Quotulatiousness

December 18, 2019

Mark Steyn on what passes as “conservatism” these days

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s certainly Conservative-In-Name-Only:

In 2000, when the Vermont Supreme Court mandated same-sex “civil unions”, American conservatives were outraged. By 2010, when the left had moved on to gay marriage, conservatives were supportive of civil unions but insisted marriage was an ancient institution between a man and a woman. Now, the left having won that one and moved on to transgenderism, conservatives profess to be a bit queasy about transitioning grade-schoolers.

So you can take it to the bank that by 2030 rock-ribbed Republicans will be on board with penises in the girls’ changing rooms, but determined to hold the line against whatever the left’s next cause du jour is: human cloning, the state appropriation of parenthood, voting rights for animals.

There really isn’t much point to conservatism that’s just leftism ten years late, is there? It’s like that ITV+1 satellite service they have in Britain that offers you the ITV schedule but an hour later, in case you were caught in traffic heading home. If you’re considering on which side to bestow your tribal loyalty, the left is right quicker; the right is left behind — but only for a few years until they throw in the towel. If you’re all headed to the same destination, why not ride first class on the TGV instead of the creaking, jerking stopping service? Justin Trudeau’s vapid modishness was perfectly distilled by his campaign catchphrase of four years ago: “Because it’s 2015.” But that beats waiting till 2025 to say “Because it’s 2015”.

While we’re on the subject of the northern Tories: Because the late unlamented Andrew Scheer finessed his views on same-sex nuptials as lethargically as did Barack Obama, he was flayed by the Canadian media as some fire-and-brimstone social conservative of televangical inflexibility. I wish. As I wrote the other day, he’s as unmoored from principle as Boris Johnson, but without the countervailing strengths of being able to stick it to the other guy and to pass himself off as a human being. He was particularly contemptible in the hours before my appearance at the House of Commons Justice Committee, as I may discuss in detail one of these days. Yet the never-learn Conservatives are minded to replace an entirely hollow man with someone just like him, only more so.

It is surely telling that the only issues on which the right has made any progress at all in moving the ball in its direction — Brexit in the UK; illegal immigration and a belated honesty about the rise of China in the US — had to be injected into public discourse by two outsiders, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. And indeed in the teeth of opposition by the establishment’s catch-up conservatives.

Catch-up conservatism gives the game away: The right has lost the knack of persuasion, and increasingly doesn’t even bother to try.

Repost – Induced aversion to a particular Christmas song

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Media, Personal — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Earlier this year, I had occasion to run a Google search for “Mr Gameway’s Ark” (it’s still almost unknown: the Googles, they do nothing). However, I did find a very early post on the old site that I thought deserved to be pulled out of the dusty archives, because it explains why — to this day — I can barely stand to listen to “Little Drummer Boy”:

Seasonal Melodies

James Lileks has a concern about Christmas music:

This isn’t to say all the classics are great, no matter who sings them. I can do without “The Little Drummer Boy,” for example.

It’s the “Bolero” of Christmas songs. It just goes on, and on, and on. Bara-pa-pa-pum, already. Plus, I understand it’s a sweet little story — all the kid had was a drum to play for the newborn infant — but for anyone who remembers what it was like when they had a baby, some kid showing up unannounced to stand around and beat on the skins would not exactly complete your mood. Happily, the song has not spawned a sequel like “The Somewhat Larger Cymbal Adolescent.”

This reminds me about my aversion to this particular song. It was so bad that I could not hear even three notes before starting to wince and/or growl.

Back in the early 1980’s, I was working in Toronto’s largest toy and game store, Mr Gameway’s Ark. It was a very odd store, and the owners were (to be polite) highly idiosyncratic types. They had a razor-thin profit margin, so any expenses that could be avoided, reduced, or eliminated were so treated. One thing that they didn’t want to pay for was Muzak (or the local equivalent), so one of the owners brought in his home stereo and another one put together a tape of Christmas music.

Note that singular. “Tape”.

Christmas season started somewhat later in those distant days, so that it was really only in December that we had to decorate the store and cope with the sudden influx of Christmas merchandise. Well, also, they couldn’t pay for the Christmas merchandise until sales started to pick up, so that kinda accounted for the delay in stocking-up the shelves as well …

So, Christmas season was officially open, and we decorated the store with the left-over krep from the owners’ various homes. It was, at best, kinda sad. But — we had Christmas music! And the tape was pretty eclectic: some typical 50’s stuff (White Christmas and the like), some medieval stuff, some Victorian stuff and that damned Drummer Boy song.

