Democracy is the exception, not the rule

Watching Mr. Trump trying to overturn a democratic election with the enthusiastic support of many Republicans has surprised many because the United States is supposed to be the democratic country that all other countries aspire to.

If you are one of these people who is surprised you should not be. Authoritarian rule has been the predominant form of government since humans formed civilizations. It is said that humans began to become civilized when we settled down into agrarian settlements and societies. It is also mentioned that when this happened the more egalitarian governing arrangements of hunter/gatherer societies gave way to rule by one person or a small group of people.

If you then look through that history, which spans about 10,000 years, you will note that less than a thousand years of that history featured any form of democratic government. The Athenians had a form of democracy for a short while. Rome was a republic for several centuries before descending into a dictatorship. Then there is the United States, which introduced democracy to the modern world, almost 2000 years after the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Some would have us look at the Magna Carta but we need to remember that it was about limiting the powers of the Crown of England in relation to that country's nobility. It was not a democratic constitution.

Further, even though the Athenians, the Romans and the Americans all had democratic looking forms of government, the Athenians and the Romans were the only examples of such, during their eras, and US has only been joined by about two dozen other democracies in the past 200 years or so, with most of them joining in the last 70-80 years. Otherwise, authoritarian governments have been the norm.

The simple fact is democracy is not the natural system of governance of our species. In all cases where democracy has flourished it has collapsed into authoritarianism within a few short centuries or less.

To expect the US to be different is flat wrong. It does look like the US is slowly descending into authoritarianism and maybe it can be reversed but it is an open question. Certainly, this week the Supreme Court of the United States legally squashed the attempts by the Texas Attorney General to overturn a democratic election but in that same week, in Florida, someone very critical of the Florida government's handling of the COVID crisis had their home raided by armed police for a reason that is still unclear to me. Maybe it will turn out she did do something illegal or maybe this will be an indication that the authoritarians in the US were prevented from destroying the American democracy in one fell swoop but that they can still continue to gradually undermine it away from the spotlight in Washington.

What does this mean for the rest of the democracies of the world? Who knows. We are certainly seeing authoritarians pop up in the other democracies of the world, including those which we can say have very stable democracies. It could very well be that the latest experiment in democracy will suffer the same fate as the previous ones. We will have to wait and see to be certain.

The Canadian Deficit, Vaccines and what it could mean for the economic recovery

On November 30 the Minister of Finance of the Government of Canada delivered a Fall Economic Statement. Among many pieces of information in that document was the news that the federal deficit for fiscal year 2019/20 will probably be $381 billion to $400 billion.

That is a tremendous amount of money and the sheer sticker shock of that figure is enough to get anybody's attention. Of course, it is much more nuanced that that. All of that debt has been locked in, long term, at interests rates that should make servicing that debt well within the capabilities of the Federal government. In short, it should not be a problem.

There is one caveat. Many commentators have indicated that the pandemic is creating a great deal of pent up demand. They are indicating that there is a risk that when the pandemic is finally manageable enough people may increase their spending so that it exceeds the spending patterns that existed before the pandemic was declare, potentially causing a spike in inflation. Said spike would then compel the Bank of Canada to increase interest rates, which would increase the yields of government bonds, which would increase the debt servicing costs of the government. That is a real risk and if it comes to pass then the government might find itself in a position where it cannot service its debt obligations and meet its program obligations at the same time. In situations like that governments reduce spending and/or raise taxes which may have negative impacts on Canadians.

That is the worst case scenario and many believe it will not come to pass. Many commentators actually believe that the economic recovery after the pandemic will be much more gradual leading to a gradual re-inflation of the economy where the Bank of Canada can raise interest rates at a gradual rate.

The key situation that will determine how quickly inflation will increase is how quickly Canadians begin spending again. That is where vaccines may play a role. Seeing that COVID-19 is a new virus and the vaccine that is being developed for it is also new that vaccine is not going to be delivered quickly. The vaccination of Canadians (and everybody else for that matter) will be a gradual process. 

This could create the situation where the economic recovery will also be gradual. As people are vaccinated they will begin doing things like they did before last March. They will begin spending again. They will begin traveling again. They will begin gathering with friends and family greater numbers again. The economy will open up again. However, if that happens at a reasonably slow pace because the manufacturers of the vaccine cannot produce it that quickly and the vaccine delivery requirement slows things down (two doses three weeks apart) then the economic recovery might be just as gradual. This is not an argument to slow down delivery of the vaccine. It should be delivered as quickly as possible as manufacturers produce and deliver it. This is just a post on what could be the impact of a gradual vaccination process.

There is one more caveat. As more people are vaccinated it could create the sense that the pandemic is coming to an end, even among those who have not yet been vaccinated. If that takes hold too early it would probably have the impact of a surge in cases of the virus and it could create an unsustainable surge in the economy and inflation. It will be up to governments to encourage Canadians not to get too far ahead of themselves as vaccines are delivered.

Our immediate concern is to defeat the pandemic. However, we do need to look to the future and what the economy will look like once the pandemic is defeated. The very nature of the delivery of the vaccine could create the conditions for a gradual economic recovery, reducing the risk of runaway inflation and the higher interest rates that would come with it. However, governments should be planning for the situation where the delivery of vaccines and pandemic fatigue create the opposite situation.

The Impact of the Biden Victory on Canadian Politics

I have read some commentary that the election of Joe Biden is bad news for Justin Trudeau because Canadians will no longer compare him to Donald Trump.  

What silliness.  Although Canadians do care what happens in the US and we tend to take sides with regard to who we would like to be President that does not translate into any real impact in Canadian politics.

I would remind these commentators that Canadians absolutely loved Barrack Obama but that did not stop them from giving Stephen Harper a majority government in 2011.  If their arguments would have carried any weight that should not have happened.

However, there may be some impact on the Conservatives.  One thing Mr. Trump did was spawn a bunch of Trump imitators and in Canada we have Conservative politicians, at the Federal and Provincial levels, following the Trump play book.  

They are doing this because they saw it worked for Mr. Trump so they believe it will work for them.  As well, they can imitate him because the world has been distracted for the last four years by the real thing in the United States so voters in Canada have not really been paying attention to his imitators.  

However, the US general election has demonstrated that using Trumpian methods are not effective.  Certainly, when he was safely ensconced in the White House he seemed untouchable but when he was finally tested in the general election he lost and lost big.  That should give his imitators in Canada pause, particularly Mr. Kenney and Mr. Ford.  Both followed the Trump playbook to get elected and continue to use it and like Mr. Trump they were successful, at first, but Mr. Trump also demonstrated that his style of politics wears down voters very quickly and accelerates the desire for change amongst the electorate.

Second, his eviction from the White House will reduce his power and influence on US politics.  He can still be a blowhard but without any access to the levers of power all he will be able to do is talk.  Without any effective way to exercise power he will fade into a voice in the wilderness, with only his most ardent supporters caring what he says, and even that will probably fade over time

So will his lesser stature cause the spotlight to shift a little bit to the actions and words of his imitators in other countries?  As the spotlight shifts from him will it focus on his imitators in Canada?  Canadians despised Mr. Trump.  Even a large number of people who identified as Conservative despised him.  Will that disdain shift to his imitators once the world breaths a sigh of relief at his departure?

Only time will tell of course.  However, if it does, even by a little bit it will put the Conservatives into a bit of a bind as they may be forced to choose between abandoning Trumpism, and the Canadian voters who like that style of politics, or continuing to following the Trump playbook and possibly alienating those who despise that style of politics.            

Could Mr. Trump's Stubbornness Help the Democrats in the Georgia Senate Runoff Elections?

