Quotulatiousness

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.

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 20, 2019

The conspiracy theorists appear to have been right about this one – “Project Cactus”

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

Maxime Bernier and the PPC would have had a tough time getting much attention in this election campaign anyway, but the Laurentian Elite were apparently scared enough to sponsor underhanded actions to keep him and his party out of the debates and on the defensive on social media:

Warren Kinsella’s Daisy Group consulting firm was behind a social media campaign to put the People’s Party of Canada on the defensive and keep leader Maxime Bernier out of the federal leaders’ debates, according to documents provided to CBC News.

The documents outline the work done by several employees of Daisy on behalf of an unnamed client. A source with knowledge of the project told CBC News that client was the Conservative Party of Canada.

The plan was first reported Friday night by the Globe and Mail.

According to a source with knowledge of the project, who spoke to CBC News on condition they not be named, the objective of the plan, dubbed “Project Cactus,” was to make the Conservative Party look more attractive to voters by highlighting PPC candidates’ and supporters’ xenophobic statements on social media.

The source added that Daisy employed four full-time staffers on Project Cactus at one time.

Kinsella is a lawyer, anti-racism activist and former Liberal strategist who has been a vocal critic of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

[…]

In a statement to CBC News on Friday, the executive director of the PPC said “It hardly comes as a surprise that the Conservative Party of Canada would be behind such disgraceful and cowardly tactics.”

“As our Leader Maxime Bernier stated when he left the CPC and repeated on numerous occasions since then, they are ‘morally and intellectually corrupt.’ And today, this story proves it without a doubt,” Johanne Mennie said in an email.

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 2, 2019

In a crowded field, Election 2019 may be the worst we’ve seen so far

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

Chris Selley makes the case that this year’s federal election is the worst of all:

It has been widely suggested that this might be Canada’s Worst Election. Certainly it is dreary as all get-out. We began with interminable back-and-forth about abortion, which all party leaders pledge to do absolutely nothing about. If one or more of them are lying, it seems very unlikely they would admit to it at a press conference. The next mania was over Justin Trudeau’s blackface revues, which were radioactively damaging to whatever was left of his Most Enlightened Gentleman brand, but which mostly served as an opportunity for exhibitionist partisan insanity and cringeworthy journalism.

[…]

By rights the Conservatives should be mopping the floor. But they can hardly attack Trudeau’s social-engineer budgeting when they’re relaunching their flotilla of boutique tax credits for kids’ sports and arts programs and public transit. Why not just make their tax cut even bigger and let people spend their money how they please?

Similarly, the Conservatives would be on much firmer ground criticizing Trudeau’s housing-market interventions if they weren’t promising to review the mortgage stress test and bring back 30-year mortgages — something Stephen Harper’s government eliminated in 2012. Having decided carbon pricing was evil almost entirely because Justin Trudeau supports it, the Tories still struggle to defend any effective or efficient policy against climate change.

Any hope that Maxime Bernier might hold Scheer’s feet to the fire on free minds and free markets went up in flames ages ago as his People’s Party attracted far more authoritarian/nativist refugees from the Conservative Party of Canada than libertarian ones. Jagmeet Singh is bargaining hard to sell the NDP’s credibility down the river to appease all-but-totally uninterested Quebec nationalists — shamefully promising not to intervene against Bill 21, as if he would ever get the chance. Elizabeth May and her Green Party constantly remind us that they’re really quite odd: May insisting Longueuil candidate Pierre Nantel isn’t a separatist while Nantel shouts “I’m a separatist!” through a bullhorn is the weirdest thing she has done since the last weird thing.

The debates have worked out as badly as conceivably possible: The Leaders’ Debate Commission, created by the Liberals to solve a problem that didn’t exist — aieeee! Too many debates! — has reinvented the wheel, crushing both Maclean’s debate (which Trudeau declined to attend) and the Munk debate on foreign affairs (which has been cancelled due to Trudeau’s lack of interest) beneath it.

