Roundup: O’Toole out, Bergen in

Posted on by

It wasn’t even a close vote—Erin O’Toole has been deposed as Conservative leader on a vote of 73 to 45, and he is done for. He says he’ll stay on as an MP, but we’ll see how long his appetite for that lasts now that is ambitions have been dashed. But rather than face the media, O’Toole put out a six-minute statement over social media that tried to claim the party was the founding party of Canada (nope—his party was created in 2003), and a bunch of other things to try and burnish his image on the way out the door. “This country needs a Conservative party that is both an intellectual force and a governing force. Ideology without power is vanity. Seeking power with ideology is hubris,” he recited. Erm, except the pandering to populism is not an intellectual or governing force, he couldn’t even identify an ideology given that he kept flopping all over the place, depending on who was in the room with him at the time. And he keeps floating this notion that Canada is “so divided!” but this has been his go-to talking point for a while, trying to intimate that there is a “national unity crisis” because Alberta didn’t get its own way and get a Conservative government (that would take them for granted and ignore their concerns), never mind that it’s not actually a national unity crisis, but mere sore loserism.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1489082431936372742

Later in the evening, out of seven potential candidates, the party voted for Candice Bergen to be the interim leader, which is a curious choice given how much she swings to the angry populist side of the party, from her unapologetically sporting a MAGA hat, to her full-throated support for the grifter occupation outside of Parliament Hill currently. It makes one wonder about both the upcoming leadership and what that says about unifying the different factions of the party, or whether the party will splinter because these factions may prove irreconcilable. And perhaps it should be a lesson that hey, maybe you shouldn’t just lie to each faction saying you really belong to them, and hope the other side doesn’t find out.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells enumerates O’Toole’s failures, and worries about the direction the party is headed now that it seems to be tearing down the few firewalls it had to keep the worst of Trumpism out of its playbook.

Grifter occupation

Yesterday was day six of what has become an occupation, and the Ottawa police chief essentially proclaimed his uselessness with the situation, citing insufficient resources to police an end to the occupation, and musing about calling in the military in the aid of civil power, which has only been done twice before in recent memory (the FLQ Crisis and the Oka Crisis)—but that has to be a request from the provincial government. (Explanatory thread here). Oh, and we’re expecting more arrivals for this occupation, including a QAnon contingent by the weekend, and the police are now warning about American organisation and possibly firearms in the area. It’s utterly unbelievable that the police force of a gods damned G7 capital can’t deal with a threat force on the very steps of Parliament, and then complaining that they are under-funded and under-resourced, when they allowed this to happen.

It does seem that they haven’t yet tried reading the Riot Act (which is a Thing).

In all seriousness, however, it’s going to be even harder to dislodge this occupation when gods damned Conservative MPs keep rushing out to support them, and will do so even more openly now that Bergen is the interim leader, as she has made a big show of supporting them. This is a problem.

Good reads:

  • The prime minister has agreed to include a Conservative on NSICOP over O’Toole’s objections—but was denied unanimous consent to make the change.
  • The government has reintroduced their bill to subject streaming services to CanCon regulations, and it has some fixes to the social media provisions.
  • While visiting Canadian troops in Latvia, Anita Anand says they are considering more forces to the region.
  • There has been a breakthrough in the blockade at the Coutts, Alberta, border crossing, and some traffic is now flowing (and no, real truckers don’t support it).
  • Unsurprisingly for anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention, inflation isn’t driving the surge in house prices—lack of supply is.
  • Five environmental groups are suing Jason Kenney for defamation after their treatment at the hands of the Committee for Un-Albertan Activities witch hunt.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at how the (garbage) Reform Act interfaces with the Conservative Party’s constitution on leadership questions.
  • Susan Delacourt notes that some of the grifters are claiming credit for O’Toole’s ouster, which is a signal they want the party to go down a losing route.

Odds and ends:

The Canadian Press looked into the “Twitter twins” of Canadian politicians, including Americans named Jason Kenney and Erin O’Toole getting their tweets.

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.

One thought on “Roundup: O’Toole out, Bergen in”

  1. Or maybe the cops have a contingent that supports the grifters and their stated aims. It’s been pointed out numerous times that they would not be treating Idle No More or Black Lives Matter with kid gloves. Heck, the Toronto PD forcibly extricated a homeless encampment because NIMBYs and developers complained about the sight of the ugly poors.

    Maybe it’s not that the cops *can’t* deal with the occupation, but don’t want to. And Dug is refusing to do anything whatsoever, because an election is on the horizon and he relies upon these nutcases as part of his deplorable base. That, and the continued obfuscation of jurisdiction (which Singh is notoriously guilty of himself) allows for deflection of blame upon Trudeau.

    In short: nothing is being done because it’s right-wing white people being inconvenienced. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Comments are closed.