Roundup: A couple of notes on Campbell’s record

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The weekend was full of conservatives and other right-leaning commenters chirping about Kim Campbell’s record after her (verifiably true) assessment that Pierre Poilievre is a “liar and a hate-monger” who doesn’t believe in the urgency of climate change. Some of them—such as a certain self-aggrandising independent MP—have been utterly dismissive of Campbell and her record, but most people don’t really understand what happened in 1993, and why the fact that the PCs went from a majority to two seats was hardly her doing.

The thing to remember about Brian Mulroney’s massive majorities was that he had managed to build a particular coalition of conservatives in the Prairies, and that he was won over Quebec, which is incredibly difficult for any conservative to do, and no doubt a lot of this was premised on the (somewhat hubristic) promise that he was going to finish the constitutional project that Pierre Trudeau wasn’t able to complete and bring Quebec “into the fold” (which is mostly hyperbolic nonsense anyway). By 1993, that coalition has collapsed, in part because of the failure of Mulroney’s constitutional projects, being Meech Lake and Charlottetown, the latter referendum failing.

Conservatives in Quebec has largely fallen away to the Bloc, which was formed in part by Mulroney’s old friend and confidante, Lucien Bouchard. To this day, the Dean of the House, Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, was first elected in 1984 as part of Mulroney’s PC landslide, and in 1990, crossed to the nascent Bloc. Meanwhile, the prairie conservatives had defected to the nascent Reform Party under the banner of so-called “Western alienation,” in part because of decisions that Mulroney had made, not only in areas of the constitutional reforms that failed, but also because of things like CF-18 maintenance contracts that were supposed to go to a Winnipeg firm were instead given to those in Montreal, and it exacerbated the existing grievances that the Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Programme had inflamed (though he was largely blamed for things that were not his fault, like the collapse in world oil prices that the NEP didn’t cause, but were blamed for regardless).

Campbell inherited a PC party that had lost its voter coalition, thanks to Mulroney’s actions. The election went from three parties to five, with two very different regional parties at play. Trying to pin the blame for that collapse on Campbell is classic glass-cliff logic, where she was handed a bag of dogshit and when she didn’t perform a miracle, was given the blame for it. Did she make mistakes in that campaign? Indeed she did. Could she have resurrected the party’s fortunes with the voter coalition disbanded? Certainly not in the time allotted. For modern conservatives to say that her “record speaks for itself” don’t seem to understand what actually happened in the early 1990s, and instead are showing a particularly misogynistic streak in how they are choosing to attack her and her record.

Ukraine Dispatch:

One woman was killed in Russian shelling in the Kursk region on Sunday. Two people were killed, including a teenager, in Russian artillery attacks on the Dnipropetrovosk region on Saturday, and Russia claimed to have shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet. Here is a horrifying look at the rapes and torture that Russians have subjected Ukrainian prisoners to, particularly in occupied areas.

Good reads:

  • Chrystia Freeland is capping the rise in excise taxes on beer, wine and spirits for another two years (because those fractions of a cent were apparently a problem).
  • Canada is joining an international coalition to try and delivery more aid to Gaza by way of sea corridors originating in Cyprus.
  • Bill Blair has again reiterated that our promised air defence system for Ukraine is being held up by the Americans, not us as we have paid for it.
  • Here are some concerns about the hate speech provisions in the Online Harms bill.
  • Bob Rae is meeting with Caribbean leaders on the deteriorating situation in Haiti.
  • An internal RCMP review of the response to the “convoy” protest shows many officers in Coutts weren’t aware of the threats against them until after it was over.
  • Another internal RCMP report shows concerns about possible crisis points over the next five years, that are going to test their ability to deal with them.
  • Experts are warning that laws are not keeping pace with AI-enabled employee surveillance technology.
  • Some Liberals are spooked by the results of the Durham by-election.
  • Desjardins Group in Quebec is no longer offering mortgages on properties in “0-20 year” flood zones, as in those where there is a five percent chance of flooding.
  • The Manitoba government is launching ads to tout tax cuts that were put forward by the preceding PC government.
  • Kevin Carmichael looks at how Canada has largely handcuffed itself to the US in terms of trade, and why it’s so hard for us to break out of.
  • Althia Raj reminds us that it’s not a comprehensive pharmacare programme being offered with the legislation, but a pilot project. (What have I been saying?)
  • My weekend column walks through last week’s Frank Caputo drama, and how the constant lying and attacking the media poisons the discourse overall.

Odds and Ends:

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