As expected, the Conservative caucus voted for the (garbage) Reform Act proposals that give them the option to demand a leadership review, and as expected, the media fell all over themselves to interpret some kind of significance into this, including the fact that the same thing happened after the last election when Andrew Scheer was still the leader – never mind that the Reform Act had precisely zero to do with Scheer’s demise.

And while everyone was smiling and preaching unity coming out of the meeting, there are still sore MPs, who are concerned about the losses they suffered, and that their promised gains in places like the GTA didn’t materialise. MP Scott Reid is openly decrying that the party is being run like a “petty tyranny” where policy positions like the carbon price was imposed on them without discussion or even notice (as Reid was running to be caucus chair). So clearly they still have some healing to do, but I wouldn’t read any significance into the (garbage) Reform Act vote, because all it will do is insulate Erin O’Toole.

Meanwhile, I am concerned at some of the delusion that seems to have set into the party, as O’Toole went into the meeting telling the assembled reporters that it was the Liberals and People’s Party who spent the campaign misleading people and sowing division. I mean, serial liar Erin O’Toole, who attempted to make the falsehood of a non-existent Liberal plan to tax home equity a campaign issue, says it was the other guys who thrived on misleading people. I’d say it was unbelievable, but it was simply one more lie that O’Toole effortlessly spouts. Later in the day, Michael Chong was on Power & Politics, and when O’Toole’s constantly shifting positions on issues like gun control were raised, he called it a “Liberal trap.” Erm, it’s O’Toole’s shifting position – that’s on him. Chong also declared that it was wrong to make vaccination a wedge issue because anti-vaxxers felt like “hunted prey,” which is…warped. When you have a group of people who are prolonging the pandemic and endangering the lives of others, whether it’s directly with the virus or because they have overwhelmed the healthcare capacity that vaccinated people require, they should be made to feel social stigma. That’s the point. That Chong is going to bat for them demonstrates why his party continues to be tone deaf about the course of this pandemic.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1445387619215552520

Bracing myself for all of the breathless hot takes on the (garbage) Reform Act votes coming out of Conservative caucus later today… https://t.co/MVtP7Pf6l1

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 5, 2021

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland are expected to announce details of mandatory vaccination for civil servants and air and rail travel today.
• It appears a computer glitch may have affected a number of the recent graduates applying for permanent residency in Canada, bumping them into the French stream.
• The government had Google pull down ads leading to scam sites that tricked people into paying for the free ArriveCan app needed to travel to Canada.
• The Vice-Chief of Defence Staff has reassigned the major-general who wrote that glowing letter for a convicted sex offender, after the survivor community’s uproar.
• Mary Ng says that the only way China would be allowed into the CPTPP is if it meets the “high standards” required of member countries.
• The NDP will be undertaking some form of review of the past election, while they push the Liberals to implement their promises.
• Charlie Angus wants Carolyn Bennett removed from Indigenous portfolios.
• In case you’ve forgotten, Alberta will be running their wholly unconstitutional bullshit Senate “consultative election” in a couple of weeks, and it’s pure bullshit.
• Shannon Proudfoot offers a lengthy meditation on how pandemic stress morphed into a kind of impotent rage during the election.
• Former ousted NDP MP Erin Weir goes to bat for Kevin Vuong.

Odds and ends:

For the CBA’s National Magazine, I look at the state of Canada’s extradition regime in the wake of the Meng and Diab affairs.

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