The brouhaha over the departure of Acadie-Annapolis MP Chris d’Entremont from the Opposition benches in the House of Commons to the government side has now descended into a he-said/they-said story.
Mr. d’Entrement says Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer and Whip Chris Warkentin barged into his office last Tuesday, nearly bowling over his assistant, proceeded to yell at him like a couple of goons, and called him a snake.
Messrs. Scheer and Warkentin say they dropped in like the gentlemen they are, remonstrated gently with their colleague about rumours he’d been talking to Prime Minister Mark Carney, and departed quietly, Mr. Warkentin pausing sadly to shake Mr. d’Entrement’s hand.
Mr. d’Entrement, who has told journalists he has felt increasingly alienated from his erstwhile party since the ascension to the leadership of former Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre, said the behaviour of the House leader and the whip was why he made up his mind to cross the floor.
To be fair, he told a reporter from the Tri-County Vanguard in his riding, even before Mr. Scheer, the MP for Regina-Qu’Appelle, and Mr. Warkentin, MP for Grande Prairie, blew into his office, his goose was probably cooked with the Opposition party. “Had he not resigned from the Conservative caucus, he figures he would have been kicked out (of) it,” explained reporter Tina Comeau.
As for the state of the Conservative Party under Mr. Poilievre, according to Mr. d’Entremont, “a lot of times I felt it was part of a frat house rather than a serious political party.”
So, who to believe?
Well, we’ll likely never know for sure what happened in Mr. d’Entremont’s office, I suppose, unless his assistant had a tape recorder running. Still, the subsequent reaction of the Conservative Party inevitably inclines one to lean toward Mr. d’Entremont’s version of events.
“Chris d’Entremont, who established himself a liar after wilfully deceiving his voters, friends and colleagues because he was upset he didn’t get his coveted deputy speaker role, is now spinning more lies after crossing the floor,” a spokesperson from the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition told the CBC. “He will fit in perfectly in the Liberal caucus.”
Liar! Liar! This reads like a Trump tweet! It is not, shall we say, best public relations practice. Indeed, it is obviously childish and petulant. The broadcaster noted that this cri de cœur was made in a statement, which implies it was written down.
And if it was written down, I think we can safely assume, it was approved by Mr. Poilievre himself, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (aka ΔΤΧ) who since his defeat in his former Ontario riding has returned to the House of Commons thanks to the kindness of the good citizens of a rural Alberta riding – Bottle River-Crawfish or some such – who have metronomically voted Conservative almost since actual dinosaurs roamed their little patch of Wild Rose Country.
It should also be noted that Mr. Poilievre got a mild assist from Prime Minister Carney, who politely called a timely by-election. This is something, it is said here, that Mr. Poilievre, who has a reputation for being somewhat childish and petulant himself, would not have done had the shoe been on the other foot.
As for whether anyone else in the Conservative Caucus will be brave enough to follow in Mr. d’Entremont’s footsteps now, the new Liberal MP speculated to Ms. Comeau, “I’m guessing that at caucus on Wednesday morning that they were read the Riot Act.”
No doubt.
While the party system that is inevitable in modern politics means that feelings will always run high when a member crosses the floor, a more appropriate statement from the OLOO would nevertheless have sounded something like this: “Canada’s Conservative Opposition is disappointed and saddened by the decision of Chris d’Entremont, Member of Parliament for Acadie-Annapolis, to cross the floor of the House of Commons to sit as a member of the Liberal Government. While we deeply regret his decision, we wish him well in his personal life and assure the citizens of Acadie-Annapolis that in the next election we will put forward a candidate they can be confident will represent their interests.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, oddly, seems to have had nothing at all to say about Mr. d’Entremont’s flight to the Liberal benches. I wonder why?
That’s all I have to say about this topic.
Hey! We’re making Alberta’s highways even more dangerous!
Back here in Wild Rose Country, on Friday the United Conservative Party indicated that it has decided to increase speed limits on the province’s already dangerous divided highways from 110 km/h to 120 km/h.
Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen, whose last significant policy decision was removing speed-camera radar from major highways resulting in an immediate increase in dangerous driving in Edmonton and Calgary, said in a news release that Albertans will have a chance to participate in a survey about whether or not they think this is a good idea.
