Tag Archive: NDP

My latest: sad Trudeau

Is Justin Trudeau sad?

He sure looks sad. He looks positively dejected, in fact.

In his few public appearances since the election, Trudeau has radiated none of the boyish charm that was the signature of his first term in office. Gone are the selfies, the costumes, and the maddening preoccupation with social media.

In their place: a grown-up Prime Minister, kind of.

The beard, the flecks of grey, the downcast eyes: all of it combines to give the Liberal leader the gravitas that he has lacked for far too long. He may be ineffably sad, but the sadness sits well on him.

Plenty of folks have similarly been struck by how changed Trudeau now seems to be. And – ironically, and whatever is the cause – that it has matured Trudeau.

It may sound a bit like Kremlinology, but it can’t be denied that Justin Trudeau is different, now. Even his detractors say so.

One of his biographers, the CBC’s Aaron Wherry, has observed that Trudeau is showing more introspection, and more humility, than ever before. He seems “less youthful,” declared The Economist.

“Humble,” agreed someone at the Toronto Star. “Sombre,” they said. Even card-carrying Trudeau critic Rex Murphy has acknowledged it: “There has been a change in his manner since the election.”

Now, it’s not as if Trudeau lacks justification. Raging wildfires in Australia, dozens of Canadians killed by Iranian missiles, crippling weather, an impeached and distracted president, climate change and economic uncertainty, a coronavirus global emergency: 2020, the experts agree, has deeply sucked, and it is only days old. There is little about which any Prime Minister can celebrate.

But there’s something else at work here – something that is not easily attributable to 2020’s bleak headlines. More than current events explains the change in Justin James Pierre Trudeau, PC, QC.

The conservative rageaholics tweet wild speculation about Trudeau’s personal life. All of it is fair game, to them. And all of it is is mean and lacking in proof.

The answer, like so many things in politics, may be hiding in plain view. It’s not a mystery.

Justin Trudeau is downcast – humble, sombre, older, changed, and all of the things the commentariat say he is – because he lost the election.

Because, you know, he sort of did. Everyone, including his opponents – particularly the Tories, who selected Andrew Scheer because they thought he’d be a reasonable placeholder leader, until someone better came along – believed Trudeau was preordained a second Parliamentary majority. It was his birthright.

And he didn’t get one.

Blackface, LavScam, Aga Klan, GropeGate, deficits, the Griswolds Go To India: all of it came together to bring Justin Trudeau down Earth. And at the worst possible time, too. An election.

It can’t be denied, of course, that Scheer and his campaign manager ran one of the worst election efforts in recent memory. Jagmeet Singh lost half his caucus. Elizabeth May could only add a single, solitary seat to what she had.

Trudeau did poorly in the 2019 federal general election, bien sur. But he knows he is only Prime Minister because his adversaries did a lot worse.

So, he’s sad. He looks humbled. He’s seemingly older.

Canadians like it. An Abacus poll conducted a few days ago concluded that “a clear majority see him doing an acceptable or better job.” His party is more popular than it was, and Trudeau’s negatives – while still a bigger number than his positives – are shrinking.

We don’t know why you’re so sad, Justin Trudeau.

But we’re kind of happy about it


A seven-hour caucus meeting creates seven big problems

The Conservative caucus met on Parliament Hill yesterday.  Watching them from afar, it recalled a big therapy session.  But without a therapist in charge.

It went for seven hours, reportedly.  That’s a long caucus meeting.  At the end of those seven hours, seven big problems remain.

