187 Search Results for wynne

The Post:

Such teenagerish behaviour is not particularly unusual for the veteran watchdog. Indeed, Marin has gotten in a number of public spats on Twitter, which occasionally end with him “blocking” his critics. He once wrongly identified a police officer he believed to be the source of of antagonistic social media comments towards him; more recently, he took to Twitter to criticize Justin Trudeau’s decision to back the Liberal candidacy of former Toronto police chief Bill Blair. Needless to say, this is not the behaviour we expect from the office of Ontario’s ombudsman.

The Globe:

Using his public office as he did was wrong for an officer of parliament. He showed extremely poor judgment when he endorsed snarky comments that compared the Wynne government to a “banana republic” and asked “Who’s more corrupt and needs oversight #FIFA or @Kathleen_Wynne?”…That’s not the kind of sober oversight an ombudsman is supposed to provide. That he is willing to portray himself as “a shining light in a sea of corruption” – another Twitter comment he endorsed – raises valid questions about his impartiality. The job has gone to his head…

Again, if any beleaguered OOO staff want to talk to a reporter they can trust, email ombudsman7777@gmail.com. No names. 

Comments (16)

Some say the material is anti-Semitic and racist. So why is Canada Post distributing it?

The publication is called “Your Ward News.” It has been distributed in Toronto for quite some time, and has always been on the fringes, promoting conspiracy theories and oddball political candidates. But, in recent months, the tabloid newspaper has veered sharply Right, and started promoting material that may offend Canadian hate laws.

Among the highlights contained in recent editions of the newspaper:

• Editorials railing against Jewish postal workers, “ZioMarxists,” “parasites,” and what the paper’s editor calls “the illegitimate Zionist apartheid state of Israel that holocausts Palestinians.”
• Advertisements promoting something called the “New Constitution Party,” whose membership cards feature Nazi salutes, and references to “88” – neo-Nazi code for “HH,” or “Heil Hitler.”
• Articles promoting Holocaust deniers Ernst Zundel, David Irving and Fred Leuchter – and denouncing “mainstream media lackeys” and “cattle” who sought to have Zundel charged with publishing Holocaust-denying propaganda.
• Articles promoting Holocaust denial and written by Gary Schipper, the former voice of the neo-Nazi Heritage Front, who now goes by the false name “Johnny Jensen.”
• A lengthy anti-Israel polemic describing the need for “Israeli Niggers to go home,” how the Jewish state “murders thousands” every year, that Zionists are “ZioFascists” and racists, that Israel forcibly sterilizes non-white immigrant women and practices Nazi-style eugenics – and repeats the old canard that Jews are not “true Biblical Jews,” a theory favoured by neo-Nazis for decades.
• Articles promoting “white nationalism,” skinheads, and the defunct neo-Nazi Heritage Front, in which the author – who describes herself as a “white woman” who favours “white pride” – talks openly about how “white people reserve the right to protest the rape and disfiguration of our country” by non-whites, and calls the New Constitution Party a vehicle for opposing “Racial Marxism.”
• A letters column mocking Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne for her sexual orientation, and attacking “homos” and “queens” – and a related editorial calling Pride “a freak show on parade floats.”
• An advertisement decrying “lies that the ZioMarxist-controlled mainstream media is feeding you about Adolf Hitler” – and calling for Jews to be “deprogrammed from anti-German propaganda.”

And all of that is contained in just one issue of “Your Ward News.”

The publication is controlled by a man calling himself Dr. James Sears. But Sears is not an accredited doctor.

According to court transcripts and records of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Sears has a dark past. He drank while on call as an intern, made “inappropriate” use of drugs, and had “inappropriate behaviour towards female staff members.” While admitted to Ottawa’s National Defence Medical Centre, Sears made ”numerous, random and obsessive telephone calls to women during which he would sometimes masturbate.”

In 1991, the College of Physicians and Surgeons finally suspended Sear’s licence after receiving complaints from female patients. The next year, Sears would plead guilty to two counts of sexual assault and he would be stripped of his medical licence for sexual impropriety.

