#VanPoli | Trans Rights | Never Let Hate Nor the Politics of Expedience Win

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Former British prime minister Tony Blair. (Tayfun Salci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Tony Blair, and the Rise of Lowest Common Denominator Politics

Like your uncle in the family group chat, in these pandemic times of ours, Tony Blair has once again given his unsolicited opinion on politics.

The former three-term British Labour Prime Minister has urged Britain’s main opposition leader, Labour leader Keir Starmer, to “reject the wokeism of the minority” if he wants to win the next general election.

In a blistering appraisal of the Labour Party leader, Blair blasted the party’s decline. The hard left, Blair wrote in the foreword of a new report into Labour voters published this past Friday, November 26th, by the firm Deltapoll for the Tony Blair for Global Change Institute, must be considered the “enemy”.

Blair urged Labour to adopt a “commonsensical position on the ‘culture’ issues”, likening Labour’s current situation with voters to 1983, when the party was pelted over its support for LGB(T)G2+ rights. Blair argued that “large numbers of Labour voters in 1983 felt our economic policy was not credible and our attitudes across a range of cultural questions profoundly alienating”.

Tony Blair said Labour must ‘turn a corner’ under Sir Keir Starmer to win the next general election

Blair has long felt that trans rights – the rights of one of the most marginalized and vulnerable demographics in the country — are part of a culture war that Labour must distance itself from, at one point warning Labour to not “look askance” at JK Rowling over her views. Veteran moderates such as Blair himself, he said, “don’t quite understand the strength in feeling over issues such as trans rights”. To speak out for trans rights, he said, is an “electoral off-putting position for Labour”.

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews, the disabled and homosexuals for Germany’s decline. Within a dozen years, the Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews, and 2 million disabled persons & members of the LGBTQ community.

Throughout our history, members of the gay community have had no rights, have lived in the shadows. All that changed in the 1970s with the rise of the gay rights movement, made ever more urgent when AIDS disproportionately affected that community. Even as recently as 2005, former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton didn’t recognize the gay community as having inalienable rights, never mind the right to marry.

More change was wrought when, only six years ago, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that a fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the Fourteenth Amendment, and that states must allow same-sex marriage.

Paul Martin’s Liberal government legislated same sex marriage in 2005.

Canadian astrophysicist Amita Kuttner, interim leader of the Green Party of Canada, and the first transgender, non-binary leader of a Canadian political party.

Here we are in 2021.

Which much discriminated against and disenfranchised group of citizens among us is left for us to blame our tales of woe on? Donald Trump had a ready answer to that question: members of the transgender community, who he ordered on April 12, 2019 to be discharged from service in the U.S. military.

“The Trump Administration is built on demonizing minority groups; reversing the civil rights gains of immigrants, people of color, women, and the LGBTQ movement. We cannot let an incompetent administration guided by a petulant bigot stand as the mascot of our time,” wrote Harper Jean Tobin, Director of Policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, in 2019.

President Joe Biden reversed, then eliminated Trump’s execrable order.


What’s wrong with us? Why isn’t Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung our most sought after, most inevitable 2022 star candidate for Mayor of Vancouver? #DraftSarah

In 2021, no thinking and compassionate person would come out against the rights of our immigrant communities, our black and Asian populations, our Jewish community, the rights of girls and women to lead productive lives, nor deny the inalienable rights of members of our LGB(T)Q2+ communities.

Yet, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair not only finds it acceptable to dehumanize members of the trans community, but actually gives instruction to Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, to work against the interests of the transgender community, as he believes support for trans people is “alienating” for the working class British electorate who might otherwise vote for Labour, were it not for Labour’s turn to what he terms as ‘wokeism’.

Note should be made, too, that not one of Vancouver’s announced, or projected, 2022 Mayoral candidates — ABC’s Ken Sim, the NPA’s John Coupar — although, John did retweet the Bloedel Conservatory’s acknowledgement —  Progress Vancouver’s Mark Marissen, TEAM’s Colleen Hardwick, Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young, nor anyone associated with OneCity Vancouver, the Greens or COPE, acknowledged the Trans Day of Remembrance, on Saturday, November 20th.

Into Light shares the story of a mother and child undergoing a transformative exploration of gender identity | Directed by filmmaker Sheona McDonald | Provided by the National Film Board of Canada

If our projected 2022 Mayoral candidates have failed to acknowledge our transgender community, at least someone at Vancouver City Hall has.

#GeoPolitics | Autocratic Regimes | A Shift in Power

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The rise of right wing populism in the United States brought on by the election of Donald Trump

We live in a troubled and troubling world, with the ravages of climate emergency a danger to us all — most particularly, British Columbians in 2021, living through a heat dome crisis in June, consuming province-wide wildfires this past summer, and now, flooding, economic devastation, and the destruction of roads and bridges that serve to exacerbate an execrable supply chain crisis.

