The hits just keep coming for Andrew Scheer, as one of his MPs came out vocally against his leadership yesterday. In the wake of the fairly low-key announcement of his Shadow Cabinet, it was quickly noticed that Ed Fast was not on said list, and Fast himself said that he was asked to be part of it and he declined, saying that Scheer should be surrounded by people loyal to his leadership, while Fast has concerns about it. Up until this moment, Scheer’s loyalists were dismissing those vocally and publicly calling for Scheer to step down as being Toronto elites and sore losers that go back to leadership rivals. Fast’s public denouncement puts a lie to this narrative.

Let’s face it – public dissent in caucus is rare because we have virtually eliminated all of the incentives for it. Our bastardized leadership selection process has leaders claiming a “democratic legitimacy” that they use to intimidate MPs into not challenging them, because it goes against the “will of the grassroots” (and to hell with that MP’s voters, apparently). We gave party leaders the power to sign off on nomination forms with the purest of intentions and it quickly got perverted into a tool of blackmail and iron-fisted discipline. Pretty much the only time MPs will speak out is if they have nothing to lose, and Fast is in that position – he could retire tomorrow and be all the better for it. And it’s when the dissent goes public that leaders really need to worry because that means that it’s happening by those inside the caucus room who aren’t saying anything out loud. Provincially, we’ve seen instances of it taking only one or two MLAs coming out publicly for leaders to see the writing on the wall and resign. The caucus may be bigger in Ottawa, but the sentiment is increasingly out in the open – that can’t be sustainable.

Scheer later went to the annual UCP convention in Calgary, where he was predictably given a fairly warm welcome– but he shouldn’t rest on this applause because he doesn’t need to win Alberta – he already has their votes, and they’re not enough to carry the country, no matter how much they increase their vote share. He needs seats in Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada, and he is having a hard time cracking those areas, in particular because of his social conservatism and the UCP convention isn’t going to be the place to go to get honest feedback about that problem. It’s a bubble, and a trap that becomes too easy to feel that there is nothing wrong if he stays in it too long.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau met with the Mexican New NAFTA negotiator, who says that the US Democrats’ concerns are valid and being addressed.
• Trudeau also met with the mayor of Edmonton, who says that mayors like him can help to “depolarize” the current tensions with the Western provinces.
• At the Council of the Federation meeting this weekend, Jason Kenney, Doug Ford and Blaine Higgs will be making an announcement about modular nuclear reactors.
• The Federal Court ruled that the government still have to come up with a plan to compensation First Nations children, while the judicial review request goes ahead.
• General Jonathan Vance is warning that climate change will drive future global conflict and combat.
• Four years later, there still isn’t a plan for what to do with 24 Sussex, which is ridiculous. Come on already, NCC.
• Here’s a look at the absurd practice of “flagpoling” – where immigrants need to cross over to US and back in order to get necessary paperwork processed.
• The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 that a woman was wrongly arrested for not holding the handrail on an escalator, and gave warned police about overreach.
• Senator Peter Harder is resigning as Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative,” as is Senator Grant Mitchell as his whip – err, “liaison.”
• Senator Lynn Beyak may not be out of the woods in terms of ending her suspension, as other letters on her website still call for Indigenous assimilation.
• Quebec is amending their provincial medical assistance in dying legislation after a court ruling, and the federal government will soon follow suit.
• A Canadian digital company pulled their plans to relocate their headquarters to Calgary and hire 1000 people because of the “separatist” rumblings.
• There are concerns about how BC’s UNDRIP legislation will be able to be implemented, as some of it contradicts established Canadian law.
• Kevin Carmichael parses yesterday’s quarterly GDP data, and applies it to what he suspects the Bank of Canada will do about interest rates.
• Chantal Hébert navigates the chatter about calls to make Rona Ambrose the new Conservative leader – or Trudeau’s ambassador to Washington.
• My weekend column hears about what Senator Yuen Pau Woo of the ISG is putting forward about “modernization,” and some of it is a Very Bad Idea.

Odds and ends:

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