Because Doug Ford and his merry band of incompetent murderclowns have decided to make Ontario miserable again with eleventh-hour changes and nonsensical measures (sorry, guys, but I am going to be insufferably bitter about the gyms being closed down again), there is once again talk about how the provincial Liberals and the NDP need to come to some kind of agreement in order to get Ford out. Which is insane.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478063212281085953

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478064242985246720

The Liberals and NDP, provincially and federally, are not the same party, don’t have the same positions, and even if they both err on the side of progressivity, and frankly, it’s a major betrayal of local democracy if you’re telling your riding associations not to run candidates because of some cockamamie plan that involves dubious polls or results from an election three-and-a-half years ago with other factors in play which are irrelevant to the current context. Sorry, but no. The opposition parties need to come up with a coherent message and plan to sell to the people of Ontario, and to be steadfast in holding Ford to account rather than letting him get away with his folksy aw-shucks routine. It means the parties need to organise their ground game. It means a proper electoral contest, not a theoretical exercise based on bullshit reasoning.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau says that China is using its economic weight to play democracies against one another, which is why a united front is needed to confront them.
• The federal government and Indigenous leaders will be announcing the details of their settlement agreement today for child welfare compensation and reform.
• Marco Mendicino’s publicly going after Twitter for not taking down threats to a prominent doctor could be a signal for future government  online harms legislation.
• The government is looking at changes to the EI system to make access to maternity and parental leave easier.
• Part of the challenge of building the national early learning and child care system is turning low-wage child care workers into a new professional class.
• Here is a look at what the two finalists for the fighter jet procurement will come down to—American interoperability, or regional job creation.
• Here is an update on the archaeology being done on Parliament Hill as the Centre Block renovations continue apace.
• Kevin Carmichael considers the Bank of Canada’s mandate renewal, the language around fit-for-purpose regulation, and how that may be used to tame house prices.
• Susan Delacourt gives her political recap of 2021, and what has changed, and what has been an endless loop of the same thing over and over again.

In case you missed them:

• My column that disputes Justin Trudeau’s claim that the Liberals are now an “open” party where they were “closed-in” before, and why it’s specious nonsense.
• My column which looks at what hybrid sittings are supposed to achieve for the role of an MP, and finds that it’s really only about being performative about WFH.
• My weekend column disputed the notion that there is a bigger “Alberta agenda” brewing, and that the grievances are hollow and Kenney is looking to save his hide.
• My Loonie Politics Quick Take on the looming crisis with Parliament’s simultaneous interpreters, as they are facing attrition.

Odds and ends:

Here is PMO photographer Adam Scotti’s year in photos, and it’s a real journey through 2021.

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