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The West wants out
The day after the election, two things happened.
Shares in SNC-Lavalin – a company based in Quebec – went up, way up. Up 14 per cent, in a single day.
And Husky Energy – a company based in Alberta – laid off hundreds of people. I don’t know the exact number, but every news report said “hundreds.”
I didn’t find out about it from the media, anyway. I found out from my best friend, who runs an engineering firm in Calgary. He sent me an email.
The message was clear. Trudeau gets re-elected, Quebec wins. Alberta, and the West, loses.
A Quebec-based company – one Trudeau and his PMO arguably obstructed justice to help avoid a corruption prosecution – wins. And a fine Calgary company – one that plays by the rules and even embraced the idea of a carbon tax – loses.
I was born in Montreal, as was my best friend. We grew up together. We, and our families, were always reliably Liberal – even during the NEP. Pierre Trudeau’s energy plan was a huge mistake, but he at least had a philosophical context for what he did. And he had the intellectual faculties to explain himself.
His son, almost 40 years later, basically doesn’t. The son stood at a podium in Ottawa and said he needed to pay extra attention to the West, now. But he talked about the West like it was a foreign country, one he hasn’t visited yet. One he’d like to check out before his AirMiles run out.
Nobody in the West believes him anymore. As Matt Gurney wrote in the Post this morning, Justin Trudeau demonized Alberta and Saskatchewan throughout the election – their leaders, their way of life – and now he expects everyone to forget that, I guess. He surrounds himself with advisors and ministers who heap contempt on the West and Westerners.
And who then clamber into big chauffeured limousines propelled by, you know, Western oil.
I’ve lived in Toronto for more years than I thought I ever would. A couple weeks ago, I decided: I want out. I want out of here.
Westerners, starting Monday night, have started saying the same thing, in a way that they never did during the NEP.
As they watch Husky employees step onto Eighth Avenue, carrying boxes filled with personal belongings and potted plants, SNC-Lavalin investors probably don’t give a sweet damn.
But they will, they will.
Did Doug Ford sink Andrew Scheer?
Elections produce mythologies and stupidities. An example of a stupidity is that opposition research firms – like, say, mine – don’t actually do opposition research.
An example of a mythology is that Trudeau, Scheer, Singh and May won. They didn’t. They all lost what they most wanted: Trudeau, a majority. Scheer, power. Singh, more seats. May, way more seats.
Another mythology that came out of this nasty, brutish and not-nearly-short-enough election: that Doug Ford sank Andrew Scheer. He didn’t.
Now, some nameless nattering nabobs (naturally) have been hissing to reporters that Andrew Scheer would have done better if it wasn’t for Doug Ford, blah blah blah. The problem with that is twofold: one, Doug Ford did what the Scheer people asked of him – he basically disappeared from public view. He kept his head down, to avoid becoming an issue in the federal election.
Ontario’s Premier kept so quiet, in fact, he didn’t even say anything when Scheer’s folks insulted him, and invited Alberta’s Premier to campaign at three dozen events across Ontario. And Doug Ford even kept his cool when the federal Tories okayed the greatest insult of all – they encouraged Jason Kenney to campaign in Doug Ford’s own riding, without giving him a head’s up.
That’s a big no-no. In politics, there are few greater insults than that: stomping through an ally’s turf without approval. But even so: Doug Ford kept quiet, and he kept out of public view. He kept his cool. So, that’s reason number one that the Ford-sank-Scheer-in-Ontario theme is totally bogus.
Second reason? This map. Here’s how Doug Ford did in 2018.
See those swaths of blue? Those are all the places where Doug Ford’s vote was located. Places where Andrew Scheer did not win, and where Doug Ford did.
Ford’s party got less popular in their first year, true. But so did the New Democrats. Only the Ontario Liberals went up. Since the Summer, Ford’s negatives have started to shrink, significantly. His new approach to governing is paying off.
So, those are a couple reasons why the Ford-sank-Scheer claim is a myth: Ford wasn’t around, at all, when Scheer was. And Ford’s historic Ontario strength is precisely in those places where Scheer – as we’ve learned – has none.
Andrew Scheer lost Ontario for lots of reasons, which are being documented by the pundits.
He didn’t lose because of Doug Ford.
Who lost
Well, everyone did, pretty much. This morning, it’s hard not to feel that way.