September 16, 2019

Election 2019 – “Going negative this early strongly suggests that the Lib’s internal polling is suggesting a fair bit of weakness”

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

Jay Currie’s take on the first week of the Canadian federal election campaign:

Dock Currie (not related) apparently posted something to the internet several years ago which was offensive. So he felt he had to resign as an NDP candidate. [Anyone who sees Dock on Twitter has to wonder if he has ever posted something which is not offensive, but there is is.] Several conservatives have, at various times been in the same crowd of several hundred or thousand people as Canada’s answer to Tokyo Rose, Faith Goldy. The shock, the horror.

I realize that a race between Trudeau, Scheer, Singh and May is not very inspiring. (It would have been so much more interesting had the Conservatives actually run a conservative like Max Bernier rather than whatever the hell Scheer is, but them’s the breaks.) But piling on to candidates for ancient statements or mau-mauing them for distant association with a cartoon fascist simply sets the bar even lower.

Having accomplished nothing of substance in their years in government – they even screwed up the pot file which took real ingenuity – the Libs are reduced to going negative from the outset. Their war room knows that Canadians are unimpressed with “climate change needs higher taxes” as a campaign theme. They also know that Trudeau’s legal and ethics problems offset what charisma he has as a campaigner.

So now it is time for “Project Fear”. Scheer = Harper = Trump. Scheer is going to take away abortion rights, Scheer is not an ally of the gay community because he does not jet all over the country to march in pride parades. The Conservatives hate immigrants, and so on.

Going negative this early strongly suggests that the Lib’s internal polling is suggesting a fair bit of weakness. Conventionally, a party will save the negative stuff for the last couple of weeks of the campaign when it is the most damaging and the hardest to refute. I suspect the Libs have realized that with their own leader either under RCMP investigation or credibly accused of impeding that investigation, they need to distract and terrify the under 30’s, newer immigrants and the ladies if they are going to win.

August 28, 2019

The political football of “mass” immigration in the Canadian federal election campaign

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

Recently a registered third-party (under Canadian election rules) paid to have billboards put up in major cities that appeared to be from Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada:

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

Colby Cosh discusses the issues raised:

I offer sarcastic congratulations to everyone who gave Maxime Bernier the stupid controversy he wanted over the “Say NO to mass immigration” billboard, bearing his image, that briefly appeared in a few Canadian cities and was taken down in a hurry Monday morning. The billboards were purchased from Pattison Outdoor Advertising by a third-party supporter of Bernier’s People’s Party. The company’s initial response to the resulting outcry was to observe that the message of the billboard complied with advertising standards; it did not contain any hateful, disparaging, or discriminatory language.

“We take a neutral position on ads that comply with the ASC (Advertising Standards Canada) Code as we believe Canadians do not want us to be the judge or arbiter of what the public can or cannot see,” was Pattison’s original statement in the face of controversy. (Most everybody, including the company, seems to have missed the point that election advertising is explicitly “excluded from the application” of the Code on the grounds that political expression deserves the highest degree of deference; the Code does say, for what it’s worth, that “Canadians are entitled to expect” that such advertising respects the underlying principles.)

[…]

The question I have for objectors and denouncers of the billboard is how they think it could have been rewritten, expressing the same underlying idea, so as to be acceptable. If the unpleasant-sounding word “mass” were replaced with “large-scale,” would there have been less of a ruction? Maybe any objection to prospective levels of immigration to Canada is to be regarded as inherently racist and hateful, even when no racist or hateful language is used.

If that is the case, it is perfectly predictable that the People’s Party will exploit this and cry “mob censorship,” and public polls on immigration suggest they will have some success, in case recent history everywhere didn’t offer enough of a hint. Moreover, we are left with an awkward question how any limit upon or criteria for immigration, any government immigration policy per se, can be justified at all. What, indeed, can be the objection to “mass immigration”? Who will have the courage to put up a “Say YES to mass immigration” billboard?