  1. They did not dump Andrew Scheer, but nor did they embrace him.  They opted for the worst of both worlds: a weakened leader who many of them blame for their loss, but a weakened leader they decided to keep around.  Make sense to you?  Me neither.
  2. The Andrew Scheer-related problems cannot be fixed, because they are in his DNA.  If you believe, as I do, that his social conservative views killed him in urban and near-urban centres – and with women, in particular – you will also agree he needs to change those views.  But he can’t, because he won’t.  It’s who he is.  A volte-face now on abortion, equal marriage, etc., would only look cynical and dishonest.  And, when you consider that Andrew Scheer was also felled by that hoary old chestnut,  “hidden agenda” (American citizenship, resumé exaggeration, etc.) – a personal-belief reversal would only add to the “hidden agenda” narrative.
  3. They think all of their problems can be solved with a leadership change.  Um, no. In my limited experience, you don’t win (or lose) in politics for a single reason – it’s always a bunch of reasons.  So, too, the CPC: it wasn’t just their leader who failed – so too did their platform, so did their lack of a compelling single message, so did their GOTV and voter ID efforts. Also, star candidates: did they have even one?
  4. They lack an alternative.  With the notable exception of the Trudeau Liberal Party, which bears all the hallmarks of a cult, the Liberal Party of Canada has always had viable leadership alternatives.  When I had the honour and privilege of working for Jean Chretien, we had ambitious ministers (Messrs. Manley, Tobin, Rock, et al.) who kept their ambitions within reasonable limits – and, yes, one who didn’t (M. Martin).  But we had alternatives.  The Conservatives presently have many suitable leadership alternatives, but none who want to be the alternative.  Not good.
  5. They’re fighting in public again.  The Tories only win when they are united (ditto all political parties).  They win when they have strong, strategic leaders who expertly control caucus and the membership, like Messrs. Mulroney and Harper.  They lose when they don’t.  Their history – as suggested in the above cartoon – is one of fratricide, discord, and civil wars.  Which permits Liberals to say: “If they can’t manage their own affairs, how can they manage the affairs of a country?”  As they will.
  6. They gave Trudeau back what he lost.  With the exception of the separatists, everyone lost in the 2019 Canadian federal election: Justin Trudeau lost his majority; Andrew Scheer lost an election; Jagmeet Singh lost Quebec and half his caucus; Elizabeth May lost credibility when – after no shortage of boastful balance-of-power claims by Elizabeth May – she could only add a single Parliamentary seat.  But the Tories’ leadership sturm und drang has given Trudeau back what he lost – a majority in all but name.  There won’t be an election anytime soon.
  7. They’re bleeding.  They are going to lose fundraising support.  They are going to lose grassroots support.  They are going to lose an opportunity to capitalize on Justin Trudeau’s problems – because he’s got problems aplenty, too.  They are, instead, just bleeding all over the place, looking leaderless, luckless and clueless.  And it is going to go on for months.

A seven-hour caucus!

And, at the end of it, they’re in worse shape than they were at the start of it.


Breaking news: opposition research firm does opposition research

From CBC, earlier today:

On his Kinsellacast podcast, an unapologetic Kinsella said the campaign to spotlight racists who attached themselves to the fledgling party was not supposed to extend into the period covered by election spending rules. 

“Our efforts would strictly adhere to Canadian election law and cease all operations on June 29,” he said. 

He also said Daisy Group’s work was “subject to full public disclosure. It would all be disclosed.”

Nor would the client be exempt from criticism, Kinsella said.

“We would reserve the right to vigorously criticize the client itself, publicly and in the media, if the client’s own members were found to be espousing racism,” he said, adding that there were times when he criticized the client in the media…

In his podcast, Kinsella defended Daisy Group’s work to undermine Bernier’s party, saying its work over the years to fight racism and white supremacy has set it aside from other companies that do similar communications and opposition research work.

“Daisy Group staff have worked for, or with, every single mainstream political party or their candidates to research, expose and oppose racist elements. Those have included the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party, the Green Party and the now-defunct Progressive Conservative and Reform parties,” he said. 

Kinsella said years ago he helped Stephen Harper, prior to his time with the Conservatives, root out and expel Heritage Front members from the Reform Party.

Kinsella said he has not worked with Bernier’s party because of some of the people it has attracted.

“He has attracted the support and involvement of myriad racists, anti-Semites and bigots,” said Kinsella.

Among those who signed registration papers for the People’s Party were members of the Soldiers of Odin and other white supremacist, anti-immigration groups, Kinsella said.

Kinsella said Daisy was approached because of its reputation. “Daisy fights racism and hate. That’s what we do. That’s why we were approached to assist in exposing and opposing racist elements within the ranks of the People’s Party.”

Kinsella said Daisy Group felt it was important for Canadians to know more about the People’s Party and who it was attracting.

“We had been going after racists in other parties too, but Bernier had more than all the others put together.”

