Been without power and phone for a day – so we’re heading back to TeeDot a day early. Got a lot of meat to get into a freezer!

Oh, and all those extreme weather/climate claims? Can’t possibly be true.

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Ekos here.

I don’t really believe the fed Grits are pulling down the Ontario Libs, or vice-versa. There’s a bit of brand overlap, but not enough to effect big shifts.

I believe in the alternation theory: when the federal party is ascendant, the provincial party generally isn’t.

There are three things possibly at work, here. One, polls aren’t so accurate anymore. Two, it’s Summer – folks are disengaged. Three, what was once new (Trudeau, Wynne) isn’t so new anymore.

Your take?

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Here.

Are we right? Are we wrong? Too harsh? Not harsh enough?

Another question: did my own party do or say anything about Pipsqueak’s promotion? I sure didn’t see anything.

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…perhaps. Quote:

“While it’s Duncan’s seat and not her former riding, there’s still a lingering hostility among voters in the city about the way Pupatello was betrayed during the leadership campaign. She’s a star in Canada’s Motown.

The day of the leadership vote, Eric Hoskins and Charles Sousa unexpectedly threw their support behind Wynne when the Pupatello camp believed they had a deal; Windsor isn’t about to forget that slight. They’ll likely sit on their hands and won’t help out candidate Jeewen Gill, the guy who got the nod when Francis refused to take the bait.”

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Landed on a dock chair as Son Two and Son Three and me were trying to figure out how to get cool (there ain’t no AC at the cabin).

Amazing, eh? What a beauty. Unless he’s eating you, that is, in which case he’s a mean looking bastard.

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If I’m not on it, I’ll be fucking pissed off.

Who’s with me?

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That’s been my prediction, and I’m sticking with it.  My friend John is in the one Ontario Liberal byelection contest I feel good about.

This Ottawa Citizen story, here, suggests why that is so.  If you read it, you will see:

• John doesn’t hide the fact that he worked for Dalton McGuinty. At all.
• The deleted email gas plant bullshit didn’t come up once at the doors when the reporter was present.
• Queen’s Park gossip is irrelevant.  All that counts is hard work.

To recap, then: the guy with the best shot at winning is the one who is proud he worked with Dalton McGuinty, who doesn’t lead with his chin by dwelling on faux-scandals, and whose focus is his home, and not the one square kilometre surrounding Queen’s Park?

Interesting, that.

 

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Sometimes, in political life, you get credit for what you do. More commonplace are those occasions where you get none.

Consider, then, Stephen Harper’s newly minted cabinet. Unveiled Monday, the big shuffle brought eight new faces to the cabinet table, many of them women. Considering Harper’s cabinet previously had all the feminist sensibilities of the Mad Men TV series, this was noteworthy.

Among those who were elevated to the big kids’ table were Calgary’s Michelle Rempel, who is one of the most impressive members of this or any Parliament, and Ontario’s Kellie Leitch, who is arguably one of the smartest. Apropos the age, we all found out about Harper’s newfound enthusiasm for gender parity on Twitter, where it was declared the prime minister was “proud to be naming four new strong, capable women” to cabinet.

Welcome to the new century, Mr. Prime Minister! While none of them could be called “new” (they’ve been sitting behind you in the Commons, patiently, for years), they are indeed “women,” and having more women in cabinet can only be a good thing. Men start wars and men commit more crime. So, congratulations.

The other changes you made — with one notable exception — don’t matter so much. As this space has noted previously, cabinet shuffles in the Harper era are irrelevant. All real power resides with the neatly barbered 20-somethings in PMO; the rest of cabinet is mostly there to give the country the illusion that we still have parliamentary democracy.

The one exception to the accolades — the one thing Harper shouldn’t have done, but did — is Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievre. Along with the now-departed Vic Toews, and the yet-to-be departed Dean Del Mastro, Pipsqueak is one of the Conservative Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Like the Biblical Horsemen, everything he says and does is bad. Everything that is good that he touches withers and dies.

Pipsqueak, who Harper actually named minister of state for democratic reform, is in fact one of the most despicable, loathsome politicians to ever grace the national stage. He is a pestilence made flesh.

A refresher: Pipsqueak is the Conservative MP who famously joked about “tar babies” in the House of Commons, a derogatory term to describe blacks. He is the MP who attacked Harper for compensating aboriginal residential schools victims, opining that what those lazy natives needed was “hard work.” He is the MP who told his fellow MPs “f— you guys,” and then later said he would “confiscate” the tape of the occasion.

