Roundup: O’Toole boots Batters at his peril

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The internal strife within the Conservative ranks is getting more pointed, as word came down yesterday that Erin O’Toole had lined up enough caucus members to force out any MP who signed Senator Denise Batters’ petition – thus weaponizing the (garbage) Reform Act to protect the leader rather than curb the leader’s powers – and with that threat in the open, O’Toole then kicked Batters out of caucus.

There are a few things about how this is all going down. First of all, the use of the Reform Act provisions to threaten other caucus members is a completely hypocritical action that would be utterly galling if it were not predictable. If only someone *cough* had warned everyone that this was a garbage piece of legislation that would only be used to insulate leaders and give them freer rein to be more autocratic and to threaten the MPs who get out of line, and literally put a target on the backs of anyone who openly stood against the leader as the Act’s provisions require. Imagine it being abused in exactly the way that someone *cough* warned was likely to happen, no matter what Michael Chong and every talking head pundit in this country gushed over. Funny that.

The other aspect of this is the fact that O’Toole kicking Batters out puts a stake in the party’s self-righteous moralising that they respect strong women and that Justin Trudeau hates them (citing Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Celina Caesar-Chavannes – but curiously omitting Chrystia Freeland from consideration). It’s even more curious that Senator Michael McDonald said virtually the same things about O’Toole that Batters did, and he didn’t face any sanction. In fact, this has clearly shown that O’Toole will tolerate the anti-vaxxers in his caucus but not someone who wanted the party’s grassroots membership to have a say in his leadership before August 2023 (at which time they would warn that there could be an election at any time so they couldn’t possibly change leaders then). And by kicking Batters out of caucus, she has nothing left to lose. She can join up with the Canadian Senators Group later today (the likeliest place for her to land) and carry on criticising O’Toole and calling on Conservative grassroots members to have their say about his leadership, and O’Toole can’t do anything about it. All of his leverage over her is now gone. If O’Toole thinks that this move solved any of his problems, he’s mistaken.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau heads to Washington today for the Three Amigos summit, and is taking Chrystia Freeland, Mélanie Joly, Mary Ng and Marco Mendicino with him.
  • An official apology to sexual misconduct survivors in the military is expected to happen shortly (possibly as part of a settlement to class action lawsuits).
  • Jonathan Wilkinson says his department can no longer just be about fossil fuel extraction, but about the shift to renewables.
  • Marc Miller says they are reaching a “critical junction” in discussions around a blockade set up by a Wet’suwet’en clan about the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
  • The union representing Veterans Affairs case managers says that their employees are nearing the “breaking point” and that they need more help.
  • Senator Josée Forest-Niesing is back home after a month in the hospital with COVID despite being vaccinated, as she has an auto-immune lung condition.
  • Government House Leader Mark Holland is defending the Commons Clerk, Charles Robert (and I’m hearing more from sources that the accusations are a turf war).
  • From Iqaluit, Jagmeet Singh called on the federal government to pay the full $180 million to permanently fix Iqaluit’s water problem (which they were in talks over).
  • The Green Party is now searching for a new interim leader, and there are calls for defeated MP Paul Manly to take the role.
  • Doug Ford appears to be holding out for more money and fewer strings for a potential child care deal (which should surprise nobody).
  • One of Jason Kenney’s backbenchers is calling on him to regain public trust.
  • Kevin Carmichael parses a speech by one of the deputy governors of the Bank of Canada on how they are changing their views on how employment affects inflation.
  • Heather Scoffield hopes the Three Amigos summit will lead to a North American-wide focus on resilience, rather than a greater turn to more protectionism.
  • Paul Wells notes how unresponsive Erin O’Toole has been to media queries of late, as the drama around his leadership continues to swirl around him.
  • My column picks up on my radio debate with Jay Hill, and digs into things we didn’t have time to delve into, such as what is the “distinct culture” of the west?

Odds and ends:

Here is the tale of how a coffee table book saved the East Block from demolition in the early 1960s, and also went toward restoring its Gothic Revival glory.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: O’Toole boots Batters at his peril”

  1. Funny how Annamie Paul made the same desperate “Trudeau is a bad feminist” whine in bad faith when her leadership was similarly on life support. But then, none of these charlatans would have that excuse to pull from their orifices if it wasn’t for the garbage media repeating that mantra ad nauseam amid the manufactured drama of the Multi-Hyphenate Affair. Then when Liberals are vindicated in their criticisms of the media’s myopic, tunnel-vision narrative-pushing, those same media types get all pouty and shouty and go into Rempelesque blocking sprees and double down on the defensive. They should just admit already that they were wrong and they suck. They all should just resign and let a fair and decent media/political landscape start over, with more mature players whose raison d’etre isn’t Trudeau derangement syndrome and childish tantrums when called out for bias, disingenuous smears, and factual errors. None of these people deserve any sympathy whatsoever.

  2. I think it’s fair to say that those who are not otherwise involved in a continuing fixation on the horrors of the Reform Act would find it difficult to see why Trudeau’s arbitrary booting of members from caucus is inherently a good thing, while O’Toole taking action to remove members from his caucus with substantial support of that very caucus is a bad thing.

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