We were working ten- to twelve-hour shifts over the holidays (extra staff? you want Extra Staff, Mr. Cratchitt???), and the music played on. And on. And freaking on. Eternally. There was no way to escape it.

To top it all off, we were the exclusive distributor for a brand new game that suddenly was in high demand: Trivial Pursuit. We could not even get the truck unloaded safely without a cordon of employees to keep the random passers-by from snatching boxes of the damned game. When we tried to unpack the boxes on the sales floor, we had customers snatching them out of our hands and running (running!) to the cashier. Stress? It was like combat, except we couldn’t shoot back at the buggers.

Oh, and those were also the days that Ontario had a Sunday closing law, so we were violating all sorts of labour laws on top of the Sunday closing laws, so the Police were regular visitors. Given that some of our staff spent their spare time hiding from the Police, it just added immeasurably to the tension levels on the shop floor.

And all of this to the background soundtrack of Christmas music. One tape of Christmas music. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

It’s been over 20 years 30 years now, and I still feel the hackles rise on the back of my neck with this song … but I’m over the worst of it now: I can actually listen to it without feeling that all-consuming desire to rip out the sound system and dance on the speakers. After two three decades.

December 14, 2019

Huot Automatic Rifle: The Ross Goes Full Auto

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Dec 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

During World War One, Joseph Alphonse Huot, a Canadian machinist and blacksmith living in Quebec, designed a conversion of the Ross MkIII rifle to become an automatic rifle. The Ross was the standard issue Canadian rifle at the beginning of the war, and Huot wanted to find a way to economically provide Canadian forces with an automatic weapon. His conversion functioned by mounting a gas piston onto the side of the Ross barrel, adding a large action cover and 25-round drum magazine, and a Lewis-style cooling shroud over the barrel.

In initial testing with the Canadian army, the Huot performed well. It was seriously considered for adoption, but had to undergo British testing and approval before that could happen. In British testing (by now near the end of the war), it was found to run well enough and have some positive attributes, but not sufficient to justify replacement of the Lewis Gun. It was rejected, and the Canadian Corps finished the war with the Lewis instead. Huot had spent several years privately developing the weapon and two more working on salary for the Canadian military, and had gone into considerable personal debt for the project. He had secured a deal to receive royalties on production, but that of course came to naught when the design was rejected. Ultimately, he was compensated $25,000 in 1936 (of the $36,000 he claimed to have spent).

Only five of the guns were made in total, with four known to still exist. Two of them are in Ottawa at the Canadian War Museum and one in the Seaforth Highlanders Museum in Vancouver and one in the Army Museum in Halifax.

Thanks to the Canadian War Museum for providing me access to film this Huot for you!

https://www.warmuseum.ca

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704

Who will “Big Dairy” push as the next Conservative leader?

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Canadian supply management system is a classic case of concentrated benefits and diffused costs … all Canadians pay more for milk, cheese, and other dairy products, but the extra profits go to those who hold the quota allotment for production. During the last federal Conservative leadership race, the “temporary conservatives” were enough to push the Milk Dud over the top to defeat Maxime Bernier — because Bernier was outspoken in his opposition to the whole supply management cartel and threatened those guaranteed profits for the insiders. The Milk Dud has announced he’s stepping down, so who will Big Dairy choose to replace him?

Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.

To my mind the defining image of Andrew Scheer’s efforts to become prime minister of Canada, which officially came to an end Thursday, comes from the 2017 Press Gallery Dinner in Ottawa. “There’s some suggestion out there that I’m beholden to a certain group within the Conservative family,” he told the crowd, grinning. And then, dimples at maximum, he took a swig from a one-litre carton of Neilson two-per-cent milk.

It’s nice when politicians can poke fun at themselves. Most are really bad at it, betraying only their own ego. Scheer’s routine, by contrast, reportedly brought the house down. The problem is that, by all the evidence, Scheer was utterly beholden to the dairy industry. And absent the effects of alcohol, that’s not really very funny.

