, 08.25.2021 10:10 PM

My latest: the stench of death

The stench of death.

That’s the colourful phrase some politicos use — uncharitably, but not inaccurately — to describe a campaign in its death throes.

Justin Trudeau’s campaign? It’s not in the proverbial morgue, yet. But it’s definitely lingering near the Intensive Care Unit.

The Last Rites no longer seem impossible.

How can you tell if a political party’s election campaign is dying?

Well, there’s the big things, like when a Trudeau cabinet minister calls the Taliban — who literally killed 158 Canadians — “our brothers.”

You know, the Taliban: the actual terrorist organization that subjugates, enslaves and rapes women.

Trudeau’s minister for “women and gender equality,” Maryam Monsef, called them “our brothers” yesterday.

She did that.

For the Trudeau Liberals, that represented a really, really bad day on the campaign trail.

Whatever else they wanted to announce was blown up by Monsef’s outrageous, disgusting statement.

But that’s kind of how the Trudeau campaign has gone, this time. Something has gone wrong every single day. To wit:

• Pre-election: On August 12, Theresa Tam announced Canada was in a 4th wave of the pandemic. Trudeau went ahead with the election call anyway.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8107100/fourth-wave-covid-19-canada-dr-theresa-tam/  

• August 15: Trudeau calls election just  as Kabul falls to the Taliban. Any other Prime Minister would’ve waited. Not Trudeau: he wants his majority, and to Hell with the consequences.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/trudeau-announces-withdrawal-of-canadian-diplomats-from-afghanistan/2021/08/15/9f2cdad5-f648-44a0-823d-db35d0276dc0_video.html 

• August 16: Trudeau and Global Affairs minister Marc Garneau refuses to say if Canada will recognize the Taliban as a government.  Wouldn’t that have been the, um, brotherly thing to do?
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-otoole-wont-recognize-taliban-government-trudeau-says-lets-wait-and-see 

• August 16: The federal Public Service Union opposes Trudeau’s vaccine mandate for federal employees. Trudeau can’t say if or how it would be enforced.  Oops.
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/corbella-trudeau-falls-into-his-own-forced-vaccination-trap-that-he-set-for-otoole 

• August 18: Maryam “Taliban Brothers” Monsef posts a Twitter thread accusing O’Toole of being anti-abortion. He isn’t.  But the Trudeau campaign won’t ever let the facts get in the way of the daily smear. Onward and downward.
https://twitter.com/MaryamMonsef/status/1428121957308981249?s=20  

• August 19: Tweets surface of a star Liberal candidate from Calgary telling Albertans to “Fit in or f— off.”  Albertans look ready to return the favour.
https://twitter.com/MariekeWalsh/status/1428526176549625856?s=20 

• August 19: Trudeau says he doesn’t think about monetary policy – just as StatsCan reports 3.7% inflation in July.
https://financialpost.com/news/election-2021/trudeau-puts-families-ahead-of-monetary-policy-on-priority-list  

• August 20: Canada evacuates 198 people from Afghanistan — while the Americans evacuate 823 on the same kind of plane. Canadian officials fret about seatbelts. Seriously.
https://twitter.com/MercedesGlobal/status/1428750432533368842?s=20  

• August 20: A photo circulates of the Liberal plane in front of “Air Elite” sign. Life imitates art, etc.
https://twitter.com/MVLibertas/status/1428645354048733185?s=20 

• August 20: Trudeau blames Afghan refugees for being unable to get to the Kabul airport. That’s right: he blames The very people he had previously promised to help.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rupa-subramanya-trudeau-blames-afghans-for-not-getting-to-the-airport-fast-enough https://www.youtube.com/embed/u9SBTcejXNA?embed_config={%27relatedChannels%27:%20[],%27autonav%27:true}&autoplay=0&playsinline=1&enablejsapi=1

• August 21: Trudeau does not campaign. A grateful nation rests.
https://twitter.com/AndrewLawton/status/1428883990757380100?s=20 

• August 21: Trudeau minister Mary Ng releases a letter asking O’Toole if he will prohibit his caucus from proposing legislation which bans mandatory vaccinations — when Trudeau himself said for months that he was against mandating vaccinations.
https://twitter.com/mary_ng/status/1429118478192087049?s=20  

