#CdnPoli | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and His Legacy Cabinet

Canada, Decision Canada 2021, Politics, , ,

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.

#VanPoli | Melissa De Genova | Fighting for You on Vancouver City Council

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, VanRamblings,

In the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, Vancouver City Councillor Melissa De Genova was elected to a second term of office, finishing a solid third place in the polls with 53,251 votes, support for her re-election coming from across the city, in every one of the 23 neighbourhoods comprising our piece of paradise by the sea.

More than any other current Vancouver City Councillor, in the years since Ms. De Genova first assumed elected office in 2011, as a Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, Melissa De Genova emerged from the outset and continues thru until this day as a champion and a fighter for the interests of working people.

Now, it is true that Ms. De Genova has a long and glorious, ought-to-be celebrated history of driving the members of Vancouver’s partisan and arrogantly self-righteous, so-called “left” just nuts, driving them around the bend at every turn, as often as she is able — which in her first seven years of elected office was often.

Melissa has no time for “politics” when there’s a job to be done, a seniors facility to be built, a senior level of government to finagle into doing her bidding to ensure the delivery of programmes and affordable housing to the residents of Vancouver.

Melissa De Genova is always ready to engage with the electorate, be it on social media or one-to-one in person (there’s not been much opportunity for the latter in these pandemic times). When Melissa is challenged on social media — which is often — she readily engages, setting out the rationale for a decision she has taken around the Council table, engaging with whatever miscreant, unnamed person who is hiding behind a faux identity on, say, Twitter, thoughtfully and methodically laying out why she has taken the decision she has.

Inevitably, these online tête-à-têtes devolve, with Ms. De Genova’s “challenger” resorting to invective and name-calling. But still, Melissa hangs in, always respectful. With a current Council rightfully afraid of the pit of despair that is Twitter in 2021, only OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle is Ms. De Genova’s equal when it comes to dialogue and informed response to the too often egregious and ferociously vicious nature of the engagement extant on the Twitter platform.

One of the great joys of VanRamblings life in recent years was observing Melissa go after Aaron Jasper and Niki Sharma — and much to her chagrin, Sarah Blyth — when the four sat on Vancouver Park Board. Aaron Jasper’s conduct towards Ms. De Genova was supercilious and condescending at all times, as if she was somehow “below” him, and undeserving of even one iota of humanity that might emerge from him during his time as Chairperson of the Vancouver Park Board.

At the time, during the course of Park Board meetings, Melissa remained respectful of the Chair and her Vision Vancouver colleagues around the Park Board table — but when the meetings ended, Melissa De Genova lit into her Vision colleagues with a vigour that was something (of a great delight) to behold, calling them out for their wrong-headed “in the pocket of (then, ruthless and none-too-stable City Manager), Dr. Penny Ballem,” and their utter failure to represent the interests of the citizens who voted to elect them as Vancouver Park Board Commissioners.

In 2014, Melissa De Genova ran for office under the Non-Partisan Association banner — all but bereft of support from the members of the 2014 NPA campaign team, and party President at the time, Peter Armstrong — and willed herself onto Council with a vitality, urgency and strength of purpose that so enraptured Vancouver’s voting electorate that she garnered an amazing 63,134 votes, placing a high fourth place at the polls, in her first run for elected office as a Vancouver City Councillor.

Never one to hide her light under a bushel, it wasn’t very long into her first term of office at Vancouver City Hall that Ms. De Genova came head-to-head with the seven-headed monster that was — back in the day, only 7 short years ago — Vision Vancouver, identifying early on the challenge with which she was confronted, most particularly in the form of Vision Councillor Andrea Reimer, whose every utterance directed towards Councillor De Genova dripped with a contemptuous condescension  that all but demanded a response from Council novice Melissa De Genova.

To say that Melissa gave as good as she got is to understate the matter.

Alas, that was then, and this is now.

During the current term of office Councillor De Genova has transformed from a fighter into a pussy cat, a ‘can barely stand on her legs’ kitten.

These past three years, what has happened to Vancouver resident champion and fighter for all that is right and good, challenger of her opposition colleagues, and ruthless yet still humane Council combatant, a woman who takes no truck nor holds any prisoners, the Melissa De Genova who calls out dissembling, self-righteous virtue signaling nonsense when one opposition Councillor or other makes a statement so ludicrous and offside that it all but demands a response from Vancouver’s warrior City Councillor.

