Quotulatiousness

January 26, 2020

Trudeau’s illogical gun ban will do nothing to reduce violent crime

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It will, on the other hand, infringe the rights of law-abiding Canadians and encourage otherwise law-abiding people to disobey the law. It won’t take a single lethal weapon out of the hands of criminals — because they’re already violating the laws that are in force today and won’t be deterred by yet another token rule they won’t obey. At the Post Millennial, D.J. Sumanik explains why the proposed ban is wrong:

Restricted and prohibited weapons seized by Toronto police in a 2012 operation. None of the people from whom these weapons were taken was legally allowed to possess them.
Screen capture from a CTV News report.

I chose the AR-15 for that video because it is the singular most demonized firearm on the planet. The rifle is used to scare uninformed citizens daily. Yet the same rifle has never been used for murder by a legal gun owner in Canada.

In fact, it’s only been used for murder one time in our country over the last 50 years by a gang. A far cry from the narrative that “assault weapons” are lurking in every corner of Canadian society waiting to murder our children.

Justin Trudeau is claiming this firearm and others like it are so deadly, so dangerous, and so extreme that they must be confiscated from every licensed Canadian gun owner across the country. But with only one murder in 50 years, and the gun almost certainly still being the murderer’s hand regardless if there was a ban, the numbers simply don’t add up. In fact they barely register. Semi-auto rifles are extremely rare for use in Canadian gun homicide […] handguns are the firearm of choice for most shootings. Semi-autos only make up a small percentage of rifles and shotguns in our country. So how does this add up to a federal ban costing $600 million in taxpayer money?

Short answer: It doesn’t.

Canada has roughly 2.2 million licensed gun owners who are monitored DAILY by RCMP for red flags. Most people don’t know that. It’s called continuous eligibility screening. If you step out of the line with the law, the cops show up and take your guns.

Some further thoughts.

If only 5 percent of Canadian gun owners were out there shooting up the streets, we’d have 110,000 deaths on our hands annually. According to StatsCan, 2018 left Canada with 249 tragic gun murders. The vast majority were by gangs fighting over drugs in urban centers. Even if you were to incorrectly assume every one of those shootings was a legal gun owner and not a gang member (yeah right) it means 99.9998868% of us pose no threat to society. Can you think of another demographic with that kind of track record? I certainly can’t.

Now, the lives lost in those incidents are valuable. 249 Canadian families are feeling daily pain. Something needs to change. Gang warfare can’t go unchecked. But to punish millions of innocent Canadians who hold such an excellent track record will not help. There’s a very simple truth in all of this: Taking my firearms away in the Yukon will not prevent gang homicide in Toronto.

Furthermore, we as Canadians don’t discriminate against entire groups of people based on the actions of a few bad eggs. For instance, we don’t blame all Muslims in Canada for the actions of 9/11. How is it acceptable for Justin Trudeau to punish gun owners across Canada for gang violence?

January 25, 2020

Petition against the Trudeau government’s proposed “military-style assault rifle” ban goes over 100,000 signatures

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

There may be little point in protesting, as the Trudeau government has a track record of ignoring what Canadians want to do what it intends regardless, but you can still sign the petition here (if you do sign, remember to click the confirmation link in the email you’ll receive after signing the petition). In the Post Millennial, Sam McGriskin reports that the petition has enough confirmed signatures to be the second-largest in Canadian history:

E-petitions can be open for 30, 60, 90 or 120 days for signature based on what the petitioner prefers. The petitions get a government response within 45 days of their opening. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair is overseeing the “buyback program” which Blair estimates could cost anywhere from $400 to $600 million.

Blair’s office did not respond to request for comment from The Post Millennial. His office was asked what the minister’s response is to over 100,000 Canadians calling on the government to drop what many experts see as a completely ineffectual action to curb gun violence. Blair was also asked about fellow Liberal MP Marcus Powlowsk’s letter addressed to him that opposed the gun ban (Powlowsk has since retracted the letter) and Winnipeg Police constable calling the ban “nonsense”.

