If the deal the federal Liberals and New Democrats seem to have cooked up to keep the Trudeau Government in power until 2025 in return for national pharmacare and dental care programs turns out to be for real, brace yourselves for a spectacular national tantrum by the Conservatives led by, well, whoever.
The new leader of the party of Stephen Harper may not have been chosen yet, but his or her reaction is a certainty. Expect to hear the word “coalition” a lot, delivered with a snarl and a curled lip.
You’ll also be hearing how a deal to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons long enough to establish some national programs of value to the Dominion is “undemocratic,” even “dictatorial,” and undoubtedly “socialistic.”
Indeed, Conservative interim leader and soon-to-be Stornoway resident Candice Bergen has already called the idea “an NDP-Liberal coalition” – note the order of the putative partners – and complained loudly that “Canadians did not vote for an NDP government.”
Well, not to worry, they won’t be getting one – but if a few sound policies result, it’ll be a darn sight better than a kick in the pants, or, God help us, several years of destructive Conservative austerity.
And while it also won’t be a coalition, if conditions are created that could someday lead to the election of a NDP government in Ottawa, well, so much the better!
To borrow a phrase from Brian Topp, such a deal might also prevent the next year or so in Canadian politics from degenerating into an “uninspiring slanging match between Prime Minister Trudeau and a coalition of unattractive Trumpian provincial Tory Premiers fronted by their federal errand-boy” – whoever that turns out to be, regardless of gender.
Mr. Topp, of course, is the NDP strategist, leadership contender and sometime chief of staff to Alberta New Democrat premier Rachel Notley who played a key role in the Liberal-NDP deal in the fall of 2008 that with a little help from the Bloc Quebecois could have spared us several painful years of Stephen Harper.
Alas, Mr. Harper managed to avoid a confidence vote in the House by bullying then Governor General Michaëlle Jean into proroguing Parliament before it could be held – a genuine offence against Canada’s democratic tradition. How the deal came unstuck is a story for another day.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told his caucus about the “confidence and supply agreement” last night. The NDP was yet to have agreed to the deal last night, media said, but party leader Jagmeet Singh has called a news conference for this morning.
So if the deal’s a go, we’ll be subjected to the full cacophony of dashed Conservative hopes by nightfall.
Of course, there will also be some predictions from what’s left of the shrinking social democratic base of the NDP that this will spell R.I.P. for the party.
The experience of Ontario in 1985 suggests otherwise, however. That was when provincial NDP leader Bob Rae struck an accord with David Peterson’s Liberals, who held four fewer seats than the Conservatives when the dust settled on May 2, election night.
Like the deal now being discussed in Ottawa, the Liberals agreed to deliver some NDP policies in return for them keeping Mr. Peterson’s government afloat for two years.
The accord that ended 42 years of Conservative rule in Ontario looked like a failure for the NDP in 1987, when the Liberals won in an unexpected landslide – notably predicted by Alberta pollster Janet Brown, one of her first analytical successes.
But when Mr. Peterson called a snap election in 1990, Mr. Rae and the Ontario NDP made history, entering that campaign with low expectations and leaving it with a majority government, having established their credibility, it is said here, during the accord.
More recently, there was a confidence and supply deal between the British Columbia NDP and a couple of Greens, but in that one the NDP was the larger partner, with the Greens buoying them up.
Some unhappy NDP true believer is bound to grumpily note that Mr. Rae eventually became a Liberal – and probably always was one at heart.
This may be true, but what Canadian NDP leader today is a social democrat, let alone a socialist? Not a one, it’s said here, although if they can bring the country Pharmacare and dental care, dear readers, that is close enough for us to overlook a multitude of sins.
Naturally, Conservatives will howl about that too – but on such issues, the Conservative Party’s track record is remarkably consistent. Since Mr. Harper sidled onto the scene they have opposed virtually anything that would make Canada a better place. They can’t even agree that climate change is real!
