Yesterday was the day that the Liberal drama in Burnaby South went completely sideways, as resigned candidate Karen Wang decided that she wanted to un-resign. And the Liberals said nope, and Wang’s attempt at a press conference turned into a gong show as she chose a location that she didn’t ask for permission from and they said nope. So, gong show. Wang later spent the day a) insisting she wasn’t racist, and this was all a mistranslation, and by the way a volunteer wrote the WeChat post anyway; and b) fending off the notion that she also tried to run for the Conservatives, by saying that the Conservatives had approached her after she ran for the provincial Liberals (remember the BC Liberals are more of a centre-right coalition than the federal Liberals are), and that she didn’t say yes to them. Oh, and she still supports the Liberals. And amidst this all, certain other anonymous voices in the local Liberal riding association are now saying that they warned the party that she was “difficult to handle.”

This is the original WeChat post with our translation. Wang is now saying that her post was meant to be translated as "Chinese-Canadian" and "Indian-Canadian" but the words "Canadian" do not appear in the post. 华裔 can be translated as "ethnic Chinese" or "of Chinese descent" pic.twitter.com/HtlwT9gOs3

— Joanna Chiu (@joannachiu) January 17, 2019

Meanwhile, this hasn’t stopped the utter lunatic notions floating around the national media that somehow the PMO engineered this whole incident in order to essentially hand the victory to Jagmeet Singh and the NDP, because the Liberals will ultimately benefit from his weak leadership carrying on, or something.

It’s the oldest trick in the book!

— Supriya Dwivedi (@supriyadwivedi) January 16, 2019

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1085960409654255616

And then there are the NDP surrogates trying to insist that the Liberals are trying to spin this version of events, and trying to build the case that it’s really just racism that the Liberals and the mainstream media are to blame for Singh not having a seat or a national profile. And lest we not forget that Maxime Bernier’s candidate in the riding is polling higher than expected, which has people wondering if it’s Scheer who should watch out.

Good reads:

• The Cabinet retreat is being held in Sherbrooke, where the Liberals hope to make inroads. Trudeau met with Premier Legault, who had a list of demands.
• Following the confirmed death of a kidnapped Canadian in Burkina Faso, Chrystia Freeland is telling Canadians to heed travel advisories.
• China’s ambassador to Canada held a press event yesterday, and made a couple of thinly veiled threats, including about repercussions for banning Huawei.
• Canada’s ambassador to China, John McCallum, says that the detained Canadians face four hours of interrogations per day, and wants our allies to apply pressure.
• David Lametti says he’s open to hearing proposals around advanced directives for assisted dying, but won’t commit to anything.
• Veterans Affairs will soon be hit with an attempted class action lawsuit around that $165 million accounting error that affected pensions.
• Liberals on the foreign affairs committee wouldn’t go for a public meeting with John McCallum on the China situation, but agreed to a closed-door session.
• Donald Trump talked about a vague new missile defence system he wants allies like Canada to pay into (but there are few details).
• After years of labour strife, the Parliamentary Protective Service finally has a new collective agreement, but gripes about salary remain.
• Some CEO in the oil patch welcome the notion of First Nations groups buying the Trans Mountain pipeline.
• The Conservatives are surveying their donor base about the election platform items they’ve unveiled to date.
• Yves-François Blanchet has been acclaimed the new leader of the Bloc Québécois.
• Maxime Bernier is touring the Atlantic provinces and thinks reviving Energy East is a key selling feature (never mind that the economics don’t work for the project).
• Colby Cosh looks at TransCanada’s rebranding itself as TC Energy, and what it says about our treatment of history.

Odds and ends:

Here’s an academic look at how those advocating for a CANZUK alliance (like many Conservatives) are enamoured with echoes of British colonialism and empire.

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