Roundup: No place for Trump

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In one of her year-end interviews, Rona Ambrose said the Donald Trump is “far off the spectrum,” and “not a voice that is welcome in our party.” Um, except that she can’t really get off that quickly or easily on this one. While Ambrose may not be saying it, her party is one that dumped any pretence of actual ideological conservatism long ago, and simply became right-flavoured populists who loudly championed all manner of non-conservative ideas and plans, all for the sake of appealing to enough micro-targeted groups that they could cobble together a base of support that they rose to power once, but which fell apart in 2015. Remember too that in the dying days of the election, Harper willingly embraced the Ford brothers in Toronto in order to cash in on their populist appeal, which are two very Trump-like voices that apparently have been welcomed into her party with open arms. And as for charges that her party is not doing enough to combat Islamophobia as Syrian refugees start arriving in the country, we’re seeing a lot of concern trolling out of her party that makes it sound like they’re supportive of the idea when in fact they are arguing or agitating for indefinite delays to refugee arrivals. Put all of this together, and it’s hard to see how Ambrose is arguing for any kind of principled conservatism, or that she rejects the populism of Trump while she has not moved to distance herself or her party from the Ford brothers. That’s a worrying sign, and when the Conservative leadership does get underway, we’ll see if Doug Ford makes that leap. If he does, we’ll see if Ambrose continues to insist that those kinds of voices are welcome in the party or not.

Good reads:

  • With the Truth and Reconciliation Report out in its final form now, Trudeau says that Canada has to accept its failings on this. (Report highlights here).
  • In the Duffy trial, he recalled being hounded by the PMO to repay expenses even though Harper said he did nothing wrong. (Reevely, Blatchford and O’Malley here).
  • RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson suspects that jihadis influenced the mentally ill Ottawa Hil shooter to undertake his attack; meanwhile, 600 officers were reassigned from organized crime.
  • After headline writers declared that Bill Morneau didn’t rule out a GST hike, he took to the Twitter Machine to reassure people that it’s not on the table.
  • Harjit Sajjan has plenty on his plate as he works on his task of declaring the new position on military deployments.
  • Procurement bids for new fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft come due in January.
  • Surprising no one, the CRA rejects the anonymous critics about the state of the agency and its flawed audits,, citing a lack of evidence.
  • Laura Payton looks at the job that Catherine McKenna has to do now that she’s back from the Paris climate conference.
  • In the National Post, I look at how Trudeau’s changes to QP in both chambers could affect the ability to hold the government to account.

Odds and ends:

Rona Ambrose said that critics like Lisa Raitt and Michelle Rempel got their posts because they’re strong, not because they’re women.

Ambrose also went on to say that she doesn’t think the LCBO does a good enough job keeping alcohol away from kids, so it shouldn’t sell weed either. So, prohibition then?

3 thoughts on “Roundup: No place for Trump”

  1. Your National Post piece is very good, but you should have also discussed how the UK does Ministerial Statements. Ministers there often preempt the need for an urgent question by delivering a statement to the House — and then being questioned by all MPs on the topic of that statement (for an hour or longer — it’s at the Speaker’s discretion how long it goes on). It’s not uncommon for some parliamentary sitting days to see the 1-hour departmental QP followed by an urgent question or two and then a ministerial statement or two — meaning the first 3-4 hours of the day will just be ministers being questioned by the House. It’s a far more accountable system even with our current form of QP. Happened this Monday in fact — departmental questions, an UQ and 2 ministerial statements, so from 2:30 to 5:55 p.m, it was just ministers being questioned.

  2. I do not think that Rona Ambrose represents a return to the old Conservative party. She is trying to muddle the waters. She would need to repudiate publicly Harper and his agenda and like Kroutchev did to Stalin denounce him. But that will not happen because it would implode the party and they would never be able to get re-elected and her aspiration to become leader would die.

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