“When we seize handguns, the handguns are always almost 100% in the possession of people who have no legal right to possess them. They’re almost always stolen or illegally obtained,” said Const. Rob Carver. “I simply don’t see how as a 27-year-old veteran, how adding another layer of law will make any difference, anywhere in this country.”

In Powlowski’s letter to Blair he wrote, “Over the course of the past three months, I have heard a wide variety of views on this proposed ban. I believe it is my role to ensure that these views are brought to your attention for consideration.”

“Given that there is currently no legal definition for a ‘military-style assault rifle’ in Canada, some community members I have spoken with are skeptical that a ban based on this term would make sense as a coherent firearm policy,” the letter continued.

In a CBC interview in the summer of 2018, Blair said that most of the gun crime is committed by illegal handguns smuggled in from the U.S. and he was skeptical of a gun ban being effective in combating gun crime. His position changed drastically once he was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the public safety minister.

Variants of the AK-47

The Liberal voters in downtown Toronto and other major cities want the government to “do something” about gun crimes, but nothing the government can do is going to make much of a difference for people who are already violating multiple laws, so all they can do is make things worse for those who are already obeying the laws as they stand. In the real world, this makes no sense, but in the fantasy world of electoral politics, the government needs to be seen to be “doing something” … and this, stupid as it may be, counts as “something”.

January 24, 2020

From a Canadian perspective, “NORAD … is more important than NATO”

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, History, Military, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The American government has once again expressed a strong desire to update the 1957 North American Air Defence Commmand arrangement between the US and Canada for defence of the North American continent. It’s a Cold War relic to some (particularly some in the Prime Minister’s Office and cabinet), but it has a very real value to Canada, as Ted Campbell explains:

In 1957 Canada and the USA agreed to create the North American Air Defense Command. It is a “combined” command, American and Canadian people, civilian and military, work together, in combined headquarters, to conduct an active aerospace defence effort over the continent we share. Americans and Canadians work side-by-side managing the airspace, detecting intruders and identifying and intercepting them and so on.

NORAD, I would argue, is more important than NATO.

First, it is about defending our own homeland.

Second, it is about defending the US strategic deterrent, which has, arguably, done more to keep global peace than all the efforts of the United Nations, combined.

NORAD modernization and expansion should be at the top of Canada’s defence policy agenda. Specifically:

  • First, billions of dollars, likely tens of billions of dollars are going to be needed to upgrade the surveillance and warning system. We need new radars, terrestrial and space-based, and upgraded control systems to do the job properly;
  • Second, Canada needs to buy enough (85+ is just the very barest of bare minimums) of the right new fighter jet; and
  • Third, Canada needs to join the American ballistic missile defence system.

I believe that this issue: the shared defence of our, shared, continent and, therefore, the defence of the American heartland and of America’s strategic deterrent is a key, perhaps even the key element in our most important foreign relationship. […] The knowledge that Canada is doing a full and fair share of defending our shared continent, of defending America, is not lost on admirals and generals, diplomats and senior civil servants, representatives and senators in the US Congress, pundits and political leaders in waiting in the think-tanks and senior staff in the White House, even if Donald J Trump is not impressed … IF we are doing a full and fair share.

Right now, we are not.

An orbital analyst tracks the Kosmos 1402 spy satellite in orbit in the Space Defense Operations Computation Center, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) on 18 February, 1983.
NORAD photo by Master Sergeant Hiyashi via Wikimedia Commons.

January 10, 2020

Pierre Poilievre’s bid for federal Conservative leader

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

Chris Selley on the varying reactions to the notion of Pierre Poilievre as Andrew Scheer’s replacement:

Glee is spreading among Liberal partisans at the thought of Pierre Poilievre succeeding Andrew Scheer as Conservative leader. The theory is he is so pugnacious, so obnoxious, so poisonously, sneeringly partisan as to be literally unelectable.