The NDP, to return to Mr. Topp’s observations, is historically “a coalition of progressive-minded pragmatists and romantics,” with the role played by the romantics “to unhelpfully agitate to make the NDP politically irrelevant and unelectable.”
If this deal can help the NDP “weave its pragmatic and romantic threads together” for long enough to get something done, that could be a harbinger of a great future, not a portent of doom.
Oh yeah, the Conservatives are going to lose it on this one. Poilievre will tweet till his thumbs pop off and go on a cross Canada rant/hissy fit that will resonate with the base, but probably not so much with mainstream Canadians. Of course, this exactly what the Liberals want.
Perhaps one of the greatest advantages to being in power is you can sometimes set the agenda. So, we will spend the next few years talking more about Pharmacare and dental care and less about Freedom loving truckers. If you want a reset, surely this is it.
Even worse for the Conservatives, Pharmacare and dental care actually could appeal greatly to the self employed, small businesses and their employees all who have trouble getting group benefits at an affordable cost. These are people the Conservatives need to get or keep the support of if they have any hope of gaining power again.
As for all the coalition talk, Conservatives have tried vert hard to make it a dirty word, but I am not sure it will work. First, this doesn’t include the BQ which was probably the biggest political weakness of the Harper era plan. Second, the Conservatives have become like the boy who has cried wolf too many times, bringing it up when it never happens. Third, and most importantly, it actuslly isn’t a coalition. What voters will not see are cabinet ministers of different parties, but two parties in a minority situation working together. So, not much different that what we already have, except an explicit agreement to advance certain worthy initiatives in a set timeframe.
I agree with you that it is not a coalition. I believe an alarming percentage of voters lack the specific background education necessary to make that call for themselves, and I think it is a serious problem.
For some voters, knowing politics is something they want to do, but for a larger amount, it is something they must occasionally do. I don’t care how my toilet works, I care THAT my toilet works, and I become very upset when it doesn’t work. I could teach myself to be my own plumber so I don’t need to rely on someone else, but then I wouldn’t have time to learn other things. We all rely on others to know the things we lack time, caring or ability to learn. Some people rely on politicians the way I rely on plumbers. Luckily for me, plumbers are directly accountable for the results of their actions in a way that politicians are not. I sympathize with the perpetual frustration of those who weren’t taught squishy things like logic, history, comparative ethics, etc. Life forces us to figure out some of that on the fly, but most of us have to reinvent most basic philosophical concepts on the fly as we grow up, or absorb them from our art if we’re lucky. Watch the Matrix, rediscover the Cogito, watch Wrath of Khan, rediscover utilitarianism, that sort of thing. The system is set up to unjustly enrich the few at the expense of the many, and they are collateral damage.
If I’m willing to make allowances and give understanding and empathy to the economically and radially disadvantaged, should I not also extend it to the epistemically disadvantaged? Most Canadians, including many economically and racially privileged ones, are epistemically disadvantaged. Instead of being taught philosophy and history, we are taught how to make money… for someone else. STEM is important, obviously, but it doesn’t help us vote.
None of us have enough time to learn everything, and most of us are coerced into giving half or more of our waking lives up so that someone else can be rich. Hell, many of us would angrily deny that we are being coerced or abused at all. Because we are IMO kept in economic servitude, we face a lot of pressure to financially justify which things we choose to try to learn, and nobody is going to pay you to become a more informed voter. Our politics and our society suffer for it, as do we.
Nothing wrong with a coalition Government of sorts. Of course the Conservatives will get their shirts in a knot. PP will have a field day. He will be apoplectic!
Bottom line….this is what Parliamentary democracy is all about.
Maybe, just maybe, in the next Federal election IF the Conservatives elect the right leader and if they manage to win more than their current share of 8/116 urban ridings Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, they too may be in a position of winning an election and forming a Government.
The Conservatives will have had three elections and three leaders in what….five years. With the last one dumped unceremoniously by his caucus. Conservatives should be more upset with themselves than with the Liberal Government. After all, Conservatives are the reason that the Liberals won the past three elections. Look in the mirror guys and for heavens sake get your sh*t together.