After that, though, no matter what they say in the survey, the government will “conduct a mini-trial of a 120 km/h speed limit to assess the impacts of higher speed limits on divided highways.”
Well, as my friend and Internet meme maker Jason Rockwell explained it succinctly on social media, “Why are we talking Charter rights when you can light it up on the QE2”?
That’s all that needs to be said about this as well.
Breaking news–UCP create another distraction so no one will notice their new 11 member committee; of which only 5 can vote; to study the challenging problems with kids classroom sizes and “stuff”….
I have a question— do the UCP ministers get all the extra perks for sitting on all those committees the same way that “Mr Poilievre’s- cut government spending” (70+) shadow cabinet gets? Mr Cooper really seems to enjoy them. Just saying….
120 kph on those snowy winter roads should prove “interesting” . So does anyone know if there are lobbyists for the auto repair industries or is this the lawyers donating to the UCP…….(CBC Jason Markus off- 6 days ago)…
Yes, who to believe? Maybe at some point, likely before the snake remark, the conversation was more pleasant. Athough I find it hard to believe it ended with a handshake, a Mafia Don hug with a whispered threat would seem more likely in these circumstances.
The timing of the Nova Scotia MP’s departure seemed designed for maximum impact, which probably made some in the CPC even angrier. Although I’m not sure they really need much to make them angry. It seems anger and rage come to them all too easily and that is part of the problem.
Fortunately for the CPC they seem to have been able to somehow keep their second departing Alberta MP more under wraps, keeping a disaster from turning into a total catastrophe. I suspect however they managed to do that has something to do with Jeneroux’s particular family situation. So the same threats may not necessarily work against other wavering MP’s.
I do not support floor crossers with my support.
That’s nice. Though I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t feel that way if it was the Liberals who lost one of theirs to the backbenches of your beloved CPC….
The CPC are very much fractured. Reformers have rotted the party. Pierre Poilievre is another Reformer, with absolutely nothing to offer Canadians, other than one to three word catch phrases.
Danielle Smith and the UCP are in peril. They aren’t going to get much farther with their constant barrage of lies, and horrendous policies, which they had never even campaigned on. That, and the major amounts of money they waste on so many boondoogles, and a total disregard for ethics. Increasing speed limits on highways is another stupid thing to do. More fatalities will result. Albertans were warned about voting for the UCP, from the outset. They didn’t listen, and here we are.
Yes, the Conservatives were great when Brian “Don’t Mind if I Do” Mulroney had his claws on the wheel. How can we restore the party of Elmer McKay and Alex Kindy to its former glory?
If P.P. has nothing to offer maybe you can refresh my memory on anything the Liberals have give Canadians anything but HOPE and WISHES past 9 years, !
Perhaps one should open one’s eyes to see the accomplishments of Prime Minister Trudeau. There are many, but I understand conservative political masters forbid their supporters from thinking critically.
I prefer Mr. d’Entrement‘s version of events, the one where Scheer barges into his office, bowling over his assistant like he was playing defensive tackle for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders on the hunt for enemy quarterbacks. Maybe internally he whipped himself up into a frenzy at the prospect of Regina’s football making it to the Grey Cup this weekend (which they did!) that he was acting out a fantasy. Anyways it’s nice to see passion in the grand old game of Cdn politics.
If the argument about raising the speed limit on some highways is “most people drive that speed anyway”, why is there no enforcement of the speed limit on those roads? Perhaps the revenue from some enforcement could fund things like hospitals, schools, vaccinations? There once was a time that police did patrol Highway 2, 16 and so on.
Who Know, is exactly right. Under PP’s leadership and their terrible election performance I believe Mr. d’Entremont.
PP has taken the party to new levels of depravity. Courting the some of the groups that you make you want to shake your head. The modern Conservatives would make my Mom and Dad sick.
If the UCP take “Wild Rose Country” off the licence plates, no one will remember the floor-crossing incident or the collapse of the Wildrose Party. Maybe they’ll even forget wild roses and Wildrosers, including Danielle Smith.
As for federal politics pertaining to the matters at hand, who can forget that trailer on the side of the road, from which one CPC leader stumbled one morning in a disheveled state?