• August 22: Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland releases a video of O’Toole  which Twitter says has been manipulated.  Like they used to do for Donald Trump.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/twitter-labels-freeland-tweet-manipulated-media-1.6149734  

• August 22: Video emerges of the aforementioned Freeland at campaign headquarters looking decidedly un-Deputy Prime Ministerial about the fictionalized Conservative healthcare plan.
https://twitter.com/JIMrichards1010/status/1429541022732886021?s=20 

• Same day, August 22: Mr. Health Care, Justin Trudeau, won’t say if he’ll match O’Toole’s healthcare transfers to the provinces.
https://twitter.com/glen_mcgregor/status/1429557179560992777?s=20  

• August 24: Trudeau threatens a clawback of Saskatchewan health transfers – despite the fact that Quebec has the very same health care approach as Saskatchewan.
https://twitter.com/punditclass/status/1430197147303956482?s=20 

• August 25: The Liberal candidate for Vancouver Granville is found to have engaged in speculative home buying – a day after a big Trudeau announcement…against speculative home buying.
https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/08/25/vancouver-liberal-flipping-homes/

Which brings us to Wednesday, the day the Trudeau government declared that the Taliban terrorist organization were “our brothers.“

Is the Trudeau campaign dead? Not yet, but based upon all available evidence, rumours of its impending death are not exaggerated.

— Warren Kinsella was chair of the federal Liberal war room in 1993 and 2000

57 Comments

  1. A. Voter says:

    It still looks like a Liberal minority. The NDP/Green split will give them some wins and the Conservative/PPC split will give them some wins. Something dramatic has to happen for a death blow, one pollster has Liberals rising over health care concerns.

    • Phil in London says:

      Nanos headline yesterday suggests the liberal fortunes are rising over health care concerns, if that t is happening they are not scaring people from voting Conservative but showing the extent of NDP leaners willing to abandon hope.

      If the tide is changing to a liberal win to defeat the Conservatives over a hidden agenda farce that has gone on for three decades, well it is the NDP (I would bold and highlight those three letters if I could) that are the more morally bankrupt party.

      If you would rather abandon your party for the liberals as opposed to work to move liberal support to your tent, you were in 2019 and are now accountable for a black faced mysoginist spoiled brat racist winning.

      I would take the NDP in opposition any day to hold a minority conservative government in check than a liberal one. They have conveniently obliged his black faced scandal by insisting on more for this or that. As if racism should be taxed as opposed to eradicated. Principals of integrity similarly abandoned during WE and SNC the list goes on.

      The “leader” of the liberal party is the poster boy for the spoiled and entitled rich white guy that the NDP allegedly stands opposed to. If their support bleeds red this time there really is a rigged election system against the Conservatives. I am stunned that 40-50% of the electorate could be that stupid. I hope they aren’t

    • Phil in London says:

      the announcement that would give Mr Singh the next orange wave is one on electoral reform;

      1) We will NOT support a corrupt government that has not delivered on it’s promises. We will work to defeat this type of government from day one.

      2) We will work with a conservative minority if we are in a position to use our seat count to hold them to account on matters important to progressive voters.

      3) We will work to defeat the conservatives if they fail to deliver.

      Time for the NDP to recognize the barrier to power for them is the liberal dynasty they have propped up for decades.

      The Laurentianites would be gobsmacked once their uncontrollable sobbing fades.

    • Pedant says:

      Yesterday’s Nanos 36 Lib to 33 Con poll you referred to is now back to 34/34 apiece according to today’s data.

      Looks like it was a one-day blip.

  2. Sean says:

    Monsef had a golden, tailor made opportunity to show the world why her oddball appointment to cabinet was valid. Like a ball waiting on a tee for her at the driving range. This is an issue that she could relate to very easily and could have used it to edify Canadians.

    And… she promptly flushed the entire national campaign right down the toilet….exactly where it belongs.

    She can’t figure out “up” from “down”. “Left” from “right”. “Night” vs “day”.

    Elections were created to solve problems like Maryam Monsef.

    Sept. 20th couldn’t come to soon.

    • Phil in London says:

      This is not a anti-woman or anti-minority rant, this is an anti-incompetence rant. Surely regardless of when and in what context someone utters such stupidity they would be escorted out of their cabinet seat, stripped of the nomination and encouraged to run for the PPC

      Competent minority women get crushed for refusing the gropenfuhrer’s request to lie to save jobs in his riding.