• Justin Trudeau was supposed to easily win a second majority. He didn’t. Blackface, broken promises and scandal – LavScam and Aga Khan, to name just two – have sullied his name, and reduced him to a minority.
• Andrew Scheer was running against a Liberal leader less popular than Donald Trump – a Liberal leader who was even hit with a massive scandal mid-campaign – and he still couldn’t win. The talking points about popular vote are sophistry – most of that vote came from the prairies, where it didn’t result in enough seats to win. We all knew he wanted to get rid of Trudeau – but we didn’t know what he’d do if he won.
• Jagmeet Singh was supposed to be the Jag-ernaut, the one everyone would turn to. But it didn’t work out that way. He lost Quebec seats and was shut out of places like Toronto, where he needed to win. His response to Trudeau’s blackface scandal was pitch-perfect – but he couldn’t translate that into a big victory.
• Elizabeth May lost, big. After multiple elections, after multiple tries, all she could do is add a single seat. As with Trudeau and Trump, it’s always dangerous to let your political party morph into a single person. She needs to go. And her party wants her to move on, too.
• Maxime Bernier is done, as my friend Brian Topp put it on TV last night. He’s done. And good riddance. Me and my firm were honoured to campaign against Bernier, who made common cause with racists, anti-Semites and white supremacists. His loss, his humiliation, was complete. May we never see his likes again.
• The West, my home, is again relegated to margins, as it was during the reign of Trudeau’s father. Trudeau didn’t seem to care about Alberta’s plight before, and he’ll care even less, now. Anger is rising in the West. There will be consequences.
• Unity, which wasn’t even on the ballot, lost. The separatists are back – visibly, in Quebec, less so in the West (for now) – and they intend to hold the future for ransom. The word “constitution” was used by the Bloc leader last night. Get ready to hear it many more times, in the weeks ahead.
• Canada lost. As in 1980, as with another Trudeau, Canada is deeply, deeply divided – with the West feeling powerless, and the East completely indifferent to that. We often claim to be better than America, but we’re like America, now – a nation divided, a nation moving apart.
Not very sunny ways, I know. And a (typical) overstatement, maybe. There are glimmers of hope in the detritus: Jody Wilson-Raybould’s huge win, Jane Philpott’s extraordinary dignity, the pollsters were finally right, the complete rejection of racist populism. But that’s about all I can see, on this rainy and cold morning.
I’m not sure where all of us are headed.
But it doesn’t feel like many victories await us there.
Statement
It’s been quite a day.
So, a few things.
After a decade or more, I’ve deactivated Twitter and Facebook. I’ve had it. I may be back on social media, I may not. I don’t know.
I’m pulling back from other media, too. My family and my work colleagues don’t deserve what they’ve been going through. One of them even had to change her cell number today, it got so bad. Also, I’m sick. So, enough is enough.
I’m a lawyer; I’m not interested in getting disbarred. As Jody Wilson-Raybould knows too well, lawyers are not permitted to simply break vows of confidentiality. Only the client can let you do that. The client, here, hasn’t.
I’ve been researching, writing about, and opposing racism for more than three decades. Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party are indisputably racist. They are bigots. They have anti-Semitic and homophobic members. If someone wants to join forces with me to beat Bernier, I will always welcome it.
I’m proud to oppose bigots like Bernier, paid or not. And the client who wanted to expose and oppose bigotry? They deserve credit, not criticism.
The work we were doing ended many months ago. It was always going to be disclosed, by law. It was in no way inappropriate or wrong. Opposing organized bigotry is always appropriate and right. We were and are fiercely proud of the work we did.
We hired someone. That person made anti-Semitic, intolerant remarks and stole from our company. We got rid of that person. It doesn’t surprise me, in the slightest, that person would do something that would later assist Bernier’s intolerant political party. It’s what a hater would do.
All the journalists calling and texting: I get it. You have a job to do, and it’s the final weekend. But I’m just not going to respond anymore. So stop trying. Sorry.
Finally: I hold no party membership with anyone. I regard myself as an independent. As a firm, we have worked for every single political party – or candidates running under the banner of every single political party. Every one, except Bernier’s. We don’t help racists.
Any of you who are depicting Maxime Bernier as in any way a victim are assisting a racist. You are helping him. You should stop doing that.
That’s all I’ve got to say. (I had originally kept comments open, below, but I had too many people inviting me to kill myself. So comments are turned off.)
