Part 3 – Who Are These Fucking Guys?

In the first two editions, we looked at

• How Canadian democracy works
• The backgrounds of the competing parties

So now it’s time to look at the party leaders, because it’s that person who goes to all the parties & signs the treaties.

A. What the hell does a Prime Minister do?

• they are the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons becomes the Prime Minister (PM)
  • the Head of Government
    • versus the Governor General, who is the titular but symbolic Head of State
• as Head of Government, the Prime Minister has a wide range of powers and abilities
  • most of these relate to “patronage”
    • the ability to control who gets selected for a particular office or posting
• as head of the political party, the PM is able to silence opposition to government policy within his/her own party
  • any MP who opposes the PM (publicly) will:
    • be sent to the back bench, to fill a seat and look from afar at those in power (where they once sat)
    • not have the party leader sign their campaign nomination, thus denying the ability to run as a party member
    • lose the ability to help their riding or region, as the PM will ‘not take their call’
• to run the government, the Prime Minister chooses who will head the various government ministries
  • these people form their “cabinet”
    • this presents difficult choices for a PM, as the cabinet is expected to reflect both the country and the regions that provided the most support
      • and is also supposed to reflect Canada’s commitments to equality and multiculturalism
    • in 2015, Justin Trudeau made history (and international media) by having a cabinet that was 50/50 men & women
      • when asked why he did this, his oft-quoted response was “because it’s 2015”.

[FYI – the tiny lady in the red dress earnestly nodding behind him is Chrystia Freeland, the likely next leader of the Liberal Party if Trudeau steps down before 2025.]

• the “Prime Minister’s Office” (PMO) is run on both patronage and bureaucracy
  • patronage in that loyal supporters make up the Office’s key staff
  • bureaucracy in that they organize his schedule, public appearances and media relations
  • the PMO’s job is to make sure their boss always looks good
    • and are expected to fall on their swords when things go awry.
• as an MP, the Prime Minister is part of both the legislative and executive branches of government
  • legislative: they are elected MP’s, and participate in the lawmaking process
    • they have a seat in the House, so can be there evry day to monitor the progress of their agenda.
  • executive: they control the government agenda
    • the PM has appointed all the cabinet ministers, and directs the program of initiatives for the party and the country.
• it makes the PM a more powerful politician than the US President
  • the PM, because of their party leadership, will always get their way
    • Trump has been the rare American President who had the party power to destroy candidates or opponents.
  • the US President is not the leader of their party, and has to rely on others to help pass their laws
    • this is where Democrats & Republicans in Congress can stymie the opposing party’s President
    • the President is only part of the executive branch

This is why becoming a political party leader in Canada is more important than simply running for the party as a candidate. It also shows the disproportionate weight that the political party process has in Canada – we don’t get to vote for the party leader as Prime Minister; we have to vote for the party, and have to accept their choice of leader as a possible Prime Minister. Guys like Stephane Dion & Andrew Scheer are recent examples of party leaders who lost their parties an election because they were considered generally unlikable. Justin Trudeau has been Prime Minister partly because the other parties options were so unpalatable.

If you are the Liberal or Conservative leader, there is a very good chance that that person will eventually become Prime Minister of Canada, so it’s a highly coveted job. If you are one of the other party leaders… you get on TV once in a while. So that’s nice.

B. So, who are these clowns, and what do they stand for?

Well, as briefly stated last week, there are six parties running for 338 seats in the House: (170 seats are required for a majority)

• Liberal Party of Canada – governing party as dissolution – 155 seats
• Conservative Party of Canada – the “Official Opposition” – 119 seats
• Bloc Quebecois – 32 seats at dissolution
• New Democratic Party – 24 seats at dissolution
• Green Party – 2 seats at dissolution
• Peoples Party of Canada – zero seats

(five seats were independent & one was vacant at dissolution)

Each party has a leader chosen by a national convention of members. That leader will become Prime Minister if they win a majority of seats, or – if no party wins a majority – they win the most seats & is invited by the Governor General to form a government. As with last week, we will look at each leader in terms of the likelihood of their become Prime Minister after September 20th.

Liberal Party – Justin Trudeau 

• Important political facts:
  • First elected: October 2008
    • Seat – Papineau (QC)
  • Party Leader since: April 2013
  • Prime Minister since: October 2015
    • won majority – 2015
    • won minority – 2019

Justin Trudeau comes from as royal a political family as we have in Canada. His father was Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919-2000), who was Prime Minister & Liberal leader from 1968-84 (save a nine-month Joe Clark minority government), and his mother, Margaret Sinclair, had a father (Jimmy Sinclair) who was a Liberal MP in BC from 1940-58. (If you’ve ever been to Vancouver, the Sinclair Centre – home of the passport office – is named after him.) The Sinclair family itself is quite famous both in BC and abroad, dating to both the Bernard family in Ireland and Scotsman Major-General William Farquhar, the first British commandant for Singapore.