We knew at the time that, days before, Scheer had barely beaten Maxime Bernier in the party leadership contest with help from a few thousand votes from people whom Bernier not unreasonably called “fake Conservatives” — i.e., people who had purchased memberships for the sole purpose of voting for Scheer, for the sole purpose of maintaining supply management in the dairy industry (which Bernier opposes) intact.

We came to know later, thanks to a Dairy Farmers of Canada briefing book discovered by an aggrieved delegate to the 2018 party convention in Halifax, that the dairy lobby considered Scheer a “safety net.” Regardless of any vote by the party membership that might recommend freer markets in dairy, the book alleged, the farmers had Scheer’s commitment never to undermine supply management in an election platform.

Scheer denied any such deal existed, of course. But it seemed doubtful the dairy industry’s notoriously fearsome, professional and effective lobbyists could have been so misinformed.

It ought to have been a liability from the start: Here was the self-styled middle-class alternative to Justin Trudeau, the man who knows what it’s like to plan a family budget around the breakfast table, to scrimp and save, whose parents didn’t own a car, declaring his fealty to a cartel dedicated to inflating milk prices for the benefit of wealthy businesses. Har, har, har.

December 13, 2019

We won’t have the Milk Dud to kick around any more … eventually

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

News of the moment in Canada is the sudden resignation of “Conservative” party leader Andrew “The Milk Dud” Scheer:

Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.

Andrew Scheer used money from the Conservative Party to pay costs of private schooling for his children, according to sources in contact with Global News. Some are suggesting this story might have ultimately let to Scheer’s resignation.

Scheer has since stepped down as leader of the Conservative Party, but he will not fully resign until the party has a replacement to fill the position.

According to some senior Conservative members, Scheer’s use of the Conservative Party of Canada funds was improper.

While in the House of Commons, Scheer said, “I just informed my colleagues in the Conservative caucus that I will be resigning as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and I will be asking the Conservative Party national council to immediately begin the process of organizing a leadership contest.”

“In order to chart the course ahead in the direction this party is heading, the party needs someone who can give 100 percent.”

Dustin van Vugt, the Executive Director of the Conservative Party of Canada wrote a statement saying, “All proper procedures were followed and signed off on by the appropriate people.”

Van Vugt talked about the party covering some of Scheer’s costs in the statement saying, “As is the normal practice for political parties, the Party offered to reimburse some of the costs associated with being a national leader and re-locating the family to Ottawa.”

Where, oh where will the “Conservatives” find a leader of Scheer’s “stature” to fill his dainty little shoes? Maybe Justin can spare one of his cast-offs…

December 10, 2019

Warren Kinsella, the PPC, and “Operation Cactus”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Kate at SDA linked to this interesting article by James Di Fiore on the Conservative Party’s contract with Warren Kinsella to smear Maxime Bernier and the PPC in the run-up to the Fall election:

If you were new to this country, or part of our sect of apathetic voters, there was a good chance you walked away from the election believing Bernier and his party were nothing but a bunch of racists who thought they finally found a home. From there, being branded the racist party in Canada, all the media had to do was either ignore the PPC, or only run negative stories, not wanting to be seen as an outlet giving positive coverage to what was deemed as obvious bigotry.

Enter Warren Kinsella.

I sometimes wonder how well-known Kinsella really is. Everyone in the Ottawa and Toronto bubble knows him. The media and party members know him. But he’s not exactly a household name, until now maybe. Kinsella, a throwback operative going back to the Chretien years, still manages to convince people to hire him, despite having a reputation of being hopelessly unsavoury, where the ends always justifies the means as long as you remind everyone along the way how great of a person you are.

Kinsella was hired by the Conservative Party of Canada to execute a campaign painting The People’s Party of Canada as a haven for bigotry and white nationalism. Secretly recorded by an employee, Kinsella was heard giving his team a pep talk on how to effectively destroy Bernier. He even tried to reinforce his motivational speech by bragging about falsely smearing three prominent politicians as racists when he knew they were not. He tries to catch himself by saying how easy it is to smear Bernier as a racist because, as Kinsella put it, “this guy actually is a racist.”

When a strong federal party hires a notoriously unethical operative to smear a new party as a gang of racists and bigots, it can be difficult to define your own brand. I asked Bernier if he thought there was a reason some racists did seem drawn to his party’s platform.

“It happened when Preston Manning started the Reform Party more than 25 years ago. People were saying that party was a racist party. The Conservative Party and Kinsella tried to do the same thing with us. That’s why I am looking at all my options to look at the legal procedures that we can do.”