Well said! Conservatives are haunted by their lies – climate change isn’t a scam, carbon taxes are the tool most supported by economists for mitigating climate change at good value, institutional racism is a thing and will not go away by itself, etc etc. Every time they repeat their lies they reinforce them in the minds of their ever shrinking, ever more extreme base, while reminder the rest of the country why not to vote for them. No amount of whining or tantrums or phony culture wars will square that circle.
In light of this development, the CONs are starting their raging tantrum.
I mean there is no chance of an election until there is supposed to be one? Horrors.
I’m getting a sense that the CPC’s looney wing are already planning on various Convoy-like protests, potentially sponsoring every nutcase with a truck to head out to … where ever and wreck havoc. (It doesn’t matter right now, because it never does.)
The interesting thing that’s emerging from the CPC leadership race is that Skippy Pollivere is determined to not only insult and beat down all his leadership rivals, but he intends to excite the conspiracy-minded. Vote for Pollivere and he will serve your conspiracy fantasies. This will work, provided everything keeps rolling towards Hell. It’s an easy way to campaign. Just find a constituency that loves being angry and the CONs will win their votes. It worked for Trump, so why not?
Of course, Pollivere and his wing of the CPC comes off looking like a bunch of foaming at the mouth cranks, but it’s not like they cared about what others think of them. (One of the benefits of dementia.)
What they fear is that a workable and effective Liberal/NDP coalition will have the support of the adults in the room. Jean Charest is sounding like an adult, and he’s getting pilloried for being reasonable and asking the CPC to be mature about the world that’s unfolding. How dare he actually talk about level-headed governance? Pollivere wants to rage and smash things.
Already Pollivere’s social media posts are starting to look like Kevin J. Johnson/Chris Sky yammerings of nonsense that the boneheads love. Once he goes full-Alex Jones, things should really start to get interesting.
I can’t wait for Pollivere to start declaring, as certain alt-right bloggers have, that Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine it’s really an assault on the Deep State. Putin is fighting for the little guy, who lives pay cheque to pay cheque, hates the cost of living, and PMJT. Get behind a real winner; get behind Putin.
Well, we could do with a little good news on the grand national scale.
We have had an incredibly good run as a society over the past 75 years. But the last decade has seen more corruption, authoritarianism and fascist outpourings from the so-called conservatives. To any but the most obtuse and ignorant, history paints a pretty grim outcome if these incompetent, immoral ne’er-do-wells gain a foothold in ruling this or any other country.
With the murderous Cossack plundering and destroying in the East and his known compatriots here in Canada and the US silenced and shamed for the time being it should not be to difficult to make the case for enlightened governance for all. Or at least for the majority who care about their families and progeny, their communities, near and far and as John Kenneth Galbraith said, the wealth of their Nation. The choice has never in this lifetime been more clear or stark.
We have real existential problems to solve, as a society, as a Nation and as a community of Nations, so therefore, as humanity in whole. It’s not too much to say that the status quo, the business-as-usual (BAU) policy path will ensure the end of humanity as we know it by the end of this Century. So, we need to take care of what we have, to preserve those social goods and democratic institutions that have been paid for with the very blood of those who came before.
The idea that we should cater to the nutjobs and ignorant belligerents parading as modern-day conservatives, that we should tolerate their rants and petulant protesting’s as some form of protected free speech is an anathema to survival as a species. Contrary to the very continued existence of me, of you, of our families and their children to come. This is not too much to say.
So while we celebrate and move forward the project of enlightened self-existence, of progressive policies that lift up all who care to be lifted, we also need to develop policies that silence these petulant, cowardly and immoral belligerents, to put them away where they can be doing something useful. In a manner that does not cause more harm than good.
Well, of course, there will be howls of outrage from Candice (Maga-hat) Bergen, Pierre (Skippy) Poilievre, and the usual suspects about how undemocratic the deal is. Their understanding of how the Westminster parliamentary system works, or at the very least the understanding that they communicate to their supporters, is influenced both by their hatred of PMJT and their willful ignorance.
