Calling all cyber-detectives: your Ontario political mission, if you choose to accept it

— 03.23.2017 10:09 AM

It could be disgruntled Liberals, sure. It could be a certain ambitious cabinet minister, aided and abetted by a lobby firm and trade association he is connected to. It could be Tories or Dippers trying to cause dissent and trouble. It could be some shadowy lobby group trying to exert pressure to achieve some policy goal. It could be average folks, too – but those people wouldn’t likely be hiding their identities, I don’t think. They’d say who they are.

One thing is certain: this effort is pretty slick and there is money behind it. They’re using Nationbuilder, for example, and Nationbuilder ain’t cheap. It isn’t nothing.

I’ve got some of the smartest, web-savvy readers around. Who wants to dive into this, and try and find out who the sneaks are who are behind it?  Let’s out them, for fun!


Comments (19)

This makes me sad

— 03.23.2017 07:14 AM

It perhaps explains Donald Trump, Kellie Leitch et al. It also can’t be dismissed as a methodological error – the question(s) were very straightforward. 

Mostly, however, it makes me sad. We have a long way to go. 


Comments (38)

The part of the budget that suggests to me that this isn’t the full budget

— 03.22.2017 05:41 PM

From the Globe:

Despite calls from the United States for Canada to increase its contributions to international military efforts, there is no increase in defence spending in the 2017 budget. In fact, the Department of National Defence is reallocating $8.48-billion that it expected to spend on capital projects, such as planes, ships, trucks and large infrastructure, before 2036 to future years when it will be used to purchase fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft and new light-armoured vehicles.

That’s quite a stark contrast from the military-industrial complex fiscal orgy that the Unpresident kicked off a few days ago with his “budget.”  From the Times:

President Trump put both political parties on notice Monday that he intends to slash spending on many of the federal government’s most politically sensitive programs — relating to education, the environment, science and poverty — to protect the economic security of retirees and to shift billions more to the armed forces.

The proposal to increase military spending by $54 billion and cut nonmilitary programs by the same amount was unveiled by White House officials as they prepared the president’s plans for next year’s federal budget.

No increase in spending up here, $54 billion down there. Given that Agent Orange has threatened to kill NATO to save it – given that he has said (perhaps appropriately) that all NATO countries need to pull their weight – I don’t see how Canada’s 2017 budget can possibly be the last word on defence.

Unless we want to enrage the lunatic to the South, we will need to spend more. I think that today’s Parliament-hallway noises about some sort of a long-term defence spending plan mean that Messrs. Trudeau and Moreau plan to do just that: spend more on guns and tanks and fighter jets and whatnot.  Why be Neville-Chamberlain-like with the Unpresident for two months, and then abruptly piss it all away in a single budget?  Makes no sense.

Trump will eventually win what he wants from Canada, even if it didn’t seem that way today.

Oh, and Obama wanted it too, folks.


Comments (9)

A Sorbara story

— 03.22.2017 09:28 AM

Greg Sorbara was on Steve Paikin’s The Agenda last night on TVO.  I was at Strombo’s place watching Against Me! play in Strombo’s living room, so I missed Steve’s show.  But I certainly heard about it afterwards.

On Paikin’s much-watched program, Greg Sorbara did to Kathleen Wynne in 2017 what he did to Jean Chretien in 2002: he went out onto the public airwaves and called for the resignation of a sitting, elected, majority party leader.  One he had previously supported.

Federally, we all know how that genius strategy turned out, don’t we?  In the case of my former boss, Martinet thuggery persuaded him to stay way longer than he’d planned.  His unctuous successor blew the Liberal Party of Canada to bits, and was thereafter relegated to a historical footnote.  Take that, mutineers.  Put that in your pipe, Greg.

So, anyway: Greg is at it again, 15 years later.  You will perhaps understand why I’ve never been a fan.

Oh, and this, too. It’s an anecdote: way back in 2009 or so, I got a call one day.  It was from a friend who worked, at a quite senior level, for Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara.

“Um, the Minister would like you to stop being critical of his friend Bob Rae on your web site,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” I said.

She was very, very uncomfortable, and said so.  “I didn’t want to make this call,” she said.  “I said it was a bad idea.”

“It was,” I said to my friend. “Nobody tells me what to write, ever. You tell the Minister to go to Hell, okay?”

I let the Premier and a few others know what had happened, and it didn’t happen again.   Greg Sorbara kept away from me, and eventually left provincial politics.

On The Agenda last night, Greg was back to his old tricks.  He supported Jean Chretien, then cheerfully played the role of Brutus.  He supported Kathleen Wynne, and is reprising the Brutus role.

I don’t know for sure who Greg Sorbara is trying to help out with all this crap.  But I’ll tell you one thing.

It isn’t helping that Minister, or the Ontario Liberal Party, at all.

 

 

 


Comments (7)