Category Archives: Canada

#CdnPoli | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and His Legacy Cabinet

October 27, 2021Canada, Decision Canada 2021, Politicscabinet, federal government, justin trudeau, october 26 2021Raymond Tomlin

At the end of Tuesday’s Curse of Politics podcast, politico Scott Reid intones …

“Anybody who thinks this is Justin Trudeau’s last term in office, and that sometime before 2024 he’s going to resign as Prime Minister is a fool. That sort of punditry is nothing but lazy ass journalism. There’s absolutely no evidence to support that thesis. Why would you want to resign from the most important elected office in Canada, where change for the better that can be wrought with you at the helm? Never mind all the perks of the office. Those folks just oughta get over themselves, and stop that shit. It serves nobody’s interests. Fuck those assholes.”

Welcome to VanRamblings’ political world — it ain’t an easy life, lemme tell ya.

The 2015 campaign for office, with future Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at English Bay

VanRamblings has long believed that Justin Trudeau is a reluctant Prime Minister, who would rather spend time with his family, enjoying a life out of the public eye. Even so, Mr. Trudeau believes that he is uniquely positioned to both make a difference, and to maintain his father’s legacy of a fairer and more just Canada. For now, and the foreseeable future, he will make the sacrifices necessary, in order to maintain his family’s progressive vision for our nation.

In 2003, when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of Canada, the first murmurings of what became known as the “AdScam Scandal” — involving illicit activities established to a fight a Parti Québécois government’s dreams of Québec independence, with tens of millions of dollars awarded to Liberal Party-linked ad firms in return for little or no work, where these ad firms maintained Liberal organizers, while donating much of their awarded monies back to Liberal party coffers — when in late 2005 a …

“Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities, headed by Justice John Gomery — which came to be known as “the Gomery Commission” — reported out, the Commission found that millions had been awarded in contracts without a proper bidding system, that millions more had been awarded for work that was never done, and that the Financial Administration Act had repeatedly been breached by the Liberal party government of Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien.”

The death knell of federal Liberal governments for a generation was sounded.

Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin lost the election he called in late 2005. The next federal Liberal Party leader, Stéphane Dion, lost again in the 2008 Canadian federal election, and in 2011 Liberal leader Michael “he’s just visiting” Ignatieff’s campaign saw the Liberals reduced to 34 meagre, ignominious seats, and fourth party status.

In late 2012, at the behest of family and longtime friends, political strategists Gerald Butts and Katie Telford — both senior policy advisors to Ontario Liberal Party leader Dalton McGuinty, dating back to 1999 — approached their former schoolmate and friend of some two decades, Justin Trudeau, and asked him to consider a run for the leadership of the federal Liberal Party of Canada.

On Sunday, April 14th, 2013, the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, not only won his leadership bid, with 80.1% of the vote to 10.2% for British Columbia MP Joyce Murray, his victory more a coronation.

Two and one half years later, on October 15, 2015, 42-year-old Justin Pierre James Trudeau was elected the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, having mounted a stunning, come from behind victory that saw the Liberal Party form a strong majority government of 184 seats in the House of Commons in Ottawa.

And since that day, Prime Minister Trudeau has not known a moment’s peace.

The governments of Justin Trudeau have wrought change for the better.

The Canada Child Tax Benefit has provided thousands of dollars more to 9 out of 10 Canadians families, lifting more than 40% of Canadian families out of poverty;
Marijuana and its by-products have been legal in Canada since 2017;
Tax cuts for middle class families, not the wealthy, have benefited 9 million Canadian families each year for the past six years;
After 10 years of Prime Minister Stephen Harper muzzling scientists in the Environment and Fisheries and Oceans department, and across his government, federal scientists have, since 2015, been afforded the opportunity to speak openly on government policy;
The Trudeau government has quadrupled funding for women’s shelters;
$9 billion to train thousands of new, highly-paid personal support workers;
Mark Jaccard, a professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management has written that the federal Liberal Party climate action plan is a “world best,” with the government’s closure of coal plants, and a carbon tax that will see greenhouse gas emissions in Canada reduced by 40% by 2030, among myriad other world leading initiatives;
Through the introduction of Bill C-14, the federal government introduced legalized medical assistance in dying, offering Canadians the choice to die with dignity to patients who are suffering intolerably.