The CPC received approximately 34% of the popular vote in the last election; the combined Liberal and NDP portion was just over 50%. The Bloc and Greens got the rest. Furthermore, the Liberals and the NDP have the plurality of seats in the House of Commons, are transparent about the deal, and are following the constitution. What they are doing is perfectly legitimate and follows democratic norms. The CPC is guaranteed to cast this deal as anti-democratic because they have been captured by Trumpism and Q-adjacent thinking, and this is now what they do, sadly.
The CPC will spread their falsehoods everywhere over social media (Skippy has a lot of Twitter followers). Many people will have to school CPC and their base in a basic understanding of Canadian democracy and civics. Notwithstanding the inevitable corrections, Skippy and his ilk will do a lot of damage with their falsehoods to our social fabric. We should be consequently concerned about the state of the CPC consequently and hope that some reasonable conservative emerges as a leader of the CPC.
A bunch of democratically elected people have compromised in order to collaborate. Clearly this is what it looks like when democracy dies.
You know, the modern iteration of Canada’s Conservative Party doesn’t really respect Parliament. My guess is that it’s because they’re really just the pre-merger Reform Party in disguise. Reform was all about “direct democracy” and using referenda to decide important issues, as though the most complex, significant decisions in our politics could be boiled down to simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions. This is a page torn unedited out of the American political playbook, and flies in the face of “responsible government”, Parliament’s control of the public purse, and so on. How many American state or municipal governments have been reduced to penury by “citizen initiatives” that so deeply cut their taxes the government was unable to fund even the most basic of services? That is what Reform would have Canada do.
Imagine if you will, a Government that presents a budget that imposes an inheritance tax on estates valued at over $10 million. It’s a matter of confidence, so if the budget is defeated the Government falls and either we hold an election or the Opposition gets invited to form a Government. However, let’s say that same measure is put to a referendum, and it’s defeated. Does the Government also fall? They haven’t lost the confidence of the House, but of the people at large … or, at least, those that bothered to come out and vote ‘no’, which might be a significant minority of the population. In our system, a budget is a confidence matter, but in this scenario, is it still?
The current crop of Cons aren’t true Tories, respecters of Parliament and the Crown, of “rep-by-pop” and the rest of Canada’s Parliamentary traditions. They’re Tea Party Republicans that should all relocate south of the Medicine Line — as our host so colourfully calls the Canada-US border — where the political climate is more welcoming of their ideas.
Call me eternally naive, but one of my first thoughts is that this will allow the Liberals to secure their hold on Parliament long enough for a transfer of power from Trudeau to a new Liberal leader. The hatred toward Justin is so great that he may be a lightning rod for anger as long as he remains the leader of the Liberal party. Is his political ability worth the cost of the ‘Trudeau’ name, will be a question to ask as we go forward. This time would allow a new leader to establish themselves before the next election.
Darcy: Apart from the good news this agreement is, I too thought that this agreement would stabilize the government long enough for eventual orderly transfer of the Liberal leadership to someone else.
This is how a minority government operates. If the CPC doesn’t like it, too bad. The CPC is in tatters, and doesn’t have any real leadership. While there are those among us who may not necessarily favour Justin Trudeau, we certainly will choose him over the Reformers.
Anonymous The true conservatives in my circle friends keep asking the question why are the people of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba so damn stupid they can’t figure out that these aren’t conservatives? They whine about not getting treated right by Ottawa yet continually vote against what the majority of Canadians want. A lot of us still think if Albertans weren’t so keen to hurl sarcastic comments a Quebec they would likely be a lot more receptive to allowing a pipeline to be put across their land to benefit eastern Canada. They haven’t forgotten the Ralph Klein cry “Let those eastern bastards freeze in the dark”. Why should they?
The funny thing is that Alberta and Quebec have an actual ton of common ground and all kinds of things they can agree on and work together on, but both groups are prone to… shall we say, passionate reactions to events, and needlessly antagonize one another almost gleefully.
