Category Archives: Politics

#CdnPoli | Erin O’Toole | The Times and Travails of Canada’s Tory Leader

#CdnPoli | Canadian Politics, Politics, , , ,

Poor Erin O’Toole, the beleaguered leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

When Mr. O’Toole ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, or order to defeat his  main rival, Nova Scotia’s Peter MacKay — a well-experienced senior Minister of the Crown in the near decade the Conservatives held power in Ottawa, from early 2006 through until late 2015 — Mr. O’Toole fashioned himself as a True Blue, Harperite social conservative who, although he would not allow a vote on abortion on the floor of the House of Commons were he to become Prime Minister of Canada, stood with and for the socially conservative values held by many members of the Conservative Party.

In a ranked ballot vote held on August 24, 2020, in order to secure victory and the leadership of the Conservative Party, the former Minister of Veterans Affairs in the Stephen Harper government, Erin O’Toole, explicitly sought the support of socially conservative leadership hopefuls, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan, to secure the winning votes in the 3rd round of voting, with 19,271 winning ballots cast in his favour, with his rival MacKay securing only 14,528 votes.

First time leadership hopeful, Leslyn Lewis, had finished in third place on the second ballot with 10,140 votes — many of those votes going to O’Toole on the third ballot. Sloan finished last on the first ballot, with 4,864 votes. Mere months later, on January 18, 2021, Erin O’Toole kicked Derek Sloan out of the Conservative caucus. Note should be made that when Mr. O’Toole recently appointed elected members of the Conservative Party to form the Opposition’s Shadow Cabinet, social conservative Leslyn Lewis did not make the cut.

During the recent federal election, much to the chagrin of the Conservative candidates seeking election or re-election, when Erin O’Toole released the Conservative Party platform early in the campaign, in mid-August, Tory candidates were taken aback that the party’s platform came out foresquare in favour of a carbon tax — contrary to long standing Conservative party policy.

In fact, the Tory platform read, as many disgruntled Conservative Party members complained, as a “red” document, or a Liberal Party lite policy document.

In order to win over Canadians who live in the vote rich Metro Toronto and Metro Vancouver regions of Canada, Erin O’Toole had created a platform document that almost entirely jettisoned Conservative Party dogma, and where it didn’t, during the course of the election campaign, O’Toole “re-adjusted” Tory policy on the fly, all in the hopes of securing centrist urban votes.

The appeasement strategy did not work — under O’Toole’s leadership, the Tories lost four  Metro Vancouver seats, while standing pat in Metro Toronto, where the Liberal Party went onto win a near overwhelming victory.

Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party enters the House of Commons down two seats, in a party riven by division, with a petition launched days ago by prominent Tory Senator Denise Batters calling for a leadership review within 6 months, specifically pointing to Mr. O’Toole’s loss of the 2021 federal election, and his party policy reversals during the course of the election campaign.

To make matters worse for Mr. O’Toole, as the 44th session of the Canadian Parliament gets underway, at a press conference held yesterday morning in Ottawa, Government House Leader Mark Holland told reporters that he believes it would be “statistically improbable” for several Tory MPs to have valid medical exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination — and those who do have them should provide “assurances” they were given for legitimate reasons.

“The Conservative caucus is 119 people,” Mr. Holland told reporters. “Statistically, the likelihood that they would have multiple people who are exempt … is extraordinarily low. There might be some possibility of it but I suppose there’s a possibility that that chair could fly,” he said, pointing to a chair in the room.

If one Conservative MP is claiming an exemption, Holland said, that is “exceptionally unlikely but possible.” More than one Conservative MP claiming an exemption, he said, would be “statistically impossible.”

To be fair, Erin O’Toole’s centrist position on the issues will play much better with the electorate and all but assure the Conservatives victory at the polls, when voters tire of the Liberal Party. Politics is like major sport, though: you’re ‘hired’ … only to be fired at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Still and all, Mr. O’Toole is hardly signaling defeat at the beginning of the current session of Parliament.