Justin was born on Christmas Day, 1971, and was immediately a prop in his father’s arsenal. In April 1972, President Nixon visited Ottawa on a state visit, and made Justin a part of his official speech – declaring he would one day be a Prime Minister himself.

And, in the early Fall of 1972, Justin & his mother were employed on Trudeau’s West Coast visits to help shore up Liberal support in BC.

As a youth, he stayed out of the spotlight, going to university for a teaching degree & working at a Vancouver private school for a few years.

He rose to national prominence on his own in 2000, when he gave the eulogy at his father’s funeral. From that point, it seemed only a matter of time until he became Liberal leader. He was recruited twice after Paul Martin’s resignation following the 2006 election, but rejected the overtures both times. Finally, the embarrassment of the 2011 loss and party’s fall to third place made him ready to assume the mantle of leadership. He was elected leader in 2013 and won a surprise majority in 2015 with the combined effort of both his name-power & national hatred of Stephen Harper.

Many people have many reasons to hate Justin Trudeau, but let’s just look at the craziest one. Since his rise to power, a conspiracy theory – not unlike Barack Obama & his birth certificate – has percolated on right-wing websites & Twitter pages: Is Fidel Castro actually Justin Trudeau’s real father?

It all starts from Pierre’s attempts to keep Canada from falling too-far under US influence by maintaining foreign relations with countries on US political blacklists. Upon becoming Prime Minister in 1968, he wanted to maintain a foreign policy independent of American influence. To that end, Pierre set out to tweak the Americans by visiting Cuba in 1976, becoming the first Western leader to visit Cuba since 1960. They spent three days on the island, Trudeau made a speech in front of 25,000 gathered Cubans, he shouted “Viva Cuba!” to thunderous applause, and then they went home.

Being married, he took his wife on the government-sponsored trip.

She posed for some photos with Fidel, in which he held & hugged the Trudeau’s third son, Michel.

Now, with what we know about Margaret and her wayward ways in the late 1970s, conspiracy theorists have latched onto this, photographic ‘evidence’, and the slimmest of facts to claim that Fidel is actually the father.

Naturally, it all falls apart the second you spend any time looking at it. Sure, certain photographs show a startling resemblance,

but for Fidel to be Justin’s father, Castro would have had to have met Margaret in either March or April 1971, given Justin’s Christmas Day birth. However, she married Pierre on March 7, 1971, and they spent their first weeks publicly vacationing in BC, it makes a honeymoon surprise unlikely.

BUT!

Some conspiracists look to Trudeau’s contact with Cuba in 1970, during the October Crisis to try & arrange for FLQ terrorists to be exiled to Cuba in exchange for the surrender of hostage James Cross, as proof of a link. In a thank you letter from Trudeau to Castro, Trudeau wrote,

“On behalf of the Government of Canada I wish to express to you our sincere thanks for the co-operation extended by your Government in the arrangements leading to the safe release of Mr. James Cross. The Canadian Government greatly appreciates the helpful attitude shown by the Cuban government throughout this situation. I also understand that, in keeping with the good relations between our two countries, the individuals who have been given safe-conduct will not while in Cuba undertake any activity directed against Canada.”

Castro helping Canada peacefully end a hostage crisis by taking in some terrorists has, in 50 years, morphed into a conspiracy of Pierre pimping out his then-wife on their Caribbean honeymoon – despite never visiting Cuba – as a further thank you to known womanizer Fidel. Decades later, when Fidel visited Montreal for Pierre’s funeral in 2000, he met with Margaret at his hotel – “to check in on the mother of his son”, goes the conspiracy. After he became Prime Minister, there was even a change.org petition to compel…someone to force Justin to submit to a paternity test. But such is life in the darker parts of reddit and Twitter.

Anyway, let’s leave this rabbit hole for more actual facts.

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Conservative Party – Erin O’Toole 

• Important political facts:
  • First elected:
    • November 2012
      • Seat – Durham (ON)
  • Party leader since: August 2020

The son of an Ontario MPP (Member of the Provincial Parliament), Erin O’Toole grew up around politics. He joined the military right out of high school, attending the Canadian Military College in Kingston, Ontario. He graduated with a double-major degree in history & political science, and then went to serve in the RCAF air command. He served in the active military until 2000, specializing in search & rescue, with postings at Trenton, ON, Winnipeg, MB, and Shearwater, NS, rising to the rank of Captain. Between 2000-2003, he served in the reserves while pursuing a law degree at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS. He specialized in corporate law, and was hired by national firm Stikeman-Elliott to work in their Toronto office. In house, he was corporate counsel for P&G, and was corporate counsel for Gillette.