The picture above? It’s of my favourite places on Earth. It’s where you’ll find me.
Thanks.
My latest: Trump trumps Trudeau, and why
Justin Trudeau is less popular than Donald Trump.
Say it aloud, so that those still considering voting for Trudeau can hear you.
Because, you know, Donald Trump. The most sexist, most racist, most dishonest US president is more highly regarded than the Canadian Prime Minister. That’s hard to do, but Justin Trudeau has done it.
As far back as March, Trump was doing better than Trudeau. In that month, Ipsos found Trump’s approval rating was 43 per cent. Trudeau’s was 40.
In August, it got even worse. Zogby Analytics revealed that Trump had an approval rating of 51 per cent. Trudeau was “underwater,” Zogby reported, at 43 per cent.
And Toronto Sun pollster John Wright, of DART, has analyzed the data, and come up with the same conclusion as the others. “Trudeau’s personal approval numbers are below Trump’s,” says Wright. “So more selfies won’t help.”
And therein lies the rub. Wright has put his finger on the zeitgeist: this election isn’t remotely about issues. It’s a referendum on Justin Trudeau. And he’s been losing it.
What went wrong? How is Justin Trudeau – once the darling of international media, the beneficiary of Trudeaumania II, and the guy who propelled his party from a Parliamentary third place to first – now facing what HuffPo’s Althia Raj, no less, has declared the “possibility he won’t be Prime Minister much longer.” How did that happen?
Three reasons. The first: he over-promised and under-delivered.
Trudeau did that a lot. On electoral reform, on balanced budgets, on ethical reform, on being the feminist champion and the Indigenous reconciler: in every case, he promised the Earth but delivered only dust.
Trudeau’s true legacy is seen in the LavScam scandal, where he obliterated his credentials as the ethical paragon and liberator of women and Indigenous peoples. There, he cravenly tried to rescue a Quebec-based Liberal Party donor facing a corruption trial – and, along the way, revealed himself more than willing to brutalize two women, one Indigenous, who bravely stood up for the Rule of Law.
Second reason: he thinks he’s far more charming and entertaining than he actually is.
Some time ago, a member of Trudeau’s insular inner circle told this writer that one of their biggest problems was Trudeau’s unshakeable belief that he is funny. “He thinks he’s a comedian,” said this man. “He isn’t.”
Thus, making blackface his go-to party favour. Thus, his puerile penchant for dress-up, even when it humiliates Canadians, as in the infamous Griswolds-style Indian vacation. Thus, his utterly bizarre penchant for making jokes – remember “peoplekind?” – that aren’t merely jokes. They’re jokes that render him one.
Recently, this writer was told by a very senior Grit that Trudeau referred to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh as “Marge Simpson” – presumably a reference to Singh’s turban. (A Liberal campaign spokesman declined to comment about the allegation; an NDP war room member said they were aware of the “joke.”)
Why, why would Trudeau say such a thing? “Because he thought it was funny,” said this Parliamentarian.
The third and final reason that Justin Trudeau is less popular than Donald Trump is neatly, and expertly, mirrored in the Conservative Party’s shrewd attack ad slogan: “Justin Trudeau. Not as advertised.”
That pithy catchphrase, more than anything else, is why Trudeau is plumbing the polling depths, even more than Trump. Canadians have grown to believe that the former drama teacher is, indeed, just an actor.
Donald Trump, as detestable as he is to so many, is at least truthful about who he is. He doesn’t hide it.
Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, wears blackface to parties.
Because he’s never as comfortable as when he is wearing a mask.
Why I can’t vote for Trudeau
I was Jean Chretien’s special assistant. I helped oversee his war room when he won in 1993 and 2000. I ran for the Liberals in B.C. in 1997.
And I can’t vote Liberal. I won’t. And I don’t think you should either.
Here’s why.
People vote for (or against) politicians for different reasons. In 2015, they voted for Justin Trudeau because he wasn’t Stephen Harper, who they’d grown tired of.
They voted for Trudeau because he was fresh and new and charismatic. Because he had his father’s surname. Because we (me especially) thought he’d be different.
They voted for him because he promised ethical and accountable government. They voted for him because he promised electoral reform, and balanced budgets, and harmonious relations with First Nations and the provinces and the world.
And now, many Canadians are voting against him because he didn’t do any of those things. He did the exact reverse.