It has become somewhat conventional wisdom that one of the reasons why senior Republicans in the United States are not speaking up about the stupidity of Donald Trump is they want to avoid having him work against them in the Georgia run-off elections in January.  He does not give a damn about the Republican Party so he could do just that if crossed.

However, there is another consideration.  As I stated in my last post that election will probably come down to turnout.  Which ever side can bring out their voters will win.  The problem for Republicans is the general election has demonstrated that there are more Democratic voters than Republicans.  Joe Biden won that state by more than 10,000 votes.  If Democrats decide to come out in similar numbers to the general election the Republicans will lose control of the Senate.

On the other hand, Georgia is traditionally a Red State.  If turn out were to revert to the mean the Republicans would probably win.  So, I would think that Republicans would be looking to cool off Democratic voters in that state and that is probably not happening as a result of the ongoing Trump saga.  That daily spectacle along with the Republican leadership's unwillingness to speak out against it is perfect situation for Democrats to convince their voters in Georgia that their work is not yet done so they need to come out in January like they did on November 3.

It could be that the Republican leadership miscalculated.  Yes, coming out against Mr. Trump could convince him to speak out against them in the run-off elections but it could also cool off Democratic voters in that state.  Turnout from Republicans would be down but so would the turnout from Democrats.  In that situation I believe the Republicans would probably come out on top.  However, the longer the Trump saga continues will probably motivate Democratic voters more and more.  In short, by allowing Mr. Trump to keep himself in the spotlight the Republicans are reminding Democratic voters in Georgia why then needed to vote on November 3 and it could very well convince them that they still have one more step before they can finally be rid of him.

It is in the best interest of Americans that Mr. Trump be tossed into the dustbin of history, possibly by way of a jail cell.  I would argue that it is even more important for the Republican Party to see him off so that anti-Trump sentiment can cool and not be carried over into the Georgia Senate run-off elections.

So Democrats did not make the same mistake twice

The 2016 election was all about turnout.  The simple fact is if just 100,000 additional Democratic voters would have turned out in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania the world would have been spared President Donald Trump.  Unfortunately, Democratic voters did not for a whole host of reason; their dislike of Hillary Clinton, their pining for Bernie Sanders and their complete lack of realization of the danger presented by Donald Trump despite his very open and honest presentation of it during the 2016 cycle.

The biggest question going into the 2020 election was whether Democrats would come out to vote this time around.  It turns out they did, in record numbers.  However, it also turns out that Republican voters turned out in record numbers, making the election much closer than virtually everybody (including me) thought it would be.  It turns out that Donald Trump was a very polarizing figure, motivating both his supporters and his detractors to come out in droves.  Fortunately for the world his detractors outnumber his supporters in key states.  

Now I guess we can look towards the Senatorial run-off elections in Georgia in January.  Will Democratic voters believing that they have done what needed to be done come out again?  Maybe because they are such a short time after the general election they might just do so.  Maybe Stacy Abrams will be able to work the same magic for January as she did for November 3.  However, my gut tells me they will not.  My biggest beef with progressive political parties is their lack of killer instinct when it comes to politics.  After they win something they tend to rest on their laurels, until they lose yet again when it is too late to do anything about it.

Plus there is 2022.  The mid-term are always hard on the party of the President because it is usually the protest vote that comes out while the voters aligned with the President tend to stay home.  That was the reason for the blue wave in 2018.  When the stakes were higher in 2020 that blue wave disappeared, and even receded a bit.

Joe Biden can hope the Democrats can win the two Georgia Senate seats in January so that he will have a united government for at least two years because in 2022 I would guess that the Democrats will lose both the House and the Senate, unless Democrats can somehow convince their supporters to come out in the same numbers as in 2020.  I would not hold your breath if you are hoping for that outcome.

Democrats did something that is not done very often.  They knocked off a sitting President vying for a second term.  That is an accomplishment but if they want to consolidate their victory they had better find a way to motivate and energize their voters in January 2021 and in 2022 or their happiness will be short lived.

US Election Night

In a few hours from the time I write this post (17:45 est) we will have an idea of who will be the President of the United States for the next four years.  Just as important we will have an idea of what Congress will look like for the next two years.

The polling data overwhelmingly indicates that Joe Biden has the votes necessary to take the White House.  Yes I realize that polls are not predictive and that 2016 proved that without a doubt.  However, this is not a single poll the day of the election that is saying this is Joe Biden's election to lose.  This is hundreds of polls conducted over eight months that have been saying that he leads nationally and in enough of the battleground states to get him to the 270 mark and beyond.  I tend to ignore single polls but I do not ignore polling trends.

So that just leaves the intangibles.  

Historically, Presidents tend to be re-elected for a second term.  It has been true of every president since they went to the term limits.  George Bush Sr. was an exception but he also won his first term after Ronald Reagan served for two terms.  That was a case of Americans finally wanting a change and voting to make it happen.  Jimmy Carter is the only president to win only one term.  There are some parallels between the 1980 and 2020 election but they are still different elections with extremely different electorates.

Then there are the voter suppression efforts of Republicans.  The problem with those is they would only be effective if the race was really close, that is, if the difference in the number of votes are in the Clinton/Trump neighbourhood.  The polling trend has indicated that Joe Biden has held an average 10 point lead over Mr. Trump and that his average support is around 52%.  If that is how the night shakes out then Mr. Biden will win, regardless of voter suppression or what happens in individual states.  Oh yes, if that is the margin of victory for Mr. Biden the Supreme Court will not touch the election results with a 10 foot pole. 

Turnout is another of the intangibles.  One of the reasons why Donald Trump won last time was his voters turned out and Clinton voters did not.  Turnout for early voting has been high but that does not necessarily mean that voter turnout will be higher than 2016 when all of the votes are finally counted.  What it is going to come down to is if there are more people who want to see the end of the Trump presidency than those who want to see it continue and whether they will show up at the polls.  The only good thing about this is the pool of voters for Donald Trump is probably much smaller than pool available for Joe Biden.  Mr. Trump did not even attempt to expand his base during this election.  The simple math is if voters in the Biden pool show up in greater numbers than those in the Trump pool Mr. Biden wins.  

So who will win?  I think when the dust settles Joe Biden will be the President-elect.  The polling trend indicates he has a big enough lead that the polling companies would really have had to shit the bed to miss this one, like they did in 2016.  Watching the campaign it does appear that Mr. Trump managed to accelerate the desire for change dynamic so that the majority of Americans want him gone.  Finally, I believe he has motivated those same voters to go out and actually vote.  We will see what the final vote tally is in a few days or weeks but it would not surprise me if this election breaks some voter participation records and if that is the case Mr. Biden will win.

The House of Representatives should remain a Democratic House.  Indeed, there is a chance that they could increase their majority in the House.  The election the House has been the most boring and predictable of the elections this cycle.

The Senate is a bit more interesting.  There are several Republican incumbents who appear to be in trouble.  They are being out fundraised and polling trends show that they are behind their challengers, although not by much.  Further the Democratic incumbents seem to be having an easier time of it where none seem to be in too great of danger.  The Senate election will probably be close but in the end the Democrats will probably come out on top by a couple of seats.  Although that will probably change again in 2022.

The last election surprised everybody but as is often the case people tend to look at the last election as a guide to the current election.  It is sometimes useful but it is also often wrong.  (See the 2015 Canadian Federal Election to see an example).  This is a different election with a different dynamic, namely the world dealing with a global pandemic, and the challenger to Mr. Trump is much more likeable than his 2016 challenger.  This appears to be Joe Biden's election to lose and I do not believe there will be any surprises this time.

The Health Committee Motion is not that big of a deal

I read the motion in question and the Terms of Reference for the Health Committee of the House of Commons and they align.  The motion does not demand the Committee to do anything it would normally not do.  That is why the Liberals decided not to make the motion a matter of confidence because it is not a confidence matter.

