Yesterday the Star reported that Justin Trudeau has been so weakened by the WE Imbroglio that he is *gasp!* asking his Cabinet ministers and caucus for ideas about the upcoming Speech from the Throne. I find the fact that this is a news story to be pretty distressing because this is supposed to be how governments work in this country – it’s not supposed to be a one-man-show with the leader and his or her office running the whole party’s platform and policies.
This criticism certainly extends to what we just saw out of the Conservative leadership race, where each candidate had a policy book that they were running on – something that should never happen because it’s not leaders who are supposed to come up with policy, but the party’s grassroots members, and the Conservatives especially like to crow that they are a “grassroots party” that respects its members, and so on. If that was the case, why would your leadership candidates be trying to run on different policy platforms? And you can’t say that this is about what the leader believes in – policy platforms are not beliefs, and the party shouldn’t be contorting itself to fit the leader because it’s not supposed to be a personality cult, but sadly we’ve missed that boat, and that’s exactly what parties have become in this country.
As for the notion that Trudeau should be consulting with the Conservatives on his Throne Speech, as raised in the Star piece, he really has no obligation to – it’s not O’Toole’s job to prop up the government, even if Trudeau wants to project some kind of “all in this together” message about the economic recovery. That’s not how our system works – we need opposition to hold the government to account, and trying to co-opt the opposition with promises in exchange for co-operation weakens that accountability. There are two other dance partners that the government can tap to maintain confidence, but subverting the official opposition is not a viable course of action.
Good reads:
- The federal government has designated residential schools as an event of historical significance, and the sites of two of the schools as national historic sites.
- PCO has hired a consultancy that specializes in workplace conflict management to look into the harassment and bullying allegations in Rideau Hall.
- StatsCan says that there have been more calls to police about domestic violence and mental health crises since the pandemic began, but fewer calls of other types.
- Here’s a look into “algorithmic policing,” and the kinds of surveillance and predictive tools that have inadequate safeguards for abuse and perpetuated biases.
- Cyber-scammers are now claiming to offer “help” after a possible data-breach, and try to get personal details that way.
- NDP MP Charlie Angus claims to have found the “smoking gun” that “proves” Bardish Chagger told the civil service to select WE for the CSSG. (Documents here).
- The Green Party expects that their leadership race will have whittled down from anyone in a green t-shirt to eight candidates by deadline.
- Heather Scoffield calls out Erin O’Toole’s revisionist history about income supports in the early stage of the pandemic, as he tries to lay his policy markers.
- Susan Delacourt delves into Australia’s spat with Facebook, and what that could signal for any moves Canada makes against web giants and news content.
- Colby Cosh ponders recent research on voter preference by party leaders’ age, and wonders how it applies to the youth cults around old socialists.
- My column warns that the Liberals are facing a possible contempt of Parliament charge over those pre-redacted WE documents.
Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.
Charlie Angus purports to have found the smoking gun. In his zeal along with his fearless leader to take down the Liberals I think that if he gets his wish and God forbid the Conservatives are elected to govern again all the policies that he claims to support will be flushed down the proverbial toilet. I think that the NDP are a bit masochistic because they keep pushing an agenda that will only benefit the Conservatives. Another one of their exalted leaders did the same thing and contributed to bringing the Liberals down and getting us the Reform/Cons under Harper. What did that move get them nothing in my opinion.
Horseshoe politics is S.O.P. for the dirtbag left. Bernie sabotaged Hillary and got Trump. The tankies in 1930s Germany attacked the social democrats and got their “revolution” good and hard, with 100 million dead in a global war against fascism, millions more dead in a global war against communism, and a totalitarian “worker’s paradise” that culminated with the tearing down of a bigly wall in 1989.
“Nach Harper, Uns” was Layton’s M.O. The NDP have grown so embittered by the fact that fate was the only thing that put a kibosh on his magical unicorn revolution, that some of their supporters have devolved into “Hillary hit list” conspiracy theories leveling accusations at Trudeau of taking him out with the “CIA cancer gun”. For every con foaming at the mouth under the delusion that Trudeau is Castro’s love child, there’s a Dipper who’s upset that he is *not*. Harper smooches Eastern European neo-fascists, while Angus and Singh worship at the altar of the likes of Maduro and Comrade Che. It’s lonely on centrist island where Trudeau, Macron and Merkel dwell, and Obama rests comfortably in retirement.
Now, lest anyone think this would go away were Trudeau to depart the leadership abruptly, you should see what they’re doing to Freeland now, tarring her with allegations of being a Nazi sympathizer because of some obscure and not entirely accurate anecdote about her father from the Ukraine. The mere existence of Black Ribbon Day really p!sses them off.
The fact remains they have never gotten over losing the brass ring in 2015, and rather than work with the Liberals as partners to pursue progressive policies, they attack them in fits of jealousy. It’s not masochism. It’s petty puritan politics. The revolution eats its own.
I don’t see the redactions as being willful obstruction or malfeasance at all, but a case of old habits dying hard on the bureaucrats’ part, and misconstruing a poorly worded motion. I’m sure the original files will get rounded up soon enough, although if Trudeau is smart enough he would find a way to force an election before the whole dump goes public. Nothing about this rises to the level of criminality or corruption anyway, and never has. Trudeau could never be Harper in a million years and yes, Harper is a Bond villain; his connections to the likes of Orban, Trump and the rest of the transnational fascist movement are nothing to sneeze at. The I.D.U. *is* a real life version of SPECTRE.
Regardless, none of this stuffy, obscure, high-minded, antiquated English legalese at the center of Trudeau’s “controversies,” whether it’s the Shawcross doctrine or parliamentary responsible government protocols or the MAGA Carta or whatever, puts food on anyone’s table or produces a vaccine or treatment for Covid-19. That’s what *should* matter, but the other stuff is “sexier” for media headlines to sell papers and drum up ratings, and fodder from the trough for the hungry pigs in the opposition to screech about. The only problem I see with any of it is politics being about “optics” which Trudeau struggles to get ahead of, but the facts are that he is in no way a dictator or a crook.
I think it’s incredibly cynical and disingenuous to presume that he doesn’t have the best of intentions, which the road to hell is unfortunately paved with, as the old saying goes. He is neither corrupt nor an abusive boss nor a wannabe autocrat. He just gets ahead of himself in his zeal and sometimes forgets to dot some T’s and cross some I’s. But Harper and now Trump have left such a bad taste in everyone’s mouth that their worst instincts end up getting projected upon a decent fellow and generally good leader like Trudeau.