      Incompetence is rewarded whether you are white or a person of colour, whether you are male or female as long as you can lie for the master.

      To play this cultural excuse horseshit excuse is to suggest we are all too bigoted to understand how things work in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Remember we were all accused racists if we wanted to seal our border to flights from Asia, as this pandemic unfolded.

      Damn it, this person (I think I am using the political correct term) should fucking know better than to utter that phrase. If this person doesn’t know better, is that the cream of the crop for liberals and voters?

  3. Gilbert says:

    When Justin Trudeau took a Saturday off in the middle of the election campaign, it looked really bad. It just reinforced the perception that he’s not very hard-working.

    When Tom Mulcair reported that the Liberal Party was asking candidates for great ideas, it simply made them look disorganized and unprepared. Maybe the Liberals were overconfident at the start of this campaign. I don’t think they are now.

  4. Peter Williams says:

    Hey Justin, we’re in the fourth wave of a pandemic, and your public health agency has stopped issuing COVID briefings to the media?

    • Phil in London says:

      Peter, don’t you understand? Now is the perfect time to vote for a clueless leader with an ego. Just vote liberal – the pandemic will fade and the Taliban will convert to western values, children will dance in the street because of the trudeau vision that any dufus with a family name can ascend to the top.

  5. Shawn says:

    Trudeaus campaign may be dead but the Canadian people are just as dead in the head which as why a low caliber person like Trudeau can even be elected by a low caliber population.

  6. PJH says:

    Where’s a “rainmaker” when you need one?……Im rather enjoying JT’s floating dumpster fire o’ a campaign….

  7. Keith Richmond says:

    But who will benefit? Singh? O’ Toole?

    The late Rafe Mair was found of pointing out that, to win in politics, you only had to be a 3 out of 10 as long as you can make everyone else look like a 2.

  8. Joe Calgary says:

    Still 3.5 weeks to go, and I’ll be biting my nails the whole way down the pipe. Sometimes I wish I was a brain dead monkey who couldn’t care aless about politics. It’s so damn consuming. There is a basic reality here, O’Toole cannot win through a minority senario unless he’s like 3 maybe 4 seats away from a majority. In that situation its likely the Bloc will prop him up despite an attempt by the NDP and Liberals to form government. If they can’t beat his total seat count he will be PM in that senario, but if they are even 1 seat ahead between the two parties O’Toole will not be PM. I don’t see Jagmet Singh propping the Tories up… It is just to counter to what they’ve done and professed in the past, and I think it would ruin him politically inside his own party. Nope, if O’Toole is to be PM, it’s got to be a majority win. Regardless, I don’t think that is going to happen, and I’m damn disapointed in Trudeau for calling an election when there was ZERO reason to. “Parliment is disfunctional and the Tories are obstructionist.” I fail to see how the commons is disfuntional when Trudeau just wracked up the largest single year deficit in the history of the nation, essentially spending what would normally be 2 years worth of finance in the space of a year, and not a twitch of denial from the other parties. Just like his daddy, spend spend spend, no thought for the future. Hope O’Toole isn’t like Mulroney, who took Pierre’s deficits and doubled them up. The one thing that is truly clear is that none of them understand that there is only one Taxpayer, and you can only hit the taxpayer for so long before they crumble as well.

    • Joe,

      They didn’t tar and feather Jack when he indirectly propped up Harper.

      • Joe Calgary says:

        Singh isn’t Jack, and that was another time and place. Singh has said he would consider working with the Tories, which is more than he could say with Sheer, but I won’t believe it until I see it, and remembering that the NDP and Lib’s have already been down this road I can see it happenning all over again. If O’Toole gets a minority government it won’t last a year unless the Lib’s and NDP are broke, then it will last as long as it takes to refill the war chests.

        • Joe,

          A rhetorical question: would you give any $ to a Trudeau-led Liberal Party after it went down spectacularly in flames?

          • Joe Calgary says:

            It would be rhetorical to me… A Tory. To the “Trudeau mania” fans like my 82 year old mother who votes for Justin because he’s “cute”, it would be a non-starter question.

        • Vancouverois says:

          Where has Singh said that he would consider working with the Tories?