Kinsella said he has no regrets about waging the campaign against Bernier’s party.

“Will I apologize for opposing racism and homophobia and anti-Semitism and misogyny? No. Never. Will I apologize for opposing extremists and haters in Bernier’s People’s Party? No. Never.”


My latest: Trump trumps Trudeau, and why

Justin Trudeau is less popular than Donald Trump.

Say it aloud, so that those still considering voting for Trudeau can hear you.

Because, you know, Donald Trump. The most sexist, most racist, most dishonest US president is more highly regarded than the Canadian Prime Minister. That’s hard to do, but Justin Trudeau has done it.

As far back as March, Trump was doing better than Trudeau. In that month, Ipsos found Trump’s approval rating was 43 per cent. Trudeau’s was 40.

In August, it got even worse. Zogby Analytics revealed that Trump had an approval rating of 51 per cent. Trudeau was “underwater,” Zogby reported, at 43 per cent.

And Toronto Sun pollster John Wright, of DART, has analyzed the data, and come up with the same conclusion as the others. “Trudeau’s personal approval numbers are below Trump’s,” says Wright. “So more selfies won’t help.”

And therein lies the rub. Wright has put his finger on the zeitgeist: this election isn’t remotely about issues. It’s a referendum on Justin Trudeau. And he’s been losing it.

What went wrong? How is Justin Trudeau – once the darling of international media, the beneficiary of Trudeaumania II, and the guy who propelled his party from a Parliamentary third place to first – now facing what HuffPo’s Althia Raj, no less, has declared the “possibility he won’t be Prime Minister much longer.” How did that happen?

Three reasons. The first: he over-promised and under-delivered.

Trudeau did that a lot. On electoral reform, on balanced budgets, on ethical reform, on being the feminist champion and the Indigenous reconciler: in every case, he promised the Earth but delivered only dust.

Trudeau’s true legacy is seen in the LavScam scandal, where he obliterated his credentials as the ethical paragon and liberator of women and Indigenous peoples. There, he cravenly tried to rescue a Quebec-based Liberal Party donor facing a corruption trial – and, along the way, revealed himself more than willing to brutalize two women, one Indigenous, who bravely stood up for the Rule of Law.

Second reason: he thinks he’s far more charming and entertaining than he actually is.

Some time ago, a member of Trudeau’s insular inner circle told this writer that one of their biggest problems was Trudeau’s unshakeable belief that he is funny. “He thinks he’s a comedian,” said this man. “He isn’t.”

Thus, making blackface his go-to party favour. Thus, his puerile penchant for dress-up, even when it humiliates Canadians, as in the infamous Griswolds-style Indian vacation. Thus, his utterly bizarre penchant for making jokes – remember “peoplekind?” – that aren’t merely jokes. They’re jokes that render him one.

Recently, this writer was told by a very senior Grit that Trudeau referred to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh as “Marge Simpson” – presumably a reference to Singh’s turban. (A Liberal campaign spokesman declined to comment about the allegation; an NDP war room member said they were aware of the “joke.”)

Why, why would Trudeau say such a thing? “Because he thought it was funny,” said this Parliamentarian.

The third and final reason that Justin Trudeau is less popular than Donald Trump is neatly, and expertly, mirrored in the Conservative Party’s shrewd attack ad slogan: “Justin Trudeau. Not as advertised.”

That pithy catchphrase, more than anything else, is why Trudeau is plumbing the polling depths, even more than Trump. Canadians have grown to believe that the former drama teacher is, indeed, just an actor.

Donald Trump, as detestable as he is to so many, is at least truthful about who he is. He doesn’t hide it.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, wears blackface to parties.

Because he’s never as comfortable as when he is wearing a mask.


Why I can’t vote for Trudeau

I was Jean Chretien’s special assistant. I helped oversee his war room when he won in 1993 and 2000. I ran for the Liberals in B.C. in 1997.

And I can’t vote Liberal. I won’t. And I don’t think you should either.

Here’s why.

People vote for (or against) politicians for different reasons. In 2015, they voted for Justin Trudeau because he wasn’t Stephen Harper, who they’d grown tired of.

They voted for Trudeau because he was fresh and new and charismatic. Because he had his father’s surname. Because we (me especially) thought he’d be different.

