Category Archives: Decision Canada 2019

Decision Canada 2019 | Reflections on a Shit Election, Part 2

October 15, 2019Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Justin Trudeau speaking to a crowd in Fredericton New Brunswick during Election 2019

In one of his many election commitments in 2015, Justin Trudeau promised Canadian seniors that by 2024 the minimum amount of money low income seniors would receive was $2000 per month, further committing to keep the retirement age at 65 (Stephen Harper stated he would raise the retirement age to 67 and, later, age 70), and immediately upon election raising seniors’ monthly payment by $100. Note should be made that one-third of Canadian seniors then lived on less than $17,000 annually.
Even now, half of all Canadian seniors live on less than $26,000 a year — and if you’re not living in social housing or a housing co-op, where you pay only 30% of your income for housing, you’re pretty much hooped.
As of September 2019, minimum pension payments to individual Canadian seniors — Canada Pension, Old Age Security plus the federally mandated Guaranteed Income Supplement — had risen to $1835.30 monthly, or a thirty-one per cent increase from the miserly $1400 minimum payment afforded Canadian seniors by the Stephen Harper government. In other words, four years after the election of a Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government, low income Canadian seniors are receiving $5,223.60 more in their bank accounts annually from the Canadian government, raising the annual payment from $16,800 in early 2015 to $22,023.60 in 2019.
Earlier this year, the Trudeau government announced that eligible seniors and their spouses can earn up to $5,000 a year each before the government starts rolling back their GIS benefits (an increase of $1500). The Trudeau government has made it clear they care about the welfare of seniors, and accept the responsibility of ensuring the health, financial and otherwise, of our low income seniors population. The Conservatives? Not so much. Well, to be perfectly honest — not at all (cuz they care only about the wealthy … it’s a dog eat dog world Andrew Scheer and his ilk believe, and “if you ain’t planned for your retirement then that’s on you buster!).
And you know what, during the course of the 2019 federal election campaign voters haven’t heard word one from the Liberal campaign on how the Liberal government needs to continue their work lifting the one-third of Canadian seniors living solely on Canada pensions out of poverty.
Why — given that seniors tend to get out to the polls in droves — the Liberal campaign hasn’t brought this entirely encouraging fulfillment of their pension election promise to the attention of all Canadians befuddles this reporter. Perhaps Liberals believe it unbecoming to sing one’s own praises, that the Trudeau government is prepared to just run on their record ???
In the final week of the election campaign, the focus of the mainstream press in its coverage of the election, as well as the other five federal political parties has set about to obfuscate about the achievements of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and his generally progressive Liberal government.

On Sunday, Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith took a look at Justin Trudeau’s record as Prime Minister. Weren’t none too complimentary. Today, VanRamblings will offer a perspective on Mr. Trudeau that is at variance with Mr. Smith’s conclusion on Mr. Trudeau’s continued fitness for office.

As an example: in October 2015, when Justin Trudeau was elected to government, he appointed 31 Ministers of the Crown, for the first time ever comprised of fifty per cent women and fifty per cent men (could you imagine Tom Mulcair doing such a thing? uh, no), and as broad a cross-section of Canadians as could possibly be imagined, from 29-year-old Afghan refugee Maryam Monsef — first as Canada’s Minister for Women and Gender Equality, and in 2019 as Minister for International Development — to 35-year-old community organizer Bardish Chagger, first as Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and Tourism, and since 2018 Government Leader in the House of Commons.

Generational change: the youngest Cabinet in Canadian history, hard charging, competent, and the most accomplished Cabinet in a generation.

Once sworn into office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first act in office was to cancel both the TransCanada and the East-West pipelines, and ban tanker traffic along the coast of British Columbia. A Prime Minister Andrew Scheer would reverse the ban, and has announced he would seek to work with the oil industry to build a raw bitumen carrying pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, and then have the bitumen tankered down B.C.’s west coast.

And then there’s this: over the course of the past four years, 900,000 Canadians — 300,000 of whom are children — were lifted out of poverty through policies set by the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party of Canada.