July 8, 2019

Ottawa defends intrusive impaired driving rules against Maxime Bernier’s criticism

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

Ali Taghva reports on the contretemps over federal impaired driving rules that PPC leader Maxime Bernier slagged on Twitter:

Earlier today the official Twitter account for the Department of Justice had to issue a clarification after Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People’s Party of Canada, called the organization out for posting a worrying public announcement in both English and French.

In their original announcement, the Justice Canada account clearly stated that you could be arrested if you were to enjoy a drink after driving. The statement seemed to include summer time drinking on your own patio, noting that “It’s summertime and the living is easy! Whether you’re sitting on a patio or having a backyard #BBQ, remember it’s against the #law to have a blood alcohol concentration over prohibited levels within two hours of driving.”

The clarification posted since then pointed to a section in the law that prohibits conviction for those who decide to drink after arriving home safely.

I’d laugh at the awkward tweets if the actual law and the potential repercussions weren’t so damn serious.

While Justice Canada has issued a clarification, their mistake only highlights the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems with the recent legal changes brought forward through the adoption of Bill C-46 and its cousin C-45.

June 25, 2019

Barbara Kay on the rise of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada

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

In The Post Millennial, Barbara Kay explains why there may be a good opportunity for Maxime Bernier to attract votes from disaffected Canadians who don’t feel the other parties represent their interests and concerns:

The nationalist Brexit Party, led by outspoken euroskeptic Nigel Farage, came into existence last January. Four months later, it boasts 29 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament). By contrast, this past May, Canada’s Green Party elected its second member of parliament after 36 years of existence.

There’s a message here. The Green Party is not a “disruptor” of the status quo, and it doesn’t represent a groundswell of voices who feel left out of the conversation. It’s just a more fibrously left wing form of the same political granola served up by the NDP and the Liberal Party. It’s not really needed. But the Brexit Party’s success is a genuinely organic statement of anger directed at traditional parties by great swaths of citizens who not only felt disrespected and ignored, they actually were, by any objective standards, disrespected and ignored. It was needed.

Forty percent of Canadians routinely choose not to vote. A certain number are politically indifferent, but another number don’t vote because they don’t feel any of the parties represent their views. Normally, they don’t feel worried enough to bestir themselves. Will the pattern hold in October?

Or is this Maxime Bernier’s “disruptor” moment? His People’s Party of Canada was officially launched in January, and it presently has more members than the Green Party. The PPC is fielding candidates in all 338 ridings, an impressive accomplishment given the time constraints. Their basic platform, which includes tax simplification, the abolition of supply management, as well as long-overdue abolition of inter-provincial tariffs, indicates commitment to fundamental conservative principles.

But those issues speak to the mind, not the heart, and a slew of anxious Canadian hearts are what is presently up for grabs. One of Bernier’s great strengths is that in spite of years of political experience, he has not become jaded or cynical. He wears his own heart on his sleeve. Not a thespian, mantra-driven, lachrymose, pre-programmed “heart” of the kind Trudeau is so famous for, but an unsentimental heart full of deeply-considered convictions that beat, like ruggedly-manned boats, against the progressive current upon which Justin Trudeau is a dreamily bobbing twiglet.

One of those convictions is that chronic breast-beating about the sins of the past and suppression of pride in Canadians’ national identity is creating an unhealthy social and cultural environment, dominated by grievance-mongering special-interest activism that corrodes national confidence and unity of purpose.

Another related, perhaps pivotal strength is Bernier’s passion for freedom of speech.

June 21, 2019

The PPC’s 2019 election platform on freedom of expression

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

Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada is posting the individual issues from their 2019 election platform online, and today’s addition was their position on freedom of expression:

The rights of Canadians to freely hold and express beliefs are being eroded at an alarming speed under the Trudeau government. Some of its recent decisions even require that Canadians renounce their most deeply held moral convictions and express opinions they disagree with.

