Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[DC Al Fine]

Phillips has resigned from Cabinet.

[DC Al Fine]

Two Liberal backbenchers have been stripped of their caucus duties as a result of travelling to the United States.

Ashton's trip to see her dying grandmother seems a lot more warranted than all of the Tories getting caught travelling to the tropics.

Agreed. That said, plenty of normal people weren't able to see their dying grandmothers in the same city over the past several months, so it would still be an awful look if she kept her job...

So, I'm not the biggest fan of Ashton's, but a lot of people are glad she was stripped of her roles for being too far left. I wonder if they hold the same criticisms for some of the new MPs like Leah Gazan or Matthew Green?

Honestly, they should have fired her over that CCP apologetics farce before this even came out. I think parties should have pretty broad tents, but appearing in propaganda for a government that is currently holding your citizens hostage?! *Cringe*

Can you fill me on on Gazan and Green?

[DC Al Fine]

Navdeep Bains is leaving cabinet, prompting a cabinet shuffle today. Champagne moves from Foreign Affairs to Bains' Industry job, Garneau from Transport to Foreign Affairs. Omar Alghabra gets Transport.

[DC Al Fine]

Visible minority:

Liberals 53%
Conservatives 22%
NDP 20%
Greens 4%
BQ 0

https://twitter.com/DavidColetto/status/1350087616570523654

Grr, Coletto doesnt have the full table in the link he provided. That's annoying.

[DC Al Fine]

So, uh Newfoundland is having an election. Looks like the Libs are running away with it. Unsurprising as all the Atlantic Premiers have been very popular during this pandemic.

[DC Al Fine]

Conservative numbers outside the Prairies are dreadful.

I was surprised by the 55+ #'s as well. Liberals leading olds by 14 is decidedly not where the Tories need to be.

[DC Al Fine]

The NDP has paid off their campaign debt and have a bit of money now. This should increase the chance of an election a bit as forcing an election won't be financially disastrous.

[DC Al Fine]

The Nova Scotia Liberals elected Iain Rankin, MLA for Timberlea-Prospect as their new leader, replacing Premier Stephen McNeil. Rankin's election signals a shift to the left for the Liberals compared to the establishment pick Randy DeLorey and blue Liberal Labi Kousoulis.

[DC Al Fine]

Lisa Roberts, NDP MLA for Halifax Needham announced she will be seeking the federal NDP nomination in Halifax.

[DC Al Fine]

Lisa Roberts, NDP MLA for Halifax Needham announced she will be seeking the federal NDP nomination in Halifax.

Does she have a chance? How popular is Fillmore?

I think she has a decent shot, particularly if the NDP can make some headway in Atlantic Canada again. Fillmore is popular and brings in a lot of pork, but he's not some powerhouse either.

The biggest risk for her is that the Halifax Green EDA is actually a real force that can raise lots of money and attract legit candidates. There's a very real risk they will split the left-of-Liberal vote.

[DC Al Fine]

Mark Carney has joined Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MarkJCarney

Will Carolyn Bennett retire and open up the "prestige" riding of St. Paul's?

He must be annoyed that Draghi beat him to becoming Prime Minister

[DC Al Fine]

What on earth is happening to O'Toole? I don't think he's doing a terrible job, or at least bad enough to warrant his numbers. Can someone explain why they're so low? Is the Tory image problem just that bad?

Within the Tories? I'd suggest a few things:

First, unlike Stephen Harper and to a lesser extent Andrew Scheer, he has failed to keep the various right-of-Blue-Tory factions happy, which were recently emboldened by the leadership race. There's a narrative that I've seen on Atlas and in the media that goes something like "X group is a small, shrinking minority in the Tories. They need to sit at the back of the bus and let the younger, socially progressive branch of the party set the tone and take their occasional scraps" and I think socons, nationalists etc had absorbed it to a certain extent. Then the leadership race happened, completely shattering the narrative. Sloan and especially Lewis, surpassed everyone's expectations and got more votes than than Peter MacKay (and anecdotally speaking, Lewis' crowd was decidedly younger and more diverse than say MacKay's). It's obvious that he got is job thanks to those further right groups. They know it and expect to be rewarded by O'Toole, which he generally hasn't.

Second, he's bounced around a lot between ideologies, which always annoys lots of people. He started as a soft red, then when his path to victory required running to the right of MacKay, he shifted to the "True Blue" doctrinaire orthodox conservative approach. Now that he's won the leadership, he's gone with a heterodox working class conservatism (which I think is the correct approach for a Tory leader for the record, but the jump from "True Blue" was jarring).

Lastly, a non-inside-Tory-baseball reason: For a lot of Tory voters, "do you approve of the leader" basically amounts to "is the leader beating Trudeau". O'Toole obviously isn't, so a lot of normie Tory voters are annoyed about that.

[DC Al Fine]

Truly wonder what is going to happen next.

To all the canadians, who is going to win the next election for now?

Easily Trudeau, likely with a majority.  The conservatives have a serious geography problem.  They will win by huge margins in the Prairies and rural southern Ontario, but they will still lose in the GTA suburbs where it counts.