“Melissa, Melissa, come out, come out from wherever you’ve been hiding! We need you! Please, be our champion once again.”

VanRamblings wrote yesterday that only two current City Councillors are assured re-election in 2022. We’d like to add Melissa De Genova to that list — but first she’s going to have to rekindle the fire in her belly that was once her electoral raison d’être, and re-emerge as the fighter for all that is right and good, and be seen to do so, if she is to emerge victorious in the 2022 election.

And, yes, VanRamblings is well aware of that damnable Code of Conduct that has stifled debate around the Council table this term of office at City Hall, with Green Councillor Adriane Carr the chief enforcer of this “we must play nice, never give the appearance of impugning the integrity of a staff person, presenter to Council, or woebegone citizen, because nicey-nicey is the order of the day on this current term Vancouver City Council — and, quite simply, I won’t have it any other way!”

What does VanRamblings hope wlll be Councillor Melissa De Genova’s response?

 

#VanPoli | The Only Two Vancouver City Councillors Assured Re-Election

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, , ,

In 355 days from today, the citizens of Vancouver will go to the polls to elect our next Mayor, and the 10 duly-elected Vancouver City Councillors who will make decisions on our behalf between November of 2022 and late October of 2026.

Most elections are the “throw the bums out” kinds of election, whether it be provincially, federally or municipally. The level of dissatisfaction with our elected officials is near off the charts these days. In Vancouver in 2018, a Vision Vancouver administration which held majority government for 10 years in our city were thrown out on their ears, with only incumbent, 19-year elected trustee Alan Wong surviving as the party’s sole elected representative, to Vancouver School Board.

As dedicated and hard working as are the entire contingent of our elected representatives at Vancouver City Hall, history — and the recent ‘change elections’ that were held in Calgary and Edmonton — tells us that the electorate are in a finicky mood, dissatisfaction with municipal elected officials is through the roof, and any objective analysis of electoral re-election prospects for our not-ready-for-prime amalgam of 10 Vancouver City Councillors and incumbent Mayor are dire, indeed.

In today’s VanRamblings headline, we write that only two Councillors will be re-elected to office in 2022. Should Coalition of Progressive Electors Councillor Jean Swanson opt to run for a 2nd term of office — by the time the 2022 Vancouver civic election rolls around, Ms. Swanson will be 80 years of age. Should she be re-elected on October 15, 2022, she would complete her next term of office at age 84. Joe Biden is the same age as Jean Swanson and appears to be doing well, and is set to run for re-election in 2024 — so “age” ought not to be a consideration in one’s re-election potential. Willingness to work into our mid-80s? There is that.

Councillor Colleen Hardwick would also be a lock to be re-elected in 2022 — we’ll explain why another time — but as it’s likely she’ll be the Mayoral candidate for the revived TEAM, that places her outside of the Councillor re-election sweepstakes.

Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry is a lock to be re-elected to Vancouver City Council in 2022. As many disparaging things as we may write about Pete, nothing but a cataclysmic event will prevent the affable, if paranoid, Mr. Fry to being re-elected to a second, thankfully post-pandemic term  at Vancouver City Hall.

Now, VanRamblings believes that Mr. Fry has served an inauspicious first term.

  • 1. When Pete ran for office in 2018, VanRamblings made him promise that he would respond to every telephone call and e-mail he received in his office at City Hall, and that he would meet with citizens in the community — a la former Mayor, the late Philip Owen, or former COPE City Councillor, Tim Louis — to help resolve issues of concern, such as clogged drains, or improper drainage, or the myriad issues homeowners have to deal with that, more often than not, requires intervention from City Hall. Did Pete Fry follow through on this sacred promise. Nope. No he didn’t.
  • 2. The first year in office, Pete held up decision-making around the Council table by plunging Council into “amendment hell.” There was no motion presented by a City Councillor that he did not seek to amend, dragging Council meetings out into hour upon hour of fruitless discussions on meaningless amendments that served only to inhibit decision-making around the Council table. VanRamblings was told by our sources at City Hall that it was not Pete who was drafting the amendment motions, but then City Manager, Sadhu Johnston — who wished to sandbag our newly-elected Council from achieving the goals which got them elected to Council.