[…]

Our Plan

What some people find politically incorrect, offensive or even hateful cannot serve as the legal basis for discrimination and censorship. Canadians should be able to enjoy maximum freedom of conscience and expression as guaranteed in Section 2 of the Charter.

A People’s Party Government will:

  • Restrict the definition of hate speech in the Criminal Code to expression which explicitly advocates the use of force against identifiable groups or persons based on protected criteria such as religion, race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation.
  • Repeal any existing legislation or regulation curtailing free speech on the internet and prevent the reinstatement of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
  • Repeal C-16 and M-103.
  • Ensure that Canadians can exercise their freedom of conscience to its fullest extent as it is intended under the Charter and are not discriminated against because of their moral convictions.
  • Withhold federal funding from any post-secondary institution shown to be violating the freedom of expression of its students or faculty.

You can read the full policy statement here, or the whole platform here.

March 18, 2019

Reconciling the libertarian and anti-immigration wings of Maxime Bernier’s PPC

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

In the Post Millennial, Brad Betters looks at how the PPC’s libertarian ideals co-exist with skepticism about current government immigration plans:

While there are many patterns of abuse in the mass media’s everyday coverage of Maxime Bernier — i.e. the constant comparisons to Donald Trump, the failure to actually engage with his policies, quoting those who accuse him of “pandering”, while failing to quote his supporters (although there is the occasional exception) — one that jumps out is the routine questioning of his ideological bona fides.

Being ideologically inconsistent is a serious charge for many among Bernier’s base. While not a concern for liberals and progressives (they just want power and results), it is for many conservatives, even if it means becoming “beautiful losers”, as one US conservative commentator put it years back.

Recently, the National Post’s John Ivison referred to Bernier’s party, the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), as being plagued by a “fundamental contradiction” in that it’s “led by a libertarian free-marketer and supported by anti-globalists.”

Although vague, Ivison is no doubt, at least in part, referring to the PPC’s call to reduce immigration levels. His Post colleague Stuart Thomson was more express, calling Bernier’s immigration position “a diversion from his ideological playbook” — a criticism repeated by Global News’ West Block host Mercedes Stephenson among others.

In calling to reduce immigration, Bernier is being perfectly faithful to free-market thought. Importing workers from abroad, if high enough, can lead to supply shocks in the domestic labour market, weighing down and distorting wage rates in the process — indeed, economists are mystified why wages in Canada have flatlined despite years of growing GDP.

For large employers, these expansions can lead to giant windfalls and a chance to avoid facing market discipline — i.e. by not innovating or offering the wages needed to draw in new workers. Markets which are expanded artificially are not “free”, and profits pumped-up with the help of government we usually call ‘subsidies’: two things free-marketer libertarians revile.

Equally reviled among libertarians is ‘big government’; something that goes hand in hand with mass immigration. Large populations with diverse languages, cultures, and religions serve as a perfect excuse for new government programs and bureaucratic meddling: from government-funded language instruction, translators, and signage, to more housing and educational and job-training initiatives for unprepared newcomers.

Overlaying all this is the array of government watchdogs mandated to ensure immigrating visible minorities get the requisite (i.e. ever-increasing) amount of cultural sensitivity and achieve economic parity with old-stock Canadians.

February 4, 2019

A thumbnail sketch of Mad Max and the PPC

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

Anthony Daoud, in an article examining the political loyalty implications of party defections, floor crossings, and resignations, provides a quick outline of Maxime Bernier and his new-but-growing party:

Does Bernier even need an introduction? It seems like everybody in Canada knows about him, and his popularity will undoubtedly grow after appearing on the Rubin Report, a libertarian Youtube show.

He left the Conservative Party and created the People’s Party of Canada, which advocates for smaller government, lower levels of immigration, and more free-markets (including abolishing supply management) according to the party’s website.

In a email to supporters, the PPC proudly proclaimed that it reached its first million dollars in total donations since the party’s founding in September.