Along with publishing a newspaper that promotes anti-Semitic and racist themes, Sears also has billed himself as “Dimitri the Lover” – and has claimed he could teach men who attend his “Toronto Real Men” workshops that he can teach them to make women “worship” them.

But the question remains: why is Canada Post distributing his newspaper? Bernie Farber, the former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, is among the many folks asking just that.

“The material in ‘Your Ward News’ is reminiscent of the neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic ravings of the now-defunct racist organization Heritage Front,” said Farber. “It’s frankly shocking that a federal government agency like Canada Post deems it appropriate to deliver this racist screed to Toronto households.”

Indeed it is. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has called the newspaper “hate mail.” But the corporation has merely shrugged, and said: “We do not have the right to refuse a mail item because we or our employees object to its content. The content is the sole responsibility of the publisher, who is clearly identified in the newsletter. Anyone who has concerns about the content should either contact the publisher or simply dispose of it.”

Bullshit. Your Ward News is hate propaganda – and Canada Post will pay a steep price for its indifference.

Comments (11)

It’s almost irrelevant. You can’t be accused of “bribing” someone you have already fired.

Comments (3)

That’s what they called it, in the Watergate days: ratf**king.  No less an authority than Wikipedia defines it as “an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks.”  Donald Segretti, forged letters, false accusations, nasty leaks, that sort of thing: ratf**king.

Which brings us, in a circuitous fashion, to Eve Adams. Justin Trudeau’s inner circle initially sought to justify the floor-crossing of one of the most dutiful members of Stephen Harper’s Talking Points Chorus as this: after a lifetime of unswerving Conservative fealty, she finally figured out that Harper’s guys are “mean-spirited” meanies, and she suddenly wanted to work with people who are nice.  When that didn’t work, they said her “values simply didn’t align” with the Conservative anymore, particularly in respect of income-splitting – a policy she had been enthusiastically touting in the House of Commons a few days earlier.  They tried other rationalizations, too.

None of them worked.  Rank-and file Liberals are livid; the media are gleefully considering comparisons of Justin Trudeau to Stockwell Day.  The long-serving Liberal MPP in her desired riding has said she’d be the Liberal candidate there “over my dead body.”  The long-serving federal Liberal incumbent has said he won’t endorse her.  And so on.  It’s an unadulterated mess.  It’s a fiasco.

Having pumped several rounds of lead into all of their extremities, Trudeau’s inner circle have been reduced to a single, solitary argument to justify Adams-gate: that her fiancé, Dimitri Soudas, is going to give the Liberals all manner of dirt about Stephen Harper and his Conservatives.  He “knows where the bodies are buried,” to use the cliché du jour.

Uh-huh.

There are several problems with the notion that the Adams fiasco is somehow worth it, because her fiancé “knows where the bodies are buried.” Here they are, expressed in questions.

1. Justin Trudeau has promised, repeatedly, that he would do politics differently, that he would not use negative ads, that his Liberals will stick to the high road, blah blah blah.  How, then, does he justify diving into the muck, and doing what he promised he would never ever do? Is it because he is worried that Harper is getting more popular, and Trudeau less so?
2. Having run out of options, it was clearly in Eve and Dimitri’s interests to intimate that they possess all manner of State secrets, hoo boy, watch out, etc.  They had nowhere else to go – of course they’d be attempting to sweeten the pot, whilst holding a pair of twos. But what if what they possess is dated, or irrelevant, or wrong, or unusable? What then?
3. Knowing Pseudas a little bit, as I do, I can attest to the fact he is not suicidal, whatever else he is. He knows very well the sad outcome of myriad notable floor-crossing tales over the years: Jack Horner, David Emerson, Colin Thatcher, Jean Lapierre, Gordon Wilson/Judi Tyabji, Jag Bhaduria, John Nunziata, Anna-Marie Castrilli, Jim Pankiw, Joe Peschisolido, Pat O’Brien, Tim Peterson, Wajid Khan, Danielle Smith, and on and on and on.  Have the Grits considered the advisability of relying on information from a fellow who has nothing left to lose – when they, assuredly, still do?
4. Having run a war room or two over the years, I verily swear the following: this Segretti-style stuff is MAD – mutually-assured destruction.  You may have something on them, but they always (always) have something on you. If the Grits are so desperate as to use Dimitri’s Dirt™, are they not worried that the Conservatives possess, say, unhelpful sworn affidavits about them? Are they not concerned that, having hit below the belt first, they invite a response that is twice as bad, and in the same general area? Believe me: they should be.
5. Scandal stuff doesn’t work.  It just doesn’t.  Voters have heard the media and the political parties scream “scandal” too many times, since Watergate. Until they see someone hauled away in handcuffs and orange overalls, they don’t believe the histrionics – cf. the by-election outcome in Sudbury, Clinton’s stratospheric post-Lewinsky numbers, Harper getting more popular after the Duffy/Wallin/Brazeau scandals, Wynne’s massive win in the midst of various (bogus) OPP investigations.  Scandal stuff doesn’t work.  Why does anyone think Dimitri possesses anything that somehow will?