He is the Conservative MP who can always be counted upon to do the bidding of the adolescents in PMO. He is the MP who even big-C Conservative commentators, like the Ottawa Citizen’s Randy Denley, say is the poster child of “red-necked bigots” in his Nepean-Carleton riding. Ouch.

There is more, much more, but you get the point. Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievre is a disgrace to Parliament. He is a joke. And whatever Harper may have accomplished with his shuffle was unalterably diminished by the promotion of Pipsqueak.

Stephen Harper deserves credit for realizing, very late in his political career, that he had been doing a disservice to the many smart women in his parliamentary caucus.

He deserves no credit at all for letting Pipsqueak into cabinet.

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On the dock with Sons Two and Three, after a fun day of water skiin’, swimmin’ and shootin’ (the legal kind).

I am happy. Wish you were here!

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Cabinet shuffles don’t matter.

Not to Joe and Jane Frontporch, they don’t. To real folks, like Joe and Jane, it’s just Ottawa talking about Ottawa.

To those who stalk the corridors of power on the Hill, peering at their BlackBerrys, nothing could be more important than a cabinet shuffle.

In fact, one CBC reporter opined last week that all the shuffle talk was “exhausting.” (That’s a quote.) Except, um, generally speaking, shuffles aren’t that important.

And, in the specific case of the Harper government, they aren’t important at all.

There are five reasons for this, all of which are (or should be) pretty obvious to denizens of Parliament Hill, even the ones with their gazes locked on their navels.

1. Cabinet shuffles don’t change government fortunes. When a regime is drifting (as the Harper government is) or looking tired and old and near the end of their usefulness (ditto), prime ministers will shuffle their cabinets.

They do it all the time, in the faint hope that it will make them more popular, or at least less unpopular. It’s a strategy that doesn’t work.

Can you picture the aforementioned Joe Frontporch at the kitchen table, hollering: “Jane, we’re going to vote Conservative again, because there’s a new minister of Veteran’s Affairs! Hallelujah!” Sounds crazy, no? That’s because it is.

2. Stephen Harper is the Control-Freak-in-Chief. Never in our history has there been a prime minister so preoccupied with micromanagement and centralization. Never has there been so little delegation as there has been under Harper, who makes Orwell’s Big Brother look like a dope-smoking slacker.

For Harper and his minions in the PMO, ministers are to be controlled, not given control. With the Control-Freak-in-Chief, who is in cabinet – and who isn’t really doesn’t matter.

3. L’etat, c’est lui. Harper isn’t just the head of the federal government, he IS the federal government. For the Conservatives, that’s been the good news: A smart, strategic leader ran the show, and helped them win power in 2006.

But, paradoxically, it’s the bad news, too. There are no viable successors waiting in the wings. And there is no minister strong enough to give cover to Harper when he stumbles, as he has indisputably in l’affaire Duffy. If you can name a dozen of his ministers and their portfolios off the top of your head, you deserve the Order of Canada.

4. A shuffle won’t change the fundamental problem. And Harper’s problem is well known and not even disputed by smart Conservatives: The governing party has lost its way. There’s no raison d’etre anymore.

There’s no mission statement. Nobody in the Conservative caucus remembers why he or she was sent to Ottawa in the first place.

A cabinet shuffle won’t change that problem, it’ll draw it into sharper focus. None of the many youngsters with “P.C.” appended to their surnames will feel powerful enough, or independent enough, to challenge the boss.

So get ready for same old, same old.

5. Nobody will notice. Forests will be felled to print opinion columns about the cosmic significance of the fashion sense of the newly minted minister of Public Safety. But Joe and Jane Frontporch won’t actually read any of those columns (which is one of the reasons broadsheet newspapers are in a spot of trouble, but that’s a lament for another day).

THEY DON’T CARE.

With tragedy striking Lac-Megantic and with flooding in Calgary and Toronto, does Official Ottawa actually believe a cabinet shuffle is even going to be noticed around the water coolers of the nation?

They do, they do. To them, shuffles are a big deal. To Mr. and Mrs. Frontporch, they aren’t. At all.

So, Canada, having trouble sleeping during the long, hot summer of 2013?

Watch some cabinet shuffle coverage. It’ll put you out like a light.

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