Bernier might have a very strong case, especially now that Kinsella’s mask has been taken off by his own hand.

“The Conservative Party of Canada is morally and intellectually corrupt, and they proved that with their contract with Kinsella.”

It is still unknown how much the CPC and Kinsella impacted Bernier’s party, but it is reasonable to believe Kinsella was ultimately successful. On September 29th, at an event in Hamilton, several protestors accosted event attendees as they tried to get into the building at Mohawk College. The aggressiveness of the demonstrators was palpable as they screamed at seniors, calling them Nazis and preventing them from entering the building. Instances like this make Kinsella’s contract all the more mysterious. After all, his job, according to his own admission, was to activate Canadians against Bernier by stoking the flames of racial intolerance.

There are questions as to whether Kinsella’s fingerprints are on several other party missteps and controversies, including a rash of resignations earlier this year when former loyalists mysteriously began trashing the party publicly.

Operatives normally do not get caught bragging about having a track history of how their lies about other people’s bigotry have been successfully used to disrupt campaigns. In Bernier’s case, Kinsella, a self-proclaimed, lifelong fighter for racial justice, actually spent a career monetizing racial divisions he helped to stoke. When his shtick was exposed through his own accidental confessions, the hindsight view of Maxime Bernier became less blurry.

December 9, 2019

Nikki Haley, 2024?

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell looks at the US political scene and wonders if Nikki Haley will be the President after the 2024 federal election:

President Donald Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, 24 September, 2018.
Official White House photograph by Shealah Craighead via Wikimedia Commons.

Following on from my previous post, I suspect that former Governor (South Carolina) and US Ambassador (to the United Nations) Nikki Haley might be President-elect of the United States five years from now. She is, right now, I think, the wholly unofficial but very clear voice of the post-Trump Republicans. She shares many of the Trumpian aims but she will campaign with a much different mixture of grit and grace, as the title of her recent book (campaign manifesto?) suggests.

It also seems pretty obvious to me, and to some other observers, that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have decided that they can win a majority in (probably) 2021 by appealing even more strongly to the Laurentian Elites and thereby securing a half dozen more seats in each of Greater Vancouver and in urban Quebec and another dozen in (mainly) South-Western Ontario.

[…]

I think that Ambassador Haley’s comments are a shot across Canada’s bows made on behalf of the American establishment, not just Donald Trump. I suspect her remarks were very carefully crafted and even blessed by influential leaders in government, academe and in the huge array of think tanks in which America’s “government in waiting” resides. She is not speaking for Donald Trump; he can (likely will) speak for himself in his own, inimitable, bullying style. She is speaking for a larger, more permanent establishment, the “deep” administrative state that guards America’s permanent, vital interests.

Canadians need to pay attention. Nikki Haley matters; she (or someone very like her) is the future and she (or that similar someone) is the future to which we must accommodate ourselves for the 2020s and into the 2030s. We must remain a steadfast, trusted member of the US-led West. We, under Mackenzie-King and Louis St Laurent and John Diefenbaker, helped to build the US-led West, we even helped to lead it. Pierre Trudeau wanted to change Canada; he did, but not as much as he wished. His own Liberal ministers would not follow him all the way. Justin Trudeau is following in his father’s deeply flawed strategic footsteps which aim to make Canada irrelevant. He has a much tamer (weaker) cabinet allowing him and Chrystia Freeland to push Canada towards a strategic place where our country will be politically isolated, largely friendless and poor.

Liberals, by which, in the 2020s, I mean Conservatives, must speak out and offer Canadians a better, principled strategic vision which aims to secure our sovereignty, our prosperity and a respectable, responsible, leadership role ~ what Paul Martin called a role of pride and influence ~ in the world. Otherwise, Canada’s very sovereignty is in peril. If, as I expect, Donald Trump is re-elected next year and is then followed in 2024 by another, albeit “kinder, gentler” Trumpian, (which I believe is very likely because I think the Democratic Party in the USA will shatter after the 2020 election and will not be a real force again for a decade or more) then Canada must adapt. The importance of our bilateral relationship with America is to all other things as ten is to one.