Everything in the motion could have been presented in whole or in part at the Committee itself and it would have decided on whether to proceed but the Conservatives decided to put it all in a House motion to generate some headlines.  Since that is usually what Opposition Parties do with Opposition days in the House that should surprise no one.

So the motion will be passed tomorrow and then it will be up to the Health Committee to actually action it.  That pretty much guarantees that this will disappear from the headlines for quite some time because the first order of business for the Committee will be figuring out how to implement the motion.  That will mean all sorts of procedural maneuvering by the various parties and I am certain that the media and Canadians will be hanging on every word uttered during those proceedings.  (Hint they won't be)  

Also keep in mind that the composition of the Health Committee will remain the same and it will be chaired by a Liberal.  That means the Liberals will form a coherent block while the Opposition Parties will be split and if the Opposition Parties try to push the Committee beyond its Terms of Reference the Chair can squash that effort without a vote.

The demands of the motion are largely routine.  Although an argument can be made about the timing of the demands there is nothing there that really stands out as being egregiously unreasonable.

We are already seeing some pushback on some of these demands.  The companies that were contracted to manufacture PPE in Canada have already made their concerns known and I believe they will not stop.  When it comes time to actually decide whether to invite representatives of these companies to the Committee the Conservatives may find that they no longer have the support of the other Opposition parties on the Committee to force the companies to appear.  Or at the very least a compromise may be reached to allow them to appear in camera and to have their testimony sealed to protect their property.  Of course, that would deny the Conservatives any opportunity to twist that testimony into another scandal.  You know, because the mail clerk, of a given company, is Justin Trudeau's third cousin, twice removed, so that was the reason that company received a contract.

With regard to the demand for documents the Committee can demand any documents they want but the timing of when they are delivered is usually determined through negotiations between the House of Commons staff and Departmental staff.  If the Opposition parties demand so many documents that it will take two or three weeks to produce them then that is how long it will take.  The motion stating that the Department has to produce them in "seven days" is grandstanding.  Further the Committee cannot overturn Cabinet Confidence so the documents will be the usual documents that are generated by Departments in the course of their work, which are boring.  Then again, the point is not to gain those documents but to complain yet again about not receiving the documents that the Conservatives believe exist that will incriminate the government.  They do not exist but that will not stop the Conservatives from claiming they do and that the government is covering them up.

I for one would love to see Dr. Tam being interrogated by the Conservative members of the Committee and the subsequent reaction of Conservatives at large to that interrogation.  I can think of nothing that would undermine the Conservatives among non-aligned voters more that that.  If it came down to who Canadians trusted more, Dr. Tam or Michelle Rempel Garner, I know who would come out on top by a large margin.  (Hint:  Dr. Tam)  Giving Dr. Tam three hours in which to explain how Public Health responded to the pandemic would not go well for the Conservatives, particularly since both the NDP and the Bloc would probably not be as confrontational as the Conservatives probably would and the Liberals would take the opportunity to allow Dr. Tam to highlight the success of the response.

The House of Commons motion that will be voted on tomorrow is not that big of a deal.  It was never a confidence motion and the only reason why some in the media actually indicated that it might be was to generate clicks.  The motion is only the beginning and how it all shakes out will be decided in the coming weeks by the Committee itself.  In all likelihood it will not all go the way the Conservatives hope.

If you are not prepared to fight a battle do not provoke one.

So another much hyped "confidence motion" was defeated in the House of Commons last night.

It all started when the Conservatives, cheered on by the other Opposition Parties, decided to put forward a motion to form a committee whose title, terms of reference and even composition was nothing the Liberals could accept.  They tried to claim it was nothing serious but even a cursory review of it revealed that it would have done serious damage to the government's ability to govern.  

So the government made passing of the motion a matter of confidence, stating that if it passed the Liberals would call an election.

Did the Opposition truly believe the government was going to give into their demands?  Do they really believe that they have the strength and the leverage to make them do so?

In the end it was the Opposition that backed down when the NDP contorted itself into a pretzel in order to justify not supporting the motion, even though they supported it when it was first presented.  Not that the other Opposition Parties showed any strength.  The verbal gymnastics of Mr. O'Toole to stave off an election were a study in doublespeak.  

The simple fact is only the Liberals are actually ready to fight an election.  The Conservatives have spent the last year in a leadership race and not in election preparation.  The NDP is broke.  The Bloc has hit its high water mark in Quebec and the only direction it can go is down.  With that in mind why are the Opposition Parties pushing their luck?

If they believe that doing this, allowing them to frame it as the government trying to cover up some kind of scandal or some other silly excuse, will help them they have not observed very recent history.  From 2006 until 2008 the Harper government routinely made bills and motions confidence matters and the result was the Harper Conservatives increased their seat count.  They did it again between 2008 and 2011 and the result was a Conservative majority.  

The Conservatives and the media have to understand that the machinations of the various parties in the House of Commons does not resonate south of Laurier Avenue, even in normal times.  In COVID times that concern is even less.  So playing these silly games is pointless at best and counterproductive at worst.  Make no mistake, if an election happens in the near to medium-term the result will see the leaders of all of the major Opposition Parties relegated to the lecture circuit.

On a final note there is a possibility that another confidence vote will take place Monday.  Since the government survived on Wednesday it will probably survive on the following Monday.  The media and the Opposition Parties will howl with outrage but I will again point out that no one but politicos will care and even the reaction of some of them will be "Meh".

None of the Opposition Parties are in any position to successfully fight an election so their attempts at brinkmanship are not strategic.  They are pathetic.  They may just provoke the government enough to call an election, which would not be in the best interests of any of the Opposition Parties right now.  

Oh for an effective Opposition

I have never made it a secret that I am a Liberal supporter but that is because they are the only party that even comes close to meeting my requirements for governing.  It is not because I am particularly partisan.

I know that the best thing for Canada is for the government to be effectively opposed by the other parties.  They should be there to keep the government honest and to push the government to make better decisions and to develop better policies.  

Unfortunately none of the Opposition Parties are doing that.  In order for the Opposition Parties to effectively oppose the government they actually have to take positions on the issues and stick to them.  They have to be able to present cogent and coherent arguments against what the government is doing and make their own proposals on how they believe the government should address a given issue.

This has not happened in a long time.  The Liberals and the NDP were complete failures at it when Stephen Harper was in power, although Stephane Dion came close with his "Green Shift" plan before the 2008 election.  Canadians were not ready for that yet, which is one of the reason why Mr. Dion was unsuccessful but at least Mr. Dion actually made an effort to mount an effective opposition to the Harper government.  Some commentators like to point out that Mr. Mulcair was effective but they base that on his work during Question Period, which only happens for 45 minutes a day and only when the House is sitting.  For the rest of the time he was no more effective than Opposition leaders that came before him, or after him.  Mr. Trudeau was also ineffective as an Opposition leader although we can never know if that was because he was no good at that job or because he was busy rebuilding and renewing the Liberal Party.

As I have stated before in this space I remember when Opposition Parties were actually effective.  Both Ed Broadbent and Joe Clark were very effective against Pierre Trudeau, managing to push his government in directions that they would not have gone if they were not so effective.  And Ed Broadbent really shined when Pierre Trudeau had a minority government.  It was his efforts during that time that lead to the idea that the NDP can be the "kingmaker" in a minority government situation.  

The last effective Opposition leader was Preston Manning.  Once he left the effectiveness of the Opposition parties went into the toilet and that has been true ever since.  