Mr. O’Toole has stipulated that battling inflation will be top of mind, by re-naming Mr. Mean, Pierre Poilievre, as his finance critic earlier this month. Poilievre has repeatedly warned about the risk of inflation during the pandemic, and has lately taken aim at the $101.4-billion stimulus package promised in the spring budget, which he now dubs the “$100-billion slush fund.”

In an interview on Friday, O’Toole told National Post columnist John Ivison that his party’s major focus will be on “the economic situation in the country.”

“There’s an inflation crisis, there’s lack of confidence, wages are flat, the cost of everything is going up, so people are actually losing purchasing power as if they were getting their wages cut, and we’ve never seen the country more fractured,” O’Toole said.

Tory House leader Gerald Deltell has said his party was supportive of the initial emergency spending on COVID-19 aid measures because of the unprecedented lockdowns that decimated the economy and forced businesses to close.

But the Tories will now argue that the government was too slow to adjust to changing circumstances, pumping too much money into the economy while running up massive deficits. The result, Deltell has said: businesses are having trouble finding workers & Canadian families are getting hit with rising prices.

For the most part, though, Mr. Deltell told reporters in a press conference held in Ottawa last week, that he could not get into whether his party will oppose various government policies until he sees what’s actually put forward on paper by the Liberals. The Conservative caucus met for two full days prior to the beginning of this session of Parliament to build a strategic political game plan.

“We have a strategy behind each and every issue,” says Deltell. “I can’t be wide open on the strategy right now.”

Here’s CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen in discussion on Parliament’s return, with the Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt, the National Post’s John Ivison, and Globe and Mail Ottawa Bureau Chief, Ian Bailey …

See you all back here tomorrow. Thank you for reading VanRamblings.

#CdnPoli | The 44th Session of the Canadian Parliament Begins Today

#CdnPoli | Canadian Politics, Canada, Politics, , ,

The ‘new’ House of Commons is located in what used to be the outdoor courtyard of the West Block on Parliament Hill, while the decade-long renovation of the Centre Block Commons building  takes place

The 44th session of Canada’s Parliament officially commences today, followed by a Speech from the Throne on Tuesday at 9 a.m. PST, to be read by Governor General Mary Simon, who will lay out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s key priorities for his minority Liberal government.

From the last, pre-election, Parliament to this, the Liberals gained 5 seats, the Conservatives lost 2 seats, the Greens lost 1 seat, there’s now one independent, and the Bloc Québécois stand pat at 32 seats

The clock is ticking on the Liberal promise to introduce a host of bills — including the introduction or reintroduction of at least eight bills — within the first 100 days of their new mandate, and the year-end session of Parliament.

The government will sit for only 24 days to get things done in the Commons before the clock runs out on Feb. 3 — with the first two days essentially lost since they’ll be devoted to electing a Speaker, and delivering a throne speech..

The Commons is scheduled to sit for four weeks before breaking for the holiday season on December 17th. MPs won’t return to Ottawa until January 31st.

If the Liberals intend to keep their promises for the first 100 days — and they insist they do — that spells a crammed legislative agenda for the few weeks the House of Commons will be sitting before the new year.

“We have a very aggressive agenda to get to in the coming weeks and that’s what we’re focused on,” government House leader Mark Holland said last week following the Liberals’ first post-election caucus meeting.

Here’s what’s on the government agenda in the next 24 sitting days …

    • Implement last month’s announcement on more targeted emergency aid benefits for individuals & sectors hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic;
    • Pass a bill to impose criminal sanctions on anyone who blocks access to vaccine clinics, hospitals, testing centres and abortion clinics, or anyone who seeks to intimidate or harass health care workers, keeping a promise made by Trudeau as anti-vaccination protests ramped up during the recent, late summer election campaign;
    • An important bill, with NDP support, would provide 10 days of paid sick leave for federally regulated workers, a measure triggered by the pandemic;