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre at a Manning Centre event, 1 March 2014.
Manning Centre photo via Wikimedia Commons.

It is true that the man longtime Conservative cabinet minister John Baird nicknamed “Skippy,” in tribute to his enthusiastic Question Period performances, does not suffer from an excess of gravitas — though Poilievre’s reported support for his leadership bid from Baird and Jenni Byrne, a former senior adviser to Stephen Harper, lend him some within party ranks. His candidacy hasn’t made any measurable dent thus far in public opinion polls. And the opposition war rooms would certainly have fun unpacking his baggage.

Never mind Poilievre questioning the value-for-money proposition of compensating residential school victims (for which he apologized), or his use of the term “tar baby” in the House of Commons (for which he did not, and nor should he have, because it was a perfectly apt and inoffensive analogy in the context he used it), or the dreaded Green Light from the Campaign Life Coalition. Having been Harper’s parliamentary secretary, Liberals will blame him for every supposed atrocity of the Harper era.

All that said, the notion that people widely viewed as pugnacious, obnoxious and partisan-to-a-fault can’t win in Canadian politics is belied by reality. A quick glance around the federation brings Jason Kenney, Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau immediately to mind.

That’s not to say they won because of those character traits: Kenney’s and Ford’s leadership opponents would likely have fared just as well. Trudeau hoodwinked many with his Sunny Ways fraud, but he might well have won as the classic born-to-rule Liberal he turned out to be. If his government continues venting credibility at the rate it established late in its first mandate, the next Conservative leader could well become prime minister no matter who he is.

After recounting the dismal tale of Sheer’s “leadership”, Selley recounts a favourite story about Boris Johnson which contrasts strongly with the Milk Dud’s occupancy of the job.

Again, that degree of swagger and eloquence is far too much to ask of Canadian politicians. But it shouldn’t be too much to ask a party leader to have enough confidence in his party, his members, his movement and his ideas to arouse him to at least some degree of annoyance when they’re unfairly deprecated. If Conservative members aren’t excited by the prospect of a Poilievre leadership, they shouldn’t be half as mortified as Liberals think they should be.

January 9, 2020

The “Ostrich” school of Canadian foreign policy

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

Ted Campbell on what former Canadian diplomat David Mulroney calls the “Ostrich” school:

John Ibitson, writing in the Globe and Mail, suggests that Justin Trudeau might want to try what former diplomat, national strategic planner in the Privy Council Office, and commentator David Mulroney refers to (on social media) as …

… “the ‘Ostrich’ school of Canadian foreign policy.” It has, he says, two pillars:

    First, “Canada has no interests/allies“; and

    Second, “The best way to deal with bad regimes, bad people is to pretend they’re nice.”

Mr Ibbitson himself says that it may be impossible to work “with European and Asian allies, including Japan, to forge a coherent response that provokes neither the Americans nor the Iranians.”

The situation in the Middle East is, as I have explained several times, hideously complex. President Trump may have made it worse … although it’s hard for me to see how any added complications really matter all that much. The socio-cultural and religious hatreds that bedevil the region are likely beyond making “worse.”

In fact, there may be an argument that a nice, all-out, albeit contained, Middle East war might be useful. Perhaps the Iranians and Saudis and Iraqis and Syrians and Yemenis and so on need to sort one another out in the way that tends to produce lasting results: on a bloody battlefield … it worked for Europe, more than once, in 1648, in 1815 and again in 1945.

John Ibbitson says that “Iran’s rage over the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani risks dragging Canada and the rest of the Western alliance into a new confrontation in the Middle East, courtesy of Donald Trump … [that true, as far as it goes, and he adds] … Most Canadians would want no part of such a conflict, especially since the U.S. President might simply be seeking to distract attention from his impending impeachment trial in the Senate … [and that, the first part about Canadians wanting no part of any conflict, is also true, but President Trump’s motives are irrelvant]. The fact is that he has ignored many Iranian provocations while he attempts, vainly, in my opinion, to disengage America from the wider world. The attack on a US embassy seems to have crossed a “red line.”

