Category Archives: Decision Canada 2019

Decision Canada | Wilson-Raybould’s Failed Tenure as AG? Part 2

April 30, 2019Decision Canada 2019Raymond Tomlin

Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General, 2015 - 2019

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s relationship with the Canadian judiciary was, to say the least, conflicted.
In many ways, Harper’s troubled history with the Canadian judicial system mirrors what Americans are experiencing down south, with a President who rarely misses an opportunity to attack the judges and the courts for rulings with which he disagrees. President Trump learned much from Stephen Harper, who has emerged as a key & valued advisor to the U.S. President.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s frustration with the courts came to a head in 2014 when his appointment of Marc Nadon to the top bench was rejected by a six-to-one decision, a majority of justices on the top court ruling that Nadon didn’t qualify to join them on the court, the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that its composition is constitutionally protected, and the Stephen Harper government’s attempt to change the Supreme Court Act through a budget bill was unconstitutional. Now retired Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell, the most conservative member of Canada’s Supreme Court, was the lone dissenting vote on the ruling of the Court.
Note should be made it was retired Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell that Jody Wilson-Raybould turned to for advice when she resigned from the Trudeau cabinet, having consistently refused to meet with retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Beverley McLachlin, as the Prime Minister, Cabinet, and members of the Liberal caucus implored her to.
Note should also be made that in 2014, Harper accused Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of making “inadvisable and inappropriate” attempts to reach him on the issue, an episode author John Ibbitson describes as the “nadir” of his time in power, also creating a constitutional crisis. “Not only did he lose the fight; he tarnished his reputation and damaged what should be the sacrosanct separation of powers between executive and judiciary,” Ibbitson wrote in his book, Stephen Harper.
When Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, he sought to repair the federal government’s frayed relationship with the courts, and assigned his new Attorney General Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to do just that.

Don't miss Part 1 of the series on former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould's fitness for office

VanRamblings contends Jody Wilson-Raybould failed in this aspect of her mandate, about which we will go into in some great detail below.
When Stephen Harper lost government to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, he left an unprecedented 48 provincial and territorial Supreme Court Justice vacancies to fill, with 11 vacancies in British Columbia, and 14 vacancies in Alberta, alone. The Tories had filled 43 vacancies in June 2015, mostly in Ontario and the Maritimes.
Filling the remaining 48 vacancies, in order to preserve the integrity of the administration of the Canadian judicial system, was job one for the newly-installed Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould. Over time, the Honourable Minister failed to fulfill this critical aspect of the mandate established by the Prime Minister for the office of the Minister of Justice.
On August 11th, 2016, Chief Justice of Canada’s Supreme Court, Beverley McLachlin, hammered the government for failing to fill the remaining 45 judicial vacancies — including one at Canada’s Supreme Court.

“There is something deeply wrong with a hiring scheme that repeatedly proves itself incapable of foreseeing, preparing for and filling vacancies,” McLachlin said. “The perpetual crisis of judicial vacancies in Canada is an avoidable problem that needs to be tackled and solved. Without a full complement of judges, and an efficient system for anticipating and filling vacancies, delay will continue to be a feature of our justice system.”

Senator Bob Runciman releases a committee report on court delays in Canada during a news conference in Ottawa, Wednesday June 14, 2017.

In this June 14, 2017 front page story in the National Post, titled “Tens of thousands of criminal trials may be tossed if delays not addressed, Senate report warns”, Post journalist Brian Platt writes …

A damning report from the Senate warns of a loss of public confidence in the justice system due to unreasonable trial delays, and that tens of thousands of criminal cases may be thrown out of court starting next year if action isn’t taken.

The Senate standing committee on legal and constitutional affairs, which toured the country and interviewed 138 witnesses, says the federal government needs to provide judges with other ways to deal with lengthy trial delays beyond a stay of proceedings.

It also says the justice minister (Jody Wilson-Raybould) must address the chronic lag in appointing judges to vacant positions.

The issue of trial delays escalated last summer, when a Supreme Court of Canada ruling known as the Jordan decision, in a ruling read by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, established a firm timeframe for when a trial must be completed after a charge is laid: 18 months for a provincial court, and 30 months for a superior court.

“Clearly it hasn’t been approached as an urgent matter,” said Sen. Bob Runciman, the committee’s chair, and former Ontario Solicitor General. He said there were 43 vacancies on the release of their interim report in August 2016; there were 48 on this report’s release.