    Apparently, Pete had struck a deal with Mr. Johnston that would see Mr. Fry resign his office as a Green Party Vancouver City Councillor in March 2022, pull a Fritz Bowers and take on a senior administrative position at City Hall. Ain’t heard nothing on that front in recent months, tho, so that outcome would appear now to be ‘moribund’.
  • 3. Pete Fry’s big claim to fame in his first couple of years in office, aside from obstructing Council from making decisions, was two fold: i) passing the all-important “trial” project on reducing vehicular traffic to 30kmh on residential side streets, and ii) protecting the interests of China at Union of B.C. Municipalities conventions, so China could continue to treat delegates to Chinese goodies — this while both Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were locked inside unlivable Chinese jails.

Now, as it happens, none of the three points made above matter a whit.

And why not?

Well, there are two good reasons that ensure Pete Fry will be re-elected.

As much as Pete Fry did not “de-escalate” the situation involving the Strathcona Park encampment resident, and as much as the “left” in Vancouver would disapprove of his intervention on behalf of his neighbour, that is not how the vast majority of the Vancouver electorate see Mr. Fry’s intervention.

Rather, the residents across the City of Vancouver see Pete Fry as a hero, a superman, a man who did what they would do in a similar situation — and that “belief” assures Pete Fry of re-election in 2022, as Vancouver’s Superman Hero, however much he would disclaim such an appellation or the accolations of Vancouverites.

Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry gives “good quote,” he’s become Global BC’s ‘go to’ guy for on camera interviews about decisions that are made around the Council table, he’s articulate, bright, affable, engaged, and willing (and able) to answer any question that is put to him by the media — as such, Pete Fry has emerged as one of the few stars on the current term Vancouver City Council. The role of the media is to act as the voice of citizens. Most other Councillors have avoided the media like the plague — not Pete Fry, who is accountable and available always, humble as all get out (on this Council, that’s saying something), with one of the great voices of all time — calm, measured, reassuring, down-to-earth, a just folks kind of guy who is simply impossible to dislike.


Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung at Council, with Lisa Dominato to her right

And then there’s VanRamblings’ favourite member of Vancouver City Council (even if she’s not a particularly big fan of ours … alas, it was always thus) — yes, we can hear you Councillors Melissa De Genova and Colleen Hardwick — we love you, too.

Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung is not just VanRamblings’ favourite Vancouver City Councillor, she is — along with Vancouver West End NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert, and B.C. Minister of Health, Adrian Dix (and if Patti Bacchus were an elected figure) — our favourite British Columbia elected official.

If Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle has emerged as the current Council’s biggest disappointment, activist City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung (a one-time Park Board Chair) has fulfilled her promise as an elected Councillor, and much more.

Not to pick on Councillor Boyle (yet again), Sarah Kirby-Yung is the complete social progressive on Vancouver City Council. Articulate, bright, incredibly hard-working, some have derided Councillor Kirby-Yung as a “populist” (the same appellation has been applied to Councillor Fry) — if that’s the case we’ll take a heaping handful of Ms. Kirby-Yung’s populism each and every day, and twice on Sunday.

The “mother” of the pandemic patio movement in Vancouver (now set to become a permanent summertime feature) is — yes, you guessed it — Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung. In addition, Ms. Kirby-Yung is the push behind the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship race next year, an all-electric race set to take place in the city’s False Creek neighbourhood over the July 2022 long weekend.

“Formula E is a win on so many levels, from being a net-zero event that supports sustainable transportation to being a huge boost for our hard-hit tourism sector, our residents and our local economy,” Vancouver City Councillor said in a news release.

One year ago, Councillor Kirby-Yung was the big push behind a mask mandate for inside city facilities — a motion that went down to flaming defeat thanks in part to the fact that Pete Fry hates Councillor Kirby-Yung — there’s just no accounting for the ill motivations of some of our childish elected officials at Vancouver City Hall.

If the media loves Pete Fry — and they do — they’re absolutely infatuated with Ms. Kirby-Yung, for whom being in elected office means being available 24-7, always available not just to those in the working press, but to everyone, all Vancouver residents across the city, Ms. Kirby-Yung as a true blue advocate for all that is good and necessary and, as we’ve written previously, the one true Mayor of Vancouver.