He lied about balanced budgets and electoral reform. He didn’t deliver on harmony with other levels of government: First Nations and the provinces, and important international players — like China and the U.S. and India — think he’s a child.
And ethics? That didn’t work out so well, either. He’s the first sitting prime minister to have been found guilty of breaking ethics laws — in the Aga Khan and Lavscam scandals. In the latter case, the RCMP have said they are now reviewing the conduct of Trudeau’s government “carefully.” Some people may go to jail.
But for this writer — who happily voted for Liberal Nate Erskine-Smith in the Toronto Beach riding in 2015 — I can’t vote again for the Trudeau Party, which bears no resemblance to the Liberal Party of John Turner and Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. I can’t vote for it because it isn’t a political party.
It’s a cult.
It bears all the hallmarks of a cult. Slavish and unquestioning devotion to the leader. The willingness to punish and isolate critics and outsiders.
The fundamental belief that they are everything — in Trudeau’s case, that the Liberal Party is Canada, and vice versa. If you are against them, you are literally against Canada. That’s what they think.
Along with running some campaigns (winning and losing), I’ve written books about politics. Along the way, I’ve learned that people vote based on emotion, not reason.
In my case, my reasons for objecting to the Trudeau cult are deeply personal and real. I have written about, and opposed, racism for more than three decades. I am also a proud father of an indigenous girl.
How can I look my daughter in the eye and say I voted Liberal, after what Trudeau did to the female indigenous hero named Jody Wilson-Raybould? After he attacked her and exiled her for telling the truth? For saying no to a group of grasping men? For standing up for the rule of law?
I can’t do that.
How, too, can I vote for a man-boy who donned racist blackface — not once, not twice, but at least three times that we know about — and still say I fight racism? How can I claim to be against bigotry when I legitimize the bigotry of a clueless, overprivileged brat with my vote?
Politicians like to say that elections are about choices, because they are. They also are choices that are highly emotional and highly personal. Emotionally, personally, rationally, I cannot bring myself to vote for this loathsome cult.
And, with the greatest respect, I don’t know how you could either.
KINSELLACAST 83: Punk rock politics! Fight Club! CBC bias! Who to vote for?
CBC vs. CPC: when bias isn’t just perceived anymore
A reasonable apprehension of bias — that’s what we learned to call it in law school.
It’s the legal standard, in Canadian law, for disqualifying a judge or decision-maker in an administrative tribunal.
Bias is prejudice, mostly. It’s an unreasonably hostile feeling or opinion about a person or group. In law, we learned, it can be “real” or “perceived.” That is, it doesn’t have to actually happen right out in the open — the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled it can even happen when a decision-maker “might have” acted unfairly.
That’s when a judge or a decision-maker can be disqualified, and kicked off a case. But is a reporter a decision-maker, in the legal sense?
It’s not a question reserved for legal scholars, hidden away behind stacks of musty old volumes in a law library somewhere. On Friday, it became a question for the rest of us, too.
On Friday, the CBC — along with their newsreader Rosemary Barton, and Parliamentary Bureau reporter Jean-Paul Tasker — sued the Conservative Party of Canada. For real.
Their complaint: on the Internet, the Tories used 17 seconds of CBC video. About the Tories.
As the Conservative Party wrote in a release: “The 17 seconds of CBC clips in the video included (Postmedia columnist) Andrew Coyne highlighting how Justin Trudeau broke the law, Justin Trudeau telling a Canadian war veteran that he is ‘asking for more than we can give right now,’ and one CBC reporter questioning why the Liberals provided Loblaws with $12 million in tax dollars to install new refrigerators.”
When this writer heard about the lawsuit, it sounded like a joke, or an Internet meme. It was farcical.
Now, Conservatives have had a long (and sometimes also unreasonable) dislike for the CBC. Voters who identify themselves as conservative are acutely focused on media bias, particularly as it exists at progressive media organizations like CBC.
A number of Rasmussen polls conducted in the U.S. during the 2012 and 2016 presidential races found that two out of three conservative voters — and sometimes as many as three out of four — felt the media give progressive politicians a much easier time. They believe media bias is real.
So, when Justin Trudeau confidante Gerald Butts was recently photographed alone at an intimate dinner with Huffington Post Ottawa bureau chief Althia Raj — an English leaders’ debate moderator — Conservatives were apoplectic. It showed an inappropriate bias, they said.
Maybe so. Butts, for his part, was doing what politicos always do — he was trying to influence the media. Fine.