“We’re almost two years into this government,” he said. “It’s perplexing to us with respect to the snail-like pace.”

A July 6, 2017 CBC story states that, “More than 200 criminal cases across the country have been tossed due to unreasonable delays — including murders, sexual assaults, drug trafficking and child luring, all stayed by judges because the defendant’s constitutional right to a timely trial was infringed” — due to Jody Wilson Raybould’s failure “to speed up Canada’s sluggish courts” by appointing Supreme Court Justices to fill the remaining 48 vacancies across the country.
This Global News story states that, “A shortage of judges … is ‘choking’ Alberta’s court system, a defence lawyer said after a judge threw out a first-degree murder case because it took too long to get to trial.”
Keith Fraser’s December 22, 2017 story in the Vancouver Sun states that, “The shortage of judges on the B.C. Supreme Court remains persistently high, creating ongoing concerns about access to justice.”
For four years, the same story was told over and over again, in every province and territory across Canada, yet Jody Wilson-Raybould didn’t listen, failing to appoint Supreme Court Justices to fill vacancies, bringing the administration of the Canadian justice system into disrepute.

Retired Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court, the Honourable Beverley McLachlin.

During his time in power, Stephen Harper implemented “mandatory minimums legislation,” tying the hands of the courts to rule on a case by case basis. Justices did not look favourably on the legislation.
As part of her mandate, Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould was required to introduce legislation that would undo mandatory minimum sentencing, such legislation similar to that recently approved by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Senate and Congress. Readers will not be surprised to learn that the Attorney General failed to introduce such legislation.
We had stated above that the Prime Minister, and members of the PMO, had requested of Jody Wilson-Raybould that she meet with the retired Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court, the Honourable Beverley McLachlin, in order that Ms. McLachlin might explain the relationship between the mandatory minimum legislation, and the reluctance of the courts to rule on cases requiring a mandatory minimum. In fact, in order to avoid having to impose a mandatory minimum sentence, Beverley McLachlin would have told Jody Wilson-Raybould in 98% of cases where a mandatory minimum was involved, those cases were settled out of court, with the remaining 2% finding the defendant not guilty rather than impose an unjust sentence.
The crux of the SNC-Lavalin case was just that — the courts were always going to encourage the parties to settle out of court, resulting in a fine in the billions of dollars and, perhaps, a three-year period when SNC-Lavalin could not bid on contracts let by the federal government.
But Jody Wilson-Raybould thought she knew better, and barreled on ahead.
Tomorrow, VanRamblings will explore in some detail how Ms. Wilson-Raybould injudiciously failed to meet the responsibilities of an Attorney General to seek a variety of opinions, from a broad cross-section of sources, before deciding on a course of action — which, of course, Ms. Wilson-Raybould consistently and insistently failed to do during her tenure.
Kyla Lee | Jody Wilson-Raybould Did A Poor Job As Justice Minister
Kyla Lee, criminal defence lawyer at Acumen Law Corporation in Vancouver.
Kyla Lee, who you probably recognize from her frequent appearances on the evening news, and for her articles in The Huffington Post, published a recent blog post in the HuffPo, on April 6th, taking Jody Wilson-Raybould to task for failing to properly administer the system of justice during her tenure as Canada’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice …

“Yes, Wilson-Raybould did champion a bill to create a process for medically-assisted dying (ed. note. Although Jane Philpott “didn’t exactly claim credit” for the assisted dying legislation, she did work with Ms. Wilson-Raybould on the drafting of the bill, referencing her work on the legislation — as a correspondent / colleague relates to VanRamblings — as “a point of pride, in her resignation letter.”). However, that legislation is already the subject of challenges before the courts in large part because it arguably doesn’t address the concerns raised by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Carter case. This case found that the ban on physician-assisted death was unconstitutional.

And yes, cannabis was legalized under Wilson-Raybould’s auspices. Or at least, some cannabis was legalized for some people. Meanwhile, medical cannabis was then subject to taxes, sentences increased for certain cannabis-related offences, and access to legal cannabis became very difficult shortly after legalization.

Along with cannabis legalization, Wilson-Raybould brought in legislation that eliminated Charter protections for those accused of impaired driving offences. This, arguably, puts vulnerable people at risk of further interactions with police. It has also been the subject of criticism for the manner in which it will disproportionately affect Indigenous and racialized people.