Elected life, though, is not easy for Ms. Kirby-Yung. When she and Councillors Lisa Dominato, Rebecca Bligh and Colleen Hardwick left the Non-Partisan Association political party fold to sit as independents, the question arose as to the fate of each Councillor leading up to the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

We already know that Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick has re-formed her father’s old progressive party, TEAM, and for some time now, rumour has had it that Peter Armstrong has reached out to Rebecca Bligh to join with Ken Sim in the nascent, but well-funded, socially progressive A Better City Vancouver civic party.

Whither then Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung, and her equally progressive colleague, Lisa Dominato (architect of B.C.’s SOGI 1 2 3 programme)?

Will Ms. Kirby-Yung (and Ms. Dominato) join their Council colleague Colleen Hardwick, and join with TEAM to seek a Council nomination? Nuh-uh. Not much likelihood of that. How about traipsing over to Ken Sim’s ABC, with Rebecca Bligh? Maybe, a possibility, we’ll see. Or, how about Ms. Kirby-Yung joins with her old (and young at heart, and socially progressive) Park Board colleague John Coupar, who is running with the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) as their Mayoral candidate?

Most folks — as in the vast majority of the electorate, well north of 90% in the months leading up to early October 2022, when VanRamblings predicts there’ll be a record low voter turnout — are unaware of the inner machinations of Vancouver politics, but they do know about the NPA. Or maybe Mark Marissen is chasing after Ms. Kirby-Yung to join his Progress Vancouver campaign for Vancouver civic office.

As we stated at the outset of our coverage of Vancouver civic politics, and next year’s Vancouver municipal election, “round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows.” More VanRamblings civic coverage, hopefully tomorrow.

COVID-19 | Anti-Vaxxers Should Opt Out of Public Health Care

Weblogs

“COVID-deniers” and “anti-vaxxers” should opt out of care in the public health system if they catch the virus, says the President of British Columbia’s Nurses and Doctors Medical Association.

The BCNDMA president, Dr Roderick McGillivray, said those who do not believe COVID-19 is real or a threat should update their advanced care directives and inform their relatives that they do not wish to receive care in the public health system if diagnosed with the virus.

As restrictions continue to lift across the province, where nearly 90% of B.C. residents over the age of 12 have received their first vaccine dose, and more than 83% are fully vaccinated, although British Columbia is still recording high daily case numbers, with 715 new cases reported on Thursday, high vaccination combined with lower than predicted length of stays in hospital has given the government confidence the health care system will cope with measures lifting earlier than first anticipated.

But McGillivray, who is an intensive care physician and an anaesthetist, said health care workers were fatigued from lockdowns, COVID-19 outbreaks, and pressures on the health system, including staff shortages that existed before the pandemic.

“Within the public hospitals, the knees are knocking as restrictions ease, because the situation is stressed to the point that in rural areas of our province tents are going up outside of the public hospitals to facilitate the removal of ill patients from ambulances, so those ambulances can go and get the next patient,” he said.

Health workers would also be grappling in coming months with a backlog of patients who had been forced to delay their elective surgery because hospitals and staff were being redirected to treat COVID patients.

“So these patients continue to suffer some pain or disability for a longer period of time, and they’re often patients who’ve been double vaccinated, they’re elderly, and they’ve done everything right, but their knee replacement is being delayed and the public hospital waiting lists are growing,” McGillivray said.

“We’re all juggling everything the best we can to avoid and prevent deaths. We know as we reopen it’s the unvaccinated who are going to get COVID, and they are going to get great hospital treatment with many new experimental drugs, even though they think the vaccine is ‘experimental’.

“A whole lot of these people are passionate disbelievers that the virus even exists. And they should notify their nearest and dearest and ensure there’s an advanced care directive that says, ‘If I am diagnosed with this disease caused by a virus that I don’t believe exists, I will not disturb the public hospital system, and I’ll let nature run its course’.”

Note: The BCNDMA does not exist, and Dr Roderick McGillivray is a fictional construct. That said, in the Australian state of Victoria, the president of the Victoria chapter of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Roderick McRae, did make the statement recorded above, as reported today in The Guardian.