December 8, 2019

The “Church of Atheism” doesn’t get charitable status … this time

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh on the recent court decision on the Church of Atheism’s attempt to qualify as a church — and receive the tax benefits — under Revenue Canada’s rules:

“The Descent of the Modernists”, by E.J. Pace, first appearing in his book Christian Cartoons, published in 1922.
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Last week the Federal Court of Appeal upheld Revenue Canada’s rejection of an application for charitable status made by a “Church of Atheism” tucked away in Ontario’s Lanark Highlands. The idea of making a gesture like this has probably occurred to every atheist who looks around at a world of tax-exempt churches and wonders why his kind is excluded from the gravy train. (Clergymen pay tax on their income, but they have access to a generous residential deduction, and any professional expenses covered by the church go untaxed.)

The fact is that the “Church’s” efforts were a bit amateurish and confused. But they may, like a doomed military reconnaissance, have revealed weaknesses in the anomalous exclusion of atheists from religious tax exemptions.

These weaknesses cannot be any big secret. You probably remember the Supreme Court’s Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay decision of 2015 — that’s the case in which the Quebec Court of Appeal had ruled that a statue of Christ with an electrically illuminated Sacred Heart was “devoid of religious connotation.” The Supreme Court, perhaps suppressing a chuckle or two, proceeded to unanimously overturn the Quebec ruling and expound the concept that the Canadian state has a Charter-based “duty of religious neutrality” (except, of course, where the constitution explicitly specifies otherwise, as with Catholic schools). Government, the SCC insisted, “must neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non-belief.”

Given that this is our law, what can be the problem with a “Church of Atheism”? Good question! Justice Marianne Rivoalen, writing on behalf of a three-judge Federal Court panel, confirmed the general point that there is a state duty of religious neutrality; in fact, even Revenue Canada, acting as the respondent, conceded this.

But the court simply ruled, without any logical elucidation, that “the Minister (of Revenue)’s refusal to register the appellant as a charitable organization does not interfere in a manner that is more than trivial or insubstantial with the appellant’s members’ ability to practise their atheistic beliefs. The appellant can continue to carry out its purpose and its activities without charitable registration.”

December 6, 2019

“‘The world needs more Canada’, some of us love to boast. Just not if it costs money”

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In hindsight, President Trump let Justin Trudeau off rather lightly for his blatant disrespect on the world stage. Trump has all the cards in our bilateral trade relationship, and the Canadian economy isn’t in a healthy state at the moment. It’s not a risk any Canadian PM should be running when we are so “delinquent” on our NATO commitments, as Chris Selley points out:

Canadian soldiers set a perimeter position after disembarking a U.S. Navy landing craft during a simulated amphibious landing, 24 April 2009. The training exercise was part of the 50th iteration of UNITAS, a multi-national exercise intended to increase interoperability among participating navies. Other participating nations include Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Germany, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile.
U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Seth Johnson via Wikimedia Commons.

The unfortunate thing is that the precipitating event for this little spat could have been useful: An American president publicly calling out Canada, in effect, as a deadbeat brother. At their media availability-cum-fireside chat, Trump accused Canada — again in remarkably diplomatic language, by his standards — of being “slightly delinquent” when it comes to military spending, particularly as it relates to our NATO obligations. The unofficial target for NATO countries is two per cent of GDP. In 2018, the World Bank pegged Canada at 1.25.

This is far from a unique state of affairs. “The world needs more Canada,” some of us love to boast. Just not if it costs money. As a percentage of gross national income, Canada’s foreign aid spending is 0.26 per cent — below the OECD average of 0.31 and a pale shadow of countries like Sweden and Norway, which spend quadruple that. During the last election campaign, no doubt having extensively focus grouped the idea, the Conservatives promised to cut aid spending by 25 per cent.

Canada routinely lobbies for a seat on the UN Security Council for reasons no one can quite articulate — I suspect because it’s a relatively inexpensive thing that we can then boast about. Trudeau’s Liberals orated furiously about Canada’s alleged peacekeeping imperative during the 2015 election, dithered for an eon about how to fulfil it, sent 200 soldiers and eight helicopters to Mali for a year, and then brought them home. Peace kept! Conservatives spent the previous decade talking up Canada’s hard-power credentials even as military spending fell, as a percentage of GDP, for five out of the nine years Stephen Harper was prime minister.