Here is the funny part.  The Liberals are currently leading a minority government.  It is a golden opportunity for the Opposition parties to push the government in a direction they would like them to go.  If any of the them actually proposed policies and then pushed the government to adopt them it would probably lead to their partial adoption at least.  Unfortunately, Mr. O'Toole and Mr. Singh are no Clark and Broadbent.  They do not have the political smarts to actually take advantage of the current situation.  They have allowed themselves to become mired in "gotcha" politics and the belief that scandal mongering will put them on the government benches.  They are delusional for thinking so but there it is.

So what we end up with is a government that is effectively unopposed even though they are in a minority situation.  The government has pretty much been able to do what it wants without any real effective pushback from the Opposition parties.  This can be a recipe for disaster but so far the current government has shown a very high level of competence, especially during these trying times.  

I am not too upset by the situation because the Official Opposition party is the most regressive party we have seen at the Federal level in the whole history of Canada.  So, having any of their policy positions even being considered would be bad news for Canada.  As well, the NDP has not had a coherent position on any issue for a long time so any proposal they make would probably just do more harm than good because they do not think things through to determine any medium to long-term impacts their proposals might have.  And the Bloc is the Bloc, a party founded to break up Canada.  Although we cannot completely dismiss any proposal they make, without thoroughly examining it, in all likelihood most proposals they make would probably not be in the best interests of Canada.

Canada is best served by a functioning and effective government being opposed by a functioning and effective Opposition.  We have been lucky that we have had the former for the last five years but we have not had the latter for more than two decades.  That has to change and the only way it is going to is for them to stop with the trivialities.  In the past five years the Trudeau government has left so many opportunities for the Opposition to effectively oppose them if they would have only had the forethought and attention span to identify those opportunities and develop coherent alternatives to them.  Unfortunately, I do not believe the current set of Opposition leaders have the wherewithal to make that happen and Canada is worse off for it. 

Government Life Spans and Scandals

Governments have life spans.  I have stated this before is this space.  What it means is after a time people just get sick of seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices from the people running the country.  It is inevitable and nothing can change that.

In Canada the typical life span for a government, both federal and provincial, is about eight years.  That does not mean that at the eight year mark a government will lose an election but it does mean that at about eight years a government is operating on borrowed time.  Alberta is a the exception, having lived under Conservative governments for most of the last 50+ years.  A whole whack of PHD candidates in Political Science could write dissertations to explain why Alberta voters seem to be political masochists.

Scandals do not change this timeline.  The Harper government had a scandal once every 18 months during their time in power but they still won three elections, losing after being in power nine years.  The Chretien/Martin Liberals had their share of scandals but they lasted 11 years before losing.  The McGuinty/Wynne government in Ontario also had their share of scandals but they lasted 15 years, although it should have been eleven but the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario pulled a Hudak in 2013 and allowed the Ontario Liberals to grab one more majority government term. 

I am certain that there are a large number of political observers in this country who have noticed this phenomena.  However, they could also be fooled by the fact that the last two changes of government have taken place during or immediately after scandals.  The Martin Liberals lost after the revelations of the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal and the Harper Conservatives lost after the revelations of Senator Duffy's trial for taking bribes.  I believe that this might have fooled more than a few political commentators into focusing on the scandals instead of taking a look at the whole picture.

Canadians have proven over and over again that they do not get too worked up about scandals by their governments.  They just don't.  As long as they believe the government is generally competent in doing its job they can be very forgiving.  As well, I believe the COVID crisis has changed politics in this country.  Suddenly, the little things no longer seem to be registering with Canadians because they are too focused on the COVID virus and its impacts.

It is interesting that the SNC Lavalin controversy caused polls to move more than the WE controversy.  SNC was about the ins and outs of the legal independence of the Attorney General while WE was about money.  Most Canadians do not understand the intricacies of legal independence but all Canadians probably understand money.  So why did SNC move the polling dial but WE did not?  Simple answer is COVID of course.  That is not just the elephant in the room that is a whole herd of them and they are not happy.  So Canadians are rightly focused on it.

That has not stopped the Conservatives, the NDP and the media from focusing on a perceived scandal.  What they are trying to do is shorten the life span of the government.  Past history has demonstrated that they would probably not succeed in normal times and chances of success in the current abnormal times is probably even less.  

However, even if they had a chance of success they are going to have to find something more than SNC and WE.  First, because two controversies are not enough to cause Canadians to turn on their government.  The Harper government had gone through at least five of them before the 2011 election and they won that election handily.  Second, the scandals have to be more compelling than the two that they have been pursuing.  Both SNC and WE did not have the kind of oomph that would move the needle among the 10 to 12 percent of non-aligned voters in Canada, the very voters that decide elections.  The Sponsorship Scandal certainly did because it was truly a scandal.  Maybe the Senate Expense Scandal had an impact but I believe that was less about the details of the scandal itself and more about the fact the Duffy trial dominated the first three weeks of the 2015 election campaign and reminded those non-aligned Canadians of just why they had grown tired of the Harper government after nine years.

So the resurrection of WE will probably not have the impact the Conservatives, the NDP and the media would like it to have.  They have gone past flogging a dead horse to flogging its dried out old bones and Canadians have much more pressing issues to worry about.  They really need to find new material but it does not seem to be available and even if it was available it probably would not matter.  As in the past they are just going to have to wait for Canadians to organically grow tired of the Trudeau government, which we should see the first signs of in about three years.

Then again if they really want to focus on WE instead of trying to find another scandal to focus on or actually decide to become an effective opposition to the government and they want to do this during a global pandemic I would encourage them to do so.  The more they waste time on trivialities the better it is for the government.

The Petroleum Industry, A Victim of its own Success

Ten to fifteen years ago all of the talk around oil and gas was the notion of "peak oil".  That is, we had developed all of the oil fields we could develop so there was no way to add production to meet demand.  As a result, the price of oil would continue to rise pretty much forever.

Alot of companies and political jurisdictions made some big business and policy choices based on that notion and for a time they worked.  The price of oil did continue to rise to the point where even the Tar Sands in Alberta was able to make money without the perennial handouts from Governments.  Not that existing handouts were eliminated it was just new ones were not needed.

The problem was the notion of peak oil was wrong.  The rise in oil prices just made other ways of developing oil reserves economically viable and companies did just that.  Fracking comes to mind.  In fact, production rose so much that the US went from being a net importer of oil to being a net exporter of it.  As an aside, I knew when I read that little piece of news that Alberta was going to be in big trouble in the not too distant future.  The US is the biggest importer of Alberta Tar Sands oil and if they had so much of there own that they were exporting it demand for Tar Sands oil would dry up.

The other impact of those persistently high oil prices was making alternatives to oil economically viable.  Wind and solar became increasingly viable alternatives and investment in both climbed so that they could be improved, made more efficient and made even more economically viable.  As well, car companies started seeing that they could make money by manufacturing and selling motor vehicles that did not use a fossil fuel distillate to run an engine.  So those companies began to invest in that technology to make it more efficient and cost effective.

All of this went on for some time.  The number of barrels of oil produced each day climbed until there was a glut in the market.  The first victims of that glut was the Tar Sands.   At one point the price of Tar Sands oil was US$40 off of the benchmark price for oil and those few years where it was profitable to develop it became a memory.  Then people began to notice that the Chinese economy was slowing down, that demand for oil in the rest of the world had also fallen and that there was way more oil in the market than there were reliable customers for it.  The result was basis economics.  The price fell and then it collapsed in the panic selling that followed.

So that is where we sit right now.  Fracking has dropped off considerably because it is no longer profitable to develop oil reserves that way.  The price of Alberta Tar Sands oil is so low that Tar Sands companies are laying off employees at a prodigious rate, despite billions of dollars in "bail out" money from the Alberta government.   Wind and solar are still being developed at the same pace as before the collapse of oil prices and automotive companies are forging ahead with developing and selling electric and hybrid motor vehicles.