Whether Bernier’s party will win any electoral district other than Beauce (his own) is incredibly unlikely, but he can definitely do some damage to the Conservatives’ prospect of victory, since he is already polling at nearly 3%.

What may be the most intense conflict in politics right now is not even taking place in parliament but between the CBC’s Wendy Mesley and the PPC leader. In an interview, she miserably failed at her attempt to link Bernier to a Koch brothers’ conspiracy.

Even more recently, the Quebec politician took the “beef” up a notch when he called for Mesley to be fired after she said Christians in Canada are attempting to sway political landscape, as if they were some sort of foreign interference in our democracy.

Truthfully, the PPC may never come establish themselves as a long-standing party, but more than anything, it could mean that politicians will begin to feel like they can simply leave the party they were elected to represent and literally “do their own thing” once in parliament.

January 30, 2019

The high cost Canadians pay to support our oligopolies

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

In the National Post, Andrew Coyne compares the Liberal and Conservative parties’ respective claims to lower the cost of living for Canadians, and points out some examples that neither party is willing to address:

For example, there is the notorious system of agricultural quotas known as supply management — a price-fixing ring the government not only approves but organizes and enforces, whose effect is to double or even triple the prices of such basic food items as milk, cheese, eggs and chicken. For all their pretended concern for affordability, all parties and every MP, with the sole exception of Maxime Bernier, are publicly, nay fervently in favour of it.

But while the farm cartel gets a lot of ink, there are plenty of other examples. Canadians pay among the highest wireless telephone fees in the world, for starters — maybe even the highest — as study after study has found. The latest report from Tefficient, a European consultancy, found Canada’s carriers take in more revenue per gigabyte of data than their counterparts anywhere else in the world — 23 times more than in Finland.

Similarly, Canadians pay among the highest air fares in the world. The travel website Kiwi. com recently found flights from Canada on a full-service airline cost roughly five times as much per 100 kilometres as flights from the United States. The situation was a little better for domestic flights, where costs were only twice as high as in the U.S. The makers of Hopper, the travel app, note it is typically cheaper to fly from Vancouver to Hawaii than from Vancouver to Regina, though Regina is 3,000 km closer.

Finally, there are Canadian bank fees, also — you guessed it — among the highest in the world, particularly for mutual funds. What is the common thread among these three industries? All are highly concentrated oligopolies: three big wireless carriers, two big airlines and five big banks dominate their respective markets.

Rather than compete as vigorously as they might for Canadian consumers, these quasi-cartels are permitted, in effect, to harvest them. They do so, again, not only with the tolerance but the active participation of the government. Foreigners are effectively precluded from competing in any of them, whether by foreign-ownership restrictions or outright prohibitions on competition — foreign airlines may not fly from one Canadian city to another, for example.

None of the parties currently boasting of their desire to make life more affordable for Canadians proposes to change a line of this, either. Whatever else may be in (artificially) scarce supply, in Canadian politics there’s never any shortage of rank hypocrisy.

September 18, 2018

Mad Max and the 338-candidate promise

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

Colby Cosh offers some electoral advice to Maxime Bernier and the still-hot-off-the-presses PPC/PP proto-party:

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you have high hopes for the new Max Bernier Party. Perhaps you believe, as my colleague Andrew Coyne does, that there is still far too much fly-blown 1970s-style intervention and protectionism in Canada’s economy. Perhaps you are in favour of a more hard-headed approach to immigration policy, or you are allergic to “diversity” as a supreme ideal. Maybe you just appreciate Bernier’s devil-may-care swashbuckling spirit.

Assuming some or all of these things are true, as some or all of them are true of me: were you especially impressed by Friday’s launch of the People’s Party of Canada? Bernier, I have to say, does not seem at all sure about the order in which he wants to go about things. Sixteen months ago he came close to winning the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada: perhaps it was on the day he lost (May 27, 2017) that he decided the big Conservative tent was, as he has now described it, “intellectually and morally corrupt,” meriting only destruction. That hypothesis makes his secession from the Conservatives seem like a spasm of arrogance.