I can’t forget a recent post to a key vipers’ nest of social media from former CPC candidate for Edmonton Centre Sayid Ahmed: “Things I like about Danielle Smith”. He listed five points and asked others to post their own lists. What’s up with that? Are we sentenced to detention like Bart Simpson now?
Abs…easy peasy…lol
1. I like to picture DS writing a letter.
2. I like to picture DS packing her bags.
3. I like to picture DS at the airport (texting)
4. I like to picture DS on a plane leaving the country.
5. I like to picture DS posting on the AB gov website why she resigned.
I actually did the survey. It asks how often the participant drives on a selection of Alberta highways. As it happens, the one highway I know best is on that list — Highway 43, between Edmonton and Grande Prairie.
I feel this might be OK to do on divided highways with only freeway-standard, grade-separated interchanges. But Highway 43 only has two of those along its entire length: one is at Highway 16, where it starts on its route northwest to Grande Prairie, the BC border, and Dawson Creek — Mile Zero of the “world-famous Alaska Highway.”
The other interchange on Highway 43 is in Clairmont, County of Grande Prairie, at what locals still call “4-mile corner” — so named because it was four miles north of city limits. This interchange connects Highway 43 as it turns south into the city, Highway 43X West (the new bypass), and Highway 2 North to Fairview, Grimshaw, Peace River, and the Mackenzie Highway going north to High Level and the NWT.
All other intersections on Highway 43 are at-grade crossings. Imagine, then, a typical Alberta driver, doing 10-15 km/h over the posted speed limit — which means over 130 km/h — who suddenly comes upon a farm tractor dragging a combine across the highway, or a tanker B-train or logging truck lumbering across. This kind of traffic across that highway is commonplace, and at 135 km/h (37.5 metres per second, so takes less than three seconds to travel 100 metres) the highway driver has very little time to react.
So, I think, and I wrote in the survey, that a higher speed limit on a highway with at-grade intersections is too dangerous.
Jerry: You say: “I feel this might be OK to do on divided highways with only freeway-standard, grade-separated interchanges.” Can you imagine the extra farm land and natural areas that must be wasted to have this? And for what? Just so people can burn more gasoline than necessary? If we cannot allow landowners to develop renewable electrical generation on their land, why should we allow the Government to seize and permanently destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of prime land to build freeways?
That wasn’t what I said. There are many divided highways that already have freeway-standard, grade-separated interchanges. My argument was that on those highways, it might — and here, I emphasize might — be acceptable to raise the speed limit as proposed. And I also argue that on highways that have only at-grade intersections, this would not be safe.
I said nothing about adding those grade-separated interchanges to highways that don’t already have them. In fact, that would probably be impractical for all sorts of reasons, as it would greatly interfere with farming and forestry operations in the rural areas through which those highways pass.
Disagree with me, fine. But please don’t distort my point.
Sorry Jerry it is never okay to disregard the basic laws of physics and putting a label of “freeway standard” on a road does not change that. No matter how well designed the road, higher speeds equal more devastating crashes with or without grade separation.
As to “grade separation”, I invite you to look at the so-called “twinned highways” sprawling across thousands of acres of natural areas, farm, and ranch land separating communities and breaking up farming operations. Each of those is later used as a justification for taking more land for “limited access service roads” forcing rural residents to travel on miles of gravel to reach pavement or even other parts of their own land.
They hypocrisy of saving farm land from solar farms while destroying it for overbuilt and ill designed roads adds insult to injury.
Oh, oh! Someone has told Dear Leader about the de-restricted portions of the German autobahn system. I was hoping the drivers in Calgary could learn how to merge in traffic before turning the hi-ways into F1 worthy roadways.
The behavior of the CPC thugs, described by the MP doing the crossing, is entirely consistent with modern “conservative” behavior that has been witnessed countless times over the past couple of decades. For some reason, the Maple MAGAs think sane people don’t notice.
Perhaps Mr. Scheer and Mr. Warkentin were bringing a sincere invitation from their leader Mr. Peepers to have a group horseback ride and wiener roast in the latter’s Bottle-River Crawfish riding to sort out their differences and discuss ways to make our country a warmer, friendlier place for all Canadians.