This is the best news I’ve read in a long time. I’m very pleased with this coalition.
Climate change is real, no matter what the Party of Stephen Harper (POSH) wants us to believe.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8698454/antarctica-arctic-temperatures-records/
National pharmacare and dental care would be most welcomed by Alberta families struggling to pay utility bills and insurance, thanks to provincial conservative policies that unleashed exorbitant rate increases. Who care pay for either when the utilities are shut off?
More and more we we see the stark contrast between our federal government and the conservative provincial governments, which stick it to the citizens every which way with higher taxes, user fees and tuition increases for PSE.
If pitiful Pierre or some PP clone wants to screech, let him screech. The coming senior citizen tsunami, or at least those who weren’t killed off by Covid, will be happy to hear about a national pharmacare program. Alberta families will be happy to know that they can work at the new Walmart procurement centre and have some form of dental and pharmacy coverage that their employer won’t provide. Walmart gets to keep its billions in profit, and employees have some form of federal coverage to ensure their health. Win, win. It’s the Conservative way to let corporations keep their profits at all costs, is it not? Everybody’s happy!
Some NDP pundits over the years have suggested a merger between their party and the Liberals. Not a good idea. Once subsumed by the Big Red Machine, the party of Douglas, Coldwell and Alexa McDonough would fade away, the big money boys making sure what’s left of social progress is forever lost. Look south for the best comparison. With no history of a labour based party they can’t even muster the votes for national health care.
“With no history of a labour based party they can’t even muster the votes for national health care”… interesting take on American politics. Too bad it’s wrong. I was reading a couple of books by New York Times journalists on the recent American elections — first on Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, ‘Shattered’, then on Joe Biden’s win in 2020, ‘Lucky’, both by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. In one of them, I don’t recall which, they discussed how American organized labour actually opposes universal public single-payer health care, because in their view it would be inferior to the benefits they’ve negotiated in their workplaces. Surprising, eh?
I’m guessing American unions don’t have the same social conscience and social activism that is characteristic of Canadian labour — possibly, and I’m really speculating here, because the prevalence of “right-to-work” and related legislation limiting the scope of union activities keeps them from getting overly involved in broader societal causes.
When the CPC starts screeching about how the poor do not deserve dental care, pharmacare or affordable housing, I hope we will remind them that the poor do not have the luxury of spending $5200 on bed and bath linens, which will be tossed in a few months, à la Candice Bergen.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-candice-bergens-move-into-stornoway-cost-federal-government-19404/
Perhaps this will push PP ‘over the edge’.
Perhaps the Conservatives should also go whole hog and absorb the Christian Heritage Party…what there is of it.
ABS. You have nailed it. I have three friends who are retired biologists and spent most of their careers working in the artic . Oilmen who worked there agree. They can’t believe how much it has changed over the past 50 years. Yet these damn fools, Reformers, continue to try to pretend it’s not a problem, and most of the world isn’t as stupid as them.
Oilmen tell us that’s why Norway took all their investments out of Alberta and why Encana moved its head office out of Calgary and moved it to Denver Colorado they were fed up with these fools telling the world they don’t give a damn about global warming when the world does care.
In 2007, a relative living in Cambridge Bay told me stories of houses tilting due to permafrost melting underneath them. People had taken to fencing off the base of their homes, so that children wouldn’t play underneath them. This didn’t solve the problem, of course.
https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/9876_cambay_residents_ponder_effects_of_climate_change/
Some see this as a wonderful opportunity for resource extraction and look forward to ice-free shipping year-round in the Northwest Passage. Those “pings” heard in Arctic waters foretell of challenges to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty. More immediately, displacement of indigenous peoples and entire communities is looming.
There is no doubt that climate change is transforming the Arctic in this generation.