Meanwhile, the Justin Trudeau administration has invested in green public transit, investing billions of dollars to extend light rail lines in Canadian cities: Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montréal, and more.

Marijuana is now legal in Canada, after Uruguay becoming one of only two countries across the globe to legalize possession and use of recreational cannabis.
In late 2015 through mid-2016, the Canadian government settled more than 40,000 Syrian refugees. In 2018, Canada accepted 28,100 refugees from war torn countries for permanent resettlement in our country.

Addressing our climate change emergency emerged as a top priority for the Trudeau administration. According to Mark Jaccard, a professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management …

“While global experts agree that the (Trudeau government’s) national carbon tax is impressive, they are equally impressed with several other climate policies: the government’s phased closure of coal plants; co-ordinating electricity decarbonization with increasing its use in vehicles, buildings and industry — which comes fully into force in two years, only if the Trudeau government is re-elected.

The government’s pending regulation on methane emissions is another example of a policy of global significance that is unknown in Canada. Flexibility provisions in the policy will ensure that emitters such as the oil and gas industry can choose the least-cost options to reduce these emissions. Again, other countries are studying this policy.

Rather than avoiding industrial regulation altogether, like some jurisdictions, Canada is innovating a model of growing interest to policy-makers in developed and developing countries. In just four years, these and other policies have transformed Canada from a global pariah under the Harper government to a model for climate action under Trudeau. In climate policy, experts agree that Canada is finally a global leader.

I wonder if enough climate-concerned Canadians will recognize this, before it’s too late.”

The long-form census is reinstated. About which Peggy Taillon, former head of the Canadian Council on Social Development — which led the charter challenge to save the census — said “this move will have a lasting impact on Canada’s ability to measure the effectiveness of government policy and hold those who make these decisions to account.”

A majority of senators are now Independents. In 2014, as then-leader of the third party, Trudeau removed all Liberal senators from the national Liberal caucus, and since becoming prime minister he has embarked on creating a non-partisan Senate, with a new and independent advisory board to recommend Senate appointments.

The Senate’s increasing independence has provided a new dynamic rarely seen in past Parliaments: amendments to government bills. What was once seen as a rare and dramatic occurrence happened 30 times this Parliament. There were 38 pieces of government legislation that the Senate sent back to the House with changes, and in 35 of those the government accepted some of the suggested alterations, according to the facilitator of the ISG, Yuen Pau Woo.
The Canada Child Tax Benefit provides thousands of dollars more to 9 out of 10 Canadians families, lifting many families out of poverty;
Tax cuts for middle class families, not the wealthy, have benefited 9 million Canadian families each year for the past four years;
Unmuzzled government scientists. By unmuzzling government scientists and allowing them to share their expertise, the Liberal government worked to restore science’s important role in national policy.

After 16 years of the British Columbia Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark provincial administrations, and 10 years of Stephen Harper muzzling scientists in the Environment and Fisheries and Oceans departments, while catering to the interests of the salmon farming industry, the Trudeau administration reversed Harper dictum (as did John Horgan’s government provincially, reversing Campbell and Clark policy). Federally, over the past four years, Trudeau administration Fisheries and Ocean Ministers Dominic LeBlanc and Jonathan Wilkinson have worked within the Trudeau government to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into restoring British Columbia’s west coast fisheries, and the environment — for instance, by the hiring of 135 new aquatic scientists and new research partnerships, an important part of protecting Canada’s oceans, waterways, and fisheries.

New and increased funding for women’s shelters;
An historic $120 billion investment in infrastructure over 10 years;
Launching the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry, to put an end to this national tragedy;
Through the introduction of Bill C-14, introducing 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; helping m
ore than 350,000 students by increasing Canada Student Grants by 50%; reopening and staffing 9 Veterans Affairs service offices across the country — and all of the above is just for a start.
Canadians are being fed a line of malarkey that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not a progressive Prime Minister — a statement which couldn’t be further from the truth.
According to the latest polls, Canadians are on the verge of electing a regressive Andrew Scheer-led federal government that will undo all of the myriad progressive accomplishments of the Justin Trudeau-led federal administration over the past four years. Don’t let that happen!