They voted for him because he promised ethical and accountable government. They voted for him because he promised electoral reform, and balanced budgets, and harmonious relations with First Nations and the provinces and the world.

And now, many Canadians are voting against him because he didn’t do any of those things. He did the exact reverse.

He lied about balanced budgets and electoral reform. He didn’t deliver on harmony with other levels of government: First Nations and the provinces, and important international players — like China and the U.S. and India — think he’s a child.

And ethics? That didn’t work out so well, either. He’s the first sitting prime minister to have been found guilty of breaking ethics laws — in the Aga Khan and Lavscam scandals. In the latter case, the RCMP have said they are now reviewing the conduct of Trudeau’s government “carefully.” Some people may go to jail.

But for this writer — who happily voted for Liberal Nate Erskine-Smith in the Toronto Beach riding in 2015 — I can’t vote again for the Trudeau Party, which bears no resemblance to the Liberal Party of John Turner and Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. I can’t vote for it because it isn’t a political party.

It’s a cult.

It bears all the hallmarks of a cult. Slavish and unquestioning devotion to the leader. The willingness to punish and isolate critics and outsiders.

The fundamental belief that they are everything — in Trudeau’s case, that the Liberal Party is Canada, and vice versa. If you are against them, you are literally against Canada. That’s what they think.

Along with running some campaigns (winning and losing), I’ve written books about politics. Along the way, I’ve learned that people vote based on emotion, not reason.

In my case, my reasons for objecting to the Trudeau cult are deeply personal and real. I have written about, and opposed, racism for more than three decades. I am also a proud father of an indigenous girl.

How can I look my daughter in the eye and say I voted Liberal, after what Trudeau did to the female indigenous hero named Jody Wilson-Raybould? After he attacked her and exiled her for telling the truth? For saying no to a group of grasping men? For standing up for the rule of law?

I can’t do that.

How, too, can I vote for a man-boy who donned racist blackface — not once, not twice, but at least three times that we know about — and still say I fight racism? How can I claim to be against bigotry when I legitimize the bigotry of a clueless, overprivileged brat with my vote?

Politicians like to say that elections are about choices, because they are. They also are choices that are highly emotional and highly personal. Emotionally, personally, rationally, I cannot bring myself to vote for this loathsome cult.

And, with the greatest respect, I don’t know how you could either.


CBC vs. CPC: when bias isn’t just perceived anymore

A reasonable apprehension of bias — that’s what we learned to call it in law school.

It’s the legal standard, in Canadian law, for disqualifying a judge or decision-maker in an administrative tribunal.

Bias is prejudice, mostly. It’s an unreasonably hostile feeling or opinion about a person or group. In law, we learned, it can be “real” or “perceived.” That is, it doesn’t have to actually happen right out in the open — the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled it can even happen when a decision-maker “might have” acted unfairly.

That’s when a judge or a decision-maker can be disqualified, and kicked off a case. But is a reporter a decision-maker, in the legal sense?

It’s not a question reserved for legal scholars, hidden away behind stacks of musty old volumes in a law library somewhere. On Friday, it became a question for the rest of us, too.

On Friday, the CBC — along with their newsreader Rosemary Barton, and Parliamentary Bureau reporter Jean-Paul Tasker — sued the Conservative Party of Canada. For real.

Their complaint: on the Internet, the Tories used 17 seconds of CBC video. About the Tories.

As the Conservative Party wrote in a release: “The 17 seconds of CBC clips in the video included (Postmedia columnist) Andrew Coyne highlighting how Justin Trudeau broke the law, Justin Trudeau telling a Canadian war veteran that he is ‘asking for more than we can give right now,’ and one CBC reporter questioning why the Liberals provided Loblaws with $12 million in tax dollars to install new refrigerators.”

When this writer heard about the lawsuit, it sounded like a joke, or an Internet meme. It was farcical.

Now, Conservatives have had a long (and sometimes also unreasonable) dislike for the CBC. Voters who identify themselves as conservative are acutely focused on media bias, particularly as it exists at progressive media organizations like CBC.

A number of Rasmussen polls conducted in the U.S. during the 2012 and 2016 presidential races found that two out of three conservative voters — and sometimes as many as three out of four — felt the media give progressive politicians a much easier time. They believe media bias is real.