So there does not appear to be any end in sight for the low energy prices we have seen for the last couple of years.  Indeed, many are now saying that we have reached or even gone beyond "peak demand" and that oil prices are going to continue to fall in the long-term.  That is having some impacts.  Exxon is no longer on the Dow Jones, BP has indicated that they have stopped oil exploration and Teck Mines has shut down their efforts to build a new Tar Sands pit in Alberta.  

I am not so certain about the notion of peak demand.  They were wrong about peak oil so I do not trust their analysis in the other direction.  We will have to see what happens but I believe we will see energy prices recover in the coming years although not to the level they were just five years ago.  

What the last five years have proven to us is that the development and sale of petroleum products is subject to the same economic laws of supply and demand for which every other product and service are subject.  Many in the industry and in the governments that have fallen over themselves to support that industry appeared to have forgotten that fact and in some cases they have still not accepted it.  There is no mystery in the current restructuring that is currently brutalizing the petroleum industry and those whose livelihoods depend on it.  They are the inevitable victims of the runaway success that the petroleum industry experienced during the first 15 years of this century.

Donald Trump has COVID

I would not wish death on anybody under any circumstances.  However, considering Donald Trump's ongoing reaction to the COVID-19 virus it is hard not to believe that his contracting the virus is karma.  I hope that he fully recovers but not until sometime in late November.

There is some talk about how this will impact the election.  For that we are going to have to wait-and-see but there are several scenarios have been talked about.

1. Mr. Trump will receive a sympathy bump that might allow him to eke out a victory.  While that is certainly a possibility I have a hard time seeing it happen because most of the time people feel sympathetic towards a person who is likeable and Mr. Trump is not that.  He has cultivated an image of being an unlikeable blowhard since he became famous.  If something like this would have happened to Al Gore or John McCain, during their runs for the White House, it might have put them over the top but I find it hard to believe anybody but those who already support him will feel sympathy for him.
2. Mr. Trump will beat this thing and come back even stronger.  This is related to the first point and it would be much more feasible if he was likeable.
3. This puts the final nail in the coffin of the Trump campaign for re-election.  It is the crucial last month of the campaign and if he is out of the picture for any length of time he will be toast.  This assertion has merit.  If he is unable to campaign for a significant amount of time in the last month then it would be hard to him to win.
4. Now that Mr. Pence will be more front and centre for the last weeks of the campaign Republican fortunes will improve because he is not as much of a lightning rod as Mr. Trump.  This one is silly because it assumes that Americans will somehow forget the last four years over the next four weeks.  As well, there is a reason why Mr. Pence was chosen as Mr. Trump's running mate.  He is about as charismatic as a turnip so there was never any risk of him overshadowing Mr. Trump.  In short, he was the perfect presidential running mate.  To think that him being put front and centre will change Republican fortunes is wishful.  Incidentally, Mr. Pence fits the mold of most VP candidates, unremarkable and dull.  The fact that Mr. Biden chose Ms. Harris does not receive enough attention because she is anything but unremarkable and dull.  Did he choose her because he is not expecting to complete his term? 
5. The election will be delayed.  That would be hard because US elections are a whole bunch of smaller elections, administered and controlled by each state.  I have a hard time believing that anybody would be able to convince all 50 governors to delay the elections.  And even if that were to happen how long would it be delayed.  Federal law indicates that Mr. Trump is President and Mr. Pence is VP until January 20.  On that date they no longer hold their respective offices and alot of work needs to be done between November 3 and January 20, regardless of who wins the election.  So a delay is probably not feasible even if some state governors would want to do it.  

I have seen some American commentators demanding that Mr. Biden suspend his campaign until Mr. Trump recovers, which he should certainly not do.  One of my pet peeves with progressive political parties is they have this sense that the should fight fair even when their conservative opponents are using every dirty trick in the book to win.  And if the nomination of Ms. Barrett to SCOTUS does not finally convince Democrats that the Republicans are playing the political game to win then I do not know what will.  

As well, Mr. Trump's condition is not a sudden and surprising condition.  This virus has been around for nine months and Mr. Trump has been downplaying it and suggesting silly cures for it during that entire period.  Hell, for crass political reasons Mr. Trump did not even take basic precautions against contracting the virus.  The way he was going it was probably only a matter of time before he caught the virus so no one should be surprised.  If this were a normal year, without a deadly virus stalking the globe then maybe there would be an argument for suspending the Democratic campaign until he recovered but this is not a normal year.  Mr. Trump failed to take all of the necessary precautions to prevent contracting a virus during a global pandemic and that has given the Democrats a potential gift.  They should take full advantage of it.

How all of this shakes out is still up in the air.  There are way too many variables for anybody to have a definitive answer.  We will have to wait and see.

Mr. O'Toole's First Month

A little over a month has gone by since Erin O'Toole won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and this is my initial assessment of his performance so far.

I realize that I am biased but I am not expecting much from him in the first month.  It takes time to learn any job and learning the job of Leader of the Official Opposition of Canada would have a particularly steep learning curve.

When he won the leadership I wrote a post indicating that if he wants to realize any success he is going to have to lead instead of follow.  That is, he is going go have to take risks and make tough choices between the interests of some of the single issue Conservatives that won him the leadership and the broader interests of the Conservative Party in winning over centrist voters.

So far he has not done that.  He refused to say whether systemic racism exists in Canada and just today he has come out against the current bill outlawing conversion therapy for the thinnest of reasons.  Both of these issues are important to Canadians and the majority of Canadians would acknowledge that racism is an issue that that conversion therapy is wrong.  So, both issues provided Mr. O'Toole with an opportunity to demonstrate he is the moderate he claims to be.  He failed to take either opportunity.  Or he could have at least faked it like Stephen Harper use to do.  

It has only been a month the longer he takes to make a stand against the social conservatives the more difficult it will be to do.  Eventually, he will not be able to do so and people will notice.

Otherwise, his leadership has been more of the same.  Piss on Justin Trudeau on a daily basis on twitter and come up with some really lame memes.  In short, the same strategy as Mr. Scheer.  If he thinks that will gain him more success than Mr. Scheer he if probably in for a great disappointment.

It has only been one month so it is unreasonable to have him turn things all of the way around but he has had enough time to begin putting his stamp on the CPC and there is no sign that he is doing that or even attempting to that.  

Leading Questions in Polls

So a Leger poll came out today that had estimates of the Liberals at 40% and the Conservatives at 30%.  If that was the outcome of an election the Liberals would be elected to comfortable majority government.

Interestingly there was one other question for the poll regarding the Throne Speech which did not have the most neutral wording.  I would bet a great deal of money that the Throne Speech question came before the party support question, which would explain the sudden spike in the Liberal estimates.

We have seen this in the past from Leger and from other pollsters as well.  Putting a question in front of the party support question that we could reasonably assume would impact the party support question.  The lowest estimate that the Liberals had in recent Leger polls came when they put a WE question before the party support question.

This may seem unfair but putting these kinds of questions before the party support question is considered to be a valid practice by the industry.  I can see their point to some extent but I have always preferred the party support question to be asked up front.

I believe one reason why it is accepted practice is public opinion and elections result do not take place in a vacuum.  There is a reason why election campaigns matter.  For the whole of the campaign the different parties are trying to establish the dominant ballot question for election day.  So, by putting the issue question before the party support question the pollster is giving the respondent something resembling a ballot question.  

When Leger made WE a simulated ballot question the estimates for the Liberals went down (but the estimates for the Conservatives did not go up it should be noted). Although, the reduction was still not enough for the Liberals to lose an election if that would have been the outcome of one.  Conversely, when Leger made the Throne Speech a simulated ballot question the estimates for the Liberals increased substantially.  

