Roundup: Freeland on tour

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For the past two days, Chrystia Freeland has been in Alberta to talk to the mayors of Edmonton and Calgary, as well as premier Jason Kenney, and she is continuing her tour there today, heading to the north of the province, where she grew up. There have been a couple of themes emerging from her tour from those she’s visited – from the mayors, it’s a sense that it’s great that she’s there to listen and hear their concerns, and from Kenney, it’s a bit of a sense of impatience that there haven’t been enough “concrete” actions yet.

I was struck after the meeting with Edmonton’s mayor on Monday about the talk of his trepidation that Kenney’s “Fair Deal” plans would make it harder for cities to deal with the federal government to address their priorities, and that he was looking for some particular assurances – and indeed, we’ve heard for the past couple of years that cities were frustrated that federal dollars weren’t flowing because the provinces were holding things up in what appeared to be some partisan pique (given that most of those provinces now have conservative governments). The federal government has been looking at more ways to deal with cities directly, and this appears to be more confirmation of the need to do just that.

This having been said, I am curious as to when Freeland is going to start further calling Kenney’s bluffs with regard to his “demands” and his threats around them. Justin Trudeau fairly effectively cut the legs out from under Scott Moe’s equalization fairy tales, and one imagines that it’s a matter of time before Freeland starts to – very diplomatically – do much the same with Kenney and some of his utter nonsense. Those “concrete actions” Kenney wants – retroactive fiscal stabilization funds, unrealistic demands related to the former Bills C-48 and C-69 (which are now law) – will eventually need to come to a head and Kenney will huff and puff and claim separatist sentiments will explode, but he doesn’t have too much room to manoeuvre himself – his cuts have proven very unpopular, and the patience of his constituents is going to run out, no matter how much he tries to distract them by fomenting anger at Ottawa. Freeland knows this, and I’ll be curious to see how she manages it.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau continues to work the phone with Canada’s allies to pursue de-escalation in the Middle East.
  • The Iranian attack on airbases used by American and allied forces resulted in no casualties, and all Canadian personnel were accounted for safe and sound.
  • Indigenous Services minister Marc Miller isn’t putting a cap on what compensation First Nations children who were given inadequate care should receive.
  • The new RCMP union is looking to start salary negotiations in mid-March.
  • A survey from CFIB members shows that the CRA’s wait times have been increasing, and that they give wrong answers 40 percent of the time. Oops.
  • The head of RBC is cautioning the government to be very careful if they decide to tweak the mortgage stress test (which the real estate lobby is screaming for).
  • Here’s an update on the Coast Gas Link situation, where the RCMP is hoping to negotiate rather than escalate action.
  • While Erin O’Toole is also about to make his official leadership declaration, a number of Quebec-based candidates are also looking to join the race.
  • In Ontario, a former provincial Conservative candidate was found to have used leaked police information to smear a rival. (He didn’t win the seat).
  • Susan Delacourt suggests that the Conservatives look to the kind of reinvention that Justin Trudeau did of the Liberal Party if they hope to regain power one day.
  • My column takes issue with some of what Donald Savoie thinks about our “disintegrating” institutions and “fixes” for federalism.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Freeland on tour”

  1. “Susan Delacourt suggests that the Conservatives look to the kind of reinvention that Justin Trudeau did of the Liberal Party if they hope to regain power one day.”

    Trudeau all but purged the party of the demons of Chretien/Martin internecine warfare (and incurred Kinsella’s wrath in the process). The (C)PCs must banish Harper and everyone from his tenure from the party, denounce them completely, and make them pariahs in public society. That goes for the media too: stop normalizing these gaslighters by giving them a platform to spew their “strategizing” and pretend to be a credible organization.

    Flush the so-cons, the gun nuts, the Koch minions, science-denying O&G war room, the war drummers, the Rapture fantasists, the GOP “advisors,” the Cambridge Analytics troll farms, the Rebel/Proud/True North/Post Millennial propaganda chambers, and the austerity/privatization/free market social Darwinists. Also, the IDU needs to be exposed and declared a security threat. No party that aligns themselves with the likes of Viktor Orban and Sebastian Kurz should get anywhere near the levers of power in Canada.

    Anything less than salting the earth of Harper and Manning’s noxious influence amounts to putting lipstick on a blue pig. Without that, they don’t deserve to call themselves the natural alternative to the natural governing party. If that means the party disintegrates, good riddance and so be it. It’d serve as prima facie evidence that there is nothing beneficial in the Trumpified, Harperized conservative movement worth voting for.

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