[…]

But, John Ibbitson says, “Mr. Trump’s high stakes gamble – that killing one of the most senior figures in the Iranian regime will deter rather than provoke further acts of aggression from Iran – could lead to some kind of asymmetrical war, with the U.S. military attacking Iranian targets, and Iran responding through militias and proxies in Iraq and possibly in North America and Europe … [true enough, and he asks] … What would Mr. Trump expect from Canada in such a conflict?” That’s the key question.

My guesstimate is that President Trump will ask little or nothing, militarily, because his military chiefs of staff will not even have mentioned Canada when they proffer lists of nations that might help or hinder US efforts. Canada is not on any of their lists of countries that matter. Diplomatically, however, I think we do matter to the USA and I would not be surprised if the phone lines have been busy all weekend as US officials tell (rather than ask) Canadian officials to get our government “onside” with the USA. The Americans hold ALL the high cards in the game of power.

I’m sure that Prime Minister Trudeau will follow John Ibbitson’s advice and adopt the “Ostrich” strategy … head buried in the sand, pretending that Canada has neither interests nor allies and pretending that evil people are good.

Perhaps co-incidentally with the “revenge” Iranian missile attacks on Iraqi airbases known to have US troops in the area, a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger jet crashed shortly after take-off from Tehran airport. Officially, the Iranian authorities are saying it was due to catastrophic mechanical breakdown, but they have refused to hand over the aircraft’s “black box” flight recorders for analysis. All of the 176 passengers and crew died in the crash, including 63 Canadians. It has been suggested by many that the timing was not a co-incidence and that the plane was likely hit by an Iranian surface-to-air missile due to the heightened state of tension in Iranian airspace during and after the missile launches against Iraq. Colby Cosh has more:

Some of the wreckage of Ukraine International flight 752 near Tehran, Iran.
Photo from MOJ Newsagency via Wikimedia Commons.

I am writing these words at a strange moment Wednesday morning. The president of the United States has just been on television, reassuring the American public that the crisis inspired by the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani has reached a satisfactory equilibrium. Iran made a demonstrative show of force against U.S. installations in the Middle East that killed nobody. Honour has been satisfied. Relief, among American observers, is general.

Meanwhile, Canada is mourning the deaths of dozens of its citizens in a passenger jet crash on Iranian soil. Perhaps it is a terrible coincidence. Stranger things have happened. But if you are old enough to remember the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988, you are old enough to doubt it.

The Vincennes incident is part of the historical litany that has made news consumers innately distrustful of the first draft of history. The ship was in the Persian Gulf, which at the time was swarming with Iranian gunboats trying to squeeze off the supply of arms to its enemy Iraq. The U.S. Navy had rushed to the area to keep one of the world’s economic arteries open to neutrals. But this had foreseeable consequences — plenty of confusing penny-ante firefights, and some notable accidents, including a puzzling Iraqi attack with air-launched Exocet missiles on an American frigate, USS Stark.

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 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.

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 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 1, 2019

The “Wokescreen” protecting the Prime Racist

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

Justin “Blackface” Trudeau has been completely exonerated for any racist acts he committed, thanks to what Julie Burchill calls “the Wokescreen”:

Justin Trudeau with dark makeup on his face, neck and hands at a 2001 “Arabian Nights”-themed party at the West Point Grey Academy, the private school where he taught.
Photo from the West Point Grey Academy yearbook, via Time

Justin Trudeau seems as compulsively drawn to blacking up as his mother was to hanging around pop groups; after the third example of him doing so was revealed this year, he admitted that he had actually lost count of the number of times he’d done it. Nevertheless, he was defended by minority spokesmen and liberal commentators. This contrasts strikingly with the fate of Atlantic Records UK president Ben Cook, who was forced to resign earlier this month after old photographs of him in blackface emerged. As Cook is responsible for launching the career of Ed Sheeran, some might say he had it coming. But it’s weird how Trudeau, an ostentatiously woke politician, has survived and thrived, while Cook has limped away in disgrace. You’d think the former had betrayed both his beliefs and his followers far more.