What does this prove?  Not much.  It is a single poll so trying to discern a broader message from it is a waste of time.  

A little off topic.  I have seen some people say that Nanos and Ipsos have different estimates even though they were in the field at the same time as Leger.  So which one is correct?  None of them are.  Why are they different?  Different polling companies with different frames, sample designs, questionnaires, collection methods, data processing strategies, estimation methods and so on.  All of these things impact the final estimates from polls and very few people really understand how.  Although, that really does not matter because the polling companies do not share this information anyway.

Some Political Thoughts

 Alot has been going on recently but I do not have the time to write a post about all of them so this post contains some relatively quick takes on what I have seen in recent days and weeks.

The Speech from the Throne was what I expected.  I know that many were hoping for much more groundbreaking proposals, such as Universal Basic Income, but that is not how politics in this country works.  Canada has always been a country were change is evolutionary not revolutionary.  As well, starting the UBI process will take time and stability and minority governments are unstable by definition.  UBI is on the radar of many now so it is probably a matter of when Canada will see some form of it instead of if.  Until then I would say that Canadian progressives should be very happy that our current Federal government is the most progressive we have seen since Trudeau the Senior ran the show and the only real alternative to the Liberals, in the eyes of Canadians, is the Conservatives who are the most regressive political party ever seen in Canada.  If you are progressively minded you should be doing whatever it takes to keep the Liberals in power.

The reaction of the Opposition Parties to the Speech was predictable.  The Governor General had barely finished reading the speech before the Conservatives indicated that they would not support it.  Some have stated that this indicates that they want an election but it indicates the exact opposite.  If they wanted an election they could have taken their time.  Instead they rushed to condemn the Speech right away because they wanted to send a message to the other Opposition Parties that if they did not want an election they would have to be the ones that support the government.  The Conservatives did not want an election but they did not want to be put into a position of having to support the government to prevent one either.  That is why they were so quick off the mark.

The well known Liberal pollster Angus Reid published a poll indicating that the government of Jason Kenney is now tied with the Opposition NDP in Alberta.  If Angus Reid is indicating that then Mr. Kenney is in much bigger trouble than that poll is indicating.  Jason Kenney is an extreme Conservative ideologue and he believed that winning government in Alberta, a province that has allowed itself to be repeatedly brutalized by Conservative governments, would allow him to push that ideology as far as his heart desired.  That is the reason why he passed on trying to become the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.  He would have had to temper his conservatism in that position.  Many believed the election of Ms. Notley was just an expression of anger and a desire for temporary change while the provincial conservative parties got their shit together.  That could be true but it could have also been an indication that Albertans do have limits to how far Conservative provincial politicians can push their Province to the right and maybe Mr. Kenney is going beyond those limits.  

The measure of just how bored the media is in this country is the recent speculation of a snap election in Ontario, with two years left in Doug Ford's majority mandate.  If he went into an election he would probably win and get himself four more years but there is also a chance that he could suffer the fate of David Peterson, a former Liberal premier, who called an early election to take advantage of some good polling and to avoid the fallout of a recession that was barreling down on Canadians at the time.  He called the election and a few weeks later the Ontario NDP, lead by Bob Rae, formed a majority government.  We are talking politics so anything can happen but do not expect the next Ontario election until 2022, which will be won by Doug Ford with a Liberals Official Opposition.

The Repubicans' horniness to fill that Supreme Court seat is the biggest indication that they do not expect to win the White House and that their majority in the Senate is in deep trouble too.  If they believed otherwise they would be willing to take their time.  Instead they want to do it while they still can.  They will probably succeed but it will probably come at a cost in November and beyond.  Female millennials and young women that followed them are very much of the opinion that they should be in control of their own bodies.  If a conservative court takes that away from them then that just might motivate a very large block of voters to become much more active in using politics to take it back.  That would be bad news for the Republicans, at all levels, for years and perhaps decades to come.

Donald Trump also does not expect to win the White House in November.  If he did he would not be talking about contesting the results.  If he loses as badly as current polling indicates that he is losing he will leave.  I do not think even the Republicans and the conservatives members of the Supreme Court would be willing to undermine the Electoral College as much as they would have to in order to allow him to stay on after a clear loss by him.  Of course, if it is close then that might change the dynamic a bit.  However, if he does manage to stay on by means of some political shenanigans the midterms in 2022 will be very bad for the Republicans.

Well, it took six months

I am seeing rumblings about what the Trudeau government knew and when and whether they reacted quickly enough to the threat posed by the virus.

First let's remember that although the WHO knew about the virus in China and Asia as early as December 2019 they believed that it could be contained and were working with China to contain it in Wuhan province.  Looking at the WHO Pandemic Timeline demonstrates that.  Canadian authorities would have been monitoring the situation but there was not much they could have done at that point, except issue travel advisories and provide any assistance to China that they could.  

On January 30 the WHO declared the COVID virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.  That is not the same as a pandemic.  That means that the global community should be concerned about this virus because it had potential to become a pandemic.

So I would imagine that the PM Trudeau and key advisors would have met on our about January 30 to discuss the issue.  The participants at the meeting would have been the:

• Health Minister
• Finance Minister
• Deputy PM
• Minister of Foreign Affairs
• Chief political advisor for the government

I imagine the conversation went something like this.

PM:  The WHO has declared this new virus a PHEIC.  I believe that means that this virus could spread to Canada.

Health Min:  Yes, that is what it means.

PM:  Well if that is the case I believe we should do everything in our power to prevent that.  What steps should be take to do so.

Health Min:  We should stop all travel to and from China and other countries that have cases.  We should also consider shutting down all international travel by Canadians because this virus is likely to spread beyond Asia.  We should apply restrictions to travel between the US and Canada.  We should begin preparing Canadians for the possible lock down of the economy.  Considering what we know, so far, about this virus, once it takes hold the only option will be to send everybody home to stay there until we can get it under control.

PM:  Really, we would have to take all of those actions to prevent the virus from coming here?  Is any of that even feasible?

Foreign Affairs:  Unilaterally shutting down all travel to and from China will not be taken very well in Beijing.  We could do it but it will hurt Canadian financial and commercial interests. 

Deputy PM:  Neither would unilaterally restricting travel over the Canada/US border.  Indeed, that would be impossible.  The Trump Administration will not accept any reduction in traffic across the border.

Finance Min:  The economic cost of these suggestions would be very high.  The airline industry would take a particularly big hit even if we just greatly restrict air travel.  If we take the suggestion of shutting down the economy the cost will be astronomical.  Millions of Canadians would be put out of work and our GDP would probably collapse.  

Political advisor:  Let's also remember that at this point none of what is being suggested will probably be effective.

PM:  Why is that?

Political Advisor:  Because it is basic human psychology.  Humans do not react to a threat until it is in their face.  This virus is still just a distant concern to Canadians, not a threat.  So any drastic actions proposed by the government will probably be ineffective.  If we tell Canadians to stay home to prevent the virus from coming to Canada they will ignore us.  The airlines and business will howl saying that we are overreacting.  The media and the opposition will say we are overreacting.  Most Canadians will say we are overreacting.  

Health Min:  If we want any chance of preventing the virus from coming to Canada we have to implement the measures I indicated.

PM:  Would that guarantee Canada would not be hit by this virus?

Health Minister:  No.  It will only increase the chances of it not hitting the country.

PM:  So we could essentially attempt to shut down the country and if we succeeded the virus could hit the country anyway?

Health Min:  Yes PM.

PM:  But in actuality, most of these measures are probably not feasible and the ones that might be would probably not be effective?

All other participants:  Yes PM.

Health Min:  But if we do not implement these measures it is only a matter of time before virus comes to Canada and we have no idea what it will do when it gets here.