Anyway.  Apologies for the length of this, but I sometimes feel compelled, like a trained medical professional, to tend to the ravings and madness of political folks who litter the battlefield.  I feel sorry for them.

The Eve Adams thing was a huge mistake, folks.  Don’t make it worse with ratf**king.

Now, here, a video for your viewing pleasure.

Comments (35)

Place your bets! Comments are open!

1. NDP ahead by three points!
2. Liberals ahead by four points!
3. We don’t have a clue who is ahead, but we’re going to use up 804 words to give you the impression we know, when we actually don’t, not in the slightest!

My gut, which I have resolved to listen to more often, tells me that the Libs will win – solely and entirely due to the favourable impression folks have of Kathleen Wynne.

What’s your take? Speculate recklessly, without making recourse to facts! The pollsters certainly do, so why can’t you do likewise?

Comments (15)

Someone using a false name and false email address has tried this morning to make criminal accusations about Kathleen Wynne and Team on this web site’s comments section. I have told that person I will not approve such comments.

Here, again, are the rules. Everyone should abide by them. Thanks.

1. No libel. Having practiced libel law, I am the sole judge of what is and isn’t.

2. Stick to the topic, please. Being wildly off-topic, or getting into a long and boring fight with another commenter, is a good way to be asked not to come back.

3. Don’t overpost. If you are posting more than ten comments a day, you are posting too much. You will be encouraged to start your own web site.

4. Be honest. People who use their real name, with verified email addresses, will get favoured commenter status. People who hide behind aliases and fake email addresses won’t.

5. Bad behaviour will be punished! Similarly, no promise is offered, express or implicit, to keep identities and identifying info secret. If you try to post something very offensive, libellous or worse, expect to be named.

Comments (8)

Harper’s refusal to meet Premier Wynne is probably for the best.

 

Comments (11)

There’s a reason why Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall is consistently ranked as one of the country’s most-popular Premiers.

He knows how to communicate. And he aggressively represents his constituents. He does his job, in effect.

That doesn’t mean he is doing the right thing all the time, however. And it certainly doesn’t mean that Saskatchewan’s interests are identical to the national interest. Or, for that matter, the collective interests of Ontario and Quebec.

Wall, who knows his way around a scrum, is lately in high dudgeon. He is angry – or he is pretending to be – at Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard over the Energy East pipeline.

Speaking to the media a few days ago, Wall said he was “surprised,” “concerned” and “very concerned” about what Wynne and Couillard have said about the $12 billion project, which would carry millions of barrels in Alberta and Saskatchewan crude to refineries in Eastern Canada.

What have Wynne and Couillard said that has whipped up Wall’s wrath? The following:

· Ontario and Quebec have said they’d like to see the pipeline follow environmental best-practices.

· They want some consultation with aboriginal people, over whose land the pipeline will traverse.

· They’d like to see effective emergency response, in case something goes wrong.

· They want some kind of benefit for folks in Ontario and Quebec, and particularly natural gas consumers.

· And…that’s it.

Shocking. Reads like a ransom note, doesn’t it? What’s next? Nationalizing the petroleum industry?

Not quite. Wynne and Couillard are raising eminently-sensible questions about the Energy East pipeline. That’s their job, after all.