So, when Justin Trudeau confidante Gerald Butts was recently photographed alone at an intimate dinner with Huffington Post Ottawa bureau chief Althia Raj — an English leaders’ debate moderator — Conservatives were apoplectic. It showed an inappropriate bias, they said.

Maybe so. Butts, for his part, was doing what politicos always do — he was trying to influence the media. Fine.

Raj, however, was doing something undeniably foolish. She was meeting privately with the most powerful unelected Liberal just before a critical debate, and thereby creating a perception that she would treat the Liberal leader differently.

Because Raj’s commentary has always been characterized by a pro-Trudeau tilt, a perception of bias was not unreasonable. At all.

In the case of the CBC lawsuit against the Conservative Party, however, the bias is not merely perceived. It is real. And it inarguably disqualifies Barton, Tasker and the CBC — all important decision-makers about the information millions of Canadians receive during this election — from broadcasting anything about the Conservative Party.

Truly: how can Andrew Scheer, or any of his candidates, now believe that the CBC will treat them fairly in news coverage? More importantly, how can the CBC’s viewers and listeners now believe that what they are seeing and hearing is free of bias?

After all, how the CBC handles a news story — how it writes it, how it edits it, how it headlines and promotes it — can destroy a political career in short order.

The CBC has said it was the “driver” behind the lawsuit, not the journalists. And it plans to remove the journalists from the lawsuit.

Whether they intended it or not, the CBC and Barton and Tasker have provided clear evidence of an appalling bias. They have shown they are utterly disinterested in being fair.

That lawsuit wasn’t a legal action. Given that the Tories now may win the election, it was a political suicide note.


My latest: debate? What debate?

Here’s the thing about Monday’s leader’s debate, Canada.

You won’t be watching it.

Well, let’s amend that. Sun readers are a scrappy, elbows-up lot, who dig politics and a good scrap. Sun readers are likelier to be watching the debate. They like debates.

But most everyone else? They won’t be.

Everyone else will be watching Shark Tank (which this election kind of is) or Wheel of Fortune (which this election isn’t). Or, they’ll be binge-watching old episodes of Arrested Development (which neatly describes most of our federal political leaders).

Increasingly, voters simply don’t watch leader’s debates in Canada. For example, Maclean’s magazine put together a debate in 2015, but it had fewer than 40% of the viewers who took in the 2011 English-language debate. And Maclean’s actually counted people who only watched part of that debate, not all of it.

Master Chef got way more viewers.

Last time around, there was a Globe and Mail debate, too, and it was absolutely awful to watch. YouTube later found only about 400,000 Canadians did so. That’s in a country, in 2015, with 36 million people in it. Ipsos later did a poll and found only about 20% of Canadians watched the first couple debates in 2015.

There’s been one debate in 2019 that Justin Trudeau has deigned to attend. It was entirely in French.

Around 1.2 million Quebecers allegedly took in the TVA leader’s debate, in which Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh and the separatist leader, Yves-Francois Blanchet, also participated. In a province with more than six million eligible voters, 1.2 million viewers isn’t anything to brag about, although TVA did.

Oh, and in English Canada — in English — nobody got to watch the French debate when it was happening. Because it was entirely in French. To get a sense of what happened, the vast majority of Canadians needed to check out the media after the fact (Widely-held consensus: the separatist guy won, hands down).

As someone who owns a public opinion firm — Daisy Data, at your service! — I can relate one empirical statistical fact: a dwindling number of voters watch debates from gavel to gavel. They may in take part of a debate, sure. But not all of it.

What voters do, instead, is watch the news media’s coverage of a debate. They’ll see a clip of a fiery exchange on TV, or they’ll hear a so-called defining moment on the radio heading into work, or they’ll read expert commentary in the pages of the Sun and hopefully nowhere else.

But they don’t watch all of the debate.

I’ve prepared prime ministers and premiers for debates, and I now know I did it all wrong. I assumed, as did my debate-prep colleagues, that everyone else watched the debates as closely as we did. That was a flawed assumption.