And, then, there’s the politics of the western world, where authoritarianism and autocratic regimes across the globe have become even more brazen in their repression. Many democratic governments are backsliding and are adopting authoritarian tactics by restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, a trend exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The political flaws and social fault lines revealed by the pandemic will drive more people towards populist and authoritarian leaders that seldom deliver durable solutions for the concerns of citizens”, says International IDEA Secretary-General Kevin Casas-Zamora. “If there is one key message in the Global State of Democracy Report 2021 — Building Resilience in a Pandemic Era”, published by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), an intergovernmental organization based in Stockholm, “it is that now is the time for democracies to be bold, to innovate and revitalize themselves. The Global State of Democracy report is not a wakeup call, it’s an alarm bell. Authoritarianism advances in every corner of the earth. Universal values — the pillars of civilization that protect the most vulnerable — are under threat.”

While many democracies have proved resilient during the pandemic, by expanding democratic innovations and adapting their practices and institutions in record time, in order to preserve our democracies, as Casas-Zamora states, bold action was required by our leaders to innovate and revitalize themselves.

Cuba’s pro democracy protesters take to the streets, to fight rising poverty and high COVID-19 numbers

One of the key findings of the report is the strength of civic activism all over the world. Pro-democracy movements have braved repression in places such as Belarus, Cuba, Eswatini, Myanmar, and Sudan, and global social movements for tackling climate change and fighting racial injustice have thrived.

More than 80 countries have experienced protests and civic action of different kinds during the pandemic despite often harsh government restrictions.

Asia and the Pacific has suffered a wave of growing authoritarianism as crises of various kinds have affected Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Myanmar. Democratic erosion is also widespread, including in India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka with many of them suffering from rising ethno-nationalism and the militarization of politics. China’s influence, coupled with its own deepening autocratization, also puts the legitimacy of the democratic model at risk.

In Africa and the Middle East, while elections remain the norm, the report states the democratic quality of these elections is on the decline and attempts to evade or remove presidential term limits present a risk to democracy.  2021 has seen four military coups: in Chad, Guinea-Conakry, Mali and Sudan.

The Middle East’s tainted track record on protecting civil liberties has been even further strained by the pandemic, with many elections held with the sole aim of keeping existing regimes in power, such as in Algeria, Egypt and Syria.

Moscow gripped with the largest anti-government demonstrations since the winter of 2011-12

The rise of autocracy and of right wing populism, its western democratic cousin, gives rise to understandable concern that liberal political values and the rule of law are heading towards terminal decline.

However, neither autocratic states such as China and Russia nor right wing populist leaders like Donald Trump in the U.S., Italy’s Matteo Salvini and right wing populist leaders in other western countries have had everything go their way. Their mixed fortunes suggest that it is premature to write off the prospects for global governance, even though the rules-based order constructed after 1945 is decomposing and will never return in its old form.

The Chinese and Russian states possess immense resources of violence and intimidation that allow them to suppress dissent with ease. From Tiananmen Square in 1989 on, China has proved that it has an unyielding state of mind, one that augurs poorly for Hong Kong protesters.

However, there is less tolerance for politically related violence in European societies, as demonstrated by the public backlash in Slovakia against the murder of Ján Kuciak, an investigative journalist, and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová.

Should right wing populism fail to make deeper inroads in western political systems, owing to its unrealistic promises and policy confusion when in power, the deliberate disruption of the post-1945 global order would arguably slow down. The growing internal challenges of autocratic systems in countries such as Russia and Turkey might reinforce this trend.

However, the most important long-term trends in international relations over the past 30 years have been the rise of China and the accelerating shift of economic power from the west to the Asia-Pacific region.

That shift ensures that the Washington-designed post-1945 order, built mainly for the benefit of the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and their allies, in the years to come will give way to a more dispersed form of global governance.

For the west, the cold reality is not that autocracy will triumph and democracy will fail, but rather that the 500-year-long era of western global supremacy is slowly and inexorably coming to an end.

#Cinema | Holiday Oscar Awards Season, Part 1 | The Streaming Oscars

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The Oscars are just around the corner and Netflix is bringing its A-game, with a collection of movies released or soon to be released that are not only eyeing the top prizes and figure in the conversation, but may come out on top.

Here are Netflix’s Oscar hopefuls for 2022.

Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (débuts on Netflix, next Wednesday, December 1st), a neo-Western that won the Venice Best Director prize for Campion, currently tops a raft of critics’ polls in major cities across the continent.

Demonstrating her own strong, clear vision — not to mention superb control of her craft — Campion once again proves her ability to illuminate hidden truths and let the viewer see what was hiding in plain sight all along. Her first film in 9 years is a contemporary Western masterpiece imbued with the same pacing and style of westerns of lore. Campion takes her time, letting the story, based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, reveal itself in languid style. Kirsten Dunst has a lock on a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod, if not an outright win.

