Roundup: Senator Batters blindsides O’Toole

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There is much intrigue within the Conservative ranks, and it just got a lot more interesting. First thing yesterday morning was the story that Bert Chen, the member of the party’s national council who was suspended for circulating a petition to call for an early leadership review would be suspended indefinitely, rather than for just sixty days. But a short while later, another petition started circulating to call for a leadership review, and this one was one they couldn’t ignore – from Senator Denise Batters.

Batters laid out a fairly devastating line of attack in her video – noting that O’Toole is the one that is growing the “rift” in the party, and that he is responsible for the election loss because of what voters perceive to be his character flaw – that he is not trustworthy. “You can’t come back from that,” Batters stated. And as a senator, Batters has latitude to lead this petition drive on behalf of grassroots members that others don’t, given that she doesn’t have nomination papers that need the leader’s signature, and if O’Toole boots her from caucus, she will only get even more vocal from outside, and she has a parliamentary platform. There have been some talking heads who are insinuating that she is perhaps a catspaw for Peter MacKay, given that she supported him in the leadership, but I sincerely doubt that’s the case – as partisan as she can be, Batters isn’t a fool, and she’s not a puppet for anyone. The party president tried to dismiss her petition, saying it goes against the party’s constitution, but the section he cited was only in relation to the leadership process, whereas she is initiating a party-wide referendum, which is different. (And again, Batters isn’t a fool, and she’s a lawyer who was once chief of staff to Saskatchewan’s minister of justice). Some talking heads have also stated that this goes against the process from the (garbage) Reform Act, but as a senator, Batters is excluded from the Act, and she is leading a grassroots movement, not one from caucus. It’s also being stated that this is just one part of a multi-stage movement within the party to call for this leadership review, so we’ll see where this develops, but O’Toole’s problems are not going away anytime soon.

Meanwhile, a parallel drama is playing out in Alberta, where more than a quarter of UCP constituency associations passed a special motion that will force an early leadership review of Jason Kenney than the April date he had managed to negotiate with his caucus earlier – and they also want an outside auditing firm to ensure the security of the voting system for this review, so that there isn’t a repeat of the alleged shenanigans that coloured the initial leadership vote that got Kenney into power in the first place (which are still part of an ongoing investigation last I checked). Things are not looking up for Kenney either, and he and O’Toole suddenly have a lot in common.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau was in Edmonton to announce the child care agreement with Alberta, and he and Jason Kenney traded barbs throughout their press conference.
  • Trudeau also called on Doug Ford to make a child care agreement now that Alberta has signed on.
  • Unvaccinated federal employees who weren’t granted exemptions started their unpaid leave as of yesterday.
  • The Privacy Commissioner has ordered a formal investigation into the data breaches at Citizenship and Immigration that may have exposed vulnerable Afghans.
  • The government made a lot of promises for their first 100 days of Cabinet being sworn in, but a lot of it is simply to introduce bills, which is easily enough done.
  • An all-party group of MPs is distributing a Mental Health Handbook for Parliamentarians and Staff to help cope with the high-stress environment.
  • Some MPs remain concerned about their personal safety as Parliament is set to be summoned once more.
  • Conservatives are demanding correspondence between Liberal offices and the Clerk’s office after last week’s allegations – but those are confidential.
  • Conservatives want the CRA to conduct an audit to determine how organised crime may have been fraudulently accessing CERB and other pandemic benefits.
  • The Green Party has formally accepted Annamie Paul’s resignation, and she is no longer the leader of the party, six weeks after announcing her intention.
  • Stephen Saideman recounts his meeting with former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour and the discussion they had about reforming the military’s leadership.
  • Ken Boessenkool writes about how to build a conservative big-tent coalition, and how its constant evolution is a feature of our system and not a bug.
  • Susan Delacourt remarks on what a good day Trudeau was having as O’Toole and Kenney face turmoil within their respective party ranks.

Odds and ends:

I was on talk radio in BC to debate with Maverick Party leader Jay Hill about the risible notion of Saskatchewan becoming a “nation within a nation.”

 

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One thought on “Roundup: Senator Batters blindsides O’Toole”

  1. Unmentioned in the “Trudeau’s good day” piece is that in the CTV interview, JWR’s own mother called her a rat. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and it would appear that his most craven adversaries have an all-you-can-eat buffet of crow just out of the freezer.

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