Do you think there's much room for the Conservatives to win federal seats in the Maritimes and Newfoundland, or do you think they're at a ceiling after the last election? I'd think that general cultural-political realignment might make some Liberal voters there open to voting for Cons, but maybe the party is still too blue Tory for them?

Sure. The Tories lost an entire quarter of Atlantic Canada's seats by 5% or less. A marginally better popular vote there, should give them a decent bump in seats

[DC Al Fine]

Truly wonder what is going to happen next.

To all the canadians, who is going to win the next election for now?

Easily Trudeau, likely with a majority.  The conservatives have a serious geography problem.  They will win by huge margins in the Prairies and rural southern Ontario, but they will still lose in the GTA suburbs where it counts.

It also seems like a lot depends on what Quebec does. I think one of the most disappointing aspects of the 2019 election was the return of the Bloc. I watched some of the 2011 elections returns and the general thinking was "good riddance" to the Bloc. That may be true in terms of vote total for separatism, but certainly not true in terms of seats in the Commons.

Is it fair to assume Trudeau would've had a Majority Government had the Bloc not spiked so much?

I don't think so. It would probably have been just a stronger minority. The Liberals were more or less flat in their Quebec popular vote and only lost five seats.  If you look at the Bloc resurgence, it was primarily at the expense of the the NDP (compared to the 2015 election) or the Tories (compared to polling earlier in 2019), i.e. they picked up the sort of soft nationalist voters who aren't inclined to vote Liberal either provincially and federally. Even with a more favourable vote split, the Liberals almost certainly wouldn't have won the ~ 60/78 seats needed in Quebec to get a working majority on 35% of the vote.

[DC Al Fine]

In Jeff Foxworthy style:

"You might be an empty suit if Derek Sloan takes a stronger antiracist stance than you."

[DC Al Fine]

Anti-Racist and Anti-Islamophobia Trudeau makes a strong stance by... not showing up to vote on labelling an ongoing genocide a genocide. Good to know!

The funniest moment of the vote was this:

https://twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/1363957132731760647

Profiles in courage

[DC Al Fine]

Re: Toronto Centre, another problem facing Annamie Paul is that the NDP is a bit "bullish" on Toronto Centre, making any sort of unite the left of the Liberal vote difficult.  In both the most recent federal an  provincial elections and it was their best riding outside the "big three" (Danforth, Davenport, Parkdale-High Park).  It's arguably the most left of the three downtown seats.

The NDP vote will surely be cannibalized in Toronto Centre  next election. Best to focus efforts on Davenport and PHP.

Agreed. The Liberals hold the seat and the Greens are running their leader. The NDP aren't going to be able to peel off enough of the promiscuous progressive vote in those circumstances to be competitive. The only reason for the NDP to put a strong effort in Toronto Centre right now is specifically to try and stop the Greens from becoming a more credible option for the left-of-Liberal voter.

[DC Al Fine]

Did the Olympics/Uighur resolution pass?

Overwhelmingly, but the Cabinet abstained, hence Hashemite and I trashing the government.

[DC Al Fine]

Iain Rankin was sworn in as Premier of Nova Scotia yesterday, which makes Justin Trudeau the longest serving head of government in the country now.

[DC Al Fine]

Toronto's NW quadrant (York South-Weston, Humber River-Black Creek, Etobicoke North) is the city's main Black concentration.  HBRC is about 75% visible minorities and Blacks are the largest VM group there.  Black Canadians are probably the most Liberal voting demographic in the country.  

You're right, but it's funny to hear, because in Nova Scotia, they tend to vote NDP.

[DC Al Fine]

Former military ombudsman confirms he raised concerns about Vance with Sajjan in 2018

Former military ombudsman Gary Walbourne says he did raise an allegation of inappropriate behaviour by Gen. Jonathan Vance with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan in a 2018 meeting — but said Sajjan refused to see evidence Walbourne offered in support of the allegation.

Snip

"Yes, I did directly tell him about an allegation of inappropriate behaviour against the chief of defence staff,” said Walbourne to the committee.

“I did tell the minister what the allegation was. I reached into my pocket to show him the evidence I was holding. He pushed back from the table and said, ‘No.'”

“The minister didn’t want to see the evidence."

Pretty damning stuff for the Defence minister, particularly given the timeline:

Mar 1, 2018 - Sajjan refuses to see evidence against Vance.

Mar 9, 2018 - Admiral Norman charged with breach of trust.

Vance had relieved Norman of duty in 2017 on the same day he was briefed of allegation against Norman (after briefing Sajjan & PMO as well).

Unrelated, surely.

[DC Al Fine]

Was there any more political fallout to the Payette resignation?

Not really, no. It was more of an inside baseball type thing.

[DC Al Fine]

Turfing a leader in a minority government (in a pandemic!) would take ... a lot.

[DC Al Fine]

Woohoo!

[DC Al Fine]

Good timing for Rankin. We're due for an election this spring (though I suspect he'll delay until the fall)