whole thing, CP reports: “The Canadian Trucking Alliance does not support and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roadways, highways, and bridges. CTA believes such actions – especially those that interfere with public safety – are not how disagreements with government policies should be expressed.”
How does that happen? In the Star on Saturday, Althia Rajnoted that the cross-border mandate was muddied when Ottawa reversed itself on the issue twice as the deadline loomed, which was apparently the result of a bureaucratic error.
Not a fan: Jason Kenney says Steven Guilbeault is an “extremist,” but says his relationship with Justin Trudeau is “professional,” Global reports.
Muddy portents: In Maclean’s, Philippe J. Fournierslices and dices five polls published last week on Ontario vote intentions, and concludes that it is hard to conclude much from them just now, because the results are all over the place.
The Quebec media and Twittersphere were set ablaze last week by a five-point disagreement between polls from Léger and Mainstreet Research: While Léger had Québec solidaire at 14 per cent, Mainstreet measured QS support at 19 per cent, tied with the Quebec Liberals for second place. Mere days later Angus Reid split it down the middle with 16 per cent. I hardly can imagine the reaction a 17-point spread would have created in media and partisan circles.
Broader mandate: Speaking of Quebec, on Sunday night, the government there published a decree requiring that patrons of big box stories show vaccine passports to get in, Radio Canada reports (translation).
Generation gap: In the Star, Chantal Hebert has an interesting column on evolving opinions in Quebec about Bill 21, the law that forced a hijab-wearing teacher from a Chelsea classroom this winter. A majority of Quebecers believes that was the right call, but opinion is shifting.
Legault may want to take note of the fact that for the second time in less than a year, a call to rally around a flag of his choosing has fallen somewhat flat. On the way to the federal polling stations last summer, many Quebec voters ignored his appeal to steer clear of Trudeau’s Liberals. At least some of those who kept their own counsel support the CAQ at the provincial level.
Also, the future of the issue is not clear, because younger voters are less likely to agree with this kind of policy.
While the restrictions imposed on teachers by Bill 21 enjoy the support of three out of four baby-boomers, only one in four among the 18-to-24 age cohort agrees with the measure. After the 1995 referendum, support for sovereignty increasingly exhibited a similar intergenerational gap. A majority of older voters remained committed to achieving the province’s independence but support for the project dropped precipitously among younger voters. The failure of the sovereignty project to thrive among younger Quebecers accounts for the marginal place the Parti Québécois has been relegated to on the political landscape.
New party: In the Post, former La Presse editor André Pratte has an informative column about the rise of a new Conservative party in Quebec, led by former radio poubelle star Éric Duhaime, who might win a few seats in the next election by stealing votes from Legault.
What’s the holdup?Robin Sears, writing in the Star, wants to know why it is taking the government so long to keep its promise to settle Afghan refugees.
It is especially embarrassing that we promised safe havens to 40,000 Afghans and have admitted fewer than 7,000. The United States, who have not outranked us in our welcome for immigrants and refugees for many, many years, have admitted over 10 times as many. At this rate of foot-dragging — fewer than 50 refugees per day — we will be approaching the end of 2023 before we have kept our promise. By then, many of these desperate families will have been tortured and killed. Are we really willing to risk the humiliation and international opprobrium of having their blood on our hands?
He has our backs: Susan Delacourt, writing in the Star, wonders if Justin Trudeau is in a rut because Liberal communications are so stilted. It led to a thought-provoking Twitter thread on the thoroughly stilted world of Canadian political comms.
Travelling again: After a year in which they stayed home, many Canadians are travelling internationally again this year, CBC reports.
Statistics Canada tallied 742,417 Canadian air-passenger arrivals returning home from abroad in December. When adjusted to account for recent changes in tracking air travel, that total is almost six times the number of arrivals for the same month in 2020, and more than half the total for pre-pandemic December 2019. The increase in international travel is likely to continue: there were 216,752 Canadian air-passenger arrivals to Canada during the week of Jan. 3 to Jan. 9, according to the latest data posted by the Canada Border Services Agency.
With the Ontario provincial election campaign expected to be launched this spring, the state of the race between the main parties remains unclear, especially since polls in the latter half of 2021 showed significant disagreement. Lo and behold, there were no fewer than five Ontario polls released last week and, although I often quip that more data means a better understanding of the landscape, last week’s Ontario polls did little to clear the air. In fact, as you will see below, the picture could hardly be any blurrier.
Abacus Data‘s latest numbers show Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party leading its rivals with 37 per cent of voting intentions, a nine-point lead over the Ontario Liberal Party which stands at 28 per cent. The race for second place is a close one with the Ontario NDP at 25 per cent.
EKOS Research Associates‘ newer Ontario numbers mirror those of Abacus, with the PC in the lead with 35 per cent. The NDP and Liberals are in a statistical tie for second place with 27 and 26 per cent, respectively.