[…]

So, to skip past those already familiar critiques of the Liste Maxime in the hope of adding a new one: why a full slate? Promising to run 338 candidates is a good way of maximizing the harm to the CPC, if this is just a plan for samurai revenge. A leader like Bernier, who is thoughtful about ideology and does enjoy recognition from coast to coast, would be a good central building block for a libertarian-ish or classical liberal political party, if you want such a party. But his party is bound to be judged by its 10 dumbest, least careful candidates. (They all are, with the possible exception of the Liberals!) Why couldn’t Bernier start out by using the first part of his 13 months to find 20 or 30 really good ones, and run only those?

As far as anyone knows, he is starting out with zero potential candidates who have any credibility or experience to speak of. There definitely weren’t any on the dais with him Friday. Nobody thinks Bernier is aiming to create a purely regional party, but if that is his concern, he would only have to make sure that his wedge of 10 or 20 or 50 candidates was spread around suitably.

Frankly, if I were the megalomaniac in charge of this thing, I would take some care not to launch my movement shortly before a general election, but as soon as possible after. You know what’s a good way to build an insurgent party? By-elections! In a by-elections, a party leader can work closely with a single candidate and move into the riding himself for personal appearances. Other non-cash resources can be concentrated. Turnout is usually low in by-elections, and the establishment candidates are often dire. But, then, I lived as a sullen, dopey teen in Deborah Gray’s riding, and have some memory of a thing called “Reform,” and they say those early-life experiences are often powerful obstacles to understanding.

I think this is quite sensible advice, as even finding a full slate of “paper” candidates can be a difficult task for small parties — and the PPC is quite small for the time being — so concentrating on finding credible candidates to run in winnable or merely competitive races makes a heck of a lot of sense. Even a limited slate of 30 still allows the media to find one or two who can be baited into making statements that can be played for all they’re worth by hostile editorialists, but over 300? The media sharks would be spoiled for choice. With a more limited group of viable candidates, there are fewer chances of a random blowhard (or a closet racist) suddenly being elevated by CBC anchors as the visible face of the new party.

September 16, 2018

Maxime Bernier and the People’s Party of Canada

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

Andrew Coyne says there’s room in Canadian politics for Mad Max’s new party:

In principle, there is room for a new party in Canadian politics; arguably, there is a need for one.

That the established parties have tended to pander to narrow and particular interests, rather than the broader public interest, is well documented, as is the result: an ever-expanding state devoted almost wholly to redistributing income, not from rich to poor, but from taxpayers to well-organized and well-cultivated client groups (notably the state’s own employees). In the same way the state redistributes from consumers to producers, from west to east, young to old, and so on, in the service of neither efficiency nor justice nor even raw numbers but just whoever frightens politicians the most.

Which over time — people learn — has come to include everybody. We subsidize everything that moves in this country, and charge ourselves higher taxes to pay for it, then demand more subsidies to offset the burden of taxes. And the fruit of all this frantic attempt to redistribute from everybody to everybody? A nation brimming with grievance and resentment, every part of the country convinced the rest are making out at its expense.

A party that proposed to end the money-go-round — to wean the country’s business class, in particular, off the public teat, to shut down the “regional development” spigots and bust up the cartels that, behind our protectionist walls, are permitted to genteelly pick our pockets — would therefore be a signal addition to our politics. If it chose to frame this critique not as a fairly straightforward application of Economics 101 but as a radical determination to govern “for all Canadians,” so be it.

And if it made life difficult for the established parties, so much the better. The market for ideas thrives on competition and choice as much as any other. The cartelization of our economy is in part a reflection of the cartelization of our politics. A more robustly conservative party, in particular, less burdened by the Conservatives’ crippling self-doubt, would be a welcome addition, even if I don’t like all of its ideas: millions of Canadians do, and it is wrong that they should go unrepresented.

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