Raj, however, was doing something undeniably foolish. She was meeting privately with the most powerful unelected Liberal just before a critical debate, and thereby creating a perception that she would treat the Liberal leader differently.
Because Raj’s commentary has always been characterized by a pro-Trudeau tilt, a perception of bias was not unreasonable. At all.
In the case of the CBC lawsuit against the Conservative Party, however, the bias is not merely perceived. It is real. And it inarguably disqualifies Barton, Tasker and the CBC — all important decision-makers about the information millions of Canadians receive during this election — from broadcasting anything about the Conservative Party.
Truly: how can Andrew Scheer, or any of his candidates, now believe that the CBC will treat them fairly in news coverage? More importantly, how can the CBC’s viewers and listeners now believe that what they are seeing and hearing is free of bias?
After all, how the CBC handles a news story — how it writes it, how it edits it, how it headlines and promotes it — can destroy a political career in short order.
The CBC has said it was the “driver” behind the lawsuit, not the journalists. And it plans to remove the journalists from the lawsuit.
Whether they intended it or not, the CBC and Barton and Tasker have provided clear evidence of an appalling bias. They have shown they are utterly disinterested in being fair.
That lawsuit wasn’t a legal action. Given that the Tories now may win the election, it was a political suicide note.
The rumours about Justin Trudeau
Rumours. It’s more than a Fleetwood Mac album.
Rumours about Justin Trudeau have littered Canadian newsrooms like confetti since the start of this election. Rumours about Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.
As we now know, some of the rumours about the Liberal leader turned out to be true.
So, in 2014, this writer was told there were affidavits detailing inappropriate conduct between Trudeau and various young people. I simply did not believe it, but I raised the allegation directly with Trudeau’s most-senior adviser.
To my surprise, he acknowledged the allegations had been made in affidavits, but said that Trudeau’s insular inner circle were not worried. They had rebutting affidavits of their own to respond.
Subsequently, a female parliamentarian sent me an editorial written by a B.C. reporter in which she alleged that Trudeau had groped her, quote unquote, at a beer festival. While Trudeau said he did not act inappropriately, he apologized, saying “people can experience interactions differently.”
In 2016 and again in 2017, this writer was told by a senior Liberal that photos existed of Trudeau wearing blackface, dating back to his time as a teacher at a private school in Vancouver. The Liberal war room knew about the photos, he said.
Efforts to find any proof, however, were unsuccessful. It did not occur to us to simply check the private school’s year books. I — and others, as it turned out — did not believe Trudeau could be that stupid. To pose for photographers wearing blackface.
But it was true: At the age of 29, while a teacher and in a position of responsibility with children, Trudeau had indeed partied in racist blackface. Turned out he had done it several times, too.
Did the blackface rumour — now the blackface fact — mean that Trudeau was a racist? In no time, several non-white Liberal MPs hustled to microphones to say that, sure, the blackface incidents had happened. But Trudeau wasn’t a closeted drawing-room bigot, they insisted.
And then Omer Aziz, a former Trudeau government aide, authored a scalding op-ed in the Globe and Mail. He wrote about Trudeau and his inner circle, and their attitudes towards minorities: “Condescending attitudes were regularly revealed. Minorities were undermined, ghettoized. The casual disregard of the privileged was systemic. I felt like I could not breathe.” Aziz quit.
Those are just some of the rumours. Some turned out to be true, others are just false, or without a shred of proof. One is presently making the rounds on a fake-news website that has fooled many in the past, this writer included. It should not be taken seriously, in any way.
But those of us privileged to hold positions in the news media, whether we admire Trudeau or not, have an obligation to investigate and report. When the subject-matter is the prime minister of Canada — a man who has repeatedly held himself out as a feminist and anti-racist and a family man — we in the media owe our readers and our listeners the truth.
On a segment on a Toronto radio program this week, and in an opinion piece on Canadaland, this writer was criticized for wondering, in a single tweet, why a Globe and Mail reporter asked Trudeau about why he abruptly left the aforementioned Vancouver private school. My answer: Because it is relevant. Because it is newsworthy. Because it is important.
When the media start acting as an extension of any political party’s war room — when we proactively self-censor — we do our readers and listeners a grave disservice. We work for them, after all.
Rumours may be just rumours. But with Justin Trudeau, as we have seen, oftentimes the rumours turn out to be the truth.