It also explains how Justin Trudeau was seen as a winner in the 2015 debates, even against two superior debaters — Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair. Trudeau’s strategy in 2015 was a lot like what he did in his celebrated boxing match with Patrick Brazeau: he waited in his corner for an opening, then he’d go in with a flurry of punches.

He didn’t try to dominate all of the matches — he just did what he needed to do to get clipped on TV, then he’d sprinkle the results all over social media.

It worked, because he knew that Canadians were more likely to see clips of a debate than all of a debate.

That’s what he’s going to do on Monday night, too. In an era of shrinking debate audiences, it works. Will the other leaders let him get away with it in 2019 like they did in 2015? Tune in and see.

Or, join everyone else, and go watch Shark Tank.

— Sun columnist Warren Kinsella will be providing debate commentary on Bell Media radio on Monday night


My latest: why isn’t Andrew Scheer way ahead?

So, Andrew.

You don’t mind if I call you Andrew, do you? It’s better than what I sometimes used to call you, which was Blandy Andy.

I stopped calling you that because you figured out a way to make the bland thing work, like Brampton Bill Davis did. You embraced your inner ordinariness.

You starting hanging out in hockey rinks and you commenced rubbing Timbits all over your torso – which, unlike Prime Minister Blackface, you have never exposed to a grateful nation. You became the Canadian Everyman, and you made it work for you.

The pocketbook stuff, too. That was good, too. You and Hamish concluded, rightly, that voters regard everyone in politics as an unindicted co-conspirators, so you stopped hollering all the time that Justin is a crook. You just kept talking about how hard it is for regular folks to get by, and left the scandalmongering to the media. That was smart.

And the polls bore fruit, sort of. Ipsos says you’re ahead, and you have been for the entirety of the campaign. Nanos says you’re tied with Trudeau for best choice for Prime Minister, which is way better than you’ve been in the past.

But. But, Andrew, seriously?

Why haven’t 110 per cent of respondents declared you their favoured choice for Prime Minister? Why isn’t your party a kabillion points ahead of the Liberals? Why, Andrew, why?

Because that’s the question everyone is asking themselves, Andrew. Hell, that’s the question members of the Liberal caucus are asking themselves – many of whom had purchased political funeral insurance, and now they’re wondering if they can convert it to another kind of policy at the insurance brokerage where you used to fetch coffee and answer the phone.

By any reasonable standard, Andrew, Justin Trudeau leads the most corrupt – the most casually evil – government in Canadian history. It is shiftless; it is reckless; it is soulless. It is a mess.

And they could still win, Andrew. They could still beat you. How can this be?

A scan of Trudeau’s press clippings reads like a grand jury indictment.

• In LavScam, he obstructed justice when he tried, repeatedly, to stop the criminal corruption trial of a Québec-based donor to his party.
• He violated conflict of interest laws when he accepted freebies during a junket to the Aga Khan’s private island.
• He lied about electoral reform, and balancing the budget, and improving relations with the provinces and the world.
• He made us an international laughingstock with his Griswolds Vacation India trip, and enraged the world’s largest democracy – our ally and Commonwealth partner.
• And, most recently, he admitted he repeatedly mocked black people by wearing blackface and jumping around like an ape – and he admitted that there’s more of it out there in the ether, but he doesn’t know how much, because he was wasted a lot of the time.

After all that, Andrew – after all that scandal, more of which this newspaper has been investigating for weeks, stay tuned to this bat-channel, everyone – why aren’t you way ahead? Why aren’t you creaming Chewbacca Socks?

Why, to cite just two examples from the past 24 hours, did you attract fewer people at a Brampton rally than Justin Trudeau’s Portuguese Water Dog, Kenzie, gets during a stroll through the park?

Why can’t you put an end to the interminable questions about your CV, and simply joke that you’re so boring, you’re the only guy in Canada who brags about being an insurance broker?

None of it makes sense, Andrew. None of it. You should be playing Fortnite with Hamish about now, getting ready to move into wherever we put Prime Ministers these days.

Instead, you’re fighting to get a decent lead. Instead, your caucus are whispering about the next leader.

It’s crazy, Andrew. But one thing isn’t crazy at all:

You’ve got three weeks left to win this thing.

And if you don’t, you’ll forever be remembered as the guy who couldn’t beat Prime Minister Blackface.