That hasn’t stopped Wall from attempting to pick a fight with Ontario and Quebec, however. He has said that Wynne and Couillard are imposing “conditions” – even though they’re not, because they can’t. (Approval for the pipeline falls squarely within federal jurisdiction.)

There is a proud and time-tested tradition, of course, of Canada’s Eastern and the Western parts screaming bloody murder about the arrogance and dominance of the Central part. It results in votes, and sometimes it attracts federal largesse. Sometimes, it’s even right.

In this case, it is not. What Brad Wall is doing is disingenuous, and he knows it.

Take, for instance, Wall’s bunkum about how Western oil is being held to a higher standard than, say, Middle Eastern oil. Wynne and Couillard seem “almost ashamed the country has oil,” Wall huffed.

“Interests in Central Canada” – presumably Wall means the duly-elected representatives of two-thirds of Canada’s population – have “never” raised concerns about imports of “oil from Venezuela, Algeria or Iraq,” Saskatchewan’s Premier claims.

Wall isn’t directly stating that Ontario is getting all of its oil from ISIS enclaves in Iraq, but he probably wouldn’t be upset if Ontario voters were left with that impression.

The reality is that crude oil imports to Canada from afar have significantly decreased. In the first eight months of 2014, in fact, imports from overseas dropped – and less-expensive North American sources now represent about half of all crude oil imports into Canada.

And, when one considers that Ontario ultimately gets 99.7 per cent – that is, just shy of 100 per cent – of its oil from Western Canada, Wall is indulging in the sort of sophistry that assists no one. As the Government of Saskatchewan itself admits on one of its shiny web sites: the amount of Saskatchewan oil that is “shipped to Ontario” is, um, “substantial.” No kidding.

Premier Wall, you are aggressively representing your province’s interests. Fine. You are doing your job. Fine.

But reflect on Alberta Premier Jim Prentice’s approach – he was this week in Ontario to meet with Premier Wynne, and he moved the Energy East pipeline towards approval without indulging in histrionics and petty regionalism.

That’s the best way to represent the people who elected you, Premier Wall: you know, by building the country up, not tearing it down.

Comments (22)

Canada is more than “a confederation of shopping centres,” Pierre Trudeau once said, decrying the narrow agendas of provincial Premiers.

It is more than that. It has to be more than that. In Trudeau’s view – and I believe he expressed it this way, once, but the quote remains elusive – Canada is also more than a grouping of feudal fiefdoms, held together by bribes doled out by the central government.

In constitutional negotiations, in negotiations of transfer payments and the like, Pierre Trudeau was (in)famously dismissive of the petty ambitions of the Premiers. No one could ever accuse the long-serving Prime Minister of being water boy to regional interests. While he wrote books about the perfection of federalism, his was always a federalism with a strong central government beating at the centre.

And whether you approve of Trudeau’s vision of Canada or not, one fact cannot be denied: Pierre Trudeau would meet with the Premiers. He did so a lot.

He may have disagreed with them. He may have castigated them. But he always remembered they were the duly-elected representatives of the people of their home province, and he treated them as such.

Trudeau did not deny the Premiers the respect their office was due. Do you remember, as I do, weekday evenings spent with Knowlton Nash, taking in reports by David Halton and Peter Mansbridge about endless First Ministers’ gatherings in Ottawa’s Conference centre? Footage of Trudeau’s baleful gaze, arms crossed, as he listened to Peter Lougheed or Rene Levesque demand more, ever more?

If pressed, Stephen Harper would likely agree with Pierre Trudeau on one point: provincial Premiers do not ever travel to Ottawa to state that they are doing fine, thank you very much, and that they require no further federal help. They do not seek meetings with Prime Ministers – be they named Trudeau or Harper or Mulroney – to express satisfaction with the status quo.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, in my view, is already establishing herself as one of the finest provincial leaders to emerge in a generation. She is no separatist like Levesque was, or a perennial antagonist like Lougheed. She is a believer in Canada, and the Canadian concept. She does not take cheap shots at Harper simply because he is a Conservative, and she a Liberal.

