Roundup: The cynicism of Kellie Leitch

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As it turns out, would-be Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch has opted not to recant her survey question on “screening” immigrants and refugees for anti-Canadian values, and has doubled down on it by insisting that there is a conversation to be had, and suggested that there was merit to the “barbaric cultural practices” tip line, but that it had simply been communicated poorly. Thus far, only Michael Chong has bothered to respond and refute the narrative that Leitch is putting forward.

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/771831806165344257

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/771848455086039040

Objectively, Leitch’s concerns about keeping Canada safe are nonsense because all of our domestic terror incidents have been home-grown and self-radicalizing lone wolves. That she thinks there are unified “Canadian values” are also hugely problematic because there are plenty of Canadians who are intolerant of other religions and cultures (particularly of Muslims), sexual orientations (hell, two of her other putative leadership candidates are running on socially conservative platforms that are downright homophobic), violence and misogynistic behaviour is prevalent if not endemic in our own culture, and the embrace of personal and economic freedoms is a dubious metric, especially as her own government was perfectly willing to curtail personal freedoms in the name of national security. The myth of shared values is nothing new, however, but it is just that – a myth. Add to that the notion that these values are something that can be tested or screened. Is Leitch somehow proposing polygraphing all prospective immigrants or refugees on these issues? Or, as I was not even really joking yesterday, hiring a bunch of telepaths to find out if they’re hiding something. It’s not even that this is dog whistle politics, it’s that the country repudiated this kind of thinking in the last election in a pretty big way. Leitch trying to adopt the language of Donald Trump to try and bring together her party’s base is deeply cynical and Leitch should know better (presuming she has the EQ to realize it, which I suspect she doesn’t).

In other Conservative leadership news, anti-abortionists are ready to back Pierre Lemieux and Brad Trost, and probably Andrew Scheer if he winds up running again. Martin Patriquin in Maclean’s argued why these kinds of leadership candidates will continue to hurt the party’s brand.

Good reads:

  • In Shanghai, Trudeau announced the creation of an e-commerce portal for Canadian exporters on Chinese web giant Alibaba.
  • The government is outsourcing more electoral reform consultations to the company that did the Vote Compass for CBC.
  • National Defence has spent $1.2 billion on their new headquarters campus, but it’s still not secure enough for top secret intelligence work or sensitive operations.
  • The number of restricted firearms has been increasing in this country.
  • Thus far, about 118 medically-assisted deaths have been granted, but that’s only one tenth of those applied for.
  • Erin O’Toole doesn’t want the government to roll back the disruption tools given to CSIS under C-51.
  • The consultations about 100 Wellington aren’t making it easy to choose an option of a national portrait gallery for the location.
  • The Royal Canadian Navy is decommissioning its only remaining research vessel, leaving yet another capability gap.
  • Here’s a long read profile of Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s right hand.
  • Susan Delacourt talks to new Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu about her problem-solving approach to parliament that comes from her engineering background.
  • Paul Wells notes the flagging electoral reform committee process and a country that doesn’t really care about the issue.
  • Kady O’Malley thinks we could get more people interested in the subject if we stopped presenting it as too boring, or that people are too stupid to understand it.

Odds and ends:

Plenty of old Hansard debates are now available online, so Tristin Hopper went looking for the sweary parts.