Re-opening the Kitsilano Coast Guard base; providing support to 450,000 students by increasing Canada Student Grants by 50%; reopening and staffing nine Veterans Affairs service offices across the country — these are just a few of the accomplishments of the governments of Justin Trudeau over the past six years in what has emerged as one of the most progressive governments anywhere across the planet.

And yet, you just can’t get away from feeling that Justin Trudeau’s continuing sacrifice of the joys of a private life, and time with his family and friends, weighs ever more heavily on him with each passing day, the relentless attacks by the opposition parties and right-wing media (“Hello, Brian Lilley“), with the support of only 33.12% of Canadians at the polls in this most recent election — despite his 159-seat minority government win — ever more unbearable.

For however long this Parliament lasts, in what may be Mr. Trudeau’s final term in office, the next years will be ‘legacy years’ for his government on the issue of the environment — which is why, on Tuesday, he appointed Greenpeace activist and respected Québec environmentalist Steven Guilbeault as his newly-minted Minister of Environment and Climate Change, and the former activist Minister who held the portfolio, Jonathan Wilkinson, as the new Minister of Natural Resources, both Ministers set to work in tandem to address the issue of oil and gas extraction, and dedicated to moving Canada away from the extraction of fossil fuels.

A pan-Canadian, legacy $10-a-day child care plan already signed onto by seven provinces and one territory, with the Ontario government just wrapping up negotiations with the federal government, and both Alberta and New Brunswick, and the two other territories not far behind; $2.7 billion in increased funding for the National Housing Co-investment fund; $3 billion over five years to support the application of higher standards for long-term care homes; unprecedented investment in public transporation, from buses, commuter rail, and a 21st-century high-speed system of regional train systems; $18 billion over 5 years to improve quality of life and create new opportunities for people in Indigenous communities, while completing the work on eliminating boiled water advisories on Indigenous lands; 10 days of paid sick leave for federal workers; funding for improved ventilation in schools and legal protection for businesses that decide to require vaccinations — represent just a few of the necessary initiatives of the Trudeau government.

Scott Reid, Jenni Byrne and David Herle present below the most cogent analysis of the “shuffle” of the Trudeau Cabinet yesterday morning, in this third — and maybe, final — term of the Justin Pierre James Trudeau-led Canadian federal government.

#COVID19 | Canada Falls Behind | Number of Vaccinations Low

December 31, 2020Canada, Food & HealthRaymond Tomlin

In comparison with other countries across the globe, Canada’s roll-out of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna coronavirus vaccine has proved significantly more challenged, and much slower when compared with vaccine roll-outs in many other countries.
Oxford University’s online tool Our World in Data, from which the information in the graphic at the top of today’s column was obtained, has Canada listed far below other countries like Israel and Bahrain, when measuring vaccines administered per 100 people …

Canada at 0.14
United States at 0.59
United Kingdom at 1.18
Bahrain at 3.23
Israel at 4.37

In Canada, the slow pace is being blamed on limited supply, poorly planned vaccination programmes in some provinces, and the technical deep-cold storage required for the Pfizer vaccine.
Approximately 242,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 168,700 doses of the Moderna vaccine, for a total of just over 410,000 overall vaccines had arrived in Canada by early this week.

In the United States, President-elect Joe Biden has promised Americans that by the end of his first 100 days in office, or near the end of April, more than one hundred million COVID-19 immunizations across the U.S. will have been administered. To meet that goal, which works out at a million immunizations a day, Biden acknowledged that his administration would need to move several times faster than Trump administration roll-out, and vowed to invoke the Defense Production Act to accelerate vaccine production and launch an education campaign to tackle vaccine hesitancy.
In other words, before the end of April 2021, one-third of all Americans over the age of 18 will have been immunized against COVID-19. Biden has promised that by June 30, every American who wants a vaccine will have received a coronavirus immunization, to protect them and their families.

