Roundup: Trying to make an election happen

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I find myself growing increasingly tired of the media’s singular focus on a snap election, wedging every possible story they can into this narrative. And every time I see it, I keep thinking “Gretchen, stop trying to make an election happen. It’s not going to happen.” Honestly, no party is suicidal enough to pull the plug with the third wave raging across the country, and the legislation to make safer elections happen still stuck at second reading and has been for months because the Conservatives have been playing procedural games in the Commons (though the government is hoping to finally get it to committee this week). And given next week is a constituency week, the soonest it might pass at this point is maybe – maybe – the first week of June. Maybe. And then it has a 90-day implementation period, so Elections Canada could not safely hold an election until maybe mid-September. Maybe. Yeah, it’s not going to happen.

Undaunted, The Canadian Press’ big story this weekend is about how parties are gearing up for a potential election, and how to do everything virtually if they can’t go door-knocking and so on. And I get that they are probably in the midst of doing some rudimentary preparations because this is a hung parliament and anything can happen, but honestly? It’s not going to happen until later in the fall at the very earliest. But this constant obsession with pumping out election stories is starting to look both desperate and tacky, especially because it’s not going to happen.

With that in mind, I found Chantal Hébert weekend column to be lacking, where she questions the need for the Liberals to have a majority if legislation is finding “dance partners” in the Commons. The problem there is that it’s a fairly facile measure of things, given that there are bigger problems than the few bills getting passed with a sufficient “dance partner” available – there have been so few bills passed this session because the Conservatives in particular are slow-walking every bill they can, and only recently did the Bloc and NDP wake up to that fact when they have bills they want to see advanced as well. Add to that, most of the committees are now in a state of dysfunction because of partisan dickishness, and most of them are in endless cycles of witch hunts on would-be “scandals” that have long-since played themselves out. I’m not sure how she sees this as being remotely productive, but that’s me.

Good reads:

  • Dr. Theresa Tam is warning that even full vaccination can leave people susceptible to COVID, and it may not eliminate the risk of transmission.
  • Dominic LeBlanc has sent a letter to Doug Ford, asking which international travellers specifically he wants banned from entering the country, calling his bluff.
  • Carla Qualtrough is defending a planned two-year review of the EI system and seven year plan to update the system’s IT, given that there are no quick fixes for it.
  • The budget allocates nearly half a billion dollars over the next five years to create a new digital processing system for Citizenship and Immigration to speed up its files.
  • The budget also makes mention of changing the criminal rate of interest, which could be a blow to payday lenders.
  • The Star recaps what we know of the timeline of the allegations against General Vance and how they were handled.
  • The RCAF is working with Citizenship and Immigration to prioritize foreign pilots that they can recruit, given the shortage currently available.
  • A year ago, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki promised to deal with Complaints Commission reports within six months – and she hasn’t lived up to that promise.
  • Statistics Canada says the online response rate for the census is higher than expected, with some remote communities filing online for the first time.
  • Heather Scoffield digs into the job numbers, and why they’re so bleak for women.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Trying to make an election happen”

  1. Seems minority governments aren’t such kumbaya bastions of hand-holding and cooperation after all, in spite of the NDP’s wishcasting. For all the single-issue griping they give, and as much as I wish he had just gone ahead and used his majority to force ranked ballots do-or-die, I’m glad Trudeau punted electoral reform. PR would make this dysfunction a permanent fixture. The Conservatives are, of course, consumed by an existential crisis and completely drunk on anti-Liberal/anti-Trudeau derangement syndrome in the same matter as their GQP cousins, but for the NDP it seems to be bitterness over always being the bridesmaid rather than the bride.

    They can’t let go of the fantasy that 2011 was anything other than an outlier, and are still operating under the belief that Trudeau “stole” the brass ring from Angry Tom Mulcair (to the extent that some particularly childish trolls even imply that he stole Tom’s beard just to cosplay as NDP). Things went sour right after the election when Trudeau rebuffed Jagmeet’s request for a formal coalition, which they see as their only fallback option for sitting at the VIP table. Then the pandemic happened and they got annoyed that the Liberals were taking credit for “NDP-style” pandemic policies that they (the Liberals) already had in the works, or as you say “pushing on an open door.”

    Finally, WeGhazi happened and the proverbial merde hit the fan. The Liberals weren’t going to accept any more abuse from the likes of Charlie Dingus so they did what they could in a minority parliament to stop it. They really were hoping to ride another Fake Sponsorgate through to a repeat of history but Trudeau outgunned them. There’s been nothing but bad blood from the NDP ever since. They’re all but irrelevant as the Near Death Party and all they can do is jump aboard the bandwagon of hating/blaming Trudeau.

    When an election does happen, I hope the Liberals get a majority just to shut the saboteur opposition up once and for all.

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