He entered politics in 2012, running in a federal by-election to replace outgoing Conservative MP Bev Oda. (Oda herself was important, as she was the first Japanese-Canadian MP and cabinet minister, serving as both Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women and Minister for International Cooperation under Stephen Harper.)

There’s not much controversial or scandalous about him. His image is based not on authority but on relatability. He’s the anti-Trudeau in the sense that he’s not an extroverted celebrity but, instead, comes across as a logical, sensible sort who cares about health care, the economy and jobs. He is building his image as a family man who works hard, jogs and enjoys an after-work drink with his wife.

It’s more that he controls a party constantly tearing at itself over how “conservative” it should be. He had to say one thing to get elected leader of the party,

but has to say another to get elected Prime Minister.

Also, the conspiracy theories.

In his short term, he’s already had to deal with two incidents where MPs made anti-Semitic allusions about George Soros and then-journalist & now-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, whom she interviewed in 2009 for the Financial Times. They backed down & apologized before he had to make them, but he stayed silent on the issue after that – which, according to some, is because he doen’t want to alienate those voters who believe in such things.

During the campaign, he’s had to walk a fine line between attacking Justin Trudeau the politician while defending him as the Prime Minister. He’s had to deal with Tory anti-vax supporters calling Trudeau a Nazi, forcing him to decry possible voters he needs. One of his candidates, Cheryl Gallant, MP for the northern Ontario riding of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, circulated a conspiracy theory about how the Liberals would impose a “climate lockdown”, and also posted a video featuring Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau with a noose around his neck.

It’s given Trudeau an opening to start attacking O’Toole about what his party stands for,

and let’s him point at actual incidents where it might look like the inmates run the asylum, letting the political analysts make points like this,

If O’Toole has any chance of winning the election, all he really has to do is come across as competent & that he – not the grassroots lunatics – will drive the party’s governing agenda. He’s had a good run avoiding controversy, and if he can keep that up until Monday, he might eke out enough seats to form a minority government.

——————————————–

NDP – Jagmeet Singh

• Important political facts:
  • First elected:
    • October 2011 – provincial election – as NDP candidate
      • Seat – Peel (ON)
      • stayed in Provincial politics until winning federal NDP leadership
    • February 2019 – federal by-election
      • Seat – Burnaby South (BC)
  • Party Leader since: October 2017

Born in Ontario in 1979, he grew up in southern Ontario, ultimately graduating from Western University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He then pursued his law degree at York University in Toronto at the Osgoode School of Law, graduating in 2005. He was called to the bar in 2006 and began his career as a criminal lawyer in Toronto, and later Peel Region. It was while working in Peel Region that Jagmeet entered politics. In 2011, he was elected Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Peel Region. He eventually rose to the level of Deputy Leader of the provincial NDP, also working as the opposition party Attorney General critic in the provincial parliament. In 2017, he took a chance and ran for the leadership of the federal NDP. His outsider platform, and the fact he was the only candidate that didn’t run in the 2015 election that dropped the NDP from Official Opposition status, allowed him to gain broad national support. He won the leadership on the first ballot, with 53% of all eligible party votes. His personal popularity – he is consistently seen as the most trustworthy and competent federal party leader – hasn’t translated into broad success for the party.

Since his rise to power, and since his first day as leader of the NDP, he’s faced accusations related to his support of Sikh independence in India and the formation of “Khalistan”, specifically around the Canadian-initiated bombing of Air India flight 182 in June 1985. When questioned, he has stated the government needs to work harder to identify the bombing mastermind, despite overwhelming evidence it is a Canadian Sikh named Talwinder Singh Parmar, and refuses to denounce those in the Sikh community who celebrate Parmar.

“I don’t know who’s responsible (for the Air India bombing) but I think we need to find out who’s responsible, we need to make sure that the investigation results in a conviction of someone who is actually responsible,” Singh said.

Whenever the questions are asked, his supporters claim that racism is behind the queries, and is an example of “othering” – defining him by his colour or religion, not his politics or deeds. This is despite the fact that his 2018 NDP leadership campaign headquarters in BC was in the same building as a Sikh temple that “lionized [Parmar] as a martyr to the Khalistan cause (he died in a confrontation with Indian police in 1992) – and that the Air India bombing is held to have been a false flag operation pulled off by Indian counterintelligence operatives.”