No Canadian government of any stripe can procure a new fighter jet, icebreaker or frigate to save its life — because at the end of the day, we can’t use them to save our lives. If things really go pear-shaped we’re basically begging at Uncle Sam’s feet anyway, so military procurement has become about buying votes and very little else. Military spending has risen under Trudeau’s Liberals, but it’s still less than the 2009 high point under Harper — 1.4 per cent of GDP, in 2009. It was above two per cent as recently as 1987.

Justin Trudeau meets with President Donald Trump at the White House, 13 February, 2017.
Photo from the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

December 3, 2019

Canada and China

Filed under: Cancon, China, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Campbell discusses Canadian foreign policies — or perhaps more accurately Canada’s lack of policies — on China:

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is the great school of Mao Zedong Thought”, 1969.
A poster from the Cultural Revolution, featuring an image of Chairman Mao, published by the government of the People’s Republic of China.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

There were many things that history might find regrettable about the Mulroney years but I doubt that it will fault him for having a principled and coherent foreign policy.

That all changed with Jean Chrétien, who was almost a neo-mercantilist, and for whom principle could never stand in the way of profit.

In the modern (Chrétien-Martin-Harper-Trudeau) era, Conservatives have been, broadly, anti-China, sometimes for reasons that are less than coherent or principled, and Liberals have been too prepared to “go along to get along” with China. This is because both parties reflect the incoherent views of the whole country. But political leaders shouldn’t (mustn’t) just reflect the views of their voters ~ that sort of populism is nonsensical ~ they must, as Edmund Burke said, bring his or her “unbiased opinion … mature judgment … [and] … enlightened conscience” to bear on each issue. But I’m afraid that too many (most?) modern Canadian political tacticians hold all those things in scant regard.

In the 2020s Canadians must listen to a few clear voices who will tell them that China is a competitor in many “markets” including in the marketplace of ideas, ideals, institutions and values. The current Chinese leadership is overtly hostile to Weterm liberal-democratic values and is not unwilling to punish any country with which it disagrees. It is protectionist, relatively rich and growing in military, political and economic power, but, still, somewhat cautious, and Xi Jinping’s China seems to be able to separate its own short-term political interests from its firm, long term, strategic goals. China, as Kevin Rudd reminded us just a few days ago “is contemptuous of weakness and prevarication,” which explains why it is so obviously contemptuous of Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government.

It is a fact that the Sino-Canadian relationship is “unbalanced:” China is a great power, Canada is not; China is an autocracy, Canada is a democracy; and so on but, as Kevin Rudd said (link just above) “China too has net strengths and weaknesses of which … [our] … strategists should be aware in framing our own strategy … [and we] … should be equally aware of our own strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities.” Canadian strategists need to educate Canadians about China so that a solid, informed majority will want a coherent and principled policy ~ one that puts our national vital interests first […]

Our policy towards China needs to be just one part of a coherent, principled foreign policy which Canadians understand and, broadly, support, and that, in turn, needs to be part of a Canadian grand strategy that aims to secure a place, as Paul Martin suggested, “of pride and influence in the world” ~ that, of course, was a place we enjoyed under St Laurent, Diefenbaker and Pearson, all of whom were acutely aware of the many and varied (and very divergent) views about Canada in the world that existed then and persist today in Canada’s many and varied communities.

December 2, 2019

Andrew Scheer’s Daisy connection

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Jay Currie on the lingering stench of the spoiled Milk Dud’s campaign:

Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.

The sheer lack of ethics and paranoia hiring the Jackal demonstrates pretty much proves that Scheer is not fit to lead the CPC or to be Prime Minister. A fact which is dawning on the CPC itself as it struggles to figure out what to do with their present leader. Before Kinsellagate it was possible to say that Scheer was a decent, if uninspiring, leader. Now? It is indecent to hire a political mobster to beat up your opponents. Which leaves Scheer as merely uninspiring. I would be astonished if he survives a leadership review.

The revelation of Kinsella’s filth may sink Scheer but it burnishes Bernier’s reputation. Virtually all the accusations of “racism” levelled against the PPC and Max personally either were manufactured by Kinsella or occurred in a climate of hate created by the Jackal. I have never seen a credible accusation and now we have a pretty good idea why.