“childish and petulant”
Perhaps a fitting epitaph to M. Pollievre’s political career, when it comes about.
Amendment for Skippy….Thug tactics is just another reminder to Canadians as to why they think you’re too d’rumpian; and ‘Milk-sop’ is a bully, because.
Shout out to the “O-show” , they were discussing the gong show of Con politics, including Doug Ford and “Stripper-gate”.
The intriguing thing was that they could just as easily have been talking about “Corrupt- Care”.
Which segways back into thugs and threats….and Dougie stealing Pierre Poilievre’s — I’m captain Canada ( photo on Google) …and given the intrigue with Jenni, one could speculate that someone is leaking information to put a spoke in certain ambitions.
The Reform/Con party seems to be trying to outdo the maelstrom next door.
If the RCMP are investigating death threats to Mr d’Entremont in NS , are we going to hear of similar cases in Edmonton and elsewhere ?
Considering that Skippy’s grasp of honesty and reality has reached Trumpian levels of dysphoria, one would think that someone would throw a net over him ASAP. But the best part of the story is the many amateur commentators (Re: idiots) who have crowded onto social media and declared that it’s illegal to cross the floor of the H of C to another party. Well, it’s only illegal if it’s to the government side, but whatever. When the MP Chris d’Entremont does it, no doubt soothing the more reasonable minds among his respective conservative voters, there are calls among the CONs for his head. This is the sort of temperament that greeted the rumour of Matt Jeneroux’s supposed intention to cross to the government side. But heads were cooled when Jeneroux decided, instead, to resign as an MP. Though there is some question as to when he’s supposed to resign — Jeneroux was never specific about his departure date — it does serve as an indicator that Pollievre is having one disaster after another. All this can mean that Skippy has been particularly aggressive with his caucus discipline. Since his return as a newly minted Alberta CON MP, it’s likely that Skippy as been demanding to know who made fun of him while he was away. Once he got those names, he decided to pull a freak-out and go all wrath of God on those who would dare challenge his leadership. Pollievre seems to have it in his mind that they will love him more in Alberta if he goes all Attila the Hun.
Meanwhile, Skippy’s rage has given him to distraction, causing him to fall into some comical administrative gaffes that make his handling of caucus affairs seem highly questionable. And they there’s the matter of Carney and the Liberals making their budget work for its support in the House. Could Le Bloc come on board if they get some of their demands met? And what of the NDP? It seems to me that the cohesion within whatever their caucus is supposed to be is loose at best. The interim NDP leader is supposed to keep that leaky ship together? If there’s an election, the whole party could be wiped out, before Avi Lewis has a chance to lead them. (I know the preference is for Stephen and not Avi to lead the NDP, but those days are long gone.) And are there anymore CONs willing to back the budget because Skippy could only do worse?
Mo popcorn.
Why would anyone believe anything Scheer says?
Mr d’Entremont was asked if he’d considered his constituents’ possible retribution when next at the ballot booth because he crossed the floor to Carney’s Liberal minority; he seemed to say that after 16+ years as a Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative MHA and a federal CPC MP since 2019— altogether 22 years of elected office—, if Acadie-Annapolis’ voters elect to turn him out whenever the next election happens (presuming he decides to run, given he qualifies for both parliamentarian pensions and will be near 60 by then when CPP benefits become available) it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Such ambivalence would not normally recommend a candidate : voters generally want enthusiastic dedication and diligence from their representatives. Maybe d’Entremont misspoke, perhaps an exhausted slip after enduring such intense political, partisan and media scrutiny and criticism as he’s never had before. Various pundits, even some from the right, call his move “courageous” (some meaning in a foolhardy way)—that is, excepting and expecting a volley of darts and barbs likely to be soon subsumed by the suspenseful, upcoming confidence vote and subsequent analyses of Poilievre’s leadership position from that angle instead. Rumours of further CPC defections aside, d’Entremont’s guaranteed-short trial by PP’s petulant pyrotechnics of partisan peeve is also guaranteed a safe landing in any event.