    • A bill will be re-introduced  to ban the traumatizing practice of forcing a person to undergo “conversion therapy” aimed at altering their sexual orientation or gender identity. Although Conservatives spun out debate on the ban last time and more than half of the Tory caucus voting against the initiative, banning conversion therapy is strongly supported by all other parties;
    • Combat online hate, including hate speech, terrorist content, incitement to violence, child sexual abuse and non-consensual distribution of intimate images. New legislation will make social media platforms accountable for the content they host;
    • Reform the criminal justice system to address the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Indigenous people: the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for less serious crimes and greater use of conditional sentences, such as house arrest, counselling or treatment, for people who do not pose a threat to public safety;
    • Safeguard Canada’s critical infrastructure, including 5G networks, to preserve the integrity and security of national telecommunications systems.

    The platform also commits the government to a host of other non-legislative tasks within 100 days, including appointing a new federal housing advocate, holding a summit on restarting cultural industries, and working with provinces and territories to create a national paid sick leave plan.

    And, of course, completing the task of bringing all provinces and territories on board for the government’s much needed, and long overdue economic, feminist and family equity issue — $10-a-day national child care.

    More tomorrow on the 44th session of the Canadian Parliament.

#VanPoli | Meet Vancouver’s Next Mayor | Jody Wilson-Raybould

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Canada, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2022, , , ,

Vancouver’s next Mayor, Jody Wilson-Raybould, principled and a voice for our city, and our nation

The woman pictured above, former federal Liberal Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould — although something of a polarizing political figure, and although she has yet to announce her bid to become Vancouver’s next Mayor — come Saturday, October 15th, 2022 will become Vancouver’s 41st Mayor.

Possessed of great integrity — for which she is justly famous, and highly regarded — incredibly bright, accomplished, articulate and human in a way one rarely finds in the political realm, Jody Wilson-Raybould will likely announce her bid for the Mayor’s chair in early 2022, not out of any cynical calculation, but because Ms. Wilson-Raybould is a protector of our land, our city, and possessed of the kind of integrity that is all too rare in Vancouver politics — which is to say, she’s not involved in politics to enrich her bank account, or find herself beholden to developer interests — but honestly believes that she possesses the innate knowledge on the functioning of government and how best to achieve one’s policy goals, the heart, the humanity and the wit essential to emerge not just as the leader of our city, but a leader across our nation, as Vancouver’s necessary voice on the national stage.

VanRamblings believes that Ms. Wilson-Raybould will announce her candidacy for Mayor in the new year, following a series of meetings with the membership of the Coalition of Progressive Electors — represented by Jean Swanson on Council — and OneCity Vancouver, represented on Council by Christine Boyle.

Given that Ms. Wilson-Raybould is known for doing her homework, and given that affordable housing and human-scale development in Vancouver are key issues of concern for the voting electorate, Ms. Wilson-Raybould will also seek out the learned counsel of Patrick Condon, the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, among a host of other academics who care deeply for our city, including Simon Fraser University’s Andy Yan and Josh Gordon, and UBC’s Scot Hein, a highly-regarded former city planner.

Calgary’s new and first woman Mayor, Jyoti Gondek

Calgary’s new Mayor Jyoti Gondek — the first female Mayor in the city’s history, who on her way to victory, defeated 26 challengers to replace outgoing Mayor Naheed Nenshi; Montréal’s re-elected Mayor Valérie Plante, who defeated incumbent mayor Denis Coderre in 2017, trouncing him again last month.

In Nunavut, the Nunavut News stated a new trend had emerged in the territory of young women in politics, as 24-year-old Ningeolaa Killiktee was elected Mayor of Kimmirut, and Pam Gross as Mayor of Cambridge Bay. In the Northwest Territories, one media outlet stated that “Female candidates swept the municipal elections in the NWT,” and the CBC reported the victories of female Mayoral candidates in Hay River, Inuvik, Fort Smith and Yellowknife.