Other legislation introduced by Wilson-Raybould, such as Bill C-51, reverses the disclosure obligation in criminal trial to an accused person and exposes that person to cross-examination by the complainant. This fundamentally undermines our entire concept of justice in this country.

In Bill C-75, Wilson-Raybould sought to eliminate a right of cross-examination of police witnesses in criminal trials, while also attempting to remove preliminary inquiries from most serious criminal cases and prohibiting peremptory challenges in jury trials.

Remember, too, that while the mandate letter directed Wilson-Raybould to put an end to solitary confinement, under her direction the Department of Justice defended several Charter challenges to the practice of solitary confinement. And when the overuse of this method was struck down by the courts, the Department of Justice filed an appeal and sought a stay of the order permitting them to continue to use solitary confinement while the appeal was pending.

Wilson-Raybould was supposed to oversee the creation and completion of an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The inquiry that has occurred has been the subject of numerous scandals, with the resignations of several prominent figures, and timeline extensions well beyond the original two-year deadline. This means that justice and closure for those families, as well as an action plan to prevent further harm to Indigenous women and girls, was significantly delayed under Wilson-Raybould’s watch.

In addition to the above, let us not forget that Jody Wilson-Raybould sought to appoint a conservative justice of Manitoba’s Queen’s Bench into the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, a justice about whom Mi’kmaq lawyer, professor, activist and politician Dr. Pamela D Palmater stated during a CBC interview … “it is egregious that Canada’s current Minister of Justice would seek to appoint a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with an appalling record of rulings on reproductive rights, LGBT issues and indigenous issues. What was she thinking?”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apparently agreed with Dr. Palmater, when he rejected Wilson-Raybould’s conservative pick for high court.

“Well-placed sources say the former justice minister’s choice for chief justice was a moment of “significant disagreement” with Trudeau, who has touted the Liberals as “the party of the charter” and whose late father, Pierre Trudeau, spearheaded the drive to enshrine the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Constitution in 1982.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was well within his rights to seek to move Jody Wilson-Raybould from the position of Minister of Justice and Attorney General, for obvious good reason.
The Prime Minister did offer to make Jody Wilson-Raybould Minister of Indigenous Affairs, asking that she undo the harm of the Indian Act, and fundamentally redefine the relationship of Canada’s indigenous people’s to the state, and the state to our indigenous peoples, working with her friend, the Honourable Jane Philpott to achieve such end.
Ms. Wilson-Raybould emphatically refused such entreaty.
Despite all, Mr. Trudeau wished to keep Ms. Wilson-Raybould in Cabinet, as the only indigenous member of Cabinet, and a woman who he believed was possessed of talent, despite her failings as Attorney General. Mr. Trudeau appointed Ms. Wilson-Raybould as Minister of Veterans Affairs, a position she held for only one week before resigning, one might say in a fit of pique (tinged with a soupçon of arrogance), resigning from the Trudeau Cabinet, while making scurrilous accusations of “interference” by the PMO during her, now truncated, tenure as Minister of Justice and Attorney General.
Tomorrow, on VanRamblings, in Part 3 of this week’s Decision Canada series (there’ll be a fourth part on Thursday) we’ll explore the validity, or lack thereof, of Wilson-Raybould’s untoward contention, as stated above.

Decision Canada | Dancing With the One That Brung Ya, Part 1

April 29, 2019BC Politics, Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Loyalty is a scarce commodity in politics.
When an individual decides that they’re going to go into politics, generally there’s both a fair bit of ego and ambition involved.
A novice candidate first has to secure the nomination, which takes organizational ability, and an energized, experienced and crack team behind her or him. Once the nomination is achieved — no mean feat, that — there’s a whole campaign team that needs to be put into place, competent, organized professionals who know how to get the candidate’s message out.
A bit of history concerning Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau, age 24 in 1996, as a student at the University of British Columbia

