Doug Ford.
Before you dismiss the pot-addled hillbilly's ruminations, consider the following facts.
Since his lame-duck showing in the recent election, the knives have been out for Andrew Scheer. There's a leadership review coming up in a few months. Scheer's gone then, if not before.
At the same time, there's a re-branding of Doug's image afoot. His much-anticipated meeting with Justin last week unexpectedly became a virtual love-in. Today he's in the news for spearheading a drive to get more federal health care funding to the provinces.
What a mensch!
What a champion of the people! Look for Doug at a Pride Parade near you anytime now, as the image buffing moves into high gear.
With Scheer out of the way and Trudeau propped up by a shaky coalition, a kinder, gentler Doug Ford would have the wind at his back.
This could prove beneficial to Ontario's teachers, who are battling the Ford government over new collective agreements. Doug's the most far-right Ontario preem since the dark days of Mean Mike Harris. He hates teachers, hates unions, and he especially hates teachers' unions.
The only thing that could trump all that hate is his political ambition!
Showing posts with label Andrew Scheer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Scheer. Show all posts
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Four more years of Fluffy
Or maybe not... coalition governments have a tendency to die a premature death.
I'm guessing that having to coordinate policy with the NDP will put the brakes on Mr. Trudeau's authoritarian tendencies, which would be good for the country but won't sit well with Trudeau. He'll ditch that coalition the moment he thinks he can win a majority.
That would be a mistake. This campaign has elevated the profile of Scheer from non-entity to contender. In fact, he won the popular vote. A credible performance in the months ahead would boost his chances next time round. I'm sure Justin would rather share the power pie with Jag than see Scheer gorf down the whole thing.
Hopefully, we will now tone down our enthusiasm for regime change in Venezuela. Our "leadership" of the Lima Group is an embarrassment to Canada and a stain on her reputation. Although a lot of Liberals share that view, the Trudeau-Freeland team has successfully throttled them. That won't be so easy now that Justin will have to keep at least one eye on his coalition partners, and that's where anti-Lima Group sentiment in parliament has been most frequently voiced.
If I were Jagmeet, I'd make shuffling Chrystia out of Foreign Affairs a precondition for any coalition agreement.
I'm guessing that having to coordinate policy with the NDP will put the brakes on Mr. Trudeau's authoritarian tendencies, which would be good for the country but won't sit well with Trudeau. He'll ditch that coalition the moment he thinks he can win a majority.
That would be a mistake. This campaign has elevated the profile of Scheer from non-entity to contender. In fact, he won the popular vote. A credible performance in the months ahead would boost his chances next time round. I'm sure Justin would rather share the power pie with Jag than see Scheer gorf down the whole thing.
Hopefully, we will now tone down our enthusiasm for regime change in Venezuela. Our "leadership" of the Lima Group is an embarrassment to Canada and a stain on her reputation. Although a lot of Liberals share that view, the Trudeau-Freeland team has successfully throttled them. That won't be so easy now that Justin will have to keep at least one eye on his coalition partners, and that's where anti-Lima Group sentiment in parliament has been most frequently voiced.
If I were Jagmeet, I'd make shuffling Chrystia out of Foreign Affairs a precondition for any coalition agreement.
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Getting tough on China
The Globe and Mail has another editorial on view today castigating PM Fluffy for not "getting tough" on China.
The China-bashing in the pages of the Globe has ramped up significantly since the arrest of Meng Wanzhou at the behest of Washington. China retaliated with the detention of two Canadians, an act of "political hostage-taking," and cancelling contracts for some Canadian agricultural products. The editorial provides a dubious compare-and-contrast between the US and China.
China, we learn, is "an amoral authoritarian prison state that is entirely detached from the rule of law," whereas the US, in spite of Trump, "...largely follows the rules, and it has independent courts where complaints can be heard."
Like I said, dubious. But it gets better; "China... has no compunction about hurting smaller countries that displease it."
Huh? You mean countries like Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Libya? Venezuela?... Oh wait; it wasn't China hurting those countries, was it?
If we were operating in the realm of reality, the Globe and Mail would be forced to concede that the list of smaller countries hurt, if not outright destroyed, by the US, is exponentially longer than the list of counties hurt by China.
Alas, we are not in the realm of reality, we're in propaganda land.
Meng Wanzhou's original sin was that her employer allegedly broke sanctions the US unilaterally imposed on Iran. Rule-of-law America is under the impression that it alone has the right to dictate to other countries who they can and cannot trade with. This is flat out bullying and a breach of international law, but the US gets away with it because everyone can see what happens to smaller countries that displease it, and therefore very few countries dare to defy American dictats.
The argument that Canada had no choice but to arrest Wanzhou is nonsense, and every diplomat and former diplomat and every reasonably well-read Canadian fully gets this. The Trudeau government had any number of options to avoid getting stuck in the middle of a US-China spat. The choice they made had nothing to do with the rule of law, and everything to do with toadying to Trump. That was a poor decision made by an inept government.
Justin's PR team has been very busy clearing the decks of unpleasant facts before the upcoming election. They're still hoping the SNC thing goes away. The Norman prosecution has disappeared. A number of controversial files have been deferred till after the election. Yes, it would be very lovely for the Liberals if the two Michaels could be home by the time we cast our ballots...
Both the Globe and Mail and Andrew Scheer think our best bet to resolve this stand-off is to align ourselves yet more closely with the US.