Mainstreet Research‘s latest survey for iPolitics measures a closer race between the main parties: 31 per cent for the PC, 28 per cent for the Liberals, 27 per cent for the NDP.
Innovative Research measures a dramatically different landscape: The Ontario Liberals (36 per cent) and PC (35 per cent) are in a tie for first place, while the NDP is a distant third with 22 per cent. It is worth noting however that all publicly released Innovative Ontario polls in 2021 had the Liberals either leading or in a statistical tie for first place.
Opposite to Innovative, the Angus Reid Institute has the Ontario NDP in the lead with 36 per cent (a first in Ontario polling since 2019), with Doug Ford’s PC as a close second with 33 per cent. As for the Liberals, Angus Reid measures their support at only 19 per cent (close to their disastrous result in the 2018 general election), far below what other firms have measured of late.
(As an aside: The Quebec media and Twittersphere were set ablaze last week by a five-point disagreement between polls from Léger and Mainstreet Research: While Léger had Québec solidaire at 14 per cent, Mainstreet measured QS support at 19 per cent, tied with the Quebec Liberals for second place. Mere days later Angus Reid split it down the middle with 16 per cent. I hardly can imagine the reaction a 17-point spread would have created in media and partisan circles.)
What is there to make of such discrepancies in Ontario polling? Here is a comparative graph showing polls results and the adjusted 338Canada weighted average:
[On the graph above, the coloured bars represent the popular vote projection 95% confidence intervals and the dots, the latest poll results (AD: Abacus Data; EK: EKOS; MS: Mainstreet Research; IR: Innovative Research; AR: Angus Reid Institute).]
For the Ontario PC party, polls measure its support between 31 and 37 per cent province-wide, meaning current polling agrees that the PC stands below its 41 per cent result from 2018. While this six-point spread should be considered a modest polling disagreement, our electoral system invariably produces wildly different seat totals within this range of popular support. At 37 per cent (Abacus Data), the PC party would almost assuredly secure a second straight majority at Queen’s Park, whereas with support of 35 per cent or below, the most likely outcome would be a PC plurality—depending how evenly split the non-PC vote would be. This projection has the PC at an average of 35 per cent.
The Ontario Liberals stand at an average of 27 per cent, but, as mentioned above, there is a wild spread between where Innovative (36 per cent) and Angus Reid (19 per cent) estimate Liberal support. Naturally, this dramatically increases the uncertainty of the projection and, consequently, widens considerably the Liberal seat projection probably density. In fact, in the best-case scenario for the Ontario Liberal Party, it edges out Ford’s PC in seat count; in the worst-case scenario, it does barely better than in 2018.
The Ontario NDP also averages 27 per cent support in this projection. However, there once again is a major disagreement between numbers from Innovative (22 per cent) and Angus Reid (36 per cent). Angus Reid’s is the only poll of late that shows Andrea Horwath’s party above its 2018 result.
As for the Green Party of Ontario, the latest polls show its support as stable between 4 and 6 per cent. Its current average stands at 5 per cent provincially.
Here are the adjusted 338Canada seat projections. The Ontario PC party leads with an average of 59 seats, just below the majority threshold of 63 seats. Of note: The PCs are the only party whose upper confidence interval stretches into majority territory. In fact, the PCs win the most seats in 91 per cent of all simulations:
The Ontario Liberals and NDP are in a statistical tie with averages of 34 and 30 seats, respectively. Notice on the graph above how wide the Liberals’ brackets are compared to the NDP’s: this indicates the Liberal Party has a noticeably higher ceiling than the NDP, but also a much lower floor. In fact, by comparing the Liberal and PC seat probability densities, we see that the curves overlap:
… which means the Liberal Party’s seat total could rival the PCs’ with a modest overperformance from the Liberals. However, should the Liberals slip into third place, their seat harvest could easily fall in the low 10s.
As for the NDP, while it has more safe seats than the Liberals (bringing the party’s floor upwards), it is projected as competitive in fewer ridings than the Liberals. In the projection’s upper confidence interval, the NDP wins between 40 to 45 seats. Considering the NDP won 40 seats in the 2018 election, its potential for net gains remains limited according to current data.
Obviously, these seat projections are based on a weighted average of polls, so if either Innovative Research’s or Angus Reid’s numbers are closer to the reality on the field, the seat totals for each party would tilt towards the extremes. Taken alone, Angus Reid’s numbers (NDP +3) would most likely produce a very close result in terms of seats between the PC and NDP, leaving the Ontario Liberals barely at the threshold of official party status. If we take Innovative Research’s latest numbers (Liberals +1), the Liberals could even hope to win a plurality, thus unseating Doug Ford and relegating the NDP to a third party holding the balance of power.
Opinion polling tends to produce greater swings between surveys when public opinion is in flux, especially many months before election day. As the campaign approaches and news cycle tend to focus more on policy and state of the race, we expect numbers to tighten up and converge. We will follow Ontario polling closely in the coming months.