Just an attempt by a couple of leaders to cling to power, sure we Canadians may get a few scraps like pharmacare and dental care but that is just a distraction. This will come back to haunt both parties as they now share equal blame for the mess Canada is in and the inevitable crash coming. Its all about power not about helping Canadians recover from the last 2 years. Singh gets to keep his job and in exchange Trudeau gets left cover for the windfall the corporations who back him will receive. Have to restock all that equipment sent to Ukraine for the Russians to blow up. Pharmacare sounds nice but is just a transfer of taxpayer money to large multinational pharma companies. Not holding out a lot of hope that it would involve moving pharma production to Canada and fixing the patent system.
Both leaders should be gone by 2025, being multimillionaires likely someplace warm at least for the winter, and we will have to deal with the mess and conservative resurgence.
Conservatives’ heads will explode. Candice Bergen already started it. Pierre Poilievre will be full of twitter bluster, and I am sure Jason Kenney will find a way to trash this agreement with his usual blah blah blahs.
Yay for Liberals and NDP finding a way to work together to make life for Canadians better.
On the federal level (the Make-America-Great-Again level), socialized pharmacare will doubtlessly get a frigid reception from Canned Ice Bergin’, while socialized dental care is bound to make Pierre “Pestpendant” Poilievre lose his Polly grip.
On the provincial level (the Make-Alberta-Great-Again level), will K-Boy come out of the independence closet and threaten to provincialize pharmacare and dentistry like he has police and pensions, and his anti-collectivist notions go ballistic and equalize over-the-Topp hyperbole?
From the baffled effluence of the right-wing skeptic tank, the cooperation of over half of federal Members of Parliament to complete public healthcare, from its modest, Saskatchewan beginnings almost eight decades ago, thence to the NDP-Liberal parliamentary alliance of the early 1960s, to the Canada Health Act, enacted by the Pierre Trudeau Liberals of the mid 80s by unanimous consent in the Commons, and subsequently implemented by the Mulroney ProgCons, and on to today’s agreement will certainly gush derisive sewerage charging a communistic plot to destroy democracy and everything holy.
Oh well.
As a union representative starting in the 1970s I learned some important lessons about negotiated dental and drug benefits. Those benefits really do change lives for lower paid workers. They are of course now standard for the unionized “middle class”, but making them universal really will benefit Canadians.
The agreement is an interesting idea. If we end up with dental care and pharma care programs, that will be a great benefit. These programs are long overdue, and I will be interested to hear the details.
As for the CPC, the tantrum has already started.
This won’t change anything. Interest rates are rising and central banks can no longer suppress them through printing money. The Feds will struggle to maintain existing programs, let alone conjure new ones. All Canadian governments face years if not decades of austerity to counter the inflationary wave caused by massive overspending since the global financial crisis. Too bad much of that spending was wasted on wages and transfers to individuals, instead of items that might deliver recurring economic benefit.
The NDs have already drifted far enough to the centre that I can’t see it making a significant difference.
However I for one do NOT think that some future “Democratic Party of Canada” would be a good thing, especially in the absence of a strong and united left-wing extra-parliamentary movement.
Just sayin’
Patricia
Regarding dentacare, just heard Armine Yalnizyan make the astute observation on CBC Newsworld that, when Medicare was designed, the only parts of the body left out were the teeth and gums. With a mouth filled with missing teeth, amalgam fillings and later in life root canals and crowns, I’m a walking testament to the long-term cost of not receiving proper dental care growing up. Like many children of recent immigrants in the 1950s and 60s, my parents just couldn’t afford it.
I would also like to see stronger voices for social democratic* policies in Canada. I like Singh, but he impresses me more by being likeable than with innovative, substantive policies. I don’t see the NDP as the party they were before Layton convinced them if they smiled pretty enough they could sit in the big boy chair. I still think Mulcair could have been an excellent leader of the Liberal party if circumstances had been a little different. He did a fantastic job prosecuting Harper in the house, but their choice to elect him lead the rest of the country to wonder what the NDP as a party stands for. The Greens have failed to capitalize on the NDP’s weakness due to the FPTP system, lack of institutional talent and… hard to tell from a distance but seems there must either be rampant racism or an extreme lack of competence (or both) within the party higher-ups. They went from being a really interesting mishmash of right-of-center financial policies and left-wing cultural and environmental views, to Mrs. May’s cult of personality, to a tire fire in the space of about 20 years. I suppose this must be why we have the “leftest” Liberal government I’ve ever seen – Justin can eat all their lunches pretty easily. It’s hard for me not to see Trudeau as the most effective Canadian social democrat of the past ten years… which does not make me very happy.