But Harper is treating the leader of Canada’s largest province with contempt. This was seen vividly – appallingly – this week, when Wynne released a series of letters seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister about issues ranging from pensions to infrastructure.

Harper’s response? Go “work with the responsible federal ministers,” he wrote, quote unquote. You, a Premier, go meet with my underlings.

This is beyond shameful – it is literally contrary to the way Canada works, and Canada’s traditions. When I had the privilege to work for Jean Chretien, I witnessed first-hand Chretien’s approach.

When he was in Ottawa, he would always be in Question Period. When an Opposition leader asked a question, it would be Chretien who would endeavour to answer it. And when he travelled on the wildly-successfully Team Canada missions, Chretien would spend days in close quarters with the Premiers – no bureaucrats, no aides. Just the First Ministers.

“A French Canadian respecting British Parliamentary traditions,” Chretien once said. “Think of it!”

Harper should think about it, too. His refusal to meet with Kathleen Wynne does not merely disrespect the Ontario Premier – it disrespects the 13.6 million people she was chosen to represent. It disrespects our traditions.

Stephen Harper must meet with Kathleen Wynne, full stop. She may not be coming to see him to flatter him, or engage in small talk. But she is a Premier, and she deserves one thing above all else:

Respect.

Comments (38)

Likely voters?

If you are likely to like what likely voters like, then you are likely to be wrong. Get it?

No? That’s alright – nobody else really understands what “likely voters” are, either. But pollsters are pontificating about “likely voters,” yet again, and all of us should be wary.

Case in point: this week, an outfit calling itself Angus Reid Global declared that, among “likely voters,” the Harper Conservatives and Trudeau Liberals are now tied.

Tied.

Said the pollster: “Among those who are likely voters, the Liberals and Conservatives are tied, with both parties earning the support of 33 per cent.”

Really? That’s not what the past year-and-a-half of polls have said. In all but a few cases, in fact, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have been shown to be ahead, or far ahead. Why is it so different with a poll looking at so-called “likely voters”?

In their appended page about methodology, the Angus Reid people said they applied “a weighting structure that further adjusts our sample to reflect known variations in voter turnout – specifically across age groups – while also filtering based on respondents’ own identified reported past voting patterns and habits.”

What does that mean? Who knows. But it, um, likely means the pollster changed the results they got to (a) reflect the fact that older Canadians tend to vote Conservative, and vote more often and (b) reflect the fact that if a Canadian has voted one way in the past, they are likely to do so in the future.

If that sounds, er, like a reasonable way of peering at mountains of polling data, you’re not alone. This writer, and many others, got burned in Ontario’s election, big time, when we started to believe in this “likely voter” category hooey.

Right until election night on June 12, it made sense to us that “likely voters” were the demographic that pundits and politicos need to pay the most attention to – and, as such, the Ontario Liberals and Ontario PCs were therefore tied in voter intention. According to “likely voters,” Ontarians wanted change, and they were prepared to consider Tim Hudak’s PCs as the best vehicle for delivering it.

On election night, however, some of us were over at the Sun News Network, readying to pontificate about the results. Before the polls closed, I ran into pollster David Coletto, and asked him this: “Um, have you pollster guys worked out what this ‘likely voter’ category is, perchance?”

Said David: “No.”

Uh-oh.

The rest is history. The “likely voters” weren’t nearly as “likely” as we’d been told, were they? A (very likeable) Kathleen Wynne and her Ontario Liberal election team won a majority when (a rather dislikable) PC campaign team – a team that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with their 100,000 pink slips craziness.

Do we in the media, and sundry pollsters, learn from past mistakes? Ha! Surely you jest! Here we are, three months and a bit later, and we’re back to believing balderdash and baloney about “likely voters.”
We shouldn’t.

Once bitten, twice shy. Fool me once, yadda yadda.

Just forget about the polls, folks, which get things wrong more than they seem to get things right, these days. Justin Trudeau is ahead, full stop.

That’s what my gut is telling me, and I shouldn’t have ever stopped going with it. Hasn’t failed me yet.

You should do, um, likewise. You’re likely to be closer to the likely outcome.

Comments (67)