After attaining a bachelor of arts degree in literature from Montréal’s McGill University at age 22 in 1994, Justin Trudeau traveled to British Columbia — the province where his mother was raised, continues to live, and where he had spent a great deal of time with his mother’s family — to enrol in the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education, where he went on to attain a Bachelor of Education degree in 1998, and a teaching certificate, securing employment post graduation at the West Point Grey Academy, where he taught both French and math, later going on to employment with the Vancouver School District, as a much-beloved teacher and colleague at Winston Churchill Secondary, in Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood.
Active always in politics, and long committed to a reconciliation process with Canada’s indigenous peoples, Mr. Trudeau first met Jody Wilson-Raybould when both were students at UBC, continuing their relationship when he was teaching school in our city, and after passing the bar in 2000, she was employed as a provincial Crown prosecutor in Vancouver’s Main Street criminal courthouse for three years, from 2000 to 2003.
Colleagues of Ms. Wilson-Raybould, like respected criminal defence lawyer Terry La Liberté described Ms. Wilson-Raybould as a smart, fair, and a skilled prosecutor, who treated defendants with compassion, saying …

“She has actually talked to the people who are affected. She has worked with these people and made choices about their future in a really meaningful way.”

In respect of the federal Liberal party, after almost a decade in the wilderness, when newly-elected Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau ran to become Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister in the 2015 federal election, in the lead up to the election, he made it a point to approach and speak several times with Jody Wilson-Raybould, asking her to consider running as a candidate in the newly-created riding of Vancouver-Granville, promising that he would put the full weight of the Liberal party campaign apparatus behind her campaign to secure her run for office.

Mr. Trudeau made it clear to Ms. Wilson-Raybould, on numerous occasions, that he believed it was past time that a Prime Minister elevate an indigenous woman into a federal cabinet, which was exactly what he did when he appointed his first Cabinet on Wednesday, November 4th, 2015, appointing Jody Wilson-Raybould as Minister of Justice & Attorney General.
At present, Justin Trudeau is Canada’s Prime Minister. Let’s take a look at those two latter words: Minister, means Mr. Trudeau is a Minister of the Crown. In respect of the word Prime, according to the Oxford dictionary, prime means primary, chief, principal, foremost, first, paramount, major, dominant, supreme, overriding, cardinal, pre-eminent and number one.
Politically, it is understood federally that Cabinet Ministers serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, and in the case of provinces, the Premier.
Read what Sonya Savage — a star candidate for Alberta’s United Conservative Party and respected Calgary lawyer, with a master of laws in environment and energy, who has worked in senior positions with Enbridge and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the MLA-elect for Calgary-North West and the likely choice to take on the energy portfolio — has to say in this CBC article on who will make the cut when Alberta Premier-elect Jason Kenney announces his cabinet tomorrow morning …

“You serve at the pleasure of the premier-elect and I’ll be happy to serve in any capacity,” Savage said on Wednesday. “First and foremost is to represent the people who elected you.”

Exactly. Should Ms. Savage make Jason Kenney’s first Cabinet, as is likely, she will serve at the pleasure of the Premier, as all of the Ministers of the current British Columbia NDP government serve at the pleasure of Premier John Horgan. That is Politics 101. Canada’s is Justin Trudeau’s government. British Columbia is John Horgan’s government, plain and simple.
Baleful that Jody Wilson-Raybould never grasped this basic political precept, in place across every government, in every country across the globe.

Justin Trudeau shares a moment with this wife Sophie Gregoire on election night 2015

On October 19th, 2015, the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party won 184 seats in the 338 Parliament, gaining an unexpectedly large majority government. One of those seats belongs to Mr. Trudeau. When it came to appointing his first cabinet, Mr. Trudeau had an embarrassment of riches from which to choose, of the 183 returning or newly-elected Members of Parliament in Canada’s 23rd national government, ambitious and accomplished all, and possessed of the belief that s/he would make a superb Minister of the Crown and serve the people of Canada well in such capacity, 153 of whom were to be sorely disappointed when Mr. Trudeau announced his cabinet.
Note should be made that Canadians heard no whinging or public gnashing of teeth from the 153 Liberal members of Parliament who failed to make Justin Trudeau’s first cabinet.
At least for most Liberal Members of Parliament, loyalty to the party under whose banner they ran, and the Prime Ministerial candidate they had committed to support and (they did, and with the exception of Jane Philpott, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Celina Caesar-Chavannes) still do, remains of paramount importance, as does loyalty to the Prime Minister.

