Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I voted Liberal in the last election.

The Liberal candidate in our riding, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, made it easy. Serious, impressive young guy, great C.V. Had a big red sign on our front lawn touting him, the minute the writ was dropped. Easy choice.

Standing in the voting booth at a local school on Election Day, a stub of pencil hovering over a slip of paper, however, I hesitated a bit. I thought back over the preceding months.

Justin Trudeau’s verbal flubs, which his own staff had admitted to me were a problem. The preoccupation with marijuana to the seeming exclusion of anything else. Letting imported terrorists keep acquired Canadian citizenship, even after they were convicted of killing someone. The selfies. Eve Adams. Not-so-open nominations. And so on. There had been not a few things to make one think twice, perhaps, about voting Liberal.

But the big one, for me, was the promise to pull out of the coalition fighting ISIS. That one, for me – along with several million other Canadians, for quite a while – had me wondering how to vote. When veteran Liberal MP Irwin Cotler abstained on his party’s ISIS position in the House of Commons, I knew: Trudeau had made a big, big mistake. The polls reflected it.

The Vatican had called ISIS the authors of genocide. The United Nations had provided proof they were engaged in genocide. ISIS had revealed itself to be a well-funded, well-organized genocidal cult – a malignant force unlike any that we had seen in our lifetimes. They were not going away, either. Beheadings, crucifixions, mass rapes, enslavements, torture, and – don’t forget – the actual murder of actual Canadian citizens. ISIS was doing all of those things, sometimes on YouTube, so everyone could see it. There was proof. It was real.

Equally real, equally true, was this: the Liberal Party of Canada sent Canadian forces into battle to fight fascism in World War II. To stop genocide, in Bosnia. To contain terror, in Afghanistan. It was Liberal governments who made those difficult decisions.

Liberals rightly opposed the war in Iraq in 2003 because that American-led effort lacked evidence of weapons of mass destruction. It lacked United Nations support. In 2015, however, the United Nations had clearly documented horrors carried out by ISIS – including the murder and enslavement of children. How – I and many others wondered – how could Justin Trudeau be unmoved by all that?

Well, he wasn’t.

For quite some time, I had agreed with Trudeau on one important criticism: Stephen Harper’s contribution to the war against ISIS was a bit of a farce. Six fighter jets? That is all? Harper’s soaring anti-ISIS rhetoric did not even remotely match what he was doing on the ground in Iraq and Syria. He was not doing nearly enough.

Trudeau initially gave us all the impression that he felt Harper was doing too much, true. But it turns out it was a head fake. When it came time for the newly-minted Liberal Prime Minister to make a decision of his own, at or about the 100-day mark of his administration, here is what he decided: he didn’t pull Canada out. He actually committed us to an even greater role in the just and proper fight against ISIS. More, not less.

He is tripling – tripling – the number of Canadian special forces, on the ground, training Kurdish forces. He is sending Canadian troops into nations other than Iraq. He is spending millions more on counter-terrorism measures. It was a change that was “riskier overall,” said Canada’s Chief of Defence staff. And, from our Minister of Defence: “There’s no mistake about it, we are in a conflict zone.”

The reaction of our allies? Barack Obama, David Cameron and the Pentagon all rushed to applaud it. The White House even issued a statement: “The President welcomed Canada’s current and new contributions to Coalition efforts and highlighted Canada’s leadership in the Coalition.”

Sound like Trudeau is cutting and running to you? Me, neither. If anything, he’s more fully committed to the fight against the enemy than Harper was.

Moral of the story? There may have indeed been reasons not to vote Liberal in 2015.

But Justin Trudeau’s apparent reluctance to take the fight to ISIS was not one of them.

 

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Those were the days. 

  

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PS: Stephen Harper also said it, July 1, 2006.

  

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It’s written about at length in today’s New York Times Magazine (go buy it, don’t go online to get it for free). Brilliantly. 

But here’s the greatest practitioner of division candidly telling George Stephanopoulos about his intended strategy, months ago:

“I’m being divisive right now because I want to win.” – Donald Trump

I know it doesn’t always work – cf., Stephen Harper’s barbaric practices hotline, Tim Hudak’s anti-foreigners ads, ad nauseum – I know. 

But it’s working these days more than it used to, isn’t it?

Yep. 

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You like? May be too subtle.