Meanwhile, in British Columbia, Public Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has stated that B.C. plans on immunizing 400,000 people against COVID-19 by late March of 2021, with priority given to residents and staff of long-term care homes and health-care workers — that would be fewer than 10% of British Columbians over the age of 18 will be vaccinated by March 31st.
Federally, in a sombre pre-Christmas Day message, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the populace roughly 375,000 Canadians, or one per cent of the Canadian population, should be vaccinated with the two-dose Pfizer shot by January 30th, with all Canadians who wish to be immunized due to be vaccinated by September 30, 2021 — three long months behind the U.S.

Meanwhile, for all the bluster among federal political leaders about not wanting an election any time soon, the political truth is as cold as the winter’s wind: the potential for a spring 2021 Canadian election will, in all likelihood, become a reality, as Canadians once again head to the polls.
And what will emerge as the key issue in the upcoming 2021 federal election? Could it be the painfully slow, behind every other developed country in the world, “botched” roll-out of the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine to Canadians anxious to return to some sort of normalcy, sooner rather than later, in 2021 — with the possibility that Canadians might experience an almost usual summer season full of music festivals, Hollywood blockbusters, travel across our great nation sans the necessity of having to wear a mask, a Canada that will allow us to once again congregate with our family, our friends, our neighbours and colleagues in safety and good cheer.

In addition to the already approved Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna novel coronavirus vaccines, in the coming month Health Canada is expected to approve the following COVID-19 vaccines …

Oxford-AstraZeneca: 20 million doses;
Johnson & Johnson: up to 38 million doses;
Novavax: up to 76 million doses; with …
Medicago (up to 76 million doses), and Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (up to 72 million doses) also in the pipeline.

If Canada’s roll-out of the life-saving novel coronavirus vaccines is, indeed, slow, you can reasonably predict that Canadians will be not just disconsolate but might find themselves more raucously up in arms, and perhaps even bloody pissed that Canada has proved so slow off the mark.
If there’s no crying in baseball, there ain’t no winning in politics, either.

#COVID19 | As The Pandemic Wends Its Glorious Way to A Close

December 8, 2020BC Politics, Canada, Food & Health, News, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Hope for an expeditious end to our current pandemic circumstance appears to be relatively close, with vaccines from at least four — and more probably, six — companies appear well on their way to receiving approval in the next short while, with the two-injection Pfizer vaccine appearing set for approval by Health Canada as early as this Thursday, December 10th, with Moderna, AstraZenica and Johnson & Johnson not far behind in the pipeline. Update: Health Canada approved the Pfizer/BioNTech on December 9th.

A number of announcements have been made in recent days involving the roll-out of the vaccines that will, eventually, keep us all safe …

On November 27th, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the appointment of former NATO commander Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin to lead the national vaccine distribution effort, with a target of immunizing half of all Canadians — that’s 19 million of us — or more, by September, 2021;

Just yesterday, the Prime Minister told Canadians that Canada has secured an agreement to receive its first batch of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine before the end of the year — up to 249,000 doses. Pending Health Canada approval, “Canadians will be getting vaccinated starting next week,” Trudeau said at a news conference in Ottawa. Shipments will continue to arrive in 2021; the second batch will be reserved for the same people vaccinated in the first batch — which is to say, the elderly in long term care facilities across Canada. “We’re facing the largest immunization in the history of our country,” Trudeau said.

Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) this past Friday released its final directive addressing the prioritization of who should receive the vaccines first, and which groups would be next, right through until the late spring. By the end of March, NACI scientists said they expect 3 million Canadians will have been vaccinated with one of the three (soon to be four, or more) approved COVID-19 vaccines, that number doubling by late June, and doubling yet again by early to mid-autumn of 2021.

The initial batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines will roll out to 249,000, or more, Canadians

NACI scientists advise the roll-out of vaccines will occur, as follows …

(a) Long-term care and assisted living facility residents, as well as residents in retirement homes and chronic care hospitals, who face “severe outcomes” and a much greater chance of dying from the disease than the population as a whole;
(b) NACI scientists said the next priority group would be “adults 80 years of age and older;”
Number of Canadians, by province, expected to receive the initial batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the early part of 2021, beginning in January.