[…]

So how come Trudeau got away with it? It’s part of a broader dodge – what the commentator Daniel Norris calls the Wokescreen. From behind this magical canopy, cliques can rob women of their hard-won private spaces (transgender activists) and enjoy the brutish thrill of racism (Corbynite anti-Semites) and because they’ve ticked the box which says Brotherhood Of Man it doesn’t make them bad people! Those people over there are the bad ones – like Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 12-year-old son.

It’s a mystery. But an even bigger one is why blackface is quite rightly unacceptable while drag gets bigger by the day. You’d have to be living in an Amish community not to have heard of RuPaul’s Drag Race, while Channel 5’s Drag Kids follows a process which we squares call “grooming”. Yet no one turns a hair. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if the Black and White Minstrels are insulting and reactionary, why aren’t drag queens? If someone can explain to me why race-based parody is bad and sex-based parody “a bit of fun”, I’d love to know. Woke me up and tell me why!

October 21, 2019

“On Monday Canadians will have a choice between five left-of-centre social-democratic parties”

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

Except for Maxime Bernier’s invisible-to-the-mainstream-media PPC, the other parties contesting today’s election are all remarkably similar except for the colour of their signs and the mediocrity of their leaders:

As Mrs Thatcher used to say, first you win the argument, then you win the vote. So not engaging in any serious argument has certain consequences. John Robson puts it this way:

    As Canada’s worst election ever staggers toward the finish line, a theme has finally emerged. Despite the best efforts of the party leaders to say nothing coherent or true at any point, we know what it’s about. Everyone is running against the Tories. Including the Tories. Makes you wonder what they’re so afraid of.

On Monday Canadians will have a choice between five left-of-centre social-democratic parties: the crony left (Liberals), the hard left (NDP), the eco-left (Greens), the secessionist left (Bloc) and the squish left (Conservatives). The only alternative to the crony-hard-eco-secessionist-squish social-justice statism on offer is a disaffected Tory, Maxime Bernier. John Robson again:

    Bernier may be an imperfect human being and a flawed politician. It happens. But whatever his blemishes, his party exists because the Tories abandoned their beliefs and their base long before 2017 on every important conservative issue from free markets to traditional social values to strong national defence.

A billboard in Toronto, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province – https://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-berniers-legitimate-position-on-immigration-taken-down-by-spineless-billboard-company/wcm/ecab071c-b57d-4d93-b78c-274de524434c

M Bernier would like to rethink immigration policy, but that makes him a racist so he shouldn’t be allowed in the debates because, per John Tory, while he’s free to rent the Scotiabank Arena, public buildings such as the CBC studios have a “higher responsibility”.

It’s a good thing for the other guys that Bernier was snuck in to a couple of debates because otherwise they’d be running against an entirely mythical beast — a red-meat conservative behemoth stomping the land for which there’s less corroborating evidence than of Justin in blackface but which is nevertheless mysteriously threatening to steamroller your social-justice utopia into the asphalt. Ah, if only that were true: I hope voters in the Beauce will return Max, and I hope our small band of readers in Longueuil-Saint Hubert will persuade their neighbours to turn out for our pal Ellen Comeau; but this is not shaping up as a breakthrough night for the People’s Party.

