The Conservatives launched their attack ads against Justin Trudeau this morning, poking fun at his “striptease” for charity, his Movember moustache – for charity – and using a carefully edited clip in which he says that “Quebeckers are better” – err, except that the actual context of the clip was that he was quoting his father. The Canadian Liver Foundation put out a statement to thank Trudeau for the thousands of dollars he helped as part of the “striptease” segment. Paul Wells muses about attack ads, and the Liberal tendency to promise not to use them – until they do. Jon Kay ridicules the amateurish ads for being just that – amateurish, nothing like a genuine attack ad, and opens up the Conservatives for worse counterattack.
Meanwhile, all eyes were on Trudeau’s debut QP performance as leader. My recap of events is here. John Ivison somewhat mysteriously concludes that Mulcair upstaged Trudeau, but made some good points about the way that Trudeau is playing to suburbia with his questions and delivery. Chantal Hébert noted that Trudeau seemed to get under Mulcair’s skin without having to say a word in QP – which may have been why Angry Mulcair made a somewhat more rare reappearance. Andrew Coyne sees Trudeau’s leadership victory as a kind of monarchical exercise.
Two more backbenchers joined the Warawa Rebellion (or as Aaron Wherry terms it, the “Backbench Spring”) with regards to the freeing MPs from having the Whips veto their Members’ Statements. That one of them is a former Cabinet minister who resigned over a matter of principle – Michael Chong – adds legitimacy to the argument and takes away from the dismissal that this is just pro-lifers trying using the issue of free speech to mask their own purposes.
Aaron Wherry has a lengthy post in which he tries to make sense of Peter Kent’s new position on carbon pricing as it relates to the Alberta model, in contrast with everything that he’s said about carbon pricing to date.
Colin Horgan takes apart one of Thomas Mulcair’s boasts during the convention this past weekend. The NDP are also looking to launch their own ethnic outreach campaign in advance of the 2015 election.
It was an opposition day yesterday, during which the NDP decried the way the Conservatives raised fees and tariffs in the budget – but not, according to Shelly Glover – taxes. Which all gets to be pretty ridiculous, and for the NDP to demonise taxes is kind of ridiculous. Because saying that you’re only to going to raise taxes on other people – the rich and corporations – is a fairly feeble bit of populist rationalisation.
After years of waivers, the Conservatives are finally reinstating the $60 fees for gun licences, in the aims of raising some $18 million in revenue annually. But they’re not raising taxes – they’re just rescinding the waiver.
And here are the three things that were covered off on last night’s Boston-centric political reporting.