Tag Archive: New Democratic Party

How Justin Trudeau could lose

— 09.10.2019 08:48 PM

In it for you.

It’s the New Democrats – now a sad shadow of their former selves – who, ironically, came up with the best slogan for the 2019 federal election campaign: in it for you.

That’s what just about every election campaign is about, this one included.  Which party best understands the lives of everyday Canadians.  Which leader actually has the best understanding of the struggles your family faces every single day.

Justin Trudeau is at a big disadvantage, here.  That’s because Justin wasn’t simply born with silver spoon in his mouth.

It was more like a silver shovel.

Trudeau is the guy who likes to talk about the middle class, a lot.  But he has never, ever actually experienced the middle class.  Trudeau has never had to worry about paying the rent, or coming up with the next mortgage statement.  

He has never wondered where he’ll get the dough to pay a hydro bill.  He has never wanted for anything.  His life has been one of mansions, private jets, and hanging out with celebrities like the Aga Khan.

Against Andrew Scheer – who grew up in a big immigrant Catholic family, and whose family didn’t have the wealth Trudeau did – the Liberal leader will likely appear privileged and out-of-touch.  Scheer worked as a waiter and a salesman.  

Trudeau, meanwhile, wears a $15,000 IWC Portuguese Regulateur watch and drives a Mercedes-Benz 300SL he got from his Dad.  (Which, apparently, can sell for millions.)

Who is in it for me – who best understands my life?

If the 2019 election ballot question becomes that question, Justin Trudeau is deep, deep trouble.  Smart Liberals know this. That’s why Trudeau rolls up his sleeves, and loosens his tie, and rarely wears a suit when on the campaign hustings.  That’s why he talks about the middle class all the time.

But not all Liberals are smart.

Last week, some less-than-smart Grits revealed a big poster of Finance Minister Bill Morneau wearing an expensive, tailor-made bespoke suit, tugging at what looked like French cuffs and pricey cufflinks.  It didn’t exactly scream “middle class.”

By this week, Liberals had pasted over that unhelpful image with campaign posters.

But the deeply-dumb Liberals weren’t done yet.  Shortly afterwards, some of them actually cooked up a hashtag to mock Andrew Scheer’s comparatively-humble beginnings.  One of them, a Liberal MP – the heretofore unknown Gagan Sikand, soon to be the former MP for Mississauga-Streetsville – actually tweeted this: “Scheer Was So Poor he had to buy his Conservative Values second-hand from Stephen Harper.”

Sikand, a lawyer, actually wrote that.  He actually tweeted that.  It was the 2019 campaign’s Beer-and-Popcorn moment: people with more, making fun of people who have less. 

Lots of other Liberals went online, too, giddily promoting the “Scheer Was So Poor” hashtag.

It recalled late 2005, when this writer was huddled on a cold bench at a hockey rink somewhere, waiting out a son’s early-morning practice.  A revelation hit me: the Liberals were Starbucks, and the Conservatives were Tim Horton’s.  The Tories were going to win with a campaign that was aimed at the Tim’s crowd, not the latte-sipping elites who frequent Starbucks.  And win they did.

No one should ever underestimate Justin Trudeau’s retail political skills.  No one should ever discount his party’s organizational chops.

But if this race truly becomes who is really “in it for you?”

Then Justin Trudeau is going to lose it.

 


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My latest, on the so-called “digital charter”

— 05.25.2019 07:44 AM

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development blinked. Then he blinked again. 

He has just been asked if his government’s “Digital Charter” would apply to his own political party. You know, the governing Liberal Party of Canada. 

He doesn’t answer. The host on CBC’s “Power and Politics” genially tries again. Will the Liberal Party agree to go along with the rules it proposes to impose on everyone else? Will the Grits practice what they preach on data privacy?

Navdeep Bains, the Minister with the aforementioned long title doesn’t answer. Again. 

Bains rallies. He sternly says the penalties for violating Canadians’ privacy will be “substantial.” The CBC inquisitor asks what that means. 

Navdeep Bains doesn’t say. 

And so it goes, as with much that the Justin Trudeau regime does: do as they say, but not as they do. Talk the talk, but don’t walk the talk. 

Justin Trudeau does that sort of thing a lot: you know, oversell, then underdeliver. Insincerity, phoniness, dishonesty. It’s his brand, pretty much. 

And there is no better recent example of that sort of rank hypocrisy than Justin Trudeau’s so-called“Digital Charter.”

Announced a few days back with much fanfare, but not much detail, the “charter” sketches out some basic principles about data protection and online privacy. 

Justin Trudeau, as is his wont, revealed the “Digital Charter” in Paris, where he knew his audience was likely to be less critical than the ones back home. Overseas, Prime Minister Chewbacca Socks can still command the occasional round of applause.

Not so much back here in the colonies, where the “Digital Charter” is like so much that Trudeau does – all sizzle, no steak. All talk, no action. 

That’s not to say Trudeau’s “Charter” – he calls it that, presumably, because it sounds like he’s serious, when he isn’t, really – doesn’t have some laudable goals. It wants to combat the spread of hate and violent extremism online, and who could be against that?

Except, well, Justin Trudeau has had nearly four full years to do something about the explosion in hate online. Every other Western democracy has done something about it. But Justin Trudeau? He waits until we are a mere 100 days or so from the 2019 election kick-off, and then claims he’s The Hate Fighter™️. 

Oh, and his “Charter” isn’t going to become law until (a) after said election takes place, and (b) he is re-elected. The chances of which, all the pollsters tell us, is presently somewhere between slim and none. 