Nevertheless, sans Max, what’s left? Virtue-Dancing With The Stars: Elizabeth May says Trudeau wants to eliminate CO2 completely, but not until 2030! Justin Trudeau says that Scheer didn’t believe in gay marriage before 2005! Jagmeet Singh says that May’s selling out to the billionaires by promising to balance the budget by 2047, whereas he won’t balance the budget ever! Yves-François Blanchet says Singh’s ten-point plan to eliminate bovine flatulence by last Tuesday is too little too late compared to the Bloc’s plan to reduce Canada’s carbon footprint by declaring Quebec independent … oh, wait, sorry, that was almost an intrusion of something real: I meant “by declaring Quebec fully sovereign when it comes to jurisdiction over selecting its own pronouns for the door of the transgender bathroom: je, moi, mon …”

And at that point in the debate Lisa LaFlamme moves on to the next urgent concern of Canadian voters: Are politicians’ aboriginal land acknowledgments too perfunctory? Should they take up more time at the beginning of each debate? Say, the first hour or two?

John Robson argues that all five candidates are running against proposals that no one’s proposing because deep down inside they know that lurking somewhere out there is not a mythical right-wing Bigfoot but mere prosaic Reality, which sooner or later will assert itself. I’m not so sure. I think it’s more an enforcing of the ground rules, a true land acknowledgment that public debate can only take place within the bounds of this ever shriveling bit of barren sod. Those who want to fight on broader turf – such as M Bernier – cannot be permitted to do so.

October 15, 2019

Looking past October 21st

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

Jay Currie has already wasted his vote at the advanced polls (the same way I’m going to waste mine come election day), and now he’s considering what our parliament will look like on October 22nd (here’s a hint … we both know our guy isn’t going to be PM):

On October 22 we’re going to wake up to a politically very different Canada assuming that JT is unable to win a majority. The first thing which will change is Trudeau’s position. He could be Mr. Dressup with a majority but in a minority position – assuming he can form a government at all – his Teflon coating will have worn off. It is just possible that the bought and paid for Canadian media will rouse itself from its slumber and begin to ask slightly harder questions.

The second thing which will change is that third, fourth and even fifth parties will matter. For Trudeau to form a government he will need at least the NDP’s support and, perhaps, the Greens. To get that he is going to have to buy into a lot of nonsense which will be extremely bad for the country. The Liberals have plenty of idiotic policy but they don’t hold a candle to either the NDP or the Greens for economically useless virtue signalling.

Scheer would have an easier time of it in a minority position. His only possible ally would be the Bloc and while the Bloc wants to break up Canada they are financially sound and not nearly as eager as the NDP or the Greens for open borders and looney carbon taxes.

The key thing to remember is that regardless of who forms the government, that government is not going to last very long. In a sense, this election is about the next, more decisive, election. If Trudeau loses as big as he looks to be doing the Liberal Party will be looking for another leader. If Scheer ekes out a workable minority he will be looking to call an early election (in the face of the idiotic Fixed Terms act we have saddled ourselves with) to crush that new leader.

For Singh, especially if he picks up seats as well as popular vote, the election will cement his place as the NDP leader and silence the people who are talking about his unelectability. Lizzie May will be hailed as an emerging force in Canadian politics if she manages to pick up a couple more seats on Vancouver Island and, I suspect, that is exactly what she is going to do. (Old, white, retired, rich people just love a party committed to never changing anything.)

And what about Max? Obviously, he needs to hold his own seat. Which may be tough but I think he will pull through. I very much doubt he will win any other seats for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with Max or his policies. New parties take a while to gain traction. For Max, the biggest issue is how he does in the popular vote. Sitting at 1% is not going to cut it, but pop up over 4% and the table changes. Anything beyond that and Max will be the election night story.