There is some credence to the fact that there is an organized campaign to smear Singh with the Khalistan brush. In 2013, the Indian government denied him a visitors visa due to his political stance against India in regards to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards. In response, when he was an Ontario MPP, he drafted a motion in 2016 that would declare the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India as an act of genocide against Sikhs; it passed in 2017 as a declaration of genocide. Apparently, the prohibition on his visa-status remains. His support for Indian farmers during the summer of 2021 led to an increase in stories against him in the nationalist Indian press, and there were attempts to tie him to a modern Khalistan movement – going so far as to allege he helped arrange for a PR firm to pay Rihanna $2.5 million to tweet her support for the farmers.

Jagmeet Singh who is accused of terror funding praising & showing off his friendship with Rihanna

Now you can understand how Rihanna got the 'motivation' for tweet supporting Farmer Protest pic.twitter.com/hHenXnB6n3

— Amit Kumar ( Modi Ka Parivar ) (@AMIT_GUJJU) February 3, 2021

He put himself in an unwinnable position. By not outright condemning the Khalistan movement, he’s trying not to alienate Sikhs, which are a significant voting bloc in BC. But he’s at risk of offending Hindu Indians, which are a larger percentage of the overall Canadian South-Asian poluation. Further, the allegations of Indian influence over his politics have played into the hands of the Conservatives and the PPC, as this plays to the anti-immigration crowd.

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Bloc Quebecois – Yves-Francois Blanchet

• Important political facts:
  • First elected:
    • December 2008 – provincial election – as Parti Quebecois candidate
      • Seat – Drummond (QC)
      • lost seat in 2014
    • October 2019 – federal election
      • Seat – Beloeil—Chambly (QC)
  • Party Leader since: January 2019

Blanchet has been a separatist politician his entire political career. He represented the provincial Parti Québécois (PQ) in the National Assembly (provincial parliament) from the riding of Drummond (2008–12). In 2012, Blanchet was re-elected to the renamed Johnson electoral district and served as Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment, Wildlife and Parks until 2014. After losing the 2014 Quebec election, he founded the short-lived TAG.média company and became a political pundit for television and print. Blanchet served as president (2003–06) of ADISQ (Association québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support Quebec’s independent music industry, which under provincial & federal statute must play a minimum of 60% Canadian (francophone) content. During this time, he also founded Diffusion YFB, an artist management firm and record label that represents noted francophone rock musician Éric Lapointe.

Blanchet was acclaimed as leader of the Bloc Québécois (BQ) in 2019. Under his leadership, the Bloc emphasized Quebec nationalism and environmental protections.

Blanchet himself faced sexual assault allegations in July 2020, based on an incident from 1999 when he was working in the music industry as the manager for rock singer Éric Lapointe. The accusations were anonymously posted on social media, but never reached the level of investigation by police. He claimed they were politically motivated, and demanded to face them in court.

More broadly, Blanchet is the latest leader of the Bloc who has to face the routine questions about the level of alleged racism & anti-semitism endemic in the Quebec sovereignty movement. The party has recently supported Quebec’s secularist and controversial Bill 21, which bans some public-sector employees from wearing religious symbols at work. This includes Muslim hijabs, Sikh turbans and Jewish kippahs. During a French-language debate for the 2019 federal election, Blanchet was criticized for urging Quebeckers to vote for candidates “qui vous ressemblent” (a phrase that can be translated as “who look like you” or “who are like you”). In the 2021 English election debate last week, he responded defensively when pressed on this legislation by the debate moderator. The nationalist reaction in Quebec to her challenging the racial animus of the legislation actually forced both Justin Trudeau & Erin O’Toole to have to make statements defending the general population of Quebec – “As a Quebecer, I (Justin Trudeau) take offence to the premise that Quebecers are racist. I don’t think that question was acceptable or appropriate.” and “Quebecers are not racists and I reject the premise of the question asked during the debate last night,” O’Toole said.

This is what it’s like with Quebec – point out their flaws, and then you have to assuage their anger when they object to their flaws being pointed out. But given that Trudeau needs Quebec, and O’Toole needs Trudeau from winning seats in Quebec, the advantage goes back to Blanchet.

——————————————–

Green Party – Annamie Paul

• Important political facts:
  • First elected: Never
    • Lost first attempt to get elected in the October 2020 Toronto Centre federal by-election
  • Party Leader since: 2020

In October 2020, the Greens elected Annamie Paul, a female Toronto lawyer who is also Black & Jewish, as their new leader. She replaced Elizabeth May, who led the party for 13 years and legitimized them as a political force, becoming their first MP and helping get other Greens elected.