PM:  So I guess what we need to do is prepare for its arrival.  What steps should be take now?

Health Min:  Continue to monitor the situation through the WHO and begin to take steps to detect the virus in Canada.

Foreign Affairs:  Issue travel advisories for countries that currently have COVID cases.  This has already been done.

Finance Min:  Begin to model the potential economic and fiscal impacts.

PM:  OK, I guess we are going to have to accept the fact that we cannot keep the virus out of Canada.  We can only mitigate its impacts both to public health and to the economy.  We are going to have to accept that Canadians are going to die because of this virus and that the economy could take a potentially big hit.  We will begin to implement the pandemic response plan to mitigate the public health impacts.  At some point this virus could become the threat that will galvanize Canadians and we may have to lock down the economy.  If so, I would like to encourage Canadians to do so by developing economic support programs.  We cannot develop them now but we can begin to do the groundwork.  If it becomes necessary we will have to deliver these programs in weeks not months so let's begin to work on them now.  We will consult with our allies and trading partners regarding collective actions to curtail the spread of the virus.  I will begin consulting with the Premiers.  They need to know what could be coming so that they can begin their own preparations.

PM:  Is there anything else we can do right now?

All other participants:  No that is a good start but this is only the beginning.  This has the potential to become much worse before it gets better.

PM:  OK, this will be a work in progress but we are agreed on what needs to be done right now.

All other participants:  Yes.

PM:  OK, thank you.

Of course, the actual conversation was very different but the above probably captures the gist.  The simple fact is all governments had a very stark choice at the end of January.  Implement very stringent measures to curtail the spread of the virus, with the commensurate impacts on their economies or protect their economies at the potential cost of many of their citizens.   

It should come as no surprise that most of the countries that took the stringent measures were countries close to the first epicentre of the virus.  It should also be unsurprising that countries that were really far away from that first epicentre took a more wait-and-see approach.  

Did the Canadian government take the best approach available to them?  That is debatable.  However, there were no perfect solutions to the problem in which they found themselves.  All they had were options and none of them would have prevented COVID from coming to Canada and none of them would have prevented the economic fallout we experienced. 

Personally, I believe they made the best of a bad situation.  They could have done somethings better but on the whole I believe they did what could be done.

Old Liberals

I have been seeing some old Liberals pop their heads up recently to criticize the current Liberal government. These old Liberals have been around for some time and they are often used by the news media to provide the "Liberal" point of view on their panel shows even though they have not been part of the party establishment for quite some time.

Some have asked why would these old Liberals come out against the government?

There seems to be several theories.  The one I see the most is that they are Blue Liberals who do not like the tack the current government is taking.  After all Justin Trudeau did not follow the old Liberal trick of campaigning from the left but governing from the right.  He actually campaign from the centre-left and he as governed from there since his government was elected. 

Maybe there is some truth to that but I believe it is much more personal than that.  You see from the election of Pierre Trudeau as Leader of the Liberal Party, to when Justin Trudeau was elected as leader, the Liberal Party had been under the thumb of the same power brokers.  They were the movers and shakers behind the party and they provided their heft in making certain that the party continued to realize success.  In return they expected loyalty from the Leaders of the Party towards them and their interests.  Most of the party apparatus was connected to those movers and shakers in some way.  There would have been no way that those who were part of that apparatus could have been employed by the Party if they were not.

Justin Trudeau was expected to be another in that line of Party Leaders who were beholden to those old Liberal grandees.  However, Justin Trudeau did not believe the same thing.  I believe the fact that the Liberals were reduced to Third Party status lead to the weakening of the hold of the old Liberal establishment on the Party.  Suddenly with Mr. Harper enjoying electoral success and the NDP being poised to actually form a government many in the Liberal Party realized things had to change.

I have mentioned in this space before that one of the accomplishments of Justin Trudeau, for which he receives little to no credit, was his remaking of the Liberal Party.  Ironically, he did what his father did.  When Trudeau the Senior won the leadership he cleaned out the old Liberal establishment that had existed since Mackenzie King.  When Justin Trudeau was elected he cleaned out the old Liberal establishment that was created by his father.  Although Justin Trudeau's cleaning was much more thorough than his father's.

That is one of the biggest reasons for the lack of support of old Liberals for the current Trudeau government.  Part of it is the direction the Trudeau government is taking Canada but much more of it is that fact that Justin Trudeau cleaned house.  The old Liberal establishment was swept away with only a few vestiges of it left over when he was elected PM.  Since then he has made it a clean sweep.  Needless to say that members of the old Liberal establishment did not like to be cast aside like that.  That was disloyal on the part of Mr. Trudeau and to be frozen out of the many patronage appointment that the PM can make just added injury to insult.  

I believe that Mr. Trudeau knew that there would be blowback for his actions but I also believe that he realized Canada is changing and that the old Liberal establishment, established in the late 60s to early 70s, would have driven the Liberal Party to near extinction.  (With the enthusiastic assistance of both the Conservatives and the NDP)  So he dragged the Liberal Party into the 21st Century and left the old guard behind.  In the long run the Liberal Party and the country will be better off as a result of his actions but that will not stop members of the now deposed old guard from shouting from the cheap seats.  

Will Mr. O'Toole Lead or Follow?

Since his election as Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada Erin O'Toole has been attempting to pass himself off as a moderate while hoping everybody will ignore the fact that social conservatives, the most militant anti-gun control groups and climate change deniers were crucial to his victory.

The simple fact is he does owe them and they will eventually come to collect their debts, or at least they will try.

I am reminded of Stephen Harper.  He was in a very similar situation.  He won the leadership of the Conservative Party by courting some of the more extreme elements of the conservative movement in this country and many believed that it would prevent him from ever winning an election.  

Of course, he did win elections and part of the reason why was he lead the Conservative Party instead of letting the different elements lead him.  He threw the thinnest of bones to the special interest groups that elected him as leader and did what needed to be done to appeal to more moderate voters in Central Canada in order to win.

The question is will Mr. O'Toole do the same thing?

Mr. O'Toole's challenge is much more daunting.  Mr. Harper won the leadership of the Conservatives before social media really took off so he could control the message within the Party and clamp down on dissidents.  As well, he came to power just as the last big energy boom in Alberta and Saskatchewan was just ramping up.  They were happy so they had no problem looking the other way when Mr. Harper started courting voters in Central Canada.  Finally, in the first decade of the millennium the social conservatives were not nearly as organized as they are now within the Conservative Party.

To overcome these challenges Mr. O'Toole is going to have to lead.  That means he is going to have to take risks.  The Conservatives cannot win without Central Canadian voters and that means they are going to have to move to the centre on a whole host of issues in order to attract those voters.  They will have to temper their social conservative urges and they will have to develop a viable and credible plan to tackle climate change.  Calling for the elimination of the Carbon Tax without expressing a credible alternative is a non-starter.  The Carbon Tax is only a big deal in Alberta and Saskatchewan.  Calling for its elimination is not a vote winner in other parts of the country.  

Of course, that runs the grave risk of upsetting the Conservative base.  If energy prices were high then the Conservatives could probably take the risk without too many problems but since the collapse of energy prices a Western Separatist sentiment has risen in Alberta and Saskatchewan and political parties with the goal of trying to make that happen are being formed.  It is an open question of whether they will have any real impact but their presence does make Mr. O'Toole's job much harder, as many Albertans will not react well to any real action on climate change, and may decide to express that dissatisfaction by voting for Wexit candidates, while central Canadians would not react well to a non-credible plan on tackling it.