October 11, 2019

A spectre is haunting the Liberal war room: the spectre of Jagmeet Singh

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

In the wake of the English language debate, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is suddenly getting more of the kind of attention I thought he’d get from the media after he became party leader. Back in January, while he was campaigning for a seat in Parliament in a BC byelection, I wrote:

When Jagmeet Singh was elected NDP leader, I really did think he’d be a significant challenge to Justin Trudeau due to the media’s apparent fascination with Singh (a love affair that appeared to be as deep and lasting as that of Justin’s teeny-bopper [media] fan club for their darling), but it faded very quickly indeed. I guess as far as the Canadian media is concerned, there can only be one …

Now it appears that the Liberal Party backroom braintrust has suddenly woken up to the threat that Singh and the NDP are going to retain and even increase their support among left-leaning voters the Liberals had been taking for granted:

An even bigger risk for Trudeau is if lots of so-called low-information voters — who make their decisions late in a campaign — decide to cast a ballot for the charming Singh’s New Democrats.

But the biggest risk of all to the Liberals and Conservatives is if lots and lots of citizens give the finger to both parties and decide to vote NDP or Green to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo.

It looks like a long shot now with the economy humming along and a low unemployment rate.

But the same circumstances existed in B.C. in 2017. And plenty of voters decided that these were the right conditions for bringing the NDP back to power.

Nobody is expecting that Jagmeet Singh will be prime minister after the October 21 election.

But if he captures far more seats than the CBC poll tracker is projecting, it will be because of his genial nature and his ability to speak like a human being.

Surely, the Liberals realize that. The class differences between Trudeau and Singh are profound — and there are far fewer voters in Trudeau’s realm than Singh’s.

October 10, 2019

Justin Trudeau scrambles to escape from the consequences of his mistakes

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

It must be awful to be a Justin Trudeau fan these days, where he seems to spend more time looking awkward as his personal mis-steps keep coming back to haunt him. I’d never vote for the guy — but I wouldn’t vote for his main opponent, the Milk Dud either — but I thought he was a better politician than he’s turning out to be in this election campaign without the dependable strawman of Stephen Harper to struggle against. While I think he’s unfit to be Prime Minister, Barrett Wilson argues he wasn’t even fit to be a teacher:

It should be well established by now that this man is unfit to serve as our Prime Minister.

But if corporate corruption, obstruction of justice, internet censorship, persecution of journalists, buying off the media, and frickin’ blackface weren’t enough to convince you that Trudeau is unfit. Perhaps this latest insanity will.

Trudeau and his campaign team somehow felt it was a good idea for the disgraced Liberal leader to appear on a pre-taped and rehearsed children’s television show today called “New Mom, Who Dis?” The appearance was cringeworthy at best, as host Jesse Cruickshank shamelessly flirted with the PM, but it was also cynical, manipulative, and exploitative, as Trudeau fielded two questions from two young black twin girls.

The first twin asked Trudeau, “Why did you paint your face brown?”

Trudeau answered: “Ooh. Um, it was something I shouldn’t have done because it hurt people. It’s not something that you should do and that is something that I learned. I didn’t know it back then and I know it now, and I’m sorry that I hurt people.”

The second twin followed up: “But did you paint your nose and your hands brown?”

Trudeau: “Mmmhmm. Yeah. And it was the wrong thing to do.”

The clip deserves to be watched more than once just to understand and appreciate how clearly scripted, deeply cynical, and frankly sick, the whole thing is.

Okay. So, this will take a second to unpack. Somehow, Justin Trudeau felt it would be a good idea to use a children’s television show and two young children of colour as a stage for a preplanned apology for his blackface exploits from when he was 29-years-old. Don’t worry everyone. He’s learned from his days of trying to manipulate strong, principled women of colour such as Jody Wilson-Raybould. It’s much easier to exploit young children!

And, by the way — who doesn’t know that blackface is wrong when they are 29-years-old? The culture in 2001 rejected such racist tropes. If Trudeau were actually that stupid at 29, when his brain was fully developed, then how in the hell should he ever lead a G7 country at 47? He can’t even be trusted to properly instruct young school children.

What other stupid things has this guy done that Canada’s enemies could use as blackmail (no pun intended).

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