After sending up the financial crisis (The Big Short) and Dick Cheney (Vice), in Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay — who makes no secret of his progressive politics — turns his satirical eye to a less serious target: a global catastrophe.

A thinly veiled allegory for climate change, critics who’ve had an early look at the film praised its humourous satirical flourish — comparing it to Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Dr. Strangelove. Even for those critics who weren’t entirely won over by Don’t Look Up, there was appreciation for a film most found to be incredibly funny — perhaps too funny to find itself in the Oscar conversation.

Jennifer Lawrence plays an astronomy grad student and Leonardo DiCaprio her professor in this broadly comic film, as the two try to alert the world to an approaching comet. The cast, including Meryl Streep as the President and Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry as TV hosts, makes this Oscar contender the starriest Netflix film of them all. (December 10th in theatres, Christmas Eve on Netflix)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s buzzed about feature directorial début, The Lost Daughter (New Year’s Eve), leads the Gotham Award nominations, and has an outstanding performance by Olivia Colman,  making her a lock for a Best Actress nod.

Playlist critic Tomris Laffly opened his review of The Lost Daughter this way …

“With The Lost Daughter, director Maggie Gyllenhaal wears melancholy like a second skin. One of her generation’s most underrated actors, she moves through her films with a flicker of otherworldly woe; an organic ability that has routinely informed the highlights of her filmography, from the erotically manic ‘Secretary’ to the gritty ‘Sherrybaby’, and more recently, the wistful thriller, ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’. In other words, Gyllenhaal has always possessed an auteurial sway over the films she was in, putting on them her signature ethereal stamp.”

Gyllenhaal’s film is a story of self-ascribed transgression and of shame buried and turned bitterly inward, and it too, is made with such alertness to the power of cinematic language — particularly that of performance — that, according to the critics, even as you feel your stomach slowly drop at the implications of what you’re watching, you cannot break its spreading sinister spell.

A masterwork in perception and all that society places upon motherhood, what makes The Lost Daughter a rewarding picture, is in how the film shatters the binary distinction between a ‘good’ mother and the bad one.

There are 2 films already streaming on Netflix that are Oscar award worthy …

While some Netflix Oscar contenders, like In the Heights, have struggled, Tick, Tick…Boom!, helmed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, emerges with a terrific lead-actor performance delivered by Andrew Garfield, his performance so outstanding and affecting, Garfield seems a lock to sing and dance his way into the hearts of Academy voters, who will thrust him into the Best Actor Oscar race, an award come Sunday, March 27th, 2022 he might very well win.

Miranda, who starred as playwright Jonathan Larson in a theatrical performance of the Broadway play, directs Tick, Tick…Boom! with a deep understanding of the passion, struggle, and ebullience of an artist committed to an art form celebrating the power and the pressure of the world both artists love most. A must-see, Tick, Tick…Boom! is a heart-filling work showcasing two musical geniuses: Larson’s musical legacy, and Miranda’s unparalleled artistry.

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And then, of course, there’s VanRamblings’ favourite indie film of the year …

In our November 5th review of Passing, British actress Rebecca Hall’s remarkable directorial début we wrote this …

“From the very first frame, Passing grabs your attention, in this piercingly sad story of characters who can’t escape the confines of their lives. The vulnerability of Irene and Clare’s smallest gestures and experiences, delicately conveyed by Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga and magnified by Eduard Grau’s judicious close-ups — a tear rolling down a cheek, the slight bow of a hatted head in the presence of a white man, a stolen glance of desire — under the genteel mask these women show to the world lies a roiling unease about their true desires, their barely hidden secrets, and their place in the world.”

Tessa Thompson is a lock for a Best Actress Oscar nod, while Rebecca Hall will likely be nominated, and perhaps win, as Best Director & is a certainty to win the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony.

Neither Apple nor Amazon have any intention of being left out of the mix …

Apple has Joel Coen’s rip-roaring The Tragedy of Macbeth (débuts Jan. 14, 2022), starring Denzel Washington, as well as CODA, the heartbreaking Sundance sensation that could catapult newcomer Emilia Jones into the Best Actress — and Marlee Matlin, into the Best Supporting Actress — awards race.