The same goes for the PPC, which could attract disillusioned social conservatives although I believe social conservatives will be keeping a close eye on Mr. O'Toole.  If he goes too far off message they will flex their muscle on social media potentially putting Mr. O'Toole in a very tough spot.  How Mr. O'Toole reacts to that will be telling.

The simple fact is Mr. O'Toole is actually going to have to lead.  That means making tough choices and taking risks.  If he is unable or unwilling to do that then no amount of image polishing will lead to electoral success.    

The Conservative Leadership Election Debacle

There is a repertory theatre here in Ottawa that has been showing old classics in order to stay afloat during the pandemic.  Beginning last week and continuing until mid-September they are having a Bruce Lee festival.  They are showing each of his movies, in order, one week at a time during the festival.  I am a Bruce Lee fan and I have seen all of his movies but not on the big screen.  I was still in elementary school when he died so I could not see them when they were first released.  So, I have been taking advantage of the festival to finally see them on the big screen and the second movie of the festival was shown last night.  As a result I did not get home until around 11:30 last night.

I mention all of this to indicate that I was not home to monitor the Conservative Leadership convention.  When I got home I figured I would take a quick look on-line, see who won and then go to bed.  I was wrong.  By the time I climbed into bed, just after midnight, the first ballot had not even been counted, a machine designed to open the envelopes was revealed to have torn up hundreds, maybe thousands of the ballot and there was no indication from the party of when the results would be announced.

I am not going to pass judgement on what all this means.  However, I would point out that in 2007, after Stephen Harper gave a national televised address, Stephane Dion gave a rebuttal address that was filmed using a mobile phone instead of an actual camera, leading to less than good picture and sound quality.  (This was before selfies became a thing).  The result of that is he was raked over the coals with people saying if the Liberals could not pull themselves together to produce a good quality video how can they be expected to run the country?  In his defence, the Liberals did not have alot of time to prepare.  Contrast that to the CPC that have had August 23 circled their calendars for months and their vote counting is still a debacle.  I will leave it up to everybody else to decide if there is any broader implications to that and what are those implications.

I then checked again this morning to discover that they had finally sorted themselves out and that they announced the results at around 0130 but that there were some 3000 ballots missed for reasons that are not yet clear.  I doubt that those votes would have changed the outcome but still the CPC has a bit of a reputation for questionable tactics during elections and those ballots being eliminated without a reasonable explanation can only feed into the reputation.

So after all of that Erin O'Toole was announced as the winner of the election.  I have read all sorts of hot takes on it so I will not add to it except to say that the Liberals are the favorite to win the next election, as I indicated in a previous post from this month, and nothing that has happened in the last 24 hours had changed that.

I would also say that my assertion that an election this fall is very unlikely stands.  Mr. O'Toole will have barely enough time to find all of the bathrooms in Stornaway before the House comes back.  As well, if he loses to Justin Trudeau his chances of staying on as leader of the CPC drop precipitously.  The Conservatives do not take well to leaders who lose elections, even ones that only won the leadership weeks or months in the past.  So he will want to maximise his time as leader and forcing an election that he is more likely to lose than win, and maybe allow Justin Trudeau to win a majority government, is not the way to accomplish that.  

All in all, last night was an inauspicious start to the Erin O'Toole era of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The Failure of Andrew Scheer

This is Andrew Scheer's last day as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and leader of the Official Opposition of Canada.  At times like this it is customary to look back at the time he spent in those roles and assess his performance.

Many in the media have praised him in the last few days, although that praise smacked more of not wanting to speak ill of the dead instead of being genuine praise for his accomplishments.  

Now it is my turn to assess his performance and it should come as no surprise that I believed he failed on a fundamental level.  Many would just put my assessment down to partisanship as I tend to support the Liberals so if you want to dismiss this assessment by all means go ahead.

Many people point to Mr. Scheer losing the last election as his greatest failure but I disagree.  He really did not have much of a chance of winning because three historical voting patterns were working against him.  It would have taken a near miracle for him to overcome them.  And if you are still one of these people who believes that Mr. Scheer prevented the Liberals from achieving majority government I would say you are mistaken.  It was the Bloc that did that.  So him losing the election was not his greatest failure.

So what was his greatest failure?  He did not renew the Conservative Party of Canada despite the fact that he had three years to do that.  The CPC that went into the 2019 election was the same one that went into the 2015 election.  He did not make the Party his Party even though he had the time to do it.  

That matters because the new leader, regardless of who that is, will have to take that party into the next election.  It is the same party that Stephen Harper created in 2004 and the same party that lost in 2015 and 2019.  Since the new leader is facing a minority government he is going to have to focus on election readiness instead of party renewal.  As well, to make things worse one of the perverse impacts of the pandemic is the Liberals now have the opportunity to develop a compelling election narrative, something that they might have had difficulty developing in normal times, for the next election.

When Justin Trudeau took over the Liberal Party he took the time offered by the Harper majority government to completely renew the Liberal Party.  He changed it from the party of Jean Chretien/Paul Martin to the party of Justin Trudeau, much to the everlasting chagrin of stalwarts of those two men.  I feel Mr. Trudeau does not receive the credit he deserves for that accomplishment, done in a relatively short period of time.  If he had not done it the Liberals might not have won in 2015.  

That 2015 loss by the CPC was a tough one but it gave them the time to renew their party.  They chose Mr. Scheer to be their leader and he failed to do so.  Indeed, I believe he did not even try.  The CPC is still very much the party of Stephen Harper.  Some believe it is because he is the man behind the curtain and that could be true but it is just as likely that the lack of renewal could have been inertia on the part of the Party Apparatus combined with laziness and/or incompetence of Mr. Scheer.  Either way, the CPC of today is the same party as when he took over the leadership four years ago and that is the fundamental failure for which he is responsible. 

Canada is not a Corrupt Country

Canada is pretty much corruption free.  Yes some politicians push the limits of ethical behaviour but it would be a stretch to call them corrupt.

What passes for corruption in this country is a joke.  Bill Moreau was accused of being corrupt because he forgot to pay a $41,000 travel bill to a WE event in Africa.  One of the contributing factors to the fall of the Harper government was a $90,000 payment from his Chief of Staff to Senator Duffy.  Another joke.  The WE controversy was billed as corruption but the facts do not support that billing and the same can be said about the SNC Lavalin "scandal".

In over 35 years of observing Canadian politics I can only identify two instances of actual corruption.  The Sponsorship Scandal and Brian Mulroney taking a suitcase full of cash from Mr. Schrieber.  That is it.

Now compare that to the rest of the world.  The dumpster fire that is the Trump Administration is a poster child for corruption.  The fact that virtually all of his campaign team, from 2016, are either convicted felons or are about to be convicted felons would be an indication of corruption.  And that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Unfortunately, the laws around campaign financing in the US create many opportunities for unscrupulous individuals to be corrupt.

Then let's look at Russia.  One of Mr. Putin's leading critics is currently in a coma in a German hospital after being poisoned, likely by people working for Mr. Putin.  Could you imagine the shit storm that would erupt in Canada if something similar were to happen to Mr. Scheer or Mr. Singh?

And that is just the big corruption.  Canada is virtually free of little corruption.  I used to work with a guy who once vacationed in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.  He is a big white guy so he really stood out there.  He rented a motorcycle so that he could go out and explore the countryside outside of the city.  On his trip outside of the city he was stopped ten times and given a ticket by the cops, for various infractions, the ticket to be paid immediately to the cop.  Each ticket worked out to be about 25 cents Canadian so the penalties were not that onerous but he knew that he did not break any laws.  He was just a white tourist who the cops believed had money to spare so they took advantage. 

Canadians certainly need to maintain their vigilance to make certain they identify dishonest and corrupt people in government but Canadians can also be assured that actual corruption in Canada is very rare and those very few who would be corrupt are always caught in the end.