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Remembered it’s been a year – time flies, eh? As you may recall, I wrote the open letter thing below, and it attracted about 300 comments. Sun News attracted strong reactions.

Looking at it, there was thing I was right about: media – print and otherwise – continue to die off at a rapid pace. Whether a media voice is right wing or left wing, they’re all in trouble.

**

Dear Sun News folks:

I was on Twitter, past midnight, reading some of the things people were saying about the network’s demise. There was a lot of gloating and awful stuff being said.

I slept for four hours, then got up to watch the network disappear. They showed a promo for Pat Bolland’s show, and then that was it. The screen in my bedroom went black at exactly 5 a.m. I stared at it for a while, and tried to formulate what I wanted to say.

It’s not you who I want to say it to, former Sun News Network folks. It’s to those people on Twitter, last night and this morning, the ones who were gleefully celebrating the end of Sun News.

They’re celebrating, I guess, because they disagreed with the opinions that were found on Sun News. They didn’t like conservative opinions being broadcast, so they think it’s funny that 200 people have lost their jobs. I find that completely insane, for two reasons.

Firstly, folks, I disagreed with those conservatives, too. Plenty. On sex ed, on CBC, on abortion, on niqabs, on social programs, on climate change, on Islam, on gay marriage, on Liberals and liberals, on just about anything you can imagine: I would regularly appear on Sun News Network to argue with those conservatives, face-to-face, on-camera. I would argue, aggressively, against the conservative point of view.

And, over almost four years, a funny thing happened: they kept inviting me back. They asked me to come on much more than my day job would permit, in fact. And they were professional and courteous and fair to me. Only once did they try and shut me down – here – but multiple Sun folks called me afterwards to apologize, and to say that it would never happen again. It didn’t.

That’s the first thing: if you disagree with someone’s opinion, debate them. Present evidence. Argue with facts. Be passionate. Because that’s what Sun News Network gave me an opportunity to do, over and over, for four years.

Here’s the second thing: in case you haven’t noticed, our traditional news media are dying.

There are all kinds of reasons for that: the Internet, Google and Facebook and Craigslist, bad business decisions, whatever. We can debate the causes ad nauseum. But the fact is that the media, as we knew it, is disappearing.

Bloggers and social media mavens will celebrate the mainstream media’s demise, too. But they shouldn’t. Because bloggers and tweeters don’t generate actual news – they just comment on it. They offer opinions on someone else’s work. Someone else’s journalism.

When that journalism disappears, mark my words: our democracy will be diminished, and possibly even in peril. I’m not exaggerating. There is nothing that keeps the powerful in check – not Question Period, not a public opinion poll, not even the police – as effectively as journalists do. I’ve worked on both sides, and I know, I’ve seen it: every time a newspaper dies – every time a TV network dies – the powerful grow more so. You may think that’s okay, but I sure don’t. They are not always benign in the way they exercise power.

Anyway. Those are the two things I wanted to say, this bitterly-cold Friday the Thirteenth: if you disagree with someone, debate them. Don’t let out a cheer when they lose their job, and their ability to pay the rent and feed their kids. Because one day, in this economy, you’re probably going to lose your job, too. And it would be pretty shitty for someone to find that funny, on that day, wouldn’t it?

Remember this, too: every news reporter – every news editor, every news producer, every news technician – is a crucial part of a flourishing democracy. And when we lose them, our democracy loses. The Sun News Network ones, too.

And I guess there’s a third thing I wanted to say: Kory – and Matt and Dennis and others – put together an actual national news network, and they had some good folks there. I may have vociferously disagreed with the opinions they expressed – and you may have, too – but I am so, so sorry that they have lost their jobs, at 5 a.m. this morning. I will miss many of them.

So, don’t celebrate them losing their jobs. Don’t be indifferent to the effect it will have on our democracy. Because if you do, you’re just being an asshole.

Anyway. Back to work. I’m lucky to still have a job – and if you’ve got one, you should be, too.

Sincerely,

– See more at: http://warrenkinsella.com/2015/02/dear-sun-news-network-folks/#sthash.ATpWmMvY.71bFH0sk.dpuf

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Canada is us, the people. Canada is not governments. Stop saying "Canada is back." We, Canada, never left. #cdnpoli

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) February 12, 2016

UPDATE: Oh, and guess who said it first, on July 1, 2006? That’s right: one Stephen Joseph Harper.

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