*people who accept capitalism but use democracy to advocate for specific socialistic policies, such as health care.
Hey! 🙂 I live in Alberta, but I guess if you look at it that way, I *did* vote for an NDP gov’t in the September election. So I will count that as a goal. And the CPC-asaurus can eat it! I didn’t vote for a regressive, laughing stock school curriculum and the dismantling of public education in Alberta, but here we have it anyway. Win some, lose some. Mostly lose.
And as this seems to be a day for crazy to happen, it appears that there is a fast-moving campaign underway to retool the UPC leadership review.
20,000 members want to vote in the leadership review, but the venue in Red Deer isn’t big enough. So, time to move the whole thing online, where everyone can be accommodated.
Of course, this leaves the whole process open to a massive hijacking of the vote by farms of anonymous voters, which is what happened last time. One does wonder what made Kenney think he could get away by pulling the same stunt again? I mean most competent criminals know you never return to the scene of the crime, and never do the same heist the same way again. Unless Kenney thinks Albertans are rubes and he is the smartest person in the room — always. This sort of thing is called hubris and Kenney’s been piling into it, along with his enormous mountain of cough syrup.
Now that the whole process has been thrown into disarry, Kenney may have to take matters into his own hands and …
1) Cancel the leadership review due to the overwhelming popularity of the kick the leader event.
2) Or call an election and say Jesus is on his side because he always has been.
Either instance will lead to an election. However, one will occur sooner than later. And it will give Kenney time to dole out the massive amounts of funds for everything. I mean everything. New this, more that, money in every pocket and a ATV in every garage. Alberta Uber Alles, baby, and thanks, Putin.
“One does wonder what made Kenney think he could get away by pulling the same stunt again?”
What repercussions has he faced? I have been going on semi-regular google searches, and have not seen one single negative consequence to Mr. Kenney for his electoral shenanigans. By all appearances, if someone rigged an election in Canada nobody would do anything about it. If I’ve missed something, would welcome correction from anyone.
This reminds me of the Jim Prentice and Daniele Smith stupidity. While they bad mouthed each other in the legislature they were planning to join forces behind closed doors. Preston Manning took credit for it and claimed that it was being planned for three months. Then when he learned how upset people were with it he tried to deny that he had anything to do with it. It didn’t work and all nine of these fools were defeated in the next election.
ALAN K. SPILLER: I remember that well. Recently, I was talking someone I know, who is a senior and I said that Preston Manning supports the carbon tax. My friend said he said he doesn’t. I said he did, and there is proof of him saying it. I also told my friend about Ralph Klein’s deregulation of our utility/power system in Alberta not being good, and it was driving up costs. There are all these different added on costs that are on utility/power bills, that weren’t there, before deregulation of utilities/power in Alberta happened. The response I got was that those were there, but we didn’t see them. I said those added costs weren’t there prior to utilities/power being dergulated in Alberta. Also, I told him about the Enron scandal in America being tied to electricity deregulation in Alberta. There was even a movie made about that. I was told don’t believe everything you hear.
This deal triggers the Cons, forcing them and those in their leadership to further entrench themselves more radically right-wing. (Assuming Charest won’t be able to rein the crazies in).
And the left-wing NDP cohort will be emboldened to move even further left. (Assuming Singh continued insupitude).
Leaving the Libs firmly free tone “centrist”.
“free to be the lone”
Kinda funny, authoritarians of a feather flock together.
Previously its been fun to tell people, a vote for the NDP is a vote for the Liberals.
Now it will be more enjoyable to tell a different demographic, a vote for the Liberals is a vote for the NDP.