One of Amazon’s choice Academy Award Oscar contenders is The Tender Bar, the new film directed by George Clooney, and starring Tye Sheridan as an aspiring writer with an absent father, with Ben Affleck playing the young man’s bartender uncle. The script, by William Monahan (The Departed), is based on the memoir by J.R. Moehringer. (December 17th in theatres for a brief run, then come January 7th, on Amazon Prime)

Amazon’s Being The Ricardos takes a chance on recognizable actors playing beloved Hollywood icons, but as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem may very well overcome the enduring memories of generations of TV viewers. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed this drama about the Ball-Arnaz relationship and the making of I Love Lucy. (December 10th in theatres, December 21st, on Amazon Prime)

For those of us older folks who grew up with Lucille Ball, who was the most beloved actress on television in the 1950s and 1960s, there’s a ready-made, built-in audience for Being The Ricardos. How the film does with the younger crowd we’ve yet to see — but word out of Hollywood is that Javier Bardem is a lock for a Best Actor nod, and in all likelihood Nicole Kidman has a Best Actress Oscar nod all but wrapped up. Aaron Sorkin will be up for an Oscar, too.

C’mon back next Thursday for Part 2 of VanRamblings’ Oscar / holiday season movie preview, when we’ll write about Steven Spielberg’s much anticipated new film, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film — both of which are shoe-ins for Oscar attention. We’ll also write about a couple of under-the-radar international films that could feature in the main Academy Award categories.

#CdnPoli | Why Did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Call a Summer Election?

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The most frequently asked question over the course, and throughout the duration, of the summer election called by the Prime Minister: why did Justin Trudeau call a needless summer election — particularly when, on Election Day, the final electoral result was a continuing minority Liberal government?

Internal Liberal Party polling conducted last spring, and throughout the summer, registered Justin Trudeau and the Liberals with a 45% approval rating, with Trudeau one of the most well-liked and respected Canadian Prime Ministers since Confederation. In the summer, within the Prime Minister’s office, the pressure on Trudeau to call a snap election was immense.

Prior to the 2021 federal election, the Liberal Party held 154 seats in a Parliament of 338 members. Pragmatically, what that meant for the Liberals was that all of the Committees of the House had majority Opposition party participation, and more importantly, decision-making power that could be — and more often than not was — wielded by the Opposition as a cudgel to serve their own partisan interests: the Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Québécois, and Greens, those parties less interested in the welfare of the Canadian people than scoring points against the government.

As they did during the election, in a display of rank partisanship and future, hoped-for increased electoral success,  and possibly government, the elected members of Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party and Jagmeet Singh’s NDP colluded to make the life of the government as miserable as possible, using the committees not simply to hold the government to account, but to do all in their power to create an impression that Justin Trudeau’s government was both ‘do nothing’, and corrupt.

Little wonder Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wanted to call a summer election.

Why did Justin Trudeau call a summer election, then? To recap …

  • Throughout the first 8 months of the year, the Liberals had been riding high in the polls, Canadians grateful for the quick action by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to secure the economy, through the introduction of CERB for Canadians who found themselves out of work due to the pandemic; the introduction of both a seniors grant for the poorest seniors, and an ongoing monthly supplement to the Canada Child Benefit to help families weather the storm of the pandemic; and the introduction of any number of business support programmes to keep the Canadian economy afloat. And, of course, securing the tens of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses that would keep Canadians safe, and help over time to bring COVID-19 to an end. Thus far, more than 60 million doses of the mRNA Pfizer, Moderna, and the AstraZenica and Janssen vaccines have been administered to Canadians 12+, with millions more doses to be made available for children aged 5 to 12 years;
  • Focus on the economy and the health of Canadians rather than continue to allow the Conservatives and the NDP to play the sort of unproductive partisan politics that not only made the life of the government more difficult, but in having to respond to the partisanship of the Tories and the NDP on the Committees of the House, inhibited the Liberals from governing as effectively as the government deemed necessary, and to serve the best interests of all Canadians. A majority government, had that been the result of the September 20th election, would have made the life of the government easier, while still allowing the Opposition to hold the government to account.

In respect of the Trudeau government not being able to secure a majority, make no mistake: Shachi Kurl cost the Liberals a majority government.

Going into the English Leaders’ debate, the Bloc Québécois had lost their footing, with all polls showing them unable to retain more than 10 seats in Parliament, for a loss of 22 seats. The support of Québeckers had moved virtually wholesale to hometown boy Justin Trudeau and his Liberal party — which looked to pick up most of the lost Bloc seats, propelling them to a majority government. Then Ms. Kurl asked a damnedly poorly phrased question concerning Québec Bill 21 — banning Québec citizens from wearing religious symbols, and mandating that one’s face be uncovered to give or receive specific public services — the contentious nature of her question propelling the Bloc into a stratospherically high 32-riding seat count, costing the Liberals their much sought after majority.

One final point: the opportunity to exercise our franchise, to go to the polls and cast our ballot in seclusion, to hold our government to account, is central to our nation’s democracy. No election held in Canada, or elsewhere, is ever unnecessary. The opportunity to go to vote in an election is both our democratic right, and at the core of our democracy. Following a 35-day election period, Canadians went to the polls, and collectively decided that a continuing minority government for the Liberals would be for all of us the best possible outcome, and voted accordingly.