VanRamblings’ studied & informed supposition as to the outcome of this year’s election

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the leader of the country, and the leader of the Liberal Party, the political figure who offers the Liberal Party of Canada, its many thousands of members, the sitting and supportive Members of Parliament and the people of Canada, the best opportunity to retain government, to continue to work on behalf of all Canadians, even if the win this coming October 21st is to result in a reduced majority, the latter thanks to the imprecations of Jody Wilson-Raybould, a sentiment of condemnation many members of the Liberal caucus, in every province and territory, have expressed to attentive and heedful members of the press.

Let’s take a look at the qualifications of Canada’s current Attorney General and Minister of Justice (pictured above), the Honourable David Lametti …

Prior to his recent appointment, Dr. Lametti was a full, tenured Professor in the Faculty of Law at Montréal’s McGill University (Mr. Trudeau’s alma mater), specializing in property, intellectual property as well as private and comparative law. He was also a member of McGill University’s Québec Research Centre of Private and Comparative Law and a co-founder and member of the McGill Centre for Intellectual Property Policy. He served as the Associate Dean (Academic) of the Faculty of Law, McGill University, from 2008 to 2011. Multilingual, Minister Lametti has taught at the university level in French, English, and Italian.

In addition to his responsibilities as a professor, Dr. Lametti was a member of McGill University’s Senate and a Governor of the Fondation du Barreau du Québec, as well as president of the governing board for his children’s — André, Gabrielle, and Dominique’s — school.

Dr. Lametti holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Political Science from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Civil Law and Bachelor of Laws from McGill University, a Master of Laws from the Yale Law School, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Law from Oxford University. Prior to starting his doctoral studies in law, he served as a Law Clerk to Justice Peter deCarteret Cory of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Clearly, Minister Lametti is a piker, and unqualified to become, and now serve as, Canada’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
When Justin Trudeau appointed his first cabinet, did he appoint the accomplished Dr. Lametti as Canada’s new Attorney General and Minister of Justice? Nope, he didn’t. He appointed a former junior Crown Counsel, Jody Wilson-Raybould, who went on to believe that she had the divine right to serve in that capacity for as long as she remained interested in doing so.
Humility and forbearance, thy name is not Jody Wilson-Raybould.
Part 2 of 3 of Dancing With the One That Brung Ya, tomorrow.

Decision Canada | Passover | Liberation, Freedom & Democracy

April 23, 2019BC Politics, Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Passover is a major, biblically derived Jewish holiday, a commemoration of Jewish liberation by God from slavery in ancient Egypt, their (our, for VanRamblings is a Jew) freedom as a nation under the leadership of Moses, commemorated by the story of the Exodus as described in The Five Books of Moses, most especially in the Book of Exodus.
As with Passover and the theme of liberation and freedom, that too is what our democracy promises us, and that is what Canadians will be voting for come this October, in Canada’s 43rd general election.
As Canadians find themselves at the beginning of our country’s quadrennial federal election season, those of the Jewish faith today celebrate the midway point of Passover, which commemoration began this past Friday evening, and will end late on this upcoming Saturday evening.
As the Jewish celebration of liberation, freedom and democracy draws to a close in just a few days, Canadians’ celebration of the three central tenets of democratic life across our nation is just now beginning.
Commencing with publication of VanRamblings columns effective this upcoming Monday, April 29th, VanRamblings will provide our own idiosyncratic insight into a variety of subjects, including the recent Jody Wilson-Raybould ‘scandal’ (sure not to please many), the state of our provincial governance (ditto, although overall, we’re supportive of our New Democrat government), and Vancouver’s municipal government — of which we will be somewhat critical, but much less so than you might imagine.
In the interim, we’ll leave you with our early prediction as to how the federal election will unfold late in the evening of Monday, October 21st …