It’s a problem. A big one. In an era where Facebook and other online behemoths regularly steal the private information of citizens, and profit from it, Canadians actually need something like the “digital charter.” At the moment, regular folks don’t have the ability to control – or consent to – the way all the political parties use their data, either. 

In 2019, when the tech giants steal your private information, they get fined pocket change. And the political parties – when they do likewise – they don’t get fined at all. They get away with it. 

The federal Privacy Commissioner, who has saint-like patience, has recently held press conferences about this outrage. He’s even brought along the Elections Commissioner, who has nodded his head and soberly agreed: the Trudeau government needs to be subject to the law, just as every other citizen and corporation is. 

But Justin Trudeau refuses. 

With less than a month to go until the House of Commons rises for the Summer, not to return for many months, Justin Trudeau needs to put his mouth where our money is. He needs to agree, finally, to practice what he preaches to the rest of us. 

Will he? Don’t hold your breath. 

But hold onto your data. 

(Justin Trudeau wants it.)


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How Trudeau elected Kenney

— 04.23.2019 06:42 AM

Last month, I was back home in Calgary to teach at the law school. So, I got together with a couple high school buddies – one a lawyer, one an engineer – at Michael’s on Tenth Avenue. (Michael’s has the best pizza in Canada, by the way. Hands down.)

We got to talking about the coming Alberta election, and what was going to happen. Some people at neighbouring tables chimed in. (Calgary’s like that.)

Here’s a summary of what I was told:

• they all respected Rachel Notley but disliked her party
• they didn’t really like Jason Kenney but figured they’d vote for his party
• they thought the rest of Canada didn’t give a shit about them
• they deeply hated Justin Trudeau

And when I say “deeply,” I mean deeply. One of my fellow Michael’s fans even suggested that it would be a bad idea for Trudeau to travel to Alberta. Because he might be placed at physical risk.

Seriously.

The conversation continued. My lawyer buddy, who works at a major construction and engineering firm, was unhappy about Trudeau’s slavish devotion to the fortunes of the oily Quebec-based construction and engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin. He looked at me.

“You know, Winkie,” he said, using the nickname my Calgary pals gave to me way back when, “My firm had to lay off more than a thousand guys last year. No one back East noticed. No one. If that had happened to SNC-Lavalin, it would’ve been all you’d hear about.”

He was right, of course. Albertans are right: if something bad happens in the Centre of the Universe, in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto axis, the whole country hears about it for weeks. But if hundreds of families lose their livelihood in Calgary, nobody in Ontario gives a shit, basically. Certainly not Justin Trudeau, who has repeatedly claimed to support Alberta – and then repeatedly done precisely nothing to help Alberta get oil to market.

I later tweeted what my friend said about those layoffs, and Ontario and Quebec’s total indifference to same. Jason Kenney was one of the many who retweeted what I said. It struck a chord.

And that, really, is mainly why Jason Kenney swept the much-admired Rachel Notley from power. Because Justin Trudeau and his government are now more despised in Alberta than was Trudeau’s father’s government, way back during the nadir of the National Energy Program. And Notley is seen, in Alberta, as having letting Trudeau get away with murder. The murder of Alberta’s economy.

Other factors were at play in last Tuesday’s night vote, of course. In politics, there always are. Jason Kenney brought together the warring factions of the Right, and avoided the vote-splits that helped Notley’s Crüe sweep to power four years ago. And, while the NDP leader was herself admired, her caucus generally was not. Notley had a Safeway employee, a yoga instructor and a bunch of twenty-somethings. Few had real political experience.

In 2015, Notley’s Progressive Conservative opponents also ran one of the worst campaigns in modern Alberta history. Nationally, the NDP was polling respectably in 2014. And Notley’s family was (and is) admired in Alberta. Her Dad was a much-loved former MLA who died tragically in a plane crash in 1984.

But, mostly, Rachel Notley lost because of Justin Trudeau. She trusted him, as did other Albertans. And she shouldn’t have. His early promises to Alberta were deceptions. They were intended to win him seats – but Trudeau clearly never had any intention of helping Alberta families survive.

My engineer buddy, who has had to lay off dozens of engineers, and take whatever work he can get, nods grimly at all this. He was born in Montreal, grew up in Manitoba and Alberta, and was always a Liberal. No more.

“He’s a liar,” my friends says, holding a glass of the best local stuff, Trad. “He’s a goddamn liar. He’s way more hated than his father ever was, in Alberta. And Notley is the one who is going to wear it.”

That was unfortunate, my engineering pal said, because he regarded Rachel Notley as “decent, smart and principled.” Many people in Alberta admired the NDP Premier, he said.

“But she was unlucky. She won when the bottom was falling out,” he said. “That’s not her fault. But her alliance with Trudeau, at the start, is something people will never forgive.”

And they didn’t. Once again, anything with the “Liberal” brand is anathema in Alberta, thanks to Justin Trudeau. On election night, the Alberta Liberal leader – a smart, hard-working constitutional lawyer, David Khan – was creamed, finishing a distant fourth in Calgary MountainView. His party was wiped out across the province, not winning a single seat.

Justin Trudeau may not have been on the ballot in Alberta, but he surely helped determine the result, more than any other Canadian politician. He helped elect Jason Kenney and defeat Rachel Notley. He did that.

My engineering buddy looked at me.

“Alberta hates Justin Trudeau,” he says. “And we are going to teach him a lesson in October.”


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