• Paul’s short tenure as leader has been marked by conflicts inside & outside the party
  • After two Green MPs criticized Israeli settlements during the 2021 Gaza conflict, Paul’s spokesperson accused the MPs of supporting anti-Semitism
    • Leading one of them to quit the Greens & join the Liberals.
    • Paul was accused of not condemning the spokesperson more forcefully, which has led to constant back & forths on every media post she makes.

• • She then faced a party non-confidence vote on her leadership, as a result of this infighting.
    • She condemned the decision as racist & sexist in origin, from an old-boys club mentality the party needs to purge.
      • Which, unfortunately, played into a victim-mentality people have used to further attack her.
        • For example, that the party is not just racist & sexist, but also transphobic.
          • Because when you claim to be a victim, someone always comes along later to point out how wrong they think you are.
  • There have been allegations she blocked election nominations from supporters of the non-confidence vote, and that some people refuse to run for the party while she is the leader.
    • This is partly why they failed to field a full slate of candidates for the election – they are 100 candidates short of a full national campaign.
      • A fact reflected in their low national polling numbers.
  • Her inability to grow the membership since her ascension had led some older members of the party to demand either May be brought back or that she be replaced.
    • There was going to be a vote at the end of July on whether to revoke her party membership.
      • Which was tabled when the election speculation ramped up.
    • But she’s surely gone after the election.

And this is how a left-wing party implodes.

——————————————–

People’s Party – Maxime Bernier

• Important political facts:
  • First elected: January 2006
    • Seat – Beauce (QC)
  • Party Leader since: September 2018

What started out as a vanity project after he lost the Conservative leadership to Andrew Scheer has turned into a plausible political party that has staked out the lunatic fringe for its core base of support. He has a loyal group of followers that have stroked his ego about the “Mad Max” persona he’s cultivated,

and he has used that rabid support to draw out the people most alienated by Canada’s multicultural, multiracial society. He has aimed to launch the PPC as a “true” conservative party. To that end, he has crafted a party platform that sounds like an angry white person’s idea of the perfect direction: (cribbed from ctv.ca)

1.The economy:

• • cutting $5 billion in foreign development aid,
  • defunding the CBC to save $1 billion,
  • cutting equalization payments, and
  • cutting funding for programs that fall within the responsibilities of provinces or cities.

[FYI – Equalization payments are monies guaranteed in the Constitution and provided by the federal government for poorer provinces to maintain basic public services equally across the country. They are provided by federal tax revenues.. In Canada, there are four “have” provinces – Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, and Ontario – whose revenues provide for the six “have not” provinces. It’s a program that causes ire on both the left and the right. They can only be eliminated by amending the Constitution.]

2. Multiculturalism and immigration

• • They would eliminate all multiculturalism funding and instead promote the integration of immigrants into Canadian society.
  • They also want to “substantially” lower the total number of immigrants and refugees Canada accepts each year and accept a larger proportion of economic immigrants.

3. Environment

• • The party claims there are “uncertainties over the scientific basis of global warming” and there is no reason for government interventions.
  • So, he proposes withdrawing from the Paris agreement and abandon “unrealistic” greenhouse gas emissions-reduction targets.

4. Free expression

• • The PPC wants to
    • repeal any legislation or regulation curtailing free expression on the internet,
    • repeal legislation adding gender identity to prohibited grounds of discrimination, and
    • repeal a federally passed non-binding motion condemning Islamophobia.

5. COVID-19

• • They would fire the chief public health officer of Canada, and replace her with someone who works with provinces to implement a “rational approach” instead of following the recommendations of the World Health Organization.
  • They would repeal vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, as well as support legal challenges of those measures by provincial governments in court.

It doesn’t help that he talks like a lunatic,

He goes even further on social media, branding Trudeau as a “dangerous psychopath,” and accusing NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh of being a “fan of terrorist sympathizers and communist mass murderers,” for tweets praising former Cuban leader Fidel Castro after his death. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has been labelled “Red Erin” and a Liberal in disguise.

and makes videos for lunatics.

Time to jump ship#VotePPC pic.twitter.com/BtFcboBexi

— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) September 5, 2021

Frankly, I’m shocked that he was shocked that they didn’t want him in the debate screaming about lizard people and microchips.

Election day is Monday, September 20th.

In any event, it’s going to be a long night. Hopefully there’s something good on…

Well, surely one of these teams can’t shit the bed as badly as they did Opening Sunday?

As always, thanks for reading along.