With the Jody Wilson-Raybould ‘scandal’ fading back into the deep recesses of the consciousness of fickle Canadian voters, come Monday evening, October 21st, 2019, while the Liberals will end up losing seats in BC (5 – 8), Ontario (23+) and the Maritimes (6), they’ll pick up seats in Québec. The Conservatives will gain seats in BC (8 – 10), Ontario (23+), Québec (5 or more), and perhaps as many as a half dozen seats in the Maritimes.
Meanwhile, the NDP will be all but wiped out in Québec, taking their seat count down in that province from 16 (as of election night 2015) to one lone seat, that of the much-beloved Ruth Ellen Brosseau, in the riding of Berthier — Maskinongé. Meanwhile, the Greens are set to gain additional seats on Vancouver Island and in the Maritimes, and if Jane Philpott joins newlywed Elizabeth May’s ascendant Green party, a seat or two in Ontario.
Although we’re looking at an ugly election, as Justin Trudeau has predicted for months, the Liberals possess the most experienced and effective campaign team, are well-financed, and have in Justin Trudeau a born campaigner, who lives to interact with the electorate.
Andrew Scheer, sad to say, simply lacks Trudeau’s charisma, and although the Conservatives will gain seats in the next Parliament, we predict Scheer will not catch on with most of the electorate.
Jagmeet Singh, as with Trudeau, will also prove to be a first-rate campaigner, but what with 17 resignations and defections from his caucus in recent months, unless Mr. Singh catches fire with the electorate, the woefully underfunded federal New Democratic Party will find themselves having one helluva not-so-good time on the campaign trail.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth May’s political star is in its ascendancy, which will translate into votes for her from disaffected members of the Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties, resulting in an effective rump Green caucus in Canada’s next Parliament.
Take note: you read it here first.

After completing the writing of the above post, a friend posted a text message at the conclusion of a lengthy text tête-à-tête we were having on the upcoming federal election, resulting in the writing of the following …
For another, not too dissimilar projection, the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy’s Barry Kay last evening published his seat projection on the Global News website, giving one seat to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party, and only two seats to Elizabeth May’s Green Party.

Source: Laurier Institute. Blend of polls from Nanos, Forum, Angus Reid, Leger and Mainstreet between mid-March and mid-April, derived from over 15,000 individual interviews. Link provided by VanRamblings reader (friend and politico), Jacob Kojfman.

Decision Canada | Earth Day 2019 | A Present Climate Emergency

April 22, 2019BC Politics, Canada, Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Record-breaking cold temperatures across Canada and the U.S. Midwest this past winter had most easteners cranking up the heat and wishing they could hibernate.
Climate change is creating extreme conditions on both ends of the spectrum. With eastern Canada caught in the midst of a series of record cold snap throughout the winter, on the other end of the planet more than 50 wildfires were raging in Tasmania, Australia’s tiniest state. In fact, Australia has had eight of its ten hottest summers since 2005.
Last summer, the failure to pass legislation that would have reined in greenhouse gas emissions resulted in the ouster of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Meanwhile, according to the New York Times story linked to above …

” … (Turnbull’s ouster) could be a bellwether for the 2019 Canadian election, set for October 21st, in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces a powerful challenge from politicians aligned with the country’s oil industry. Conservatives have pledged to undo Mr. Trudeau’s plans to put a price on carbon nationwide if they take power. At the provincial level, Conservatives have won majority governments in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick after campaigning against the federal government’s carbon tax programme.”

Perhaps the fact that Prince Edward Island Green Party leader Peter Bevan-Baker is leading in the polls and on the threshold for a majority win in tomorrow’s 66th Prince Edward Island general election might be seen as a necessary and fitting backlash to the Trump-like, decidedly right-of-centre Conservative Party sweep that seems to have our nation in its grip.

April 22, 2019 poll for Maclean’s magazine indicates an historic win for the PEI Green Party in tomorrow’s precedent setting 66th Prince Edward Island general election.

All of which begs the question: with less than six months to go to the upcoming 43rd Canadian general election when is the Andrew Scheer-led federal Conservative Party planning on releasing the party’s climate change plan, particularly when as recently as December he refused to commit the Conservative Party to meeting Paris targets?
As the Star Editorial Board published earlier this year …

The Conservatives’ critique of carbon pricing has become increasingly incoherent.

On the one hand, they say, the Liberal plan is a tax grab. On the other, since 90 per cent of what’s collected by Ottawa will be rebated back to taxpayers and most will actually come out ahead, it amounts to “bribing people with their own money.” Again, on the one hand a levy of $20 a tonne to start is an onerous “tax on everything.” At the same time, they insist, it’s a paltry amount that won’t cut GHG emissions nearly enough. As the old joke goes, the food here is terrible — and such small portions!

Amid all this politicking and confusion, the advantages of carbon pricing continue to stand out.”

Make no mistake: the environment is very much on the minds of the electorate this year. The federal Liberal, New Democrat and Green parties have, each and every one of them, developed coherent and forward thinking strategies to fight climate change, and preserve our planet.
Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party has not.
On this Earth Day 2019, that’s something for all of us to think about.