BCL noticed that Mark Steyn hasn’t been around for quite some time, and started asking around.

As I recall, there had been some indication, some months ago, that the U.S.-based writer was facing some health challenges in his family. I fired off a note to him at the time, offering best wishes, etc.  I didn’t get a reply, but I hope that whatever challenges he was facing at a personal level have been resolved.

Oh, and just to be clear, I still disagree with just about everything he says, particularly the Islamaphobia.

 

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Higher drug prices, among other things.

…this column is a look back at the battle of 2010 for the hearts and minds of voters on a controversial government proposal — and the corporate interests that tried to counter it: The generic drugs law brought in by the Liberals just over a year ago aimed to curb excessively high bills for medicine in Ontario pharmacies — and sparked an unprecedented campaign-style conflict. The lessons learned will be studied by both the Tories and Liberals in the coming campaign.

When the chain drug stores and independent pharmacists banded together for a no-holds barred fight against the government, they went to Crestview Strategies Inc., a consulting firm well known for its focus on opinion research — and opinion change.

Crestview’s founder, Mark Spiro, is now the campaign manager for the provincial Tories. A Crestview partner, Chad Rogers, is the PCs’ volunteer campaign secretary overseeing research, messaging and advertising. Neither would agree to be interviewed for this column, citing their corporate policy that prevents them from confirming or discussing any work they do for clients.

Further glimpses into that firm’s approach, and the Ontario PC’s priorities, here and here:  “Rothmans also hired Crestview Public Affairs, a lobby company founded in 2004 by Mark Spiro, a Conservative insider and former campaign manager for Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak.  Around the time the health minister told her provincial counterparts she was quashing the new labelling initiative, Crestview Public Affairs made a flurry of new registrations on tobacco-related topics.”

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What would Tommy Douglas do?

The Saskatchewan socialist icon was, among other things, the founding father of the movement that would ultimately become the NDP. Prior to his death in 1986, the Baptist preacher — and former leader of both the NDP and its predecessor, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation — was a giant on the Canadian political landscape.

He was also a socialist, and no big fan of Liberals. So what would the prairie Goliath make of his part’s doings in Vancouver over the weekend?

You may have heard: At their confab in B.C., hundreds of the party faithful surprised everyone — me, included — by doing the unexpected. Instead of passing a resolution removing the word “socialist” from the preamble to the NDP’s constitution, they let it stand. And, most surprising of all, the NDP declined to reject future discussions about a merger with the Liberal Party of Canada, too.

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For a speedy recovery and a happy return home.

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His threats are bollocks, his proposed reforms are bollocks, the Senate itself is bollocks.

Bollocks.

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Firmly ensconced in Stornoway for the next four years, delighted by the many perks that come with official opposition status, Jack and his orangey crew are pinching themselves. They don’t want to do anything that will send them back to the perdition of Rump Party status. These are the best jobs they’ve ever had, after all. So, they are tossing out whatever it is they once believed — and as one Liberal friend memorably put it to me — “they are trying to depict themselves as the Liberal Party in drag.”

As a federal Liberal — and as someone who had the privilege to toil for the winningest-ever prime minister, Jean Chretien — I have some free advice for my not-so-new, not-so-democratic friends getting together in gloomy, post-playoff Vancouver this weekend.

Here’s the advice: When you start getting rid of the stuff that makes you what you are, people stop voting for you. It’s simple: They don’t know what you stand for anymore and neither do you.

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Just got this one over the transom. I take it some people weren’t impressed with Hudak’s Game Seven intermission at-tax ads. How…interesting.

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This has been circulating today at the convention in Vancouver. A pity this wasn’t in circulation in Outremont during the federal election – but it’ll now be a question for Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath to answer, I expect. What a huge disappointment she (and they) have been.

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H/T Jane Daly.

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Tonight, Hudak ran a ham-fisted attack ad during the final Canucks-Bruins game (and let’s not talk about “the game,” okay?).  So someone sent me this in response. Looks like they did it some time ago, but I tend to think the criticism it contains – that Hudak’s in it for himself, not the taxpayer – will carry a bit more of a sting than the piece of sophomoric garbage he’s paying to put on-air.

It’s going to be an interesting campaign.

UPDATE: Best observation, from one of my fave sports columnists: “7 min.: Two things are now certain — Vancouver is going to have to do this 5-on-5; and Ontario Tory boss Tim Hudak’s big Game 7 TV ad splurge is wasted on the inebriated half of the audience and annoying the sober remainder.”

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