Canadian feminist and Mayor of Ottawa, Charlotte Whitton, was the first woman Mayor of a major city in Canada, serving from 1951 to 1956 and again from 1960 to 1964. Whitton was a Canadian social policy pioneer, leader and commentator, as well as a journalist and writer.

Janice Rhea Reimer became the first female Mayor of Edmonton, Alberta, serving in that capacity from 1989 until 1995. Saskatchewan Mayor Sandra Masters was sworn in as Regina’s 35th Mayor, after having swung to victory as the next year city’s first elected female Mayor, on November 23rd, 2020.

Kate Rogers elected as Mayor of Fredericton in 2020, the first woman to hold the position

Toronto Mayors June Rowland & Barbara Hall, Montréal’s Valérie Plante, Edmonton’s Janice Reimer, Regina’s Sandra Masters, Calgary’s Jyoti Gondek, Ottawa’s Charlotte Whitton, Cambridge Bay’s Pam Gross & Kimmirut’s Ningeolaa Killiktee, Halifax’s Moira Leiper Ducharme (1991-1994), Charlottetown’s M. Dorothy Corrigan, St. John’s Suzanne Duff, and Fredericton, New Brunswick’s current Mayor, Kate Rogers — all duly-elected Mayors of Canadian cities.

Whither Vancouver?

Every Mayor of Vancouver, from Malcolm A. MacLean in 1886, through until Kennedy Stewart today, have been white men of privilege more often than not elected to serve the monied interests of our city. Why is it that in 135 years, the good citizens of Vancouver have never seen fit to elect a woman as Mayor of our city, when almost every other city in Canada has seen fit do do so?

In all likelihood, Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick will throw her hat into the ring to become Vancouver’s next Mayor.

Rumour has it, too, that former Vision Vancouver Councillor Andrea Reimer is considering a bid to become Vancouver Mayor. VanRamblings’ sources have told us Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young is set on running for office, as Mayor, in next year’s Vancouver civic election.

Andrea Reimer, former Vision Councillor (l); Adriane Carr, Green Party; Wai Young, Coalition Vancouver

The Green Party of Vancouver’s Adriane Carr is also reportedly considering a run for Vancouver’s top elected office next year.

And there remains to this day, the persistent rumour that current populist and well-schooled Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung may also run for office as Mayor in next year’s municipal election.

A surfeit of qualified women candidates for Mayor of Vancouver, any one of whom would well represent our city, should she be elected to the office of Mayor in the 2022 Vancouver civic election, only 321 short days from today.

#VanPoli | The 2022 Mayor’s Race | They’re Off and Running | Part 2

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2022, , , , ,

Colleen Hardwick, TEAM Vancouver, running against incumbent Mayor, Independent, Kennedy Stewart

In the next month or so, current and sitting independent Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick — who is at present seeking the Mayoral nomination with the recently-formed Vancouver municipal political party team … for a livable vancouver — will, in all likelihood, announce at the end of the nascent civic party’s upcoming AGM that she has won the TEAM Mayoral nomination, and will officially announce her bid to become Vancouver’s next Mayor, on Saturday, October 15, 2022.

Colleen Hardwick’s platform?

The platform has occurred as a function of a series of policy meetings TEAM conducted on October 24, 2021. VanRamblings would understand that Ms. Hardwick and the TEAM candidates who will soon be announced will prioritize …

  • A return to neighbourhood democracy, where residents in the 22 neighbourhoods across Vancouver will be empowered to formulate policy affecting their neighbourhood, and will be listened to when decisions are taken at Vancouver City Hall;
  • A move away from podium and high-rise tower-driven plinth construction, in favour of medium-and-low-rise, largely wood frame townhouse, affordable apartment and rowhouse construction, along arterials, and along some residential streets;
  • At Park Board, a re-prioritization of elected Park Board Commissioners as stewards of our parks and recreation system, while working to develop policy to strengthen our community centres, and developing new public pools and parks;
  • A commitment to sustainable fiscal management at City Hall that will reduce annual property tax increases, while prioritizing the delivery of core city services;
  • Arts & culture, transportation, reconciliation, public safety and security, finance and administration, economic development, climate emergency, and School Board policies that were decided on at the October 24, 2021 TEAM Policy Conference, and set to be announced at the upcoming team … for a livable vancouver AGM.