The PPC, even with Kinsella’s disinformation campaign, secured over 300,000 votes from a standing start a year before the election. If the CPC tears itself apart with a red/blue fight, a lot of thoughtful, conservative, people will give the PPC a second look. Conservative MPs looking for an alternative to the nastiness and vindictiveness of the Scheer people might well be tempted to join the PPC. Max had a lot of caucus support for his CPC leadership run. He was careful not to unfairly attack conservative positions, rather, during the campaign, he attacked CPC positions which were, in fact, Liberal-lite positions.

Political pundits, as they do after every election in which the Conservatives fail to win government, solemnly inform us that it was because the Conservatives failed to move towards the middle. The fact that only 30-35% of Canadians are even a bit right-leaning is trotted out to show how impossible it is for the Conservatives to win government unless they move left. I think this analysis is entirely incorrect. A solid, right of center party which had libertarian social views would hold that 30-35%. From there it is simply a matter of finding 3-5% in carefully targetted ridings. To do that a party would have to come up with policies which, while conservative, do not alienate middle-class voters, immigrant communities and women.

I don’t think there is a chance the CPC will manage that simply because they are too tied to establishment politics in Canada. Yeah multi-culti, boo climate change only echos the Liberal Party’s bland formula for success.

November 28, 2019

“The chickens are coming home to roost … but they are, actually, Pierre Trudeau’s chickens”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell looks at Justin Trudeau’s plight — needing to focus on policies that will increase his party’s chances of winning more seats in Quebec — with increasing demands from south of the border to get the Canadian commitment to higher military spending moved from “aspirational goal” to actual policy:

Justin Trudeau meets with President Donald Trump at the White House, 13 February, 2017.
Photo from the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

Many in the media are saying, and I agree, that Justin Trudeau’s agenda for the next couple of years is about 99.9% domestic and focused, mainly, gaining seats in on Québec and holding on, at least, in Atlantic Canada and in urban and suburban Ontario and British Columbia. The overarching aim ~ the ONLY aim ~ of this government is to be re-elected with a majority.

As I mentioned a week or so ago, Donald J Trump is about to rain all over Justin Trudeau’s parade.

As Murray Brewster reports, for CBC News,

    The Liberal government is facing renewed political pressure from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to increase defence spending to meet the benchmark established by NATO [… and …] Robert O’Brien, the new U.S. national security adviser, said it is an “urgent priority” to get allies across the board to set aside military budgets that are equal to two per cent of the individual country’s gross domestic product [… while …] Speaking with journalists at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday, O’Brien rattled off a list of the world’s flashpoints, including Iran and Venezuela, as well as traditional adversaries such as Russia and China [… saying …] “There are very serious threats to our freedom and our security [… and adding that …] Canada made a pledge at [the 2014 NATO Summit in] Wales to spend two per cent. We expect our friends and our colleagues to live up to their commitments, and Canada is an honourable country; it’s a great country.”

Note the choice of words by Mr O’Brien, who is “a lawyer and former U.S. State Department hostage negotiator.” He doesn’t say that President Trump and the USA “asks” Canada to keep its word (although the Harper government said that spending 2% of GDP on defence was an “aspirational goal,” rather than a firm commitment) nor did he say something like “the US hopes Canada will change its ways and spend more on defence.” He said that Donald Trump’s America “expects” Canada to live up to its “pledge.” As I mentioned before, when President Trump negotiates with friends and allies he usually has both fists in the air and his knuckles are often reinforced with unfair trade tariffs and the like. Right now he is, for example, asking Japan and South Korea to pay much, much more to support American forces in their countries because, in his mind, he (America) is providing a “service” which is all for the Asians and is not, in any way, in America’s self-interest and, therefore, he wants to be reimbursed. It’s a very Trumpian notion. I am sure he sees NATO and NORAD in very much the same light.

[…]

The issue that worries some analysts is that while Canada is, in the final analysis, protected by the US because it is in America’s best interests to protect us, NATO provides a useful counter-balance and, in effect, helps us to at least pretend to be a little less than just another American colony. And that, having the status of being little better than a US colony, is what Pierre Trudeau willed upon Canada in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he wanted to leave NATO, entirely and saddled Canada with his, juvenile, nonsensical, neo-isolationist “Foreign Policy For Canadians” white paper in 1970. Although Brian Mulroney wanted Canada to be independent – think standing up to President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher on South Africa – and Stephen Harper did, too, the cumulative impact of Trudeau-Chrétien-Trudeau for 30 of the last 50 years has been too much to change. When our political leaders don’t care about Canada being a leader amongst the nations and don’t, in fact, even care about Canada being a truly sovereign state then we will sink, inevitably, into the status of an American colony.