(c) NACI scientists expressed concern about Indigenous adults living in communities “where infection can have disproportionate consequences, such as those living in remote or isolated areas.” Indigenous persons will be the third group of Canadians to be vaccinated;
(d) Adults aged 75 – 79 would be next to receive vaccinations, followed by adults aged 70 – 74 years of age.

These four groups — long-term care residents and staff, the elderly, front line health care workers and some Indigenous adults — are expected to consume all of the six million doses (the Pfizer vaccine requires two doses) to be delivered in the first three months of 2021.

In the second phase of the vaccine roll-out, which would begin in April 2021, as more supply comes online, other essential workers will have access. The NACI advisory committee said first responders — such as police officers, firefighters and health care workers not included in the initial rollout — would be next in line, followed by residents and staff in other “congregate settings” — such as migrant workers, prisoners in correctional facilities and people in homeless shelters.
At the end of the day, though, it is the provincial Premiers, their Health Ministers and Public Health Officers who will determine prioritization of vaccine roll-out in their jurisdictions. By late summer / early autumn, Prime Minister Trudeau has said he expects half of all Canadians would be vaccinated — that’s 19 million Canadians.
The vaccine roll-out will continue through the end of 2021, and beyond.

Decision Canada | Politics | Final Pre-Election Week Wrap-Up

September 5, 2019Canada, Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

At some point over the course of the next nine days, Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau will attend at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, the home of Canada’s 29th Governor General, the Right Honourable Julie Payette, to recommend to the Crown that a federal election be called. In 2019, under Canadian law, the election period may be no less than 36 days, which gives the Prime Minister until Sunday, September 15th to “drop the writ”.

One week, or so, from the commencement of the 43rd Canadian general election, how are the five major political parties, and their leaders, faring as Canadians head into the five week long election period?
The Conservative Party

Six weeks out from the October 21st federal election, Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party has emerged as the only Canadian federal political party to have nominated candidates in all of Canada’s provinces and territories which comprise the 338 ridings that constitute the Parliament of Canada.
The Conservative Party goes into the election with the largest fundraising total for any federal political party with $28 million in the coffers to run both the national and the riding-by-riding campaigns, outstripping their four rival Canadian political parties. If elections could be bought, Andrew Scheer would become Canada’s 24th Prime Minister.

Green Party Elizabeth May, New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau march together in the 2019 Vancouver Pride Parade.

Sad to say for the Conservatives, though, the pre-election period has hardly been kind to either Andrew Scheer, or his struggling Conservative party. A couple of weeks back, Mr. Scheer found himself in hot water for failing to participate in any LGBTQ2+ Pride Parades across Canada — when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh were front-and-centre walking arm and arm at the Vancouver Pride Parade — after which (in a series of challenging and ultimately failed press interviews), Mr. Scheer failed again to enunciate a position on LGBTQ2+ issues acknowledging that as Prime Minister he would represent all Canadians, not just right-of-centre Canadians.
On top of that, Conservative party leader Andrew Scheer found himself in hot water arising from the release of a 2004 Canadian Parliamentary video where he rose in the house to decry same sex marriage. And, finally, in the 14-day-old contretemps, Mr. Scheer failed to assure Canadians that he would forbid Conservative MPs from putting abortion on the political agenda in a Conservative Party led Canada — concerning, given that Conservative party members who are also “anti-abortion activists are planning to win 50 ridings for their cause in the upcoming federal election.”
This past week, in his bid to fear monger — a traditional right-of-centre political party tactic — Mr. Scheer sought to scare the bejeezus out of Canadians by suggesting the government of Justin Trudeau would allow infamous child-murderer Jon Venables’ move to Canada after being released from prison in England. Scheer’s post caused widespread controversy. To make matters worse for Andrew Scheer, the British Justice Ministry stated Britain has no intention sending Venables to Canada.
As further confirmation that Scheer’s post was categorically false, and was indeed ‘fake news,’ Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada also added that some people are “inadmissible” to the country under Canada’s immigration law, particularly if they have a criminal record or could pose a risk to Canada’s security. Meaning that even if Venables was headed towards Canada, he would probably struggle to get though immigration.
The Liberal Party

Meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has gotten out of the way of the train wreck that has become the Conservative party 2019 bid for government, while making a record 5500 spending announcements this summer totaling $15+ billion, in ridings across Canada, ranging from transit and affordable housing to the environment and infrastructure, with the unstated caveat that all of the commitments made by his government would be cut were Andrew Scheer to become Canada’s next Prime Minister.
The New Democratic Party

Take a look at the graphic above. As of Thursday evening, September 5th, the federal New Democratic Party has nominated candidates in only 54% of ridings across Canada, with no nominated candidates in the provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Furthermore, the NDP goes into the 2019 federal election with a $4.5 million debt from the 2015 election, and less than a quarter of the money raised by either the Conservative or Liberal parties with which to present their case to the Canadian people.
For the first time since the party was formed in 1961, the New Democratic Party will have no campaign plane to take the leader, and the press entourage, across the country, in order that campaigning might take place more readily in all provinces and territories across the country.
According to Éric Grenier’s CBC Canada Poll Tracker, an aggregation of all publicly available polling data, the New Democrats are at 9.4% support in the province of Québec. That places them in fifth place, behind the leading Liberals (32.8%), the Conservatives (23.5%), the Bloc Québécois (18.5%) and the Greens (11%). The very real prospect exists that the NDP may be wiped out in Québec, losing all 15 of the current seats held in the province.
(VanRamblings wouldn’t count out Ruth Ellen-Brosseau in the riding of Berthier-Maskinongé, a popular hard-working NDP member of Parliament.)
On Tuesday, New Brunswick’s Green Party announced the defection of 15 NDP candidates to the federal Green Party. Turns out, though, that eight of the so-called NDP dissidents knew nothing about their defection to the Greens, forcing federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May to backtrack, and restate the number of defections at only seven, while the other eight members of the New Brunswick NDP went on record stating they would remain loyal members of the NDP, and knew nothing about the decision to defect to the Greens. In a CBC interview, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May “has a lot to answer for.”

Meanwhile, British Columbia and much of southern Ontario remain NDP strongholds, with a popular John Horgan NDP government holding power in Victoria, and a strong presence with Andrea Horvath’s NDP, who elected 40 MPPs to the Ontario legislature in the 2018 provincial election.
In British Columbia, Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan is a lock to hold onto her seat, as is the case with Don Davies in Vancouver Kingsway and Peter Julian in New Westminster-Burnaby. Jagmeet Singh, we predict, will hold on to his seat in Burnaby South. Svend Robinson looks to make a welcome comeback in Burnaby North-Seymour. Yvonne Hanson is running a first rate NDP environmental campaign in Vancouver Granville, as is the case with community activist Christina Gower in Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam — both novice candidates could very well win their respective ridings.

CBC’s At Issue panel podcast | Thursday, September 5 2019 | Upcoming election

The Green Party

Canadians most frequently score Green Party Leader Elizabeth May as the most ethical among her federal counterparts, according to a series of Nanos Research and other surveys conducted over the past 12 months. The Greens will have nominated candidates in all federal ridings by this time next week, and according to recent polling stand a good chance of gaining official party status (12 seats) in Parliament, post the October 21st election.
In the final week of the pre-election period, according to the latest polls, the federal Green Party could elect 5 members to Parliament representing ridings on Vancouver Island, a member or two in Ontario, as well as Québec, and a sturdy contingent of Green Party MPs in the Maritimes.
The fortunes of the Greens rely on the benevolent affability of Ms. May.
Should Ms. May acquit herself well at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec (just across the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill) during the course of the October 7th federal leaders’ debate, she could very well consolidate support for the Green Party of Canada, and assure official status for the party in Parliament following the October 21st election.
Please find below an episode of The Herle Burly, one of the finest podcasts to come out of Canada, fascinating always, the interviews conducted and conversations led by longtime Liberal Party apparatchik David Herle. In the episode below, you’ll hear Mr. Herle’s recent, fascinating, wildly informative and revealing interview with Elizabeth May. Very much worth a listen.

People’s Party of Canada

Currently polling at 2.9% across Canada, Maxime Bernier and his band of racist, transphobic and xenophobic supporters don’t have a chance in hell of electing anyone to Parliament. Mr. Bernier will not be included in the leaders’ debates. The less said about this group of reprobates the better.