Tag Archives: Pascale St-Onge

Roundup: Zelenskyy speaks with his inspiration, Trudeau

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We are now in day eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and attacks against hospitals, schools and critical infrastructure continue. Russian casualties are mounting, but Putin shows no sign of stopping, even as we are well into war crimes territory (and Ukraine is also making announcements of policy changes that would also be war crimes, so this is not solely a Russia problem). When it comes to sanctions, Germany has seized the yacht of one of Russia’s oligarchs, and one can expect more seizures to come in the days ahead. Canada has also joined 32 other countries in denouncing Russia’s use of propaganda in its campaign against Ukraine.

While there was no new announcement of sanctions from Canada yesterday, there was a call between Justin Trudeau and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who apparently thanked Canada for our efforts and stressed the need to keep expanding sanctions (which is happening, but being done in a coordinated fashion with allies). Also, interestingly, an old tweet of Zelenskyy’s was circulating yet again, where he cited Trudeau as one of his inspirations to join politics—which must really burn Trudeau’s critics, who are hailing Zelenskyy for his leadership in a crisis.

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Roundup: Breakaway caucuses are more headaches for O’Toole

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Things in the Conservative caucus seem to be getting increasingly precarious, as a “small number” of MPs continue to remain unvaccinated, and others refuse to disclose even if they are vaccinated, which is going to be a problem for Erin O’Toole in two weeks when they need to show proof of vaccination to enter the parliamentary precinct, their offices, or reach the House of Commons.

As if this weren’t enough, you have more unofficial “breakaway” caucus groups forming – one of them calling themselves the “civil liberties caucus,” apparently headed by Marilyn Gladu, who are concerned with the loss of “medical privacy” over vaccine status; the other is allegedly rallying around fiscal and deficit issues (and I would be tremendously surprised if this isn’t a faction led by Pierre Poilievre). And for context, particular “caucus” groups are fairly normal, but they tend to be around things like friendship groups with other countries, or other soft parliamentary diplomacy. This is not it, and while Gladu insists that this isn’t about O’Toole’s leadership, but it’s hard not to see it that way – especially as he should have been clamping down on the anti-vax contingent in his caucus and party more broadly because there is still a pandemic going on, and pandering to a group that is heavily influenced by conspiracy theories is frankly insane.

Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves. O’Toole continues to try and play both sides of the fence, saying he’s encouraging vaccination but won’t enforce it when people refuse for no good reason at all. The fact that the party has made itself beholden to its social conservative and more fringe base because they’re the ones who both fundraise and volunteer is a problem for the party over the long term, as the need to keep appeasing this base isn’t going away. That makes it harder for the rational, moderate Conservatives from having influence (witness the savaging they gave to Michael Chong in 2017, and Peter MacKay last year, even though MacKay wasn’t even a real Red Tory). So long as O’Toole refuses to put his foot down in the face of a global pandemic, he’s enabling more of the decline and that bodes very poorly for the future of the party, and Canadian political discourse.

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