November 26, 2019

The Avro Arrow

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 25 Nov 2019

In the 1950s, Canada had one of the world’s most advanced aerospace industries. But the cancellation of the Avro CF-105 “Arrow” changed everything. The History Guy remembers the Avro Arrow and forgotten aviation history. It deserves to be remembered.
(more…)

November 23, 2019

What? No minister for socks? How will Justin decide what to wear?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the quirky decision to appoint a “Minister of Middle Class Prosperity” to Justin Trudeau’s new cabinet:

Typical image search results for “Justin Trudeau socks”

Wednesday’s Cabinet shuffle featured the usual head-scratching reorganization of portfolios and outright invention of others, “bigger” being for some reason a stated goal. Joyce Murray, for example, becomes Minister of Digital Government. It has a very pre-Y2K ring to it, but then again the government in question accepts payment for access-to-information requests by cheque, and sometimes fulfills them (if at all) via CD-ROM, and it can’t manage a simple payroll system. So maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have someone on that job specifically.

Then there’s Ottawa-Vanier MP Mona Fortier’s new job. I literally assumed people were joking about the Liberals’ obsessive branding, but it’s true: No word of a lie, she is an Associate Minister of Finance and, specifically, the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity.

Should a government need a minister whose job is to ensure Canadians are prospering? One might reasonably hope that’s the goal of pretty much any minister when she rolls out of bed in the morning. But they sure don’t always act that way, so maybe a Minister for Making People Richer isn’t such a bad thing.

But the “middle class” flourish is so ridiculously on-brand that it turns the very idea into a joke. Recalling Trudeau’s 2015 catchphrase, many wags asked: “Shouldn’t it be the Minister of the Middle Class and Those Working Hard to Join It?” And they have a point. After four years in government, the Liberals have a good story to tell on social mobility: Poverty rates are at an all-time low. And yet they remain officially obsessed with a middle class that was never as imperilled as they claimed.

November 20, 2019

Activist court watch – Federal Court of Canada judge creates new website blocking rules

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist on the precedent-setting decision from the Federal Court of Canada:

A Federal Court of Canada judge issued a major website blocking decision late Friday, granting a request from Bell, Rogers, and Groupe TVA to block access to a series of GoldTV streaming websites. The order covers most of the Canada’s large ISPs: Bell, Eastlink, Cogeco, Distributel, Fido, Rogers, Sasktel, TekSavvy, Telus, and Videotron. The case is an important one, representing the first extensive website blocking order in Canada. It is also deeply flawed from both a policy and legal perspective, substituting the views of one judge over Parliament’s judgment and relying on a foreign copyright case that was rendered under markedly different legal rules than those found in Canada.

Perhaps most troubling is that the judge has created a substantive new policy framework for site blocking, an issue that given the many complex policy issues (including copyright enforcement, freedom of expression, net neutrality, and telecom competition) is best left to Parliament. Indeed, the activist judicial approach explicitly engages in an analysis that considers many of the policy issues but arrives at its own conclusion about how best to balance competing interests. These are issues that are best left to elected officials. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Economic Development, which completed the comprehensive copyright review earlier this year, heard extensive submissions from groups calling for reforms to the law to include site blocking. It instead recommended:

    Following the review of the Telecommunications Act, that the Government of Canada consider evaluating tools to provide injunctive relief in a court of law for deliberate online copyright infringement and that paramount importance be given to net neutrality in dealing with impacts on the form and function of Internet in the application of copyright law.

In other words, the committee recommended holding off on a site blocking rule until further study is conducted. Moreover, it concluded that “paramount importance be given to net neutrality.” The judge in GoldTV acknowledged that there were net neutrality concerns (rejecting claims that “net neutrality is of no application where a site blocking order is sought.”), but concluded that the net neutrality issues did not tip the balance against granting the injunction. Not only is that inconsistent with the copyright review emphasis of paramountcy for net neutrality, but it represents the judge making a policy choice best left to elected officials.

The CRTC, which rejected a proposal for an administrative site blocking system in the FairPlay case, also thought the issue was best left to the government. Its ruling specifically cited the copyright review and the review of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Act as avenues to address the issue. In other words, the appropriate venue to consider site blocking was government, not an administrative agency.

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