The team … for a livable vancouver AGM will take place either before year’s end, or early in the New Year / first quarter of 2022.

According to a Research Co. poll published in The Vancouver Sun on June 23rd, early pre-election polling has incumbent Mayor Kennedy Stewart with an almost insurmountable lead, and a 49% approval rating among the Vancouver electorate.

Note should be made that the Research Co. poll was commissioned by the Vancouver and District Labour Council , which represents more than 100 Vancouver-based unions. The Labour Council endorsed Kennedy Stewart as their Mayoral candidate in the 2018 election, and has announced their intention to do so again in the lead-up to the 2022 Vancouver municipal election.

Not everyone is thrilled with Kennedy Stewart, though.

Mike Howell, longtime and well-respected Vancouver civic affairs columnist, in a column published in Vancouver is Awesome, posted the question, Why is a former Vancouver councillor bringing developers to meet the mayor?

“Former Vancouver City Councillor Raymond Louie has been advocating for some of the city’s high-profile developers and joining them in a series of private meetings at City Hall with Mayor Kennedy Stewart. Louie participated in seven meetings in February and March in the Mayor’s office, which included Ian Gillespie of Westbank Projects Corp., Bruno and Peter Wall of Wall Financial Corporation, and Brian McCauley of Concert Properties.

Louie, who served 16 years on Council with COPE and Vision Vancouver before retiring (prior to the 2018 election), also met three times by himself with Stewart, according to the mayor’s monthly calendars posted on the city’s website. The frequency of Louie’s visits to City Hall are in contrast to a major plank of Stewart’s election campaign in which he called for new conflict of interest and lobbying rules for elected officials and senior staff members.”

Meanwhile, The Tyee’s Paul Willcocks took Stewart to task last year for his “painfully lame” response to police reform.

“There are 11 municipal police forces in B.C., including Vancouver … Stewart chairs the 9-member Vancouver Police Board, but he’s the only elected and publicly accountable member. The Police Act says Police Boards are responsible for determining the ‘priorities, goals and objectives of the municipal police department.’ But they are also required to “take into account the priorities, goals and objectives of the Council of the municipality.”

If Stewart and Vancouver’s Councillors agreed on measures to combat systemic racism — and shared them publicly — the Police Board would have to respond, or be held to account. That doesn’t take (a provincial government) review, as Kennedy Stewart suggested. No. It just takes leadership.”

VanRamblings believes Kennedy Stewart to be Vancouver’s worst, most inept Mayor since Jack Volrich was elected Mayor in the late 1970s.

Kennedy Stewart has proved throughout his term in office to be a feckless leader, given to whining about a “lack of support” from senior levels of government on the housing file, objectively the worst Mayor of any major Canadian city when it came to responding to the COVID crisis we’ve been living through over the past 20 months, and given to taking positions on issues that rather than serve the public interest, serves the plundering interests of Vancouver’s development community.

Two examples of how Kennedy Stewart serves the development community, rather than interests of all of us who call Vancouver home …

Councillors reject Christine Boyle & Kennedy Stewart’s developer-friendly motion

On May 28th, Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle brought forward a controversial motion that would allow projects up to 12 storeys to be built across the city, sans public hearing and community input, a proposal Boyle had worked closely on with Mayor Kennedy Stewart before bringing it before Vancouver City Council.

Boyle and Stewart’s cynical proposal called on the City’s Planning Department to come up with suggestions that would allow 12-storey, so-called ‘social housing’ developments in areas designated for apartments, without the benefit of a public hearing that would allow neighbourhood resident comment. The following Vancouver neighbourhoods would have been impacted were Boyle’s and Stewart’s motion to pass: Fairview, Grandview-Woodland, Hastings-Sunrise, Kensington-Cedar Cottage, Kitsilano, Marpole, and Mount Pleasant.

The Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods posted a statement online on May 16th in opposition to Boyle’s and Stewart’s motion.

“This will increase development pressure, increase rental inflation, gentrification, demovictions, and displacements for existing older more affordable rental buildings,” the coalition said. It noted that existing rents in older buildings “tend to be much lower than new rentals, sometimes even lower than typical subsidized social housing rents, while existing older units are also generally larger”.

The Coalition also reiterated its longstanding objection to the city’s definition of social housing that allows 70% of the units at market-rate rents, but counts entire projects as 100% social housing “when it is mostly market rents”.

“It’s the carrying on of the policies that were established during the Vision administration, and the staff who was in place then is still in place now, and is simply carrying on with these things,” Larry Benge of the Coalition said, “and unfortunately, staff is directing the way this Council is approaching housing policies.”

Boyle and Stewart’s motion offered a cynical sinecure to the development industry that would allow developers to designate an entire building as ‘social housing’, when in fact, 70% of such proposed units within a 12-storey tower would be made available at market rental rates (generally $2150 for a studio, $2575 for a 1-bedroom, $3100 for a 2-bedroom, $3722 for a 3-bedroom), with the remaining 30% of units available at 20% below the going market rates, rather than the much more affordable 20% below CMHC-determined median rental rate — resulting not only in unaffordable housing units for the vast majority of Vancouverites, but creating unnecessary, counter-productive land inflation across the city.

When the motion failed (miserably) — as well it ought to have —  both Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Councillor Christine Boyle’s OneCity Vancouver municipal party sent out withering funding letters to their supporters, derisively calling out those who had voted against this ‘very important equity motion’.

Balderdash.

The bottom line, for the beleaguered citizens of Vancouver: the majority of Vancouver City Councillors saw through Boyle’s and Stewart’s cynical, developer-friendly ruse, voting against the Boyle/Stewart motion, voting in favour of democratic citizen engagement in the planning processes in our city’s neighbourhoods.


REJECTED | City of Vancouver Real Estate Department Plan for False Creek South

When the City of Vancouver’s Real Estate Department put forward a proposal to Vancouver City Council that would have laid waste to False Creek South, and turned this friendly, low-and-medium-rise townhouse and four-and-six storey apartment-style, and largely housing co-operative neighbourhood into a mirror image of the podium and high-rise tower-driven plinth False Creek North neighbourhood, Mayor Kennedy Stewart was first out of the gate to sing the praises of …

“The new False Creek South Plan”, Stewart wrote, “will add more than 4,600 new below-market and market rental, strata, and co-op homes, so thousands of more Vancouver residents can enjoy the benefit of these publicly owned lands. Great cities like ours can never stand still. We must always examine whether our city is meeting our needs, both for today and tomorrow.”

Too bad that the 171 articulate and informed speakers who appeared before Council to denounce the Plan were so moving Council unanimously rejected the Plan, preserving the heart of our city for generations to come. Notice how in the graphic below, Kennedy Stewart has ‘changed his mind’ on the appropriateness and efficacy of the City’s greed-driven plan for False Creek South.

Kennedy Stewart’s last minute change of heart: rejects greedy False Creek South Plan

As might be expected, one of Kennedy Stewart’s main rivals for Mayor of Vancouver in 2022, the very bright and principled Mark Marissen, takes the Mayor to task for re-announcing and re-launching proposals already soundly rejected by Council. “This is not leadership,” writes Mr. Marissen.

Seems that other of Vancouver citizens — you know, the ones that Research Co. didn’t call — are among the many who find Mayor Kennedy Stewart wanting, in the integrity and climate emergency departments …

Make no mistake, Kennedy Stewart retaining power at Vancouver City Hall for a 2nd term will prove no easy task, for reasons other than you’ll find above. That issue, though, will be the topic of Thursday’s VanRamblings column.