Roundup: Lightbound goes rogue

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It was something of a spectacle yesterday to watch Liberal backbencher Joël Lightbound call a press conference to denounce his party’s handling of the pandemic, and to call for a roadmap to end public health measures—never mind that the vast majority of those measures are provincial in nature—and to deploy the farcical Conservative talking points about how “divisive” the prime minister has been about vaccine mandates. (Full transcript here). Some of it made little sense—this virus doesn’t operate on timetables, mandates were deemed necessary because carrots weren’t working anymore and governments needed to employ more sticks to drive up vaccination rates because we still need more people to get fully vaccinated if we want to have any hope of achieving some level of herd immunity, and yes, there are some deeply selfish people who refuse to get vaccinated, and we should absolutely call them out on that fact. (And to the point about complaints of the prime minister’s alleged name-calling around the grifter convoy, he clocked them for what they were, and if a few credulous numpties attaching themselves to this band of grifters, extremists and conspiracy theorists gets offended, they should take a hard look at the company they keep).

This being said, we need to ensure that there is room for MPs to dissent, and the Liberals have been better than most about that in their current incarnation. They have a handful of MPs who routinely go rogue, though generally in not so spectacular a fashion as Lightbound did yesterday. This being said, the comparisons to Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould have been circulating, but I don’t find the circumstances remotely similar. Wilson-Raybould had begun a media campaign against the prime minister, and the revelation of the recordings she made of private phone calls was a signal that she was unlikely to be trusted again, which is a huge problem. Philpott, on the other hand, was naively trying to run her own media campaign, cleverly trying to dole out tidbits to various outlets in a coordinated strategy, while she was also found to be taking notes in caucus (which is forbidden—they take away your phones and materials because caucus confidentially needs to be enforced), and again, that led to issues of trust because her media strategy was in the open. That is not the case here, and Lightbound says he continues to have confidence in the government, but felt the need to speak out. While he resigned his position as the party’s Quebec caucus chair, we’ll see if he retains his post as industry committee chair, or if he gets sent off to scrutiny of regulations to cool his heels for a while.

Meanwhile, Althia Raj wishes that we saw more MPs going rogue like Lightbound, while Paul Wells delves deeper into Lightbound, the dynamics at play, and the problem that this government has in its inability to communicate or manage issues.

Grifter Occupation: Day 13

There weren’t many developments with the occupation today, other than the continued inability of the local police to effectively interdict fuel entering the occupied zone in spite of their stated intention of doing so, while the occupiers are putting on a big show of shell games to troll the police and ensure that the can still get fuel inside. Also hampering efforts are the fact that nearly a quarter of the trucks there have children in them, which makes police action all the more difficult (and possibly getting Children’s Aid involved). More concerning were comments coming from the head of the local police union, who basically admitted that they’re siding with the occupiers, which pretty much sums up why the police have been so useless, to the point where they ignored the federal warnings not to let the convoy park there and turn into an occupation.

Curiously, the organizers of this occupation declared that they were withdrawing their MOU that called on democracy to be overturned, and then claimed that they didn’t want to do anything to “support or encourage any acts which tarnish democratic values.” Yeah, that’s plausible. I think that that they realized that it was harming their efforts so they needed to memory hole it before it hurt their brand any more, but it’s pretty hard to walk back against something that is arguably sedition with an “oops, I didn’t mean it.” No, you absolutely meant it, and you should own up to it.

I am forced to also conclude that we’re seeing so many copycat blockades and protests right now because the Ottawa Police’s inability to deal with this occupation is emboldening other groups who can see that police are unlikely to remove them, and now that we have Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec winding down their public health measures, some of them way faster than is prudent, it will embolden these kinds of actions even more because they think they’re effective in getting their way. That’s a pretty worrying prospect that this could start being a repeated tactic by plenty of other groups.

Good reads:

  • The head of the country’s largest trucking company says that the cross-border vaccine mandate was never a problem, and unvaccinated drivers were re-assigned.
  • The House of Commons passed a non-binding motion calling on PHAC to suspend its use of publicly available anonymised data to track migration habits.
  • It’s Candice Bergen’s first caucus meeting as interim leader today, and there are questions as to positioning in caucus and shifting critic portfolios.
  • The National Post talks to Alain Rayes about his planned endorsement in the leadership race, and why he is trying to ensure a more Red Tory candidate.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column suggests ways that MPs could keep the occupation on the Order Paper for days and weeks to come.
  • Kevin Carmichael reads through the trade data released yesterday morning and sees hopeful signs that supply chains are starting to sort themselves out.
  • Anna Drake examines the occupation through a lens of inequality, the growing sense of white entitlement, and institutional failures.
  • Justin Ling traces the coordination between conspiracy theorists and extremists to organize the occupation.
  • Matt Gurney recounts more observations from the occupation, including how very much the mood changes overnight.
  • John Geddes credits our political systems for blunting the advance of Trumpism in Canada, thought we need to remain vigilant for its continued presence.
  • My column offers a reminder of why the Reform Act is still garbage legislation, as everyone praises it for the vote that saw to Erin O’Toole’s ouster.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/R_Boissonnault/status/1491256057158508545

https://twitter.com/R_Boissonnault/status/1491256060132597764

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