That will prove an enormously short-sighted and self-defeating strategy in the long term.
The China-bashing in the pages of the Globe has ramped up significantly since the arrest of Meng Wanzhou at the behest of Washington. China retaliated with the detention of two Canadians, an act of "political hostage-taking," and cancelling contracts for some Canadian agricultural products. The editorial provides a dubious compare-and-contrast between the US and China.
China, we learn, is "an amoral authoritarian prison state that is entirely detached from the rule of law," whereas the US, in spite of Trump, "...largely follows the rules, and it has independent courts where complaints can be heard."
Like I said, dubious. But it gets better; "China... has no compunction about hurting smaller countries that displease it."
Huh? You mean countries like Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Libya? Venezuela?... Oh wait; it wasn't China hurting those countries, was it?
If we were operating in the realm of reality, the Globe and Mail would be forced to concede that the list of smaller countries hurt, if not outright destroyed, by the US, is exponentially longer than the list of counties hurt by China.
Alas, we are not in the realm of reality, we're in propaganda land.
Meng Wanzhou's original sin was that her employer allegedly broke sanctions the US unilaterally imposed on Iran. Rule-of-law America is under the impression that it alone has the right to dictate to other countries who they can and cannot trade with. This is flat out bullying and a breach of international law, but the US gets away with it because everyone can see what happens to smaller countries that displease it, and therefore very few countries dare to defy American dictats.
The argument that Canada had no choice but to arrest Wanzhou is nonsense, and every diplomat and former diplomat and every reasonably well-read Canadian fully gets this. The Trudeau government had any number of options to avoid getting stuck in the middle of a US-China spat. The choice they made had nothing to do with the rule of law, and everything to do with toadying to Trump. That was a poor decision made by an inept government.
Justin's PR team has been very busy clearing the decks of unpleasant facts before the upcoming election. They're still hoping the SNC thing goes away. The Norman prosecution has disappeared. A number of controversial files have been deferred till after the election. Yes, it would be very lovely for the Liberals if the two Michaels could be home by the time we cast our ballots...
Both the Globe and Mail and Andrew Scheer think our best bet to resolve this stand-off is to align ourselves yet more closely with the US.
That will prove an enormously short-sighted and self-defeating strategy in the long term.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Fluffy's fried
Watched the Jody Wilson-Raybould hearing from Ottawa for a spell this evening. I think PM Fluffy's days are numbered. JWR exudes a confidence and sincerity that Justin has long lost, especially the sincerity part. Justin's hypocrisy has been exposed for all the land to see. The PM who is all about keeping politics out of the judicial system when he's doing gopher work for Donald Trump (in the Huawei case) has no qualms at all about arm-twisting his Justice minister in the SNC-Lavalin affair.
I think Trudeau should resign. The Liberal Party should have a leadership convention, which JWR could readily win, and then they'd have a chance in October. Otherwise, they're screwed.
And we'd be screwed too, because do you really think things have a snowball's chance in hell of improving under a PM Scheer?
Nope!
Ideally, we'd have a party to the left of the Liberals with a little more appeal than what we see there, but I'm not hopeful.
As for those DPA laws, how is it conceivably a "reason" to have them just because the US and UK have them? Oh, because we need to be "competitive." In the US especially, big corporations routinely get the DPA treatment time and again. It's clearly not a deterrent to corporate malfeasance.
I would suggest it's not intended to be. What it is, is a corporate get-out-of-jail-free card. Not for the company or the shareholders, but for the executives caught dealing dirty. Canada's DPA was sneaked into law in the back pages of last year's budget omnibus bill explicitly for the benefit of SNC. If we were really that concerned about the "rule of law," that should never have happened.
Interesting to look back and see what former SNC Chair Gwyn Morgan had to say when the poop was starting to hit the fan for the company back in 2013. Gwyn had absolutely no idea! I'm guessing he'd be all for the DPA. Gwyn's not a guy who believes in government regulation. We should just cross our fingers and hope the greedbags who cut ethical corners, take integrity shortcuts, and skirt the law somehow develop an honest corporate culture.
Really?
I think Trudeau should resign. The Liberal Party should have a leadership convention, which JWR could readily win, and then they'd have a chance in October. Otherwise, they're screwed.
And we'd be screwed too, because do you really think things have a snowball's chance in hell of improving under a PM Scheer?
Nope!
Ideally, we'd have a party to the left of the Liberals with a little more appeal than what we see there, but I'm not hopeful.
As for those DPA laws, how is it conceivably a "reason" to have them just because the US and UK have them? Oh, because we need to be "competitive." In the US especially, big corporations routinely get the DPA treatment time and again. It's clearly not a deterrent to corporate malfeasance.
I would suggest it's not intended to be. What it is, is a corporate get-out-of-jail-free card. Not for the company or the shareholders, but for the executives caught dealing dirty. Canada's DPA was sneaked into law in the back pages of last year's budget omnibus bill explicitly for the benefit of SNC. If we were really that concerned about the "rule of law," that should never have happened.
Interesting to look back and see what former SNC Chair Gwyn Morgan had to say when the poop was starting to hit the fan for the company back in 2013. Gwyn had absolutely no idea! I'm guessing he'd be all for the DPA. Gwyn's not a guy who believes in government regulation. We should just cross our fingers and hope the greedbags who cut ethical corners, take integrity shortcuts, and skirt the law somehow develop an honest corporate culture.
Really?
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