          That’s certainly the narrative that the Liberals are desperately trying to push right now, relying on their usual shameless fearmongering to dupe NDP voters into supporting them instead – but as far as I know it’s a completely made-up idea that comes from a recent article by David Akin.

          The article itself was obvious clickbait. It tried to say that because Singh hasn’t repeated his promise never to work with the Tories (which he made in February), that maybe he was sorta kinda possibly open to it. However, it definitely did NOT quote Singh as saying he was open to any such thing.

          Has he actually said otherwise? If so, I didn’t see it.

          (Also: Hi, Ronald! Miss me? )

          • Joe Calgary says:

            I can’t remember the specific article, but it was last week when O’Toole started slipping past the traps the Liberals laid. I think Singh is basically a decent guy, but working with the Tories would be a major line crossing event to most dippers.

    • Douglas W says:

      It was high interest rates on the debt that hurt Mulroney.

      It was not government spending.

      • Joe Calgary says:

        Sure, you can blame high interest rates on Mulroney’s spending, just like you can blame his wife for brillant appointments to the Privy Council, like her hair dresser. Brian Mulroney was not a great PM, and he spent big bucks too. Chretien and Martin reined all that in, and I don’t say that lightly as I am not a fan of either.

        • Doug says:

          Not a Mulroney fan, but he did sell the country on free trade. No one else likely could have pulled that off at that point in time. Free trade is the most significant political innocation in Canada’s history as it provides the most effective check on government over-reach.

          • Joe Calgary says:

            That one I’ll give you, but I think Chretien and Martin would have wheeled out something similiar in the long run. We were naturally progressing towards Free trade anyways. Now if we could just get freedom of movement and employment through, that’s one to vote for.

        • Joe,

          Must have been one hell of a hair stylist. Damn, he forgot about me. After all, I was so nice in the 80s when I questioned both of them in New Brunswick. LOL.

        • PJH says:

          Chretien and Martin reigned all of that in, I agree….but the impetus was provided by Refoooorm’s Preston Manning who made Canadians wake up to the fact that we were spending ourselves into penury…..I despised the Refoorm Party, but I have to give Preston his due…..

    • Sean says:

      If Justin loses, the Liberal Party will expeditiously move to Leadership contest mode.

      There will be zero tolerance for a come back or third chances.

      If Libs don’t have the most seats, the NDP won’t prop them up without cabinet posts. Same as the 2008 coalition mayhem.

      O’Toole will govern with a similar mandate that Harper had in 2006.

      • Douglas W says:

        Who do the Libs, have waiting in the wings?

        They’re not going to defer to Freeland.
        Carney has no interest in being an Opposition leader.

        They’re stuck with the Dauphin.

        • Douglas,

          Generally, a future politician’s interest is based on a polling barometer. That’s why they are usually intensely flexible on the timing of the big splash.

        • Vancouverois says:

          There’s still Marc Garneau. He’s still the first Canadian in space!

          What’s Martha Hall Findlay up to these days?

          Who knows -maybe Bob Rae is up for one last kick at the can?

          It’s all predicated on the Dauphin losing, though. Which at this point seems not impossible – but by no means guaranteed, either.

          • Vancouverois,

            As you know I supported Garneau for leader in my previous political incarnation that spanned ten years. Marc is a straight up guy, very nice and without a God complex but he’s damaged himself for the future by not taking Trudeau on when necessary, you know, the way Stock used to do it around the cabinet table. In other words, he’s permanently burned himself re: a future leadership run. Anyway, it’s not my impression that it still interests him anymore either.

          • Now MHF would be an interesting choice. She’s not even remotely associated with the TrudeauDisasterTM. She would be at least formidable and we would have to be at the top of our game if she was leader.

            As for Rae, trop vieux jeu. But basically Carney’s already got it in the bag, if he still wants it, that is. I think he still does.

          • And what I wouldn’t give to hear Michael’s comments about a hypothetical Rae leadership run. Something tells me they would speak at least volumes.

  9. Pedant says:

    So, Trudeau in his desperation is now proposing a special TFSA for people under 40 saving for a down payment on a home (first-time buyers only). It will operate like an RRSP in that inputs will be tax deductible and withdrawals tax free. Essentially, taxpayers will be gifting young homeowners a down payment.