October 15, 2019. Angus Reid Poll. Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party currently leading in every province across Canada, except Québec, where the Bloc Québécois is leading.

Decision Canada 2019 | Reflections on a Shit Election, Part 1

October 14, 2019Decision Canada 2019, Politics, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

The term “shit election” was coined by Liberal Party apparatchiks Scott Reid and David Herle, and Conservative Party eminence gris Jenny Byrne (no mean feat being an eminence gris at only 42 years of age), although, for the sake of propriety, the title of that particular episode of The Herle Burly podcast — where for the past month and more all three have weighed in on the current federal election —&#32eventually was titled The Seinfeld Election, “where the various political parties offering candidates in the 43rd Canadian federal general election are throwing the kitchen sink at the public and at each other, effectively turning the race into an episode of Seinfeld: an election about nothing.” And so this election has proven to be.

If you look at CBC’s poll tracker above, the intentions of the electorate have barely shifted since the writ was dropped on Wednesday, September 11th. The two leading parties have been stuck at 33% for the past five weeks, while the NDP have inched up a couple of points, as have the fortunes of the Bloc Québécois. Elizabeth May’s Green Party has failed to move the needle at all, as is the case with Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada.
Chances are that for the first time in a decade, Canadians face the prospect of a hung Parliament, with no Canadian federal party emerging with enough seats to form anything other than a precarious minority government. If, as the poll above suggests, the Liberals garner 140 seats, the NDP 25 and the Greens 4, together the three parties would not have enough votes to pass a budget or any legislation in the Parliament of Canada. If the Bloc outdoes expectations and garners 40 seats, Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet could effectively align himself with Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives, for a non-coalition / “working agreement” majority — a very real prospect.
Up until a week ago, it looked as if Justin Trudeau would be able to form a government of around 154 seats (170 seats constitutes a majority) with the support of Jagmeet Singh’s NDP and Elizabeth May’s Green Party — and all would be right with the world. Canada would continue to have progressive government, both domestically and on the world stage.
One week ago, the Liberals were leading in all provinces across Canada, except on the Prairies (the base of support for the Conservatives), with 40% of the vote wrapped up in the three largest, and most seat rich, provinces: British Columbia, Ontario and Québec, and the prospect of 154 to 164 seats in Parliament. But, alas, no more. Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet — with his message of “Québec for Québecers, we’re not interested in federal politics, we’re interested only in representing the interests of Québec” — has decimated prospects in Québec for both the Liberals and, more particularly for, the Conservatives.

In Québec, Liberal support has dropped 6 points to 33.1%, the Conservatives dropping from 23% to 16%, the NDP on the rise at 12.8% (up 3 points), and the Greens a non-factor (again, as is the case with the People’s Party of Canada). Only a week ago, the Liberals were looking to win between 50 and 60 seats in Québec (out of 78 seats). But no more. The Liberals will hold on to only 30 – 33 of their current 40 seats, the Conservatives will be decimated, winning maybe 2 seats (down from 11 in the last Parliament), the NDP could hold on to a half dozen Québec seats, while the Bloc Québécois will pick up the rest, with 40 seats or more.
In 2019, no federal party policy platform, no issue, and no federal party leader has fired the imagination across a cross-section of the electorate.
In 2015, cannabis legalization brought out hundreds of thousands of new voters, Canadians who would otherwise have stayed home, a commitment by the Liberals to raise minimum pension payments for seniors to $2000 a month by 2024 (more on that tomorrow), a return to sanity in Ottawa — with Justin Trudeau committed to holding regular press conferences, as well as regular town halls across the country, in contrast to a secretive and elitist Stephen Harper government, which hadn’t had a press conference since 2006 — a commitment to a child tax credit for families that would make life easier and more affordable for young families, a commitment to proportional representation, to building transit infrastructure and affordable housing across Canada, allowing scientists to speak freely and openly on issues respecting the environment, and the introduction of assisted dying legislation saw a record number of Canadians going to the polls.
In 2019: nada, nothing, zilch — aside from a commitment from Andrew Scheer to gut infrastructure spending, gut foreign aid, and a commitment to do nothing on the climate change file. And the electorate yawns.
As we write above: a “shit election” — when there is so much on the line.