Poilievre’s public address this morning evaded questions about his leadership (the list now all the longer with the d’Entremont’s defection and the announced resignation of Edmonton Riverbend CPC MP Matt Jeneroux), preferring instead to quote at length from d’Entremont’s campaign speech(es) as an incumbent CPC candidate— which sounded suspiciously like typical pro-forma PP screed which all CPC candidates are required to recite verbatim on the stump. PP read from the transcript the all-too-familiar Trudeau ad hominem which, despite the Nova Scotia candidate’s obedience ahead of an election the CPC expected to win, almost perfectly illustrates the very tone d’Entremont cited as the major factor in making his decision to join the Liberal caucus just half a year into Canada’s 45th parliament.
No apology is required from any MP who crosses the floor anytime the HoC is in session, but if d’Entremont needed any
It would most plausibly be that residents of Acadie-Annapolis are still represented by the same politician they’ve known and elected for 22 years and that very nearly half the riding voted Liberal anyway.
It’s worth taking his experiences into account. Foremost is the fact that as MHA he was a Progressive Conservative which we understand to be much closer to the centre-right than the Western Reformer faction that cleaves to Poilievre as he does to MAGA. However, d’Entremont moved to federal politics in 2019, before the Nova Scotia ProgCons’ return to power under the new, overtly Red-Tory —and federal Liberal-tolerant—Tim Houston in 2021 who led his party to re-election one year ago and remains popular today.
Without guessing if Houston’s Red-Toryism was much different under his predecessor Iain Rankin, it’s safe to say Nova Scotians’ Toryism is close enough to Liberalism that government alternated between the two parties with either minorities or slight majorities for the past two decades—with a single NDP majority term, 2009-13.
d’Entremont was elected a CPC MP in 2019; what must he have thought of the distinctly different party of the right he transitioned to? After Opposition leader Andrew Scheer, whose razor-thin leadership victory in 2017 exposed a growing fissure in the party, endorsed the “United-We-Roll” precursor to the 2022 “Freedom Convoy” and topped the victorious Liberal minority’s popular vote in the 2019 election, the new East Coast MP found a factionalized party: Eastern moderates disappointed, Western far-right extremely embittered. Scheer resigned rather than face the CPC’s mandatory leadership review after a loss. The election of Ontario MP Erin O’Toole as leader was an overt bid to temper hyperbolic rhetoric and welcome LGBTQ citizens and others not usually associated with conservatism. All indications are that d’Entremont approved of O’Tool’s moderating policy. If so, he found his new party quite comfortable.
Possibly counter to that is the fact that O’Toole did contest his own 2022 review after he led the party to another loss in the 2021 snap election. Again, it’s safe to suppose d’Entremont supported O’Toole’s continued leadership. So what did the Member for Acadie-Annapolis think of O’Toole’s ouster in February, 2022? Or better to ask what he might have thought about Poilievre serving Freedom Convoy besiegers of the Capital coffee and donuts for news media cameras. However he felt, he did stick with the party under PP for the next three years. Perhaps the CPC’s impressive rise in the polls under Poilievre made whatever disapproval d’Entremont might have had tolerable—or maybe made disapproval of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau intolerable. The incessant ad hominem and stupid rhyming slogans PP required every CPC MP to recite must have been, as d’Entremont alluded, increasingly repellent. He hung in but nobody in the CPC could watch that 20+point lead evaporate without alarm, or the Liberal’s fourth-term victory, and PP’s ouster from his 21-year Carlton seat in Ottawa without admitting that the leader spoiled the victory the CPC was forecast to win.
Yet d’Entremont could have bailed anytime after those astonishing losses and disappointments. Why now?
Why? The confidence matter of the budget, of course! d’Entremont’s floor-crossing and Jeneroux’s resignation announcement are, I think, meant to underscore the deep division in the CPC and the deeply divisive rhetoric and policies espoused by its current leader in order to say, in other words, that defeating this budget is not what CPC MPs should rejoice so long’s Poilievre’s at the helm. Precipitating an election now would obviate PP’s review and any plan to oust him in January.
On the other hand, if more defections occur, Poilievre might step down before exposing himself to the same embarrassments as Harper, Scheer, and O’Toole experienced. It’s tough being a CPC MP.