    Some comments on this policy:

    1) How is this fair to people who choose to rent and invest the difference? What do they get? Anything?

    2) How is this fair to immigrants who have been saving for a down payment and now find themselves on the wrong side of 40 and unable to use this financial vehicle?

    3) Wouldn’t it be unconstitutional to restrict this to people under 40?

    4) Didn’t Trudeau say (falsely) in 2015 that TFSAs are only good for rich people? What changed? This seems even more a gift to the rich since Boomer parents with sufficient means will be only too happy to give Junior $40K to stuff into one of these accounts.

    • Pedant,

      Typical Trudeau. The good news is that he actually put in as much thinking on this as he generally does on anything else! Oh, wait a minute.

      • david ray says:

        Hey Warren. I drop by every once in a while to catch up on what you’re up and all I ever see is this O’Dowd guy posting the same talking points over and over. Is there some way of blocking this jackoff.
        Now if it’s you using a nom de plume, fine but if not wtf.

  10. Robert White says:

    Liberals follow a typical cycle of death not unlike the Greek cycle of life & death in so far as they start out with an Acropolis via their tent, and then it somehow becomes a life of its own via the Metropolis only to fail in the end as a Necropolis of death & stench ridden rhetoric that belongs under the bus wheels.

    I hope the Liberals regret being Liberals this election.

    P.S. Ottawa talk radio is very excited today given the polling that indicates a horse race is indeed what we are getting here. Conservatives are polling higher than the Liberals.
    RW

  11. Joe,

    I know, why don’t we just ask Himself to let all of us know how much federal taxes he paid last year? Guess he pays no Quebec income taxes since he lives in Ottawa, so at least there’s that he can be happy about.

    • Joe Calgary says:

      He hasn’t really got a lot of money… I’m guessing his old lady has more dough than he does. After 6 years of kissing ass though, I’m sure his next job pays north of $500K per year.

  12. MY GOD. How I hope that Broadhurst isn’t in any way near this “campaign”.

  13. Shane says:

    Must be incredibly interesting times at traditionally pro-Liberal media outlets like the Toronto Star and the CBC. How do you cover this many missteps with a pro-Trudeau slant, and still maintain any scrap of journalistic integrity?

    • Joe Calgary says:

      I know right! It’s awesome seeing negative headlines and negative columnists beating Justin over and over again. Take his sunny ways and shove them where Patty put the shilling. The arrogant prick walked straight into this, and I’m hoping he gets the drubbing he and his party so richly deserve. Honestly though, I’m having a bit of trouble parsing O’Toole from the Libs. I guess it’s a case of “Go along to get along”.

      • Joe,

        O’Toole may not be everyone’s cup of tea, either as a Conservative or Conservative-leaning voter but hey, if he can kick this Prime Minister to the curb, by all means, lets have at it.

        • Robert White says:

          I fully agree with this statement.

          O’Toole is a better bet than Trudeau by far.

          Trudeau is toast like Trump.

          RW

    • Shane,

      That’s what mind-altering substances and drugs were created for. Hope they keep a lot of air freshener in the old newsroom.

  14. Joe Calgary says:

    Nanos
    Ekos
    Mainstreet

    All have the Tories up… I’m having a bit of a hard time with Mainstreets Ontario numbers though.

  15. Vancouverois says:

    Exactly, which is why the Liberals and their friends are trying so hard to push this narrative – even though it’s based on nothing.

    It sounds like you may indeed be referring to the Akin article I mentioned, and I can promise you there was nothing in there about Singh saying “well, maybe we can work with the Tories” or anything at all along those lines. Some people just seem desperate to spin his responses that way.

    https://globalnews.ca/news/8140954/analysis-jagmeet-singh-wouldnt-back-scheer-but-he-could-back-otoole/

    Other than the response you can see in the video – where he doesn’t rule it out categorically, but does say that he can’t see them working together – he’s simply said what every NDP leader before him has said:

    “I’m running to be Prime Minister.”

  16. For the few who don’t already know, those of us who support the CPC on this website feel an obligation to help nail it down. And so we will continue until election night. That’s democracy in action.

    (Thanks Warren for allowing us to post comments here.)

  17. Yet Another Calgarian says:

    Guess this explains the Taliban are our Brothers comment.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/taliban-leverage-canada-1.6157430

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