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.

Decision Canada | Taking a Stand Against the New Barbarism

September 3, 2019Decision Canada 2019Raymond Tomlin

Modern barbarism is a malodorous umbrella concept.
Underneath the umbrella are a great many fetid phobias, isms and other behaviours: Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, semi-fascism, scapegoating, stereotyping, bullying, libeling and an aggressive intolerance of everything & everyone who is not to the liking of the modern barbarian.
Over the past two decades we have witnessed the rise of nationalism across the globe, and the rise of anti-environmentalism, nativism, anti-globalization, protectionism, and opposition to immigration.
From the 1990s on, right-wing barbaric populist parties have established themselves in the legislatures of democracies across the globe, ranging from Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Estonia to France, Germany, Romania and Sweden; entered coalition governments in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Finland, Greece, Italy, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia and Switzerland; and led governments in Japan, Brazil, Colombia, India, Turkey, Hungary and Poland.
The “radical right” in the U.S. is also closely linked to barbaric populism, with its roots in the modern Republican party, led today by Donald Trump.
Since the great recession of 2008, barbaric right-wing populist movements, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) in France, Matteo Salvini’s far right League party in Italy, Geert Wilders’ ultranationalist Party for Freedom and Thierry Baudet’s anti-immigrant Forum for Democracy party in the Netherlands, Frank Franz’s National Democratic Party (formerly Reich Party) in Germany, and Nigel Farage’s UK Independence (now Brexit) Party have only grown more vibrant in voter popularity and strength at the polls, in large measure arising from their avowed opposition to immigration from the Middle East and Africa.
In the U.S., Donald Trump’s political views can best be summarized as right-wing populist, nationalist, Islamophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and based on an aggressive intolerance of anyone or anything not to his liking.

In Canada, we have three left-of-centre, progressive parties from which to choose in the upcoming October 21st federal election: Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats, Elizabeth May’s Greens and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

On the right side of the spectrum we have the neo-barbaric, Andrew Scheer led, Trump-embracing Conservatives, and Maxime Bernier’s far right-of-centre, anti-immigrant, climate-change denying, nationalist People’s Party.
Whether we look south to the Trump admininistration or the far right administration of Jair Balsonaro in Brazil, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, or Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Heinz-Christian Strache’s Austrian Freedom Party, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, or Polish Congressional leader Michal Marusik, every day we live with the reality of the new barbarism of our modern age, a political philosophy reliant on nativism, the promotion of division and fear of the other, barbarism as adhered to by the cheering and jeering hate-filled, reactionary and revolting masses of the unthinking, undereducated and disenfranchised we see in rallies across the globe, best referred to by their correct name: the modern barbarians.
What’s on the line in this year’s upcoming federal election?
If we vote for one of the right wing parties in Canada (not to put too fine a point on the matter): chaos, catastrophe, ultra-right wing nationalism, the decimation of social and economic norms and programmes in order that the interests of a wealthy elite might be best served, an attack on culture, a war against our most vulnerable citizens, political decay and ultimate disintegration, rage, alienation, anomie, the propagation of extremism, demagoguery, a crisis in leadership, and the atomization of our society.
Hyperbole, you say?
Don’t think it can’t happen here. Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are not the Progressive Conservatives of Robert Stanfield, Pat Carney, Dalton Camp, Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, Hugh Segal or, even, Brian Mulroney. The modern Conservative party (a contradiction in terms) realized by Stephen Harper is a disingenuous, far right nativist party (there are exceptions in caucus, Red Tory MPs such as Lisa Raitt, Michael Chong and Michelle Rempel), undeserving of your vote — lest you would wish to have the Trumpian nightmare than has much of the U.S. in its grip visited upon Canada.
Again, just look south, to the United States or Brazil, or to the other side of the Earth, to the European countries written about above. There exists a thin line between order and chaos. As in every election, much is on the line.
In 2019, the stakes are high. Choose which side you’re on.